Chapter 2

The sun beat down on my flesh making me warm; the sand in between my toes had a cooling effect. The waves gently lapped at the shore. I opened my eyes to see her coming toward me from the water. Every move she made exuded sex.

Her small white bikini was heroically doing its job of containing her glorious chest. I was going to feign sleep, but she had seen me looking at her and her smile lit up the beach. I knew all of the men were looking at her; hell, you’d have to be blind to not look at her, and even then, I was sure some sixth sense of the dick would kick in and let the sightless horn dogs know they were in the presence of hotness.

She sauntered up to me and kneeled down between my knees. With pure mischief in her smile, she reached up and tugged my trunks down and off of my legs. She freed her beautiful tits from the confines of her bikini and leaned into my crotch.

She had just taken my hardening cock into her mouth, when an annoying sound struck me. I didn’t know what was making it, or where it was coming from. It was a series of electronic beeps and tones. I could also hear some garbled conversation.

I tried to ignore the sounds and concentrate on the blowjob I was receiving, but I realized that I had a splitting headache. As the headache got worse, the vision of beauty began to fade. I realized that the girl wasn’t real, but I didn’t know much else. I heard a mechanical whir off to one side and my headache started to fade and darkness enveloped me.

Then I was skiing. I was at Squaw Valley on my favorite run. It was a cloudy day and the powder was absolutely awesome. As I was cutting through the trees I realized how much I had loved to ski. I hadn’t actually been on skis since I was in the tenth grade.

I had torn a knee up in a crash and had to give up skiing. I slid to a stop in the trees, and she was there waiting for me. As she was removing her gloves, my head began to hurt.

As the headache worsened my vision began to fade. I could hear beeping and whirring. Then I heard voices. Two women were talking to each other, but I couldn’t tell where they were.

“Look at the EEG. He’s been dreaming again.”

“It was a good one too, by the look of things.”

“It’s a damn shame. Why do all of the criminals get the nice cocks?”

“You are a married woman. What would Dale think if he knew you were ogling a patient’s package?”

“Who knows? Lord knows he doesn’t show me his often enough.”

“We better let Dr. Yoo know he’s coming around again. I hate that they took the morphine away from him.”

“Yeah. I am sure he’s got a thumping headache.”

Thumping didn’t begin to describe it. My head felt like someone was running a hot blade through my brain. I tried to open my eyes and couldn’t. I was starting to panic. I tried to yell, but I realized that there was a tube in my mouth and running down my throat.

At that moment, I hoped for death to take me. In all of my life, I had never wanted to die, but at that moment, I was ready. I heard garbled voices and then a warm feeling ran up my arm and my pain disappeared.

As time went on, the pain became more bearable. The voices came and went; some were doctors, some nurses. In one of my more lucid periods, I realized that my eyes had been taped shut.

One time, I woke up from a dream to hear voices in my room. “Mr. Marshall, can you hear me?” a female voice asked from my side.

I tried to nod my head, but it seemed to be restrained. I couldn’t speak because I still had the tube in. I think I managed to wiggle a finger. I couldn’t remember much after that.

Sometime later, I opened my eyes. I saw nothing but blurs and white light. Beeping and whirring sounds surrounded me. I tried to move and found that my arms were immobilized. It didn’t take long for me to realize that any real attempt at movement sent great pain through my head.

“Welcome back to the world Mr. Marshall,” a feminine voice said.

I turned my eyes toward the sound and could only see a shape approaching me.

“Can you see well Mr. Marshall? Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

I blinked twice. Soon after, a hand was on my head and a white light blazed into my eyes. She said something medical to someone else, and asked if I could see light. She then told me that my eyesight should return to normal in a short time. Then she told someone to make sure I got plenty of rest.

As time passed, my eyesight did clear up and I was staying awake longer. I lost the breathing tube and learned that someone had tried to bash my head in and had fractured my skull.

On the second day that I was able to stay alert for an entire day, a couple of men came to see me. The larger, of the two pulled a chair next to my bed and sat. The smaller man seemed to be checking the room for weaknesses.

Finally, the man in the chair spoke. “Inmate Marshall, I am Deputy Warden Pavelich and this is prison detective Officer Blackwood.”

