Chapter Two
Chapter Two
T he small church was one of Mia’s favorite places. The linoleum floor was cracked and peeling, and the faded yellow paint on the nursery walls needed to be redone soon, but it didn’t diminish the comfort she felt every time she walked through the doors. She had spent so much of her childhood in this building that it was like a second home.
Her mother had been a pastor’s wife and that came with responsibilities. She’d devoted her days to record keeping in the office, baking sweets in the kitchen to be delivered to elderly neighbors, and teaching Sunday school in the nursery as children sat on the floor and listened to fantastical tales of rainbow-colored coats and boats big enough to hold two of every animal in the whole world.
Mia had loved it all, but none of it had captured her heart like those stories. For a lost and frightened child, the promise of miracles and God’s love had been a profound revelation. She wanted nothing more than to make the same positive impact on the lives of others as her mother had made, and she intended to start right here with this same congregation. She always arrived early to set out desserts and help to set the room up for their Wednesday night meeting.
“Are we ready?”
Mia smiled and set a stack of paper cups on the table. Mrs. Mitchell was the head of the women’s Bible study group, a sweet white-haired lady in her late seventies that wore the thickest glasses Mia had ever seen. Firmly independent and spirited, she always smelled like nipped afternoon rum cake and old woman.
Mia adored her.
“That’s the last of it,” she said. “Everyone should be showing up any minute now.”
As she predicted, the room filled quickly as women talked and snacked on cookies and lemonade that Mia had made herself. There were young girls newly graduated from high school, some in college like herself, recent brides still flush with new love, tired moms with hastily wiped spit up stains, and women that were old enough to be grandmothers who liked to hand off advice to the rest of them.
There was a feeling of community, a connection that Mia was grateful for as talk moved quickly over the latest town news. There was a pregnancy, a death, an amicable divorce. Someone mentioned the often hoped for dream that they might someday get a Taco Bell in town, and Mia couldn’t help but smile.
They’d been hearing that rumor for five years and still had to drive all the way to Abilene for a late-night burrito.
Mrs. Mitchell let them ramble aimlessly for a few minutes before clearing her throat and standing up from her orange plastic chair to call the group to attention.
“We’ve got a lot to cover tonight,” she began. “We have the upcoming bake sale to raise money for the food pantry, the Fourth of July celebration that still needs volunteers to work the tables, and Ms. Durand has suggested that we might want to consider starting now to gather donations of school supplies for the kids when classes start back up in the fall.”
Almost everyone nodded and Mia knew her best friend’s newest project would also be a success. Lilly had joined the church when the girls had been in middle school. Back when Lilly’s family had recently moved from Louisiana, and she’d been dealing with a new school on top of middle school mean girl attitudes. It hadn’t been easy, especially for her in a small town like this one, but nothing had been able to wipe the smile off Lilly’s face and Mia had loved her immediately. Lilly had lost the braces in the years since, but she had maintained her round cheeked grin and determined attitude.
Mia shot her a quick, encouraging smile as Mrs. Mitchell continued.
“The first thing on the agenda, though, is to see if anyone has gotten a letter back from the prison? I got mine in the mail yesterday,” Mrs. Mitchell confirmed.
Across the circle from Mia, Mrs. Newberry sniffed indelicately. Middle-aged and still beautiful, she’d been a regular church volunteer since her youngest child had left for college the previous year. She’d been openly opposed to Lilly’s suggestion from the start, refusing to participate and quoting fire and brimstone to everyone who would listen at every meeting since.
“Felons will meet their justice at the hands of God,” she had insisted. “We must be vigilant and not allow these criminals to corrupt our hearts and minds. Their dark thoughts have the ability to let the devil into our lives.”
Everyone had ignored her then, and Mia ignored her now, though she noticed Lilly’s eyes narrow as she reached for her own letter and knew she hadn’t been the only one to notice Mrs. Newberry’s behavior.
One by one each of the other ladies held up a similar envelope to the one in Mrs. Mitchell’s hand.
“Wonderful. Did anyone have any problems? Issues?” Mrs. Mitchell scanned the group, but everyone shook their heads, denying any upsetting interaction with the prisoners. They had been polite in their responses, and most had seemed genuinely grateful for the letters. “Then the Lord must have ensured that our letters found their way into the right hands.”
The rest of the meeting went smoothly, and soon the only people left were Mia, Lilly, and Kennedy Daniels. Kennedy was the third member of their friend group and had been since she’d started coming to their church in high school. Her parents didn’t let her come every week—making her go to the one they attended on the other side of town at least once a month—but when they did, she was reluctant to leave and always stayed after to help with the cleaning.
“I love that Mrs. Newberry objects to all of my suggestions by pretending she doesn’t actually want to help people in trouble and thinks that’s better than admitting she’s a racist who hates me because my grandmother is Vietnamese,” Lilly muttered, tossing her long black braid over her shoulder as she stacked the orange chairs a little too forcefully in the corner.
