Riven - Jerry B. Jenkins [164]
Brady was alarmed every time he was taken to the shower and got a glimpse of himself in the makeshift mirror. He had begun to look older than his years, gaunt, wasted. Three years and the lethal injection couldn’t come soon enough.
Those first ninety days, he knew, were meant to break him. Again, that puzzled him. Break him from what? He supposed it was good for him to have quit smoking, though it had not been voluntary. But he didn’t have to be persuaded to follow orders, do what he was told, not cause trouble, not trust anyone.
Apparently this initial period of deprivation didn’t have its desired effect on every inmate, as many newcomers went crazy within a week or two, finding themselves dragged from their cells to Ad Seg and—depending on how much of a fight they put up—having years added to their sentences. Brady had no interest in making trouble. He found himself simply sad, depressed, and mostly sleepless.
One day his lunch delivery was accompanied by a letter from his aunt Lois. Brady’s fingers trembled as he opened it, though it was clear it had already been read by the authorities.
Your uncle and I are praying for you, Brady. We know it was an accident and that you would never hurt a flea on purpose. We asked if we could come visit you but were told only one person was allowed at a time and not till after your first ninety days, and then only if you put us on some list. Do that, and one of us will come as soon as it’s cleared. Tell us about your appeals when you can.
The last thing Brady wanted was his aunt or uncle seeing this place. He wanted to answer, “It was on purpose, stop praying, and don’t come.” But he would not be issued pencil or paper until the ninety days were up, and he wasn’t allowed to send any mail until after that anyway.
And his appeals? He didn’t even want to know, let alone tell anyone else. What was to appeal? Any higher court judge or panel looking over his transcripts would see what everyone else saw. If anyone dared reverse his sentence, he would sue them. Whoever all these activists were, demonstrating and acting in his and other death row inmates’ interests, they were going to be sorely disappointed at his lack of cooperation. In fact, he would be working at cross-purposes to theirs.
At the eighty-day mark, Brady began to really get antsy about reaching normal status. Wasn’t that something? Whatever their motive for treating him like the animal he was, it had worked. He would still be a man condemned to death, living in a steel-and-concrete box, humiliated, deprived of almost everything, and relegated to public calls of nature, public showers, body cavity searches, and cuffing and uncuffing every time he left his house. And yet the TV and radio and writing materials and something to read began to actually sound like something, looming on the horizon like an oasis.
And he needed something to distract him. Because now that the craziness and the noise and the creatures and the smells had become a macabre amalgam of his daily existence, Brady’s sleeplessness and nausea finally reached him in that far corner he had struggled so frantically to avoid.
He had searched desperately every minute for anything to occupy his mind so he could shut out the ugly truth about himself. He was a criminal, a murderer, a monster. He had snuffed out a life and destroyed a family.
Brady had allowed himself to somehow cover the worst of this in his mind by freely admitting his guilt and demanding death. By some far-fetched rationalization, he felt that should have squared it. But when he was forced to face himself, he knew better. Nothing could make it right. In one ugly instant he had gone from a liar, a lowlife, and a no-account loser to the worst thing a man could be.
And now that he had settled in to where