Page 44 of The River Is Waiting

Outside, I walk over to the picnic table where my new buddies are starting a poker game. “Deal you in?” Boudreaux asks. I tell him sure and grab a seat.

“We were just talking about Angel’s girlfriend,” Pacheco says. “You ever see her, Ledbetter?” I shake my head. “You one lucky mofo, Angel,” he tells him. “That chick’s a Jamaican Stormy Daniels.”

“?’Cept my boo’s titties ain’t fake,” Angel assures him. “Only thing gets implanted in her is me, know what I’m sayin’?”

Lobo flashes his missing-teeth grin. “Yeah, man. Bury the meatstick. Right?”

Boudreaux rolls his eyes. “Lobo, you cray-cray. After all that meth you done, your brain cells probably ain’t even in double digits anymore.” He may have a point. Lobo’s pretty slow on the draw. His nickname is short for lobotomy.

He counters with, “Whaddayouknow, Boudreaux? You’re so dumb, you probably don’t even know ‘Meatstick’ is a Phish song.”

“Thass right, Einstein. I don’t know it ‘cause I don’t listen to no lame-ass white-boy music.”

“Your loss, motherfucker,” Lobo says. “I been to nine Phish shows and every one of them was fuckin’epic. Hey, Ledbetter. I betyou’reinto Phish. Right?” He and I are the only two white guys in the game.

I shrug. “Never paid them much attention.” I turn to Angel. “What’s the story, bro? We got thirty minutes out here. You going to deal or what?”

Angel deals the flop. I have a decent hand and I’m a pretty good bluffer, so I bet. Boudreaux and Angel both call. Lobo and Pacheco fold.

“Whoyoulike then?” Lobo asks me.

“Me? Musically?… The Killers, Drive-By Truckers, Jason Isbell, Amy Winehouse.”

Boudreaux’s eyes bug out. “Amy Winehouse? She dead, man. Thass messin’ with some bad juju.” Andre Boudreaux, a New Orleans Cajun, is superstitious as hell. Angel’s his cellie and he told me the last time the COs did room searches, they confiscated Boudreaux’s hoodoo shit and he was afraid to leave their cell because bad luck might chase him down.

Angel says, “Hey, Ledbetter, how come we don’t hear no bruthas on that list of music you like?” In my defense, I tell him I like a lot of old-school R & B.

“Then what about Wu-Tang or NWA? They old-school.”

“Older than that,” I tell him. “Smokey Robinson, the Temptations, Aretha. Some rap’s okay, though.”

“Yeah? Like who?”

“Kendrick Lamar, Common. I used to like OutKast. Are they still around?”

Angel ignores the question. “Tupac versus Biggie? Where you at on that?”

I tell him I’m neutral. “And anyway, I’m a convicted felon, so I’m notallowed to vote. Are we going to finish this hand before break’s over or what?”

Angel deals the turn. My luck’s still running. Boudreaux folds and it’s down to just Angel and me. When he deals the river, it gives me a full house without even having to bluff. I show my hand, then reach across the table and scoop up my winnings: commissary shit everyone’s thrown into the pot. I’m now the proud owner of three teriyaki beef sticks, five instant coffee packets, two envelopes of spicy vegetable ramen, and a minitube of athlete’s foot cream.

When I get back to our cell, Manny’s curled up in the fetal position on his bunk with a towel over his head. “Bad?” I ask him.

He whispers that it feels like there’s a jackhammer pounding inside his head, and when he opens his eyes, the lights make him nauseous. I ask whether there’s anything I can do, anything I can get him. “The wastebasket,” he says. “I keep thinking I might puke. I just wish everyone would turn their music down. The noise is killing me.”

“Here you go,” I tell him, propping the empty wastebasket against his hip. I feel for the guy but you can’t miss the irony of it. When it comes to playing the music he likes, no one jacks up the volume more than Manny.

I squint over at the digital clock. It’s 3:03 a.m. Sure, I’d rather be asleep than awake, but sometimes I don’t mind these middle-of-the-night bouts of sleeplessness. During the daytime, the cell block can get so noisy you can’t hear yourself think. Gets even louder in the evening from all the bickering, card game chatter, hip-hop, and shouting TVs. But at three in the morning, I can hear it: the Wequonnoc river at the rear of the prison property, flowing past this place.

AA says we need to have faith in “a god of our understanding,” so let’s say for example’s sake that some undefinable spiritdoesexist—that it’s not all just random. Maybe that spirit is speaking to me through the sound of moving water. And maybe that sound is telling me to trust thatnot everything is stuck and stagnant—that forward movement is possible. That by the time I’ve done my three years here, the sun will come up and light the path that leads me back to my wife and daughter.

I don’t know. Sometimes I think we’re all wandering in the dark and that it’s random and pointless. But I’m trying to open my mind to the possibility of some deeper truths. Trying to see the light and move in that direction. At lights-out earlier tonight, the skies opened up and it began pouring like crazy. I don’t hear the rain now, but the river is roaring back there. Clamoring to be heard.

I can’t get out of second gear today because I was up half the night, so pretty much all I’ve been doing today is watching TV in our cell. Manny’s rallied after his migraine yesterday and he’s full of pep. When I start dozing off midafternoon, he taps me on the shoulder and asks whether I want him to wake me up when it’s time to go eat. I shake my head, then fall into a deeper sleep. I don’t wake up until a couple of hours later when I hear him come back from chow.

“Well, Corbs, you missed all the action,” he says. “Dinner and a show. You know that tall skinhead with all the White Power tats?”

“Gunnar,” I say. “He was one of the ones who tried to recruit me for the big race war.”

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