The Graybar Hotel Page 7

  Then it was over. I opened my eyes. I found my arms folded over my chest, as if I actually had been in a casket all along.

  The next evening at the Comfort Inn I closed the curtains, turned off the cell phone and computer, and returned to the vein. It went much smoother this time, as a puff of red colored the clear liquid in the syringe when the needle hit the flow of blood. When I woke, the needle was still there, and the skin had begun to heal around the metal. I had to twist the needle to get it free and apply pressure with a cotton ball. Eventually I learned that’s what the belt was for—to keep the drug from hitting long enough to pull the needle out. The movies always make drug use look easy. It actually takes practice.

  * * *

  Some of the prisoners here wear the numbers of the dead. According to the Department of Corrections, the prisoner has been “released by death,” and they just reuse the number. My first bunkie, Pepper Pie, had a number like that.

  The dead men’s numbers were just another odd fact in the strange new world I found myself in. Another I discovered one night as I tried to fall asleep on my bunk. Pepper Pie stood up from the bunk below and walked in his sock feet to the door. He thought I was asleep, I’m sure. If he thought otherwise, he probably would never have done it.

  Our cinder-block rooms were the prison standard eight by twelve, with two small desks against the wall opposite the steel-framed bunk beds. One narrow window sat in the center of the solid steel door, which slid open and closed electronically by front desk officers who man a control panel straight out of NASA. Pepper Pie stood in front of the window for a moment, then slowly reached through the thick glass all the way to his elbow, where he seemed unable to go any farther, as if he’d reached the end of an invisible rope, or encountered a barrier I couldn’t see. He drew his arm back into the cell, then did the same thing twice more, like reps of a strange exercise. He would get an inch or two farther each time and could reach nearly up to his shoulder. After ten minutes or so, he lay down and slept until lunch the next day.

  At night, things like that can happen—mistakes of perception brought on by a softening of the real. I figured I was just seeing things, until a few nights later when he stood up again in the middle of the night. He looked back at me and I closed my eyes before he could see I was awake. He walked to the door again and stood there. He didn’t reach through the glass this time. This time, he faded. He faded a few shades short of invisible, as if he was behind a crusty shower curtain, then he came back up to full strength. After that he lay back down and slept until lunch.

  Most nights, as far as I knew, he slept. But every third or fourth night, he practiced. With the rest in between, he seemed to grow stronger. After about two months, Pepper Pie could disappear completely for a full sixty-four seconds, and he could push his entire arm, along with half of his shoulder, through the window. As much as I was dying to ask him about it, I figured he wouldn’t like me knowing. It was no use, anyway. Why would he tell me anything? What if it was all tied up in the fact that he wore a dead man’s number? If that was the case, I was out of luck. My number was permanent. There would never be any hope of losing it for as long as I lived.

  * * *

  I met Jonnie Rae at night too, on the outside. I was standing on the porch of my apartment clapping and stomping to some jazzed-up chamber music coming from the dark law office across Park Street. The building was converted from a Church of Christ, Scientist and had stained-glass windows lit softly from the inside. Jonnie Rae walked by and said, “What are you doing?”

  “Enjoying the music,” I said.

  “You appreciate that sort of thing, do you?”

  “I’m sure there are plenty of old people around here who think it’s too late, but not me.”

  “Never too late,” Jonnie Rae said. “Well, I’ll be seeing you.” She continued on down the sidewalk toward town. I went back inside and fastened my new Armani belt around my arm.

  Jonnie Rae eventually became my best friend, which, I’ll admit, isn’t saying much. On nights I was home, he or she would show up and silently listen to music with me. I can’t categorize Jonnie Rae’s gender—I don’t know, and it didn’t matter. I realize now that by looking back at her I am trying to make solid what only ever seemed vaporous. She was tall, that’s certain. And extremely thin—sometimes when she turned, I could just barely see her in profile. Her hair was different every time we met: up or down, pulled back with dark streaks of moody colors smoldering in certain lights. Cool seems like the best descriptor for her, as cool as the air on the nights that I’d see her, and just as fleeting.

  * * *

  Pepper Pie and I talked, of course, but prison talk is generally superficial. Most prisoners have spent their formative years having their trust continually compromised, so to trust another person with information, or emotions, is a sign of weakness. They don’t want to seem weak, so they offer up very little. I never learned the full story of why he was here; “I got drunk” is all he would say about it. I knew that he read the Bible for an hour a day, and I knew the only money he had coming in was the fifty-six cents a day he was paid for his laundry-porter job.

  I knew why he was called Pepper Pie. In chow hall, some men get impatient with the plastic pepper shakers and instead slam the top into the corner of the table, opening a large, irregular hole. Pepper Pie had grabbed an altered shaker one day, and as a stream of pepper hit his green beans, some flecks spotted his apple pie. On any given day you’ll get three or four guys asking if you’re going to eat your pie, but that day no one asked him. And since the pepper is cheap, with little or no flavor, he started adding some to his pie daily, “as a bug repellent,” he’d say.

