RED SOX: I’m sad, really sad about the developments this summer. It is not the losing streak but the ‘roid scandal tearing me up. If Papi was juicing then I’m heartsick over the lies, the hypocrisy, and his damaged health. If Papi was not juicing then I’m heartbroken over his ruined reputation. There is only one thing I know for sure. Cowards who anonymously leak court sealed documents and the scum ‘reporters’ who print the allegations without more than hearsay are ruining our quality of life. They are nothing but balloon poppers who never built a damn worthwhile thing in their whole miserable lives. They are never more happy than when the rest of us are deflated. They know no greater joy than shattering clay footed heroes. I’m pretty sure most of us didn’t need a newspaper to tell us every one of our heroes is a human being.
FEEDBACK: It’s a good thing p.phair@comcast.net
by
phair
Deni Tyler waited patiently to be searched and shackled in the prison’s dingy holding area. Several other inmates were beginning to get restless with the hold up in the scheduled departure for their work detail. However, Deni was not concerned with the delay. She could wait better than most folks could. She had the last five years to get acquainted with the concept. Hurrying up to wait was the constant reality of prison life.
Deni believed she managed to almost perfect the art of displaying a casual indifference in spite of any inner turmoil rattling her soul. She continued to appear distant even this morning when her soul was not just rattling. It was shaken to its very foundation.
“Okay girls, let’s get moving. I haven’t got all day to play nurse maid to the bunch of you,” a rail thin corrections officer announced as she entered the room.
“Won’t be nursin’ nuttin’ but bile out of them shriveled up titties,” a well-worn, twenty something, black inmate sniped.
The corrections officer hearing the mumble but not the actual words turned on the group with a snarl. She searched the smirking faces before her for the wise cracking offender. Her lips lost their usual sour curl and spread into a contented grin when she noted Deni was standing amongst the group.
“Tyler, that you? You joining my chain gang today. You typically sick out when I’m on watch.” The officer taunted, “Maybe you’re here ‘cause you got something to say to me.” When only silence answered her, the officer shouted, “Try saying it right to my face!”
The enraged officer stopped long enough to slam her clipboard onto the desk before stalking over to the loose line of loose women. She may have shown every outward sign of anger but her swagger spoke more of satisfaction.
“She got a hard on for you or somethin’ else maybe? Girl can’t no credit for her own mouth when you’re within pissin’ distance?” The offending inmate complained in a low voice.
Deni ducked her head and stammered with stilted words, “Jax, fess up? Can’t get bumped. Not this day. Other day okay. Not this day. Please?”
Jax gave a sneering assessment of the stooped shouldered woman next to her before mockingly announcing, “Officer Catley thinks gimpy can talk all good ‘nuff now? Like some kind of miracle or somethin’ else; our own limping lady of the penal system.”
Most of the woman howled with laughter. Those women did not know Deni as anything other than the cripple dragging at the back of every work detail. In fact, only Jax and one other woman in the room had ever heard Deni speak more than a half dozen words in any given day. Officer Catley was the other woman. Her conversation with Deni left lasting reminders on both the prisoner’s skin and deep in her heart.
“Back it up Jack-wipe unless you want trouble with me. I’m in the mood to lock a few of my problem children down for a night or three,” Officer Catley warned.
“That’s Ms. Jackson, to you, Nasty One,” Jax grinned knowing she was destined to be returned to her cell and wanting to make the most of it. “I ain’t letting no halfwit steal credit for my best lines. I’ll pull my own solo hours! Don’t get no money from this shit work anyway. It’s all restitution for the punk ass I cut the nuts off of.”
The assembled women laughed again. This time their humor was at Officer Catley’s expense. She was denied her fun taunting Deni in front of an audience. Jax would pay the price but for the moment, each of the inmates was enjoying the disappointment Officer Catley could not hide.
“I need back up in the holding bay, pronto! Tell that fat ass to get in here double time. We got a locked down heading back to the main building,” Officer Catley spat the words into her shoulder mounted walkie talkie with spittle flying through the air.
“Roger,” the radio transmission crackled the reply.
Deni suppressed a groan when a heavyset male officer hurried into the room minutes later. His curly salt and pepper hair was glistening with perspiration. He grunted hard and cleared his throat to cover the wheezing noise he made trying to catch his breath. His workday was just beginning and he already had sweat stains under his armpits.
“What’s the deal?” He asked with a genial but breathless tone of voice.
