CHAPTER ONE
DREW
I don’t want to get out.
This place is surrounded on three sides by the Mississippi River. The fencing everywhere else is topped with razor wire. But in the last eight years, I’ve never needed those to keep me in.
This is where I belong. And everybody knows it. Ma. Annie. Grandma Quincy.
But out of the sixty-three hundred inmates here at Angola, I’m the one being released today.
It’s morning, but it’s not time for roll call yet. I know because, for Hickory, it’s quiet. There’s no such thing as silence in a dorm with eighty bunks to a hall. That’s eighty men who talk, whisper, snore, fart, cough, jack off, and whatever the hell else they can get away with during lights out. But in the hour or so before dawn, like now, this place is as quiet as it ever gets, so I know I’ve got a little time left ahead of me.
Just not enough.
The thought of the outside world has my stomach clenching under the thin sheet. In a few hours, they’ll process me out, and then I’ll walk through the doors of Reception. Annie will be there, and that’ll be okay. That’s not the part I’m dreading.
We’ll get into her car — I have no idea what she’s driving; we’ve never talked about that — and we’ll make the two-hour trip down Highway 61 and along I-10. That’s not the part I’m dreading either. Because that’s just road and sky. There’s plenty of sky here. I’m used to it. Nothing to be afraid of.
For the last five years, I’ve worked in the auto tech shop. Assistant to the foreman for the last two. I know I could swipe a six-inch screwdriver and sink it into a guard’s thigh. Buy myself a whole lot more time.
I’ve thought about it. Really, I have.
But that would only be more blood on my hands, and I have enough already.
Enough already.
I’ve been able to picture the ride with Annie, I can get as far as crossing the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge, but as soon as I try to see us pulling off I-10 onto University Avenue, my mind shuts the fuck down.
I roll onto my back. The ceiling above me is a washed out gray in the pale, pre-dawn light. Top bunks are a trade off here. On the bottom bunk, you feel like the world is closing in on you. And with a two-hundred-pound man sleeping in the bed above you, on a noisy heap of springs and feathers, it’s not hard to imagine all that shit coming down on you every time that bastard rolls over.
On top, there’s nothing there to crush you, but it’s hot as fuck up here. I may not be ready to get out and face everything and everyone waiting for me, but I’m not gonna lie. I’ve missed air conditioning. It’s September, and September in Louisiana is like the inside of a baked potato. Steaming and still.
Today is September 18th. Eight years to the day the fool I was walked in here.
Walking out, I’ll still be a fool, but I’ve learned some things inside. Back when I was eighteen, I had no idea that in the state of Louisiana an aggravated burglary conviction got you one to thirty. My lawyer made sure to tell me that ten years was a sign he’d done his job.
I’d said nothing to that. I would have taken the thirty if it hadn’t been for Annie and Grandma Q. My sister said if I went away that long, I’d miss seeing her have kids, miss seeing them grow, and Grandma said I’d miss her altogether. Those are the little details I have to remember.
I shake my head at the ceiling. What’s wrong with me? Those details aren’tlittle.
But it’s hard to remind myself that there are a few people I care about who don’t want me to pay anymore for my crimes. And the fact that I disagree with them only makes them suffer more, and that’s the last thing I want.
They are the reasons I “good-timed-out” when I had the chance. For them. Not for me.
The creak of springs and rustling of sheets snag my attention. I glance down to the bottom bunk on my right and find A.J. smiling up at me.
“It’s here,” he whispers, grinning. “Ya big day.”
In spite of myself, I grin back. A.J. Lemoine is a goofy ass mother, and he makes me laugh at least six times a day.
“It’s here,” I whisper back, glad that seeing his smile makes my own show up. A.J. and I are tight, but I haven’t told him how I feel about getting out. Like almost three-fourths of the inmates at Angola, A.J’s here all day. A lifer. Second degree murder. No possibility of parole.
You can’t tell a guy who’ll never get out that you want to stay in. That’s just cruel. In fact, half the guys I know have been smiling my way all week, happy for me. It gives them hope.
I feel sick just thinking about it, but I can’t let on.
“Annie comin’ for ya?” A.J. asks, his voice so low I almost can’t make it out over the tide of snores that surrounds us.
