There was a persistent rumor that the parole board was going to inaugurate a program called Prison Without Walls. This was a plan for very early paroling of inmates guilty of minor offenses. The rules were stringent. The parolee was to be carefully supervised. In some cases he would be required to return to the prison every weekend. In others he would live in halfway houses. In yet others, he would be required to make weekly detailed reports to his parole officer. The plan was to be offered only to prisoners who were believed by the parole board to be fully rehabilitatable. Recidivists were specifically excluded.
Everything, according to the rumor, depended on the behavior of the first group of parolees. If they failed, the program would be abandoned or at least highly modified. So the future freedom of hundreds of prisoners depended on the correct behavior of the first few men.
The prisoners spent hours drawing up lists of names of men they wanted in that first batch of parolees—solid, stable men who could be relied upon not to let the rest of the waiting prisoners down. And on almost every list was the name of Jason Poole.
One day, when Brewer was in the prison exercise yard, Poole drew out a small white cardboard box from his jacket pocket. Inside was a long red leaf. To Poole it was like a messenger from a distant world.
“Sweet gum leaf. Sweet gum is the first tree to turn color in the autumn—with the sassafras. It’s kind of a waxy maroon color. This coming September and October, when the sweet gum turns, my father and my brothers will start slicking up their hunting pieces, oiling the stocks, cleaning the barrels.
“And there’ll be mists in the alder thickets by the lake in the morning. And the skies will be filled with migrating birds. The geese will fly across the moon late at night, way up, honking as they go. And the dogs will be getting funny and milling around, barking at nothing. They know they’re going to be hunting soon. First for the woodcock in the old abandoned apple orchards. And the other game birds too. Then later comes the deer season. There’ll be the first snow sprinkling the ground by then and the water in the buckets will freeze on top.”
Brewer stood up. “I don’t give a shit for your birds and deer and geese and dogs or mists or frosts or any goddam thing.” And he walked away.
Brewer told himself he had to escape soon. He couldn’t stand much more of this.
The whole prison knew about Jason Poole’s paintings. The subjects were always rural scenes, often hunting scenes. The guards were his biggest customers; they were all rural men who hunted as avidly in New York State as Poole’s family hunted in Maine. His cell was always overcrowded with paintings, and he would sell them for a few dollars just to get leg room for more painting.
His oils graced the mantel of many a guard’s home. A few were even hanging on the wall of a saloon five miles away. The guards were convinced that Poole could make a comfortable living just painting hunting scenes. They said he was getting better with each painting. They expected his paintings to fetch a good price some day.
There were, however, about a dozen paintings that Poole wouldn’t sell. These were his personal favorites.
On the first Thursday of every month, the three members of the parole board arrived. This was the most important day of the calendar for many prisoners. Those who were scheduled for a hearing prepared and rehearsed and memorized for days beforehand. Shoes were carefully shined, hair was cut, clothing washed and ironed. The men sat in their cells with their hands clasped, reciting their lines, waiting for the three board members to arrive in their separate cars.
And everyone knew the three cars: a five-year-old red Mercury, a year-old white Saab, and a year-old blue Cadillac. Red, white, and blue. Hundreds of pairs of eyes from every part of the fifty-four acres would watch the three cars drive through the prison’s main gate and park by the Administration Building. They would watch the three men walk up the entrance steps.
And everyone knew the names of the three parole board members, knew their dispositions and mental habits.
Shortly after the three cars arrived, escort guards would be sent for the eligible prisoners. Then came the long walk from the cell, along the concrete corridors, up and down steel steps, and through steel security doors. There were encouraging words called from various cells as they strode by. The walk led past the throngs of prisoners in the prison yard, past the smiling faces and waving hands in the windows of various work buildings. And everywhere were words of encouragement.
Then came the jubilant half-dancing walk back. The thumbs up. The catcalls. The clip-clap of applause. Free! God almighty! Free! I’ll never come back here! You bastards, hear me! Never!
But not every prisoner was granted his petition for parole. For them the walk back was wracking. Now there were no words. No one looked at the unsuccessful petitioner. Everyone contrived to be busy with his back turned. Except the few close friends.
“Next time, Eddie. You’ll get it next time.”
In the night, then, on the first Thursday of the month, one would hear soft sobbing.
With August came a long spell of hot weather. There was no air conditioning, and often the prison smelled like a locker room. On August 7, the first Thursday of the month, the three members of the parole board arrived in sultry heat. The quick, eager walk of the petitioners commenced, followed by jubilant dances and long slow trudges. This time the trudgers outnumbered the dancers.
During the exercise period the inmates stood in the shadows, away from the scorching sun. A few played boccie ball. Brewer was sitting against a shady wall, watching a delivery truck unload provisions. It takes a great deal of food to feed 1,500 men, however badly, and delivery trucks arrived every day. Upon departure, each one was searched carefully by the guards. Studying the trucks now as he had been doing for several months, Brewer knew he had found a way to escape.