“She gives everyone a bad attitude and I guess that makes it easier for her to hide it,” Mia mused. “She’s never been easy to get along with, but I’ve noticed we’re having more problems with her since she started volunteering.”
“She does always seem to have something negative to say when she’s not the center of attention,” Kennedy said. “Mrs. Mitchell’s talked to her about it but...”
Mia glanced at Lilly as Kennedy let the words hang meaningfully. “If she makes you uncomfortable, we can talk to Mrs. Mitchell or my dad about her.”
Lilly pondered that for a moment, the plastic chair in her arms cradled against her chest. “Not yet,” she said. “If she does anything more obnoxious than whine about my project ideas then we can, but I want her to see the success of the programs for herself.”
“Are you sure?” Mia asked. “You don’t have to prove anything to her.”
“I’m sure,” Lilly said, setting down the chair and tossing the last of the used paper cups in the trash. “I don’t want her to cause bitterness in my heart, but I do kind of want to watch her sit there every week, knowing she can’t stop us from doing good things and being kind to people.”
Mia laughed. “If that bothers her then it’s a misery that she brought on herself.”
Kennedy nodded in agreement, and they went back to working in silence until she looked over her shoulder and said, “I noticed you didn’t say anything about the guy who got your letter.” She huffed a strand of blonde hair out of her face with a grimace. It hung loose nearly to her waist, softly curled at the ends. With her strikingly blue eyes and even ivory complexion, the pink dress she wore made her look like a porcelain doll and everyone knew how much she hated it. Kennedy would have cut her hair years ago if her parents would have allowed it.
Mia reached her hand into her pocket and rubbed her fingers over the stiff paper. “I was going to, but I haven’t decided yet if I should write him back or ask the warden to send my next letter to someone else.”
“What?” Lilly said in surprise. “I thought you agreed that it seemed like our letters went to the right people?”
“I didn’t want to worry the other ladies and put a damper on your project,” Mia admitted.
“Did he say something mean to you?” Lilly looked ready to fight, her usually cheerful face set in angry lines.
“He barely said anything to me at all,” Mia said quietly. “He says he’s dangerous and I should write to someone else, but he didn’t give me any more information than that.”
Kennedy’s expression was doubtful. “I guess you should stop writing to him if that’s what he really wants but maybe he’s not used to having someone care about what happens to him?”
Mia nodded. She had gone into this because she wanted to reach someone that might otherwise have been unreachable. After all, someone had once reached out to her, taken on a difficult challenge with no promise that things would work out in the end, and it had made all of the difference.
“I’ll pray and ask God for guidance,” Mia promised them, and she listened with a smile as the conversation turned to Lilly’s boyfriend and Kennedy’s excitement about going back to college at the end of summer. These women were a blessing to her, and she was convinced God had helped them find each other, knowing they would help guide one another through life’s challenges.
Perhaps that was what He had planned for Gabriel Myers. Maybe he needed someone in his life to encourage him and guide him toward God. She had gone over every inch of his letter several times since it arrived yesterday, looking for clues to what kind of person had written it. The evidence didn’t paint much of a picture. Neat handwriting and evidence that he lived as she imagined a prisoner would—cheap pens and scraps of paper that smelled vaguely of cigarette smoke.
There was nothing to tell her what kind of man he was, or how he spent his days, or what he’d done to deserve being sent to prison. All she knew for sure was that he must be lonely if no one wrote to him.
3:30 am
He didn’t need the wake-up call anymore. After so many years on the same schedule, he woke on his own at exactly the same time every morning, allowing himself a few seconds to become oriented to his surroundings before the rest of the prison began to stir.
There was no need to think about what to wear since all inmates were stripped of their individuality and made as indistinguishable from one another as possible in white jumpsuits and black shoes, and they dressed in silence before filing into the dining hall. Breakfast was questionable oatmeal, browning apple slices, and shitty black coffee all served precisely at 4:30 and eaten elbow-to-elbow on long metal tables. They ate in silence as well, though this was as much from habit as lack of desire.
Talking during mealtime was prohibited.
By 6:00 a.m. they had been shuffled along with most of the other inmates to their shift in the prison’s garment factory. The shifts were long, twelve hours a day, and the work was hot, sweaty, and miserable.
It was also mandatory. Every able-bodied prisoner was required to work. Some worked the kitchens, or the laundry unit, and a lucky few even got to work outdoors in the garden. The rest came here, to a large room that was loud and busy and filled with complicated machinery and rows of sewing machines, where they would spend their sentences making clothing and textiles that would be used in their prison and others around the state.
None of them were paid, Texas didn’t bother giving their inmates financial compensation for their labors, but while the other inmates hoped that they might at least earn time credits for an earlier release date or a good behavior stamp that would increase their chances of parole, Gabriel’s only benefit was a way to kill the endless stream of time that threatened to drive him mad.
