As yet unfinished, just posting here so I force myself to see it through.
__________
Ultimatum
The air was stifling, the kind you wake up to in a hotel with questionable housekeeping. The kind where you can almost feel mould growing on your scalp. I gave a quick scratch behind my head with the phone before returning it to my ear.
“So then what’d you say?” I’d only half heard what the story was about, but it seemed like the right ushering.
“Well, that’s just it,” he went on. “What could I say, really? I have to talk to my son? You met Pete, you know what a prick he is.”
I grinned. “Come on, Pop. I know all about pricks in my line of work.”
Leaning back in the chair, I shrugged off my jacket and let it wrap around the armrests. I put my feet up on the table as he went on telling me about the elusive time off he’d been pursuing. The conversation slipped on, consistent like the tide – always homecoming, never the same.
I perked up when I heard something off. “The Sox? Seriously?”
“They’ve had great pitching this year!”
“They had their miracle in oh-four,” I snorted.
“What ever you say, Ethan,” and he capped it with an exaggerated sigh. “But prepare for more disappointment – Guererro can’t win the playoffs for the Angels by himself.”
“We’ll see.”
“We’ll see you shot down. Again.”
I laughed. “Law of averages, Pops.”
Autopilot kicked in as the talk glided into the women situation – obviously I wasn’t much help in that regard. The door groaned open behind me. I tossed my neck back and checked it out; Jules came in, regal skirt clinching her thighs so close together she walked like a tightrope performer. What an aesthetic coincidence she was!
“Here’s your water, Ethan.”
“Thanks, Jules.” I watched her go, and it was just as pleasant.
“That’s that lady friend of yours, huh?” Dad offered up his trademark laugh, gut shaking like an oil barrel as he gasps out thick jeers. “You should talk to her more.”
“Nah, I’m just another asshole.” A thick slosh of water soothed my raw throat, and I felt the icy chill spread in my stomach. I swirled the water in the glass, watching the many particles and bits of grime form a glossy cyclone in their crystalline prison.
“You know,” I muttered. “When I first started up here I could never drink water like this. I guess you get used to it.”
“Mhmm.”
“God, Dad, I just can’t wait to get out of here.” I tossed the glass back and caught as much of the silver ambrosia as I could, mopping the spillage across my beard and face, cooling every pore and scratch.
“Come on, now, don’t do that,” he blurted. “You have to be productive with your time, no matter where you are or what you’re doing. Just try to enjoy your time. You’ll wish you did later if you don’t.”
I allotted the tiniest of smiles. My Dad’s always been bumbling with his motivational speeches, but the advice was usually worth its salt. If a little tired.
“Fair enough.”
The door screeched harder, and I made a note to oil the hinge next time. Keys jingled behind me and I knew it was Norman.
“Sorry, Hiller. Time’s up.”
I slipped my coat on and dropped to a standing position, leaving the glass on my table and giving a final glance through the plexiglass.
“I’ll see you later, Pop.”
He replied with his usual hybrid of a frown and a smile, and I followed Norm back to my cell.
-
My cot was wearing thin. About time to ask for a new mattress. Snapping my neck back like an owl, I snatched my shopping list off the wall. Under "Buddhism" was scrawled The irony hurts more than the chair but at least it's funny. I chuckled, tapping my pencil on the clipboard and pondering how to die at peace when you're on the Row young.
Well, young-ish.
After a few minutes with nothing to show but a beautiful doodle of Josh Beckett icing a broken finger. I grunted and slapped the list back to the wall. That sitting was about as productive as a dyslexic taxman. It reminded me of high school, idly slapping the wall and waiting for life to get a kick start -- though turned on its head, I admit.
"Ethan!"
I snapped to attention in soldierly response.
"Relax, this ain't boarding school," Jules snickered.
Slapping my thighs in anticipation, I prodded hard. "Come on, get on with it."
"Can't get no respect," she pouted, producing a book from her cart. Jules's arm flexed hard and the book made an honest attempt to burrow through my gut.
I flipped the old leather over and read the gold highlights. Selected translated texts, Gautauma Buddha.
