Change of Heart

  "Amen," Mary Lou whispered.

  That's the other thing I love about the Church: you never know what to expect.

  Lucius

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  When Shay Bourne returned to I-tier after three days in the hospital infirmary, he was a man with a mission. Every morning, when the officers came to poll us to see who wanted a shower or time in the yard, Shay would ask to speak to Warden Coyne. "Fill out a request," he was told, over and over, but it just didn't seem to sink in. When it was his turn in the little caged kennel that was our exercise yard, he'd stand in the far corner, looking toward the opposite side of the prison, where the administrative offices were housed, and he'd yell his request at the top of his lungs. When he was brought his dinner, he'd ask if the warden had agreed to talk to him.

  "You know why he was moved to I-tier?" Calloway said one day when Shay was bellowing in the shower for an audience with the warden. "Because he made everyone else on his last tier go deaf."

  "He's a retard," Crash answered. "Can't help how he acts. Kinda like our own diaper sniper. Right, Joey?"

  "He's not mentally challenged," I said. "He's probably got double the IQ that you do, Crash."

  "Shut the fuck up, fruiter," Calloway said. "Shut up, all of you!" The urgency in his voice silenced us. Calloway knelt at the door of his cell, fishing with a braided string pulled out of his blanket and tied at one end to a rolled magazine. He cast into the center of the catwalk--risky behavior, since the COs would be back any minute. At first we couldn't figure out what he was doing--when we fished, it was with one another, tangling our lines to pass along anything from a paperback book to a Hershey's bar--but then we noticed the small, bright oval on the floor. God only knew why a bird would make a nest in a hellhole like this, but one had a few months back, after flying in through the exercise yard. One egg had fallen out and cracked; the baby robin lay on its side, unfinished, its thin, wrinkled chest working like a piston.

  Calloway reeled the egg in, inch by inch. "It ain't gonna live," Crash said. "Its mama won't want it now."

  "Well, I do," Calloway said.

  "Put it somewhere warm," I suggested. "Wrap it up in a towel or something."

  "Use your T-shirt," Joey added.

  "I don't take advice from a cho-mo," Calloway said, but then, a moment later: "You think a T-shirt will work?"

  While Shay yelled for the warden, we all listened to Calloway's play-by-play: The robin was wrapped in a shirt. The robin was tucked inside his left tennis shoe. The robin was pinking up. The robin had opened its left eye for a half second.

  We all had forgotten what it was like to care about something so much that you might not be able to stand losing it. The first year I was in here, I used to pretend that the full moon was my pet, that it came once a month just to me. And this past summer, Crash had taken to spreading jam on the louvers of his vent to cultivate a colony of bees, but that was less about husbandry than his misguided belief that he could train them to swarm Joey in his sleep.

  "Cowboys comin' to lock 'em up," Crash said, fair warning that the COs were getting ready to enter the pod again. A moment later the doors buzzed open; they stood in front of the shower cell waiting for Shay to stick his hands through the trap to be cuffed for the twenty-foot journey back to his own cell.

  "They don't know what it could be," CO Smythe said. "They've ruled out pulmonary problems and asthma. They're saying maybe an allergy--but there's nothing in her room anymore, Rick, it's bare as a cell."

  Sometimes the COs talked to one another in front of us. They never spoke to inmates directly about their lives, and that actually was fine. We didn't want to know that the guy strip-searching us had a son who scored the winning goal in his soccer game last Thursday. Better to take the humanity out of it.

  "They said," Smythe continued, "that her heart can't keep taking this kind of stress. And neither can I. You know what it's like to see your baby with all these bags and wires coming out of her?"

  The second CO, Whitaker, was a Catholic who liked to include, on my dinner tray, handwritten scripture verses that denounced homosexuality. "Father Walter led a prayer for Hannah on Sunday. He said he'd be happy to visit you at the hospital."

  "There's nothing a priest can say that I want to hear," Smythe muttered. "What kind of God would do this to a baby?"

  Shay's hands slipped through the trap of the shower cell to be cuffed, and then the door was opened. "Did the warden say he'd meet with me?"

