Chapter Twenty-Five
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Solomon doesn’t join the crew until halfway through my third week on the job.
I brace myself, assuming he’s going to be a defiant pain in the ass, but now he seems more sad than hostile.
Maybe prison life’s ground him down. November means sweatshirt weather, so I can’t see whether that cut on his arm has left him with a nasty scar or whether he’s carved any fresh ones.
I don’t bring it up. It’s like Cavagnero said, I’m only expected to supervise his work, not be his shrink.
On the day Solomon joins us, Lieutenant Cavagnero has us raking leaves.
He divvies up the property among us and hands out our rakes and work gloves.
Solomon and I are assigned the north lawn, from the main building down to the security fence, probably the easiest job because it means raking a downward slope.
I divide our section in two and ask Solomon whether he wants the right side or the left.
He shrugs, so I tell him to rake the left side, and that we can take a five-minute break after the first half hour.
“That sound all right to you?” He shrugs again.
His raking is slow and haphazard—he’s being passive-aggressive, I guess.
He refuses to wear his work gloves, even after I warn him about blisters.
The section of lawn he’s raked still has plenty of leaves on it when, after not even ten minutes of work, he throws down his rake and sits on the ground, his legs bent and his head resting against his knees.
I’m not sure, but he might be crying. Rather than telling him to get back to work or asking whether he’s okay, I just keep raking.
He sits there for several more minutes. Then he stands, picks up his rake, and starts working again.
By the time Lieutenant Cavagnero comes by to check on us, I’m near the bottom of my section and Solomon isn’t halfway down the slope yet.
Cavagnero asks me how he’s doing. “Let’s just say he’s a work in progress,” I tell him.
“No outbursts yet, so that’s good. Right?
” He nods, then reminds me that Solomon and I are a team, so if my teammate’s work isn’t up to par, we’re both accountable.
Before I can voice an objection, he climbs the slope and stops to talk to Solomon.
Whatever he’s saying to him, Solomon, staring down at the ground, is nodding in agreement.
By eleven or so, despite all the sanctioned and unsanctioned breaks he’s taken, Solomon has managed to rake to the bottom of the hill.
“Good job,” I tell him. “But let’s go back up to the top and take one more pass to catch the leaves we missed.
” When he protests, I tell him this round will go much faster.
“So let’s go.” He stays put on the bottom of the hill while I climb to the top and start raking his side.
“Hey!” he calls. “You’re not my boss!” When I don’t answer him, he starts up the hill, rake in hand, and joins me.
By the time we’ve made it to the bottom again, the hill looks pretty good.
“Gives you a sense of accomplishment, doesn’t it? ” I say.
“Not really.”
At lunchtime, my charge sits apart with his back to the rest of us. “Hey, Solomon,” I call over to him. “You want to join us?” He shakes his head. Takes his sandwich out of the bag, pulls it apart, and drops it back in. The only thing I see him eat is his cookie.
“What’s up with him?” Ratchford asks. “He antisocial or something?”
“Solomon likes to keep his own counsel,” I say.
“How old is he?” Harjeet wants to know. I tell him he’s eighteen.
“Ain’t that the kid who shot those dog-pound dogs?” Tito asks. The others wait for my answer, but I just shrug. “Woof woof,” one of them says under his breath. I’m relieved when the conversation shifts to who’d be the better lay: Shakira or Nicki Minaj?
Cavagnero gives us thirty whole minutes to eat, talk, and relax—a luxury compared to the way we get shortchanged in the chow hall.
When lunch is over, he hands each of us two clear plastic garbage bags.
Our afternoon task is to finish raking our sections and bag the piles of leaves.
I think about the time I swiped two of this same kind of bag when I was planning my suicide, and more recently, when Piccardy slashed the water-filled ones to remind me that he had the authority to harass my wife at the metal detector, and if I complained about it, he’d make me regret it. Asshole.
Solomon’s afternoon productivity is even less than it was in the morning, but we manage to get the leaves bagged without any major problems. I remind myself that he’s probably never had to do much physical work before and that I need to bring him along gradually.
Confronting him like a foreman is not the way to go with this kid.
Just before quitting time, a dozen or so wild turkeys strut across the lawn, pecking away at grass and bugs.