At least his work went toward the prison itself and he wasn’t sewing bras for Victoria’s Secret, unlike prisoners in some other institutions he’d heard about. It was a good system for the prison and the company, maximizing profit under the guise of giving the prisoners job skills and a way to pay for their own room and board, but it was an obvious labor scam. He’d been around enough shady deals to know one when it hit him in the face.
He settled in behind an industrial-sized sewing machine, and the hours passed in a blur of stitching on white fabric. There was only a short break for lunch—if two hot dogs with sauerkraut tossed on top, a slice of white bread, and a scoop of cold canned carrots could really be qualified as a meal—to break up the monotony until late in the afternoon.
He glanced up from his machine as the sounds of fighting erupted behind him, barely audible over the roar of the machines, despite the proximity of the beating that was happening a few feet away. A young man was curled up on the floor, arms wrapped protectively around his head as an older inmate with a shaved head and a swastika tattooed on his neck rained down a series of vicious kicks.
“You think you can get away with bumping into me and not paying attention to where you’re going, you dumb piece of shit? You worthless—” The rest was cut off as the guards finally reached him and wrenched him away from his victim.
He left the room in restraints, destined for disciplinary action that likely meant nothing to a man already serving a life sentence while the young man he assaulted was sent to the medical ward for stitches and ibuprofen, blood running over his dark skin and onto his white uniform.
Gabriel went back to his sewing.
There was nothing he could have done to help that wouldn’t have made things worse for the kid and gotten himself written up, too. The kid was new, and he was going to have to get hard or do his time with a target on his back. He was lucky that this had been a beating, instead of a stabbing or worse. Prison was a living hell for anyone identified as an easy target.
There were cameras everywhere and the guards patrolled constantly, monitoring for signs of contraband or the violence that was never far from the surface, but it wasn’t enough. It didn’t stop the beatings or the drugs. Prisoners were nothing if not inventive, and they had plenty of time for scheming, especially if they considered the reward sufficient. The guards didn’t run this prison, the gangs did.
Gabriel had resisted the pressure to join up with any specific gang, having had his fill of that bullshit before getting arrested, but plenty of others hadn’t and the slightest misstep was enough for a man to end up dead. Hell, sometimes the way you looked was enough, as the kid currently getting stitched up had found out the hard way.
By the time they made it back to the day room, Gabriel was in a bad mood. As usual he opted to skip the limited opportunity they had for TV or social interaction and withdrew to his cell. Everyone in here had something that helped keep them sane. Some had drugs, Alex had a surprising love for reality TV, and he had art. Paper, like everything else in here, was exorbitantly expensive but at least his stone-cold cunt of a mother kept his commissary card full every month, even if she hadn’t spoken a word to him since he was fifteen years old.
He lost himself in the smooth glide of his pencil and ignored his cellmate when Alex finally threw himself down on his bunk not long before lights’ out.
“Looks like I got a letter from my brother,” Alex mused, rustling the day’s mail in his hands before realizing Gabriel wasn’t going to answer and tossing a letter onto his bunk with a smirk.
Gabriel sighed, holding it up to find that she had written his name on the envelope herself this time. The woman was obnoxiously persistent, and he knew the type. Probably middle-aged and mousy, sure that her own husband and children were flawless and therefore convinced that she knew how to fix everyone else’s problems, too.
One of his childhood friends, the rich kind that he’d known before he was sent to live with his Uncle Richard, had had a mom exactly like that. Sanctimonious. Pious. Obnoxious. He used to get high in the garage with that kid while his dad fucked the babysitter and he wondered now if she’d ever figured out how little she’d actually had to hold over the rest of them.
He pulled out the letter, curiosity getting the better of him but still prepared for an unwelcome lecture.
Gabriel,
I don’t know what you did to be in prison, but no one deserves to be lonely for the rest of their lives.
I think you wrote that last letter to try and scare me and it worked for a little while, but I know that God commands me not to fear and to love my neighbor as myself.
I’m ashamed that I considered complying with your request to write to someone else, and I’m sorry you feel undeserving of someone to talk to.
I’m not afraid and I’d like to continue to write to you if you don’t mind?
Mia
He didn’t know what to think about this lady and her odd determination to put herself at risk trying to be friends with a dangerous stranger, but her response bothered him. He’d signed his letter with his real name, hoping to frighten her when she realized the extent of the crimes he had been convicted for, but she hadn’t responded to that information at all. His trial had been plastered all over the TV for months and he didn’t think there was a single person in the country that didn’t know his name and his face by the time it was all over. There were several possibilities in his mind but only one of them made sense.
He wrote a single sentence before stuffing the slightly crumpled piece of paper in an envelope.
How old are you?