  The only other thing I knew about him I learned by accident one day when he was out sorting laundry bags with the other two porters. A guard by the name of Strickland peered into our cell with his bulging little eyes to tell me we’d have room inspections in half an hour. He noticed Pepper Pie’s Bible tucked under the edge of his mattress, and he did what I was afraid he was going to do—he opened the door. I had been at peace, rolling Bugler into perfect cigarettes and drinking a jailhouse mocha, a teaspoon of instant coffee and a teaspoon of hot chocolate mix. Now I was going to have to look at his mustache, hear his squeaky voice, and smell his rotten cheese breath. “You guys know you can’t have anything under your mattresses. Move the book,” he said.

  “It’s my bunkie’s Bible. I don’t think I should move it.”

  “I’m not asking you to move it, I’m giving you a direct order.”

  “You’re going to write me a ticket if I don’t move someone else’s property? Is that a major or a minor ticket?”

  “Move the Bible or give me your ID, jackass.”

  I wanted him out—him and his whole ratlike vibe—so I pulled the book from under the mattress and Strickland closed the door. I held the book in my hand and looked at the cover, a tree in warm orange autumn colors with the sun causing the leaves to glow from behind. The cover was genuine, but the inner pages were too thick: they weren’t the usual onionskin pages we rolled our cigarettes with. I opened the book to the middle and found it full of typing paper, folded and cut to fit and glued between the Bible’s covers. On every page were two sentences, handwritten in small letters of blue ink: For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. It shall be done for you as you have believed. The pages were numbered and ended at 452. When I reached the back cover I felt terrible for having the book in my hands, especially knowing what I knew of Pepper in the nighttime. I was quick to cover my tracks—I cleaned off my fingerprints with toilet paper and put the book back under his mattress exactly as I had found it.

  If only I’d been as careful with the ketamine.

  * * *

  It’s a simple fact that I never sold so much as a taste of the drug. I thought about it, sure—I could have cooked it into powder and sold it as ecstasy for one hundred times what I paid. But try telling the Drug Enforcement Administration that the massive amount of ph
armaceuticals you’ve imported is for personal use. They could care less about how big or small your appetite. After a certain amount, it’s distribution by default.

  Four months after leasing a new mailbox—this time in Kalamazoo—I saw a long, white Chevy van with tinted side windows pull out of the Taco Bell next door, but they didn’t get me then. Later, when they offered to drop federal charges in exchange for a guilty plea, I learned that the second mailbox I had set up as Mr. Gauss triggered a law enforcement alert—two mailboxes in different states under the same name. Meanwhile, I was spending most of my time alone, sliding through slick mechanized cities to arrive at that glowing, glorious destiny.

  * * *

  It was spring 2006, and the baseball season began. I had a TV, Pepper Pie didn’t, and he was grateful I liked baseball too. Every night when there was a game, we watched the Detroit Tigers. The year before, they had lost 10 shy of 100 games. Three years prior, they had set an American League record by losing 119, but this year, they had a new coach and were expected to possibly win half of the season.

  Our unit, Eastlake, was one of two low-profile, two-story buildings on our half of the compound. Once the snow melted off the grass we began softball practice on the days we had afternoon recreation. I was badly out of shape, but I could catch an outfield fly, which is not as easy as it looks on TV. I played left field. Pepper Pie was a little rusty from the winter, but he played third base and started off batting near the top of the lineup because he had an on-base percentage of .500. He was quick with the glove—great hand-eye coordination—and could generate a lot of bat speed for a small guy.

  Pepper and I took softball seriously, constantly helping each other improve. We’d watch the Tigers play, making mental notes and applying the subtleties on the field—keeping the back elbow up in the batter’s box, keeping our baseline stride short and sure. We kept statistics and encouraged each other. We were ready for the competitive season to begin against our rivals across the yard, Dublin Unit.

  A week before the season began, our slightly overweight second baseman, Frank, was taking batting practice. We would each hit four balls, then run on the fifth. On the fifth pitched ball, Frank hit a nice shot to the gap in left-center. He’d just rounded second on his way to third when his top-heavy body tumbled to the dirt. Al, our shortstop, caught the ball and tagged him out. “His Bugler light came on.” Al laughed. “You need to give up the smokes, fat ass.”

  If it had been anyone but Al, I don’t think Frank would have done what he did. But Al had taken the shortstop position from Frank a few weeks earlier because he was just plain better. Frank stood up, dusted off his belly, then spit between Al’s eyes. There wasn’t much of a choice for either of them after that—they had to fight, or be permanently labeled cowards. Al started swinging, even though he was outweighed by fifty pounds. After any fight, both parties involved spend a month or so in administrative segregation, and then each is moved to a different prison to avoid reprisals. You never see them again.

  This meant the Eastlake team was in serious trouble. We had no infield and no number three and four hitters. Frank and Al were good players. We filled the positions with Tex and Sparky, neither of whom could bat his way out of a paper bag and who seemed allergic even to soft grounders. We lost our first seven games.