I give them a quick look, but Solomon stops and stares at them.
I watch him watching. He’s mostly focused on a mother hen and the four chicks who hurry behind her.
What’s going on in his brain right now? Does he think they’re cute?
Is he fantasizing about shooting them? Remembering his birth mother?
It’s impossible to know what’s in that screwed-up head of his.
When the whistle blows, we drag our bagged leaves back to the barn, hand in our rakes, and start walking back to our buildings.
I’m walking a little ahead of Solomon when he says, “Hey, wait up.” I stop and he catches up.
I ask him what he wants. “There’s a library here, right?
” I nod. “Where’s it at? And don’t try and bullshit me either. ”
“Main building, top floor. Why would I bullshit you?”
He says none of the guys on the other tier would give him a straight answer.
“?‘It’s in the building behind the chow hall,’ they’d tell me.
Or, ‘It’s in the basement of C Block.’ But C Block doesn’t have a basement and the only thing behind the chow hall is that brick thing where they burn garbage.
When I got a pass and went looking for it out there, some lady CO yelled at me for not being where I was supposed to be.
I tried to tell her that was where they said it was, but the bitch told me I was lying and gave me a ticket. ”
“Were you raising your voice when you tried to explain?”
“No.” His bottom lip pokes out and his eyes go glassy. “Maybe.”
“Look, I saw the way you lost it that time in the visiting room. You’ve got to get ahold of your temper.
People shut down when you start yelling.
And as for those clowns giving you bogus directions, they were just screwing with you because you’re new.
It’s boring as hell around here and some guys will grab at anything to entertain themselves.
And the more you show them they’re getting to you, the worse they’ll treat you.
” Despite what he’s in here for, I feel bad for the kid.
Still, I need to hold the line at being his work buddy.
“My new cellmate says there’s a form where I can file a complaint against those guys for harassing me. Do you think I should report them?”
“For giving you bullshit directions?” I shake my head. “Choose your battles.”
“But they did other stuff, too,” he says.
“Pissed on me in the shower. One guy stuck his hand in my mouth and tried to yank my braces off. And look at this.” He lifts the back of his shirt to show me a purple bruise at the base of his spine.
“I was out in the yard, minding my own business, and six or seven of those assholes put me in the middle of a circle and started shoving me back and forth. And the guard just stood there, not doing anything. Then I got kicked in the back and fell down. And now my fuckin’ jaw clicks when I chew.
” He’s in tears now. “And I didn’t even do anything to deserve it. ”
You killed six defenseless dogs, is what I’m thinking. A lot of the guys in here have brutalized or killed their victims, but I’m willing to bet that even those guys have a sentimental attachment to their dogs.
“Well, you can write them up for assault, sure. You’ve got grounds.
But if a captain or a deputy warden investigates your complaint, the first thing they’ll do is go to the CO who was on duty when the incident happened.
And he’ll probably deny it or downplay it.
Maybe now that you’re on our tier, you should let it go.
Daugherty’s your bunkie, right? What does he say? ”
“That I should sue the state for not protecting me. He knows a lot about prison law and can represent me. File court papers and shit, and he says my stepmother can pay him his fee by putting money in his commissary.”
Manny gave me the scoop on Daugherty. His parents are in real estate, his sister’s a corporate lawyer, and he’s the family embarrassment.
Got kicked out of UConn Law for dealing fentanyl, then got caught trying to bribe a witness who was going to testify against him.
Around here, he comes off as the righteous defender of the wrongfully convicted, and since half the guys in here claim they’re innocent, he’s got a following.
The families of whoever he’s advising pay him by contributing to his account.
“Be careful about taking legal advice from Daugherty,” I warn the kid.
“Why? He’s a lawyer.”
“He’s not a lawyer. Went to law school but never finished.
You know what a ‘fish’ is in here?” He shakes his head.
“A new arrival who gets taken by a con man.” The kid looks confused, but I need to end this conversation before I get sucked any further into the black hole of his neediness.
“Don’t quote me, but my guess is that Daugherty’s more interested in getting your mom to feed his commissary account than he is in seeing you get justice. ”
“She’s not my mother!” he protests.