Riven - Jerry B. Jenkins [163]
The inmates all around him apparently found him no fun due to his silence and eventually gave up hassling him entirely. But his only respite from the other constant racket came in the evenings when those with televisions all watched the same show and then discussed it to death.
During that time, Brady could hear every word of dialogue from all the TVs, so he would stretch out on his cot and pull the end of his scratchy blanket up behind his head, forcing it into his ears. Sometimes that allowed him to doze, but only briefly, because then his hands would relax, the blanket would slip away, and the noise would invade.
TVs had to be off at midnight, and some of the men actually seemed to sleep, though Brady could hardly imagine how. The other clamor seemed to go on and on until it became white noise to him. Part of him wished he had not grown used to it, because when he had been unable to think, at least he was spared the wide-awake nightmares that showed him for who he really was.
What Katie North’s father had told the press was right. He deserved to burn in hell.
Brady slowly came to understand that there were two types of prisoners—those who lived to make trouble for little other reason than that they were bored and craved attention, and those who were content to just get along.
He fit the latter category, but he could understand the others. They couldn’t really be punished any more. Even being sent back to an intake cell for Administrative Segregation was at least variety. And the chance to fight and bite and spit and throw blood or feces or try to make some creative weapon out of whatever could be found—well, Brady wasn’t interested, but something about the efforts of the desperate reached him. It reminded him of how he had felt at Forest View High School years before, when negative attention was at least better than none.
In his more fanciful moments, Brady had imagined himself simply passing his time doing nothing. But the deprivation of everything he knew—human touch, conversation, something to read, not to mention the ability to come and go as he pleased—changed his entire system of values.
While he could not sleep, never ate his entire meager portion of food, and felt nauseated all the time, still Brady found himself looking forward to every scheduled event that marked the passing of each day. He anticipated being roused by the banging on his door for first count, the delivery of every meal, even his short walk to the shower every week. The head counts helped him mark the time, and he was expected to stand and show himself at the predinner count. Hardly a week passed without someone refusing and having to be forcibly extricated from his cell.
Brady tried to be cordial to the officers, hoping one might engage him in other than just stilted conversation. Whenever he said anything more than please or thank you, however, he was quickly barked back into submission. Someone—he couldn’t even remember who now—had told him, “Treat the officers with respect, but don’t expect to talk to them much.”
Hardest to get used to were the creatures that invaded his house. Sleep was so evasive that he didn’t think he had to worry that something would bite him if he happened to doze. But he was wrong. In the weeks he had been inside, he had already seen roaches, flies, mice, crickets, moths, spiders, mosquitoes, and gnats. Brady suffered so many bites on his feet and ankles that he had taken to wearing his soft slippers to bed.
He looked forward to the end of his ninety-day probationary period so he could have a TV and something to read besides the juice boxes—which he had memorized. He had also read and reread his induction materials so often that he could have recited every word, subtitle, and page number.
Brady didn’t know what he would do with his hour a day in the exercise kennel. There was only one man in there at a time, and each either strolled or just leaned