Chapter Thirty-One
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
A red-haired boy, age eight or nine, and I are fishing from a rowboat.
The boat drifts among flowering lily pads on that pond where a kid in my fourth-grade class named Eddie Elrod tried to swim from one side to the other but drowned halfway across.
The boy might be Eddie or he might be Niko; I’m not sure.
Whichever one he is, his bob plunges underwater.
“Got something!” he says, and begins to reel it in.
But what comes to the surface isn’t a fish.
It’s a large bird—a great blue heron. Flapping the water off its wings, it skids across the pond’s surface and takes flight.
The fishing pole dangles beneath the heron until it’s shaken loose and falls back into the pond.
I watch the bird, unburdened now, fly farther and farther away from us. Us? I’m alone now. The boy is gone.
I smile, remembering that Eddie Elrod had blond hair, not red. The boy in the boat must have been Niko.
“Hi, Ledbetter.”
“What? Who’s there?” The tapping on my shoulder stops.
“Did I wake you? Sorry about that.” I know the voice.
In the darkness, his whispering against my ear makes me flinch.
“Just wanted you to know that Emily’s been looking for it online.
She’s using a different name, but I recognize her.
Hope nothing bad happens to her, because some of the guys on those websites are dangerous.
Well, nighty-night, Ledbetter. Get some sleep. ”
After I hear him leave, I start to shake. My breathing is fast and shallow. That’s bullshit about Emily, but it’s jarred me. Hasn’t he made his point? When the fuck is this going to stop? Deep breaths, deep breaths.
From the top bunk, Manny asks what’s going on.
“Nothing. Go back to sleep.”
“Was someone in here? I thought I heard someone.”
“You must have been dreaming.”
“Oh. Okay then. G’night.”
“Night.” A couple of minutes later, he’s snoring.
When my shaking subsides, I roll off my cot and walk to the back of the cell.
Look through the narrow sliver of window to the outside.
Not much to see. The empty visitors’ parking lot, the tipped-over garbage bin.
It’s probably been raided by that fat raccoon I’ve seen on other sleepless nights.
The lamppost light is flickering, getting ready to die.
Above it, the moon’s waxing or waning, I’m not sure which.
Back in bed, I keep shifting positions but can’t get comfortable, can’t settle down.
I’m furious with myself for thinking I could take on those two sons of bitches and win.
I should have known better. I did know better, but I became so intent on making them pay for what they did to Solomon that a kind of temporary insanity took over. The insanity of ego maybe.
My father sometimes woke me out of a sound sleep, too, but he didn’t whisper; he yelled.
What goes on in this house stays in this house , he was fond of reminding me so that I wouldn’t blow his cover.
At his college, he was the well-respected professor.
At home he was the tyrant whose specialty was verbal abuse.
You know who brings home report cards like this, Corbin?
Losers! People who are never going to amount to anything.
… You want to know why I never ask you to come with me to university parties, Vicki?
Because you’re an embarrassment, that’s why!
… Maybe taking on Solomon’s tormentors was a belated attempt to take on the illustrious Professor Ledbetter, the bully who demeaned and humiliated Mom and me and then made his escape.
I was never going to win that fight either. Justice would not be served.
Three fifteen according to Manny’s clock radio.
Goddammit! How can I be exhausted and wired up at the same time?
… In that fishing dream, Niko was older than he was the day he died.
School-age, third or fourth grade maybe.
So, at least in my dream state, he lives on and grows.
I didn’t end his life after all. Desperate to shut off my mind and get back to sleep, I do something I haven’t done in a long time.
“Hey, Niko? Are you there? It’s Daddy.” I’m mouthing the words but not speaking them out loud.
“I think I saw you tonight in a dream. Was that you?
“I’m still here in prison. Still doing my time for having taken you out of the world. Out of this world, anyway. I’m still clean and sober and I try every day to be a better person than I was the day you died. You’ve been my North Star in this effort, buddy. Do you know that?
“In AA, there’s a prayer where we ask for the wisdom to know the difference between what we can change and what we can’t.
I’m in a tough situation right now because I wasn’t wise enough.
See, I saw something bad happening to this kid I was kind of looking out for, and my ego convinced me I could take on the system and stop it.
But doing the right thing in here isn’t the same as doing the safe thing, and there’s been these two guards who are out to get me.
The good news is that that kid, Solomon, got transferred out of here.
How much do you see, Niko? Do you know how he’s doing? I worry about him.
“I worry about your sister, too. First you disappeared from her life and then I did. Do you think this might have screwed her up—made her feel abandoned or whatever? Your mom sends photos of Maisie and writes me sometimes about the things she’s into: Disney princesses, tea parties, swimming lessons—she’s in the Guppies class.
In return, I send her notes and drawings, stories I write and illustrate to try to keep her memory of me alive.
Her favorites are the one about her and her best friend, Jeremy, who’s a giraffe.
I was into writing and drawing their third caper when I realized Jeremy Giraffe was a stand-in for you.
“I have trouble accepting that your mother keeps your sister away from this place, and maybe from me. I thought she’d change her mind after a while, but she’s stayed firm on that.
The last time we talked, she said Maisie’s had to sit in time-out a couple of times at her nursery school for hitting other kids.
Boys, not girls. Your mother says it’s just normal kid stuff, but is it?
Where’s that anger coming from? And how might this affect her down the line?
