by Grace Mead
“But I’m certainly not going to help my cause by refusing to help Tyrone,” Matt said.
“You also have to think about the nature of this favor.” Luther had regained his composure and he spoke in a reasonable tone, saying, “Parnell wants to watch you handle a case where the outcome doesn’t matter. He wants to be able to tell when you aren’t working as hard or as well as you can work, so he can compare it to his case. Parnell’s very, very smart and don’t let his speech fool you. He speaks like a brother because he needs to in this place, but he’s at least as smart as you. If Parnell had grown up in a middle-class family, he’d be CEO of a big company. He might have picked Enron, but it’d be a big company. Drugs were the shortest path to money and he took it. Not all criminals are stupid.”
“I don’t see how I have a choice,” Matt said.
“You have a choice,” Luther said. “Let Tyrone take his chances with Parnell. Protecting someone you don’t owe anything to got you here in the first place. Now that you’re here, you should really just worry about protecting yourself.”
“I am worried about protecting myself,” Matt said. “I’m worried that I can’t do it alone. And if, in the future, no one in Tyrone’s position will help me out, then I’m fucked. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but I’m fucked.”
“Matt, sorry to say this to you, but you’re fucked anyway. We all are.”
Matt spent the rest of the afternoon doing legal research for Parnell’s appellate brief. The legal error during Parnell’s trial was simple and egregious. Matt hoped that if he could win Parnell a new trial, all could be forgiven and some of the pressure would be off.
After dinner that night, he approached Parnell again and the two men met in the bathroom at the rear of the barracks. “Okay, I’ll do it,” Matt said.
“Bill wants to talk to you first and you can tell him what a lousy idea this lawsuit is. If you wanna volunteer to take on another case for him, that fine with me. I just owe Bill a favor and I don’t give a shit what case you work on. You better tell your friend Tyrone when he gets back he needs to stop selling white lightnin’ or you ain’t gonna be able to protect him no more. ’Cause you ain’t.”
Matt slept well that night, knowing he’d done the right thing, even it jeopardized his safety. He felt as if he were playing a losing game; a single misstep or piece of bad luck would lead to serious violence. The self-defense sessions with Tommy and Dave hadn’t equipped him to fight Parnell’s entire gang.
The next evening, Tyrone still hadn’t returned to Building 2, and Matt wondered about the severity of his injuries.
Before dinner, Parnell sought Matt out for the first time. “Bill wants to meet with you, so you gonna sit at his table tonight,” Parnell ordered. “We can’t arrange nothin’ more private, so that’s gonna have to do.”
“All right. I’m safe sitting at his table, right?” Matt asked.
“So long as you still working on my case and you don’t fuck up, you safe,” Parnell said. Parnell’s assurance was laden with enough qualifications to make any lawyer proud.
After filling his tray in the line at the cafeteria, Matt looked across the room for Bill. He spotted a tall man with filthy, shoulder-length blond hair, surprised to recognize him as the man Parnell had signaled during the football game to discipline the black man in the front row. He supposed that, when they needed to, Parnell’s gang and the White Brotherhood could cooperate.
The most distinctive feature of the White Brotherhood members was a swastika tattooed across the forehead. The brand must remind members of how much they had to lose by falling out of favor. On the off chance the black half of the population in Wheaton—or, if transferred to Angola, the mostly black prisoners there—hadn’t already identified all of the White Brotherhood’s members, a glance could identify an unprotected outcast.
The men around Bill had left a space next to him. Matt took the empty seat. He held out his hand, just as he would if meeting with an executive for a corporate client. “Matt Durant.”
“I know,” Bill said. “I hear you’re some kind of superlawyer, and Parnell agreed you could help me out with a case.”
“Parnell’s explained it to me, but I’d like to hear more about it from the guy who’s suing.”
“That can wait. I want to know why you went to Parnell for protection,” Bill said, locking eyes with Matt, who had difficulty focusing on the eyes beneath the swastika.
“I went to Parnell because he’s been recently convicted. Under the law, appeals immediately after trial have a far greater chance of success. I thought there was a better chance that I could do something for him.”
“Sure, but you’re white. Notice how many white guys there are in Parnell’s crew?”
“None.”
“That’s right.” Bill gestured toward Matt with an open palm. “You could have appealed to my better nature for help, as a white man,” Bill said as he pulled his hand in toward his chest.
“I was also slightly worried about the fact I was beaten up outside a gay bar. From what I remember, Hitler set out to kill all of the gays in Europe.”
“If you’d told me you weren’t gay, it would have been enough. You’re not fucking any of those niggers, are you?” His eyes narrowed: apparently, his hate had a hierarchy.
“No,” Matt said. Bill had a wild-eyed intensity; he hadn’t blinked since Matt sat down.
“You should think about your long-term best interests. You can become a friend and brother to the men in my group. Those niggers are never going to be your friends or brothers. They’re just going to use you for one thing or another until you’re all used up.”
“I hear you,” Matt said. “Now, can we talk about this case?” He wanted and hoped to disengage—and perhaps deescalate—by shifting the discussion to an issue more familiar.
