Archive of Our Own

The year is 1971.

The year is 1971 and Richard Nixon occupies the White House. He was inaugurated two years ago. Three years from now, he will become the first and only president to resign in disgrace.

The year is 1971 and the war in Vietnam drags on. Over the last five years, more than fifty thousand Americans were killed in the jungles of Southeast Asia. One in four of those deaths were black men despite the fact coloreds only make up one in ten Americans. The war will continue for another four years with another three thousand American deaths before the last of the troops are airlifted out, leaving chaos and wreckage in their wake.

The year is 1971 and the so-called War on Drugs is just a few months old. Intended to reduce drug abuse, it will instead make the America the nation with the highest incarceration rate in the world. Fifty years from now, one in five black men and one in a hundred Americans will spend part of their lives behind bars for a drug-related offence.

The year is 1971 and in a few months Sylvester McGee, the last surviving man born as a slave, will die in his home in Mississippi. He is 130.

The year is 1971 and it is a time of unrest, a time of uncertainty. While the horrors that are perpetrated on and by our boys in Vietnam hang in the background, flickering on the evening news every night, violence filters through to the quiet streets of our homeland. John F. Kennedy was killed nearly ten years ago, followed by the deaths of the far more controversial Malcolm X and George Lincoln Rockwell. Three years ago, within two months of each other, two great visionaries were killed. Martin Luther King Junior was shot on the balcony of a hotel in Memphis and Bobby Kennedy was shot in a hotel kitchen.

The year is 1971 and a year ago, the National Guard opened fire on the students of Kent State University, killing four. They called it a massacre, but why? It was just four deaths. Those deaths, deaths of teenagers on the verge of being adults, are no different than the deaths happening each day, half a world away, in the jungles of Vietnam, on the streets of the cities where the colored people live. The fact these deaths happened here, on our soil, the bullets fired by our own army, to well off white kids, make even the white folk question the basic safety they took for granted.

The year is 1971 and for the coloreds, Kent State means little. Deaths at the hands of the police, or mobs of whites draped in white gowns, happen all too often. The deaths of Mack Parker, Emmett Till and James Powell are all too fresh. Seven years ago the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act reaffirmed rights that are fundamental to what it means to be an American but even half a century from now, cases will still snake their way through the courts questioning these rights. In the aftermath of such legislation, one would think that the situation would improve, but instead it got worse. Now, in the hot summer of 1971, the whole pot is simmering, ready to boil over without warning.

The year is 1971 and it is a time of magic. A few months ago, Apollo 14 landed on the moon. It was the third time men have set foot on that world. The night the landing happened, Jean Valjean sat on his bunk and stared out the barred window at the full moon. He only got half an hour or so before it passed out of view, but for half an hour, he tried to imagine life on another world. A world that did not keep him in a cage.

The year is 1971 and Jean Valjean has been in prison for eighteen years. A lifetime, for some. Draftees sent to Vietnam, only to return weeks later in body bags, are often no more than 18 years old. Students at Kent State walking to class, were just nineteen. For him it will be a little less than a third of his life. The middle third, to be precise.

And so we begin, on a hot August night in 1971. The air is humid and sticky and the cry of seagulls can be heard through the grate that covers the window. Lights-out was two hours ago and Jean Valjean is doing pushups.

***

“Jack, will you just go to bed?” Chenildieu complained, rolling over in his bunk. “I can’t sleep with you grunting and huffing. You are like a foot from my face.”

“Eighteen…nineteen…twenty…” Valjean put his knees down and sat back on his heels. “Shut the fuck up, Vito.”

Chenildieu persisted. “When are you taking your nigger ass to bed?” he whined.

Valjean ignored him and started his next set.

Ever since Chenildieu was moved into Valjean’s cell some four years before, this had been a nightly exchange. After eighteen years in prison, Valjean had grown, as they say, institutionalized. The uncertainty of prison life, the way a guard could turn up at the bars and hand him a sack to put his stuff in, the way he could be led off without explanation, without warning, to a new cell, a new block, or even a new prison, the way he could be standing at the bars, waiting to be let out for rec, or lunch, or a shower and the bars never opened, had numbed him over the years. Once he would have gotten worked up, gotten angry, done something stupid, but now he had accepted that some things are just not worth the fight. Four years with one cellie, even a rat like Vito, was in Valjean’s experience, unheard of. That kind of constancy just did not happen.

It was a pity they had so little in common. Valjean and Chenildieu were on opposite ends of the prison spectrum. Valjean, nearing a parole date, was the kind of black man whites crossed the street to avoid. He was of medium height, but after nearly two decades spent in the prison weight yards, he was muscular and intimidating. Valjean shaved his head, polishing his scalp to a shine. He had few friends and his demeanor was usually sullen and withdrawn. Over the years, Valjean had watched as prison gangs had grown in light of the unrest in the outside world. Here in San Quentin, it was the Aryan Brotherhood for the whites and the Black Guerrilla Family for the blacks. Valjean was the kind of man who steered clear of all of that, who did his time in his head.

Chenildieu was four years into a life sentence. Slight, unhealthy, near-sighted and pale, he had passed for white at some points in his life. Here, in prison, he fooled no one. He struggled to find a place. At first, he had tried to wear his hair in a ‘fro, but it was too soft and it just came out looking like a floppy brown mop. Too black for the Brotherhood, too white for the Guerrillas, he was an outsider everywhere and the grinding pressure of the decades in front of him made him surly and mean.

Valjean finished the last set of push-ups and reached for a rag to wipe the sweat from his face. The greenish light from the gallery filtered through the bars, and in the half light, he could see Chenildieu looking at him.

“What?” he demanded.

“You done?”

Valjean grunted in reply as he stood, stretching his arms up over his head. He was able to put his hands flat on the ceiling and he pressed himself between the ceiling and floor, letting himself feel the edges of the space, the way it contained him. The cell was a tight fit for two men; indeed, when Valjean first came to San Quentin, just one man would have lived in this space. If he reached out his hands from side to side, he could almost brush both the right and left fingertips against the walls. Front to back, he could take three steps. Looking into the cell, there were two bunks bolted to the left wall – the bottom bunk was Chenildieu’s and Valjean took the top. Along the other wall there was a metal toilet in the back and a tiny sink. Ten years ago there would have been a little table up by the bars, but they took those out when they added the second bunk.

Valjean climbed into his bunk, “Go to sleep, Vito.”

