Flesh and Blood

by Michael Lister

  As we entered the sally port, Merrill turned left and disappeared into the security building and I vanished into the crowd of officers, my cursory glances of the crowd turning up nothing. No one stood out as I surveyed the nearly twenty correctional officers in the small holding area. Some stood quietly, most stood talking, and a few of them stood next to the ashtray, smoking. They held lunch boxes and small ice chests, and they all looked eager to go home.

  Never once had I stopped and waited with the group of officers at the end of the day—I was on a different shift and didn’t get off for another hour. However, Billy Ray wouldn’t know that. I milled around the crowd looking at the officers trying not to seem as though I was looking at them. I took a deep breath and slowed down a bit. I knew I needn’t rush now—I could trust Merrill to keep the gate closed.

  I studied them one by one, checking first the ones standing by themselves. There was a middle-aged white woman with short black hair, an older man with almost no hair at all, a tall black man with huge hands, a young white man with a DC cap on who turned slightly so I couldn’t see his face.

  Searching a small group of officers standing near the entrance to the security building, I could see that three were women, two were in their fifties, and two were black. Another group standing close to them was comprised of all young white men, any of whom could have been Billy Ray. I walked over to them. They were sharing the exciting news: an inmate had been killed on the rec yard.

  I stepped into their circle and asked what had happened and then looked at each of them carefully and slowly, which was difficult because of the adrenaline coursing through my veins. So strong was its effect, in fact, that I had begun to shake.

  They told me what they knew and why they were here and not down where the action was, but Billy Ray was not among them. It made sense that he wouldn’t be in a group, but he probably wouldn’t stand completely alone either.

  I spotted another small group, and, though they stood together, they weren’t talking. I approached them, and as I did, one of them moved forward slightly. This put him closer to the outer gate … and freedom. When he moved, his shoes slid back and fourth on his feet the way his uniform did on his body. There was also an unmistakable light prison-green tattoo on his left arm.

  When I turned to locate Merrill, I saw him coming out of the security building with a nine millimeter at his side. He was always a dangerous man—now he was deadly. And then, I felt it—an arm around my throat, a blade pressing into the flesh at my jugular.

  It was a stupid mistake. I felt ashamed and embarrassed, and knew that however this ended—in my death or his—I would be partly to blame.

  Merrill brought the nine up and aimed it straight at me. “Hands down, motherfucker,” he said to Billy Ray. “No way outta here. ’Cept in a bag.”

  “I’ll kill the preacher,” Billy Ray yelled as the other officers in the sally port began to scatter. His mouth was at my right ear, which rang when he finished yelling, “Back off.” His blade cut into my neck slightly and my skin burned with a small, but sharp pain.

  “He die—you die,” Merrill said. His tone was low, somehow soothing and threatening at the same time.

  “I’m dead already,” he said.

  “Billy, listen to me,” I said, barely above a whisper because of the pressure on my throat. “They can’t let you out of here—even if you kill me. You could have Warden Stone and it wouldn’t matter. I know you’re hurting, but this will only make things worse. Stop this now and I can help you. I know an organization that will bring your little girl and her mother to see you. That’s why I called you to my office this morning.”

  “Really?” he asked, his voice softening.

  “Why didn’t you come?” I asked, coughing from his grip on my throat.

  “I’s busy,” he said, the edge back in his voice. “’Sides, I didn’t want no more bad news.”

  “It’s good news, Billy,” I said as upbeat as I could.

  Remembering the shank in my pocket, I tried reaching for it, but there was no way I could get it without getting my throat cut in the process.

  “I don’t want to see her,” he said. “I wouldn’t know what to say. I just want to kill the son of a bitch who did it.”

  “That won’t help her,” I said.

  “It’ll fuckin’ help me,” he said, spit flying from his mouth.

  I nodded my head slightly. “I understand, but they’re not going to let you out of here. They’re going to kill you right here and now unless you surrender.”

  “I don’t care, preacher,” he said sounding on the verge of tears. “I don’t care anymore.”

  “Do it for Jessica,” I said. “She needs her daddy … now more than ever.”

  “I killed a cop today,” he said. “They not gonna let me see her. I’m as good as dead anyway. I let you go and all these brown shirts gonna kick the shit outta me.”

  “I won’t let that happen,” I said.

  He laughed.

  “Times up,” Merrill said. “What’s it gonna be?”

  “Death!” he shouted, releasing his hold on me and putting the knife to his own throat. I turned and looked at him. I could tell he was praying and I knew what was coming next.

  I dropped to the ground and yelled, “Shoot!”