"You keep reading my mind like this and I'm gonna need some books on ESP."
Jules winked. "I know."
I ogled her back down the hall, then started reading.
-
"Back the fuck up."
Jacob winced, but his usual grin crocodiled its way up to his temples all the same. "And where am I losing you?"
I tossed the hair out of my eyes and rapped his magazine. "You guys, you just have it all."
"I like to think we do okay."
"That's not what I mean!"
"Okay, Ethan," his smile said. "What do you mean?"
Nobody liked Jacob. Even though he didn't go cell to cell, he managed to put off that same Janus quality the rest of his kind are packing. Asking dodgy questions, leading you around like a dog on a leash. A cloud of doubt in our homely estate, he loved that "where-did-my-neck-go?" look we get when trapped, and I was determined not to trip if I had to talk to him.
"Well come on," I sputtered. "You accept death of the soul, man, I can't really... make it any more plain than that."
"A soul is a gift," Jacob parried. "Why be given another go with your favorite toy after you break it unnecessarily?"
"No, that's a cop-out. Soul death is BS, you can't have that if you aren't atheist. You just don't want to accept Hell."
"I'm faithful, I think. I've got nothing to worry about.
I'd found a nerve. If I could send Jacob to his steak dragging heel just slightly, I could finally get the damn Jehovah's off my list.
"Okay." I stalled for time, picking at a shaving kid. "But what if you haven't?"
"The worst case scenario for me is that I return to my life before this place. Better than that."
"Or you rot in the ground."
His brow started to tighten. "Not for me, Hiller."
I changed tack with the swiftness of a Kennedy. "What's the best case scenario?"
"I go to Heaven, my friend!" Jacob leaned back in the chair, reaching his arms to the heavens. To think, it was his moneyshot, and me and Clemence the janitor were the only audience. But he savored it all the same before relaxing euphorically. "I will rule with Christ and all those pious enough before me."
"That's paganism."
"Don't do that."
I shrugged. "It is! You've got quite a photofinish, here, Jake! End game for atheists for some, standard Christian umbrella detente for most of you, and... a god? A god for the best?" Part of a balanced breakfast.
"The truth is hard to accept."
"The truth would acknowledge that your own Bible has central themes about just how badly a guy like you or me would handle that kind of a privelage."
Jacob's chair grinded back quick and I tensed up for a slug.
Instead, his grin pulled back, turning the loveliest shade of pseudo-sincerity.
"I should try to read some of that Bible, this went on longer than I thought it would." He stuck out his hand. I cocked an eyebrow and took it, only half-surprised. Tangle a tangler and you've won him over, I guess.
"So..." After all that heat, I felt obliged to bid adieu on a higher note. "Did they grant you the squad? You know, because of the no-needle thing?"
Jacob's features softened as he loosened his grip. "Yeah."
I nodded. "I couldn't do that, wait to get... you know. I've been shot at, it's just not something I can imagine. Just standing there."
"No one can imagine it," he affirmed. He patted my knuckles twice with his free hand before releasing them. "That's why I need Christ, with me." He grinned one last time. "Even if I just rot in the ground."
I lowered my gaze bashfully.
"Good luck with your hunt, Ethan. I wish you well. I really do." Jacob sauntered off, his heel dragging just slightly.
I spent the rest of my recreation time in that chair, staring intently at the opposite side of my list. I'd already decided against the Jehovah afterlife. Too many semantics. But I owed an old Rower one last thing.
I waited, not looking from that part of the page. It wasn't much, just Jacob Singer. But I didn't look away once.
And at two-oh-five, eastern standard time, I started to draw a line through it.
-
There’s no fear on Death Row once you adjust to the fact that you’re going to the big mess in the sky. (Or ground, or wherever.) There’s no ****. No violence. We’re the spew society, a phlegm-y cough some old smoker hurked into a sidewalk crack. The failures. There’s a wide range of us, the murderers, the child molesters, the rich boys and the greasers, career criminals and mistake-makers. Some education or university degree, we’re nothing alike and yet we remain united and identical as a brotherhood of the only people the government admitted even they can’t fix, for all their rehab and meds. You don’t sit next to your friends when you eat, you just sit next to others like you. We eat the same meals, wear the same slacks, the same shirts, we smoke, and we all know that one of these days we have that ultimatum.
