The slap of cold metal on his wrists. The night inside a cell. The sweat from a dream in which he'd ended up dying in such a room. The night pressing until he choked under the weight of tears. A glaucoma of all the colors in the world.
He is longer Joe Hastings, but a shadowed face split by cell bars. His kiss goodbye was the slam of the judge's gavel.
His hands are cuffed. His back's stuck to a bus seat. There's dark patches beneath his arms and his fingers are interlaced like a prayer. Joe takes a deep breath, but the pit in his stomach only worsens. The air smells acrid. His right eye still twitches from last night.
The potbellied man commanding the wheel wears sunglasses that inhale the road. The smacking sound of his chewing tobacco carries to the very back.
A dozen men are seated and cuffed as well. Their eyes hold largely nervous looks that sometimes flit between resignation and fear, as if they are toying with the unknown life that has been thrust upon them. There are two exceptions: a man stares emptily at the distant grass, and another smiles to himself, like this is all just one big hoot.
People, Joe guesses, have different ways of navigating their ruin.
He takes a deep breath and tries to relax himself, then takes in the view of the field whirring by, swift in its vanishing act. Maine is pretty this time of the year, unfathomably green, bristling with subtle winds he wishes to smell and feel, to slip away inside and become part of, invisible and far-reaching. Free.
This'll be the last time you see it, another voice in his head echoes.
Joe doesn't argue.
Down the rounding drive, on a platform high above, moving dots are stark against the sky: officers wielding oil-black guns. They steady their eyes like crosshairs on the short annex of high chain-link fences leading into the yard. Men in prison getup begin to crowd the perimeter, their eyes eager, their lips pulled back into sneers. Their fingers curl around the diamond shapes drawn from the metal and they press their noses to it to see better.
The bus moves through the opening gates slowly and stalls before a formation of officers lined shoulder-to-shoulder at the end. Clad in black, stony-faced, it is easy to mistake them for Death's accomplices. Silver badges shine dully from their chests, assuring the location: SHAWSHANK STATE PENITENTIARY.
The tallest one crosses to the vehicle as its doors fold open and reaches in, pulling out the first soul his hand could grasp. He studies the face of the sturdy fellow, whose eyes won't budge from his shoes, and tells him to follow a different officer to the looming building ahead. The fellow's steps tug along the rest, all of them guided by a shared ankle chain.
Joe is the last to leave the bus. As he steps off, he becomes closely acquainted with the unforgiving face of the tall, glaring officer. The man is immobile, and yet he manages chew Joe up and spit him out before he's forced ahead by the chain biting his ankle, choking back tears in fear he'll paint himself the biggest target of the group.
The surrounding prisoners are not so different from lions who've caught sight of bloody meat.
The clattering of the fences sounds like loose change rattling around in his skull, and as the length of the fence ends—as they tread across open ground—heat scales Joe's spine and floods his face as he imagines them overrunning the procession. He imagines the guards standing back, their guns left untouched and their eyes watching, either biting back laughter or letting it all out.
But a P.A. system tells the old souls to head in for evening count, and the men disperse, tossing evil smiles their way. Smiles for the "fresh fish", as they've been frantically shouting for the past moment, to dwell on as they're led into a half-lit hall for the inauguration.
Chalk dust: that is what Joe is reminded of when the officer throws up a scoop of white powder. The stuff collides with his naked backside and sticks to the surface of him. The rest disperses, clouding the air like smoke, twisting away in the shafts of darkening light.
He coughs, still shivering from the cold water they sprayed not long ago. His blond hair is flat against his skull, dripping into his eyes.
"Turn," a voice dictates, mechanical-toned.
He does so, and another scoop of white power hits him in the face mainly, falling down his front. More clouds, more coughing. His skin stings.
"Move out," the voice comes again, and a cloth is lazily pressed to his face. Joe takes it in his own hands, rubs, then cups himself, padding out of the cage.
Further along, he's equipped with an itchy bundle of sheets and clothes. A toothbrush pokes out from the side, a pathetic little thing. Joe wonders if he could be described the same way.
