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things.”
“Can’t learn the world from a book, Teach.”
But Jack knew the world did not make sense, anyway. He’d had four weeks to ruminate on that very topic. Why would someone like himself even bother listening to someone like Aldo LeGrande?
“You keep your ass tight and prissy like that,” Aldo said, “and you’re gonna be candy for the other boys.”
Jack tried not to feel his heart race at the other man’s words. It was what every man thought about when he conjured an image of jail. Would it be irony or biblical justice to be convicted of sexual assault and then find himself the victim of a prison rape?
“What’re you in for?” Aldo asked, picking his teeth with his pen.
“What are you in for?”
“Rape,” Aldo said.
Jack did not want to admit to Aldo that he had been charged with the same offense. He didn’t want to admit it to himself, either. “Well, I didn’t do what they say.”
At that, Aldo tipped back his head and laughed. “None of us has, Teach,” he said. “Not a single one.”
The minimum-security pod resembled a daisy: small groups of bunks sticking out like petals from the central common room. Unlike the floors downstairs, there were no cells, just one universal locked door and a guard’s booth in the middle. The bathrooms were separate from the sleeping area, and inmates had the freedom to go there as they pleased.
Jack deliberately went to the bathroom a half hour before lights out, when everyone else was still watching TV. He glanced into the common room in passing. A big black man sat closest to the television, the remote control in his fist. He was the highest in the pecking order, the one who got to choose all the programming. Other inmates sat according to their association with him, closest buddies sitting just behind him, and so on, until you got to the row of stragglers far back, who simply did their best to stay out of his way.
By the time Jack returned to his bunk, Aldo was gone. He quickly stripped down to his shorts and T-shirt and crawled into bed, facing into the wall. As he drifted off, he dreamed of autumn, with its crisp apple air and sword-edged blue sky. He pictured his team running drills through the muddy soil, cleats kicking up small tufts of earth so that by the end of the day’s practice, the girls had completely changed the lay of the land. He saw their ponytails streaming out behind them, ribbons on the wind.
He woke up suddenly, sweating, as he always did when he thought of what had happened. But before he could even push the memory away, he was stunned to feel a hand at his throat, pinning him against the thin mattress. At first all Jack could see were the yellowed eggs of the man’s eyes. Then he spoke, his teeth gleaming in the darkness. “You’re breathing my fucking air.”
The man was the one he’d seen earlier holding the television remote, the one Aldo had referred to as Mountain. Muscles rippled beneath the sleeves of his T-shirt, and at eye level with Jack in the upper bunk, he was easily six and a half feet tall. Jack reached for the hand pinning his windpipe. “There’s plenty of air,” he rasped.
“There was plenty before you came, asshole. Now I have to share it with you.”
“I’m sorry,” Jack choked. “I’ll stop.”
Almost immediately, the big man’s hold eased. Without another word Mountain hefted himself into his own bed. Jack lay awake, trying not to breathe, trying not to recall how Mountain’s thick fingers had let go of his throat and begun to caress it gently instead.
The cows surprised Jack. Chained individually to their milking stanchions, he had first thought this was some kind of cruel joke: prison animals being locked up. But a few days of the routine of the farm and he realized that they never got turned loose-not out of cruelty but because that was where they were comfortable. Jack would watch their languid, drowsy expressions and wonder if it would be like this for him, too-after so many months of being