Chapter Thirty-Four #4
Hobbling in pain along the walkway, I don’t know why all those fall colors have turned monochromatic gray.
I’m confused by the numbness that’s overtaken me as I walk back toward B Block.
Where’s my outrage about what they’ve done to me?
I flash back to Emily’s behavior the night of Niko’s death and most of the next day.
Picture the way she sat slumped on the couch for hours, hugging a pillow to her chest and paying attention to no one, not even Maisie.
Her pupils were saucers and her complexion was ashen.
When I sat beside her and reached for her hand, it felt clammy and cold.
Later, a counselor we talked to said she’d probably been in shock.
Is that why I’m feeling detached from what they just did?
Am I in shock? If not for the pain back there, I might almost be able to convince myself that it didn’t really happen.
That it was just some perverse dream I was relieved to wake up from.
But it did happen. They raped me with a state-issued defensive weapon to punish me. Silence me. And they must have planned it ahead of time. Why else would Piccardy have shown up on his day off?
Nearing the cellblock, I approach two guards chatting with each other.
Neither looks familiar. As I come closer, their conversation stops.
Why are they staring at me? Is this something Anselmo and Piccardy would keep to themselves or brag about to other officers?
Has word already gotten out? Walking past them, I glimpse their batons and shudder.
Better not make threats you can’t prove.
… Who do you think they’d believe: a whiny little bitch like you or an Officer of the Month?
Challenging their two-bit authority put me in their crosshairs.
That was how it had started. Then, to make matters worse, I got noticed and praised by their superiors.
They had to punish me for that, and if I don’t want more of the same or worse, I’d better keep my mouth shut.
Inside the building, I climb the stairs in pain.
Walk down the hall and stand in front of our cell door for longer than usual.
Mullins is at the control desk. He and I don’t have a problem.
Why isn’t he letting me in? Is he fucking with me, too?
Has he joined the campaign against me? “Sorry, Ledbetter. Didn’t see you there,” he finally calls. He buzzes me in.
Manny looks up from the TV. “Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“They’re still hassling you over those turkeys? Why they keeping that alive?”
I shrug.
“Well, don’t let it bother you, Corbs. They’re just idiots. I mean, a missing salt shaker? Give me a break. Those shakers always go missing. If it’s not salt, it’s pepper.”
I say nothing, hoping he’ll stop.
“Hey, what’s that bump on your forehead from? Those goons didn’t rough you up over there, did they?”
Instead of answering him, I ask whether he has any aspirin or ibuprofen.
“I got both,” he says. Opens his lockbox and reaches in.
Pulls out two small plastic bottles and shakes them at me like maracas.
“Chills and headache or achy muscles and minor injuries?” I point to the second one.
When he tosses the bottle to me, I shake out three tablets and swallow them dry.
“How hard did you hit your head?” he asks. “No concussion, I hope.”
Without answering him, I ease myself down onto my mattress and shift onto my side, facing the wall.
“Can I just say one more thing?” he asks. “If they did rough you up, you might feel better if you talk about it.”
“Yeah, thanks, Dr. Phil. I’ll keep that in mind.”
He doesn’t deserve the snark, but I’m not telling anyone what happened, especially Manny.
Gay guys are into that anal stuff—tops and bottoms, butt plugs.
And sure, he’d understand the difference between a good time and a sexual assault, but Manny’s a talker.
The last thing I need to do is second-guess who has or hasn’t found out what those sick fucks did to me.
And what if it gets back to Anselmo or Piccardy that I didn’t keep my mouth shut?
What kind of fresh hell would they dole out then?
Still, I wish I could tell him. Maybe it would make me feel better to let it out.
But telling him doesn’t feel safe.… Well, looky there.
The baby killer’s got himself a boner . Why had that happened?
Why was I participating in my own humiliation?
So no, I need to just keep it to myself.
Keep crossing off the days on my calendar until I’m out of this place and can pretend it never happened.
I skip five-on-the-floor. Don’t want to be around anybody, guards or inmates.
What I do want—what I need—is to stop the nausea and clean myself up.
Later, when I hear Mullins whistling as he lopes down the corridor, I call to him.
Ask whether I can grab a quick shower. “I missed shower time yesterday and I’m starting to stink.
” He unlocks the cell door. “ Real quick,” he says.
“In and out. I don’t want to hear ‘Well, how come you let Ledbetter take one?’?” I thank him and grab my soap, washcloth, and towel.
It hurts like hell to hurry down the corridor toward the shower room, but I want to respect his kindness.
When I step out of my clothes, the sight of my bloodstained underpants triggers a flash of revulsion.
I turn on the shower and step beneath it.
The warm water sluicing down my back and between my cheeks feels soothing, but when I try to clean down there with a soapy washcloth, it hurts too much.
I have to stop. Watching a string of blood wash down the drain rockets me back to the day I saw Niko’s spilt blood on our driveway.
Despair hits me so hard that I double over and wait for the vertigo to pass. …
If there was a god, here’s what I’d want to know. Can a man who caused the death of his child ever atone enough to be forgiven? Is absolution even possible?