Barker House

by David Moloney

  “Just put your finger on that button right there. It doesn’t take much pressure to release it,” O’Brien said.

  “I find that when I start to feel like this, it’s best to formulate an attack strategy. My mother used to tell me, ‘Henry, just take a deep breath, count to ten,’ but I’d get to ten and ask myself, why ten? Who decided ten was the right number to defeat how I’m feeling? Sure, it may work for some people, but there is no way ten works for everyone.”

  “Hit the button.”

  “I started trying fifteen and it worked for a while. And then it didn’t. So, I switched to twelve, seven, forty-two, and I kept changing up the numbers and the counts to where I couldn’t remember which ones worked and which ones didn’t.”

  “I’ll just go ahead and do it,” O’Brien said.

  “I started charting them, the counts. For some odd reason, even numbers worked on a more consistent basis.”

  O’Brien released the door. He watched the orange-shirted Moncrieff emerge alone into the dayroom. Moncrieff was shorter than Carmichael but just as fat and had long, greasy black hair peppered with thick white dandruff. He stopped in the dayroom, put a hand on his chest, and with his eyes closed let out this high-pitched cry toward the top tier. Moncrieff held the cry for a few seconds before O’Brien walked over and grabbed him by the biceps.

  Moncrieff got under the water. O’Brien began a round of the unit. Three cells on the bottom tier were fitted with electrical outlets for respiratory machines, CPAPs, heart monitors. They were the only cells in the building with outlets. Every cell on the bottom tier was a Lexan for close monitoring, and almost every inmate in those cells was wearing a green Velcro dress. A burrito. Officially, a safety smock. He had to walk around three wheelchairs parked outside cells. U3 was a half unit, only twenty-four cells, and because it shared a unit with U2, there was a dividing wall separating the two. It was a normal unit cut in half. O’Brien always thought of it like a two-story warehouse, except with cells, and toilets, and sinks that dripped all night. But now, he imagined it as an old hospital, the way it smelled like bleach and Bengay.

  The clear Lexan doors let O’Brien know rather quickly what ailed each inmate. Crutches against the wall, hospital bed, one inmate was perched on his sink, shitting into it. There wouldn’t be much sense made of anything down here, O’Brien knew that. It was an infirmary and a psych ward, a sub-unit of a sub-unit for the mentally ill inmates. Inmate Sanders barked like a dog in cell 10. Inmate Kilgore stuttered heavily to the point of losing his breath, begged O’Brien to stop and talk to him, asked him if he could buy him a cup of coffee, it was cold out here, he said. Hogan in cell 14 began singing cadence and stomping his feet at his cell door. Hogan was big-chested, his skin white and reflective like waxed linoleum, even whiter and more intense in contrast to the green burrito tied around his waist. His eyes were wild, and when O’Brien stopped at his door to check on him, the eyes widened, and he scowled, raised his hand, and gave O’Brien a salute.

  “Did the fat boy tell you he stole my jungle boots?” Hogan asked.

  O’Brien shook his head and looked back at Carmichael, who was standing alert but with a blank stare on his face outside the lone shower stall. O’Brien couldn’t tell whether he was confident or scared. The guy was senseless.

  Hogan’s expression seemed almost insincere. He whispered in a raspy voice through the crack in the door and told O’Brien the fat boy stole his boots after he lost his own in a paddy field. Said the fat boy was always crying for his mother, sometimes he even walked off in the night and they’d spend the first few hours of the next day dragging him back. Hogan was animated and, to O’Brien’s surprise, spoke well. Hogan continued. He said he liked to sleep with his boots off, made him feel like he was home. Said he didn’t care the fat boy stole his boots, they hadn’t moved in six days. He pointed over O’Brien’s shoulder and said that was him, right there, Carmichael, walking around in his boots. He said he was damn sure they were moving soon and he was hell-bent on getting his boots back.

  O’Brien nodded, looked back suspiciously at Carmichael, rubbed his chin, overacted sort of, but Hogan didn’t seem aware of O’Brien’s sarcasm. O’Brien half wondered if Hogan was pretending himself.