The List has nineteen so far. Dexter Holland, 1985. He was here the very first day of my sentence. All he did was slap me on the shoulder, mutter “I wouldn’t mention your badge”, and give me his apple. They chaired him the next day.
So many people, all of them I have seen, met, laughed with and busted balls. All of them met the gas, or the juice, or the lead for a rare few. You don’t make friends here, that’s the rule. It’s not callous, it’s just practical. Think of the best conversation you ever had with somebody at a pub you just met that night. You never see that person again. That’s the fellowship of the Row.
All friends do is hurt…
“Shouldn’t you be reading, Hiller? Or whatever?”
I didn’t even glance up, just left my arms dangling on the crossbar. “Got a smoke, Norm?”
He grunted, and I just caught the pack as flew by my hands. I gummed one out and waited for Norm to light it before handing it back to him.
“Keep it. These prison smokes we sell you guys are toxic.”
I laughed, hard, as he walked away. I chased his shadow with my lunatic howling. Cancer would be too good for me. Dying in a nice, cozy bed. With a big fluffy pillow, a real mattress. Watch the Angels game on my own telly.
The cackled lost its steam and retreated back into my throat. I glanced back at my tiny table.
I wanted to read the letter, more now than ever. Still there… ETHAN. It’s the Korean characters beneath that were truly maddening. It added something exotic, something just inches from grasp. It screamed at me, a ghoul that could haunt me even if I transferred somewhere else and left it behind. I stared and stared at it, but I knew the agreement. I can’t open it yet, not for a few more weeks. I already stuck it out for two years.
The usual sledgehammer belted me in the ribs as I realized how truly alone I was. It’s funny how big a cell feels when you miss someone. It’s spacious. It’s a luxury mansion with no furniture or utilities. It’s your own planet, and you’re waiting for the sun to explode.
I’m lost at sea, and I still haven’t decided where I’ll go when I get my ultimatum.
__________
Ultimatum
The air was stifling, the kind you wake up to in a hotel with questionable housekeeping. The kind where you can almost feel mould growing on your scalp. I gave a quick scratch behind my head with the phone before returning it to my ear.
“So then what’d you say?” I’d only half heard what the story was about, but it seemed like the right ushering.
“Well, that’s just it,” he went on. “What could I say, really? I have to talk to my son? You met Pete, you know what a prick he is.”
I grinned. “Come on, Pop. I know all about pricks in my line of work.”
Leaning back in the chair, I shrugged off my jacket and let it wrap around the armrests. I put my feet up on the table as he went on telling me about the elusive time off he’d been pursuing. The conversation slipped on, consistent like the tide – always homecoming, never the same.
I perked up when I heard something off. “The Sox? Seriously?”
“They’ve had great pitching this year!”
“They had their miracle in oh-four,” I snorted.
“What ever you say, Ethan,” and he capped it with an exaggerated sigh. “But prepare for more disappointment – Guererro can’t win the playoffs for the Angels by himself.”
“We’ll see.”
“We’ll see you shot down. Again.”
I laughed. “Law of averages, Pops.”
Autopilot kicked in as the talk glided into the women situation – obviously I wasn’t much help in that regard. The door groaned open behind me. I tossed my neck back and checked it out; Jules came in, regal skirt clinching her thighs so close together she walked like a tightrope performer. What an aesthetic coincidence she was!
“Here’s your water, Ethan.”
“Thanks, Jules.” I watched her go, and it was just as pleasant.
“That’s that lady friend of yours, huh?” Dad offered up his trademark laugh, gut shaking like an oil barrel as he gasps out thick jeers. “You should talk to her more.”
“Nah, I’m just another asshole.” A thick slosh of water soothed my raw throat, and I felt the icy chill spread in my stomach. I swirled the water in the glass, watching the many particles and bits of grime form a glossy cyclone in their crystalline prison.
“You know,” I muttered. “When I first started up here I could never drink water like this. I guess you get used to it.”
