By Joshua Ryan

Something woke me.  It was the bus slowing down as it took an exit.  There was nothing around but trees.  Tall pine trees.  I knew we’d been going north, but I didn’t realize how far we’d got.  This was the fucking forest primeval.

“Where are we?” I asked.

Junior was awake and looking out the window.  He nodded toward something coming into view.  It was a sign with an arrow pointing to the left.

MASKAWA

Ferry 12 m.

“Maskawa,” I said.  “That name sounds familiar…”

“Worst prison in the state,” he muttered.  He didn’t say it like “I don’t give a fuck.”  He said it like, “fuck, this is bad.”

Then I remembered.  Dean said that too.  He said it was the toughest prison in the state.  When he said I wouldn’t be sent there.

“Maybe we’re not stopping there,” I said.  “Maybe they’re taking us someplace else.”

“Ain’t no other joint up here.  Maskawa’s the end of the line.”

You know that hardon you get just because you’re sleeping, and not even because you’re hooked, arm in arm, to the kind of man that some guys would kill to be hooked to?  I’d had that kind of hardon when I woke up, and it had made me happy.  Now it was gone.

“Is it cold in here?” I said.

“Nah.  You’re just scared.”

We drove through trees for the next few miles.  Then we came to a sign that said, “South Harbor, Pop. 1689.  Great Way to the Great Lake.”  Suddenly we were on the main street of a tourist trap.

I’d often wondered why people went Up North, and now I knew.  It was for signs that said OLD-FASHIONED FUDGE — SEE IT MADE!; ONE BLOCK AHEAD, SOUVENIRS OF THE TALL PINE COUNTRY; KILLED WITH AN AXE! WORLD FAMOUS MURDER MUSEUM; FAMILY DINING — TURN RIGHT HERE, and for the pleasure of strolling aimlessly down the street, gawking at stores.  The bus slowed and crept forward, careful to avoid tourists standing in the road, phones raised to immortalize the vista.  The street was narrow, pedestrian heads were at window level, a camera rose on somebody’s arm and took our pictures through the bars.  I tried to cover my face, then realized that my hands were no longer mine to use.  All I could do was close my eyes.

When I opened them we were sitting beside a line of cars waiting for the FERRY TO MASKAWA.  “Maskawa’s an island,” Junior informed me.  OK, thanks.  That went with having a ferry.  A little ship was at the dock, its ass open to take in passengers.  Cars were waiting, but we were given a head start.  The chain bus bumped into the hull and came to rest with a sigh that echoed through the surrounding steel.  The officer riding shotgun emerged from his cage.

“Awright, you’re goin onto the island.  State law says you can’t stay inside a vehicle that’s on a ferry.  So we’re takin you to the next deck up, where you can ride in a place made special for you.  Move off!  No talkin!”  He unlocked the culprits in the cages and pulled them out first.  They were dazed and wobbly and were keeping their lips zipped.  Then the rest of us were unlocked from our seats, free to navigate the aisle and steps as well as could be done by cuffed and shackled two-headed monsters.  Even Junior had trouble with the stairs that led up from the car deck to that special place that was just for us.  At the end of the steps we were shooed to the stern, where a narrow deck was open to the weather.  A barred gate protected us from the passengers moving forward and upward, and spiked railings protected us from jumping off the ship.  There were benches (no backs, of course), and we shambled over to them.  I guess nobody wanted to go and gaze over the side.

I looked at the deck above us.  From the sounds I was hearing, that was where passengers went to buy snacks and drinks.  Directly above us was what they probably called a promenade.  People could stand in the open and look out at the lake and the town, and down at the freight, otherwise known as prisoners, that was stowed on deck.  Soon a lot of passengers were taking in the sights.  Most of them just stared.  A few of them pointed and laughed — young guys, mainly, standing at the rail with cokes and tacos.  One of them yelled “Look at the monkeys!”  A crewman came over and smiled at him.  “Don’t bother the animals!” he said, which made everybody laugh.  Then they got bored or decided to go where they could get a better view of the lake or their crushes or whatever, and there was only one of them left.  He was a college kid like the rest of them — blond hair, khaki shorts, red flannel shirt, blue baseball cap — but he wasn’t yelling or joking, he was just looking at us like he wanted to be a camera.  One of his buddies came to fetch him — actually, it looked like an older brother or something, from the way the guy was telling him what to do, but he shook his head and kept looking down.  He didn’t laugh; he didn’t smile; he just looked.