  “You ask him about my boots. You’ll see.” Hogan stroked his long, graying beard. “Carry on, soldier.” He turned off away from the glass door, out of the light of the unit, and into the shadows of his cell. His mattress was laid vertically against the back wall, something O’Brien hadn’t noticed until then, and he took a boxer’s stance in his green skirt and started jabbing the mattress, then sped up his punches until he was in an all-out flurry.

  O’Brien was stopped at another cell, this one on the top tier with a regular cell door, red-painted steel with a vertical, rectangular window on the left-hand side covered in a waffled grate. There was a short inmate behind the grate, his face barely visible, barely able to see out of the cell. O’Brien checked his O-report. Iglesias, and he was crying. Iglesias asked O’Brien when he could leave. O’Brien asked him if he meant out-of-cell time.

  Iglesias wiped tears from his face. He was very young; O’Brien guessed eighteen. “When can I go home?”

  “That’s not up to me,” O’Brien said.

  Iglesias walked away from his door and fell facedown on the bunk. “They told me I could go home.” And he began to wail. Inmates started to yell things at Iglesias. Pussy. Put him in my cell, I got a shoulder he can cry on.

  O’Brien told Iglesias he’d check on it for him but instead he checked back in on Carmichael, who was still in front of the running shower. He told Carmichael they could do an easy controlled Escape Drill, a 10-13, on U3. They could also do an unclothed search on Hogan after he came out for his shower. Not to overwhelm him, but O’Brien was sure they’d also be able to check off the task of supervising med pass. Carmichael nodded, but didn’t show much eagerness or excitement.

  “Why do you want to work here? Why Corrections?” O’Brien asked. His tone was frustrated, and O’Brien knew. He was trying to help Carmichael, but there seemed to be no desire in him. The shower kept running with the curtain drawn and Carmichael stared at the curtain with his hands on his hips.

  “I always wanted to be a cop,” he said.

  “This is different. This takes something else,” O’Brien said. “I’ve tried with you. You couldn’t be a cop. This is your last chance at being even a CO. You act like someone is forcing you to do this.”

  “I’m getting married in April. My fiancée found the job posting. I do need a job,” Carmichael said.

  O’Brien pictured Carmichael in a tuxedo, a bow tie wedged under his double chin, standing expressionless as his equally fat fiancée walked toward him in a windowless church, with large women on both sides of the aisle sobbing into tissues. He’d probably found someone who needed him as much as he needed her. Poor girl. Poor Carmichael. Their home would be cluttered, small, dirty dishes covered in pasta sauce, funny pages scattered about the tables. They’d have a bunch of kids, a herd of idiots, tripping over toys, endless laundry, and church on Sundays. He’d coach his sons in football, feel the need to play them even though they sucked. Parents would hate him, urge his removal. His sons would suffer, join the marching band. They’d play the tuba.

  “Do the checklist, finish this out. For whoever. I don’t give a shit,” O’Brien said. He went and sat down at a dayroom table and wrote his round into the pod log.

  After Moncrieff finished his tier time, O’Brien gave Carmichael the order to conduct the 10-13. Carmichael immediately went and checked and secured the rec yard, showers, and dayroom and then went cell to cell physically ensuring each cell door was secured. He was doing well, much better than when they tried it on U5, where Carmichael forgot to check the showers and rec yard, and then on his second round he pretended to ask inmates to see their wristbands through their grates. O’Brien had snuck up behind Carmichael as he nodded, and seen the two inmates in the cell sleeping in their b
unks.

  But today’s drill went just fine. O’Brien congratulated him on a successful 10-13 and checked off the box on his J-sheet. Carmichael smiled a fat-cheeked smile. He looked around the dayroom at the imaginary accomplishment.

  After lunch, the unit enlivened. Hogan did jumping jacks at his door, counting them out in sets of three. Moncrieff sang operatically in gibberish, his arms waving about, his hair standing straight up and swaying like it was in a coordinated dance. Iglesias kept crying, except now he was addressing the inmates who were yelling things at him. “I’m not a baby! They said I could go home!”

  O’Brien sent Carmichael around the unit to retrieve the lunch bags from under the cell doors, told him to make sure all the sporks were accounted for. The inmate in cell 1, lying in a hospital bed with a big, loud machine that sounded like a dishwasher, yelled out that there were rats in his bed. Then it was spiders. Carmichael reported there were no rodents and the inmate appeared to fall asleep.