The guy standing, nodded curtly toward me. “Just so you know, you are in St. James Presbyterian Hospital in Carson City. You are in the ICU and will be kept here under guard until you are pronounced fit enough to be transported back to Lovelock, where you will convalesce in our infirmary,” said Blackwood, as if I felt up to making an escape.

“Your being alert now, can help us clear up a mystery,” said Pavelich. “Do you have any idea who attacked you and caused your injuries?”

“Your guards.”

A look passed between the two and then Blackwood asked, “Are you positive?”

“Yeah, I am,” I croaked. I barely recognized the sound of my own voice. “Last thing I remember is being shackled; hands and feet.”

“Why were you being shackled?”

“I guess they thought I had something to do with those guys raping Smedly.”

A look passed between the two men.

“Mr. Marshall,” said Blackwood. “Smedly Duncan has been dead for a year and a half. The guards released you as soon as they figured out that you had been trying to rescue Mr. Duncan, and your wounds had been seen to by the doctors.”

How can Smedly be dead? I know he looked bad lying on the shower floor, but I didn’t think he was dead. Are these guys covering up for their staff? A year and a half? Blackwood then excused himself from the room. Mr. Pavlich looked at me and asked, “You really don’t remember anything from the past year?”

“I guess I don’t. I only remember thinking that Smedly didn’t look so hot before the guard landed his knee in the middle of my back. I know my head hurts like a motherfucker.”

Blackwood came back with a doctor in tow. I had seen this doctor peeking in on me from time to time, but he had never spoken a word to me. He came in and asked me if I knew the date; I didn’t. He asked me who won the last Super Bowl; I couldn’t tell him.

Finally, Pavelich and Blackwood wished me a speedy recovery and left. I could hear them talking to the doctor in the hall, but I couldn’t make out anything they were saying.

For the next two weeks, Dr. Leonardo, the doctor that Blackwood had retrieved, ran tests and worked with me to the point of exhaustion. He and a staff psychologist helped me to remember a few things.

I remembered that Daisey had become smitten with a new guy. I had met him a few times. His name was Jimmy and he ran a restaurant in Elko. They had both told me that they could offer me employment and board if and when I came up for parole. I wondered if I was near parole, or if I had slept through it.

As the days went on, I got stronger. They began walking me around my room. One day after the umpteenth door-to-window pass, my therapist got pissed off and left the room. I wondered what I had done until he came back in with the guards.

My first inclination was to deny doing anything, especially since I hadn’t. The therapist just laughed and said that he was tired of not being able to walk me properly and he and the guards led me out of the room and we walked around the circular ICU ten times. From that day on, I was allowed out of my room for that time.

I wasn’t allowed any visitors during my stay, so if the nurses got bored, they’d come keep me company. One nurse, named Victor, would play cards with me for hours. He told me it was nice to have a reactive patient because most ICU patients were out of it during their stay.

Near the end of my hospital stay, Detective Blackwood came by to ask if I had remembered anything new about my injuries. I told him point blank that I wished I could remember because I was going to make someone a very sorry son of a bitch when I got back to Lovelock.

“Are you sure you want to be making statements like that, Mr. Marshall?” he asked. “It sure wouldn’t look good if things started happening when you returned.”

“Relax,” I told him. “I don’t think I ever saw whomever. The doc told me that most of the damage was done to the back of my head, and I don’t have eyes back there, so whatever derelict asshole Pearl Harbor’d me is likely pretty safe from repercussions, legal or otherwise.”

I didn’t spend another week in the ICU before I was transported back to Lovelock. Once in Lovelock, I spent another month in the infirmary. I had a suspicion they were watching me more than letting me recover.

Mike snuck in and visited me a few times, and a couple of the guys slipped me contraband magazines to read while I was bedridden. The orderlies didn’t walk me around as much as the therapists had at the hospital, but I was at least free to move about the ward, as long as it didn’t tire me out.

One day, about two weeks after I had returned to Lovelock, Officer Gerrard came into the ward holding a box. He walked up to me and handed me a uniform and the box.

“Sick time’s over, asshole, let’s get you to your cell.”

“Oh you’re such a charmer,” I said, sarcastically. “I’ll bet your wife just considers herself to be the luckiest woman on three continents.”