If I hadn’t been dressed in a white convict suit with shackles on my legs and my arm chained to the arm of another convict, and if I hadn’t been ten years older than the guy looking down, I would have thought he was cruising me.  Or somebody.  I was like all the other prisoners — I wanted to keep my head down, and I wanted to keep it even lower when I saw how weird that guy was.  It was like he was taking notes on us, like he was the one who was going to write a book about what he saw on his trip to prison.  The fact that he was a hot little guy, with his shirt flopped open and a great little chest underneath it, and his shorts tightened in exactly the right places … it almost made the zoo-visitor stare not humiliating.  Like, maybe he WAS cruising.  Maybe he wasn’t just looking down at the cattle.  But then he lifted his phone and started doing what guys that age do, all the time — recording the scene.  And not for a couple of seconds, but on and on, walking back and forth to get it from different positions and angles.  The guy had this psychotic intensity, like he was working on a secret report and he wanted it to be fully documented.

There was no place to hide; I just did my best to stare at my flipflops.  The kid kept it up until his friend came back and acted pissed with him.  Then he shoved his phone in his pocket and moved away, like he was the one that was embarrassed, not his victims on the deck below.  But before he got to the door that led to the snacks and drinks and restrooms, he turned around and went at it one more time.  I’d been trying not to look at him, but just when I thought he was gone, he got me right in the face.  I know; I was looking straight at him.  And he kept on taking pictures.  Now I understood why they had us chained up like that.  I wanted nothing so much as to climb up to the next deck, dragging Junior with me, and smash that guy’s phone into his face.

It takes an hour to cross the strait between South Harbor and Maskawa, heading north.  For normal passengers, it was a nice day, considering how far Up they were.  There were sailboats and seagulls and the rest of the vacation paraphernalia.  For the packages in white canvas with PRISON TRANSPORT on their backs, the only thing that mattered was the island in the distance as it changed from a fleeting possibility to a reality that wouldn’t go away.  The thing was long and green, low at the ends and high in the middle, like a monster in a sci-fi movie when it’s been killed and has gone belly up.  As we closed in on it, the cause of death became clear — on top of the belly was something hard and gray, like a thick, scaly tumor.

“Rocky up there,” I said.

“That’s the prison,” Junior said.  “I seen pictures before.”

So that’s where I was going: Devil’s Island!  Or was that just a story?

The ferry turned the point and coasted into the harbor, the cancer on the mountain vanishing behind the trees.  Soon we were bumping against the old tires nailed to the dock at the village of Maskawa.  Here again, it was convicts first.  The paying passengers were held behind until we’d been marched down the steps and onto the bus.  I had to pay close attention to my convict shuffle; I didn’t want to fall on my face while leaving this miniature Titanic.  I did almost fall, when we were passing the gate that kept the normal people back.  I was right at the steps when I heard a voice: “Steven Meres!  You’re Steven Meres!”  My head jerked toward the noise, I stumbled, and Junior had to get me on my feet again.  At the moment when my foot went wrong, I saw whose voice it was.  It was that college kid who’d been taking pictures.

“You know that guy?” Junior said.

“I never saw him before,” I answered.  I don’t think he believed me, but he didn’t care.  Why should he care who Steven Meres was?

Back on the bus, I felt rivers of sweat coming out of my pits.  Who was that guy?  Why was he taking my picture?  It was like he’d been waiting his whole life to collect a picture of me in a convict suit.  Did Jerry send him?  For some kind of publicity stunt?  But Jerry didn’t know where I was.  He couldn’t know.  He couldn’t even guess … unless Dean had told him!  But no, that would get Dean into trouble.  As for publicity … it would blow my cover.  It would destroy my project before it even got started.  I could see it now: “Author Seen in Prison Caper.”  And those pictures!  I shuddered as if I were running through the boreal wilderness, with Sergeant Preston on my tail.  If that guy put those things on the net — “Steven Meres Models Season’s Newest Fashions,” “Last Voyage of the ‘Steven Meres’”…!