  Merrill closed one eye, took a breath, dropped the hammer … and saved Billy Ray Dickens’ life—what there was left of it anyway.

  Billy Ray was on the ground now, the shank lying beside him. Blood was pouring out of the place where his right arm became his right shoulder, and I spun around, ripping off my clerical shirt and tying it tightly around his wound.

  Billy Ray looked up. “I was gonna do it.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m glad he didn’t let you.”

  He closed his eyes and remained silent.

  “I can help you,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Too late.”

  “It’s never too late,” I said.

  Later, after Billy Ray had been rushed under armed guard to the hospital by ambulance, Merrill and I sat on the sidewalk in front of the control room, talking.

  “How’d you get them to give you a gun and keep the gate locked?” I asked.

  He smiled his broad smile, his bright white teeth contrasting with his gunmetal-blue skin. I looked up into the control room. Standing there with a grin of her own was Robin, a model-tall woman with an athletic build and beads in her braids that matched the color of her full lips.

  “You do have a way with the women around here,” I said.

  “Shee-it,” he said. “Women everywhere.”

  “Hell of a shot, too,” I said.

  “Shee-it,” he said again, smiling. “I’s tryin’ to kill his racist ass.”

  I laughed.

  As we sat there in the warm, but waning glow of the setting sun, I thought about the afternoon’s events and my role in them. Sometimes I functioned as a chaplain and sometimes as a cop. Some days I worked on saving souls and other days I was happy just to save lives.

  A Taint In the Blood

  I was drinking again.

  I told myself that every burning swallow would be my last, that I would once and for all quench the insatiable thirst of the simian creature lurking inside me, but I knew when I was being lied to.

  Until just recently, it had been a long time since I had been drunk, and the last time I drank I climbed right back up onto the wagon the next day, so I had convinced myself that maybe I wasn’t a drunk after all. I had stopped going to meetings—hell, I had stopped going much of anywhere besides work.

  I was on my way to the warehouse to pick up supplies for the chapel when five white inmates, each with teardrop tattoos, emerged from behind the PRIDE building and surrounded me.

  With each one touching shoulders with those on either side, their leader, an inmate everyone called Bush because of his dark wiry hair and eyebrows, stepped forward, his face an inch from mine.

  I could have yelled for security.
I could have tried to fight them. But I wanted to hear what they had to say. They were members of a gang known as Southern Comfort. Recently, I had been involved in an investigation that landed their previous leader in a cell full-time. Based on their body language, I’d say they weren’t happy about it.

  “Cut off the head of some snakes,” Bush said, “he grows another one.”

  “What kind is that?” I asked.

  “Southern Comfort kind,” he said, gesturing to the group surrounding us.

  The sour smell of the groups’ body odor was almost as bad as their rancid breath.

  “And we never forget any bastard dumb enough to do us harm,” he said.

  “So there’s no point in me asking you guys to let bygones be bygones?”

  “Not only that—” he began.

  “But I better watch my back,” I said.

  He smiled, his crooked, cigarette-stained teeth looking like dried kernels of corn dangling from a rotting cob. “Blade,” he said to one of the other inmates. Blade, a tall, thin, pasty boy with adolescent peach fuzz and a permanent scowl on his face, flashed the blade of a shank in front of me. He did it so fast, the blade exposed for such a short period of time, it didn’t register until after he had concealed it again.

  “You’re alive ’cause we allow you to be,” Bush said. “Do all within your power to make things go well for Southern Comfort and stay the fuck outta our business. That clear enough for you?”

  Before I could respond, the small group dispersed, and I was left standing alone. I took a minute to make sure I understood their cryptic message—inmates could be so enigmatic—then proceeded through the south gate.

  When I emerged from the compound, I realized I’d been so distracted by Bush and his boys that I hadn’t noticed the Federal Express truck parked near the warehouse. Now that I had, my heart rate quickened and my mouth grew dry.

  The truck driver was Laura Matthers. We had dated for a short while and I had not seen each other since.

  I was about twenty feet from the truck when Laura stepped down from it holding a small box and an electronic clipboard. When she saw me, she set the package down on the bottom step of her vehicle and the clipboard on top of it, and waited for me to reach her.

  “Hey, you,” she said.

  Laura Matthers looked like a beautiful, gentle deer with a broken nose. Her eyes were deep brown and her breast-length brown hair was a couple of shades darker than buckskin. Summer had not officially begun yet she already had a tan her Fed Ex uniform shorts displayed nicely.

  Ever the smooth talker, I said, “Hey.”

  We embraced awkwardly, lingering a moment too long.