So once again, I strolled down the middle of cell pod A, carrying my possessions in a box and wondering what kind of cell mate I’d get. I was relieved when I was led to my old cell, and Fred’s family was still adorning the walls.

“You got lucky,” Gerrard said, as he turned to walk away. “Fred’s former celly had an accident last night and won’t be back for several weeks. You get your old cot back. Good luck.”

I had learned not to wonder if things had been accidental or not, so the news of Fred’s former cellmate meeting a demise of sorts was quickly filed away but not forgotten. If someone told me that an accident had been arranged to get me back in my old bunk, I’d have no problem believing it. As a matter of fact, I suspected an act of God wasn’t as likely.

I got there during dinnertime, so I didn’t see many guys milling about. I didn’t go eat because they fed me shortly before they moved me back to the pod and my appetite wasn’t nearly what it had been before.

That evening, I discovered that Mike was going to be in segregation for another two weeks. He had busted some guy’s head open with a lunch tray and had been put away for a month. No one mentioned Fred’s former cellmate, and I didn’t ask. I also kept my eyes peeled because I didn’t know if the guy or guys who got me before were looking to finish the job.

I realized that I hadn’t heard from my lawyer in some time. I knew he usually wrote to me once a month, but my mail had no letters from him in it. There were a few letters from my parents, and a couple from Daisey and several from Sarah.

After supper, I spent the evening on my bunk reading my mail. Fred came in and jumped up onto his bunk. “Fuck. I had hoped for a celly that can carry an intelligent conversation.”

“Nice to see you too, Freddy.”

“Fred, junior.”

I grinned and felt comfortable for the first time since I had been back. I read and re-read my mail until they called for lights out. I was on the verge of sleep when Fred started talking, just loud enough for me to hear; only pausing when the guards would pass by.

“I’m gonna tell you some things. If you have questions, keep ‘em to yourself. I’m telling you this for your peace of mind and so you don’t bring any unnecessary attention to anyone. Your cousin asked me to tell you all of this. The guys who got to you, they’ve been dealt with. Martinez, Enriquez, and Guerra. One guy did the riskiest deal for not watching you as closely as he should have been.”

I then remembered Mike saying I’d need a second set of eyes after I broke up Smedly’s rape. It fully came back to me that those guys had all been moved to a more secure facility. I wasn’t sure which one.

“There was a fight in the yard during a basketball game,” Fred continued. “During the fight, Jose Martinez managed to get shanked three times. He held on for a day but died. Little Joey is now looking at federal time.”

Little Joey Dalton was pretty much Mike’s bitch. He never did any heavy lifting, so to speak. I did very little, but L.J. only wanted to be a punk. I guess he must have been the eyes that failed me.

“It seems that Mario Guerra was a weightlifter, too. You’d probably remember him. It seems he over judged his bench press ability and dropped well over five hundred pounds on his own windpipe. Accidentally of course. He didn’t survive.”

I remembered Guerra. He was strong, but he couldn’t bench anywhere near five hundred pounds. I assumed that he’d had a ‘spotter’ during this monumental press. Obviously he didn’t have the right spotter. I felt no remorse as Fred recounted my attackers’ demise with no more feel than he’d tell me about yesterday’s baseball scores.

“Jesus Enriquez just turned up dead. He was alive at bed check, but when wake-up was called he was dead. Biggest part of the mystery is the fact his celly was in the infirmary. I haven’t heard what the autopsy results were. Word is he probably OD’d.”

Soon, I heard Fred snoring. I took some solace in the fact that someone was looking out for me, but I didn’t care much for the fact that they could get a guy alone in a locked cell. I just hoped that I never crossed that guy.

Slowly, things returned to normal for me. One Sunday morning found me on the fringe of a bunch of guys gathered around listening to a pair of guys talking about how they found Jesus. “Jesus has saved my life,” one said. “He guides me to the will of the lord. He’s always been part of me.”

“Where was he guiding you when you were beating that seventy-eight-year old lady for her pension check?” These guys talked a good game, but once they were outside the walls, they’d forget Jesus. They definitely hadn’t paid much attention to him before their arrival. I had no intention of ‘finding Jesus’ while I was in here. I had the feeling that it was more cliché than reality, so I ignored the religious talk.