Protection (6 page)

But in the showers Joey had failed to defend himself. Failed to keep from screaming, begging, weeping. Dr. Pfiser and the courts had taken everything external from Joey, but Gabriel had taken everything internal – his optimism, his self-assurance, his belief that no matter how bad things got, he could cope. Just the thought of Gabriel touching him made Joey tremble. Being locked with Gabriel in their cell at night, aware of his presence on the bottom bunk, was torture. The first two nights Joey had hardly slept. Could he remain still for Gabriel, endure whatever happened without retching?

But the first week stretched into the second, and still nothing happened. Gabriel never went into the showers until Joey was done, though he lingered in the towel room to be sure no man tried anything. They ate together, smoked together and gradually began discussing books together. Those rituals grew more and more familiar. But every night Joey climbed into his bunk in his prison-issue pajamas and lay on his back, staring at the ceiling and wondering if this would be the night. And every morning he awakened as the overhead lights snapped on to find Gabriel up and already shaving in front of the cell’s small rectangular mirror.

Often Lonnie turned up at their table during supper. From what Joey could deduce, Lonnie was still Gabriel’s, though sexual activities between them had ceased. Yet Lonnie didn’t seem jealous of Joey. He was a happy-go-lucky sort, cheerful and frequently idle, except for his mouth.

“Do you miss it?” Joey asked Lonnie one night over supper. Gabriel had gone off to roust the gang taunting Benjamin Stiles. The big man couldn’t abide raised voices and frequently found himself backed into a corner, the candy bars he bought in the commissary stolen away.

“Miss what?”

“You know,” Joey said softly, making certain no one else heard. He’d never met a man willing to admit to homosexuality. Even the men who’d tried to seduce Joey denied it. There was always an excuse – special circumstances or some fleeting appetite. “Being Gabriel’s only lover.”

“Ah. Well. I suppose.” Using his spoon, Lonnie heaped his mashed potatoes into a hill. “Gabe’s my sort in lots of ways.”

“Your sort. So you were …?” Joey glanced around surreptitiously. “Homosexual before you were incarcerated?”

Lonnie’s head jerked up. “Oi. ’Course not.” The denial must have sounded unconvincing even to him, because he added in a suddenly accusing tone, “Why, were
you
?”

“No.” Joey smiled. “I was all set to get married. The girl said yes, the ring was purchased, the church was engaged. Then my life fell apart. But I didn’t mean to upset you,” he added, resisting the impulse to place a friendly hand atop Lonnie’s. The nuances of Wentworth’s prison culture were still strange to Joey – God knew what meaning such an otherwise innocent gesture might contain. “I’m merely curious. To know if my turning up here has – well, caused you any grief, I suppose.”

Lonnie chuckled. “I do love the way you toffs talk. And if you really want to know,” his eyes sparkled, “I weren’t exactly what you’d call a
virgin
before I got sent up. But the geezers round here don’t want to hear that. Think they’re all proper men, hot for pussy or nothing.” Lonnie pronounced the last word “nuffink.” “Six months later those same geezers are bending me over, going to town like they’re riding a thoroughbred. But I’m the dirty pervert ’cause I tried it of my own free will. They think they’re better than me ’cause they was driven to it.”

“Gabriel says he was driven to it.”

“I know.” Lonnie glanced around, then leaned across the table, whispering, “But he knows about me. Knows I was queer when I was outside, and never beat or cursed me. He protected me all the same and still does, even now that you’re here.”

“But have I done you a bad turn?”

Lonnie shrugged, flattening his mashed potato hill into a plain. “Told you. I like Gabe. But I couldn’t make him happy. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”

Joey thought about that. Across the cafeteria, Gabriel was prodding Stiles, still crying, through the food line, forcing him to select meat and vegetables as well as pudding. The convicts who’d tormented the big man had disappeared. They were unlikely to try it again, at least in Gabriel’s presence. Gabriel was treated with friendly respect or overt fear by almost everyone, but among the inmates he seemed to have no friends.

