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I’m ready for this heartache to be over. I’m ready to move on to the next chapter of my life, and it’s not college. It’s with him, my Daddy.
The coffee kicks in almost immediately and I look over the word search puzzle he sent me again, thinking maybe I missed something. I continue searching because I know there’s something here I’m not seeing, and if I want to be sure to see him again, I need to find it.
And find it I will.
9
James
The door to ‘the hole’ as it’s known, or solitary confinement, opens for the first time in I don’t even know how long. How can you keep track of time when it’s dark, dingy, and smells like mold twenty-four hours a day? Then again this just seems like one long repeating day, one nightmare.
“You going to behave, asshole?” the CO asks, and I simply nod. “We’ll see about that,” he says, tapping the doorjamb with his nightstick and I rise to my feet and walk out of solitary.
A few minutes later he’s putting me inside a new cell with a new cellmate, who looks me up and down and quickly, decides he wants nothing to do with me. I may have been locked up, but I wasn’t crazy or lazy enough to stop working out. A weak physique is a death sentence in here, literally, and you have to be ready to fight at all times, especially when you get a new cellmate and the pecking order for top dog is instantly determined.
“It’s just temporary, until tomorrow when you’re parole is denied again,” he says, tipping me off to the fact I’d been locked in solitary for a few months.
“Do you have any mail for me?”
“You aren’t allowed to get mail, scumbag.” He pauses. “But if you’re referring to those little letters and gifts from your girlfriend then, yeah, we got them.”
“Can you please bring them to me?” I damn near beg, for the first time in my life.
“Oh, you’ll see them tomorrow at your hearing. They’re contraband and were clearly against the terms of your confinement here.”
“I’m walking out of here tomorrow,” I state as if it’s a done deal.
“Yeah, you are…right back into solitary, if Bubba doesn’t finish you off tonight.” He pauses again and looks up at the top bunk. “We’ll make sure not to patrol this floor tonight, Bubba. So you’re free to do what you’ve gotta do…in case there happens to be an…accident,” he winks.
I hear Bubba laugh above me and quickly realize I’m not getting a second of sleep tonight. Now tomorrow, the most important day in the next step in my life, the determination of whether or not I go free or I rot in here forever, is going to start with me showing up looking completely beat down, probably without a shower, and every odd in the book stacked against me.
I don’t care. I’m going to win, my freedom that is. I’m going to say whatever I need to say to get out of here. If they want to hear that I accept responsibility for those fires then I’ll give it to them, even though I know it’s absolutely a lie. All I want is the truth, and that’s her. Little Josi.
I just hope she waited on me, someone she probably sees as a deadbeat who doesn’t keep their end of the deal, who never wrote her back. But if all works out tomorrow I’ll never need to write her again, because she’ll be where she belongs. In my arms.
A moment of clarity washes over me and I realize I’ve completely lost it, that I’m hallucinating. I’d blame it on being in solitary for all that time, but I know the truth. It’s something much more powerful than that.
My ability to reason, to think clearly, to do anything rational is absolutely clouded…but for the best reason ever.
Love. For the first time in my life, I’m in love, and she loves me back. Or at least she did before I quit replying to her letters.
The notes from the parole hearing will be made public, so if I need to I’ll just say something that would make sense to her and only her so she knows I haven’t forgotten about her…if life forgets about me and sentences me to more time to serve.
I clench my fists. Not. Gonna. Happen. I’m going to get out of here and dedicate my life to serving as her liaison, her guiding light, her beacon of knowledge.
And prove that guard and everyone that ever doubted me wrong, as I confess to a crime I didn’t commit and said I never would.
Because the greater crime would be not having her as mine. Forever.
It’s the only shot I’ve got, and tomorrow I make the most of it.
The cell door slams shut and before the clack of the CO’s boots turn to nothingness down the hallway I hear the top bunk squeak and feel Bubba’s thick forearm squeeze tight against my throat.
10
James
“I’m surprised to see you alive,” the CO says, as he arrives at my cell door the next morning, before turning on the hallway lights. It’s an obvious security infraction and a sign he expected to find me dead and was prepared to quickly deal with the aftermath before the other prisoners were awake.
