Read Online The Four Stages of Cruelty by Keith Hollihan - Free Book Online

motive, pressing like a heavy weight on my chest, was a desire to atone for having ignored Josh’s warnings in the Keeper’s car. I wanted to assess my responsibility for the consequences I’d seen in the yard during that brutal fight. I wanted a better understanding of an event that was, in all likelihood, ultimately incomprehensible.
    The studio that housed the art class was in the education or east wing, and that location enhanced all my misgivings and the sense that I was betraying my tribe. The east wing had been a two-floored unit until 1979, when the inmates housed within had risen up and taken control, killing four of our brothers in the initial siege. A full-scale riot resulted, during which only two inmates died, leaving the account booksspectacularly unbalanced. To wreak as much destruction as possible, the walls between the isolation cells had been knocked down by the inmates involved, creating long, ragged passageways through the length of the wing. Afterward it was decided to go with the flow of that refurbishment work, knock down all the walls, plaster and paint over the unfortunate grim memories, and build classrooms and offices where cells had once stood. They housed the weak sisters within that new space, ceding them occupied territory for their anger management programs and therapy sessions, while turning the wing into an edifice for tolerance and a permanent monument to defeat.
    The doors of Brother Mike’s studio were open. I had never been inside, and I was surprised by the expansiveness of the space within, a workshop filled with broad tables and tall stools, lit by giant caged windows overlooking the yard. I called out but got no answer and so, finding myself alone, wandered around to look at the so-called art. The drawings and paintings on the walls were calmer than I would have expected. Bowls of fruit, the faces of loved ones. I stopped before an abstract piece and couldn’t decide whether it was ludicrous or interesting. It was a large canvas divided into a dozen grids, with a single identical portrait of Elvis painted into each square. Fat Elvis, with the sideburn muttonchops. When I looked closely, I saw that each Elvis was different in the most trivial way—a shortened sideburn, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, a pirate’s earring. I was drawn in by the irregularities and had begun to note each variation in turn when I was startled by a voice.
    “I’m over here, I’m over here.”
    It sounded, to my ears, like a snarl of complaint. I turned around expecting accusation but got an impatient wave instead. Brother Mike appeared in the doorway of an office I hadn’t noticed at the far end of the studio. He seemed a mixture of anger and energy as he moved toward me, pausing once to adjust a precarious arrangement of tools on one of the workbenches. Yet there was ease to him, too. He was at home in this room and in his own skin. In comparison, I felt as though I were masquerading as someone important.
    I introduced myself by name, and we shook hands, his grip about as firm and commanding as I’d ever felt. He called me Officer Williams. I hesitated to call him Brother Mike. Using the term made it sound as though we were at a lodge meeting.
    And then a smile came to his face. “If I’m in trouble, at least they sent you.” A little flirtatious, the way old men can pour on the charm before much younger women.
    I decided to go with the flirt. It’s a cheap instinct, but too easy to pass up.
    “I’m not sure why you should get in trouble for doing something the boys ought to have done themselves. I thought that was a decent takedown for a counselor.”
    “I used to box,” he explained.
    I smiled. “I’d say you used to wrestle.”
    “Only with sin.”
    It was a joke, I think.
    “You look fine,” I announced, as though my work here were done. “I just wanted to see if you were physically okay.” The word physically sounded stupid to my ears.
    He grimaced, but it wasn’t pain.