And so, quiet came to the cell. Jean Valjean fell asleep promptly, the energy drained from his muscles by the hours of exercise while Vito Chenildieu tossed and turned. An hour of sleep had taken the edge off and now he worried, consumed by the outside world that he would never see again. He wondered about his girl. Marcie had not spoken to him since his arrest. He got a nice little fantasy worked up about her, lying back, naked, when the guard walked down the gallery, banging on the bars with his baton. The guards did this two or three times a night to the grumbles and complaints of the inmates. They peered into the cells to see their residents move. He had heard the guards joke – dead and warm meant they were doing their job, dead and stiff meant trouble. As the guard disappeared down the gallery, he wondered about his Mas who had not answered a letter or phone call in four years. Back when they were kids, she used to stick her head in the bedroom and check on him and his brother, catching them under the covers with flashlights. He got to thinking about the way she made fried chicken with the perfect crispy shell, when Crazy Tony four cells down the way started screaming. He wondered about his brother who had come to see him once, three years ago. He thought about the picture his brother showed him of his girl, a fine white broad with a mane of brown hair and straight sparkling teeth, when he finally fell asleep.

***

Several hours later and a quarter mile away, the other residents of the prison were getting ready for the day. COs, correctional officers, guards, gathered in the dingy assembly room for the change of shift. Some leaned against the wall, with its off-white, chipped paint, nursing a cup of coffee. Others stood in small clumps, trading gossip. The new guy, a young guard by the name of Sam Javert, stood in the corner, shifting from foot to foot. He was dressed in a crisply pressed shirt and his hair was trimmed close to his head.

Mostly men, mostly white, some were older but many were in their twenties. They wore batons and cuffs on their belts, but no guns, never guns. They got locked in with the murderers, rapists and thieves with nothing more than a stick and the weight of their arm to protect themselves. They knew the stakes and if they erred on the side of brutality, who could fault them?

The lieutenant entered the room. From the corner, one of the sergeants called, “Fall in!”

All told, there were about fifty officers in the room and they assembled into rough lines that wandered from side to side and got particularly ragged near the back of the room. Sam Javert frowned and tried to stand straighter, as if that would compensate for the slovenly behavior of the others.

Standing in front of the group, the lieutenant flipped a page on his clipboard and began with no preamble. “An inmate was taken to the hospital for stitches after B block lunch yesterday. The cause of his injury was not determined. A shake down of his cell revealed no contraband.”

“Another member of the A block Brotherhood was put on keeplock yesterday after he swung at a second shift CO. That brings the total to eight. If any of the remaining cause you any trouble, I want to know about it.”

The LT flipped another page on his clipboard. “Beatty?”

“Aye,” said a short, white officer from the back.

“B block, flats.” The LT looked down at his list. “Frederick?”

“Here, LT.” answered a black man from the front.

“A block, escort.” The LT continued without looking up. “Javert?”

“Yes, sir!” Javert snapped to attention. Around him, the officers snickered.

The LT looked up with a warning look, “’Here’ will suffice, Javert.” Javert shifted uncertainly. “Officers, this is Sam Javert. He was transferred from downstate. Javert, Y block, fourth gallery. Larson,” he looked at sergeant in the front row, “is Officer in Charge on Y block. He will show you around.”

“Russell?” the lieutenant continued.

“Here.”

The LT continued, giving out the day’s assignments. A few minutes later, they were dismissed and the officers filed out.

“Javert!”

Javert turned as Larson came up. “Yes, sir?”

“We’ll be working together today. You’ll be on my block for a few weeks while you learn the ropes.”

Javert nodded. “Yes, sir.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes as officers headed to the other blocks peeled off.

“So, when’d you graduate the academy?”

“Two months ago.”

Larson nodded. “Where’d they transfer you from?”

“Centinela.”

“That’s right down on the border?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. Hablas español?”

“Un poco.”

“Comes in handy. We got a few ‘spics ‘round here who don’t speak much English. Killer is the chinks, though. Can’t make heads nor tails of that gibberish they speak.” As they walked, Larson pointed out the other blocks, the mess, the yard.

Javert said nothing as he walked beside the Sargent.

They were alone in the tunnel that connected Y block to the mess when Larson asked, hesitantly. “Any relation to Bill Javert?”

Javert looked squarely ahead and nodded once. “Yes,” he said in a voice that did not invite further questions.

As gate after clanking gate closed behind him, Officer Javert made his way into the filth-infested world of San Quentin. He was not entirely sure why he had let them transfer him here, of all the prisons in the California Corrections system. He had thought about appealing the assignment. Some fifteen years before, a few hundred yards from where he now walked, William J. Javert had been escorted into the San Quentin gas chamber. The guards had strapped him down and he had breathed his last, lung-searing breath of cyanide. Half a state away, Sam, then just in third grade, had not known. His father had not asked to see him and his foster mother had not thought to tell him. It was not until years later that he had found out and by then, it only confirmed what a decade in foster care and orphanages and group homes had taught him about the world.

***

Hours pass, as hours do in prison, hyped up by the constant noise, the undercurrent of fear and the swaggering bravado that lets the men trapped within the bars, guard an inmate alike, retain enough dignity to make it through the next hour, the next moment. For Javert, it was overwhelming, but it was what he was expecting. A hundred new faces peered out at him through bars. Some angry, some twisted and disturbed, some eager. Every one of them criminal.

Within the cells, the inmates looked out at the newjack and wondered. He looked like he had a stick up his ass, but sometimes, it was hard to tell. Sometimes, those were the ones you could count on to bring in weed, or sometimes, those were the ones who took you into a corner for nothing and worked you over so bad you were sent to the infirmary to be cuffed to the bed for weeks. Time would tell, and no one in Y block was lacking for time.

***

The cellblock had rec mid-morning. It was a sunny, clear day and the inmates filed down the steps and out to the yard, gathering in clumps and clusters. The Brotherhood under the guard tower and the Guerillas on a basketball court where basketball rarely got played. The weight pile was a no-man’s-land where blacks and whites and Hispanics and Chinese mingled and worked out.

By the time rec was about half over, Valjean had finished his own workout and he was spotting for MJ, a guy who had done the same kind of time he had but had a lot more years left. MJ had played double-A ball, back in the world, back before he fell for a married white girl. Valjean helped MJ settle the bar back on the stand and stepped back. “Good?” Valjean asked him.

“Yeah. Thanks man.”

Valjean nodded. “Anytime.”

Valjean had been watching a newblood across the yard. He was sitting at one of the metal picnic tables bolted to the ground near the building. The guy had sat there alone for the last two days. Curious, Valjean decided to go introduce himself.