Of course not,
Joey thought.
Most of them are mentally subnormal or sociopathic
. Their only pursuits were physical exercise, smoking and cards. Gabriel’s intellectual curiosity was alien to them. And he could only win so many games of poker. Afterwards, his restless mind would seek fresh stimulation, at least during those hours he wasn’t using his carpentry skills toward Wentworth’s ongoing renovation.

Joey had assumed that when it came to work detail, he would be sent to the infirmary, but instead he found himself assigned to B-block’s overhaul. Governor Sanderson, emboldened by the use of British prison labor to improve roads and dig tunnels, intended to completely rebuild Old Wentworth over the next several years. Gabriel, as Wentworth’s only skilled craftsman, a master carpenter, was indispensible to the project. Joey was just another pair of hands, one of over fifty inmates supervised by an architect, an engineer and the guards.

Despite the tools at hand – picks, shovels, hammers, ropes, pulleys, large S-hooks and trowels – the outbreaks of bad behavior had been few. Many inmates seemed to relish hard physical labor, particularly when they could see the fruits of their efforts rising around them. And corporal punishment loomed for any man caught misusing or stealing a tool.

Joey and four others had been set to bricking-in the walls of B-block’s new office. Joey alternately mixed mortar and trowelled it into place as the others laid bricks and wiped away globs of oozing mortar. By afternoon, two walls were up. Then the engineer swept through, noticed their progress on the third wall and demanded they stop at once. The specs for a window space had been completely overlooked.

The guard in charge of Joey and the others turned belligerent, insisting the plans were unclear and no one could have interpreted them properly. More progress that afternoon looked unlikely – the guard was digging in his heels and the engineer was fit to be tied. So Joey and the others had sat down within the shelter of two and a half walls, smoking and laughing as they speculated on how they’d finally be directed to continue.

“Cooper! Bet you can read better than Bynum,” one inmate said, meaning the guard who’d misread the plans. “Why don’t you volunteer to supervise us?”

Joey smiled. The F-block men were easier with him now, occasionally calling out greetings or stopping to pass the time of day. But Joey recognized a challenge when he heard one.

“If you chaps nominate me, I’d be honored.” Joey put on an impossibly posh accent, the sort of enunciation that gave “Shakespeare” four syllables. “But the governor will jolly well have to pay my price, won’t he? Is a month’s furlough and a case of bubbly too much to ask?”

Laughter and smiles all around made Joey feel almost normal again, back in his home village instead of this nightmare. Then Paulie Jensen turned up.

Paulie was E-block’s strong man. Blond-haired and squat, he had an overdeveloped chest and long arms like an albino gorilla. As with many of Wentworth’s lifers, Paulie seemed almost supernaturally attuned to the guards’ movements. Small pockets of unsupervised mirth drew Paulie like a shark to bloody waters.

“I’ve been watching you, Cooper,” Paulie told Joey, looking him up and down hungrily. “You’re too sweet for MacKenna. His dick tastes like Lonnie Parker’s shit, don’t you know that?”

“Spit it out, then.” Joey didn’t stand up, but all his muscles tensed. The visceral response came as a relief. True, Gabriel terrified him. But when it came to normal men, normal threats, he was still the Joey Cooper he’d once relied on. “And while you’re about it, piss off.”

Paulie’s eyes widened. “Stand up and say that.”

Joey stood up. When Paulie lunged for him, slow and untrained, Joey caught Paulie’s short legs in a wrestling hold and pulled them both down. Then, as if on the mat at Oxford, Joey jerked Paulie’s left arm behind his back. Even as the man grunted, unable to break free, Joey gripped Paulie’s lower half in a scissor hold.

“Give,” Joey warned. “Give or I’ll snap it, swear to God.”

