Free Dark Men by Derek Haas

if you know what I’m saying.
    “The second day I’m locked up . . . the second damn day . . . I get sucker-punched in the walkway between the chapel and the restrooms. I’m walking along and WHAM! on my back, laid out flat. Didn’t see the fist fly, didn’t see the face, just a blast of pain, blinking white lights, and I’m looking up at the ceiling. I don’t know who hit me or why they hit me or what I had to do to make it right . . . no one tells you that shit. Look at me, I’m all of five-ten and skin and bones and I was even thinner back then if you can dig that. No one helped me up and no one told me what the fuck I was supposed to do to keep from getting jawboned again.
    “When I went to get my meal that afternoon, I saw some of the prisoners snickering at me and my fat lip and my purple cheek but I just ignored them best I could and sat down at one of the tables they had scattered in the cafeteria.
    “That’s where Archibald Grant found me, busted lip and busted flat, eating a dry hamburger in the cafeteria at Lewisburg. He asked me my name and he asked me my story and I don’t know why I let everything out, but like I’m doing here, I did for him there. The words just poured out of me like water out of a busted bucket. I told him where I came from, where I’d been and why I was stuck up inside there.
    “He looked at me, smiling that half smile of his, the way he does, you know, and didn’t say nothing for a while. Then, he nodded like he’d known my story before I told it and he said I’d been stealing the wrong things. Cars, electronics, wallets, knicks and knacks, this place was full of people who boosted the wrong shit. Boosted it because they didn’t know better. All that crap could only get you a little cash and what was the point in that? Risk versus reward was all upside down. Five thousand dollars worth five years in lockdown? In Federal? With these animals? Hell no. No fucking way.”
    Smoke shakes his head vigorously, then swallows hard. He doesn’t look at us, lost in his story, as he continues.
    “Archie folded his hands and lowered his voice. He said what he stole, the only thing worth stealing, was information. He said there was no greater commodity in the world. He said people laid down their lives for it since the dawn of man and they did it for good reason. Told me he stole information on the outside and he’d been stealing it on the inside, riding out his two-year term in comfort and security until he could resume business on the other side of the wall. Said he got thrown in here on purpose anyway, and though that claim had just the slightest ring of bullshit to it, I bought it like a fifty-cent bottle of beer. Looking back now, I’ll just bet he did get himself thrown in there for whatever reason made sense at the time.”
    I remember that time. My old fence Pooley went to visit Archie in that prison, and commented how he couldn’t get to him to put a scare in him, get the information I needed at the time. Maybe Archie was in there to avoid my reach back then. It doesn’t matter . . . I keep my mouth shut and listen to Smoke unfold his story.
    “Anyway, I naturally said something along the lines of ‘why you telling me this?’ And he said, ‘nobody ever believed in you, but I see a spark inside you maybe no one else saw before. Maybe it’s buried deep down in there but I can see it.’ Of course I thought he was completely shining me but fuck if those words didn’t sound like honey. Say what you want about Archibald Grant, but he’s got a mouth on him that could sell scissors to a bald man. He told me he knew who waylayed me in the hall outside the chapel and he knew how to take care of that situation so I wouldn’t be bothered again, not even looked at askew the whole time I was behind bars, but I needed to do something for him. ‘Could I do that?’ he asked.
    “I didn’t know but I said I’d try. He said ‘good, good.’ Then he nodded to indicate a beefy