He saw no one looking back, and saw no guard near. Misto grinned, flicked his tail, and vanished again?but when Lee lifted the blanket the invisible cat crawled underneath, warm against Lee?s shoulder, the comfort of his purr easing Lee into sleep.
8
THE CLANG OF metal and the echo of men?s voices woke Lee. Morning light flooded the cellblock, striking down from the high clerestory windows. He staggered out of his bunk in automatic response to the wake-up call, stood at his barred door in his wrinkled prison clothes and stocking feet while the count was taken, then turned to the metal basin. He splashed water on his face, used the toothbrush and toothpaste he?d been issued. He was sitting on his bunk putting on his prison-issued shoes when a big-bellied custodian in blue pants and white shirt slid the barred door open. His nametag readHAMILTON. He stood looking Lee over.
?You sleep in those clothes??
Lee pulled the shirt straight, tried to brush out the wrinkles.
?Once you?ve made up your bunk, Fontana, you can go from here to the mess hall. Then to classifications, then return to your cell. You?ll stay here until you?re notified, until you?re allowed to move around the prison and exercise yard.?
Lee listened to Hamilton?s directions to the various buildings, then followed him out, moving away along the metal catwalk among straggling inmates and down the iron stairs.
The prison cafeteria smelled of powdered eggs, bacon fat, and overcooked coffee. Inmates pushed in around him half awake, grumbling and arguing or shuffling along silent and morose. Again a train rumbled and screamed passing outside the wall. None of the men paid any attention. Lee guessed they were used to it. Maybe the siren?s call didn?t stir their blood the way it excited him, the way it made him want out of there, made him feel all the more shackled. He kept to himself in the crowded line until he was jolted hard from behind by two men horsing around, pummeling each other. Lee didn?t look at them, he left it alone, he didn?t want to start anything.
Not until one of them bumped him hard, did he turn. The man was right in his face. Lee stood his ground. The guy would be a fool to start something here, with half a dozen guards watching. He stared challengingly at Lee, his face hatched by deep lines pinched into a scowl. Dark hair in a short prison cut, a high, balding forehead. It was the look in his black eyes that brought Lee up short, a stare so brutal Lee paused, startled by the sense of another presence within that dark gaze.
But just as quickly the man?s look changed to the insolence of any prison no-good. Lee could see the guards watching them, ready to move in. He took a good look at the man?s companion: blond pompadour combed high above his weathered face, pale, ice-blue eyes. A pair of twisted inmates that a fellow wanted to avoid. Lee moved on with the line, picked up a tray and collected his breakfast. Turning away, he crossed the room to a small, empty table.
The two men joined a crowded table in the center of the big cafeteria and in a moment all seven inmates turned to watch Lee. He ate quickly, ignoring them, trying not to think about the spark he?d seen in those dark eyes, that quick glimpse of something foreign peering out.
He didn?t look at the crowded table as he left the mess hall. Pushing out into the prison yard, he headed for the counselor?s office. To his right rose the stone buildings that would be prison industries. Beyond, at a lower level, sprawled the exercise yard, surrounded by the massive stone wall that enclosed the prison grounds. The wall must be thirty feet high. From this position he could see only one guard tower, two guards looking down, rifle barrels glinting in the morning sun. He had started toward the classifications building when a short man crossing the yard stopped, stared at him, then approached Lee with a dragging limp, a stocky man with husky arms and shoulders. His voice was grainy. ?Hey, Boxcar, is that you??
Lee hadn?t heard that name in fifty years. ?Gimpy, you old safecracking buzzard.?
Hobbling along fast, Gimpy joined him, his eyes laughing beneath bushy gray brows. His hair was gray now, and he was maybe some heavier.?When the hell did you get in, Boxcar??
?Just transferred in from Springfield. How long have you been here??
?Two years, doing five. I might make parole one of these days.? The little man scowled. ?My last safe job went sour.?
They?d been just kids when they?d pulled a few jobs together, Gimpy opening the train safes slick and fast. He was the best man with a punch and hand sledge Lee had ever seen. ?Do you remember .†.†.? Lee began. He was silenced by the loud blast of a Klaxon, the sudden blare brought ice grippinghis stomach. Gimpy nudged him out of the way as four guards ran by, followed by two medics carrying black bags and a stretcher, their white coats flapping.
?It?s in the furniture plant,? Gimpy said. They moved toward the industries building, where a short spur track ran from the loading platform out through a sally port in the prison wall. A freight car sat on the track, guards and inmates milling around its open door, pulling out heavy crates.
?Furniture crates,? Gimpy said, ?desks for the military.? There was a lot of shouting, the sound of wood being pried and splintered. A guard and two prisoners eased a body out from the collapsed wooden crate, lifted the bloody figure onto a stretcher.
Once the injured man had been carried off, four inmates pulled the crate out. Lee could see the false bottom the man had built, splintered now and crushed. Gimpy said,?He must have squeezed into it after the crate was loaded. Maybe the crates on top shifted. Doesn?t say much for his carpentry.?
Lee shook his head.?An ugly way to go.?
?Hell, Boxcar, no one?s ever broke out of this joint, something always goes bad. One guy had a gun smuggled in by a guard, got himself rifle shot before he got through the main corridor.?
Lee looked up with speculation at the thirty-foot wall, but Gimpy snorted.?Not over that wall, nor under it neither. Wall?s a dozen feet thick at the bottom, and sitting on solid rock. I?ll do my time right here,? he said, shifting his weight. ?No one could get over that baby.?
When they parted company Lee headed for the classifications office, moving up the steps and inside past rows of desks where prison personnel sorted though files or sat talking with inmates, men fidgeting nervously in straight-backed chairs or slouching with bored disdain. The room stunk of sweaty bodies and stale cigarette smoke. Lee?s classification officer was a soft little fellow in his forties: slick bald head, white rumpled shirt, his tie pulled loose and his collar unbuttoned. He laid his unlit pipe on the desk among stacks of jumbled papers. ?I?m Paul Camp. You?re Lee Fontana? You just came in from Springfield.?
Lee nodded. Camp gestured for Lee to sit down and handed across a printed set of rules, a meal schedule, and a laundry and mail schedule.?I do three jobs here. Classification, parole, and counseling.?
?You think I can get a job in industries? I like to be doing something.?
?You?ll have to see the doctor first. When I get a slip from him, you?ll have more freedom, we?ll see what we can do. You can go on over to the hospital from here.? Camp gave him directions. ?He?ll want to see you every week for a while, to check on the emphysema.? Then the jolt came. ?Twice a week,? Camp said, ?you?ll be attending group counseling sessions.? He handed Lee another short schedule.
?I don?t need group counseling. What do I want with that??
Camp studied him, then thumbed through Lee?s file. ?You may not think you need the sessions, but I do. If you had used a little restraint, Fontana, if you hadn?t gotten into trouble in Vegas, you?d still be out on parole.? He fixed Lee with a hard look. ?Unless, of course, you wanted to be back behind bars.?
Lee?s belly twisted. ?Sure I did. I have what the shrinks call a subliminal need to be confined, to be shut in by high walls, safe from the outside world and with all the prison amenities.?
Camp just looked at him. Lee couldn?t decide whether the counselor?s eyes reflected anger, suspicion, or a suppressed desire to laugh. ?The Federal Bureau of Prisons, Fontana, has moved into the age of treatment. Just go to counseling, it?s the policy. Just go and endure it.?