Officer Catley would not look the man in the eye. “Officer St. Marie, Jax is lipping off again. She earned a time out in her cage today. You take her back. I’ll truss up the rest of ‘em and load ‘em up. By the time you’re done, I’ll have ‘em in the van.”
“No fuckin’ way is he locking me down. I want a female officer. It’s my right, my call,” Jax demanded with a twinkle of amusement in her rich brown eyes.
“You only got the rights I decide to give you,” Catley hissed in Jax’s face. “And, your only right is to shut the fuck up and go with Officer St. Marie. NOW!”
“Step off, Officer Catley,” Officer St. Marie made the command seem like a request. “This prisoner has every right to request a female officer for escort. So, do your job. I’ll get Bernice to come in from the loading area and do the pat downs in here.” He watched his co-worker grind her teeth but make no effort to follow his directives. “Sheryl, don’t make me say it twice.”
She shot him a glare before grabbing Jax by the upper arm. Jax shook her off with an indignant snort.
“You’re my escort. You ain’t my date,” Jax said with a grin. “No holding hands.”
“Shut it and move!”
“Thought you no work today?” Deni haltingly asked when Officer St. Marie approached with her shackles.
The big man grinned. His dark brown skin dimpled at several junctures on each cheek. He was a jovial fellow and he had the laugh lines to prove it.
“You worrin’ ‘bout my health? Careful Tyler, I might think you’re startin’ to care ‘bout me,” he said with a wink and a nod.
The corrections officer bent to his task beginning at Deni’s ankles. She was impassive as he fitted the fetters and clicked the locks into place. He finished the process by fastening the right cuff around her wrist. The cuff locked to the chain wrapped around Deni’s waist and was identical to the cuff holding Deni’s left wrist to her side. Once he was done, he wiped his sweaty brow with the back of his hand.
“You tired early?”
“I’m always tired but I got little Elmer to worry about, now don’t I? He’s got potential, that boy. He’s going places.”
His usually twinkling eyes narrowed with worry. He mumbled his greatest fear to a woman he believed incapable of understanding complex thoughts and long conversations. He was certain she would never be able to repeat any fragment of information she might happen to grasp.
“If this old man of his can hang on and get enough overtime to pay for that pricey high school in the suburbs, he’ll have both potential and opportunity. Just a couple more years of sixty plus hours and I’m home free.”
The words were stated in much the same manner the judge used when he sentenced Deni Tyler to prison. Before the corrections officer could say anything more, the door from the main building opened and Sheryl Catley reentered the room. She frowned when she saw Officer St. Marie and Deni were lagging behind the rest of the women already loaded into the van.
“How did I know you’d still be screwing around with the halfwit?”
“No need to be name calling,” Officer St. Marie cautioned the still angry woman.
Catley rebuffed him, “You coddle these cons. They’re here to be punished, remember? Or, do you think we’re running some kind of nursing home for felonious ‘tards.”
The older man grew visibly angry. He continued to keep a gentle hold on Deni’s arm but she could feel a sudden tremor run through him. His voice boomed against the concrete walls when he snapped at his co-worker.
“You’re on report! This woman doesn’t need your contempt. She needs your help! She needs all our help. Its bad enough the system took no pity on her.”
“Pity? For her?” Catley interrupted his reprimand. “How much pity did she have for all those hard working slobs she robbed? How much pity did she have for the cops she put in danger with that high-speed chase? None! She got all the pity that we should spare for something like her when she wrecked and didn’t manage to kill some stray schnook heading off to work. It would have been murder then instead of just armed robbery. Deni Tyler got off damn lucky, if you ask me.”
St. Marie hissed his counter argument, “Brain damaged with a nearly useless leg, trapped in an adult body with the mind of a two year old, is not lucky. It’s punishment enough. But, nothing’s ever enough for people like you. Leaving her to rot in this dung pit with violent offenders for a dozen years is not justice. It’s plain cruel. Piling onto her suffering is only about revenge.”
“Revenge works for me.”
“Figures,” he sneered.
“What are you? The patron saint of solitary confinement?”
St. Marie growled his reply as he calmly led his shackled and limping charge out the exit to the loading area, “No, I’m just a guy who understands a little bit about compassion and forgiveness.”
“No, you’re just a guy who’s too naïve to believe,” Catley mumbled before she followed them.
Deni hip hiked her braced left leg to step up onto the wooden pier. She used her trash spear to balance on the bouncing surface. Relentless rains had swollen the river forcing it to crest its grassy banks and quicken an already robust current.