“Yeah. The guy who’s suing is to your left. John Walker.”
Matt stuck out his hand to John, who was a mousy man, with brown hair and brown eyes, and introduced himself. “Why don’t you tell me what this lawsuit is about?”
“I wanna sue to get the cameras out of the showers. Don’t we have privacy rights or something in there under the Constitution? If there are privacy rights that protect abortions, there’s got to be a right for the guards not to see us naked in the shower.” John looked up, but down again quickly. The man had a timid twitchiness, and Matt wondered if it was from years of exposure to the prison’s predators.
“Unfortunately, the courts have rejected precisely that argument,” Matt said. “The constitutional rights of prisoners are far more limited than the rights of the general population. State governments can limit the privacy rights of prisoners for security reasons. I can draft a brief that reads well and looks professional, but it’s not going to have much chance of winning.” Matt turned to Bill. “That being said, I’m happy to work on another case for you. I can talk to some of your guys and see who has the best case.”
“No,” Bill said. “You aren’t getting this, are you?”
“What do you mean?” Matt asked.
“If there aren’t any cameras in the bathrooms, what happens?”
“I imagine there’d be more beatings and rapes in the showers,” Matt said.
“Maybe,” Bill said. “What’s the best way to protect yourself from getting beat up or and raped when the guards aren’t around? You should know the answer to this one.”
“You have to get the protection of a gang.”
“Or the White Brotherhood,” Bill said, shaking his head. “We’re not a gang.”
“Banning the cameras from the showers, where all of the inmates are required to go, would increase the power of Parnell’s gang and White Brotherhood and reduce the power of the guards,” Matt said.
“Yep,” Bill replied. “That’s why even if there’s only a one percent chance of this lawsuit working, it’s worth a shot.” Apparently Bill didn’t have the pull to have the cameras turned off in his building; or perhaps he did, but he wante
d them turned off throughout the rest of the prison’s bathrooms. Maybe to spread his influence further?
“But I’m telling you that you don’t even have a one percent chance of winning,” Matt said. He was beginning to get frustrated.
“And I’m telling you you’re supposed to be some sort of hotshot lawyer. Larry Bird didn’t become Larry Bird by doing the same thing as every other basketball player. He became a superstar by doing shit other basketball players couldn’t do. And that’s what I need you to do.”
“I hear you and I’ll try my best,” Matt said. “It would be helpful if we could argue they don’t need to remove the cameras entirely. Can you think of a compromise solution that would remove the cameras only from certain areas in the bathrooms and still allow you to work? That’s what I need from you.”
“See, there you go. A good idea already. I’ll get back to you with something besides removing all of the cameras.”
Dinner ended and Matt returned to Building 2. As he fell asleep that night, he considered that he’d already been maneuvered into arguing an untenable legal position. Matt remembered Parnell had originally told him that he would work on cases for others, and then he realized why Parnell hadn’t followed through on a larger scale. Parnell didn’t want him to develop any friendships or earn any favors, and he’d already maneuvered him into handling a case likely to fail so that he couldn’t. Matt needed to find another way to win allies.
Chapter 22
A few days later, Tyrone returned to Building 2 with a broken nose and collarbone. He couldn’t work yet, so he whiled away his days in the barracks. When Matt asked him about the reasons for the beating, he refused to say anything—after Matt passed along Parnell’s warning, Tyrone just sat there sullenly.
One afternoon, Matt was sorting books in the library while he watched Luther tutor an inmate. He realized that the way to make friends was right in front of him: he could teach someone how to read. Other inmates could offer that skill, but he could do it better than most.
When Luther finished his session, Matt approached him. “Luther, I was thinking about spending an hour or so each afternoon tutoring an inmate. How do I go about doing that?”
“Well, if you could tutor Reggie, it’d be a huge favor to me. I love him like a brother and he protected me for years, but we always end up fightin’ whenever I try and teach him.”
“I’d be happy to teach Reggie,” Matt said. He felt a twinge of disappointment. Reggie had been a force to be reckoned with in a different generation and was an inmate in Angola, not Wheaton.
“Any way I could also tutor some folks from Wheaton?”
“I wouldn’t push it now. They aren’t allowed to come over here even to use the computers. They have to handwrite all their legal papers. That’s why you take books to them.”
“I figured as much,” Matt said. Tutoring Reggie would at least be a start, and maybe he could offer more advice on how to survive. But he suspected Reggie’s strategy for survival had depended on brute force, rather than sophistication or subtlety.
“You’re new, so you aren’t supposed to have the privileges to tutor,” Luther said. “You’re gonna have to get permission. And you can’t go through Parnell because I’d imagine he guards your time pretty jealously. You’re going to have to ask Ted.”
Matt wasn’t thrilled about asking Ted, who would probably just tell Parnell. But he needed to reach out and develop other friendships and resources.
*
Ted arrived that evening to pick him up from the library.
Matt waited until they were alone in the pickup truck on the road back to Wheaton. “Ted, I have a question for you,” he said, hoping to placate the guard by asking permission to even ask a question.
“Yeah.”