When he got closer, he saw that the guy had a pen and a piece of paper and he seemed to be making dots. Valjean watched for a moment, trying to figure out what the dots were. The man looked up at a place across the yard and then back at his paper. Valjean followed his gaze and suddenly the dots resolved themselves into the corner of the guard tower. Wide eyed, he sat down at the table. “Wow,” he said.

The man did not look up. He continued carefully placing dots.

Valjean looked at him. His dark, kinky hair was shaved short and he had an old scar on his face, puckered lumpy pinkish skin that deformed the right side of his face from his eye to his mouth. His right eyelid drooped and he looked a bit slow. He kept working on his drawing. Dot by carefully-placed dot, the tower took shape.

Valjean asked, “Is it okay if I watch?”

The man kept his single-minded focus, not answering or even acknowledging his presence.

Resting his head on his hands, Valjean watched and as he watched he became aware of an odor. Urine, perhaps, sweat, fear. He wondered if the guy had been in seg. When the bell rang and the inmates started to line up to be, Valjean waited for the man to stop drawing and look up. He seemed surprised to see him there. “Hey,” Valjean said. “That is amazing, that drawing you are doing. Never knew you could draw with just dots.”

The man looked him over and shrugged.

“I’m Jack,” Valjean offered. “You new?”

The man shook his head as he carefully rolled up his paper.

The line was moving slowly as one by one the inmates stood with their arms outstretched, legs apart, to be patted down by the guards. Usually, this went quickly, but as Valjean looked ahead he could see the new CO making Chenildieu turn his pockets out. Rolling his eyes he turned back to the man standing next to him. “Where’d you learn to draw like that?”

Again, the man shrugged.

When they got near the front, Valjean watched the newjack. He was a young guy, white like most of the COs, brown hair, with eyes that were a bit wild. He was taking at least twice as long as the other guard doing the search and had, for his efforts, nabbed two shanks. Valjean watched as two different men he vaguely knew were led away in handcuffs, off to the hole.

Steeling himself, Valjean stepped forward and stood, his face stony as the guard’s hands touched him. The young guard did not move swiftly like the experienced ones; he took his time and patted down everything. Valjean was not worried-he was clean. No need for him to risk weapons any more. Nearly two decades in this hell, and there were some things he just could not get used to, even if he resolved to endure them in stoic silence. His grandparents? Great-grandparents? He did not remember, but they had been slaves. At least his time would come to an end.

Next to him, a different guard took the new guy’s pen and paper.

“What’s this?”

The man looked at the guard.

The guard laughed and dropped the materials in a trash bin. “Spread ‘em, retard,” the guard ordered.

The man glared at the guard, his eyes narrowed and his teeth clenched.

Valjean hung back to walk with the man back to the cell block. “That was shitty,” Valjean said.

The man shrugged, defeated now.

“What’s your name, kid?” Valjean asked.

The man walked on, not answering, head down.

They got to the stairs at the end of the cell block. Valjean stopped and the man kept walking. “Hey,” Valjean said.

The man looked back.

“I am up in the gallery, fourth floor. You in the flats?”

The man gestured vaguely behind him.

Valjean nodded. “A friend of mine’s on the first gallery. MJ. You know him? He sends a lot of kites to the flats.”

The man shrugged again.

“Well, if you see him, he’s a good guy. Bet he would lend you a girlie magazine for one of those pictures.”

The man looked at the floor, tracing a crack in the concrete with his toe.

Frowning, Valjean turned to make his way up the steps. “Well, see you ‘round kid.”

***

Jonny Frederick, for that is the name his Mas had given him some 22 years before, watched as the inmate who had introduced himself as Jack climbed up three flights of stairs. His eyes followed him to his cell. With a sigh, he shoved his hands in his pockets and made his way down the gallery. There would be another five or ten minutes before they were locked in. He walked over to his cell and slid down the bars on the outside. He sat on the cool floor and watched the goings-on.

A couple of cells down there was a cluster of three white guys sitting on milk crates. Two of them were facing towards him. The one on the left was perhaps the whitest kid he had ever seen. He had pale skin, almost transparent, his face was covered in freckles and he had a shock of curly red hair. He recognized that kid. They had been on the same bus when they had both been transferred here. The guy sitting next to him was a scary big-assed fucker with a shaved head and tattoos all over. One look and he found himself looking away, shrinking down, wishing the floor would swallow him up.

Despite himself, he heard some of what they were saying.

“You got a nice line there, Steve. Very consistent.”

The guy with his back to Jonny chuckled. “It’s been six years, Bobby. I’ve done this design dozens of times.”

“You all know each other?” the red haired boy asked.

“Yeah, Steve and me, we go way back,” the big guy called Bobby answered.

“He taught me to ink,” Steve said. “After the niggers broke his hand.”

Bobby held up his right hand. The fingers had been broken and they had healed badly.

Steve said, “So, what’s the news from A-block, Bobby?”

“I don’t know. Football told me that he had heard from that faggy porter they got over at A that another Brother got put on keeplock for doing nothin’.”

Jonny thought he heard someone call his name and he looked up. His eyes widened. Behind the three white guys, he saw his Mas standing watching what they were doing. He opened his mouth, to ask her what she was doing here when suddenly the red haired kid pointed over at him. “What the fuck? Is that retard listening in?”

The big guy with the tattooed face stood, his eyes hard and angry. Something inside him shriveled and he felt his pants get wet as piss leaked out of him and the man spat out, “Nigger, you stay ‘way from us! That clear?”

The giant loomed over him and he managed a squeak.

Behind him, the electric lock on his cell door clicked open and over the loudspeaker, a guard said, “Step in!”

“Better get in there.” The giant took a step forward.

Most inmates took their time, waiting as long as possible before going back to their cells, but Jonny fled. He went in, pulled the door shut behind himself and retreated to the far back corner. He was shaking, feeling sick to his stomach, hating the wet feel between his legs. He wondered if the bars would protect him or if those men would come right through them. He stared at the bars and wondered if his Mas was still there. Seeing him like this would break her heart. He wrapped his head in his arms in shame, curled into his own misery.

It was hard to understand what was going on in his head. Jonny had a hard time keeping track. The doctors had told him that sometimes the things he saw, the things he heard, were not there. Other times they were. It was hard for him to tell the difference. The ground was solid enough under him, the wall was at his back. Those were there. The bars were a few steps away. He was sure they were there too and later he would wrap his hands around them and feel their solid comforting presence. They kept him in, but they also keep them out. At least, for now, he thought they would.