“Mhmm.”
“God, Dad, I just can’t wait to get out of here.” I tossed the glass back and caught as much of the silver ambrosia as I could, mopping the spillage across my beard and face, cooling every pore and scratch.
“Come on, now, don’t do that,” he blurted. “You have to be productive with your time, no matter where you are or what you’re doing. Just try to enjoy your time. You’ll wish you did later if you don’t.”
I allotted the tiniest of smiles. My Dad’s always been bumbling with his motivational speeches, but the advice was usually worth its salt. If a little tired.
“Fair enough.”
The door screeched harder, and I made a note to oil the hinge next time. Keys jingled behind me and I knew it was Norman.
“Sorry, Hiller. Time’s up.”
I slipped my coat on and dropped to a standing position, leaving the glass on my table and giving a final glance through the plexiglass.
“I’ll see you later, Pop.”
He replied with his usual hybrid of a frown and a smile, and I followed Norm back to my cell.
-
My cot was wearing thin. About time to ask for a new mattress. Snapping my neck back like an owl, I snatched my shopping list off the wall. Under "Buddhism" was scrawled The irony hurts more than the chair but at least it's funny. I chuckled, tapping my pencil on the clipboard and pondering how to die at peace when you're on the Row young.
Well, young-ish.
After a few minutes with nothing to show but a beautiful doodle of Josh Beckett icing a broken finger. I grunted and slapped the list back to the wall. That sitting was about as productive as a dyslexic taxman. It reminded me of high school, idly slapping the wall and waiting for life to get a kick start -- though turned on its head, I admit.
"Ethan!"
I snapped to attention in soldierly response.
"Relax, this ain't boarding school," Jules snickered.
Slapping my thighs in anticipation, I prodded hard. "Come on, get on with it."
"Can't get no respect," she pouted, producing a book from her cart. Jules's arm flexed hard and the book made an honest attempt to burrow through my gut.
I flipped the old leather over and read the gold highlights. Selected translated texts, Gautauma Buddha.
"You keep reading my mind like this and I'm gonna need some books on ESP."
Jules winked. "I know."
I ogled her back down the hall, then started reading.
-
"Back the fuck up."
Jacob winced, but his usual grin crocodiled its way up to his temples all the same. "And where am I losing you?"
I tossed the hair out of my eyes and rapped his magazine. "You guys, you just have it all."
"I like to think we do okay."
"That's not what I mean!"
"Okay, Ethan," his smile said. "What do you mean?"
Nobody liked Jacob. Even though he didn't go cell to cell, he managed to put off that same Janus quality the rest of his kind are packing. Asking dodgy questions, leading you around like a dog on a leash. A cloud of doubt in our homely estate, he loved that "where-did-my-neck-go?" look we get when trapped, and I was determined not to trip if I had to talk to him.
"Well come on," I sputtered. "You accept death of the soul, man, I can't really... make it any more plain than that."
"A soul is a gift," Jacob parried. "Why be given another go with your favorite toy after you break it unnecessarily?"
"No, that's a cop-out. Soul death is BS, you can't have that if you aren't atheist. You just don't want to accept Hell."
"I'm faithful, I think. I've got nothing to worry about.
I'd found a nerve. If I could send Jacob to his steak dragging heel just slightly, I could finally get the damn Jehovah's off my list.
"Okay." I stalled for time, picking at a shaving kid. "But what if you haven't?"
"The worst case scenario for me is that I return to my life before this place. Better than that."
"Or you rot in the ground."
His brow started to tighten. "Not for me, Hiller."
I changed tack with the swiftness of a Kennedy. "What's the best case scenario?"
"I go to Heaven, my friend!" Jacob leaned back in the chair, reaching his arms to the heavens. To think, it was his moneyshot, and me and Clemence the janitor were the only audience. But he savored it all the same before relaxing euphorically. "I will rule with Christ and all those pious enough before me."
"That's paganism."
"Don't do that."
I shrugged. "It is! You've got quite a photofinish, here, Jake! End game for atheists for some, standard Christian umbrella detente for most of you, and... a god? A god for the best?" Part of a balanced breakfast.