There was such a strong bond between you two.
Is that somehow still intact? Do you watch over her, Niko?
Even if she can’t see or hear you, can she feel you’re still there?
“With over half of my sentence served here, I have a lot of anxiety about what happens when I get out. I have two versions in my head about the day I walk out of here. In the first, the gate opens and your mother and sister are there, waiting. In the other, I walk through the gate and look around. No one’s there.
“Well, I’m getting sleepy now, so I guess I’ll say good night. Please look after Maisie for me and keep her safe. I love you, Niko. Thank you for listening.”
I drift off, smiling and wondering whether I’ve finally discovered what, until now, has eluded me. Is my dead son the one who can remove my defects of character and restore me to sanity in this place where insanity reigns? Is Niko my spiritual touchstone?
The shouting wakes me up. “Goddamn it, Corby! I just stepped on that fucking thing! I think it bit me! Get it the hell out of here!”
I’m confused. What’s he yelling about? I follow his pointing finger, but all I can see in the dim light is that it’s a snake. Jesus, is it a copperhead? Those things are poisonous.
Climbing to the safety of his upper bunk, Manny continues his rant. “You had to file that stupid grievance, didn’t you? ‘I know what I’m doing, Manny. This isn’t about you.’ The fuck it isn’t! I knew I heard someone in here last night!”
I swing my feet onto the floor, walk cautiously toward it. “False alarm, Manny. It’s a milk snake. They’re harmless. You’re all right.”
“I knew I’d get caught in the middle because of that grievance.
Such a stupid move! You see them kill a fucking turkey and you get so bent out of shape that…
Well, your space is my space, too, asshole, and if this shit continues, I’m putting in for a cell change so I don’t have to step on a fuckin’ snake when I get up to take a piss!
Now get that fucking thing out of here!”
I make a grab for it, but it’s fast. Try again.
And again. Get ahold of it on the fourth try when it slithers into the corner.
Holding it so that its head pops out from the top of my loose fist, I take a couple of steps toward Manny.
“Look at him. He’s kind of cute, isn’t he? What are you afraid of?”
“Get that thing away from me! I mean it, Corby! It’s not funny!”
I hold it until they call us for morning chow, then carry the snake with me and let it go once we’re outside.
It pauses for a second or two, lifts its head, then slithers off the walkway and toward the woods.
Probably hears the river out there. How can snakes hear if they don’t have ears?
I remember asking my father when I was a kid.
They don’t have outer ears, but they have inner ears. They hear vibrations .
Later that day, I apologize to Manny about the snake and he says he’s sorry he lost his shit.
In the time I’ve known him, he’s never said much about his childhood, but he opens up about how kids in his Staten Island neighborhood used to chase after him with toads and snakes and call him a “sissy pants.” And that by middle school, “sissy pants” became “pansy,” “faggot,” “fairy,” “flit.”
I tell him one of the things I admire about him is that he’s comfortable about who he is and doesn’t seem to get pushback from the homophobic assholes here.
He says that’s because straight guys enjoy a good blow job just as much as gay guys do. “And believe me, I give a great one.”
I smile. Tell him I’ll take his word on that.
“But I tell you, Corby, when I stepped on that snake this morning, I went flying back to Willoughby Avenue with those punks tormenting me, and Bobby Costello, who I had a secret crush on, putting his pet snake a few inches from my face and me staring at its flicking forked tongue.”
Talking to Manny gets me thinking about how most of us must carry our bruised childhoods on our backs when we come here.
Solomon was the most obvious example. No matter how well-intentioned his adoptive parents might have been, or how unfit his birth mother was, she was still his mother.
Maybe getting separated from her is at the root of his troubles.
For a lot of the other guys here, the bruises might not show, but they haven’t necessarily healed.
My conflicted feelings about my father take center stage whenever I think about my childhood.
Dad was the guy who taught me my love of nature when I was a little kid.
Taught me the names of the constellations in the nighttime sky and the stories that went with them.
Those three bright stars make up Orion’s Belt.
Above them and to the right is his shield.
He was a warrior and a great hunter.… There’s Pegasus, the winged horse, who emerged from the sea to help Perseus rescue the beautiful princess, Andromeda, from being devoured by the sea monster, Cetus.
That cluster of stars tells their story.
… I can still pick out those stars in the sky and I have vivid recall of those ancient tales.
But Dad was also the guy who, as I got a little older, began to chip away at my self-confidence and sense of worth. You acted like you were afraid of the ball out there. And you didn’t show the coaches any hustle whatsoever. That’s why you were one of the last ones picked. What did you expect?
I blurt it out. “Manny, you were right. I wish I had listened to you. I never should have taken on those two. Piccardy’s been sneaking in here in the middle of the night, waking me up and whispering shit to scare me.
And that had to have been him who dropped the snake in here.
I mean, Anselmo’s a thug, too, but he takes his marching orders from Piccardy.
He’s the ringleader and, for all I know, a fucking sociopath.
I’m sure they’re planning to make the time I have left as miserable as possible.
” Manny sighs but doesn’t say anything. “So have you requested that cell change yet? Because if you haven’t—”
“I changed my mind about that,” he says. “You’re a pain in the ass, Corby, and I’m still sort of pissed at you, but we’re friends. I’m not going to bail on you now.”
What he says brings tears to my eyes, which I try my best to hide from him.