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was easy to be distracted, and I let it happen. A million more snowflakes followed the first one, materializing out of the milky emptiness rather than falling from the sky, dancing in front of me, stirring whatever thin poetry I had inside. The snow landed heavy, piling up fast. The beauty was surprisingly insistent. I forgot about caution, movement, and status notifications for the moment and took it all in. The towers could have been turrets. The dip in the yard a grassed-overmoat. The dome a crystal palace. What did that make me? Hardly a princess—too much uniform in my life for that—but still.
    My reverie lasted long enough for me to be utterly startled when the siren blasted to mark midday. The buildings remained unaffected by the signal for two or three puffs of breath; then the doors burst open and the men hit the yard like schoolboys at recess. The change in weather slowed them up. Arms got outstretched, hands and mouths opened to receive the flakes. The exaggerated innocence made their brutality seem as random and regrettable as a car accident. You could get lulled like that sometimes. You could start to look on them like acquaintances.
    I blinked to see through the blur. The men were not walking their usual defined routes at their usual regulated pace. No one else seemed to mind, but the disruption of flow across the yard bothered me because the situation was abnormal and called out for vigilance. Twelve minutes later, only two minutes longer than normal, the movement had trickled off and I willed myself to relax. A group of inmates entered the yard from the education center in the old wing, a class or counseling session having spit its dutiful attendants out late. I tracked them with less caution because their numbers were small. It was almost amusing when the scooping up began and the snowballs launched among them like a flurry of arrows from opposing ramparts. I picked up my binoculars for a closer look and was surprised to see Josh standing among the group. Despite the childish nature of the play, he looked more uncomfortable than the others, hands shoved into his pockets.
    Then I saw Crowley in the larger scrum, chased by another man with a handful of snow. The horizontal cast, the strange slow-motion way he walked, twisting his body as if on a swivel. His pursuer moved awkwardly, too, and I recognized Roy Duckett, the one-legged kitchen chef called Wobbles. Funny to see the two of them together, as if competing in the Para Olympics. A snowball hit Crowley in the back, and he turned and waited for Wobbles to reach him. When they grappled, Wobbles slipped and fell hard on his back and lay there as if stunned, and Crowley fell on top of him and began to face wash him. I thought it was a bit rough, edging toward brutal, but two COs had gathered and seemed to feel there was no reason to intervene. Then a third inmate took the opportunity to launch himself into the tangle. I didn’t like it, and I willed the COs to break it up. Even so, I was completely startled when the third inmate’s arm began pumping up and down with the sped-up vigor of someone using a sharpened killing implement.
    Three or four seconds later I scrambled inside the booth and came out with an AR-15 assault rifle. It was heavy but beautifully balanced and locked on, and I cradled it in my arms. A circle formed, but the COs did nothing to interrupt. Someone needed to take control, so I sounded the blare, hoping to clear the tight group and fire off a round, at least a skip shot to frighten them into stopping. At the sound, everyone in the yard looked up as though startled, then looked back to the scrum. Almost immediately Crowley managed to do something within the tangle, which evoked a howl of agony in his attacker, who scooted away on the seat of his pants, dragginghis lower body. The fight had turned, as they sometimes did. With COs on hand, it should have ended there, Crowley could have been pulled off or restrained, but still no one