The rest of the prison work crew was a few hundred yards up stream moving heavy sand bags into place. More rain was predicted which posed a threat of serious flooding. A nearby watershed project would be ruined if the river’s waters reached the construction site.
When the work crew arrived several hours earlier in the day, Catley dismissed Deni by pushing a trash spear into her hands. Catley pointed at litter along the steeply sloping banks and instructed the prisoner using very simple terms to pick up ever last scrap of junk.
“Might as well get something useful out of you ‘cause you ain’t got no chance of lifting them sand bags,” Catley said before letting Deni wander away chasing blowing garbage.
The wind was picking up as Deni hobbled along the ancient wood planks. It churned up the river’s already frenzied current. Papers and wrappers littered the narrow walkway from the banks to the pier’s end which jutting out a third of the way across the river. Deni continued to follow the blowing trash and stab it once she was within reaching distance. The thunk of the spear tip competed with the thump of her metal leg brace as she lurched closer to the far end of the pier.
“This is BravoTango seventy eight, finished securing six of eleven prisoners in the van with Officer Franklin. I’ll be returning to the work site to assist Officer Catley with remaining crew. Over,” Officer St. Marie spoke into his radio.
“Roger that. Pack them up and hurry back, Gabe. The weather guy on twenty five says torrential rains are bearing down on us and we’re gonna get swamped. Don’t want you getting drenched and catching cold. You’re covering for me tomorrow night.”
Gabe sighed feeling the weight of exhaustion settling into his joints and said, “Will do. ETA is forty minutes or so. Out.”
The officer clicked off the radio and climb out of the van’s cab. Wind whistled passed his ears and he swore he felt a splash of rain. He surveyed the riverbank before him. Overcast skies seemed to darken by the minute with the setting of the sun. The river was slurping and sloshing over its natural boundaries. It was eager to expand its territory.
The orange suited prisoners were merely silhouettes in the distance. Gabe counted four bodies bending to their tasks and one rigid shape watching over them. His heart rate picked up and he quickly counted again. It yielded the same result. He was short one prisoner.
Gabe St. Marie was a highly trained corrections officer. He had twenty years of experience. Once he received a commendation for ending a riot. He also received a shiv to the ribs requiring six stitches a couple of years back. In spite of many extreme confrontations, he was never so frightened that he screamed on the job. Until today.
“Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus!”
The words ripped across the open field like a gunshot. Gabe broke into a mad dash toward the wildly rocking pier and the lame prisoner struggling for balance only inches from the far end. His heart tripped like a jackhammer in his barrel chest. He shook out of his rain slicker as he furiously strived for more speed.
“Sheryl! GET OVER HERE!” Gabe found enough extra air to bellow the command.
“FUCK!” The singular curse echoed back.
Defying his bulk, Gabe sprung onto the pier’s aging wood planks. The force of his landing bounced the pier even more than the current. In utter horror, he watched Deni lose her balance and fall back into the surging water.
Gabe sprinted to the end fully prepared to dive in after her. He stopped short when lightening flashed and reflected off the metal brace. Deni’s leg was hung up on a stray line. Gabe grabbed the brace’s upright post and pulled. She was dead weight; water soaked and limp.
“Grab her,” he shrieked to Catley who was precious heartbeats behind him.
Catley took the orthopedic shoe in her right hand and wrapped the fingers of the left hand around the brace’s upright. She, to her credit, yanked for all she was worth. Deni’s body lifted three quarters of the way out of the water. Only her shoulders and head remained submerged.
Gabe risked hanging his own shoulders and head over the pier’s edge. Water cascaded over him but he managed to snag the collar of Deni’s jumpsuit and dragged her shoulders above the surface. The woman’s head lolled backward. At first glance, Gabe realized Deni’s mouth was agape and her eyes were rolled back. A huge gash was ripped open from her eye brow to her ear.
“Shit,” water pouring over him reduced him to gasping coughs for air.
“Gabe, I can’t hold her much longer! Get her up and out of there!” Catley demanded.
“Can’t! She’s stuck on something.”
A wall of water cascaded over the trio. The strong surge pulled Deni back down. The front of her jump suit tore in two. Gabe held tighter but with the next blast of water, she was out of Gabe’s clutches. Catley lost her grip on the upright once the full weight of the woman shifted to her hands. Her last grasp was on the black soled shoe with the metal brace inserted into the heel. Another wind powered surge ripped the foot free from the leather and the brace free from the shoe’s heel.
“DENI!” Gabe screamed like a madman as her body was tossed fully into the rage current.
