The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(5)

They did the head count at six o’clock every morning. There was a loud buzz at the end of the hallway and then the guards came around to make sure there were two men in every cell. You had until seven to be on your feet and dressed. That’s when the cell door opened.

You filed down to breakfast. If you were near the end of the line, you had to eat fast because the work assignments started at eight. Mason was assigned to the laundry room. Supposedly one of the easier jobs, although Mason hated touching the other inmates’ filthy clothing. The morning work period lasted four hours. Then lunch at noon, another rush if you were at the end of the line. Then an hour of classes or counseling sessions or just sitting alone in your cell. At two o’clock they finally let you outside.

That was a moment Mason lived for, every day, when he could escape from the gray walls and the artificial light, get outside and feel the sunlight on his face. See the trees in the distance beyond the fence. That’s when he could stretch his legs and walk on the grass, remember these simple things he once took for granted. Or just sit at one of the tables and breathe.

Other inmates would often bring their mail outside with them. They would sit and read their letters from home and sometimes even share them with the other men sitting around them. It was just another way to pass the time.

Mason didn’t bring mail outside and he had no interest in reading anyone else’s. After four years of watching the mail cart come by, six days a week, he had learned not to expect anything. To feel nothing at all as the other men grabbed their letters and tore them open.

It was another hard lesson of prison life. If your hopes never leave the ground, they can never fall.

On this afternoon, he could hear a man reading something out loud, a funny story related to him by his wife. Mason was close enough to the field to see the ball game, but not too far away from the other white men at the tables behind him. It was something he didn’t even have to think about anymore. The yard was always divided into three different worlds—at this time of day it was whites on the tables, blacks in the workout area, Latinos on the ball field—and you stayed with your own. The first time you strayed outside those boundaries, you got a warning. The second time, you deserved whatever happened to you.

A guard came up to him. He was one of those guys who walked around trying a little too hard to look like they owned the place. Maybe because he was barely five and a half feet tall he had to put on the attitude every day, right after he put on his uniform.

“Mason,” the guard said.

Mason looked at him.

“Take a walk with me. Somebody wants to meet you.”

Mason didn’t move.

“Let’s go, inmate. On your feet.”

“Tell me who we’re going to see.”

The guard took a step closer. His arms were folded across his chest. And with Mason sitting on top of the picnic table, the two men could look each other in the eye.

“We’re going to go see Mr. Cole,” the guard said. “Get up and start walking.”

“Mr. Cole works here?”

“No, he’s another inmate.”

Whatever this was, it was not official prison business.

“I’ll pass,” Mason said. “Tell him I mean no disrespect.”

The guard stood there, working it over in his head. He clearly didn’t have a plan for no.

“This is not the way to play this,” he said as he hitched up his pants. Then he walked away.

Mason knew that probably wasn’t the end of the matter. So he wasn’t surprised when he saw the shadow in the hallway later that day, just outside the door to his cell. What did surprise him was when the shadow gave way not to the same five-and-a-half-foot prison guard but to two inmates he’d never seen before. They were both black and they both looked like interior linemen from the Bears, six hundred combined pounds of prison khaki filling up the doorway and blocking out the light like a f*cking solar eclipse.

Mason was determined to stay calm. It was his rule number two (prison edition): Don’t show them weakness. Don’t show them fear. Don’t show them shit.

“Can I help you guys?” he said. He was sitting on his bed and he didn’t get up. “You look lost.”

“Mason,” the man on the left said. “Mr. Cole wants to talk to you. Not a request.”

Mason stood up. The two men remained polite and composed.

They walked on either side of him, drawing stares from every other inmate they passed. When the three of them were at the end of the cellblock, the guard took one look at them and let them pass into the connecting hallway. Mason felt vulnerable for the few seconds they were alone there. The two men could have stopped at any time and taken him apart piece by piece. But they kept walking, and Mason stayed between them. He didn’t say a word. It was his one rule from the outside that was just as good on the inside, rule number three: When in doubt, keep your mouth shut.

They passed another guard. Mason was now in the Secure Housing Unit, a separate wing for what they called high-profile offenders. Men who were best kept separate from Gen Pop but with no special need to be isolated from one another once they were. Everything looked a little newer here—glass on the cells instead of bars, a central guard station on the second floor looking down over the common area. Men were playing cards at the tables. Others were watching the television. It seemed odd to Mason that the men weren’t automatically separated by race here.