It was a fuck of a time to have a fan club.  But how did he even recognize me?  He followed all the literary news?  Dean was right — nobody did that.  I wouldn’t recognize myself in the outfit I was wearing — how could he do it?  He couldn’t.  It was a weird guess.  Even he would have to realize that.  But no, the whole thing was ridiculous.  He was just some geek with Collector’s Syndrome.  People like that don’t publicize their finds; they hoard them.  I had worse things to worry about than some random stranger.

The bus jolted to life and found its way off the ferry.  We had reached the island — which turned out to be a much more exclusive destination than South Harbor.  No more narrow, tacky streets and cheap clothes on cheaper bodies.  We were rolling along a broad avenue beside a beachfront park, an avenue lined with quaint Victorian hotels and stylish outdoor cafes.  People in bright clothes enjoyed their drinks as other smart people strolled past.  It was the kind of scene that made you think that somebody must be filming a commercial.  No one took pictures of the ugly white bus going past.  Why should they?  They knew a garbage truck when they saw one.

In a few blocks, we passed the final hotel’s final Welcome banner, and the land returned to the North — tall dark pines sighing along a beach that was nothing but jagged rocks, black with the spray of waves crashing in.  A left turn, and we began to climb.  We were going up the mountain.  The forest road was dark and too small for vehicles to pass.  I remembered the chapter I wrote in “Second Thoughts,” when Danny has escaped from prison and he’s running through Sinfield Woods, running and hiding among the trees.  He couldn’t have done that here.  The forest floor was filled with brush and brambles and what looked like stretches of old barbed wire.  He could never have escaped from Maskawa, not with the forest to delude him and trip him up, and the lake beating on the rocks somewhere below.

The road stopped being paved and started being gravel.  It crept and bent for one or two miles, always slanting upward, when we came to a gate bearing the sickening sign:

MASKAWA STATE PENITENTIARY

There was a guard booth on the side, and an officer in gray who let us through.  As the gate slid open I looked left and right at steel fences running as far as I could see — two parallel fences, with razor wire on top and a wide space cleared between them, a dead zone stripped of everything but the lowliest vegetation.  No, Danny couldn’t get out of this.

Now what?  I wasn’t the only one who was asking himself that.  The atmosphere in the bus had changed.  No more sleeping.  No more random conversation.  Everyone, even Junior, was twisting himself to look out the windows.  None of us wanted to go to prison, but all of us wanted to see where we were going.  There were driveways running off through the trees, each with a sign: MOTOR POOL, OFFICERS CLUB, FIRING RANGE.  Then at a fork, PARKING, with an arrow pointing right, and DELIVERIES, with an arrow pointing left.  The bus turned left; it was about to deliver its goods.

A final curve, and the road broke out of the forest.  First a narrow green lawn; then, on the far side of the lawn — the Prison, full in our faces.

There are some things that can’t be described; they can only be seen.  I had imagined places like this before, and put them in my stories.  Now I realized that nothing I’d imagined came anywhere close.  You try it.  Imagine a stone wall 30 feet high.  Then imagine piles of brick and stone rising inside it, twice as high.  Imagine that any windows you see are covered with bars, proof that this is a place constructed for total control.  Now imagine that the place is not imaginary at all; imagine that it’s real, and that you know it’s the place where you will actually have to live.  But you still haven’t arrived at your penitentiary.  You’re still on the outside.

At the front of the prison was a Victorian monstrosity of a house, all gables and arches and towers, sitting like a miniature castle between the prison and the road.  The thing was huge, but it looked like a doll’s house, compared with the monster behind it.  A small sign in front said “Entrance,” but apparently that was for people, not prisoners — the bus didn’t stop.  It turned and turned again, hugging the side wall of the prison.  Across from me, the windows went dark; there was nothing out there but the wall.  On my side, I saw — nothing!  We were traveling into the sky!  I jerked my body up as far as it would go and looked past Junior, through the window and down.  There, hundreds of feet below, was the lake.  The road was built on a cliff, and so close to the edge that there was only one choice: death or prison.  When the brakes grabbed, I thought the choice had been made — we were going over the side!  But we weren’t facing death; we were facing the steel gate of Prison.  Which looked like death.

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