Directly under the parked delivery truck was a large cast-iron grating fitted into the cobbles. The grating covered a storm drain. The grating itself was quite large but the drain was hardly big enough to hold a man. However, the drain lay buried just above an old and infrequently used underground passageway that led from the food storage building to the main building.
A twenty-minute session with a pickax would produce a hole in the ceiling of the passageway leading to the drain. It was the storm drain that presented the problem. Cutting away the drainpipe so he could crawl through the grating would surely require an acetylene torch and might take several sessions. So he would have to re-cover the hole in the ceiling after each pipe-cutting session.
What he would need then was a way of securing himself to the underpart of the truck at least until he got through the gates and preferably into the nearest town. He was thinking of a rope hammock with steel hooks that would attach to the metal frame of the truck. Then he would be able to go into the main building, unlock the tunnel door, descend to the passageway, take down the ceiling cover, climb up to the grating, push it aside, and hook himself into his hammock on the underside of the truck. Voilà! Freedom.
“Brewer.” A blue-shirted guard stood over him. He nodded his head at the Administration Building. Brewer stood up and followed him. They walked across the exercise yard on the hot, uneven cobbles to the dished stone steps of the building and entered. Many men watched.
The building was air-conditioned. The cool air, like a hostess, greeted him with caresses and held him in her embrace up the old wooden steps to the second floor. The guard pointed at a bench. Brewer sat and waited.
Presently a man opened a hall door and leaned out like a bird, squinting up and down the hallway. He had a florid face and pate and large dark sweat stains at the armpits of his blue shirt. He pointed at Brewer with the jab of a yellow wooden pencil.
“Is that Brewer?” he asked the guard.
“Brewer,” answered the guard. The man jerked his head at Brewer.
It was a surprisingly small room, and the long oval conference table occupied much of it. The three-man parole board sat behind it in shirtsleeves with their papers and a
ttaché cases and their aging world-weary faces. The air conditioning was not working well in this room, and the faces of the three men were damp with perspiration. They were clearly irritable and brusque. No wonder a number of petitions had been turned down.
The guard pointed at a seat directly across from the three parole board members. Brewer sat. The guard remained standing behind him.
“Identify yourself,” said the board member in the middle.
“Brewer.”
“No, no, no. Your number.”
“B23424309.”
The three men each picked up a piece of blue paper and scanned it.
“B23424309,” said the man in the middle. “Brewer. Hmm.” He peered with absolute disgust over the tops of his glasses at Brewer. “Have a lawyer?”
“I don’t know. No. Not anymore.” For the first time since his sentencing he recalled her—the faint sensuous odor of her perfume and her long stockinged legs and her lawyerly struggle to help him with his hopeless case.
“We’ll appeal,” she’d said. “I’ll come see you in prison.”
“Don’t bother. Don’t come see me.” He knew he’d been wrapped and tied like a fish. There was no appeal worth bothering with. “I don’t want to see anyone.”
She acceded to his wishes. She never came to visit him.
The man in the middle spoke to Brewer. “B23424309. Have you heard about a program called Prison Without Walls?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Under that program we will consider a petition for parole on your behalf. You say you have no lawyer. Good. You’re far better off with some of those guardhouse lawyers in the prison library than with most of the members of the bar we’ve seen around here lately. Submit your petition in one month. Dismissed.”
All the way across the main yard under the blazing sun, back to the exercise yard, the same suspicion crossed and recrossed his mind. Setup.
After his trial Brewer had been given the maximum sentence with the gravest prejudice by the judge, who sternly recommended that Brewer be made to serve every single day of his term with not one day of parole. Officially, Brewer was anathema to the whole legal system. And here he was being offered the parole he was not supposed to be eligible for. The new Brewer told the old one the truth: He was a setup. A mark. He was being released to be aced. Someone wanted him dead.
Brewer thought wryly that he might be the first man in Sweetmeadow’s history to refuse to accept a parole … the first man to be kicked out of prison.
The prison hummed with talk. There were drawn-out arguments, quarrels, and analyses without end. Every possible consequence was explored to a degree outsiders would have found absurd.
There were fourteen men who had been invited to petition for parole under the Prison Without Walls program. Seven of them would be selected for parole. Among the fourteen names was Jason Poole’s.
With great diligence he set about drafting his petition and planning his presentation. He had lots of help. Nearly every man in the prison was eager to make the program a success.
Poole walked around like a celebrity. There was a strange fever glow in his eyes. He talked without end about Maine. He painted urgently, often through the night by flashlight. The paintings were almost painful in their affection for the woods, almost mawkish.
The others let Brewer alone mostly. They believed obviously that the parole board was not going to give the nod to any man who had committed the crime Brewer had.
Pools were formed and the betting was heavy. Brewer’s name was not among the favored seven names. Indeed, of all the many combinations of names that were being wagered on, his name was not in one.
Brewer declined what little help was offered. He filled out the correct forms with the assistance of a small pamphlet of instructions. Writing the petition was a matter of complete indifference to him. It was easier than digging a hole. It simply saved him the trouble of escaping.
