Page 53 of The River Is Waiting

“You heard me,” she says. “Back to your units.”

But she forgot a step: the required post-visit strip search before we go back.

Solomon’s already left the building, but the rest of us wait our turnto participate in the DOC humiliation ritual. At least this CO is one of the older ones who’s probably counting down the days to retirement. They don’t hassle you the way some of the younger ones do. They keep it perfunctory. You just do what you need to do and try to go someplace else until they’re done.

He points to the Sikh first. Tells him to take off his turban, too. After he searches him and sends him on his way, he examines Cornell, then Angel. I’m last. “You guys left early,” he says. “Trouble in there?” As if he hasn’t most likely watched what went down on that closed-circuit TV mounted to the wall or seen them haul Solomon out of there.

Without answering him, I take off my shoes and socks. Flare out my toes. Open my mouth wide to let him look down my throat. Touch my tongue to the roof of my mouth so he can see under it. Pull off my shirt. Drop trou. Cup my balls and lift them. Turn around, spread my ass cheeks, cough when he tells me to. “Okay,” he says. I put my clothes back on and he sends me on my way.

Back in our cell, I flop down face-first on my mattress. “Who’d you have visiting you?” Manny asks. I tell him my wife.

“Yeah? I know you’ve been wanting to see her again. Good visit?”

I don’t answer.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

October 2018

Day 429 of 1,095

Officer Kyle Piccardy arrived at Yates after his uncle, Deputy Warden Geoffrey Zabrowski, got him transferred here from the women’s prison, the better to keep an eye on him. According to the jailhouse scuttlebutt—which is often more reliable than not—Officer Piccardy, a newlywed not long out of the training academy, had been indulging in a little third-shift sex with one of the women in his custody. She was a pedigreed grifter who was open to a deal. Some strings got pulled somewhere and an agreement was brokered. In exchange for staying silent about the fact that Piccardy had knocked her up, she received a sentence reduction. I guess you’d call it a win-win-win situation. She waltzed out of prison and supposedly got the abortion, Piccardy got to save his job and his marriage, and Corrections dodged a front-page sex scandal. The only losers are the men of Yates CI who now have to put up with Piccardy.

Piccardy and his best buddy, Anselmo, are on shift tonight. Each is a dick, but when they’re working a shift together, it’s worse. Cavagnero’s at the control desk, and when he pops open our doors, Piccardy shouts, “On the chow, girls! Chop chop!” Some of the other COs resort to name-calling, too—address us as vermin, losers, garbage—but Anselmo and Piccardy’s ridicule is usually gender-based; to them we’re ladies, bitches, pussies, cunts. One time, something set Anselmo off and he yelled down the tierthat we should all tell our mothers we should have been abortions. Makes you wonder what kind of relationships these two have with the women in their lives.

Manny pushes our door open and asks whether I’m coming. I’ve got to take a leak, so I tell him to go ahead, I’ll catch up. Toss him a shoe to keep the door propped open so I don’t get locked in.

I pee, flush, remove the shoe. Leaving the cell, I run smack into Piccardy. I haven’t seen him since the night Emily visited and the sight of him triggers my resentment about the way he treated her. “Propping open a cell door, Ledbetter? You looking for a ticket?” I bow my head and walk toward the others. “Hey! I just asked you a question. You think you can ignore an officer?”

I stop. He catches up and puts his face a few inches from mine—classic CO intimidation. “Sorry, Officer. I thought your question was rhetorical. But no, I’m not looking for a ticket.”

“You thought my question waswhat?”

“Rhetorical. It just means—”

“I don’t give a flying fuck what it means. You think your college-boy vocabulary makes you superior around here?”

Oh boy, here we go. “No, sir.”

“Hey, by the way, how’s your wife doing, Ledbetter? How’s Emily?” My brain tells me to keep my mouth shut, but his saying her first name has just made it personal. “Tell her for me that the next time she comes here, she should remember to take the candy out of her pockets first.”

I feel my heart pound and my adrenaline spike from an impulse to wipe that smirk off his fucking face. I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but I know my body’s in danger of overruling my brain.

“Yeah, she mentioned that you were hassling her,” I tell him. “Making her go through the metal detector over and over and suggesting it might not go off if she removed her bra. I guess you’d call that sexual harassment. Right?”

He snickers, but at the same time wraps his hand around his stick incase he needs to start swinging it. I guess I’d be paranoid, too, if I knew a bunch of convicted felons would love to take a pop at me. “Let me assure you, Inmate Ledbetter, that when your wife kept triggering the detector, my actions were one hundred percent professional. If she told you otherwise, all I can say is I’m not responsible for whatever she was imagining. But I do feel sorry for the women whose men are here. They have needs, too, so if Emily enjoyed her little fantasy, then no harm, no foul.”

I’m out on a limb, but I’m in it now, so I might as well finish. “I’m warning you, Piccardy. If you ever—”

He grabs me by my shoulders and backs me against the wall. “Better stop right there, Ledbetter.” His face comes so close to mine, I can see his stubble and a small scar on his chin. “Because if what’s about to come out of your mouth is a threat, me and some of my fellow officers can make your life here a whole lot harder than it is now.” He lets me go and backs up a couple of steps.

It’s all I can do to hold back from going at him, but I saw what happened to that con who threw his urine at a guard. They clubbed him so bad, his face was unrecognizable. “All I’m saying is—and this is a statement of fact, not a threat—all I’m saying is, if you hassle her again, I’ll write you up.” It sounds pathetic, even to me. Bother my wife and I’ll squeal on you.

“Okay, you do that, big man. Make sure you spell my name right. There’s twoc’s in Piccardy. And my badge number is 1537. Think you can remember that or should I write it down for you?”

Up ahead, Anselmo’s walking backward and watching us. “Everything okay back there, Officer?” he calls.

“Yeah, there’s an annoying little gnat flying around me, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.” Turning back to me, he says, “Now if I were you, Ledbetter, I’d catch up to your girlfriends before I send you back to your cell with one of those leftover court lunches that have been hanging around the office for a few days.”

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