  "Yeah," Smythe said, leading Shay toward his cell. "He wants you to come for high friggin' tea."

  "I just need five minutes with him--"

  "You're not the only one with problems," Smythe snapped. "Fill out a request."

  "I can't," Shay replied.

  I cleared my throat. "Officer? Could I have a request form, too, please?"

  He finished locking Shay up, then took one out of his pocket and stuffed it into the trap of my cell.

  Just as the officers exited the tier, there was a small, feeble chirp.

  "Shay?" I asked. "Why not just fill out the request slip?"

  "I can't get my words to come out right."

  "I'm sure the warden doesn't care about grammar."

  "No, it's when I write. When I start, the letters all get tangled."

  "Then tell me, and I'll write the note."

  There was a silence. "You'd do that for me?"

  "Will you two cut the soap opera?" Crash said. "You're making me sick."

  "Tell the warden," Shay dictated, "that I want to donate my heart, after he kills me. I want to give it to a girl who needs it more than I do."

  I leaned the ticket up against the wall of the cell and wrote in pencil, signed Shay's name. I tied the note to the end of my own fishing line and swung it beneath the narrow opening of his cell door. "Give this to the officer who makes rounds tomorrow morning."

  "You know, Bourne," Crash mused, "I don't know what to make of you. I mean, on the one hand, you're a child-killing piece of shit. You might as well be fungus growing on Joey, for what you done to that little girl. But on the other hand, you took down a cop, and I for one am truly grateful there's one less pig in the world. So how am I supposed to feel? Do I hate you, or do I give you my respect?"

  "Neither," Shay said. "Both."

  "You know what I think? Baby killing beats anything good you might have done." Crash stood up at the front of his cell and began to bang a metal coffee mug against the Plexiglas. "Throw him out. Throw him out. Throw him out!"

  Joey--unused to being even one notch above low-man-on-the-totem-pole--was the first to join in the singing. Then Texas and Pogie started in, because they did whatever Crash told them to do.

  Throw him out.

  Throw him out.

  Whitaker's voice bled through the loudspeaker. "You got a problem, Vitale?"

  "I don't got a problem. This punk-ass child killer here's the one with the problem. I tell you what, Officer. You let me out for five minutes, and I'll save the good taxpayers of New Hampshire the trouble of getting rid of him--"

  "Crash," Shay said softly. "Cool off."

  I was distracted by a whistling noise coming from my tiny sink. I had no sooner stood up to investigate than the water burst out of the spigot. This was remarkable on two counts--normally, the water pressure was no greater than a trickle, even in the showers. And the water that was splashing over the sides of the metal bowl was a deep, rich red.

  "Fuck!" Crash yelled. "I just got soaked!"

  "Man, that looks like blood," Pogie said, horrified. "I'm not washing up in that."

  "It's in the toilets, too," Texas added.

  We all knew our pipes were connected. The bad news about this was that you literally could not get away from the shit brought down by the others around you. On the bright side, you could actually flush a note down the length of the pod; it would briefly appear in the next cell's bowl before heading through the sewage system. I turned and looked into my toilet. The water was
as dark as rubies.

  "Holy crap," Crash said. "It ain't blood. It's wine." He started to crow like a madman. "Taste it, ladies. Drinks are on the house."

  I waited. I did not drink the tap water in here. As it was, I had a feeling that my AIDS medications, which came on a punch card, might be some government experiment done on expendable inmates ... I wasn't about to imbibe from a water treatment system run by the same administration. But then I heard Joey start laughing, and Calloway slurping from the faucet, and Texas and Pogie singing drinking songs. In fact, the entire mood of the tier changed so radically that CO Whitaker's voice boomed over the intercom, confused by the visions on the monitors. "What's going on in there?" he asked. "Is there a water main leak?"

  "You could say that," Crash replied. "Or you could say we got us a powerful thirst."

  "Come on in, CO," Pogie added. "We'll buy the next round."

