Page 105 of The River Is Waiting

“I heard he tried to, but the warden wasn’t having it. The mole had uncovered too much of their shit: physical abuse, psychological abuse. They’d target the weak ones and threaten them with what would happen if they said anything. Like when they found out you’d complained about Piccardy pepper-spraying those turkeys. They gave you a hard time, too, but you got off easy.”

I flash back to what happened in that storage room.You enjoy that, Ledbetter? You want some more?…Better not make threats you can’t prove, baby killer. You see anyone who can back up your bullshit?And what happened because of that assault and the threats they made if I were to say anything.Benzodiazepines aren’t magic, but they can help to take the edge off, and the effect kicks in pretty quickly.…

“They got hit with sexual harassment charges, too,” Manny says. “Making comments to the female guards about their sex lives, posting dick pics inside one woman’s locker.” When I ask him whether anyone knows who the mole was, he says, “Yeah. It was Goolsby.”

“Seriously? Man, he had me fooled. Fooled those two dumb fucks, too. They treated him like he was their newbie-in-training.”

“I heard Goolsby wasn’t even his real name. They transferred him the hell out of here as soon as he blew the whistle in case there was retaliation. You know what happens to snitches at this place.”

“Yeah, but I have the feeling there was no love lost between them and most of the other guards.”And from now on, try to remember who’s in charge around here and who isn’t.“I tell you one thing, though. If those two get convicted and end up having to do time, I hope they send them here. They’ll get what’s coming to them, compliments of all the guys they’ve fucked with in one way or another. I’d join that team myself.”

I get up and hobble over to the toilet to take a leak. My ankle’s aching and swollen from when I was kicking my storage box. Manny notices and gets me a couple of Tylenol from his stash. I tell him I lucked out when it comes to cellmates and it makes him smile. “Fuck, yeah,” he says. He opens his mouth to say something else, then closes it again. I tell him to spit it out, whatever it is. “No, I’m just really sorry about what happened to you, Corbs.”

“It didn’t happentome. Imadeit happen. When they told me I wasn’t getting out, I shouldn’t have started swinging.”

“Yeah, well, don’t beat yourself up too much. Half the guys here would have reacted the same way if they had the rug pulled out from under them like you did.”

“But how many would have broken a CO’s nose?”

“Well, there’s that,” he says.

“I just wish I knew how my family’s going to react when I try to explain what happened.” Pointing to our back window, I tell him I saw them standing in the snowy lot, waiting for me. “I don’t know if someone went out in the cold to tell them I wasn’t getting released or if they finally just gave up and left.”

“They? I thought just your mom was picking you up. Who else was there?”

“Emily and our daughter. I guess they planned it as a surprise.”

“Oh Jesus, Corby,” he says. He goes to the back window and looks out, shaking his head. Then he pivots. “Hey, before I forget, I got something of yours.” He opens his storage box, rummages around in there, and takes out a piece of paper folded up like a packet. “I didn’t know if you meant to take these when you packed your stuff. They were both under your bunk. I figured I wasn’t going to see you anytime soon, but I didn’t want to just throw them out.”

When I unfold the paper, my river stone falls out. He’d wrapped it in the other thing I’d left behind: the printout of that poem Mrs. M gave me—the one about the Bruegel painting that had triggered my idea for my mural. I don’t care about the poem, but I thank him for not tossing out the stone.

“No problem,” he says. “I figured from the way you were always holding it that it meant something to you.”

I wrap my hand around the stone and squeeze. “Means hope,” I tell him. “Back when I was on the grounds crew? I left my post one time and snuck down to the river out back. I used to listen to it on nights when it got quiet in here, but I wanted toseeit, too. Watch it flowpastthis place. And before I snuck back, I pulled this little stone out of the water as a keepsake or whatever—a promise that one day I’d move past this place, too.”

As he looks at me and listens, I can see that something’s just dawned on him. “Hey, wait a minute,” he says. “You know how, in your mural,you painted some of us floating down the river? Was that supposed to be like an escape or something?”

“More like a liberation,” I tell him. “I set you guys free.”

From the corridor, CO Kratt calls us to supper chow. My stomach’s growling, but I can’t handle going over there, being glared at by the guards and getting the third degree from whoever’s at my table. Not to mention having to choke down the prison slop I thought I was done with. Meanwhile, that other Corby is probably sitting down to a steak right now, medium rare, with sauteed mushrooms and my mom’s scalloped potatoes. I need to call her tonight to let her know I haven’t had a full-blown relapse if that’s what she thinks. I also want her to know that I’m owning up to my mistake.Mistakes, plural. Letting that doc prescribe me Klonopin and throwing that punch. Poor Mom. This has got to be hard on her. And Emily, too. I wonder how she explained it to Maisie when I was a no-show. I need to assure her that even though I let my guard down about the benzos, I’m committed to my recovery and plan on keeping that commitment when I’m finally out of here.

When Manny gets back from eating, he asks whether I mind him turning on the TV so he can catch the news. “Have you heard about that virus that’s going around?”

“The one in China? I heard something about it last week, but it’s not like you can watch TV in seg. Why? What’s going on?”

“It’s spreading and it’s killing people,” he says. “A thousand deaths worldwide and now there’s a big breakout in Italy and another one on some cruise ship.”

“But nothing here in the States, right?”

“Wrong. There are fifteen confirmed cases, mostly out on the West Coast.”

The TV’s all staticky, but when Manny fiddles with the coat hanger antenna, a press conference comes into focus. Some old guy in a lab coat is at the podium. Trump, Pence, and several sober-looking expert types are standing behind him. I ask Manny to turn up the volume.

When Trump takes the mic, he says the coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” He looks over his shoulder, acknowledging the guys behind him, then continues. “The scientists in charge have been working hard and they are very smart. When you have fifteen people infected and the fifteen within a couple of days is going to be down close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

“Did he just congratulate himself for accomplishing something that hasn’t happened yet?” I ask. “Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, does it?”

Manny looks worried. He says he lived through it once and can’t believe it’s happening again.

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