Chapter Twenty-Nine
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Piccardy is doing push-ups while he waits for the crew to assemble.
He’s been in a good mood the last couple of days because he was in a weight-lifting competition last weekend and won in his weight category.
“What was his prize?” Ratchford wondered.
“A mirror so that he can kiss it?” We all laughed at that one.
“Everyone here, Officer Goolsby?” Piccardy asks. Goolsby gives him a thumbs-up. “Okay, listen up, ladies!” he says. “We’re starting a project today that’s probably going to take a couple of days to finish.”
“What’s that, boss?” Tito asks.
“The maintenance department’s planning to repaint the barn before the really cold weather gets here, but as you can see, it’s peeling pretty bad.
” As if on cue, Spence comes out of the barn pushing a wheelbarrow full of scrapers, wire brushes, wooden blocks, sheets of sandpaper, and face masks.
“You’re working in pairs. Two to a side, one of you up on a ladder, the other on the ground.
Tito and Israel, you’re scraping the east side, Ratchford and Harjeet the west. Ledbetter and Clapp, you do the back.
Spence, you and Officer Goolsby can tackle the front.
” This seems to take Goolsby by surprise, but he recovers quickly from the demotion.
“That all right with you, Officer Goolsby?” Piccardy asks.
Goolsby gives him a nod and a half-smile.
I can tell from Solomon’s face that he’s relieved we’re working together again and I guess I am, too.
Has Aliyah Jackson worked some kind of counselor’s magic or is this just a coincidence?
Probably the latter; nothing gets done this quickly at DOC.
But if she did intervene, I’m sure Piccardy didn’t like it.
“Where are the ladders at?” Harjeet asks.
Goolsby points to the pickup rumbling toward us on the dirt road. One of the maintenance guys is at the wheel and four extension ladders stick out from the back of the truck bed. “Okay, girls. Grab your equipment and get started!” Piccardy says. “Chop chop!”
Goolsby drops the tailgate down and Tito, Harjeet, Spence, and I slide the ladders out.
Israel says he has trouble with heights and wants to be on the ground.
“Me, too,” Solomon says. I tell him sure, but that he should grab the other end of the ladder.
Of course, he objects. Tells me Spence and Tito are carrying their ladders by themselves.
Why can’t I? When I give him a look, he cooperates.
Things go okay for the first hour, although Solomon’s no more enthusiastic about scraping than he was about leaf-raking or “brooming.” When he complains that the paint I’m scraping off overhead is getting chips and dust in his hair and eyes, I ask him how he might solve that problem.
“Oh,” he says, and moves to the other side.
Like I told Cavagnero: he’s a work in progress.
When Goolsby shouts that it’s lunchtime, I tell Solomon to go ahead.
I have one more little section in the corner to scrape and then I’ll be right down.
He disappears around the corner, but here comes Piccardy.
He stops at the base of the ladder and when I get off the bottom rung, he latches on to my shoulder and says, “I met your new friend yesterday afternoon.”
I know who he means, but I play dumb. “Which new friend is that?”
He lets go of my shoulder and pulls down my face mask. “Jackson. You really gave her an earful, didn’t you? Talking about how you and Clapp have a father-and-son bond or some such horseshit.”
I clarify that I didn’t say that; she did.
“Guess she doesn’t know about your history as a father then, huh?”
He’s goading me, but I stand there, blank-faced, waiting for this to be over.
“Or maybe that’s not the kind of bond we’re talking about. You and that little geek got a man-boy love thing going on? Is that why you want to be his daddy?”
I feel my right hand make a fist. “No, sir. Is that all, Officer Piccardy?”
“Not quite.” He gets a foot from my face. “You fuck with my authority again, Ledbetter, so that a counselor tells me who’s working with who on my crew, you better remember that payback is a bitch. Got it?”
“Yes, sir. I understand. May I grab some lunch now?”
“Sure thing. Maybe Clapp’s saved Daddy a seat.”
After work, I tell Manny about the exchange.
“I know you care about that kid, Corby,” he says.
“But be careful. Piccardy has a ten-pound chip on his shoulder where you’re concerned.
Plus he’s insecure as fuck, so he’s going to feel threatened by a supervisor pulling rank, especially a self-confident Black woman.
