By Joshua Ryan

It takes a little over half an hour to get to Glenvue from where I’d been living, but I was so wired up I don’t remember anything about the drive except being wired up.  I was a mile from my destination when I came out of my nerves enough to notice that Glenvue was a lot more prosperous than I’d thought it was.  I hadn’t pictured Dean working in a place that was quite that well off.  Maybe that explained why they didn’t mind hiring gays!  It looked like the kind of town where they wash the streets every night and you get fined if you don’t have a two-car garage.  I couldn’t help looking at it and thinking, “If my next book sells, I’m gonna get a place out here.”

The driver slowed down and turned in my direction.  He was a 20-something with a pony tail and a taste for the smooth jazz channel.  “You said 623 White Oak, right?”

“Right.”

“That’s it over there, but there must be somethin wrong, man.  It’s the County Jail.”

“That’s right.  That’s where I’m going.”

“Uh, OK dude.  I’ll let you off at the front entrance … Or do you want the visitors entrance?  That sign on the corner…”

“No thanks.  I’m not a visitor.  You might say I belong here.”

“OK, boss.  Whatever you want.”

He stopped in front of the building.  I reached in my wallet for a tip.

“Thanks.  And … good luck, man.”

He’d figured out why I was there.  He pitied me.  From noted author to dude-to-be-pitied, in one easy ride.  Amusing — and definitely something for the book.

The jail, or Justice Center as it said on the sign over the door, was a modern building — earth-tone brick on the sides, dark marble accents on the front, nice little lawn, low travertine steps leading to the all-glass entrance.  Inside the lobby was a broad marble desk with computers on top and a cop seated behind it.  He raised his head and wondered if he could help me, sir.  That’s the way they treat taxpayers in a town like that.

“Thanks.  I … uh … I’ve got an Order to Report…”

His face changed.

“Name.”  He said it like he was making an announcement.  “Last name first.”

“Uh … Meres.  Steven Meres.”  Why was it so hard for me to get those words out of my mouth?  “I’ve got the Order here…”

He allowed me to place it on his desk, then typed something into his computer that I hypothesized was “Meres Stephen.”

There was an awkward moment of quiet.  Awkward for me.  What if something had gone wrong?  But the cop found what he was looking for.  He nodded silently to his screen.  To me he said, in a voice like ice, “I.D.”

I fumbled for my wallet and fished out my driver’s license, which he placed next to my Order to Report, as if they were two opposing pieces of evidence.

“All right,” he said.  “Sit over there.”  He pointed to a bank of leather seats next to one of the big front windows, yellow with dawn.  I lingered for a moment, expecting him to push my license and my order back across the desk, but his hand scooped them into some receptacle I couldn’t see.  They were gone.  I’d never lost my driver’s license, but now I knew how it felt.

All right, so I chose a seat.  I was grateful that nobody was sitting on the other ones; I needed a minute or two to compose myself.  A glance at my phone confirmed that, yes, I was on time.  Ahead of time — 6:47 a.m.  Naturally, if you came early, there might be a delay of some kind…

I looked through the windows.  Across the street was an apartment building.  Condos, maybe.  Three stories.  Balconies.  Nice.  Must have a pool in there…

“Meres!”

I looked around.  At the far end of the lobby, a big cop was standing next to an open door.  OK, this is it…

“MERES!”

He clearly didn’t like to say things twice.

I started for the door.

“Hurry it up!”

I hurried.  I went through the door.

Boom!  A bear paw landed on my shoulder and pushed my face against a wall.  “Hands on your head!  Lace em!”

At the moment, “lace” seemed like an unduly literary word.

I was in some kind of hallway, and the cop was filling almost all of it.  I’d noticed that smell of polyester before.  It was the smell of Dean’s uniform.  The odor of law enforcement was now overwhelming.  Big hands ran down my body, patting my butt and rubbing my cock on their way to my pockets.

“Anything in there that might hurt me?”

“No, I…”

The hands kept moving.

“All right.  Turn around.  Lower your right hand.”

I lowered, and a handcuff clicked onto my wrist.

“Other one.”

Same thing happened.

“See that door?”  There was a door at the end of the hallway.  The door was buzzing.  “Go for it.”

I went for it, my cuffed hands in front of me like a package I was carrying.  The cop reached past me and pushed the door open.  Now I was in a square white room with two steel benches crouching in the center.

