It was the most beautiful thing Caxton had ever seen. It was also carved up into sections by a mesh of wires so close together that Caxton couldn’t have put her hand between them, even if she’d had the chance. The SHU exercise yard was a cage twenty feet wide by fifty feet long. Wire mesh formed a ceiling and four walls. The concrete floor of the cage had a red rectangle painted on it, and the inmates were never allowed outside of that rectangle, which kept them always six feet from the mesh.
They were allowed to do as they pleased inside the rectangle, as long as they didn’t approach one another or talk. A row of yoga mats had even been set up along one side of the cage, and a couple inmates made use of them to do sit-ups or stretching exercises. The rest just milled around, careful not to get too close to each other. One of them, a big woman with no left ear, only a lump of twisted scar tissue, made a nasty game of it. She would start walking toward one of her fellow inmates until they would be forced to step backward. The COs weren’t timid about shouting for them to keep their space, and anyone who broke through the invisible limit was dragged off, forfeiting their exercise period for the next day. They made no attempt to stop the big woman from herding the others back and forth across the yard, however.
Back in the cell Caxton asked Stimson why the big woman would do such a thing. She was only causing trouble for the others. “She’s a convict,” Stimson said, as if that explained everything.
“So am I. So are you. We don’t pull that kind of bullshit.”
Stimson shook her head excitedly. This was another chance to initiate her celly into the ways of life inside. “No, see, I’m an inmate. There’s a difference. Inmates try to get along. We want to be model prisoners so we can get days on our good-behavior jackets. Convicts are different. They know they’re going to be in and out of prison all their lives, so they got no reason to try to be good. If they can be bad, though, like, real tough, they can get a rep for it, and that’s a good thing, how they see it.”
Caxton thought of Guilty Jen, who had been obsessed with respect and reputation to the point she was willing to kill to get it. “I think I’d rather be an inmate.”
“Yeah?” Stimson asked. “I had you pegged different. A hard case.”
Caxton climbed up onto her bunk and lay back on her mattress. She had to think about what that meant.
As usual, Stimson wouldn’t just let her be. “I’m pretty useful to you, huh?” she asked, pulling herself up onto the side of Caxton’s bunk and leaning her chin on the mattress. “I mean, I can tell you stuff you didn’t know. I can help you out.”
“I guess,” Caxton said.
“We’re connecting, right? We’re bonding. That’s good. ’Cause if I’m useful to you, maybe you can be useful to me. You can protect me. If I get in trouble, you can vouch for me. That’s how it works, right? We’re getting together?”
“Whatever,” Caxton told her.
“I am going to be so useful to you,” Stimson said. “You wait and see. I’m gonna be your road bitch. That’s what you call your best friend inside. See? Useful. I’m gonna be your best friend in the world. And then, and then, and then you can be my mama. If—if—if, you know. If you wanted to.”
Caxton couldn’t look into those trusting eyes anymore. They reminded her too much of the eyes of the dogs she used to rescue. She turned her head away. It was impossible to spend twenty-three hours a day in the cell with Stimson and not talk to the woman. To not interact with her. But the last thing she wanted to do was lead Stimson on. They weren’t friends.
Caxton couldn’t imagine ever being friends with someone like this baby-obsessed speed freak. The second she got out of SCI-Marcy she would never think about Stimson again. It wasn’t fair to pretend otherwise. “I won’t be in here that long,” she said, trying not to put too much edge in her voice. “Maybe your next celly can be your mama.”
“I didn’t mean nothing by it,” Stimson said, dropping back down to the floor. “Shit. I didn’t mean I was going to suck your * or nothing.”
“Okay,” Caxton said. “Good to know.”