Grant

Grant

"Stones were thrown at villagers who sinned,"

Grant's mother

“It’s Tupac,” one inmate shouted. The sound was mostly bass as it echoed from the pale green cell.  Grant passed down a long hallway that had cells on either side of it. As he passed he also heard, “Newtopia,” clearly from another inmate who was right up against his clear small window.  Across from that one to his right he heard foreign languages, probably obscenities, Grant thought. Grant’s steps were short, interrupted gallops taxed by bands around his ankles attached by thin, braided wire.  Minutes earlier, the guards that now flanked him had woken him to place the restraints on.  Grant had refused to comply upon their first request.  And then he answered their second and third requests with swears and racial slurs of whatever race he suspected they were.  Finally the one who he guessed was Polish rushed him and pinned him while the other one bound his hands and feet.

The shouts from the cells about him quieted by time they exited the local cell group.  They silenced completely when the tier door shut behind he and the two guards.  The walls were persistently a pale beige and so was the ceiling.  The tile squeaked when he stumbled or failed to raise his feet high enough, which was almost every step.  His shoes had flat, rubber bottoms and were made with a thin beige cotton surface.  This was the most walking he had done in them but they were normal and almost comfortable.  They were all he had looked at since they exited the tier where an inmate had shouted, “It’s Tupac.”  The walls made him dizzy and the fact that he was going to see the warden again didn’t make things much easier.

The warden had portrayed himself as a genial old man who had a business-like demeanor.  In a place like this that’s probably just a face he puts on.  But don’t we all? He used to think that each person has a number of faces and each face has a time and place.  But lately he seemed to have lost all of his faces.  He had no face for prison.  Grant had been in solitary confinement as to safely recover from being shot at his court hearing.  But the rest of the inmates had been brought into solitary screaming or fighting. Between the curt smiles and calm nods the warden was indeed a warden.  His idea of solitary confinement included transcribing foreign language dictionaries and enacting unpredictable sleep hours, both of which Grant had been exempted from.

The final turn took them to an office at a dead end.  Still, his strides were greatly impeded by the short metal wires.  Pacing inside of the office was a tall woman with long brown hair.  Her bangs bowed out from her forehead further than any Grant had seen.  She wore a brown suit jacket and a dark green skirt down to her shins.  The movement she made from one side to the other was swift and jerky.  She looked up when they got closer and seemed to look through Grant but smiled and nodded anyway.  The guards on his left and right released him to the guard already there.  They mumbled to the office guard and left. “Hi, my name is Claire Newbody.”  Her voice was low and toneless.  The eyes that seemed distant and completely vacant moments ago began to stir and focus on him.  The peered invasively all over Grant then settled on a chair to the right of the door.  He sat, slowly at first but fell once his knees knocked together.  “Beginning with your psychological evaluation,” she paused and shook her head, “there is nothing I regret more than not having done it until now.”  She said. Grant slowly nodded, desperately embarrassed.

He had received the psych evaluation on paper a week ago.  It was delivered by an assistant the first time and a guard the next.  The cover page read, “PLEASE UTILIZE AND FILL OUT IMMEDIATELY.”  The evaluation was stapled to a self affirmation worksheet that highlighted ways to remain positive while in a ‘forced institutional setting.’  The first time he threw them away.  The second time he relieved himself on the paper and asked the guards to take it away.  They ignored him and he let it stand in his cell for as long as he could.  Custodial services had just cleaned in his cell so when he flushed it the cleaning fluid exploded.  (Everyone knows the cleaning fluid most commonly used in toilets is explosive until neutralize by the pneumonia in urine.  If not neutralized and, instead, the cleaning fluid is flushed while in the toilet it becomes excited and explodes.) Porcelain usually cracks and begins to leak but his stainless steel toilet hardly moved.  Rather, the paper work and waste exploded up and out of the toilet in a horrible display.  Newbody had no doubt heard of his protest and the issue with the toilet.  So when she asked “do you feel mentally healthy today,” he looked away.

“Physically yes, mentally, no.” he said darkly.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” she said.  Grant winced and looked up.

“I thought I was going to meet with the warden?”

“Yes in a minute.”  She said smiling again, “But this eval is my stone to throw at Goliath.”  The Bible story she mentioned wasn’t familiar to Grant but he was familiar with this some Christian themes.  “Stones were thrown at villagers who sinned,” his mother had told him before he left Crete for Newtopia.

“Yea, the sinner I’m familiar with that one.  There’s a lot to say about that and its obvious parallels here.  But how has your Goliath sinned?” She squinted her eyes as if to see very deep into Grant.  And he squinted back.

“You could put it like that,” she continued and left the question unanswered. “The more I heard about you the more I requested we do this eval.  At first Ed had refused but now…Newtopia.”

“Finally,” Grant threw his hands up that stopped just in front of his head because they were bound.  “It’s so nice of them to get me a stupid psych eval.  What an amazing nation I call home!”  The guard was standing alert now of Grant who was getting louder.  “Don’t you think so, Doctor… Doctor Clair Psychologist.  I get framed by a multi-million dollar corporation, shot, and now my proud Newtopia calls upon a psychologist to set things straight.”  He didn’t know what else to say after that.  So he took Newbody’s laptop and threw it.  His head jerked to the side from a hit from the guard.  And then he went down.