Sleepers

'All right,' he said. 'Let's stop fuckin' around, sweet thing. It's time for fun.'

I eased down to my knees, my head up, looking into Ferguson's eyes, my hand reaching for the baton to my right.

'That's it, sweet thing,' Ferguson said. 'And remember, I like it slow. Nice and slow.'

Ferguson felt the edge of the knife before he heard John's voice.

'That's how I'm go

'You little punk,' Ferguson said, more with surprise than fright. 'What the hell you tryin' to do?'

'It's time for me to have a little fun,' John said.

'I can have you killed for this,' Ferguson said.

'Then I've got nothin' to lose.'

I grabbed the baton, jumped to my feet and held it with both hands. I looked past Ferguson at John, saw something in his eyes that had never been there before.

'You can't cut him, Joh

'Watch me, Shakes,' John said. 'Sit down on your cot and watch me.'

'Go back to your cell,' I said. 'Leave him to me.'

'He's not go

'He has to get away with it,' I said.

'Who says?' John asked. 'Who the fuck says?'

'We're go

'Listen to your friend, Irish,' Ferguson said. 'He's talkin' sense here.'

I braced my legs and shoved the fat end of the baton into the center of Ferguson's stomach. I watched him flinch from the blow, his lungs hurting for air.

'Stay outta this, scumbag,' I said. 'Or I'll kill you myself.'

John moved the knife away from Ferguson's neck, stepping back, holding the sharp edge of the blade in the palm of his hand. His face was a portrait of hard hate, emptied of its sweet-eyed charm, a resting place for all the torment and abuse he had endured.

In so many ways, he was no longer the John I had known, the John I had grown up with. Wilkinson had done more than beat and abuse him. It had taken him beyond mere humiliation. It had broken him down and pulled him apart. It had ripped into the most gentle heart I had known and emptied it of all feeling. The John Reilly who would turn our clubhouse into a safe haven for lost kittens was gone. The John Reilly who stole fruits and vegetables off supermarket trucks and left them at the apartment door of Mrs. Angela DeSalvo, an elderly invalid with no money and no family, was dead and buried. Replaced by the John Reilly who stood before me now, ready to kill a man and not give it another thought.

'Let it go, John,' I said. 'He's a piece of shit and he's not worth it.'

'Glad to see you got smart,' Ferguson said, getting his wind back, looking up at me. 'I'll go easy on you in my report.'

'There won't be a report,' I said.

'Fuck you mean, there won't be a report?' Ferguson said, the drunken slur of his words replaced by a steadfast anger. 'You two assaulted a guard. There's gotta be a report.'

'Just go, Ferguson,' I said, handing him back his baton. 'Fix your pants and get the fuck outta here.'

'I ain't leavin' before Irish over there hands me the knife,' Ferguson said.

'There isn't any knife,' I said.

I walked over to where John was standing, the steel look still on his face, his eyes honed in on Ferguson. I rested my hand against the one holding the knife, knuckles tight around the edge of the blade.

'It's okay, Joh

'He's not go

'I hear you,' I said, taking the knife from my friend's hand.

I nudged past Ferguson and walked over to my cot. I lifted the thin mattress and put the knife on top of the springs.

'Like I said Ferguson,' I said, turning to face him. 'There's no knife.'

'I ain't go

'It's a devil's deal, then,' I said.

'What the fuck's that mean?' Ferguson said.

John explained it to him. 'First one to forget dies,' he said.

NINE

The English teacher, Fred Carlson, stood before the class, his tie open at the collar, his glasses resting on top of his head, a thick piece of gum lodged in the corner of his mouth. He had his back to the blackboard, hands resting on its edge. He was young, not much past thirty, in his first semester at Wilkinson, paid to pass on the finer points of reading and writing to a class of disinterested inmates.

'I was expecting to read thirty book reports over the weekend,' Carlson said in a voice that echoed his country home. 'There were only six for me to read. Which means I'm missing how many?'

'This here's English class,' a kid in the back shouted. 'Math's down the hall.'

A few inmates laughed out loud, the rest just smirked or continued to stare out the classroom windows at the snow-filled fields below.

'I'm doing my best,' Carlson said, his ma

'Must be easy to read where you live,' an inmate in a thin-cropped Afro said. 'Easy to write. It ain't that easy to do in here.'

'I'm sure it's not,' Carlson said. 'But you have to find a way. If you expect to get anywhere once you get out of here, you have to find a way.'

'I gotta try stayin' alive,' the inmate said. 'You got a book that's go

'No,' Carlson said, stepping away from the blackboard. 'I don't. No one does.'

'There you go,' the inmate said.

'Then I'm just wasting your time,' Carlson said. 'Is that what you're saying to me?'

'You wastin' everybody's time,' the inmate said, hand slapping a muscular teenager to his right. 'Give it up and keep it home. Ain't no place for what you got here.'

Fred Carlson pulled a metal chair from behind the center of the desk and sat down, both hands on his legs, his body rigid, his eyes on the inmate.

He stayed that way until the whistles sounded the end of the period.

'See you Friday, teach,' the inmate said on his way out the classroom door. 'If you still here.'

'I'll see you then,' Carlson said. 'If you're still alive.'

I was walking down a row behind four other inmates, a black-edged notebook in my hand, a dull pencil hanging in my ear flap.

'You got a second?' Carlson asked as I passed by his desk.

'I do something wrong?' I asked.

'No,' he said, shaking his head and smiling. 'I just want to talk to you.'

I stood my ground, waiting for the classroom to empty, hands in my pants pockets.

'You did a great job on your book report,' Carlson said.

I mumbled a thank you.

'How come you were able to find the time to do the work?' Carlson asked, with a slight hint of sarcasm. 'Aren't you worried about staying alive?'

'I worry about it all the time.' I said. 'That's why I read and write. It keeps my mind off it awhile.'

'You really seemed to like the book,' Carlson said. My report had been on The Count of Monte Cristo.

'It's my favorite,' I explained. 'I like it even more since I been in here.'

'Why's that?'

'I told you why in the report,' I said.

'Tell me again.'

'He wouldn't let anybody beat him,' I said. 'The Count took what he had to take, beatings, insults, whatever, and learned from it. Then, when the time came for him to do something, he made his move.'