Life or Death (2 page)

Prisoners are ordered from their cells, scratching at navels, cupping testicles and wiping grit from their eyes. Some emerge willingly while others have to be encouraged with a swinging bat. There are cells on three levels enclosing a rectangular yard with safety nets to stop people from attempting suicide or being thrown off the walkways. The ceiling has a tangle of pipes that gurgle and knock as though something sinister lives inside them.

Moss hauls himself up and out. Barefoot. He stands on the landing with his face to the wall. Grunts. Farts. He’s a big man, softening in the middle, but solid across the shoulders due to the push-ups and chin-ups he does a dozen times a day. His skin is a milk-chocolate brown and his eyes seem too big for his face, making him look younger than his forty-eight years.

Moss glances to his left. Junebug is leaning his head on the wall, trying to sleep standing up. His tattoos leap and snarl on his forearms and chest. The former meth addict has a narrow face and a moustache trimmed into wide wings that stretch halfway across his cheeks.

‘What’s happening?’

Junebug opens his eyes. ‘Sounds like an escape.’

Moss looks in the other direction. Along the length of the landing, he sees dozens of prisoners standing outside their cells. Everyone is out now. Not everyone. Moss leans to his right, trying to peer inside the next cell. The guards are coming.

‘Hey, Audie, get up, man,’ he mutters.

Silence.

From the upper level he hears a voice ring out. Someone arguing. A scuffle develops until the Ninja Turtles storm up the stairway and dish out a beating.

Moss steps closer to Audie’s cell. ‘Wake up, man.’

Nothing.

He turns to Junebug. Their eyes meet, silently asking the question.

Moss takes two steps to the right, aware that the guards could be watching. He peers into the darkness of Audie’s cell and can make out the rack bolted to the wall. The basin. The toilet. No warm body or cold one.

A guard yells from above. ‘All present and accounted for.’

A second voice comes from below. ‘All present and accounted for.’

The hats and bats are coming. Inmates flatten their bodies against the walls.

‘Up here!’ yells a guard.

Boots follow.

Two of the uniforms are searching Audie’s cell as though there’s somewhere he could possibly be hiding – under a pillow, or behind the deodorant. Moss risks turning his head and sees Deputy Warden Grayson reach the top of the stairs, sweating from the climb. Fatter than Albert, his belly hangs over his polished leather belt and more rolls of skin are trying to smother his collar.

Grayson gets to Audie’s cell. He looks inside and takes a breath, making a sucking sound with his lips. Unhooking his baton, he slaps it into his palm and turns to Moss.

‘Where’s Palmer?’

‘I don’t know, suh.’

The baton swings into the back of Moss’s knees, dropping him like a felled tree. Grayson is standing over him.

‘When did you last see him?’

Moss hesitates, trying to remember. The end of the baton is driven into his right side, just below his ribs. The world flushes up and down in his eyes.

‘Chow time,’ he gasps.

‘Where is he now?’

‘I don’t know.’

A shimmer seems to rise off Grayson’s face. ‘Lock the place down. I want him found.’

‘What about breakfast?’ an officer asks.

‘They can wait.’

Moss is dragged into his cell. The doors close. For the next two hours he lies on his rack, listening to the prison buildings quiver and groan. Now they’re in the workshop. Before that it was the laundry and the library.

From the next cell, he hears Junebug tapping on the wall. ‘Hey, Moss!’

‘What?’

‘You think he got out?’

Moss doesn’t answer.

‘Why would he do something like that on his last night?’

Still Moss remains silent.

‘I always said that sonbitch was crazy.’

The guards are coming again. Junebug goes back to his rack. Moss listens, feeling his sphincter opening and closing. The boots stop moving outside his cell.

‘On your feet! Against the back wall! Spread ’em!’

Three men enter. Moss has his wrists cuffed and looped through a chain that is wrapped around his waist, while another tethers his ankles. He can only shuffle. His trousers are undone and he doesn’t have time to do up the buttons. He has to hold them up with one hand. Prisoners are whooping in their cells and hollering messages. Moss walks through shafts of sunlight and catches a glimpse of police cars outside the main gates where stars of light reflect from their polished surfaces.

When he reaches the administration wing, he’s told to take a seat. Guards on either side say nothing. Moss can see their profiles, the peaked caps, sunglasses and tan shirts with dark-brown epaulettes. He can also hear voices inside the adjacent meeting room. Occasionally one utterance rises above the others. Accusations are being made. Blame apportioned.