  The Tigers, meanwhile, were establishing the best record in all of baseball. Pepper Pie and I watched nightly, sharing microwave popcorn as night after night a hero emerged—Granderson, Marcus Thames, Brandon Inge, and numerous veterans well past their prime.

  Pepper Pie was growing stronger all the while. I’d watch him on the nights he exercised, and eventually got to know his schedule: every third night, unless the end of the month was coming up, when he might rest a few more days so he could begin on the first. His schedule was determined more by the first of every month than by anything else I could figure.

  I was going to have to broach the subject soon—he was progressing rapidly, able to stay completely gone for three minutes. As the All-Star break approached, he could push his torso clean through the thick steel of the door, which looked to be more difficult than the glass—he had to push harder, and oftentimes the opposing force made him stumble backward.

  Eastlake was becoming very effective at losing, though at least our margins had shrunk since the start of the season. Pepper Pie and I developed the quiet camaraderie that team losership brings, a complement to the camaraderie we’d built by watching the winning Tigers.

  They were playing the Yankees in New York one Sunday afternoon after dropping the first of the doubleheader. Late in the game, Craig Monroe hit a home run to win the game. His mother, Marilyn, was in the stands. In a ghostly way, the former wife of Joe DiMaggio was in Yankee Stadium again too.

  “Pretty unbelievable, huh?” I said.

  “Yeah,” Pepper said. “I never thought I’d back a winning team.”

  We couldn’t see each other. I was on the top bunk, and he was on the lower. We were as quiet as the Yankee fans for a moment. Then I asked him.

  “You leaving soon?”

  “October, probably,” he said. “I know you know.”

  “How?”

  “The cover to my Bible was too clean.”

  “Strickland told me to move it. I panicked and moved it back. I wanted to learn. I’m not going to tell anyone.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. I could hear his springs shifting on the bunk below. “No one would believe you, and even if they did, there’s nothing they could do. They could keep a guard on me twenty-four-seven, but one night I’ll be gone, regardless.”

  “Is it anything I can learn?”

  Talking to someone on your bunk is almost like talking to yourself. I spoke to the ceiling, my hands behind my head. The pause waiting for the other person to reply is a real test of patience: there is no way to gauge how close he is to answering. He might have drifted off to sleep, or in Pepper Pie’s case, he could have disappeared.

  “Are you still there?”

  “I’m thinking,” he said.

  “Are you able to do it because of the dead man’s number they gave you?”

  “The number was just the beginning. It allowed me to believe I was different.” He stood up to look at me. “But listen,” he said. “You don’t want to be able to do this. You got it pretty good here and you’ll get out eventually. You got a good number, so you might as well not think about it. Because once you get to where you can walk out of here, once you can walk right through that door, I’m pretty sure you can’t come back. From what I can tell, I’m pretty sure you stay disappeared.”

  “Are you willing to do that?”

  “I got no one on the outside, man. There’s you in here, but they can move you any minute. Disappearing isn’t such a bad thing anyway,” he said. “Sometimes I feel like I already have.”

  * * *

  Jonnie Rae was never more than a figure on the sidewalk at night. Standing on Park Street, the stained glass of the law office in the background, she was never all the way solid. And now that the memories of her are fading . . . The memory that remains most solid is the last time I saw her, when I ended up at the river, lying in someone else’s handmade wooden boat, listening to the water under the hull. Jonnie Rae had said, “Follow me to the river. I think you’ll like the music there.” The water was humming, of course. It sounded old and deep. There was the surface splashing and rattling against the boat, but you had to listen past that to the river’s soul.

  * * *

  Our softball tournament began one week before the World Series. Prison tournaments are magical in a way: all previous losses are erased—theoretically, anyway. The recreation worker raked the field, cut the tall outfield grass, filled in the dips on the infield, and drew chalk foul lines, batter’s boxes, and on-deck areas in perfect white circles. New gravel was spread under both benches. Everything was crisp white and brown and green. We all wore our dark blue clothes with orange stripes. Our prison-issued black dr
ess shoes gave better traction on the field, so everyone wore them too. The softballs were brand-new Gold Dots, white and solid. I sat on the bench and watched everyone warming up. Pepper Pie and I had been watching the Tigers all year on a twelve-inch black-and-white screen, and I had forgotten about the beautiful colors of baseball.

  We didn’t expect to win the tournament; we’d only won two games all season. The Dublin Unit had been talking for weeks about how they were going to spend the five dollars given to each player on the winning team, and we had resigned ourselves to second place.

  The tournament was best two out of three, and after losing the first, we won the second game when I hit a deep fly to center field. Tex, who had only recently learned to run the bases after the ball was caught, tagged up and scored the winning run. We were to play the final game October 21, opening day of the World Series. But the rain came.

  I had the sense that Pepper Pie could go at any time, but he wanted to finish the softball season and watch the World Series with me. Secretly, I started training myself using the pages of my King James Bible. The cover was a light brown marble design with a cross in raised relief. I spent hours cutting pages away and rolling them into cigarette papers. Every day, I wrote the same verses Pepper Pie had written. He said it would take a year to really believe that all I had to do was believe.