Something hard connected with the side of Joey’s face. He let go of Paulie’s arm and legs. It took Joey a second to realize he’d been struck by a glancing kick. The wet warmth on his upper lip was blood. Head still reeling, Joey felt himself hauled up by two of Paulie’s crew, spun roughly around and bent over the half-bricked wall. None of the F-blockers were there. No one had stuck around to defend him.

Still dazed by the kick, Joey felt his trousers pulled down. His shorts were yanked to his ankles. He tried to scream but couldn’t – two men held him in place while an apelike hand clamped over his mouth. Joey’s heart beat wildly against his ribcage, blood roaring in his ears as Paulie rubbed up against him. It was happening again. Joey was bare-assed, helpless,
it
jabbing his inner thigh and about to—

“Paulie,” a familiar voice said between panting breaths, ragged with exertion yet fundamentally calm. “What’s this, then?”

Joey snapped back to himself. The wild roaring in his ears shut off. Such was his dread of Gabriel – the realization he was present, with Joey in such a vulnerable state, snapped Joey back to reality as nothing else could.

“Just looking over your girl.” Paulie’s simian fingers detached from Joey’s mouth. The other men let go, too. Backing away from the wall, Joey tripped on his shorts and trousers, still wadded around his ankles, and fell over.

Paulie laughed as Joey flailed, making himself decent as fast as he could. But Paulie’s friends weren’t laughing. They were blank-faced, staring at Gabriel.

“Paulie,” Gabriel said, still between breaths. He’d run a long way. “You used the phrase ‘my girl.’ Do you not know its meaning?”

“Oi! Are you in love, MacKenna?” Paulie scoffed. “Do you whisper Cooper’s name into your pillow as you lie down to sleep every night?”

As Joey got to his feet, Gabriel’s eyes slid over his face. “You’re bloodied. Right. Who did it?”

Joey wasn’t sure which of Paulie’s friends had kicked him. Nor was he sure if he was meant to answer. Wentworth’s culture felt a great deal like primary school. So Joey fell back on his old schoolboy’s oath never to grass, no matter what. “I don’t know.”

“Fair enough.” Whirling, Gabriel came at Paulie in a blur, something small and metallic in his hand. Paulie screamed – high, gut wrenching, primal. As Gabriel released him, Paulie staggered back, a long steel nail protruding from his left eye.

“Pull it out! Pull it out!” Paulie screamed at his friends.

Lips compressed, eyes wide with terror, the braver of the pair grasped the nail and jerked it free. Paulie screamed even louder as a gush of blood and what Joey knew must be aqueous humor shot from the ruptured orb.

“Joey,” Gabriel said in his ear.

Joey recoiled. Only with effort did he look at the man who’d protected him.

“Say as little as possible. Admit nothing. I’ll see you tonight in commons.” Then Gabriel was off, sprinting back to safety.

Soon Joey found himself under intense scrutiny, along with his recently reappeared F-block brethren. They’d abandoned him to warn Gabriel, Joey realized, surprised by his sudden emotional response. Was it twisted, feeling gratitude to one rapist for saving him from another?
 
Feeling warmth for the men who recognized Gabriel’s ownership of him and hatred for the men who ignored it?

I’m losing my mind
, Joey thought, not for the first time.
Maybe I’m dead. Maybe the train crashed on the journey to Findley. The person I took for Dr. Pfiser was really Satan, and Wentworth is really hell.

But surely hell would make sense. And Wentworth made no sense, none at all. Under direct questioning from the lieutenant governor, Joey, Paulie’s friends and even Paulie himself repeated the same ludicrous refrain. They had no idea who’d blinded Paulie with a nail – just a mystery man without a face. The lieutenant governor had speculated, threatened, even hinted he might be permitted to birch obstructive witnesses. But beaten by a sea of mute, gormless faces, the lieutenant governor finally gave up. The guards bundled Paulie off to the infirmary to have the empty white shell of his eye removed and the lid sewn over the socket.