Page 70 of The River Is Waiting

“Yes you are, Solomon. What you’renotgoing to do is sit in your cell all day tomorrow and replay today. You’re going to get up on time, walk over to the barn with me, and keep busy.” What do they call this? Tough love?I have no idea whether that’s what he needs, but I know that wallowing in self-pity was what mademethink suicide was the answer. “Here, take this,” I tell him. “It’s not a gift. It’s a loan. Don’t lose it.” I hand him my river stone.

He glances at it, then looks up at me. “I don’t get it,” he says.

“It’s from the river back there. It’s powerful.”

He rolls the stone between his thumb and index finger, studying it. When he looks back up at me, I can tell he’s skeptical.

The following morning, Solomon is up in time but withdrawn. He sits across from me at breakfast chow. The swelling on the side of his face has gone down and his black eye’s begun to change color. When the guard calls time, we dump our trays, leave the hall, and walk toward the barn in silence. “Here,” Solomon says. He hands me back the river stone. I tell him he can keep it for a while—that I don’t need it back this soon. “I don’t want to lose it on you,” he says.

I tell him to suit himself and take the stone back.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

November 2018

Days 484–86 of 1,095

Piccardy is doing push-ups while he waits for the crew to assemble. He’s been in a good mood the last couple of days because he was in a weight-lifting competition last weekend and won in his weight category. “What was his prize?” Ratchford wondered. “A mirror so that he can kiss it?” We all laughed at that one.

“Everyone here, Officer Goolsby?” Piccardy asks. Goolsby gives him a thumbs-up. “Okay, listen up, ladies!” he says. “We’re starting a project today that’s probably going to take a couple of days to finish.”

“What’s that, boss?” Tito asks.

“The maintenance department’s planning to repaint the barn before the really cold weather gets here, but as you can see, it’s peeling pretty bad.” As if on cue, Spence comes out of the barn pushing a wheelbarrow full of scrapers, wire brushes, wooden blocks, sheets of sandpaper, and face masks. “You’re working in pairs. Two to a side, one of you up on a ladder, the other on the ground. Tito and Israel, you’re scraping the east side, Ratchford and Harjeet the west. Ledbetter and Clapp, you do the back. Spence, you and Officer Goolsby can tackle the front.” This seems to take Goolsby by surprise, but he recovers quickly from the demotion. “That all right with you, Officer Goolsby?” Piccardy asks. Goolsby gives him a nod and a half-smile.

I can tell from Solomon’s face that he’s relieved we’re working together again and I guess I am, too. Has Aliyah Jackson worked some kind of counselor’s magic or is this just a coincidence? Probably the latter; nothing gets done this quickly at DOC. But if she did intervene, I’m sure Piccardy didn’t like it.

“Where are the ladders at?” Harjeet asks.

Goolsby points to the pickup rumbling toward us on the dirt road. One of the maintenance guys is at the wheel and four extension ladders stick out from the back of the truck bed. “Okay, girls. Grab your equipment and get started!” Piccardy says. “Chop chop!”

Goolsby drops the tailgate down and Tito, Harjeet, Spence, and I slide the ladders out. Israel says he has trouble with heights and wants to be on the ground. “Me, too,” Solomon says. I tell him sure, but that he should grab the other end of the ladder. Of course, he objects. Tells me Spence and Tito are carrying their ladders by themselves. Why can’t I? When I give him a look, he cooperates.

Things go okay for the first hour, although Solomon’s no more enthusiastic about scraping than he was about leaf-raking or “brooming.” When he complains that the paint I’m scraping off overhead is getting chips and dust in his hair and eyes, I ask him how he might solve that problem. “Oh,” he says, and moves to the other side. Like I told Cavagnero: he’s a work in progress.

When Goolsby shouts that it’s lunchtime, I tell Solomon to go ahead. I have one more little section in the corner to scrape and then I’ll be right down. He disappears around the corner, but here comes Piccardy. He stops at the base of the ladder and when I get off the bottom rung, he latches on to my shoulder and says, “I met your new friend yesterday afternoon.”

I know who he means, but I play dumb. “Which new friend is that?”

He lets go of my shoulder and pulls down my face mask. “Jackson. You really gave her an earful, didn’t you? Talking about how you and Clapp have a father-and-son bond or some such horseshit.”

I clarify that I didn’t say that; she did.

“Guess she doesn’t know about your history as a father then, huh?”

He’s goading me, but I stand there, blank-faced, waiting for this to be over.

“Or maybe that’s not the kind of bond we’re talking about. You and that little geek got a man-boy love thing going on? Is that why you want to be his daddy?”

I feel my right hand make a fist. “No, sir. Is that all, Officer Piccardy?”

“Not quite.” He gets a foot from my face. “You fuck with my authority again, Ledbetter, so that a counselor tells me who’s working with who onmycrew, you better remember that payback is a bitch. Got it?”

“Yes, sir. I understand. May I grab some lunch now?”

“Sure thing. Maybe Clapp’s saved Daddy a seat.”

After work, I tell Manny about the exchange. “I know you care about that kid, Corby,” he says. “But be careful. Piccardy has a ten-pound chip on his shoulder where you’re concerned. Plus he’s insecure as fuck, so he’s going to feel threatened by a supervisor pulling rank, especially a self-confident Black woman. The last thing you want to do is get in the middle of a pissing contest between Custody and Counseling.”

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