  Inmate Sombath lay at his cell door and rapped without taking a breath, a possible attempt at drowning out Moncrieff’s stabbing falsetto. O’Brien, and everyone else on the peculiar half unit, knew his name was Sombath, because of a line he kept circling back to, a refrain, but O’Brien didn’t think Sombath knew what a refrain was. And now hear the wrath of Sombath. He had no teeth and a dark purple bruise on his neck. Every time O’Brien walked by his door, Sombath pretended to reach out, grab at O’Brien’s feet.

  Sombath sang. Ever wash out your draws same place you would shit, ever knock push-ups same place you would piss, come feel your girl you’re missing her lips, come through for visits she’ll sneak you some nips, I know you ain’t have a cellmate who went to war with the strip, wake up hear screaming he fighting somebody and shit. O’Brien didn’t hate it.

  Carmichael opened cell 14 with less hesitation than he had earlier in the shift. He seemed to be coming around and O’Brien felt that FTO pride, bought into the old idea that anyone could do this job, they just needed guidance. O’Brien went over to the door and told Hogan to put the smock on over his shoulders the right way. Hogan did. His white body was wet with sweat, his black chest hair grouped and fat like fed leeches, and when he walked through the well-lit dayroom he moved like a person of importance, intentionally slow, controlled, with a wide smile spread over his face. An emperor to the bathhouse.

  When Carmichael came out of the sally port, Hogan whispered to O’Brien, who was shadowing him, “There’s my fat boy.”

  O’Brien had forgotten about the boots. “Just take your shower, Hogan. I’ll talk to him about the boots.”

  Hogan winked at O’Brien, then nodded at Carmichael like they were old friends. He undressed in the dayroom and folded his smock and laid it outside the shower on the floor. Once the shower was running, O’Brien told Carmichael to stand right outside, make sure he makes no sudden move toward either staircase. Then, O’Brien decided to go try and calm Iglesias.

  “Listen,” O’Brien said. “This is a pussy unit, but still, if you cry like this in gen pop, they’re going to be worse than this. You have to get it together. I have you coming out next. Make a call. Figure your shit out.”

  Iglesias tried to catch his breath in shuddering gasps but was having trouble. He’d been crying for so long, his body seemed to not want to stop. O’Brien shook his head. He heard the shower curtain rings slide quickly and figured Hogan was finished with his shower. O’Brien told Iglesias to get his shit ready to come out.

  O’Brien then turned and looked down off the tier over the railing into the dayroom and saw a naked Hogan standing over Carmichael, who was on his knees and looking up at O’Brien with the shower curtain wrapped around his neck. O’Brien made an Officer Down call over the radio, a 10-44, the first time he’d ever done that, and ran across the top tier. As he started down the stairs he could hear Hogan saying, “Those are my fucking jungle boots, fat boy.”

  He ordered Hogan to let Carmichael go. Carmichael’s glasses had fallen off and his cheeks bunched up in his face, making it look like his eyes were closed, but the pupils were still visible as they tried to move away from the darkness.

  “I need them back! We’re on the move, soldier!” Hogan yelled and seemed to tighten the curtain around Carmichael’s neck. His veiny body was upright, muscles taut; his skin gleamed in mad brilliance.

  The sally port door opened via a Central Control override and dozens of officers led by Lt. Hobson filled the dayroom. Hobson came up behind Hogan and put him in a choke hold, then windmilled him to the floor. O’Brien ran to Carmichael and helped him to his feet. Carmichael’s uniform was wet from the water droplets on the shower curtain. He tapped at his chest like he was looking for something in his breast pockets but nothing was there. He was breathing heavily.

  Hogan was facedown on the ground, two officers were cuffing his legs and hands, and Hobson held his boot on the center of his back. He grunted but wasn’t yelling anymore. An officer had slipped and fallen in a puddle of water outside the shower and a few others were helping him to his feet. Hobson looked O’Brien’s way but O’Brien ignored the glare.

