When
the loudspeaker called yard, #620749 grabbed a book and his tape
player with Peter Gabriel cassette, then headed out to seek respite
from that pathetic "bug" who shared his cell, an old man who devoted
his personal time to indulging obsessive-compulsions and throwing
fits over imagined slights to the respect he neither earned nor
deserved. Too often lately #620749 found himself tempted to reach
out mid-tantrum and smack him once or twice, but like those recovering
addicts who must constantly remember the vows they made during easier
times, he always managed somehow to desist. In more charitable moments
he tried to feel sorry for anybody who could spend all morning gazing
blankly upon cinder-block walls, then when count clears rush down
to base and join the small herd that gathers an hour or more in
advance of the loudspeaker calling chow. Submerged so long, now
too cognition-impaired to remember up from down, that old lifer
would never again find his way back to the surface.
The day proved sunny and hot, so #620749 hurried to claim some grassy
patch between pine trees in a far corner of the rural compound.
He studied the scene and noticed three colors of clover blooms intermixed,
all methodically attended by numerous honeybees and the occasional
bumble, their legs gobbed with powdery wads of pollen. Good news,
this, after the honeys had nearly been decimated for so long by
mites, their critical role in agriculture and wildflower propagation
seriously compromised. The bee crisis likely never concerned his
cellmate, but at least #620749 still cared about that world beyond
the gun towers.
The raccoon he'd fed a few times appeared, watching from a drainpipe
passageway, her private access encouraging unfettered visits in
defiance of concertina wire and electrified fences. She liked to
inch close for bits of cracker or cookie directly from his hand,
eating right there within arm's reach. Nobody had taught her to
fear the convicts, and to assume for no reason save circumstance
and fate that surely #620749 must be as dangerous as the worst.
So while two wasps circled like wary corrections officers, he began
listening to Peter Gabriel's "Washing of the Water," a resonant
plea for some unspecified river to show the singer how to float.
For that moment it seemed both artist and convict must understand
the sensation of being caught in the water, in too deep for their
feet to touch the ground.
A pine cone fell, joining scores of its fallen comrades for a martyrs'
session of What now? Mushroom caps peeked through a mat
of tiny blue-starred blossoms and three-leaf clovers, yearning for
a taste of buttery sunshine but too mired in the dark and damp to
risk expanding their horizons. He sat still so sweat bees could
sniff at his legs, then let a spider hunt for prey on his shoe while
industrious bugs explored his open book, their simple curiosity
eclipsing the clueless oblivion of some mammalian bi-ped who's content
to stare at the wall until time for the next feeding call.
Delighted by the unexpected appearance, he spied an iridescent beetle
trundling along his arm, then out across his hand. Boasting a guise
of chromium green, it shimmered exquisitely, shifting through a
boundless spectrum of hues. #620749 relished this rather poignant
moment of serendipity because the author of that novel he'd brought
tended to spend a handful of words breathing life into an iridescent
beetle that trundles briefly at least once through many of his tales.
Now a real one had come to advocate for that smallest measure of
truth found as much in fiction as song.
A trio of butterflies lifted his vision higher-first the requisite
spotty white, then a traditional lemonade yellow, and finally one
like he'd never seen, a vivid pattern traced in burnt orange and
mottled sienna and sunrise gold. Of course, looking up also meant
he could see other prisoners swarming the yard, flurries of state-issue
orange stripes, their cautionary ensembles bolder even than the
regal monarch's. At least the prison-banded honeybees kept to their
purpose, and managed to help beautify the world, too, even absent
provable intent.
So while Peter Gabriel sang of a river, #620749 gazed beyond the
razor-wire, deep into the uncertainty of shifting green forests,
and he noticed how the silver bands of security fence began to coruscate
in the bright sunlight, looking at that moment like a crystal-clear
stream flowing unabashedly through otherwise impenetrable woods.
The magnificent white oak draped its mitigating shadow across the
water, even as the hot sun began to liquify one solitary prisoner
amid the crush, Gabriel's song pulling him into the fluid surge.
Above it all, the sky unfurled streamers of cerulean blue, and he
reminded himself that penitentiaries are little more than fragile
constructs clinging precariously to that thinnest of lines separating
miles-thick rock from infinite space, and that the sky will always
be bigger than any prison yard. Right then he knew that even from
where he sat, he could simply reach up . . .
And touch the entire universe, all that's real poised right there
at his fingertips.
A light breeze riffled the grass, but wads of white cloud hung motionless
above the horizon-inches apart from his point of view, probably
light years from theirs. Watching closely, though, he could see
each moving within itself: breathing, growing, and gathering moisture
as if despite being sentenced to this place for a time they refused
to sit idly by and wait until the loudspeaker of some cold front
thundered a call for rain.
Spotting a regal hawk, then several more, he admired how they soared
and looped, rarely flapping their wings, riding whatever updrafts
happened their way, diving through the downs, exuberant in their
confidence another wind would come to lift them back up.
The silver fence shimmered like that mighty river cutting its determined
swath through uncertain trees, and Peter Gabriel quietly finished
by asking the river to bring something that would let him get to
sleep, something to take this pain away.
So #620749 shut off the tape and lay back in the clover, bumblers
scattering to share this space of theirs so near the ground, and
he closed his eyes to listen for the water.
When he felt that liquid surge of the washing, he reached up . . .
And remembered how, no matter what, he would always be bigger than
anybody's sky.
And even then, even there, he could still find ways to be free.
* * END * *
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