  Everyone seemed to find this hilarious, but then, they'd all downed nearly a half gallon of whatever this fluid was by now. I dipped my finger into the dark stream that was still running strong from my sink. It could have been iron or manganese, but it was true--this water smelled like sugar, and dried sticky. I bent my head to the tap and drank tentatively from the flow.

  Adam and I had been closet sommeliers, taking trips to the California vineyards. To that end, for my birthday that last year, Adam had gotten me a 2001 Dominus Estate cabernet sauvignon. We were going to drink it on New Year's Eve. Weeks later, when I came in and found them, twisted together like jungle vines, that bottle was there, too--tipped off the nightstand and staining the bedroom carpet, like blood that had already been spilled.

  If you've been in prison as long as I have, you've experienced a good many innovative highs. I've drunk hooch distilled from fruit juice and bread and Jolly Rancher candies; I've huffed spray deodorant; I've smoked dried banana peels rolled up in a page of the Bible. But this was like none of those. This was honest-to-God wine.

  I laughed. But before long I began to sob, tears running down my face for what I had lost, for what was now literally coursing through my fingers. You can only miss something you remember having, and it had been so long since creature comforts had been part of my ordinary life. I filled a plastic mug with wine and drank it down; I did this over and over again until it became easier to forget the fact that all extraordinary things must come to an end--a lesson I could have lectured on, given my history.

  By now, the COs realized that there had been some snafu with the plumbing. Two of them came onto the tier, fuming, and paused in front of my cell. "You," Whitaker commanded. "Cuffs."

  I went through the rigmarole of having my wrists bound through the open trap so that when Whitaker had my door buzzed open I could be secured by Smythe while he investigated. I watched over my shoulder as Whitaker touched a pinky to the stream of wine and held it up to his tongue. "Lucius," he said, "what is this?"

  "At first I thought it was a cabernet, Officer," I said. "But now I'm leaning toward a cheap merlot."

  "The water comes from the town reservoir," Smythe said. "Inmates can't mess with that."

  "Maybe it's a miracle," Crash sang. "You know all about miracles, don't you, Officer Bible-thumper?"

  My cell door was closed and my hands freed. Whitaker stood on the catwalk in front of our cells. "Who did this?" he asked, but nobody was listening. "Who's responsible?"

  "Who cares?" Crash replied.

  "So help me, if one of you doesn't fess up, I'll have maintenance turn off your water for the next week," Whitaker threatened.

  Crash laughed. "The ACLU needs a poster child, Whit."

  As the COs stormed off the tier, we were all laughing. Things that weren't humorous became funny; I didn't even mind listening to Crash. At some point, the wine trickled and dried up, but by then, Pogie had already passed out cold, Texas and Joey were singing "Danny Boy" in harmony, and I was fading fast. In fact, the last thing I remember is Shay asking Calloway what he was going to name his bird, and Calloway's answer: Batman the Robin. And Calloway challenging Shay to a chugging contest, but Shay saying he would sit that one out. That actually, he didn't drink.

  For two days after the water on I-tier had turned into wine, a steady stream of plumbers, scientists, and prison administrators visited our cells. Apparently, we were the only unit within the prison where this had happened, and the only reason anyone in power even believed it was because when our cells were tossed, the COs confiscated the shampoo bottles and milk containers and even plastic bags that we had all innovatively used to store some extra wine before it had run dry; and because swabs taken in the pipes revealed a matching substance. Although nobody would officially give us the results of the lab testing, rumor had it that the liquid in question was definitely not tap water.

  Our exercise and shower privileges were revoked for a week, as if this had been our fault in the first place, and forty-three hours passed before I was allowed a visit from the prison nurse, Alma, who smelled of lemons and linen; and who had a massive coiled tower of braided hair that, I imagined, required architectural intervention in order for her to sleep. Normally, she came twice a day to bring me a card full of pills as bright and big as dragonflies. She also spread cream on inmates' fungal foot infections, checked teeth that had been rotted out by crystal meth, and did anything else that didn't require a visit to the infirmary. I admit to faking illness several times so that Alma would take my temperature or blood pressure. Sometimes, she was the only person who touched me for weeks.