“I was wondering if I could tutor an illiterate inmate from Angola in the library during the afternoons, like Luther does.”
“Well, hell, you aren’t even supposed to be in there, but it couldn’t hurt,” Ted said, keeping his eyes on the dirt road.
Matt felt a small triumph. It sounded like Ted had paid so little attention to his request that he might not even tell Parnell. And surely it wouldn’t create problems with Parnell even if he found out. It was only an hour a day, or at least he could tell Parnell that, so he had a plausible reason for not running it by the man to whom he’d at least superficially ceded control.
The next day, in the library, Luther and Matt approached Reggie, who was already seated at one of the conference-room tables.
“So Luther, you gonna be in the rodeo this year?” Reggie asked.
“What are you talking about?” Matt asked.
“You ain’t heard about the rodeo?” Reggie asked. “Every year for decades the Warden’s been havin’ a rodeo for us prisoners to participate in. We ain’t allowed to train for it. Those of us who been ’round long enough know it’s a sucker’s bet. But Luther here decided he was gonna win a belt buckle ’bout twenty-five years ago.”
“I wanted to give it to my son,” Luther said quietly.
“Now Luther ain’t that athletic, so the only thing he could do was play convict’s poker.”
“What’s convict’s poker?” Matt asked.
“They sit down a bunch a cons ’round a bright red table, shock a bull, and the last con to get up from the table and run away from the bull wins. They shocked that bull, an’ firs’ thing you know, I don’ know who took off faster, Luther or the bull.” Reggie cracked a wide smile, showing missing teeth.
“Well,” Luther said, “I decided if I was going to lose, I was going to lose in a way that made sure I didn’t get hurt.”
“Can inmates at Wheaton participate?” Matt asked.
“Yeah,” Reggie said, “but I told you it’s a sucker’s bet. Why you wanna perform like a monkey for some outside visitors?” Reggie asked, with a quizzical expression. Matt wondered if he thought it below the status of a lawyer, who had services to trade, but, if so, he underestimated Matt’s willingness to explore every option to survive.
“Just curious,” Matt said. Being underestimated could have its advantages.
“Well, don’t be,” Luther said, with a pointed look, likely remembering how his single attempt in convict’s poker had embarrassed him in front of the other inmates, perhaps leaving him vulnerable.
Matt and Reggie then sat and plodded through phonetics. Reggie showed deliberate determination and never once, over the course of two hours, asked for a break; he lacked aptitude and enthusiasm, but he kept putting one foot in front of the other.
After he’d left, Matt asked Luther: “Why’s he learning to read so late? Why bother?”
“Well,” Luther said, “his son came to visit for the first time in ten years a year or so ago. Told him he had a grandkid. When Reggie asked if he could see his grandkid, his son asked him why he’d bring him to meet his granddaddy, a convict who can’t even read. Asked what kinda example that would set. Reggie figured he couldn’t fix the convict part but maybe he could fix the reading part.”
Matt’s conversation with Luther made him think of those in his life who’d communicated with him in prison and he decided to write to Eric and his mother. He began with the letter to Eric because the relationship was less laden with history, even if it had held a different kind of promise now transmuted to wistfulness.
Dear M—
Thanks so much for the note, which put a smile on my face. Around here workout clothes are the same clothes we always wear, jeans and a t-shirt. Digging ditches is incredible exercise, though—I’ll bet I’m in better shape than you’ll ever be. Perhaps you could open a gym on the outside that copies the workout here. Then maybe you can start a new line of athleisure and make us both rich. But I think if people on the outside were restricted to one outfit choice, they probably wouldn’t dress in the equivalent of sweats all the time.
I firmly believe the deliberately casual look is spreading from California. I was eating dinner in a nice restaurant in the Quarte
r last winter and a guy in what looked like a sweat suit he’d stolen from a homeless person walked in. I thought to myself, “He’s either a billionaire or a genius.” Got to talking to him, though, and he was neither—just a visiting professor from Dartmouth.
He also told me it was an Ivy League school. Who knows that? I just thought it was where Michael Corleone went to college in The Godfather. And that he felt he had to tell me didn’t speak too highly of it or him.
Anyway, hope you recovered from your hangover and actually managed to work out.
Take care,
A
Matt turned to the letter to his mother:
Dear Mom,
I know you must be happy about LSU winning the national championship! You certainly deserve some good news.
I have some good news to report, too. I got a job in the library organizing and shelving books and tutoring other inmates. It’s wonderful to be surrounded by books again. And I’m being paid—like I was as a lawyer—to sit alone in a room with books and read and think. I guess it’s only four cents an hour, but I did it for free for decades in school so I think I’m still coming out ahead.
Also, there’s no librarian’s paradox here like I told you about in the university libraries. There, first thing, they give you a long lecture about the billion and one different ways you can damage a book and how a misplaced book among millions can be lost for a hundred years. It’s as if the librarians don’t want anyone ever reading or using the books. Here, the librarians are prisoners who love books and that form of escape. The inmates who visit do too. Hard to imagine more appreciative patrons than prisoners who come to the library willingly.