Sam
Six Months Later
“HUUUH-HUH-HUH-HUUUH, huh huh huh.”
Ten more minutes. I just had to keep my shit for ten more minutes, then I’d be out of here.
“Huuuh-huh-huh-huuuh, huh huh huh.”
My cellmate Co, who lay on the bottom bunk with headphones drilled to his ears the last few months he’d been here, slapped his chest and stomach for a drumbeat while he sang along.
Nine minutes and forty-five seconds, then I’d get to see the sun, inhale air that wasn’t infested with farts and rotten teeth, stare at something other than Co’s ridiculous number of Lego “spaceships” swinging from the ceiling. They weren’t even glued together, so pieces rained down on the floor all the time. Nothing brought thoughts of violence and murder quicker than leaping from the top bunk in the middle of the night to take a piss and landing on a deadly Lego piece. But I’d pushed passed it, breathed through it, whatever it took to be released on time. And in nine minutes thirty-one seconds, I would be.
The game of teeter-totter politics made the last few months into a media circus. Hill’s fuzzy video of me not shooting Alex had been trumped by the crystal clear video Tony’s camera had taken. Hill hadn’t been expecting that, I was sure, or the found gunpowder residue that corroborated my story over his. He had hundreds of pictures of me standing at 131stand Chestnut, but none of them showed my face because of my hood. It had been my word against his that he had been blackmailing me, because all of his texts had been from pre-paid phones. The police were still investigating him for an unrelated drug charge at his club, the Underground Hill. I’d been cleared of the two murders, but not drug possession with intent to sell the heroin in my backseat, fleeing from police pursuit, resisting arrest, or assault against Senator Rick Chambers. The judge told me I was getting off easy with six months in jail and a $500,000 fine. I didn’t argue.
Riley, on the other hand, was in deeper shit than me. Taking bribes from Rick in exchange for campaign funding, soliciting bribes to Hill, campaign finance fraud... The list went on. I honestly didn’t know when I would be seeing my big brother again, but at least his and Dad’s dick pics were secure. So hurray for that.
Mademoiselle Goldfinch gave an anonymous tip to the police, and they found Rose’s little black book at Rick’s house. She had made sure they checked for tampering, because somehow my name had been written in it. Riley had ripped part of it away from Rose when he’d visited. He’d given it to Rick so he’d help fund Dad’s campaign, as part of the deal he and Riley had made. Then, Rick had erased some poor schmuck’s name in it and stuck mine in, the fucking bastard, with clipped on photos that kind of looked like me, but weren’t. Every listed name in the book had been investigated. With Rose’s knowledge of who was and wasn’t in the book, as well as more pictures she’d kept hidden to prove it, the resulting scandals lit up every news channel. Mademoiselle Goldfinch was a household name. Needless to say, Dad’s bid for presidency ended before it began.
“Huuuh-huh-huh-huuuh, huh huh huh.”
“Co,” I shouted from my seat at the desk. I leaned forward and waved a hand in his face, not hard to do since we lived in a six-by-eight-foot room, but his eyes were closed. So I snatched at the wire and yanked.
He snapped upright, two huge feet thudding against the tile, his wide, coffee-colored nose pulsing like a pissed-off bull’s. His fists, which were about as big as my head, clenched against the thin blanket on his mattress.
“Sorry, man.” I held his headphones out to him. “It’s time to say goodbye.”
Co’s shoulders drooped a little. He tucked his chin, but his brown eyes never left my mouth.
Dude was a master lip reader. He could see a conversation across the room and retell it in his own unique voice. It served me well on more than one occasion, once I learned how to understand him. I didn’t know sign language. I was pretty sure he didn’t, either. He didn’t seem all that excited to learn, even though there were signing books in the library, because he said he’d be made fun of, said it was best not to talk at all, except to me. Maybe he was right, but what would he do when I left? Become mute?
“Don go,” he said, his tongue thickening the words.
“I got to, dude. But look.” I grabbed a knitted hat off the top of my bag and tossed it to him. It had red and black stairstep stitching in it like Legos pieced together. “My sister made that especially for you. I didn’t measure your head or anything, so if it doesn’t fit, you can wear it on your fist like a boxing glove, okay? And I’ll send you another for your other hand. And a bigger one for your head if she has enough yarn.”
A big, goofy grin lit up his face as he ran his fingers over it. “She mae it fo me?”
“Yeah. Try it on.”
He did. It didn’t fit, not even close, but I wasn’t about to tell him that because of the look on his face. I’d given him a hat, but I might as well have given him a million bucks. Two red puffballs on strings hung down both sides of his head, just past his ears. He shook his head a little so they’d sway back and forth.
“You like it?” I asked, even though I didn’t need to.
He didn’t answer because his eyes were aimed at the ground between us while he concentrated on making the balls smack his head. I sat back and watched him for a while, trying not to think about what his new cellmate could be like. We’d both lucked out in that department.
A guard walked up to the bars and banged them lightly with his clipboard. “Cleary, let’s go.”
Seven minutes and thirty-seven seconds early. Hell yeah.
I stood and leveled my gaze with Co’s so he’d finally look at me. “See you, big guy.”
Swing. Swing. “See you at dinnah, Sam.”
I didn’t correct him. No matter what I told him, he didn’t seem to get that I was never coming back. Maybe it was better to leave him to exist with his hat and the expectation that he’d see me later. I didn’t know what else to do but leave. I sure as hell wasn’t going to stick around, not when I had so many wrongs to put right.
But it was the weirdest sensation walking out of there a free man. Already dressed in my regular clothes the guard had dropped off earlier, I could almost believe the past six months had been a dream. But the closer I got to the exit, the faster I walked because I had a plane to catch.
At the end of a long deserted hallway, my guarded escort stopped at a glassed-in counter and waved at the female guard behind it before retracing his steps back down the hallway. The female guard’s dark hair was pulled too-tight behind her head, giving her a constant surprised expression.
