Chapter 40

They’d been talking, animatedly talking for an hour. “And you did get pictures,” said Rodney.

“Yes,” said Riley.

“And the bad guy, Brown?” he said.

“Yes, he’s being transferred to a different cell, one in a part of the unit peopled by the skinheads. He’s going to be having a hard rest of his life,” she said. The guard, mister Turley was very considerate and protective of me too.”

“We will see to taking care of him as we promised,” said Rodney. “Okay, so when?”

“Saturday. The man will be off work and I will pin him at home. Parker will be taking Emma shopping; she managed to get the day off;. This one has to be him and me one on one,” said Riley.

“He’s going to be mad,” he said.

“At first, probably, but I have a plan as to how to get by that part,” she said. He was nodding.

“And will Emma be in the know. I mean before you out yourself to him?” he said.

“Yes, I’m going to see her tomorrow morning once he’s gone to work.”

“Okay, the die is cast,” he said. “You got the pictures, right?”

“Yes, it is,” she said, “and yes of course. Rodney, I have to say, the man was totally right about him not being able to express what the place, his experience, was like. It was awful. I cannot imagine spending nineteen years in that place. Two days was awful. Those men...” and she began to cry.

“Well, it’s over now. I guess I’m glad I allowed you to do it. And it was me allowing, so if he gets mad about any of it, it’s all on me. I insist on that part, Missy. I do,” he said.

“Okay, sir,” she said.

“So, six hundred men and you,” said Parker.

“Yes,” said Riley. “And it was scary. I had a guard, but I was still scared.”

“And well you might have been,” said Emma. “I spent twenty-two years in the Kaibab before I transferred down to Perryville. I’ve pretty much seen it all. I can’t believe you went up there. It actually is dangerous.”

“Yes, I’m a believer,” said Riley. “But after what you and Adam said; well, I had to learn the reality to the extent possible. And, well, now I have. I know it was really no more than a preview of what those men go through when they are condemned to be in there for years, but it was enlightening.

“And one thing I did notice: the men, the inmates, were also afraid. That my Adam was in there for so long and had to be afraid most of the time was stunning. And he was right about the one thing. There is no way he could have explained it to me in words. The cells, the semi-abuse by the guards, the smell of the place. You have to be there in person to have even a small chance to understand it.”

“Yes,” said Emma, “yes.”

“So you and I are going shopping tomorrow?” said Parker.

“Yes. Would noon be good?” said Emma.

“Yes, Horace is in the know about all of this. I told him. He couldn’t believe it when I told him, but he’s onboard.”

“Okay, then we are all set,” said Riley. “I will be with Adam—unless he kicks me out—for a couple of hours.” The others nodded.

Parker had shown up to pick up Emma to go shopping right at noon. No surprise, Emma and Parker had been more or less pals since Parker’s sojourn in the Perryville infirmary. I would be taking advantage of Emma’s absence to kick back with a beer and watch the game on the tube Dodgers and Diamondbacks. Well, that had been my plan. But, as per the old saying—apologies to Robert Burns—” The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft a-gley.” Somebody was buzzing my door.

“Riley!” I said, answering the door.

“Yes, may I come in, sir?” she said. Her referring to me as “sir” immediately raised a red flag, actually several of them! I nodded my okay, and she did indeed enter and took a seat at the table. I turned off the TV, moved my beer from the end table next to the couch to a chair at the dinette table across from her.

“Okay?” I said.

“I see you were about to watch a baseball game,” she said. I decided to be polite—Emma’s standing order.

“No big deal. Whaddya got?” I said. She sighed, looked down, then up, and finally stared at me.

“Riley?”

“Adam, something you said recently struck home with both myself, and well, and Rodney too,” she said.

“Okay, I guess?” I said.

“You said that you were, I guess, disappointed because no one had ever asked you what it was like for you when you were in prison. You recognized the truth that we all empathized with you, but were disappointed that no one actually cared enough to ask what it was like. Then there was the kicker. You said it didn’t matter anyway because you couldn’t actually explain it because to understand what it was like a body actually had to have been there, to see the place, in order to understand it,” I said.

“Yes, I said something like that, not exactly like that, but something like it,” I said.

“Today Parker took Emma shopping so that I could talk to you. Adam, I have been to Winslow prison. I spent two days there with the inmates and the staff. You might say I got the fifty-cent tour,” she said.

“What did you say?” I said. I’d heard her, but I could not believe what she said. She looked down and remained silent for a long minute. She passed me a picture of herself and a guard, a guard I recognized from the Apache.

“That’s Turley, and ... and you ... in a jumpsuit!” I said. “Of all the...” She shut me up with a stern look. I was so stunned I actually obeyed her.

She took a large envelope from her purse, and passed it to me.

“I toured the cell you lived in for years in the Kaibab. I stayed the night with Turley in the cell you lived in when you were in the Apache, you and Leonard. I saw the showers, ate meals with the inmates. I spent an hour locked up in solitary, just to get a taste of it,” she said.

