Free The End of the Sentence by Maria Dahvana Headley, Kat Howard Page A

wire, and nobody climbs out. Ask me, they should have put the Pen on the coast, or offshore. Like a lighthouse. No pirates on the Oregon coast these days to pick prisoners up. They’d be trapped there with rocks to their backs and sea to the front, and that’s a good prison.”
    Ralph looked ruminatively off into the distance as though he was picturing the prison even as he spoke to me.
    “Will they let me in?”
    Ralph laughed. “You worried you’ll have to break in? No. It’s a place like any other, Malcolm. And your errand won’t take long.”

14.
     

    I stopped by the library to make sure Ralph had been right when he handed me Lischen’s spare keys. The doors were locked there, though, and there was no movement inside, despite her saying she’d be working.
    The interior of the truck smelled of her perfume. I nearly turned back. It was Sunday, after all. Chances were there’d be no visiting. I could go home, to my safe little house, where no one could find me. 
    For another two days, anyway. No. I had to go to the prison. Approved . 
    I did go home for a moment, and grabbed a stash of letters, but I took off from the front door without looking back, afraid I wouldn’t manage to leave if I considered it any more. 
    I hit the highway and headed north to I-84, cursing the strangeness of Oregon, the 55 mph speed limit that anywhere else would be 75. It was already mid-morning, and I worried I wouldn’t get into the prison before it closed. I should have called. My mind had gotten soft here, and now I expected the rest of the world to feed me lunch and tuck me into bed. It felt good to take the ramp out of town. 
    I worried my way west, driving a parched landscape, patches of trees as I moved toward Portland, and then, green and dark everywhere. A national forest, so lush it seemed impossible after all the desert. Beside the highway, the river gleamed silver as chains. I looked to the left and saw Mt. Hood, the volcano rising up, snow like a cape over its shoulders. Bridal Veil Falls, a flash of white, a sign announcing a landmark. 
    I was breathing again, feeling like a real person again. Other cars around me, towns, people. I was driving. I was okay. Nothing was wrong now, not really. I believed, for a moment, that I’d moved on, and then I remembered I was driving toward a prison. 
    They’d tell me he was dead, and that I was only getting letters as a formality. They’d tell me I needed to pay for his burial. I’d get a motel room, and watch cable TV. I saw signs advertising rooms for $29 a night, old neon with cowboys on them. A motel, a swimming pool, an orange soda. That was what I’d find once this was done. A reward for making sure. That’s all I was doing. Making sure. 
    The prison itself, when I finally got to it, was weirdly beautiful. I’d imagined concrete blocks, and instead it was Art Deco curves, a watchtower rising over the front entrance, and tall arched windows lined with dark tiles. The sun hit the complex in a way that tricked my eyes into thinking I was somewhere nice, a hotel not terribly far from the seaside, maybe, except for the loops of barbed wire around the tops of the walls. The gates were open, to my surprise. I’d expected to fail. The guard motioned a window roll-down, and I struggled with it for a moment, unused to the manual operation in Lischen’s truck, but then got it down, and tried to look not guilty. Why? I wasn’t guilty. 
    The guard looked at me, sighed, and said, “Visiting hours are over, mister.”
    “I need to see the warden,” I said, that notion falling out of my mouth unexpectedly. 
    “There’s procedures,” the guard said. I looked at the wad of gum he was nursing in his cheek. Bright pink. I could smell the strawberry on his breath. He looked barely old enough to be out of high school, and he’d shaved badly. His face was nicked. 
    “I need to see him,” I said, and pulled the sheaf of letters out of the glove compartment. The guard