“You know,” Baker said, “back in Minnesota they got the biggest mall in the world.”
Tilden nodded. Baker liked to talk and needed periodic proof that someone was paying attention.
“There’s six bars in that mall,” Baker said, “and nothing but rent-a-cops. You can get drunk and walk from one bar to another and nobody fucks with you. Not bad, huh?”
Tilden nodded.
“I ever tell you the best thing about getting locked up in St. Paul?” Baker said.
“The view.”
“That’s right, partner. The river was right there. You could watch boats all day from my cell. Bet you didn’t have no view in Kentucky, did you?”
Tilden had been among the first prisoners assigned to a new facility in Morgan County. People called it the Pink Palace due to the pastel color of its outer walls. The prison was surrounded by hills. Sometimes groundfog prevented the men from going into the yard because the sharpshooter in the tower couldn’t see well enough. On clear mornings, each tree leaf was distinct in the mountain light. Their presence was a tease, like a friend’s wife who liked to flirt.
Tilden wondered if a view of the river made men sadder or gave them hope. He figured the prison psychologist would like it, since he favored anything that was different, even a new coat of paint. Tilden had learned to give the shrink what he wanted, which was mainly the impression that you wouldn’t shank the first son of a bitch who looked at you mad-dog. Getting through the joint took the ability to make everyone think you were crazy enough to be dangerous. Getting out was the opposite. Tilden wasn’t sure what it took to stay out.
Heat was on him like water, pressing against his sunburnt face. He and Baker took a break on the shadowed side of a stand of pine. The oldest tombstones were pale with black stains, the lettering nearly worn away. Faded plastic flowers surrounded the newer stones. Beyond them lay fresh earth waiting for the dead.
“You know something,” Baker said. “I ain’t spent a whole lot of time in a graveyard.”
“Reckon not.”
“I was just a kid last time, for my grandmaw’s funeral. I ever tell you about her?”
“No.”
“She died.”
“I guessed that.”
“Hung herself from a clothes pole in a closet. Knocked her own wheelchair out from under her. The only suicide the nursing home said they ever had, but you can’t trust them bastards.”
“You got that right.”
“They ought to lock that home down. A little blue-haired lady with no legs hanging in a closet like an old dress.”
“No legs?”
“She had diabetes,” Baker said. “Know what they did so nobody else would do it?”
“Threw them in the hole.”
“No, man. They took away the clothes pole in every closet. They can’t hang nothing no more. All them old folks wearing wrinkly clothes. Just like Deer Lodge. We had a man shoot somebody in the belly with a staple gun he’d rigged to fire a homemade bullet. He’d stole it from Art and they shut down Art tight as a fucking drum. It was my best class. I made pictures of the ocean. Ever see the ocean?”
“No.”
“Me neither. That’s why I made them pictures. Anyhow, my grandmaw got her gravesite picked out and paid for about a hundred years ago. It was waiting on her, but coffins got big over the years and there wasn’t enough room. They had to dig up a whole row of my family to get her in there.”
“Guess those others died too soon.”
“Or her too late.”
“I ain’t knocking your grandmaw,” Tilden said, “but I can’t see owning a burial plot. It’s the same as having your own cell in case you get put away.”
“Hell, if I owned a grave, I’d have hocked it on jump street.”
They laughed together, the sound fading in the still air. Tilden ate an apple while Baker smoked. Each tombstone threw a narrow shadow that lay over the adjacent grave like a puddle. According to the dates, many people had been dead longer than they had lived. Tilden knew men who’d spent more years in prison than out, and it occurred to him that time didn’t move forward as he’d always thought. People moved through time instead.
“Ever miss the joint?” Baker said.
“I don’t reckon.”
“I do. The dope especially. I had good connections inside. Out here, I don’t know nobody.”
“Well, you best watch or that mandatory sentencing will eat you up. I celled with a guy did two murders and he was on the street before the dopers.”
“I like that mandatory law,” Baker said.
“Do you.”
“You bet. Fill them cells up with hopheads and they ain’t got room for you and me.”
“They don’t need room for me.”
“Big talk,” Baker said. “You know why they called me Storebought inside?”
Tilden nodded.
“My first beef. They popped me on some over-the-counter caffeine pills. I kept telling them it was storebought dope but you can’t tell the law nothing.”
“I hear that.”
“Tell you what else I miss,” Baker said. “All the different guys you meet. I thought it would be like high school and you went to whatever prison was close. I met guys inside nothing like home. They were from all over the country. Sometimes I miss those guys. I miss them calling me Storebought, too.”
“I know what you mean.”
“What I don’t like about being out, I never had to hang in a graveyard before.”
Tilden didn’t miss anything about prison, but he could understand Baker’s desire for routine. They ate lunch under the same ponderosa pines every day, and after work they went to the same bar. Baker was like a bee, needing to follow a pattern over and over. Prison was his hive. In custody, he flourished.
“Eight years in the can,” Baker said. “TV was the biggest thing that changed.”
“Some.”
“I seen a guy on it saying you shouldn’t eat eggs because raising chickens was slavery.”
“Talking out his neck, ain’t he.”
“Only thing good are these true cop shows. They think they’re bragging how great the police are, but all they really show is how the chumps get caught. A guy can learn something.”
“Not exactly.”
“I guess you’re Square Johning on me.”
“Aim to.”
“Shouldn’t be kicking it with me then.”
“Way I see it,” Tilden said, “maybe I’m a good influence on you.”
“Best influence I ever had was inside. A fence told me what not to move, and a paperhanger said what to look for on funny money. Hell, even the government’s doing me good with the gun laws. TV says they got people walking in off the street and giving their guns up. I, for one, am all for it. That’s one less bullet to hit me on a job. Citizens are a bunch of morons. The government figured that out a million years ago.”
“I never thought about it that way.”
“Well, if you watched TV, you’d know something.”
Gravestones rose like teeth from the earth. Tilden wondered how many people buried here had been killed by a bullet. Baker would no more blame a gun for somebody getting shot than he’d scapegoat a shovel for the graveyard. Laws would never slow him down. He didn’t think far enough ahead and getting caught would never happen. There were thousands like him. Tilden wondered if he was lumping himself in with that group. He didn’t think so, but he was an ex-con, working a job that no one else would take.
He threw a piece of apple to a squirrel. He’d prefer to feed the birds, but since the squirrels got it first, he went ahead and fed them. He considered it a lesson from prison — not trying to force what he wanted. Still, Tilden knew how the birds felt, compromised right out of the deal.
“You get anything else from being down?” he said.
“Muscles,” Baker said. “I worked out every day. And my tats.”