***

Half a dozen cells down the block, Steve Tate lay on his bed. He could still feel the texture of Irish’s smooth, damp, baby-soft freckled skin under his fingers as he pressed the tattoo needle in, again and again, slowly inking out the ornate lettering of the Aryan Brotherhood’s logo. There was a certain thrill that went with putting a first tattoo on a Brother and as he lay back, he ran his thumb over his fingertips, feeling the residual tingle.

Tate was, as prison measured things, an old-timer. At 28, he had spent nearly half his life behind one set of bars or another. He was new to San Quentin but he had done time in the youth facility at Stockton, in the voc program at Tracy and in Folsom. This time, he had a dozen years ahead of him, but with parole, his lawyer told him he could be out in eight.

For as long as he could remember, he could draw. His mom told everyone that he was born with a pen in his fingers. As he lay there, he worked on a new design in his head, feeling out the sensuous sweep of a girl’s body, caressing the soft curve of her butt, the firm peaks of her breast as he sketched her outline in his mind. Six years ago, he had been Bobby’s cellmate in Folsom. Bobby was a lifer who had been in prison for some two decades by the time they met. Once he saw Steve’s talent, he was more than happy to take Steve under his wing and in exchange, teach him what he knew, especially once his hand had been busted. For all of Bobby’s tattoos and bulk and fearsome façade, he had been gentle with Steve. Steve was genuinely glad to run into him again.

He kept himself pretty comfortable behind bars, with a steady stream of stamps and cigs that he was paid for his work. Once he had arrived at San Quentin, it had taken him a week to get the supplies he needed and now he had the beginnings of a clientele. San Quentin would be good to him, he decided.

He thought about the kid he had been working on before. Irish was 19, full of swagger and anger, in prison for the first time. He put on a big show, initiating into the Brotherhood within days of arrival, having made the requisite kill on the outside. But under Tate’s fingers, as he had inked the first tattoo on Irish’s skin, he could feel the sheen of sweat, the nervous tension in him. That kid was a time-bomb. He had rich parents and an expensive lawyer. San Quentin was going to eat him alive.

***

The Y block was a massive building, the kind of space that dwarfed men. Standing on the ground floor, called the flats, one could look up at four tiers of bars, stretching to the ceiling. The building was as long as a football field. Sunlight filtered through the cloudy, filthy windows on the far opposite side of the block. The wall of windows was five stories high, stretching from the floor to the ceiling, illuminating a vast warehouse of humanity. For the next hour, nearly every one of its residents was locked away in their cages.

For one of the oldheads, whose hearing was going, it was easy to imagine this vast space was empty. Standing on the flats and looking up, all you could see were walkways and barred walls. However, it was anything but. The din was incessant as inmates talked and shouted to one another.

Out of the cells, there were a dozen or so inmates in their state Blues moving along the walkways. They were mopping the floors and chatting with the inhabitants of the cells as they passed. These were the porters, inmates who did much of the dirty work around the prison in exchange for privileges – an extra shower each week, an extra half an hour with the TV, getting released to meals first. Overwhelmingly white, the porters were essential conduits of information, gossip and magazines.

On the flats, one of the porters was an unlikely looking man, the sort of man who would never have picked up a mop in the outside world. He was a good six feet tall with huge muscular shoulders, a head of unruly blond hair and an open, friendly, boyish face. He wore his blue shirt with the cuffs unbuttoned and folded up, showing muscular forearms untouched by ink. Jackson, Fred Jackson was his legal name, but everyone, guards included, called him Football.

Jackson was working his way down the row. Many of the inmates came up to the bars and greeted him. “Hey Football,” they said. “S’up?”

And he replied, “You know that new CO? You know the one who took a fucking week to search three people after recc?”

“Yeah,” they replied back. Everyone on Y block had noticed him.

“Do you know his name?”

“No.”

“It’s Javert,” Jackson told them. “Who ever heard of a name like that? Have you?”

“Naw.”

Then he lowered his voice and told them, “But, do you know what I heard from one of the oldheads? One of the old, old bloods, one who’s been here since like the forties?”

“What’d he say, Football?”

Triumphant, Jackson replied, “They said that there use’ta be guy named Javert on death row. Got himself a lungful.”

“No, fucking, way!”

“God’s honest truth.”

Jackson moved past the new nigger’s cell, the one that smelled of piss. He moved past Tate’s cell and Tate came up to chat with him before he moved on. He moved on down the row to Mike McSweeney, Irish, as it seemed he was being called. McSweeney was new and Jackson was worried about him. Young, slim, with a head of red hair, he was sure to attract all the wrong kinds of attention. “Pssst.” Jackson said, pausing outside his cell. “Irish!”

He peered in and the kid was sitting as far away from the bars as he could get, his back turned. “Leave me alone,” he growled. Football heard the kid’s voice crack. Man, he was young.

***

It had been three weeks since they had sent Mike McSweeney here to this filth infested, vermin-ridden prison. He had thought he’d be sent to the CCC, a low security easy prison up north for the white folk, or so he was told. He was not. He remembered the day in the state processing center when he was called up for the transfer. The guards had lined them up alphabetically and he had been sandwiched between a nigger and a ‘spic, which had made his stomach turn. He stood there as the nigger guard had attached the leg irons and the cuffs. He had pleaded with him.

“Please. I think you made a mistake, I think you have me in the wrong line. I don’t belong with them.”

“And where do you think you belong, McSweeney?” the guard sneered.

“I thought I was supposed to go to the CCC.”

The guard had laughed in his face. “You’re a fucking murderer. You go to max like the rest.”

“But-”

The guard had cuffed him across the face. “Shut up, scumbag!” His nose had bled and he was not able to lift his hands and wipe the blood from his lip because they were cuffed to his belt.

They had led the line off and he had shuffled along with the rest of them, struggling up onto the bus with heavy gauge screen welded across the inside of the windows. He was shoved into a seat with the stench of the ‘spic on right and the reek of the piss-soaked nigger on his left. The ride to San Quentin had taken nine endless hours. The blood on his face first turned sticky and then it became hard and itchy.

By the time the shackles were off and they were left in holding cells for the night, he was too exhausted to think. The next day, he was processed in and he traded his orange jumpsuit for San Quentin blues – jeans and a blue button down shirt with INMATE emblazoned in black across the back.

