Page 7
“Make a line. Don’t be
peeking,” an officer joked. There was some cackling.
Outside the Clean
Room, men, about eight of them, with inmates being added to the line every few
minutes, stood outside the office waiting their turn. Two officers spread the
inmates against a wall and shook them down. Inside the office, an unused
privacy curtain lay folded back. An officer escorted an inmate behind the open
curtain room where, with several others watching, an inmate was stripped and
probed for contraband.
“Hey, Martin. How are you doing?” Philips
asked him as he waited for Martin to undress.
“Yeah, you know how it
is.” Martin looked at the two guards watching him and then at Philips. He
didn’t know the two other guards.
“Family here today?”
Philips asked.
Martin took off his clothes and hung them on a peg. Philips
changed his gloves and pushed Martin over, Martin’s anus spreading before
him.
“Yeah. They’s coming today. Sunday, you know,” Martin
said quietly. He leaned his head inside the crook of his hands. He could see
the two other guards upside down, watching the search.
“Alright,
Martin. You can dress.”
Martin nodded and kept his eyes away.
“Next,” Philips yelled as he snapped off the rubber gloves.
Lena
and her children came over the last rolling hill and the trees parted and the
land flattened as if they were a troop coming over to see the calmness of the
land broken in the valley by the sight of death and the sounds of war. But it
was still. Many buildings occupied the plain with fences of differing variety
circling the massive punitive structures. It looked as if the earth had been
deeply ruptured and scarred and the white buildings that was Oklahoma State
Penitentiary was a parodic suture in the earth.
The girls and Martin Jr.
were quiet. The car passed through the gate inspection and was allowed to park
in the visitor’s parking area. A large Oak between the gate inspection and
parking lot had recently been struck by lightening and hadn’t been totally
removed yet. One thick, knotted branch rose like a gentle airplane taking off.
In a day or two, the branch and massive trunk would become shredded bark for
the inmates to spread.
Lena got out slowly from the car. She showed a smile
to her family.
“Come give your mamma a hug, babies.”
Dawn and
Lily hugged their mother. Martin Jr. stood looking up at the building they
stood in front of, his hand covering his eyes, shielding them, as if the bright
sky and sun tried to hide what it illuminated. A bird whistled in three long
notes.
“I love you, mamma,” Martin Jr. said. “Come on, we
still got a ride back.”
Lena gathered her children around her and set
off towards the visitor’s door. Martin Jr. didn’t mind giving his
mother a hard time about things, but here he didn’t say much. He
didn’t tell his mother, who was about all the family they had, that he
would rather lay lazily on Sunday with his friends by the lake and watch the
small lake perch nip at his toes. He didn’t tell his mother that there was
a girl, he didn’t know her name, but he had dreamed about her. He
didn’t tell his mother that he got into a fight and beat another fellow
and got his respect at the lake. He didn’t tell his mother his Sunday was
ruined and that he couldn’t care less if his father never had gotten a
reprieve. Martin Jr. had a hard enough time not hating himself, for lying all
the time about his life. He didn’t want his mamma to know that sometimes
he wanted just to let go inside of himself, but he wasn’t sure what it
would mean. All of these were mere glimpses of consciousness barely thought out
in his mind.
“Martin Williams.”
Martin Williams sat rubbing
his hands. He was in civilian clothes and it felt strange. He imagined them
smelling the way that his high school sweetheart and wife, Lena, cleaned them,
but they smelled irreversibly different. Martin Williams didn’t know too
much about G,d, he thought, but he knew love and he loved his family. But he
had ruined another family, irreversibly, destroyed it, and why G,d had decided
to let him live was another question Martin Sr. had trouble understanding. He
had too much time to think about it.
“Hi, baby.” Martin Sr. said,
his eyes moist and glad. His two girls clawed at him, their hands hugging him
tightly. Lena’s face was bright, her black skin shiny under the florescent
lights. Her muscles tightened as if holding her insides in.