Page 73 of The River Is Waiting

“And you’ve got a daughter, a mortgage, and a car payment. Okay, I get it.”

“There is one thing Icando,” Jackson says. “Get Clapp to the hospital and have his injuries looked at, have some X-rays taken. I’ll request a psych eval while he’s there, too. I’ll flag it as an emergency so they don’t just walk him over to the med unit and give him a couple of Tylenol. The state shouldn’t be housing Clapp here when he clearly needs to be in a psychiatric facility. I might not be able to get him transferred by myself, but a report from the hospital couldn’t hurt.”

I thank her for listening to me and taking it seriously. She thanks me for caring about Solomon. “But I’m worried about you, too,” she says. “You need to take care of yourself. Do you know anything about black holes, Ledbetter?”

“I know that whatever gets sucked into one never gets out.”

“Exactly,” she says.

Standing up, I tell her I’d better get back to the job we’re doing. I ask her what she wants me to do with the dead turkey. She tells me to leave it, that she’ll get it disposed of. “Somehow,” she says.

After I leave her office, I head back to the worksite to face the music. I start chastising myself for being too emotionally involved in Solomon’s problems. Sure, I feel sorry for the kid and want to help him, but he’s not really my responsibility. Jackson’s got a daughter to support and so do I. The best way for me to support Maisie is to keep my nose clean until I can get out of this place and be back in her life. Solomon’s not my kid; she is. Still, I’mnotas powerless as Jackson thinks. Getting Anselmo and Piccardy fired is a long shot, but itcouldhappen. Inappropriate use of a state-issued weapon against a poor, dumb animal. Somebody’s got to do something to expose those two and the shit they’re pulling.

When I get back to the barn, the sun’s on the descent. I can hear the other crew members scraping. I’m guessing about an hour to go until quitting time. I grab my scraper and start climbing the ladder when someone grabs my foot. “Hey!” I yell. “What the fuck?” Looking over my shoulder and down, I see it’s Piccardy and, behind him, Goolsby.

“Tell him, Officer Goolsby,” Piccardy says.

“Go back to your block, Ledbetter,” he says. “You’re off the crew.”

“You had a good thing going here, but you blew it,” Piccardy adds.

I’m tempted to say what I’m thinking: you COs have a better thing out here than we do. Pizza parties, pot parties, no one watching you. That would wipe that smug expression off Piccardy’s face, but I’d end up paying for it in spades.

Walking back to B Block, I decide that if I get the third degree from any of the other crew members, I’ll keep my mouth shut. The less said, the better. I enter the block, climb the stairs to our tier, and stop at the control desk. “What’s up?” CO McGreavy asks. I tell him I need an Administrative Remedy form. McGreavy and I have never had any issues, but he gives me a suspicious look as he hands it to me. When I ask him where it goes after I fill it out, he points to the locked box at the far end of the desk.

“Who reads these?” I ask.

“The unit officer who handles grievances for this block,” he tells me.

“Officer as in a regular CO?” He nods. “Who is it?” He says I’m not privy to that information. “It’s not Piccardy, is it? Or Anselmo?”

He looks around to see whether anyone’s watching. Then he shakes his head.

“So I write up the complaint and drop it in the box. Then what happens?”

“Depends. The grievance officer either dismisses the complaint or passes it up the chain to the unit supervisor, or sometimes to a captain or a lieutenant.”

“But not to the warden?”

“Jesus, Ledbetter, what is this? Twenty Questions? Maybe one time out of a hundred it goes as high as the warden’s office, but it’s usually dealt with before it gets that far. You sure you and whoever you got a problem with can’t talk it out instead of putting it in writing? Settle it that way?” I tell him yes, I’m sure.

On the way back to our cell, I try to second-guess which CO would be reading my complaint. Kratt? Hernandez? Maybe even McGreavy himself.Whoever it is, I get the feeling a lot of the other guards think Piccardy’s a douche, so it might make it to the next round. And Captain Graham’s our unit supervisor; she’s no-nonsense but she strikes me as fair. If it gets to her, she might follow up, ask questions, pass it up the chain. It’s worth a shot.

Back in our cell, when Manny asks me about my day, I can’t help but laugh, though nothing’s remotely funny. I tell him I got kicked off the crew.

“What for?” he says.

“Piccardy and Anselmo were abusing Solomon, so I walked off the job and reported them to Jackson.”

“Wow, that was either ballsy or stupid. Abusing him how?”

“Threw him on the ground and started kicking him.” I feel my anger bubbling up again just thinking about it. “Then they took him into the woods, made him get down on all fours and bark like a fucking dog!”

“Jesus, that’s bad. But I’ve seen worse, Corbs.”

I make him promise not to say anything about what I just told him—to let me handle it. “Jackson’s going to have him checked out at the hospital,” I tell him. “Get some X-rays taken and have him talk to a shrink, although who knows how that’s going to go? But seriously, Manny. Don’t discuss this with anyone.”

“Okay, okay. I get the message. Sheesh.”

---