“Sit,” he said, pointing to a section of bench with “6” painted on the surface.

I sat, and he padlocked the chain between my cuffs to a ring that was welded to the bench.  I watched while his thick tanned arms chained my thin white arms to the ring.  Then he walked away.

“Well,” I thought.  “That didn’t take long.”

I guess I didn’t need to tell you that I’d never been handcuffed before.  It happened in my stories — quite a lot, come to think of it — but when it happened for real it wasn’t like the way I’d described it.  Nothing prepared me for the automatic way in which the cop claimed ownership of my arms, and then of the rest of me.  And I wasn’t just cuffed; I was attached to a piece of furniture, with nothing to do except look around at one of the least interesting rooms I’d ever been in.  It was just four walls, with a long counter poking out from the wall across from me, protected by one of those plastic shields that you see in banks.  A shield with no one behind it.  I twisted the other way — tried to, anyway, until the steel bit into my wrists.  Nothing in that direction either, except two or three doors.  Steel.  Painted gray.  Paint rubbed out around the handles.  No telling where those doors might lead.  A few minutes before, I’d been telling the Luft guy where to take me.  Now I was there.  With nothing going on except the thought thudding through my skull:  Where is Dean?!  He said he’d be here to take care of me!

From time to time a door opened and a cop walked through the room.  They looked like the taut young guys I put in my stories, but unlike people in a story, they weren’t paying much attention to the hero.  None, in fact.  It was like there wasn’t anybody sitting on the bench.  I wondered what had happened to the guys who’d been occupying bench positions 1-5 and 7-10.  Had they died without anybody noticing and been carried off at the end of the day?

Then two of the cops sauntered past, talking.  I heard one of them say, “Who’s on the roster?”

“Brannigan.”

“Glad it’s not me.  Hate that Owosso run.”

“Yeah. Biggest fuckin bore.”

They went out through the door to the lobby.  So — OK!  Dean was “on the roster.”  At least I hadn’t been making him up in my head.

“All right, boy,” a voice said from behind me.  “Time to go.”

Fuck!  It was Dean.  Acting like a cop.  Which he was.  Of course.

He bent down and unlocked my cuffs from the bench.

“Stand up,” he said.

I stood up.

“Stand still.”

I stood still — while he locked a pair of shackles on my legs.

“This way,” he said, steering me by the arm.  “Through that door.”

His movements were inflexible, part of his job, a thing he got paid to do.  He must have done it a hundred times.  But now it was me, a thin little author in a $200 shirt, $200 slacks, $500 shoes, a pair of handcuffs and a set of shackles, cost unknown, stumbling toward one of those gray steel doors, his gait limited to the bird trot of a man over 90 — and him, a solid, hard, totally toned Deputy Sheriff, completely equipped and uniformed, guiding me down a hallway saying “Hey man,” “Gotcha on Thursday,” and “Pullin your duty I guess” to the other totally equipped, stacked, and uniformed men encountered on the way, until finally we got to a place where there was a bigger steel door and a wall full of little steel boxes beside it, each with a combination lock on the front.  He dialed a combination, took a gun out of the box, and dropped it into his holster.  So now he was armed, in case I gave him any trouble.

Ego rush?  Definitely — it was exciting to imagine that I was a threat, even a generic one.  But not for long.  The rush died out when I got through the door and found myself stumbling down some concrete steps and into the parking lot.  The shackles had about 15 inches of chain between them, and if Dean hadn’t been holding me by the arm I would have fallen on my face.  He pulled me, waddling like a duck, toward a line of cop cars resting against a fence, the barrier that separated the world of upscale Glenvue from the domain of offenders and cops.  All the cars were the same — long, wide, and black, with tall white lettering on their sides and thick steel rams on their snouts, in case some prisoner had friends who wanted to block his way to the penitentiary.  “Climb in,” Dean said, opening the door to the back seat.

Getting into a car isn’t easy when your feet are shackled and you can’t use your arms.  I missed my target, banging against the side of the car and hitting my leg on the door sill.  Dean watched me for a minute, then casually threw me inside and locked the seat belt on me.  Click.  I was fastened.  He slammed the door.  I was good to go.