The last thing you want to do is get in the middle of a pissing contest between Custody and Counseling. ”
I know he’s right.
On our second day of scraping, the work assignments get juggled—everyone’s but mine and Solomon’s. Piccardy isn’t going to buck authority, but Manny’s right: I need to watch my back. Things go without incident all morning.
At lunchtime, Piccardy leaves Goolsby in charge and takes off over the hill toward the facility.
Later, when we get back to work, I can see from my vantage point on the ladder that he’s coming not from the prison but from the woods.
Anselmo’s with him and his voice is the one that carries.
“I thought you said this shit was mellow, but I’m fuckin’ baked , man.
I gotta sit.” When he plops down on the grass, Piccardy sits, too.
Whatever he just said makes the two of them giggle.
I look down at Solomon to see whether he’s heard or seen any of this, but his attention is elsewhere.
A turkey hen and her young are pecking and circling at the crest of the hill.
If those are the same ones he’s watched so closely before, the chicks have grown.
They must have started molting, because their birth fluff is mostly gone.
When Solomon takes five or six steps toward them, the mother hisses and ruffles her feathers and her young scurry in different directions, then freeze in place.
Solomon stops in his tracks and Momma somehow gives the all-clear.
The poults unfreeze and rejoin her, resuming their scavenging for bugs and seeds.
They’re about halfway between Solomon and the two stoned COs.
“Ten bucks says you won’t do it,” I hear Anselmo say. Do what, I wonder.
“The fuck I won’t,” Piccardy says. “One of those stupid birds put little dents in the door of my Mustang last week, right after I’d washed and waxed it. Saw its reflection and attacked it like it was an enemy. How dumb is that? Sanborn seen it when he was coming on shift and chased her away.”
He gets up off the ground and draws his canister of pepper spray out of its holster.
Arms extended like he’s holding a Glock, he says, “This is for you, bitch!” and shoots.
The mother hen takes a direct hit. She screams in ear-piercing agony, then falls over, beating her wings against the ground.
Her panic-stricken young run around her in frenzied circles.
Laughing, Anselmo calls his buddy “one crazy motherfucker” and says he hopes no one comes across the injured bird and starts asking questions.
Piccardy tells him he worries too much. Then he walks over to her and stomps her head.
Picking her up by her feet, he rears back and flings her into the woods.
“Don’t forget my ten bucks,” he reminds his bud.
It doesn’t dawn on me that Solomon’s just witnessed what I have until I see him charging Piccardy, his paint scraper raised like a weapon.
“No, Solomon! Stop!”
Alerted by my shouting, Anselmo and Piccardy turn and short-circuit his kamikaze assault.
Anselmo grabs his wrist and twists it until Solomon cries out in pain and drops the scraper.
Piccardy picks him up from behind, then slams him down against the ground.
Solomon’s screaming, “You murdered her! You murdered their mother!” As Piccardy comes at him, Solomon curls into a fetal position.
I scramble down the ladder fast as I can to stop what’s happening. Piccardy presses his boot against Solomon’s neck, eases up, then kicks him in the head and in his side—once, twice. “Cut it out!” I yell.
Reeling around, he faces me, red-faced and furious. “Stay the fuck out of this, Ledbetter, or I’ll have you down on the ground next!”
Anselmo tells his buddy to calm down. “They’re not worth it,” he says. He looks scared, but Piccardy is still seething.
When a voice behind me asks what happened, I turn around and see Officer Goolsby. Lured by the commotion, the other crew members are standing behind him. “Stop dogging it and get back to work!” Piccardy screams at them.
“Nothing to see here,” Anselmo says.
Some of the guys look from Solomon to me, their faces asking what’s just gone down. I shake my head. Not now, maybe later. I can tell from the look on Goolsby’s face that he can’t figure out what’s happened either.
After the onlookers have been dispersed, I approach Solomon to see how badly he’s hurt, but Piccardy steps in front of me. “Weren’t you supposed to control this little psycho?” he says. “Isn’t that why I had to make sure you two worked together?”
I stand there, glaring back at him, saying nothing.
“You saw him try to attack an officer without provocation. And you had better corroborate that if there’s an investigation,” Piccardy says.
“But there was provocation. He saw you pepper-spray an innocent animal.”