Food arrives. Moss feels his stomach cramp and his mouth fill with saliva. Another hour passes. Longer. People leave. It’s Moss’s turn. Using short mincing steps, he shuffles into the room, keeping his eyes lowered. Chief Warden Sparkes is dressed in a dark suit that already looks crushed where he’s been sitting down. He’s a tall man with a mane of silver hair, a long thin nose, and he walks like he’s balancing a book on his head. He signals for the officers to step back and they take up positions on either side of the door.

Along one wall is a table covered with plates of half-eaten food: deep-fried soft shell crab, spare ribs, fried chicken, mashed potato and salad. The grilled cobs of corn have black skillet marks and are glistening with butter. The warden picks up a spare rib and sucks the meat from the bone, wiping his fingers with a moist towelette.

‘What’s your name, son?’

‘Moss Jeremiah Webster.’

‘What sort of name is Moss?’

‘Well, suh, my momma couldn’t spell Moses on my birth certificate.’

One of the guards laughs. The warden pinches the bridge of his nose.

‘Are you hungry, Mr Webster? Grab a plate.’

Moss glances at the feast, his stomach rumbling. ‘Are you fixing on executing me, suh?’

‘Why would you think that?’

‘Meal like that could be a man’s last.’

‘Nobody is going to execute you … not on a Friday.’

The chief warden laughs, but Moss doesn’t think the joke is very funny. He hasn’t moved.

Maybe the food is poisoned. Warden’s eating it. Maybe he knows which bits to eat. Hell, I don’t care!

Shuffling forward, Moss begins heaping food onto a plastic plate, piling it high with ribs, crab claws and mashed potato, trying to perch a cob of corn on the top. He eats with both hands, leaning over the plate, the juices smearing his cheeks and dribbling down his chin. Meanwhile, Warden Sparkes picks up another spare rib and takes a seat opposite, looking vaguely repulsed.

‘Extortion, fraud, drug dealing – you were caught with two million dollars’ worth of marijuana.’

‘It was only weed.’

‘Then you beat a man to death in prison.’

Moss doesn’t answer.

‘Did he deserve it?’

‘Thought so at the time.’

‘And now?’

‘I’d do a lot of things different.’

‘How long has it been?’

‘Fifteen years.’

Moss has eaten too quickly. A piece of the meat is lodged halfway down his throat. He thumps his fist on his chest, making his cuffs rattle. The warden offers him something to drink. Moss swallows a full can of soft drink, fearing they might take it away. He wipes his mouth. Belches. Eats again.

Warden Sparkes has sucked the spare rib clean. He leans forward and plants the bone into Moss’s mashed potato where it sticks upright like naked flagpole.

‘Let’s start at the beginning. You are friends with Audie Palmer, is that correct?’

‘I know him.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘Yesterday evening at chow time.’

‘You sat with him.’

‘Yes, suh.’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘Usual stuff.’

The warden waits, his eyes expressionless. Moss can feel the butter from the griddled corn coating his tongue.

‘Roaches.’

‘What?’

‘We were discussing how to get rid of roaches. I was telling Audie to use AmerFresh toothpaste and put it in the cracks in the wall. Roaches don’t like toothpaste. Don’t ask me why, they just don’t.’

‘Cockroaches.’

Moss talks between mouthfuls, eating around his mashed potato. ‘I heard a story about a woman who had a cockroach crawl into her ear while she was sleeping. It had babies that burrowed right into her brain. They found her dead one day with roaches coming out her nose. We fight a war against them. Some niggas will tell you to use shaving cream, but that shit don’t last through the night. AmerFresh is best.’

Warden Sparkes eyeballs him. ‘We have no pest-control problems in my prison.’

‘I don’t know if the roaches got that memo, suh.’

‘We fumigate twice a year.’

Moss knows all about the pest-control measures. The guards show up, order prisoners to lie down on their racks, while their cells are sprayed with some toxic-smelling chemical that makes everyone feel poorly, but has zero effect on the roaches.

‘What happened after chow time?’ asks Sparkes.

‘I went back to my cell.’

‘Did you see Palmer?’

‘He was reading.’

‘Reading?’

‘A book,’ says Moss, in case any further explanation were needed.

‘What sort of book?’

