cleared. Shrek opened the cells and the entire block hit the showers and ran the ranges and ran their mouths and ran out to the yard to buy ice cream and ran down to sit at the benches to watch the TV behind the Plexiglas or to see if Melvin would continue his win streak. He looked happy. He had attention. But when a guard walked close by he quieted down. I slammed doors. My hands were sore. Then there was the game’s opening jump ball and the block became a great sweating bellowing furnace that slammed me back.
Scraps of yellow paper covered the ground like confetti. Used inmate passes. Library: get a pass. Doctor’s appointment: get a pass. Counselor, visiting room, gym, chapel, and psychiatrist: get passes, make sure they’re signed. This, from what I saw, writing passes, was Shrek’s primary occupation.
I caught Normal on the wrong range. I told him that since it was the first time I caught him—and didn’t know what do about it anyway—I’d give him a free pass. I told him, Stay on your range, please?
“Ten–four, CO. My bad.”
He held up his scratched-plastic coffee cup. “This is shot fourteen. I’m buzzing, CO. Buzzing!” Fourteen cups of coffee sounded lethal. “I know a guy who snorts it,” Normal said. “I’m doing twenty today. Twenty goddamn shots!”
It seemed too loud on the block that night. Too chaotic. Deranged. I saw a guy upside down, legs hanging outside the cage, body inside, doing sit-ups. I made him get down. I saw another standing on top of a trash can and wearing a folded-newspaper hat. I told him to take it in (jail speak for go to your cell). My first five days weren’t like that. Inmates slept. But the heat and noise kept on coming. The game made the third quarter. The fire alarm went off every fifteen minutes with a droning Whoooop Whoooop Whoooop that was so loud that if somebody had driven by on the street, and if the windows were open, that somebody would have believed a riot was in progress. The heat set it off.
Shrek yelled, “Melvin, young man, I’m not telling you again!” Inmates and staff were learning Melvin’s name.
I watched the sun lower through the brown windows from range 5. The volume stayed high. Inmates and guards milled around by the TV and phones: inmates in brown and white, guards in gray and black, all of us watching the clock. I willed Shrek to ring the bell.
And he did.
I ran down the steps against the flow of inmates. I was going for the count sheets. And even though we had no space, and even though everyone was sprinting, nobody knocked shoulders with me.
Then something broke above me. It sounded how a car accident sounds: big bangs with glass rain. Inmates screeched. I looked up so see that three windows on range 5 were broken. I paused, expecting to see an escape rope hanging out. But saw the bars still intact. Somebody yelled, “Can’t take the goddamn heat!”
When I made the bubble, I told Shrek what had happened.
He said, “No shit? I’m going to make them pay.” He sent me back up on a hopeless mission to find the guys who broke them. But before I left he asked me, “Want to know the secret to straight-up happiness?”
Sure.
“A blowjob.”
The doors banged shut on the ranges. Inmates locked themselves in. Something they didn’t usually do. I guessed that the guilty were nowhere near range 5 anymore—guilty for the windows, I mean—but I made it look good for Shrek and took the steps two at a time.
Up top I saw nothing except the state-issued soap used to break the glass sitting on the frames of the former windows—the bars and screens kept them out of the parking lot. Fifty feet below, little cubes of safety glass were all over the floor. Everyone was in his cell. The ranges were clear. But still banging. That was a good time in jail. For the inmates. I felt them watching me. Normal asked me through the bars, “Find anything, CO? Who did it, CO? Want some help, CO?”
I radioed Shrek, Range 5 is clear. They used bars of soap.
“Ten–four,” he radioed back.
The sun set. There was no sense rushing down. I had the count sheets. I had investigated the jail crime to the full extent of my ability. The window-breakers did me a favor anyway. Wind blew through the bars. It smelled like the Pennsylvania I used to know. It was cool and full of night. It cured the fire alarm. It smelled free and fresh and a few glass cubes fell from the frames and flashed like sparks on the way down.
In one hour I knew I’d be driving home with the windows down to try and blow the public-restroom stink off my uniform. I would take the long way, the route through the farms with their tractor-cracked roads, streaking lightning bugs, and sleeping cows. Home meant AC, even if it was only a window unit. That was straight-up luxurious. My fiancée was even there, probably grading her students’ papers and listening to classical music at the table I had just bolted together. The talk the night before: we should try for kids right away. How different it was eight miles away.
But then Shrek made threats over the loudspeaker about how he was going to keep the lights on and keep guards running the ranges until somebody owned up for the windows. He said that he was going to get maintenance to come and turn the heat on. “Bet me,” he echoed. “Bet me.”
He was faking it but had to say something—it was his block.
He delayed count fifteen minutes to be dramatic, but after the phone rang—no doubt the control center asking him for numbers—he rang the bell for at least a minute straight, until the hammer had to be red hot, and called, “Count time! Count time! Be standing! Be visible! Lights on! Count time! Count time!”
“Fuck your count!” inmates yelled.
“Fuck your lights!” inmates yelled.
I counted—all 458 inmates. We were short that night. Usually you only counted two ranges. The regular guard followed me. It was loud. The game was getting close, and the broken windows and wind energized the block. The ranges glared. Cell lights were on then, as required. I checked them off. We started at the top. Normal saluted. Melvin giggled.
We finished in ten minutes. My headache dimmed. And for the first time since clocking in, I wasn’t sweating.
No more caged rounds for me. No more doors. No more hot breath and smoke and slams.
Down in the bubble I gave Shrek the count: all.
Over the speaker he said, “You can forget about soap tomorrow.”
Sunday was soap day. Every inmate got a fresh bar.
Inmates screeched again—a bullshit technical foul was called in the last minute of the game. Shrek thought it was him who had them fired up. “That’s right, bitches,” he said to the four of us guards.
Then the inmates chanted, “Lights! Lights! Lights!” They wanted them out.
Shrek pumped his fist in rhythm with the cheer. “You break my windows? I’m leaving ’em on!”
“Fuck you! Turn up the heat!” It sounded like Normal. His voice was hoarse.
Shrek laughed and cut the lights.
The game was over.
Up in the cage I saw lights still on in some cells, figures moving, cigarettes streaking, TVs flickering blue. The wind blew through cage. The only noise was the occasional tick of falling glass. An oven cooling off.
Nobody spoke for a long minute. I sat on the counter and I took off my hat.
Shrek leaned back almost horizontal in his desk chair. The bolts creaked. “Seventeen years here,” he said. “Seventeen years, and there’s only one thing that beats final count . . .”
He looked up at the cage.
He looked at us.
He said, “. . . and that’s a blowjob.”
And I laughed. I actually did. It was funny. Anything was. Then.
The