I opened the envelope. It was a stack of photographs, a couple of dozen of them. They were pictures of her, in the orange jumpsuit, and the block and inmates and the cafeteria and the yard and the Kennel in the Kaibab.

“Jesus! Are you crazy! Did your asshole husband agree to let you do this!” I said.

“Yes, he agreed. And...”

“And what!” I said.

She pulled out one more picture. I was speechless, horrified, frightened and there was nothing to be frightened about—now! It was of her dressed to the nines, and looking absolutely gorgeous she was in the one-on-one meeting room that the lawyers used when meeting with an inmate. She was standing close to the steel table. Turley was standing slightly behind her and to her right. There was an inmate shackled and wrist-cuffed to the table. It was Davonte Brown!

I couldn’t speak. I just looked at her and stared.

“I spent an hour with him. He was shackled and no threat to me as you can see. And I had my guard with me; the one who guided me to where I needed to go for the two days,” she said.

“Inmate? Guard?” What?” I said.

“The guard was Cal Turley as you guessed. He was a great big guy and experienced,” she said.

“Yeah, I know him, knew him. He was in the Apache unit when I was there. He was an okay guy. And yeah, he is real big!”

“He is for sure,” she said.

“You said you talked to him,” I said.

“Yes, him, Davonte Brown!” she said.

“Damn it!” I said.

“Yes, I wanted to see the man who did...”

“Riley!”

“He is an utterly evil man, Adam. I could see that. After I left, he was to be transferred to a different block. He would be sharing a section, or whatever they call it, with the skinheads. I was assured that he wasn’t going to like it much,” she said.

I could barely contain myself. I was seriously angry. I was all but speechless.

“Adam, while I can never really appreciate how much you suffered in that awful, smelly, piece of hell over all of those years. I can kinda understand at least a little of how bad it was for you. And in case it matters; I cried the whole way home from there. My guilt, Adam Barnes, will never be assuaged; there is no way it could be. But ... at least now I have some idea what it was that you saved me from,” she said. “I love you, Mister, there is no one like you. Not that I ever met, not even Rodney. And I do love my husband, sir, but you are at a whole different level from anyone else. And, Adam, I really mean it.”

She started to cry; and surprise, surprise, so did I. We would talk again. I still had questions and they would be answered. Oh yes, they would be answered.

“So?” said Rodney.

“I got lucky. My plan to let the pictures tell the story worked; well, it got him to listen to me without screaming—too much. But ... he was pretty mad especially at first. I think he started to cry at one point. But what the hell, I was, so maybe I’m wrong about that,” said Riley.

“Well, we, you, have gone the extra mile. He’s got to appreciate that,” said Rodney.

“The extra mile? While Turley and I were locked in his cell that one night, I did some calculations; well, there was nothing else to do, which of course was a clue as to the depth of loneliness that prisoners are subjected to. Rod, the man spent eighteen years, and two-hundred and eighty-nine days being incarcerated for something he didn’t do. And when he got out he had nothing. So, the extra mile—hardly,” she said. The man looked down.

“I stand corrected,” he said. “So now what?”

“I don’t know. I’m just hoping that things will settle down and we can finally actually be a family, a real one,” she said.

“Yes, me too,” he said.

“Was it too bad?” said Emma. “I knew for a fact that you were not likely to be pleased, but...”

“I hate it that she did what she did. But, that said, I would have to say she did it right. She did impress me. It was the pictures. The pictures proved to me that she did understand at least to some degree what it was like. Still, I would have preferred that she never knew, found out about it all. That was bad of her. I know why she did it. But it was still bad of her,” I said.

“Adam, not if it started the healing process. What she and your brother did was unconscionable. But people have done worse and somehow come to a place where forgiveness and even appreciation of badly thought out intentions were possible. Now the ball as they say, really is in your court. Can you begin to see where they were at trying to justify what they did knowing you would be in prison for forever. And in prison, sacrificing yourself and your life so that she could have hers?” she said.

“I don’t know. I guess I have to try,” I said. “I told them last Saturday that I would be doing so.”

“I know. I was there. Now you have to do what you said. There may be, no will be, times when you question yourself. It’s your intentions now, not theirs, that matter. Let them make it up to you the best way they can. They will never really be able to fully succeed. But you are at a place where you can let them think that they have, can,” she said.

“Emma, I know you’re right. So, I guess, I will follow your lead. I just need you to tell me what to do. Honestly, I don’t think I even know how. Lady, you are the best thing that ever happened to me.” She was nodding and smiling and she looked like a conspirator. And oh boy, did she ever turn out to be just that!

“And just what are we doing here?” I said. I knew what she was thinking we were going to be doing here, but I wanted her to say it so I could tell her no.

“You’re taking the money. It’ll make them feel good,” she said. She being my wife: Emma Barnes.

“Make them feel good? How is that of interest to me, us?” I said.

“We have committed ourselves to curing the divide, well, you have. You don’t have to spend a dime of it, ever. You can set up charities for your favorite, well, charity. They will then feel and believe, first, that you are committed to curing the divide: and two that that will ease tension among the whole family,” she said. “Any other questions?” I frowned, but I surrendered.

“I guess not,” I said.