Riven - Jerry B. Jenkins [162]
Brady was released from the cuffs and shackles again, handed his induction packet, and finally locked away. Once the officers were gone, the noise became almost unbearable. Besides the radios and TVs and conversations, everyone within earshot began calling out to Brady, asking him obscene questions about the heiress, describing the murder, recounting everything they had heard and read about it, demanding that he answer.
Brady laid his envelope on the steel desk with attached stool, knowing it would probably be his only reading material for three months. He sat there, studying the cot and the combination toilet/sink in the corner, in full view of any passersby.
He decided not to answer, to say absolutely nothing. But as the yelling and the questions rose to a deafening din and he sat on his cot and covered his ears, Brady realized that some cons in certain cells of other units in the pod could see him. They told his unit mates every detail of what he was doing.
“Don’t plug your ears, trailer trash!”
“Too early for bed, lover boy!”
“Tell us the story! Did you really think she loved you, Romeo?”
“Did you hear what Daddy North said? He wants you to burn in hell!”
Brady had seen similar hazing at County and knew of newcomers who wound up burying their faces in their blankets and crying themselves to sleep, opening them to even more ridicule. He decided to just busy himself in the farthest, most private corner of his cell, reading over the stuff from his packet.
But it was no good. He couldn’t block the noise, and he had resolved not to respond.
“Miss your smokes, sweetheart?” someone hollered.
Boy, did he.
In some recess of Brady’s mind, he realized that his nicotine addiction and all the racket were at least keeping him occupied. One thing he feared above everything else was having to face his own darkness.
Fighting the withdrawal and the unending harassment, Brady sat with his back to the wall, his head between his knees. He was unaware of having slept the night before and wondered if this place ever quieted enough for anyone to sleep. Brady was exhausted, and yet there would be no dozing, at least for now.
His absolute refusal to give the hecklers what they wanted eventually cooled them down. But even when the shouting was not directed at Brady, the noise level seemed to abate only during the counts of the inmates with every shift change and meal delivery. Like everyone else, Brady began to look forward to the food, meager and unappetizing as it was.
Each time the officers brought his meal, Brady was required to sit on his cot at the back of the cell. Holidays and weekends the men got just two meals a day. The rest of the time, three were delivered, almost always with the same fare: a simple TV dinner–style entree, salt and pepper packets, a fruit drink, a combination plastic fork and spoon, a packet of instant coffee, and a tea bag. The irony of the last two was that no hot plates or heating units of any kind were allowed in the cells, so the men had to mix these with barely warm tap water.
When the officers came to pick up his tray, again Brady had to be sitting on his cot, and his tray was searched every time to be sure everything was still there—all the packaging and the spork. That, he was told, was to ensure that he didn’t keep anything he could use to fashion some hybrid weapon. If only he had the courage. He was barely eating anyway, and if he ate less, he knew he would be reported and likely hauled away for intravenous feeding.
At the end of his first month, the drone of Brady’s life had been established. The sharpest bite of