at Sing Sing when I was there and he had a reputation as a crier.”
“A crier? Ha!” Moses cackles.
“Shh. Moses, listen. So when he put in for a transfer up here, he got it right away. I was transferred around the same time. You see our lives have been like this. They are parallel. He was assigned to the hole and I was there soon enough. For three years we spent nearly every day together. What you must know is that he was put there as punishment for what the others thought was his weakness: He was too nice. They put him there for the same reason they put me there, to break our spirits. They wanted to make a killer out of him, and I saw in Ed’s eyes a young man like me, scared like me. We were both locked in a box with no light and no hope, for what seemed back in those long away days an endless sentence.
“When he was by himself he never did nothing mean. He never spoke bad to no one. He just did his trabajo. Maybe he was a little quiet, intimidated. Some of the men down there they sensed this, so did the guards. The guards would force him to beat us just to toughen him up. He used to do this to me. And Moses, I tell you, I saw myself in him. Those men, they were like Portencia. Horrible and cruel. Working to make us bad, you know? When he beat me, I felt for him. It was just my body that was hurt and my body would heal, but I knew that each time he hit me it was his spirit that was destroyed. I saw it in his eyes.
“Don’t be angry, Moses,” Jorge says. “Ahh, Papito! Finally! Where have you been?” he says to the little brown bird with the thread tied to one leg that lands on his shoulder and chirps and turns his head as if in response. Jorge takes a cracker from the top of the locker, breaks off small pieces, and feeds them to the bird.
“He was just doing his job,” Jorge continues. “You know the kind of COs around here who are so brutal. He was saving himself. But he hurt himself bad. When Ed toughened up, they transferred him to D block. I too had been released out of the hole. Marie found me then and saved me by giving me Gina. And that same year, Ed and his wife, they gave birth to their hija, Shell. So we were young fathers together. Oh, I was so jealous of Ed each day when he come to work with those red eyes of his. He got no sleep her first year. He got no rest from the demands of his tough little wife. He started messing up on the job.
“One day, he was the OIC on my row and he had the keys. He was trying to let guards in and out of the gate at the stairs and trying to get the keeplocks back from the showers, and at the same time letting a crew of mess hall porters through the gate from the gallery upstairs so they could report to work and there was a group of hombres who had just come back from Industry and they were crowding around him asking him all kinds of questions. Where is the paper I requested? Can I go to the infirmary? You know how it can get, and he lost the keys. He left them in the gate. I saw them and grabbed them myself. When I saw Ed reach for his keys and realize they were not there, I said something horrible—I don’t even remember what—something to make him come after me. And he did. You’ve seen the temper they built in him. He took me down to the floor and punched me and I slipped the keys back on his belt. It was a kindness from one new padre to another, entiendo? No one noticed that Ed had committed the cardinal sin and let the keys fall in the hands of an inmate.
“I tell you this so you can know the power of such a kindness, Moses. You see I had been jealous of Ed. Jealous that he could hold his hija whenever he pleased. That he could sleep in the same bed with his esposa every night. But something changed for me after that day. I began to see myself differently. I knew that I had returned to the same person I was when I lived with mi mama in Ecuador. When I did the kindness for Ed, I felt like I had been reborn.
“After that, Ed come to me to talk. He told me terrible things that were in his heart. He told me that one night he heard his hija crying and he got up and went to her room and saw her behind the bars of her crib and he flipped. He hit her hard because he couldn’t tell the difference between his hija and one of us, you know? He said he forgot where he was and who she was. He cried. That’s how hard his heart was from this place. He told me this in return for helping him.
“When you arrived, I did not like you,” Jorge laughs and Papito jumps from side to side.
“I remember. You don’t need to remind me of all that,” Moses says, the bashful burn of a teen on his cheeks.
“When I found you,” Jorge laughs. “You were mean. Like a mongoose. You had a quick bite and you’d take anything you could get from someone. Moses, be careful. I know you took that mirror from Lila. You must return it to her, entiendo?”
Moses looks away. “Get on with it,” he says.
“I had a dream, you see. Jesús Cristo come to me and he showed me the blood on my hands. He told me that blood is the blood of passion. My crime was hunger, hurt, and fear. I recognized this in you. Your crimes were like mine. You killed that woman you loved because she beat you.
“I know why I’m here,” Moses interrupts.
“Moses, you must be honest about your crime or it will not go away. It will stay with you in death. You killed her because you wanted to save yourself. When she heard your stutter and laughed, when she beat you, you felt it in your body. The blood is on your hands, Moses, not your soul. You will be saved, but you must be honest. This is why you don’t make the phone calls no more. You must never give in to the temptation to avoid your punishment and the truth about the crime you have committed. You must promise me, even after I die, you will live an honest punishment. If you have served your time well, you will be saved. No calls and no more stealing, claro?”
Moses sneers. He doesn’t understand why he’s getting a lecture, suddenly, or how Jorge knew about the compact. “Claro,” he grunts.
“Good. Let’s thank Díos that we are going to be saved, and get a good sleep. You have much to prove tomorrow, mi amigo. I remember when I did my studies how worthy I felt. I’m proud of you, Moses. Now turn and give me some privacidad.”
Moses lies on his side, facing the wall and he hears Jorge sit on the can right next to his head. He shits. Thankfully it is not the unhealthy shit of an old, worried man, as it’s been. Jorge finishes his business, washes his hands and face in the small sink, and gets into bed.
On nights like tonight, Moses believes Jorge. He believes that goodness, even here in this rotten place, is possible, and that there will be peace on the other side. The pain of the procedures of his days, the humiliations that weigh him so heavily each night will all dissolve when he relinquishes his hold on this life. And he believes his passing will be peaceful because he will have lived out his sentence, paid for his crimes. He imagines that when he leaves he’ll be so pure, leaving his body will be the feeling he has when he looks at Lila and his breath suspends because she is innocence. He doesn’t need breath in that moment, looking at her. He rides on some other fuel. He has decided that the moment he leaves his body will feel like this; only it will be sweeter for every night he’s spent here. He promises himself he’s going to return Lila’s compact tomorrow.
Moses turns his head and looks over at Jorge, already a lump under the thin blanket in the bed beside him. He thanks God for his friend, and he prays someday there will be a peaceful end to it all.
Moses wakes clean and calmed from a death-like sleep. He rolls over onto his back and looks to the ceiling. There are eight black spiders running to the far right corner. He looks around to see if it is his cell he’s in or maybe heaven, and when he does he sees Jorge twisted and stiff. His torso hanging between their beds, arms over his head, Gina’s letters crumpled in his gnarled old hands, his knees bent up tenting the sheet, bruises on his skyward face.
Moses sits on the edge of his bed rereading his paper, making small edits with a pencil. Ed Cavanaugh comes in and sits down across from him on Jorge’s cot. It’s already stripped and vacant, exposing its cheap and lumpy impressions. He only died that morning, yet all his belongings, the letters he’d thumbed to shreds and the pictures he worshiped of Gina, her diploma from Brown, are already gone. But the smell is still thick from his body’s release. They mopped, but it just moved it around. The sparrows have been flying in and out in a frightened panic all morning. The chirping frenzied.
Cavanaugh looks tight and red-eyed.