"The truth is hard to accept."
"The truth would acknowledge that your own Bible has central themes about just how badly a guy like you or me would handle that kind of a privelage."
Jacob's chair grinded back quick and I tensed up for a slug.
Instead, his grin pulled back, turning the loveliest shade of pseudo-sincerity.
"I should try to read some of that Bible, this went on longer than I thought it would." He stuck out his hand. I cocked an eyebrow and took it, only half-surprised. Tangle a tangler and you've won him over, I guess.
"So..." After all that heat, I felt obliged to bid adieu on a higher note. "Did they grant you the squad? You know, because of the no-needle thing?"
Jacob's features softened as he loosened his grip. "Yeah."
I nodded. "I couldn't do that, wait to get... you know. I've been shot at, it's just not something I can imagine. Just standing there."
"No one can imagine it," he affirmed. He patted my knuckles twice with his free hand before releasing them. "That's why I need Christ, with me." He grinned one last time. "Even if I just rot in the ground."
I lowered my gaze bashfully.
"Good luck with your hunt, Ethan. I wish you well. I really do." Jacob sauntered off, his heel dragging just slightly.
I spent the rest of my recreation time in that chair, staring intently at the opposite side of my list. I'd already decided against the Jehovah afterlife. Too many semantics. But I owed an old Rower one last thing.
I waited, not looking from that part of the page. It wasn't much, just Jacob Singer. But I didn't look away once.
And at two-oh-five, eastern standard time, I started to draw a line through it.
-
There’s no fear on Death Row once you adjust to the fact that you’re going to the big mess in the sky. (Or ground, or wherever.) There’s no ****. No violence. We’re the spew society, a phlegm-y cough some old smoker hurked into a sidewalk crack. The failures. There’s a wide range of us, the murderers, the child molesters, the rich boys and the greasers, career criminals and mistake-makers. Some education or university degree, we’re nothing alike and yet we remain united and identical as a brotherhood of the only people the government admitted even they can’t fix, for all their rehab and meds. You don’t sit next to your friends when you eat, you just sit next to others like you. We eat the same meals, wear the same slacks, the same shirts, we smoke, and we all know that one of these days we have that ultimatum.
The List has nineteen so far. Dexter Holland, 1985. He was here the very first day of my sentence. All he did was slap me on the shoulder, mutter “I wouldn’t mention your badge”, and give me his apple. They chaired him the next day.
So many people, all of them I have seen, met, laughed with and busted balls. All of them met the gas, or the juice, or the lead for a rare few. You don’t make friends here, that’s the rule. It’s not callous, it’s just practical. Think of the best conversation you ever had with somebody at a pub you just met that night. You never see that person again. That’s the fellowship of the Row.
All friends do is hurt…
“Shouldn’t you be reading, Hiller? Or whatever?”
I didn’t even glance up, just left my arms dangling on the crossbar. “Got a smoke, Norm?”
He grunted, and I just caught the pack as flew by my hands. I gummed one out and waited for Norm to light it before handing it back to him.
“Keep it. These prison smokes we sell you guys are toxic.”
I laughed, hard, as he walked away. I chased his shadow with my lunatic howling. Cancer would be too good for me. Dying in a nice, cozy bed. With a big fluffy pillow, a real mattress. Watch the Angels game on my own telly.
The cackled lost its steam and retreated back into my throat. I glanced back at my tiny table.
I wanted to read the letter, more now than ever. Still there… ETHAN. It’s the Korean characters beneath that were truly maddening. It added something exotic, something just inches from grasp. It screamed at me, a ghoul that could haunt me even if I transferred somewhere else and left it behind. I stared and stared at it, but I knew the agreement. I can’t open it yet, not for a few more weeks. I already stuck it out for two years.
The usual sledgehammer belted me in the ribs as I realized how truly alone I was. It’s funny how big a cell feels when you miss someone. It’s spacious. It’s a luxury mansion with no furniture or utilities. It’s your own planet, and you’re waiting for the sun to explode.
I’m lost at sea, and I still haven’t decided where I’ll go when I get my ultimatum.