Sweeter Life Read Free Page A

column of empty space. At any time Hank could see a hundred other cells just like his, with a hundred other stories just as sad. The prison was designed that way, he believed, to remind the inmates that they were nothing special. Like chickens in a pen, he thought. Doomed creatures.
    The empty space beyond the railings, a good hundred feet across and four storeys high, magnified every whisper, every moan. Occasionally a prisoner in a lighter mood would test the distance with a paper airplane. Sometimes a bird got in and flew about the space in a panic, and the men would whistle madly, hoping to coax the stupid thing to their cells. About a year ago at morning roll call, Willie Brown, maybe thinking
he
was a bird, stepped out of his cell and said, “Oh, Lord,” then vaulted over the railing. It took them weeks to remove his stain from the stone floor below.
    Hank wasn’t a jumper. Mostly he liked to stand at his door and peer into the middle distance and try to imagine a future for himself. What he’d figured out so far was that if he ever did get out of there, he might like to spend the rest of his days outdoors. A park ranger, maybe. Not too many people to deal with in a job like that, he guessed. Not a lot of stress. The kind of job where they could maybe forgive a man for what he’d done. A park ranger at the Grand Canyon, maybe. That sounded good.
    So when he couldn’t sleep, this is what he’d do: he’d walk to his cell door and stand with his forehead resting on the iron bars. He’d peer into that open space until he could picture himself in the khakis and tan shirt, the big wide-brimmed hat and leather boots. As clear as something on TV, he would see himself sitting behind the wheel of a jeep, no other people around him, nothing at all except maybe a mountain goat picking its way along the edge to something green.
    A SINGLE KILLDEER led Cyrus all the way down to the Bailey bridge near the marina. The wind off the lake had gotten stronger, colder, and he had begun to regret his decision to walk to school. So when Sam Loach camebarrelling down the Marsh Road in his rusted pickup and stopped to offer a ride, Cyrus accepted.
    “Seen Benny out there in your old man’s field,” Sam said. “Guess he figures to beat the rains.” He laughed, a wheezy sort of chuckle. “Ain’t one of us ever done that. Don’t know why he keeps on.”
    Cyrus kept his opinion to himself. He didn’t much like Sam Loach or any of his family. They went about all things in a half-assed way, and that included their farm. There was no way Cyrus would criticize anyone in front of Sam.
    The Loaches farmed the same kind of land the Owens had farmed: reclaimed marsh, dense and black. It wasn’t the best soil in the area. For that you’d have to go north of the ridge to sandy well-drained loam that stood up to a tractor even a few weeks after spring melt. Some of those farms to the north already had a few early crops in. By contrast, marshland, even with the tile beds and the pumps, held the moisture like a sponge. No one in fifty years had gotten all his crops in before the end of May. And even when you could get on the land, you were limited in the crops you could grow. The marsh never generated the kind of heat units you got north of town. It had never made anyone rich, that’s for sure. There wasn’t a single family out there who had ever amounted to a hill of beans.
    This year, however, things had been different. The winter had been drier and the rains later than anyone could remember. A downpour had been predicted every day for more than a week, but so far not a drop had fallen. As a result, Benny had been on his tractor, getting his hopes up. More power to him, Cyrus thought.
    Sam dropped him off at the main intersection of town. Each corner had its own bank and, since the centennial celebration three years before, a sorry-looking maple in a square cement pot. The shopping district stretched north, south, east and west of the four