Hard News

department. It’s just …”
    Rune raced up the back stairs and through the open kitchen door. She saw a man leaping forward fiercely and stomping on the burning bag, sparks flying, smoke pouring. A chubby woman held a long-spouted watering can, dousing his feet. Then Rune was past them, unnoticed, taking the carpeted stairs two at a time. Upstairs she found herself in a small hallway.
    First room, nobody.
    Second, nobody.
    Third, chaos. Six children were staring out the window at the excitement below them, squealing and dancing around.
    They all turned to the doorway as Rune walked into the room and flipped the light switch on.
    One of them cried, “Rune!”
    “Hi, honey,” she said to Courtney. The little girl ran toward her.
    A chubby boy of about ten looked at her. “What’sis? Jailbreak?”
    “Shh, don’t tell anybody.”
    “Yeah, right, like I’m a snitch. Got a cigarette?”
    Rune gave him five dollars. “Forget you—”
    “—saw anything. Right. I know the drill.”
    Rune said to Courtney, “Come on, let’s go home.”
    She pulled the girl’s jacket off a hook and slipped it on her.
    “Are we playing a game?” the little girl asked.
    “Yeah,” Rune said, hustling her out into the corridor, “it’s called kidnapping.”
    THE PRISON YARD WAS SEGREGATED.
    Just like the city, Randy Boggs thought, hanging out there at nine the next morning. Just like life. Blacks one side, whites the other, except on the basketball half-court.
    The blacks were mostly young. A lot wore do-rags or stockings or they had cornrows. They stood together. Strong, big, sleek.
    Yo, homes, quit that noise
.
    Wassup?
    Mah crib. I ever tell you ‘bout mah crib?
    Hells yeah
.
    The whites were older, crueler, humorless. They looked bad—it was the longer, unclean hair, the pale skin. They too stood together.
    Black, white. Just like the city.
    A lot of the men were exercising. There were weights here though the hierarchy didn’t allow for democratic use among all prisoners. Still, there were always push-ups and sit-ups. Muscles develop in prison. But Boggs hadn’t made a fetish of exercise. Doing that’d be an acknowledgment of where he was. If he didn’t stand in line for the thirty-pound dumbbells then maybe he was somewhere else.
    “Amazing grace, how sweet thou art….”
    An a cappella black gospel group was practicing in the yard. They were really good. Boggs, when he first heard them, wanted to cry. Now he just listened. The group wouldn’t be together much longer. They’d walk in two months, four months and thirteen months respectively.
    “I once was lost but now I’m found….”
    The singers started a second verse and someone nearby yelled, “Yo, shut the fuck up.”
    He smelled fireplace wood smoke. He tried not to think of the last time he’d sat in front of a fireplace. Thought about that girl from New York. The little girl with the big camera.
    He sat quietly. He smoked some though since he’d been inside he’d lost his taste for smoking. He’d lost his taste for a lot of things. He sat for five minutes thinking about the girl, about the story, about prison, about the sky before he realized that the prisoners he’d been sitting with were no longer next to him.
    Boggs knew why they’d moved and he felt his skin crackle with fear.
    Severn Washington was sick. Got the flu bad, was puking all night, and was in the infirmary. If Boggs knew it everybody knew it.
    He looked around the yard and saw the man immediately. Juan Ascipio was back.
    He wore a red headband and a fatigue jacket over his jumpsuit. Two other prisoners walked beside him. Ascipio was a newcomer, a dealer who’d been convicted of the assassination of two rivals. He wasn’t a big man and he had a face that when it smiled might make children comfortable. A kind face, the sort you want to please. But the eyes, Boggs had noticed, were grinny-mean and chill.
    The three of them stopped about fifteen feet from where Boggs sat, next to a tall wall of red brick. Ascipio said, “Yo, man. Here. Now.”
    Boggs looked at him but didn’t get up.
    Ascipio pointed to a small shaded area out of sight of the towers. The prisoners called it Lovers’ Lane.
    Ascipio stepped into the nook and unzipped his fly “Yo, man, I’m talking to you. You deaf, or what?”
    His friend said, “Yo, man, on your fucking knees. Gonna turn you out, man, turn you out. You do that an’ you’ll live. Big nigger ain’ here to save your pretty cheeks.”
    The