Once he was in the driver’s seat I had trouble seeing him very well — between him and me was a thick steel grille.  I looked around — there were bars on the windows too.  If you want to achieve full personal security, go to the Patna County Sheriff’s Department.  There was no possibility that I would not arrive at my destination.

He started the car and it bumped heavily over the sidewalk, out to the street.

“Brannigan,” he said to his dashboard.  “Offender in transport.  On his way to Owosso.”

“Check.  Enjoy your trip, dude.”

“Done this before.  Back for lunch.  Brannigan out.”

He turned some corners and headed for the highway.  Before I’d stopped squirming in my belt, cuffs, and shackles we were rolling down a four-lane toward Owosso.

Finally he noticed the package in the back seat.

“How’s the ride?” he said.

“Bumpy.”

“Yeah, don’t have much cushioning back in the cage.”

Not much?  There wasn’t any.  It was like nobody remembered to put shock absorbers on the rear part of the car.  The back seat was hard plastic — no padding at all.  Every bump in the road let me know that I was a criminal being punished for his mistakes — in my case, for the mistake of letting myself be sent to prison.  The car had a smell, stale and sharp at the same time, as if everyone who’d traveled in “the cage” had left a trace of his panic behind.  My pride in being a criminal was ebbing fast.  The penalty for flouting the law was to be cooped like a dog on its way to the pound.  And Dean was playing the untouchable cop.

The big black-and-white nosed through traffic like a shark, all the little, unimportant fish making way for it.  When we slowed for a jam I could see people in the other vehicles staring at the strange creature riding in the back of a car that was not a taxi or a Luft.  I could see the moment when they realized I was a jailbird being taken to the pen.  Reaction was a few laughs, a lot of giggles, and a whole lot of smug.  Dean turned his gaze lazily from side to side, enjoying the attention, but his shoulders always loomed up giant on the other side of the cage, imperturbable.  When he started to talk, there was no movement, no sense of urgency or even interest.  There was just the sound of his voice in the distance, like a voice coming over the radio.

“I know you’re excited,” he said, “so I’m gonna yank your wires a little bit more.  I put an Opt In on your records.”

“Huh?”

“I knew you’d ask.  Again, you may be the big prison writer, but you don’t know jack about prisons.”  He looked at me in the mirror.  I expected a flash of that irresistible grin.  But he just looked.  “Let me put it to you this way.  Remember a book called ‘Second Thoughts’?”

“Yes.  I wrote it.”

“So you’ll probably remember the scene where Danny is sitting in the back of the courtroom while a pair of sheriff’s deputies are pulling out some guy that’s like, totally bad, a total offender, and he just got a sentence that was a slap on the wrist.  One year, I think.”

“Two years.”

“No difference.  You’ll see how that is in prison.  But Danny’s watching the deputies.  That’s a good idea you had, by the way — keep shifting the focus.  Good technique.  You’re a good writer.”

“Thank you,” I said, putting as much irony into it as I could.  I was still trying to get halfway comfortable, and I hoped the thrashing of my ass and the rattling of my cuffs and shackles against the plastic seat would let him know what “one year to life” was starting to do to me.

“Anyway, Danny’s watching the deputies, and he’s thinking, ‘They know what’s going on.  What are THEY thinking while they’re takin this guy out to do his twelve months in a white-collar prison?  They’ve gotta be thinking, ‘Revenge!  Somebody’s gotta get back at that guy, or there’s no such thing as justice.’  That’s in your story.”

“Right.”  I was going to add, “And your point is…?” but that didn’t seem like something a prisoner would actually say.

“So yeah.  Great insight.  You got it right.  But what you don’t know about real cops is this: we don’t need to wait for Danny Brant to come along.  We got ways to take revenge.  And one of them is Opt In.”

“Which is what?”  No amount of twisting would get my butt into the right position.   The best I could hope for was to keep my arms and legs from numbing out while Dean continued his endless, unhurried remarks.  Somehow I seemed to have been more comfortable before he started making conversation.

“It’s something special for punks like you.”  Again, a look in the mirror, this time with a little smile.  “When we know an offender is more dangerous to society than the judge thought he was, we enter a little Opt In on his jacket.  That’s what we call your record,” he added, helpful as my third-grade teacher.  “We call it your jacket.”

“Really!”  But sarcasm was lost on him.  He was the guy wearing a gun; I was the guy wearing chains.