The walk to his cell was a nightmare as gate after gate clanged shut behind him. As he walked down the cell block with a stack of bedding in his arms, he felt eyes on him as inmates came up to the bars to check out the newcomers. It was not until he was standing in front of his cell that he realized his luck was about to change. Newcomers were put in solo cells on the flats. It was with a palpable sense of relief when the cell door crashed shut behind him and he realized that this entire five foot by nine foot space was his. At least for now.

That was two weeks ago. Soon, he knew, they would transfer him off the flats, into a cell up on the tiers. He tried not to think about it. Maybe, just maybe, if his lawyer came through, it would not be like that. He idly rubbed at his arm – the new ink itched and stung. He lay back on his bed and waited for lunch.

****

When the bell rang and the doors unlocked, the great empty space of the cell block erupted into life. In unison, hundreds of cell doors banged open, and the walkways filled with men in blue, talking and jostling on their way to mess.

After the yard, the mess was the most dangerous place in the prison. Javert was positioned by the door and he stood stiffly, watching as the men filed past him. Overhead, giant canisters of tear gas were strapped to the ceiling. A guard sat in a glassed-in booth with the button that would snap the doors shut and release the gas if it were needed. Javert looked at them warily. As a part of his training he had been tear-gassed. It was an experience he hoped never to repeat.

Larson came over to check in. “How’s it going, Javert?”

Javert shrugged, his eyes roaming over the sea of mostly brown faces that filled the whole room except the corner nearest him. It seemed that the ten or so tables closest to his post was the white corner.

“It’s different than Centinela. Louder.”

Larson smiled tightly. “Welcome to the big leagues. You know what to do?”

Javert nodded. “Watch for hoarding and search them on the way out?”

“Yes. And try and speed up the searches, okay? You went too slow at rec.”

Javert nodded. “Sir.”

Larson moved on, checking with each of the COs stationed around the room. Javert let his eyes roam over the men closest to him, the whites sitting together by his door. He frowned. Two tables down, three in…No. He was overreacting.

When lunch was over, the line started forming to leave. Javert tried to frisk the inmates more quickly. He slid his hands over what seemed to be countless bodies, one after another. He was running his hand up an inmate’s leg and he stopped, his hands finding something long and rigid around his ankle. He pulled up the cuff of the man’s pants and found a spoon tucked in his sock. He held it up and looked at the man.

The inmate who was looking down at him was a big, white guy with tattoos across his face. The inmate said, softly, menacingly, “You might want to put that back, newjack.”

With scorn, Javert got to his feet. “Larson!”

Larson looked from across the room and visibly blanched at the scene. When he came over he looked at the inmate, shaking his head. “Bobby…A spoon? You fucking idiot!”

The big man frowned. “I thought we had a deal, you and I.”

Larson rolled his eyes. “The deal does not involve you being a dumb fuck, Bobby. Javert, take him down to seg. Then, come see me.”

When Javert walked into the Y block office a few minutes later, Larson looked up at him. “That,” he said, “was incredibly stupid.”

“Why?”

“He’s some Grand Poohba or something in the Aryan Brotherhood. Last thing you need is the AB on your back.”

“He was smuggling a spoon out! That’s a shank waiting to happen!”

“Look, just a warning, Javert. Be careful before you start trouble with the AB. A block’s about to erupt. We got nearly a dozen inmates on keeplock and two guards over in A have been injured in the last week.”

Frowning, Javert nodded. “Sir.”

Considering that most of the residents of Y block spent three quarters of their time locked in their cells, word of the newjack spread like wildfire. Within hours, every white prisoner was spitting at Javert as he walked by and when his shift was finally over, it was with great relief that he clocked out, stripped off his now filthy uniform, and escaped into the world.

***

A few days later, Valjean stood at the bars of his cell. His forearms were on the crossbar and his hands and wrists stuck out. His forehead rested on the bars. There was something incredibly sad about his stance, about the practiced way he leaned on the bars, like they were a part of him. His eyes were closed.

Half an hour ago, the newjack had unlocked the door and called Chenildieu out. Visiting hours. Vito’s lawyer was there. It had been eight years since even a lawyer had come to visit Valjean.

With a sigh, he opened his eyes and pushed himself away from the bars. Climbing on his bed, he pulled out his homework and tried to concentrate on it. A few years ago, someone told him the parole board would look more kindly on his case if he worked on rehabilitating himself. He thought the word, the concept, was ludicrous. But here he was, trying to make sense of this book. He supposed the teacher had thought it would be fun. It had something to do with a place called Barsoom that might have been Mars, but he was pretty sure that Mars was not like this.

He finished a page when the cell door opened and he looked up to see Chenildieu return. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” Chenildieu replied.

“How was visiting hours?”

Chenildieu shrugged. “Some motion was denied. Something about the admissibility of evidence.”

“Sorry.”

“Like you care.” Chenildieu sat down on his bed, disappearing from Valjean’s view. “Something’s going down, though. Not sure what. One of the new white guys was having a heart to heart with a suit. Pretty sure something got passed ‘cross the table.”

“Happens. Guards look the other way?”

“’course.”

“And your new buddy was there too.”

“Huh?” Valjean asked.

“You know, that smelly retard? The one who draws.”

Valjean rolled his eyes and picked up his book. “Shut up, Vito. I gotta finish my homework.”

“’kay.”

***

There is a tension, a gestalt, a web of understanding that flows through a prison. The new kids, they don’t feel it, but as the months bleed into years, the old bloods know it. They can feel in their bones when something is not right.

The next morning at breakfast, Valjean carried his tray over to MJ and sat down across from him. The old ball player looked up at him and smiled, the weathered skin around his eyes creasing easily. “Jack! Morning. Not going to mope in the corner by yourself today?”

Valjean set his tray down and sat. Instead of answering the question, he asked, “How you doing, MJ?”

“Tolerably. You read that book for class?” MJ asked.

Valjean wrinkled his nose as he scooped up some of the yellow mess that they called eggs. “Yeah. You?”

MJ shook his head, ruefully. “Naw. I tried, really, but I got distracted.”

Valjean laughed. “Got the new Playboy, huh?”

MJ winked. “It’s got this fine blond piece of ass. I’ll show you.”

Valjean shook his head. “You are so predictable, MJ.”

“Set in my ways. And I like blonds.”

“Don’t I know it.”

They ate quickly. Eight or nine minutes was all the time they got before the guards were hustling them out so the next block could come in. As they were lining up, MJ leaned over and said, “Something’s up.”

Valjean nodded. “Yeah.”

“Do you know anything?”

“Naw. Vito said something was going down at visiting hours yesterday, but he didn’t see much.”