The new lot—powdered white, teeth chattering, naked—look very much like sugared treats cast into a ravenous arena as they're led into the cell block. In the gauzy dark, without time to dress, they climb cold stairs, their eyes shuttered for fear of striking a wrong nerve or enticing ridicule. Without a shred of dignity, without even a second to make sense of anything.
Joe follows the tangent he was directed to, going up the levels, nearly reaching the top before he gets to an empty cell that is supposed to be his. It is and it isn't. He sets his bundle down on the cot, holed up in mossy darkness, flushed with dingy colors and faint piss-yellow light from the bulb hanging overhead. Home sweet home.
He dresses quickly, tripping some as he wrestles his short legs into jeans. He is eager to protect himself, hiding skin away as if hungry eyes lurk in a corner, and who is there to detest this? He's heard enough stories about prison, and none of them were fairy tales.
A bit of water from the sink clears the delousing powder from his face, and a quick swipe of the tongue across his lips tells him they're dried out and crumbling. His eyes feel swollen, tears frozen in his numb disbelief pressing behind them.
The shadows take all kinds of shapes, and an old fear of the dark is magnified.
Joe settles on his bed and breathes in. There's a musty smell. He doesn't know how to describe it, not exactly. Everything is new and confusing. And nothing is good, of course.
Somewhere, there is the faint drip of water. How unexpected! he thinks.
But after a while it is no longer a mere sound, braiding with his thoughts. Inescapable. An inwrought mockery in its endless cascade.
Sleep finds him unexpectedly, thankfully, and his mind revels in images scattered throughout his twenty-one-year-old life.
...A baseball game on the fringes of some empty lot. The older boys laced around the fence rooted for his ten-year-old self after an unexpected hit had set the ball on a path to the stratosphere. Their voices frenzied as he just stood there, astonished, his eyes caught by the swallowing sky: "Run, dumbass! Run run run!"...
...A small moment during a Sunday morning at church, a moment wherein the clouds parted above the building and shed a stream of light that goldened his face, a holy sun playing in the windows...
...A kiss enveloped in shadow, the glint of two smiles. Her name is still sweet on his lips...
Joe lives them all a second time before a deeper wave of sleep leaves him a thoughtless shell. Time passes, but not fast enough.
In the cell next to his, almost lost in the silence, there's sniffling: a fish cries.
Morning comes, tinging everything with pale light. The windows bleed dawn.
Joe stirs from his place against the wall, his mouth numb and his eyes raw from the night, the world around rebuilding itself as he staggers out of a lethargic fog.
Seeing the vertical shafts of steel and the half-uniform he adorns, he regrets to have opened his eyes again. Despite his wits, he had embraced the cliché that his falling asleep in this cell was the finale of an elaborate and alarmingly vivid nightmare in which he had gone to prison. Nope, he thinks, this is real. This is too fucking real.
Later, others wake. They pull sheets from their bodies, cots squealing from the movement. Prisoners bathed in hushed blues dress silently.
Joe walks to the sink and splashes water in his face before grabbing the toothbrush. He would feel normal if it weren't for his surroundings, of course. This is, to an obvious degree, like getting ready for school or work.
Then he pushes the thought from his mind. Am I really trying to normalize the situation?
He doesn't know how the conditions are around here, but it being prison, he's smart enough to deny any comforting projections. Will he be lugging enormous rocks in the yard until his bones crumble? Will he boil beneath a blazing sun, swinging a pickaxe at the soil for hours? Finished, he strikes the facet shut and crosses to his bed, waiting for whatever there is to come.
What comes is this: a sudden alarm that shatters the morning. The bars of his cell slide away with an ancient grind, allowing departure. Across the room, men on every level appear from the gloom of their units, standing stoically in view. Joe follows suit.
Below on the ground floor, officers take count until satisfied. There are five, and their black caps draw in light and drown it. The one called Hadley is among them like a secret blade, eyeing the levels with disdain.
"Okay, move it," booms the squat one whose cap is very nearly his whole head. This sets in motion a game of Follow the Leader down the stairs, albeit with armed and spiteful observers.
Joe tries matching his steps to the march thundering in his ears.