‘A thick one without any pictures.’

Sparkes doesn’t see any humour in the situation. ‘Did you know Palmer was due to be released today?’

‘Yes, suh.’

‘Why would a man escape the night before he was due to be released?’

Moss wipes grease from his lips. ‘I have no idea.’

‘You must have some inkling. The man spent ten years inside. One more day and he’s a free man, but instead he makes himself a fugitive. When he’s caught he’ll be tried and sentenced. He’ll get another twenty years.’

Moss doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say.

‘Are you hearing me, son?’

‘Yes, suh.’

‘Don’t tell me you weren’t close to Audie Palmer. Don’t tell me that for a second. This ain’t my first rodeo and I know when someone is crow-hopping me.’

Moss blinks at him.

‘You shared the next cell to Palmer for – what – seven years? He must have said something to you.’

‘No, suh, honest to God, not a word.’

Moss has reflux. He burps. The chief warden is still talking. ‘My job is to keep prisoners incarcerated until such time as the federal government says they’re eligible for release. Mr Palmer wasn’t eligible for release until today, but he decided to go early. Why?’

Moss’s shoulders rise and fall.

‘Speculate.’

‘I don’t know what that word means, suh.’

‘Give me your opinion.’

‘You want my opinion? I’d say that Audie Palmer was dumber than shit on a biscuit for doing what he did.’

Moss pauses and looks at the uneaten food on his plate. Warden Sparkes takes a photograph from his coat pocket and puts it on the table. It’s a picture of Audie Palmer with his puppy-dog eyes and floppy fringe, as wholesome as a glass of milk.

‘What do you know about the Dreyfus County armoured truck robbery?’

‘Just what I read.’

‘Audie Palmer must have mentioned it.’

‘No, suh.’

‘And you didn’t ask?’

‘Sure, I did. Everybody asked. Every guard. Every nigga. Every visitor. Family. Friends. Every sonbitch in this place wanted to know what happened to the money.’

Moss didn’t have to lie. He doubted if there was a man or beast incarcerated in Texas who didn’t know the story of the robbery – not just because of the missing money, but because four people died that day. One escaped. One got caught.

‘And what did Palmer say?’

‘Not a damn thing.’

Warden Sparkes fills his cheeks with air like he’s blowing up a balloon and then releases it slowly.

‘Is that why you helped that boy escape? Did he promise you some of the money?’

‘I didn’t help nobody escape.’

‘Are you cocking your leg and pissing on me, son?’

‘No, suh.’

‘So you want me to believe that your best friend escaped from prison without saying a word to you?’

Moss nods, his eyes searching empty air above the warden’s head.

‘Did Audie Palmer have a girlfriend?’

‘He used to talk about a girl in his sleep, but I think she was long gone.’

‘Family?’

‘He has a mother and a sister.’

‘We
all
have a mother.’

‘She writes him regular.’

‘Anyone else?’

Moss shrugs. He isn’t revealing anything that the warden couldn’t find in Audie’s file. Both men know that nothing important is going to come out of the interview.

Sparkes stands and paces, his shoes squeaking on the linoleum floor. Moss has to twist his head from side to side to keep him in view.

‘I want you to listen carefully, Mr Webster. You had some discipline problems when you first arrived, but they were just kinks and you ironed them out. You won privileges. Gained them the hard way. That’s why I know your conscience is bothering you, which is why you’re going to tell me where he’s gone.’

Moss looks at him blankly. The warden stops pacing and braces both his hands on the table.

‘Explain something to me, Mr Webster. This code of silence that operates among people like you, what do you think it achieves? You live like animals, you think like animals, you behave like animals. Cunning. Violent. Selfish. You steal from each other. You kill each other. You fuck each other. You form gangs. What’s the point of having a code?’

‘It’s the second thing that unites us,’ says Moss, telling himself to hold his tongue even as he ignores his own advice.

‘What’s the first thing?’ asks the warden.

‘Hating people like you.’

The chief warden upends the table, sending plates of food clattering to the floor. Gravy and mashed potato slide down the wall. The guards wait for the signal. Moss is hauled to his feet and pushed out the door. He has to shuffle quickly to stop himself falling. They half carry him down two flights of stairs and through a half-dozen doors that have to be unlocked from the other side. He’s not going back to his cell. They’re taking him to the Special Housing Unit. Solitary. The Hole.