  After an intense, but brief summer romance, Laura and I had decided to stop seeing each other, each for different reasons, many of them concealed, and, until now, we had managed to avoid each other until now.

  Her taut body felt good and vaguely familiar, and the sweat-tinged perfume rising in the heat emanating from her skin smelled of sex, which was funny because the two of us had never had it.

  “How have you been?” she asked.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “How about you?”

  “Me, too,” she said.

  “You look great,” I said.

  “You, too,” she said.

  We grew quiet a moment.

  Behind me, I could hear the gate opening, and I turned to see the Restricted Labor Squad, or chain gang, marching out, the cadence of their boots and rattle of their chains sounding like the percussion section of a college band taking the field. Periodically one of the inmates would call out a jailhouse cadence and the others would repeat it: “They say that Florida girls are fine, their kiss as sweet as brandy wine, but that sweet thing’ll never be mine, ’cause all they’ll let me do is time.”

  The officers escorting them were dressed in gray fatigues that made them look like military special forces more than correctional officers, the black shotguns propped against their shoulders adding to the effect. The RLS was the result of a political attempt to appease the public’s desire to get tough on crime. However, if the public realized that almost all prison escapes happened when inmates were already outside the fence, they’d probably reconsider their position.

  When the RLS had rhythmically shuffled by, I turned back to face Laura.

  “You think we could talk sometime?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said, nodding. “Is everything okay?”

  She shrugged. “I’m sure it will be after we talk.”

  “What is it?”

  She hesitated. “I think … . We’ll talk about it when we get together.”

  “Laura,” I said, my voice sounding as if I had a right to insist.

  “Someone’s harassing me,” she said, “and I don’t know what to do.”

  By the time Laura arrived at my trailer in the Prairie Palm II, I had already downed several drinks.

  When I opened the door, Seven and Seven in a lowball glass in my hand, her eyes widened momentarily, but then she smiled warmly—perhaps even adoringly.

  Her royal blue sleeveless summer dress hung loosely, hiding her hard body and sharp curves. A row of saddle-brown buttons ran the length of the dress, matching her leather thong sandals. Just beneath the top button, a keyhole opening revealed a small cross necklace and the fact that she sunbathed in the nude, for the slightest hint of breasts hiding there were as dark as the rest of her.

  “Would you like a drink?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I’ll have what you’re having.”

  Walking over to the couch, she lowered her shoulder and shrugged off the long strap of her purse, then dropped down beside it.

  As I prepared her drink, I considered her again. Why had we given up so soon? What was it about her that made me willing to do that? Seeing how nervous and awkward she was now, I was reminded. At times, she walked in beauty that was truly sublime, but they were seldom, and most often she seemed uncomfortable with herself, like someone experiencing the first long days of sobriety.

  Still, she looked so good.

  I walked back over to her and handed her what for me would always be unlucky number sevens. She tasted it and tried to smile, but the drink was too strong, too bitter.

  “You want something else?” I asked. “Maybe something with fruit in it?”

  She shook her head. “This is good,” she said.

  The trailer was quiet, seeming more so now than before she arrived. I grabbed a remote off the couch, clicked a few buttons, and a CD of Gram Parsons began to play.

  “What’s that?”

  I dropped down onto the lumpy couch beside her, the slip cover bunching beneath me, and told her.

  “Are you drunk?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “But you better go ahead and tell me what you need to sooner rather than later.”

  “I feel a little silly,” she said, “and embarrassed—especially asking for your help after all this time, but … I just don’t know what else to do.”

  I should have reassured her, but I just waited.

  “I’m being followed,” she said, “and harassed.”

  “You know who’s doing it?”

  She nodded. “I think I do, but I haven’t actually seen him. If it’s not him, I have no idea who else it could be.”

  “Old boyfriend?”

  “Actually, he is,” she said. “He was rebound guy after you broke up with me. It was intense, very sexual, but fun and sweet, too. I thought he might be the one.”

  “Very sexual?” I asked.

  When Laura and I had dated, she had been a virgin, and though tempted, we had managed to avoid changing that. Until I was certain we had a future, I hadn’t wanted to do anything I’d later feel guilty about. I already had enough of that.

  She nodded. “I wanted you to be my first,” she said. “When that didn’t happen … well, I was just ready. And it was amazing. I discovered that I really, really like sex.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,
” she said. “My mom and sister can take it or leave it, so I figured I’d be the same way, but … wow.”

  When we were together, I had assumed that being a thirty-two year-old virgin meant Laura was carrying an entire suitcase— perhaps even a steamer trunk—of sexual hang-ups. I even imagined that she had been molested as a young girl, but we weren’t together long enough for me to find out.