Jason Poole walked like a man in a daze. Already out of prison in his mind, he lived and relived the first moments of contact with his family. He was terrified of rejection. He wrote letter after letter home, particularly to his father. He eagerly received advice from everyone around him in the prison on what to say, what arguments to use, what promises to make.
At last a letter from his father arrived. The first. It was painfully terse—a single sentence: “We’ll talk about it.” Jason was overjoyed.
“It was my mother,” he said to Brewer. “He’s a pretty hard guy. She softened him up. Everything’s going to be all right.” He almost shook his own hand in congratulation.
There was a vicious fight. One of the eligibles discovered that his closest friend had bet a list without his name on it. He considered it disloyal—bad luck in fact. The other prisoners went to great lengths to conceal the fight from the guards. But many other prisoners took sides—an ethical issue that was argued over and over and caused ripple quarrels of its own. Tempers grew shorter by the day.
If the parole board’s decisions had been delayed another week or so, the whole prison would have exploded into riots.
Fourteen men: That’s less than one percent of 1,500 men. Seven is less than one half of one percent of 1,500 men. It was a statistically insignificant number, yet even the prisoners on death row demanded hour-by-hour bulletins.
The day of the parole board’s decision began with a furious sun that leaped above the horizon balefully. The heat had been relentless—a superwarm pocket of humid, stagnant air that sat over the land without even a hint of a breeze. The earth panted and gave off slowly rising convection currents of shimmering heat. The fields turned brown and shriveled. Life waited for cool weather and rain.
For the desperately bored, there was even a pool on the order of arrival of the three board members. The first car drove through the prison gates at 1:13 P.M. It was the blue Cadillac and it was greeted with cheers and groans. The next car to arrive was the white Saab, followed almost immediately by the old red Mercury.
Prison guards gathered the fourteen applicants outside the board room. The rest of the prison paced and waited. More than two hours passed. The only information the guards gave out was the order in which the men were interviewed. Each interview took about ten minutes. The last interview ended at 3:49. Another half hour passed.
It was nearly 4:15 when the front doors of the Administration Building opened and six men came out, hugging each other and flinging their arms in the air, cheering. They ran in a group across the yard, shouting overjoyed obscenities.
The seventh man came out alone. He slouched along behind the others under the terrible sunlight, indifferent to the shouts and catcalls. Eyes all over the prison studied the group and called out the names. Even before the second group of seven came down the steps and trudged away, the whole prison knew the names of all the winners. The seventh man was Brewer.
Jason Poole was in the second group. His petition had been denied. The next phase of the program, when seven more men would be selected, would start in January. He was told to resubmit his application at that time.
Release date was set for the following Tuesday morning. During the next few days he was scheduled to sit through a series of seminars with the other six men. They would be told that they were not on parole. They were officially still in prison. In fact, one of the men was going to have to return to his cell in Sweetmeadow every night.
The seven were lionized. Wherever they went they were thumped on the back, applauded, and smiled at. Every single prisoner believed that somehow his own sentence had been shortened this day. The commonest admonition the seven heard was “Don’t screw it up, bastard.”
Jason Poole congratulated Brewer with a faint grin. “Best of luck, Brewer.”
“You’ll be out, Jason. Hang tough. January will be here before you know it.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I’ll be out of here before you know it.” Poole went back to his painting.
The festive mood carried all through the dinner hour and into the night. The prisone
rs laughed and talked through their favorite television programs. Periodically, a wave of birdcalls and animal imitations would sweep through every tier of the prison. It was a totally spontaneous event that might occur but once in several months. Men trilled like canaries or cawed like crows, barked like dogs, mewed, roared, giggled, chattered, shrieked, cooed, and trumpeted. And that night it happened time after time. It began with a single call, rose to a long sustained crescendo, then slowly died away to silence.
The guards were uneasy. In the manic-depressive world of the prison, such a high would surely be followed by a low—a mean, sullen time that could trigger fights and riots, especially if it was accompanied by a full moon. In the cell blocks it was dripping hot. At nine, September’s full moon rose.
Brewer could tell that Jason Poole was busy in his cell. He was tearing wrapping-paper, scribbling notes, putting the last few touches on a painting, cleaning his brushes, packing things in his footlocker. It was the busy-ness of a man getting ready to leave.
Brewer was busy with his own thoughts. In less than five days he would step through the prison gates. His life would go back to that moment he was sentenced. Like a piece of movie film he would take the 118 days of his imprisonment and snip it out of his life, then splice together the day he was sentenced with the day he would walk out free and resume the ongoing action that the imprisonment had interrupted. The minute his feet hit the ground he would be on a manhunt. And at that same minute, someone might be waiting around a bend in the road to kill him.
After all the ruminating during all those nights in his cell, he still didn’t have the vaguest idea why all this had happened to him.
“Hey, Brewer.”
“I’m here, Rine.”
“How you doing?”
“I can’t be beat.”
“Hey, Poole.”
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