“Ah.”

“And Football seems to think there is something up over at A block.”

“Yeah,” MJ answered. “I heard that all the Brotherhood is on lockdown over there.”

“No kidding?”

They shuffled forward. The patdown was cursory. As they walked back to the block, MJ asked, “See you at recc?”

“’course. Gonna try 500 again.”

MJ grinned. “No way! You fucking nut!”

“Will you spot?”

MJ laughed. “If I can get Tiny to help out. I sure as hell ain’t dragging 500 pounds off your chest by myself.”

“I’m gonna do it this time.”

“Sure you are. You said that last time.”

“Thanks, bro,” Valjean said.

***

By rec the tension in the air had eased somewhat. Maybe it was all a false alarm, maybe it was nothing. Valjean and MJ met at the weight pile and, as word got around that Valjean was going to try and bench press 500 pounds again, breaking his own record, a crowd gathered. (The record board was kind of boring these days. Jack Valjean held every record on it. One guy had suggested that maybe they keep another board for the runner up because Jack’s records were so far out of reach, but no one had gotten around to setting it up.)

Valjean ignored them as he did his warm-up. Cigarettes and stamps traded hands and the betting ramped up. As racially segregated as the prison usually was, the weights was one place where white and black and Mexican and Chinese mingled and, at the moment, bet. Even two guards came over and stood on the outskirts of the jostling crowd, watching. The newjack stood with his arms crossed, his baton gripped under his arm, ready to use. Larson was more relaxed, chatting with Football.

While Valjean was warming up, two other guys had assembled the bar, cobbling together the 50 lb plates from three different sets of weights.

When they were done, the bar was visibly bent.

After finishing his warm-up, Valjean straightened up and looked at the crowd.

“Nervous?” MJ asked him.

Valjean shrugged. “What are the odds?”

MJ clapped him on the shoulder. “You don’t want to know.”

“That bad?”

“Well, this is your third try at 500.”

Valjean chuckled. “I suppose. Okay. I’m ready.”

Valjean lay down on the bench and the spotters took their places. In the end, there were enough volunteers that MJ crouched by his head while three other guys stood ready at the bar. Valjean reached up and grabbed the bar. He gave his spotters a nod and they lifted the bar off the supports and then released it. Valjean held it there for a moment, before slowly lowering it to his chest. The spotters leaned forward. It was at the turnaround when he had failed the last two times. The crowd collectively held their breath. This time, the bar started to rise smoothly. The veins popped out of Valjean’s arms with the effort and he let out a long, slow controlled breath as the bar made a steady progress upwards. The crowd let out an audible sigh as they released the breath they had not known they were holding.

He got the bar back to its full height, and he dropped it into the supports with a clang.

The crowd let out a cheer and activity erupted around him as bets were settled. He ignored the activity as he let MJ pull him up into a sitting position, arms quivering. “Wow, Jack.”

Valjean just nodded, wiping the sweat out of his eyes.

“Third time’s the charm?” MJ asked.

“I guess. Either that, or three months doing sets at 460.”

***

The crowd was dispersing. Across the yard, Tate and McSweeney sat on a picnic table and watched. Jackson came up and sat down next to them. “What happened, Football?” Tate asked.

Jackson shrugged. “He did it. 500 lbs. The man is a fucking machine.”

Tate watched as the big black man sat on the weight bench. The other nigger sat down next to him and handed him his shirt. The newjack wandered away from the weight pile, headed back towards his station by the gates in. Tate’s eyes followed him.

Tate spoke without looking at McSweeney. “You ready?”

McSweeney nodded. “Ready as I will ever be.”

Jackson looked between the two of them and then stood. “I don’t want no part of this.”

Tate shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

****

Violence is the mortar that holds society together and it is the pickax that tears it apart. Society only functions when there are rules, rules that keep people in their place. It is one kind of violence that enforces rules: rules that give the white folk rights that the coloreds don’t need, rules that keep the rough hewn poor so the well bred can thrive, rules that recognize that gentle men are simply not suited for the draft, rules that elevate a man to master of his family to hold dominion over his wife and children. It is a different type of violence, an unnatural sort of violence, where those who have been born on the short end of society’s stick, those who by birth or bad choice are the subject of the society’s violence, lash out, fight back and shatter society’s rules.

The residents of San Quentin, guard and inmate alike, are intimately familiar with both kinds of violence. Most have been on the wrong side of society’s violence their whole lives. The guards live in a murky zone. After all, who would want such a job but someone who is rough and uncouth, who has no other choice? On the outside, they are society’s undesirables, but on the inside they are kings with whole castes below them. Many cross the line and if they are caught, they find themselves in State Blues, too. The inmates, of course, live a life saturated by society’s violence. The bars, the cuffs, the Blues, the time, soaks through them, making it all the more likely that a moment will come and they will flash into the other sort of violence, the kind that erupts without warning.

After rec, the day Valjean broke his own record, that is exactly what happened.

***

Valjean was standing with MJ and the kid who did not talk on the flats. The kid’s name was Jonny, Jonny Frederick, he had found out. Valjean was leaning on the bars of the kid’s cell, facing MJ and Frederick. The CO, Larson, was behind them, urging them to return to their cells, but they had a few minutes yet and Valjean was not ready to comply. MJ was showing the kid the centerfold of the Playboy, trying to get him to draw it. The kid looked at the picture skeptically.

With an amused shake of his head, Valjean said, “You can say no, Jonny.”

The kid looked at him and MJ grumbled, “Thanks for the support, Jack.”

Larson said from behind them, “Step in, inmates.”

With a toothy grin, Valjean looked at MJ. “That, my friend, is what you get for betting against me.”

MJ’s opened his mouth to reply, but only a strangled scream emerged and his eyes opened wide, showing the whites all the way around. He reached out and Valjean clasped his forearms in his own, guiding him to the ground. From somewhere, over by the entrance to the block, someone shouted, “Get down, everyone get the fuck down!”

The kid was still standing and Valjean reached up and pulled him down, next to him. He looked around wildly. MJ was staring up at him with wide frightened eyes. He coughed, and bright red blood spilled from his mouth. Behind him, the guard Larson had also gone down as well, but his eyes were already fixed and dead as a pool of blood seeped from his body, spreading out on the concrete floor.

All around, the floor was covered in inmates. Some had retreated to their cells, others sat or laid on the concrete. Maybe ten feet away, there were two inmates standing. One had flaming red hair and was waving a gun around. The other had taken the baton from the newjack, (Javert, he wildly recalled) and held it tight across the guard’s throat.

