Something goes bump in the night. A thick band of light streams into the dark cell from the rectangular window in the door and it grounds Chris Haley as soon as he wakes. There can be no doubt as to where he is.

Unseen in the darkness he hears forceful exhalations of breath and the smack of flesh hitting concrete. Chris fumbles for his invisible reading lamp.

“Sean?” asks Chris.

He finds the lamp and turns it on. Sean Coleman is doing burpees in the middle of the small cell. His thick chest is covered in cloudy tattoos. Swastikas and lightning bolts and all the regalia of hate. The man is a true believer.

“What are you doing, man?”

Sean does not stop. He does another burpee and exhales. “Punk motherfucker,” he mutters. “Fucking bitch motherfucker.”

Chris swings his legs off of the top bunk. The small cell is immaculate. A large drawing of a Templar Knight is stretched out on one wall and the photographs of their families are taped neatly to the other wall in the black rectangle where it is allowed.

Entire worlds encased in a little black rectangle. Mothers and ex-girlfriends and siblings smile and wave out into the void.

“What are you talking about?” asks Chris. “What time is it?”

Sean does not answer and begins doing squats. His corded muscles gleam with sweat. Chris gropes for his watch and sees that it is 0450.

“Seriously, bro,” says Chris. “Are you okay?”

Sean finally stops and stares at Chris with wild eyes.

“No, I am not okay,” he growls. “That bitch motherfucker thinks he can punk me out? Thinks he can disrespect me like that?”

Chris swallows. “Who are you talking about?”

“The Corporal!” exploded Sean. “The fucking Corporal!”

“Corporal Ramirez?”

“Yeah, Corporal bitch-ass Ramirez! Fucking punk. Fucking bitch!”

Chris pulls on a pair of green basketball shorts and a white t-shirt. Some small part of him hopes that these thin clothes will shield him from Sean’s rage. “What happened? What do you mean?”

“Fuck do you think I mean? You were here last night! Motherfucker said he would pick up my letter before he left last night!”

Sean takes a pink indigent envelope from the small metal table that serves them as a desk and tosses it up onto Chris’ bunk.

“And yet here it is,” continues Sean. “Seven long hours later. Piece of shit thinks he can disrespect me? Me?”

Chris takes a deep breath and takes his plastic tumbler and hops down from the bunk. His throat is dry from the stale and recycled air.

“Sean,” says Chris. “Things kicked off on Tier 3 last night. They were probably just dealing with that. Probably just got busy.”

Chris digs into his tote bin and removes a packet of powdered orange drink mix to cover the sterile taste of the iron-tinged water that comes from the taps.

“Whose side are you on?”

“Your side, man. Always. But, like, shit just happens sometimes.”

“I don’t care what happens. He said that he would pick up my letter, and he did not pick it up. It’s as simple as that.”

“Mail hasn’t gone out yet,” says Chris as he pours the envelope of flavor crystals into his tumbler. “If you get it to staff in the morning it will still go out today. Same as it would have if they had picked it up last night.”

Chris turns towards the sink and then Sean steps forward and blocks him and his eyes are wide and his fists are clenched and suddenly Chris is afraid.

“It ain’t about a letter going out on time,” says Sean in a low and deep voice.

“Okay.”

“It’s about respect, Chris. Nothing more. Nothing less. Respect. You feel me?”

“Yeah, dude, I feel you. Respect.”

Sean nods and steps aside and Chris begins filling his tumbler with water. He tries not to show that his hands are shaking and his heart hammers in his chest.

“Day shift starts in an hour,” says Sean and he begins to pace up and down the cell. “He’ll be here, then.”

Chris takes a sip of his orange drink. It is fizzy and tastes of tin.

“I’mma smash that motherfucker out.”

Chris steps back from Sean and wishes that he was anywhere else.

“Bro, don’t do some dumb shit like that,” he says in a tentative voice.

Sean’s rage is immediate and he gets up in Chris’ face and his eyes are wide and demented and Chris steps back and bumps into his bunk. There is nowhere else to go.

“Are you disrespecting me?” demands Sean. “Are you fucking disrespecting me, Chris?”

“No, man, no,” says Chris as quickly as he can. “I just… I just don’t want to see dumb shit go down is all. AJ and Viking will never sign off on it.”

“They’ll understand. They have to. It was me that was disrespected. Ain’t nothing to do with badges, ain’t nothing to do with gangs. It’s just one man standing up for his honor. AJ and Viking will understand that.”

“Dude,” says Chris in a slow voice. “I am not disrespecting you. But AJ and Viking and the cops will never see it like that. You’re a soldier so the cops will think that it was ordered from the top and they will come down hard on everybody. Bro, I just don’t want to see you get greenlit by our own people.”

“Then they’ll just have to greenlight me!” snaps Sean. “I’m the motherfucker who has to look at myself in the mirror every morning. And I’d rather die that look in the mirror and see a fucking punk.”

“The dude just forgot, Sean,” says Chris. “He wasn’t trying to punk you. He just forgot.”

–

It is the deep blue of the very early morning beyond the windows and Francisco Ramirez fills a thermos with coffee. He screws the lid on and then puts the three packed lunch boxes into the refrigerator.