“It’s bottom right corner in the offender’s Short File.  It means that for him to get a review — you know, to decide whether he’s gonna get out after one year or two years or five years or whatever is the minimum part on his indeterminate, somebody in the system has to opt in on it.  Some officer has to say, yeah, let’s review him.  As opposed to somebody actually having to go on record and deny a review.  That would be a Double Oh — an Opt Out.  A con with an Oh Eye could wait a long time before somebody decided to opt him in.  You understand?”

I finally put it together.  “You did that in MY file?”

“Yup.  I knew it would get you goin.  If you knew.  So I just told you.  Now you know you’re just another hopeless con.  Unless, of course, I get somebody to opt you in.  Which, you know, I plan to do.”

He was right about yanking my wires.

“Are you telling me…”

“Hey!” he smiled to the mirror, not looking at me.  “Nothin changed.  You’re still gettin out in a year.  Although … you don’t think that anybody with your charges would actually get out in that length of time, do you?  Normally, I mean.  But I still like you.”

I tried to remember the charges.  DUI, drugs, resisting arrest … some other stuff.

“Maybe I wouldn’t!  But…”  But what?

“It’s your fantasy, Steve.  I know you want it to be as real as possible.”

“Steve.”  I hated that nickname.  It reminded me of “stevedore” or some other type of “workingman.”  But OK, you’re chained in a car with PATNA COUNTY SHERIFF painted on the side in eight-inch letters, and you’re on your way to prison, and you’re scared out of your head, and then your FRIEND, who’s taking you to prison, reveals that he’s made it virtually impossible to get out of there, unless he does you a favor.  Because he likes you.  What would you be thinking, right at that moment?

Right.  You guessed it.  I was thinking, What just HAPPENED?  What should I do?  Was he threatening me?  Should I offer him more money?  But I didn’t have any money!  I mean, I did, but I didn’t have it WITH me.  My lawyer — oh fuck! what’s his NAME?  Norman.  Norman Jarrelson.  I’d call my lawyer.  He’d give me the money.  But I couldn’t call him!  I was on my way to prison!

Then it came to me — This is stupid.  There’s no new information here.  I paid for an adventure; he’s giving me one.  He’s just giving it an extra turn of the screw.  An extra frisson of fear.  Which he’s being completely up front about.   And this is no time to show my fear.  This weird guy can do whatever he wants with me.  It’s not a good time to piss him off.

“That’s right,” I smiled.  “That’s what I want.”

“Well hey,” he said.  “Here’s our exit.  Now shut the fuck up.”

If there was a town of Owosso, it was invisible.  As soon as we got off the freeway there was nothing but long, flat fields — dirt with some green stuff sticking out.  Where was the prison?  I was squinting through the bars on both sides and doing the best I could to see through the windshield, but all I could make out was a cheap-shit industrial park and some nondescript buildings, far away.

Abruptly we turned onto some pavement going off the main road.  A sign said:

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

OPC

“OPC,” Dean said.  “Orientation and Processing Center.  This is where you get off.”

A long driveway led to some grim-looking concrete structures squatting behind a fence topped with razor wire.  Dean drove slowly along the fence.  “Brannigan,” he announced to his equipment.  “Patna County Sheriff.  One on board.”

“Good ta hear ya, buddy.  Bring him in.”

Soon the car was facing a gate in the fence, which I now saw went up higher than the building it guarded.  The red light above the gate flickered and turned to yellow, then to green.  We crept closer; the gate slid open.  As we passed, I had time to read the sign hanging next to it:

YOU ARE ENTERING A CORRECTIONAL FACILITY

ALL PERSONS ARE SUBJECT TO SEARCH

VIOLATIONS WILL BE PROSECUTED

Behind us, the gate whirred, slithered, and banged shut.  Ahead was something that looked like a garage door.  Around it was — nothing, just the fence, guarding the tract of dirt we were sitting on.  The sun was climbing.  You could tell it was going to be a hot day, here in the dirt.

Dean sat calmly, looking ahead.  “If you can’t do the time,” he commented, “don’t do the crime.”  Everything was quiet after that, except for the rustle of my cuffs as my hands shook.  Then there was a clank and a loud metallic growl, and the garage door started opening.  It rolled up slowly over the dark hole behind it.  The car moved forward.  The door fell behind it with a shattering clang.  It was closed.  I was inside.  I had Entered the Correctional Facility.

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