Over the loudspeaker, a voice said, “Inmate, put the gun down.”

“No!” screamed the red-haired man. “Not until I get out of here!”

The other man, the one holding the guard, yelled, “Not until Bobby is out of seg!”

“Not until the members of the Brotherhood are off keeplock!”

“All of them!”

The loudspeaker spoke again, its voice tinny and comically weak given the situation. “Put the gun down, inmate.”

The red haired man waved the gun again. “Everyone, in the cells. Now.” Inmates started to get up but he screamed, “No! Don’t stand. Crawl.”

Valjean looked at the kid and MJ. MJ’s eyes were closed and he could not tell if he was still alive or not. He got up into a crouch to drag MJ into the kid’s cell behind him when the man with the gun pointed it directly at him. “Not you. You don’t move. None of you niggers.”

Valjean froze. Next to him, the kid squeaked in terror. Suddenly, he vividly remembered a few days ago, watching from the walkway three flights up as that tattood asshole from the Brotherhood had sent Frederick fleeing into his cell. Frederick’s reaction had brought to mind a memory he had not thought of in years. Jenny was (is? he wondered) near the middle of his sister’s brood. She was a sweet girl, but a bit slow and she talked funny. One day when he had been walking home, he come upon a group of white guys gathered in a clump. He had almost walked past - he did not need that kind of trouble - but then he heard her voice and recognized it. “Please….please, sir,” she had lisped.

He had brought her home half an hour later, his nose still bleeding. She had never been quite the same, after that.

He had heard in newer prisons, there were walkways in the blocks that could only be gotten to from the outside, like the guard towers. Guards with guns patrolled those. San Quentin was too old for that kind of security. No, when the guards came in, it would be through the block gate. There would be gas and guns and people were going to get hurt. He glanced at Frederick, pressed against the bars and then looked up at the inmates with the gun.

As he watched, he saw the guard Javert lift his foot and try and stomp on his captor’s instep, but the inmate stepped deftly away. “None of that,” he growled, tightening his grip on the baton. “None of that you fucking nigger lover!” As he watched, the newjack clutched weakly on the ends of the baton, his eyes bugging out.

Valjean looked back to MJ, whom he was pretty sure had died, and the CO lying behind MJ in a pool of his own blood and then at the kid next to him. Frederick was cowering back against the bars, his legs and head wrapped in his arms. He had pissed himself and the concrete around him was stained dark. Thinking of Jenny, Valjean stood, his hands raised.

The red-haired kid pointed the gun at him. “What the fuck are you doing, nigger?”

“What’s your name?” Valjean asked.

“Shut up!” he screamed.

Valjean glanced up at the loud speaker.

Valjean spoke again, gently, “My name is Jack. What’s your name?”

Much to his surprise, the red haired kid answered. “Mike. My name is Mike.”

The other man, the one holding the guard said, “What the hell are you doing?”

But Mike said, “Shut up, Steve.”

Valjean looked from one to the other. Now that he looked at the one called Steve, he vaguely recognized him. A transfer from downstate. He had set himself up doing tattoos for the Brotherhood.

“Let the newjack go. You don’t want the kind of trouble killing him is going to get you,” Valjean said.

Mike looked wildly from Valjean to his partner. The guard was now dangling limply from the baton at his throat. Mike said, “Shit, Steve, the nigger is right. He looks half dead already.”

Steve shook the guard in his grasp and glared over at Valjean. “C’mon nigger. Beg. Beg for this piece of crap.”

Valjean felt the cold, hard fist of anger clench in his stomach, but he forced it down and looked at the one called Steve, “Please? Will you let the guard go?”

“Not good enough, nigger. Beg. On your knees.”

Not taking his eyes off Steve, Valjean got slowly down on one knee and then the other. His pants were instantly soaked through in the puddle of blood and piss on the floor. “Please,” he said. “Please release the guard.”

And the one called Steve laughed. “You a fucking Oreo, Jack? Big and strong and black on the outside, but just waiting for a nice white bit of meat to be shoved in you?” He threw the guard at Valjean and Valjean scrambled to catch him before he hit the ground. Valjean caught the guard by his armpits and lowered him. The guard sucked in a great, gasping breath, eyes wide and unseeing.

“Take his cuffs,” Mike ordered. “Lock yourselves together.”

Doing as he was told, Valjean took the cuffs from the guard’s belt and closed one circle around the guard’s wrist and one around his own. He fumbled, his hands shaking. He could not count the times he had worn cuffs and it always looked so easy, putting them on. With his shaking hands, it was harder than it looked. Once they were on he realized he had made them too tight and his hand started to go numb almost immediately.

He wondered what was taking the guards so long.

Then Mike said, “You– nigger.” He pointed at the kid, cowering against the bars. “You!” Mike screamed and the kid looked up. “Yeah, you. Get the cuffs from Larson. Lock yourself to the other side of that fucking newjack.”

The kid looked at Valjean and Valjean nodded. Do it, he mouthed, without saying anything.

The kid hesitated.

“Now, you reeking bedwetter. Now!”

He blanched and grabbed the cuffs from Larson’s body, fumbling them onto his wrist and the guard’s other wrist.

Javert’s eyes slowly gained sensibility, but his breath came in rasping gasps. There was a huge purple bruise coloring on his throat.

Valjean looked at the kid, the guard and then glanced back at Mike and Steve. “CO,” he whispered. “How long before…”

Javert shook his head. “I don’t know.” He looked at the guard laying next to him. “Larson’s dead?”

“Think so.”

Javert’s eyes flicked up to the booths at each level. There were guards in two of them, but block officers only had batons. They were sitting tight, locked in for now.

“They have to go to the armory. Without Larson…the LT on today is…” he frowned. “Soon, I think.”

Steve kept pointing the gun at them, while Mike fumbled with a bundle of keys. “Those your keys?” Valjean asked.

“Yeah. Won’t do them much good. I just got block keys.” He leaned his head back against the bars. “I’m locked in, same as you.”

Valjean looked at him. “Not the same,” he said with a growl.

Javert met his gaze and nodded. “No. Not the same. My father was, though.”

“So the rumor is true?”

“Yeah.”

“Fucking A.”

“I am hoping that I don’t become the second Javert to die in these walls. Just think of the newspaper headlines.”

Valjean frowned, “Happens all the time. Just last year, friend of mine was shanked. I knew his dad who had died ten years before doing thirty to life. Rumor had it that his grandfather had also died in San Quentin, but it might have been another prison. I don’t remember.”