Ramirez returns to the master bedroom. Ana is awake and standing before the bathroom mirror with her makeup bag open on the counter.

“Good morning,” he says.

She turns and smiles at him and her mascara brush is balanced between her black acrylic nails. “Good morning, honey,” she says.

“More parent teacher conferences?”

She shakes her head. “Yesterday was the last one. I should be home by five. You? Another sixteen?”

“I don’t know,” admits Ramirez. “I hope not.”

Ana leans forward and kisses him on the cheek. “You’re off tomorrow, at least.”

“Off tomorrow,” says Ramirez with a nod. “Lunches are ready. Have a good day.”

“Be safe,” she says. “I love you.”

“Love you, too,” says Ramirez and he takes his boots and his duffel bag from the closet.

He kisses her again and then leaves and his heart is heavy but he does not stick his head into his daughters’ rooms to say good-bye because he does not want to wake them up.

It is cool and dark and silent in Kuna when he steps out of his front door. Thick fog blankets the town and Ramirez takes a deep breath of the pre-dawn freshness before he gets into his Subaru and drives to work.

Night still shrouds the fields and pastures of southern Idaho. There is no snow but frost glitters on the grass. Ramirez joins the long line of headlights marching out into the dark high desert.

The lobby of the Idaho Maximum Security Institution is quiet and subdued and officers shuffle off to the locker rooms and buy energy drinks from the vending machines. It had been a long night and many of them face a long day.

“How is overtime looking?” Ramirez asks Sergeant Mosse.

Mosse consults his roster. “I think you’ll be alright,” he says. “I’m holding eleven over but you should be in the clear.”

“Right on.”

Ramirez dresses in the locker room and then makes his way down to Alpha Block and finds that Sandoval and Kearney and Chris Flynn have already beaten him to the unit. A night shift officer lounges at the control center and Flynn has Roy Jones Jr. playing from his speakers.

“You working up, today?” asks Sandoval and there is a glimmer of hope in his voice.

Ramirez glances at the other man. It is Ramirez’s turn to work ‘up’. Running the unit control center requires watching cameras and keeping the unit log and opening doors on the computer system and monitoring radio traffic. But it does not require inmate contact.

They rotate and it is not Sandoval’s turn but Ramirez knows that he is stressed out. Sandoval has been on for sixteen months and is not cut out to be a correctional officer and the bruises on his face and neck from a week ago have faded to mottled blue and green.

The bruises to his skin will fade far sooner than the damage to his heart and his mind.

“Nah, bro, I want to work the floor today,” says Ramirez with a shrug. “You take the bubble.”

Flynn raises an eyebrow and they all know what Ramirez has done for Sandoval but no one says anything.

“Right on,” says Sandoval and he cannot hide the relief in his voice.

Ramirez adjusts his leather duty belt and loads it with keys and radio and OC canisters and handcuffs and all the trappings.

“I’ll do first walks,” he says.

Flynn had already been standing to take the first check but he shrugs and sits back down at his desk. Kearney has started a pot of coffee and the control center fills with the rich scent of the percolating coffee.

Ramirez looks out over the three tiers. Each is two stories of cells overlooking a dayroom. The two story control center sits in the middle and big glass windows overlook the three tiers. White brick walls and polished concrete floors and gray iron doors. His home for the next twelve hours.

He walks downstairs into the foyer and Sandoval buzzes him out onto Tier One. The Tier is bright and still and the monstrous silence of it all deafens him. He reaches the row of cells and glances through the narrow window in the door.

A man looks up from his bunk with his reading glasses perched on his nose. Then Ramirez steps on and the man is gone. Each glance offers a single frame of life. Men workout or sleep or wash their faces for the day ahead. They dress themselves and sit on the toilet and brew coffee or tea.

What Ramirez looks for and dreads and does not see on this morning is the noose. The shirt or bed sheet tied to a bunk post. The blue face and the protruding black tongue and the eyes white and staring and bulging out from the face.

He looks for the still bodies and the scarlet blood pooling dark and glistening on the concrete floor.

Ramirez does not see those things on this morning but he sees them every night when he closes his eyes. When the darkness screams out at him.

“Hey, CO,” comes a voice and Ramirez stops before cell 14.

Sean Coleman’s broad face fills the narrow window.

“What’s up?” asks Ramirez.

“Yo, Corporal, can I synch my player?”

Ramirez rests a hand on the handle of the cell door and glances back at the caged kiosk in the middle of the dayroom. Inmates cannot access the internet so if they want to send emails from their tablets they need to synch it to one of the kiosks.

“Synch it during your dayroom time,” says Ramirez.

“Come on, CO, please,” says Coleman. “It’s my mom’s birthday today and I want to send her a message before she goes to work, man.”

“What time is your dayroom?”

“It ain’t until eleven,” says Coleman. “Please, CO? I just want to tell my moms ‘happy birthday’. She’s a citizen, Corporal. A taxpayer.”

The cavernous silence fills the tier. Francisco Ramirez reaches for the mouthpiece of his radio and nods. He wonders what Ana is doing. If the girls are up and having breakfast yet.

Ramirez depresses the button on his radio. “Control,” he says. “Sending one to the kiosk. Roll 14.”

The heavy door buzzes as the lock is disengaged and Ramirez yanks it open.

– Michael Feeney