Barker House by David Moloney

Author:David Moloney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

After lunch, the unit enlivened. Hogan did jumping jacks at his door, counting them out in sets of three. Moncrieff sang operatically in gibberish, his arms waving about, his hair standing straight up and swaying like it was in a coordinated dance. Iglesias kept crying, except now he was addressing the inmates who were yelling things at him. “I’m not a baby! They said I could go home!”

O’Brien sent Carmichael around the unit to retrieve the lunch bags from under the cell doors, told him to make sure all the sporks were accounted for. The inmate in cell 1, lying in a hospital bed with a big, loud machine that sounded like a dishwasher, yelled out that there were rats in his bed. Then it was spiders. Carmichael reported there were no rodents and the inmate appeared to fall asleep.

Inmate Sombath lay at his cell door and rapped without taking a breath, a possible attempt at drowning out Moncrieff’s stabbing falsetto. O’Brien, and everyone else on the peculiar half unit, knew his name was Sombath, because of a line he kept circling back to, a refrain, but O’Brien didn’t think Sombath knew what a refrain was. And now hear the wrath of Sombath. He had no teeth and a dark purple bruise on his neck. Every time O’Brien walked by his door, Sombath pretended to reach out, grab at O’Brien’s feet.

Sombath sang. Ever wash out your draws same place you would shit, ever knock push-ups same place you would piss, come feel your girl you’re missing her lips, come through for visits she’ll sneak you some nips, I know you ain’t have a cellmate who went to war with the strip, wake up hear screaming he fighting somebody and shit. O’Brien didn’t hate it.

Carmichael opened cell 14 with less hesitation than he had earlier in the shift. He seemed to be coming around and O’Brien felt that FTO pride, bought into the old idea that anyone could do this job, they just needed guidance. O’Brien went over to the door and told Hogan to put the smock on over his shoulders the right way. Hogan did. His white body was wet with sweat, his black chest hair grouped and fat like fed leeches, and when he walked through the well-lit dayroom he moved like a person of importance, intentionally slow, controlled, with a wide smile spread over his face. An emperor to the bathhouse.

When Carmichael came out of the sally port, Hogan whispered to O’Brien, who was shadowing him, “There’s my fat boy.”

O’Brien had forgotten about the boots. “Just take your shower, Hogan. I’ll talk to him about the boots.”

Hogan winked at O’Brien, then nodded at Carmichael like they were old friends. He undressed in the dayroom and folded his smock and laid it outside the shower on the floor. Once the shower was running, O’Brien told Carmichael to stand right outside, make sure he makes no sudden move toward either staircase. Then, O’Brien decided to go try and calm Iglesias.

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