Javert frowned. “But they were all criminals.”

Valjean turned away and rested his head back against the bars and looked up. “Like you said, you are locked in same as us.”

Looking up, Valjean saw movement. He gestured with his head and Javert followed his gaze.

“Any second now. It’ll be tear gas, first…”

And before he finished speaking, a dozen canisters landed with a metallic clank on the concrete floor of the flats and start belching out white smoke.

****

Eyes wide, Javert scrambled back, pressing himself against the bars of the cell at his back. Remembering his training, he took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut. Sit tight., he ordered himself.

“Shit!” screamed one of the two inmates who had taken him hostage. Things were happening fast and he opened his eyes, despite himself. The burning started almost immediately and he tried to lift his hands. He was able to get one up – the sick little fucker on his left did not resist. He was curled up, his face buried in his knees. But the big guy, Jack, who had broken the weight record…minutes ago? Was it that long ago? He growled at Javert and yanked his arm back. The cuff dug into Javert’s wrist and he yelped in pain and then drew a deep, choking breath of the tear gas. He lost control in a fit of coughing.

There was someone standing in front of him. One of the inmates. He was a foot in front of Javert with the gun pointed right between his eyes.

“Let me out of here! Let me out or the newjack is dead meat!”

To his side, Jack gasped, “It’s over, fool!”

Tears were streaming down Javert’s face and he could not see anything clearly. There was a shot and he screamed and something heavy fell on him.

The next thing he saw was a creature pulling the body of the inmate off him. The creature was giant and blurry, with a black face and a single large eye. It was terrible. “Found him!” the creature shouted.

He knew it was a guard. It seemed like there were dozens, waving guns around, shouting orders. He found himself being unchained, unlocked, carried away.

Later that night when his eyes were still red and every breath hurt, starting with a dull ache on his throat that was followed with a pain deep in his chest, when he lay in bed, sweating in the August heat staring at the ceiling, when sleep would not come hour after hour, what he would remember was that feeling of helplessness, of the cuffs on his wrists, of being a fraud. Perhaps then, lying on the ground chained to criminals, he was finally in the place where he belonged.

****

And so, as it does, time goes on. Fleeting, moments of pleasure, moments of terror, moments of unspeakable violence, moments of love, all left in the past as new moments unfolded. Even in the prison, where time seems almost to stand still, to not move at all, time does in fact move along.

The entire block was on keeplock. No showers, no rec, no work, no class. The porters delivered peanut butter and jelly sandwiches three times a day. Yesterday, they had searched the cells. One by one, they opened the door and forced the inmates out. One pair of guards searched the inmates – making them stand with their hands on the bars, their legs spread, as they roughly ran their hands and clubs along their legs, their arms, their bodies. Another pair of guards tore the room apart, tossing mattresses and clothes and sheets on the floor, dumping out shoeboxes of carefully hoarded letters, tearing pictures off the wall. Of course, they found little, but a search done like that – finding something was hardly the point. The process took hours and by the time they got to a cell, the drugs had been flushed and the shivs had been broken down to worthless trash.

Javert walked down the gallery, not turning his head as the inmates called out to him. “Hey CO! I got an appointment with the doc. Took me six months to get it. You gotta let me out.” Or “Newjack, goddamnit, I ain’t had a shower in a fucking week.” Or, “How about a new magazine, CO? I read this book eight times.”

To his left was the railing and the three story drop to the flats below. The mess had been cleaned up over the last week. The blood mopped up, the bodies dragged away. McSweeney was in solitary pending a new trial. In another day, the keeplock would be lifted and things would return to normal.

They had warned him about hostage situations in training. The warnings had not prepared him. This morning when he had come back to work for the first time since the riot, he had thought he would be fine. He had dropped his baton in its holder, lined up with the other guards and then dispersed into the prison. As one gate and then another closed shut behind him with clanging finality, he felt the tension coil tight in him, ready to spring free. The only thing that made it endurable was that it was over.

It was strange, the way things worked out. When he had picked up his mail three days ago, the night after the riot, he had stood at the wall of post boxes and opened his box with his key. He had pulled out two letters, both in official looking envelopes. Both had hand written addresses on them with his old address scratched out and his new address written in some curly script. One was stiff, from the DMV, with his renewed driver’s license in it. The other was from Selective Service. He stared at the envelope for a long time, leaning against the wall of mailboxes before he opened it. He tore it open, prying open the flap with a patience he did not feel. The letter had been delayed by his move. He was ordered to report in three days.

He walked along the cells, the numbers counting down and stopped in front of 401.

Both inmates were in their bunks. He stood there looking into the cell. After four days of keeplock, it was spotless. The bars gleamed, the floor had been scrubbed. Very different from the cells on either side which had not recovered from being tossed yesterday. Eventually, the man in the lower bunk set aside his book and raised his head. “Jack?”

“Mmmm?”

“We got company.”

“Huh?” Valjean set aside the magazine he was reading and looked at the bars. “Oh. CO.”

“Valjean.”

Valjean slid down off his bunk and came over to the bars. “I don’t see no sack in your hands. Am I getting transferred?”

Javert frowned. “What?”

“Am I getting transferred? It’s been four years, and after the stuff that went down on Tuesday, I figured…”

Javert shook his head. “No, you are not being transferred.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve been drafted. I came…I don’t know why I came. But I thought…”

Valjean looked at him and he could not read the expression there. “Vietnam?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

Valjean shook his head, gripping the bars in his hand and looked at the floor. The dark creases in his fingers stood out prominently as clenched the bars. Javert took a step back. Even with the bars between them, he was wary of the inmates now.

“I…” Javert began and Valjean looked up and watched him. Javert frowned and then straightened up. “I’ve got to go.”

He could feel Valjean’s eyes on him as he walked back down the gallery.

***

It was 1971. Neither of them could have dreamed what the next eight years would hold, when their paths would again cross. Watergate, the Hearst kidnapping, Title IX, Arthur Ashe. The death of Elvis, the beginning of Star Wars, and founding of Microsoft. The world would change in the next eight years.

The desperation that would grip Valjean immediately after his release was familiar enough, but the singular moment of kindness that would shatter it was undreamed of. That moment, when his path would diverge from countless like him, where his recidivism would not send him back, but instead send him on a different road. The hundreds of dollars that he would leverage into millions before he saw Javert again. All of that was in the future. For now, he gripped the bars and watched as the guard walked away while he, himself, could go nowhere.