Page 46 of The River Is Waiting

I stand there, dissed and dumbfounded. Why’s he being so hostile? What did I do? What did I say?

I go up to the desk to return the book about Connecticut prisons, renew the Easy Rawlins one, get my pass stamped, and get the hell out of there. “Hey, what’s the deal with Lester?” I ask Javier.

“What are you talking about?”

“Last time I was here, he was friendly, talkative. But just now, I thought he was going to bite my head off.”

Javier says he gets moody sometimes. Suffers from depression. “Why wouldn’t he get depressed with the kind of sentence they gave him? Fifty years? That’s a lifetime. Mrs. M says he’s gone to the parole board maybe fifteen, sixteen times to try and get his sentence reduced but it’s always no.” He reaches for my book. Renews it and stamps my pass. “Hey, did you ever read that other book I checked out for you?”

“American Genocide? No, I haven’t gotten to it yet. You need it back?”

“No, you can keep it for a while. Let me know when you’re done with it. I’d be curious about what you think.” I tell him okay and I’m out of there.

Walking back, I keep thinking about Lester—how he’s been stuck in here for decades. Is he in touch with his kids? Is his wife still alive? If he’s practically a lifer, what did he do? And why’d he get so ornery?You ain’t turning me into your Uncle Remus or your magical Negro.What the fuck, man? Just because I asked whether I could sketch him? It’s not likeItold him he couldn’t get his sentence reduced. And if he thought I was being racist, he was mistaken. Someone says you have a face of wisdom, that’s acompliment, Lester.

That night, maybe five minutes after lights-out, I ask Manny whether he’s still awake. When he says yes, I ask him whether he knows an older inmate named Lester. “Big Black guy, uses a wheelchair?”

“Lester Wiggins? Sure. Everyone knows Lester. He’s like a legend in here.”

“I saw him in the library today. He says he’s been at Yates since 1982.”

“Yeah, with a fifty-year sentence. I suck at math. What’s 1982 plus fifty?”

“Uh… twenty thirty-two. So he’s got about fourteen more years to go?”

“If he lasts that long. I heard Lester’s got a lot of health problems.”

“What the fuck did he do to get a fifty-year sentence?”

Manny says he heard he was active in some Black liberation group back in the seventies. “A couple of their members held up an armored car and shot one of the guards. The guy died the next day. The way I heard it, they wanted to try Lester for murder along with the other two, but they couldn’t pin it on him. So they got him on something else.”

“What?”

“He was married, but he had a girlfriend on the side—a white woman who was a hanger-on with that Black Power group. Some judge’s daughter. Owned a sports car, and one night, when Lester was driving it, they crashed into a bridge abutment.”

“Did she die?”

“No, but one of her arms got so mangled, they had to amputate.”

“Was the accident what put Lester in a wheelchair?”

“Nah, he’s only been using that for the past few years. I don’t think he got hurt much in the accident, but she got a prosthetic arm so they trumped up the charges and put him in here for the long haul.”

That’s when I begin to understand Lester’s about-face from my first library visit to this one. For the death of my son, they gave me three years. Lester got fifty years because a judge’s daughter lost an arm and, I’m guessing, because she was white. Three years as opposed to fifty. No wonder he’s bitter. No wonder he went off on the stupid white guy who asked whether he could “capture” him.

This call originates from a Connecticut Correctional facility. Press 1 now if you wish to accept this call from… Corby Ledbetter.If you wish to decline—

“Corby? Hi.”

“Hey. Thanks for picking up. Pleasant surprise.”

“Surprise?”

“Yeah. I haven’t talked to you in over a month. I was starting to think maybe you didn’t want to talk to me anymore.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Well, you know. Iama jailbird.”

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