  "So," she said, as she was let into my cell by CO Smythe. "I hear things have been pretty exciting on I-tier. You gonna tell me what happened?"

  "Would if I could," I said, and then glanced at the officer accompanying her. "Or maybe I wouldn't."

  "I can only think of one person who ever turned water into wine," she said, "and my pastor will tell you it didn't happen in the state prison this Monday."

  "Maybe your pastor can suggest that next time, Jesus try a nice full-bodied Syrah."

  Alma laughed and stuck a thermometer into my mouth. Over her back, I stared at CO Smythe. His eyes were red, and instead of watching me to make sure I didn't do anything stupid, like take Alma hostage, he was staring at the wall behind my head, lost in thought.

  The thermometer beeped. "You're still running a fever."

  "Tell me something I don't know," I replied. I felt blood pool under my tongue, courtesy of the sores that were part and parcel of this horrific disease.

  "You taking those meds?"

  I shrugged. "You see me put them in my mouth every day, don't you?"

  Alma knew there were as many different ways for a prisoner to kill himself as there were prisoners. "Don't you check out on me, Jupiter," she said, rubbing something viscous on the red spot on my forehead that had led to this nickname. "Who else would tell me what I miss on General Hospital?"

  "That's a pretty paltry reason to stick around."

  "I've heard worse." Alma turned to CO Smythe. "I'm all set here."

  She left, and the control booth slid the door home again, the sound of metallic teeth gnashing shut. "Shay," I called out. "You awake?"

  "I am now."

  "Might want to cover your ears," I offered.

  Before Shay could ask me why, Calloway let out the same explosive run of curses he always did when Alma tried to get within five feet of him. "Get the fuck out, nigger," he yelled. "Swear to God, I'll fuck you up if you put your hand on me--"

  CO Smythe pinned him against the side of his cell. "For Christ's sake, Reece," he said. "Do we have to go through this every single day for a goddamn Band-Aid?"

  "We do if that black bitch is the one putting it on."

  Calloway had been convicted of burning a synagogue to the ground seven years ago. He sustained head injuries and needed massive skin grafts on his arms, but he considered the mission a success because the terrified rabbi had fled town. The grafts still needed checking; he'd had three surgeries alone in the past year.

  "You
know what," Alma said, "I don't really care if his arms rot off."

  She didn't, that much was true. But she did care about being called a nigger. Every time Calloway hurled that word at her, she'd stiffen. And after she visited Calloway, she moved a little more slowly down the pod.

  I knew exactly how she felt. When you're different, sometimes you don't see the millions of people who accept you for what you are. All you notice is the one person who doesn't.

  "I got hep C because of you," Calloway said, although he'd probably gotten it from the blade of the barber's razor, like the other inmates who'd contracted it in prison. "You and your filthy nigger hands."

  Calloway was being particularly awful today, even for Calloway. At first I thought he was cranky like the rest of us, because our meager privileges had been taken away. But then it hit me--Calloway couldn't let Alma into his house, because she might find the bird. And if she found the bird, CO Smythe would confiscate it.

  "What do you want to do?" Smythe asked Alma.

  She sighed. "I'm not going to fight him."

  "That's right," Calloway crowed. "You know who's boss. Rahowa!"

  At his call, short for Racial Holy War, inmates from all over the Secure Housing Unit began to holler. In a state as white as New Hampshire, the Aryan Brotherhood ran the prison population. They controlled drug deals done behind bars; they tattooed one another with shamrocks and lightning bolts and swastikas. To be jumped into the gang, you had to kill someone sanctioned by the Brotherhood--a black man, a Jew, a homosexual, or anyone else whose existence was considered an affront to your own.

  The sound became deafening. Alma walked past my cell, Smythe following. As they passed Shay, he called out to the officer, "Look inside."

  "I know what's inside Reece," Smythe said. "Two hundred and twenty pounds of crap."

  As Alma and the CO left, Calloway was still yelling his head off. "For God's sake," I hissed at Shay. "If they find Calloway's stupid bird they'll toss all our cells again! You want to lose the shower for two weeks?"

  "That's not what I meant," Shay said.