  Carmichael now looked more like he had the wind knocked out of him. O’Brien put his hand on Carmichael’s shoulder as he stretched his back and held his face to the ceiling, water pouring out of his eyes. O’Brien knew right there Carmichael was through. He’d be trying another line of work. O’Brien thought about asking Carmichael if he tried finding his happy number while fighting for his life. He didn’t ask, though. It hit him that maybe this was his fault. That somehow he had wanted Carmichael to fail. That he should have known better than to leave Hogan with a tubby OC.

  And then O’Brien understood. He shouldn’t doubt himself; he was unharmed. U3 carried on like none of them saw what happened. Or, they saw very clearly what happened. This is jail. Smiles aren’t really smiles but sometimes they are. You just know. It takes certain people to understand the world inside these walls. He stopped patting Carmichael’s shoulder. Someone on the top tier kicked their door and yelled, “Welcome to Barker House, bitch!” Sombath was rapping loudly over Moncrieff’s high pitch; the machine in cell 1 hummed and clanged like a dish was loose, and the wails of a scared kid trickled in as merely a ripple in the noise.

  Gen Pop U4 Cell #2341

  Dialogue II

  RAY:

  How hard is it to open a bag of soup?

  DON:

  I was in the shower too long, my fingers are all pruned.

  RAY:

  Oh, man, Don. You woke me up from this magnificent dream. Will you quit it with the goddamn wrapper?

  DON:

  I’m telling you I’m useless. They should take me out back.

  RAY:

  Just bite it.

  DON:

  There. Got it.

  RAY:

  Praise the Lord.

  DON:

  What was it about?

  RAY:

  What was what about?

  DON:

  C’mon, it’s the chicken flavor. The chicken one tastes like socks. Your dream.

  RAY:

  Oh, the dream. Yeah. Jesus, some dream. I was in this enormous room. It was really something. All the walls were pastel and there were these Egyptian columns all through the place with lion faces on them. Not structurally necessary but lavish, like freckles on a tit. Way up on the walls near the ceiling were these medieval bookshelves with thousands of books, but all the bindings were the same. This dark red. And there were ladders all over the place crawling up the walls this way and that to the bookshelves. I wanted to climb up there and check out the books.

  DON:

  Ray, you going to want some of this? I promised Paquin I’d bring the noodles and sausage and he’s got the crackers. If you throw in some squeeze cheese, you’re in.

  RAY:

  You’re ruining my damn dream story. Do you even care? Are you listening?

  DON:

  I can do two things at once.

  R
AY:

  I’m forgetting most of it anyways. How many times have I told you? Soak the noodles; don’t just run piss-warm water on them.

  DON:

  I get grossed out putting food in this sink.

  RAY:

  I just cleaned it. Don, I just cleaned it. Those books made me think of my collection. Couple hundred, at least. I scored a first printing of On the Road at an estate sale in Vermont. Clean jacket, text was clean, too. Oh, my books. I can only imagine what my illiterate brother is doing with them. I bet that’s what this dream was about. All the same bindings. That’s it, Don. My subconscious telling me to let my collection go. Never meant anything anyways.

  DON:

  Uh-huh. This brand of sausage makes my fingers pink. Takes days to get this shit off. Looks like I fingered a broad on the rag.

  RAY:

  Walden, Pugilist at Rest. Oh, dammit. A signed first edition of The Stand made out to “Shirley, the tragic one.”

  DON:

  You still telling me about your dream? I’ll be honest, I don’t care much about books.

  RAY:

  The room didn’t just have books in it. Other stuff happened in the dream, it’s coming back in pieces. Sure, now I remember this creaking sound like a heavy door opening but I turned all around and couldn’t find a door and then I look and then right in the middle of the room there’s this great big bed, California king I’m betting, silk sheets; I went straight for it, of course. I ran my fingers over the silk, Don, it was like sunflower petals.

  DON:

  You’re dreaming about reading and sleeping, Ray. This place is getting to you.

  RAY:

  Will you let me finish? I’m getting to the good part. On the bed there’s this long-black-haired woman spread-eagle. She was young, looked like Linda Ronstadt and her mouth was open like she was about to take a bong hit. But you know that’s not what I was thinking.