Shorty or short timer was what you called a guy who was closing in on his release date. Helio wasn’t a big man and I had him beat by a good six inches but he wasn’t calling me shorty to be ironic. “Don’t get cocky there, shorty,” he scolded, flashing two gold teeth in his grin. He beat me to the door and elbowed me out of the way. One of the day shift guards bellowed down the corridor.Īrtie Helio, who was serving a nine-month bit for strong-arm robbery at a Kingman liquor store, was instantly upright and bright-eyed as I jumped down from the top bunk. The next sound I heard was the click of every cell in the pod unlocking. More importantly, I would have a chance to make things right with my brother.Īt some point my eyes had closed and my mind had stopped racing. I would have another chance, a chance to live again.

When I’d arrived here over four years ago the hourglass had been full of minutes and days and months and years. The minutes kept dropping, one by one, like the last handful of sand grains in an hourglass. When I was finished I refolded the paper, returned it to the pillowcase, and went back to watching the ceiling. It was important because it would be the last one, number one thousand five hundred and thirteen. My new mark was made carefully so I wouldn’t rip the paper. I would take it with me tomorrow when they opened the front gate and allowed me to walk out of here. Each one of the one thousand five hundred and twelve marks on that page was the tragic badge of a squandered day. Darkness was never absolute in here, not even in the middle of the night. It served its purpose though.Ĭarefully I unfolded the paper and stared at all the marks. Mine was a plastic ink tube wrapped in surgical tubing. Since a few months back there’d been a stabbing with one of the ballpoint pens issued from the commissary, the warden only allowed us to have crudely modified versions now. When I was sure the hour was past midnight I reached inside my pillow and withdrew a folded piece of notebook paper. For four years I’d been faithfully sending him letters. Words from a vanished childhood, a lost innocence.

It seemed impossible that I would, at last, be free. It seemed impossible that I would see life outside the prison walls. It seemed impossible that tomorrow night would be different than every other night for the past four years. I’d been staring at the ceiling for hours, trying to calm the thud of my heart as Helio, my cellmate, rolled around and cursed through his dreams on the bunk below. They all told me that no man sleeps the night before he walks.

Walk by Cora Brent