“You allowed to keep four books in your room,” the trusty said, in the down-home dialect of the South, “and after this time, you got to give me back a book to get a new one. If you tell me what kind of books you like, I’ll try to pick some out the library and put on the cart for you.”
Noah grinned at him. “I appreciate that,” he said. “I like stories about history, especially stories that talk about how people did things a hundred years ago or two hundred or however long. Westerns are good, too, and if there aren’t enough of those to go around, I like spy stories and stuff like that.” He was looking through the books on the cart as he spoke, and pulled out a book about King Arthur, and another about magic. “These kinds of stories would be okay, too,” he said, and the trusty nodded.
Noah chose his four books, and set them on one of the shelves. The trusty began to pull the cart back out the door. “Okay, I be back in a couple days, and I see what I can do for you. My name’s Benny, you be seeing me a lot.”
The guard closed the door as Benny left the room, and Noah sat down to begin reading. King Arthur was one of his favorite quasi-historical figures, and Noah enjoyed reading about his adventures, whether from the original legends or those written by later authors.
Life settled into a routine rather quickly, mostly involving reading, eating the occasional snack, working out in the room, and his once-daily, hour-long recreational break, which took place in a concrete square somewhere in the middle of the building. The top of the square, but for a double layer of chain-link fencing, was without a roof and open to the sky. Since the weather was warm, he enjoyed the sensation of being outdoors, even if he couldn’t see a tree or blade of grass anywhere.
The rec yard, that concrete square, was just about fifty feet on a side, so Noah calculated that twenty-seven laps would constitute about a mile run. He ran for the full hour every time he got to the rec yard, averaging a mile every eight minutes, which gave him a little over seven miles a day.
In his room, he did push-ups, sit-ups, squats and jumping jacks, averaging three hours of PT every day. His shower stall had a solid rod across its door from which a curtain hung, and he began using it for chin-ups, inverted crunches and other workout exercises that he devised. He had always kept himself in good condition, but he was rapidly getting into the best shape of his life, even if only to escape the boredom of death row.
He had been there a month when Lieutenant Mathers turned up. He was in the middle of a workout when the door opened, and one of the guards told him that he had a visitor. Since he hadn’t been expecting her, he had to go to the visiting room covered in sweat, and he was surprised when she rushed across the room to give him a hug.
“Sergeant Foster,” she said excitedly. “I’ve been trying to get word to you for two weeks now that I got myself transferred back to the states. I’m actually in Missouri, at Fort Leonard Wood, but since I’m still officially assigned to your case I can come to visit you anytime you need me to. Sit down, sit down!”
She hurried around to her side of the table and took her chair, while Noah sat down in his own.
“So, how are you doing?” Mathers asked. “Anybody mistreating you in here? Any threats, beatings, anything like that?”
Noah shook his head. “No, nothing at all,” he said. “I’m doing well. I get to read, work out, rest when I want to. This whole death row thing isn’t all that bad, to be honest. Well, except for the fact that it comes to an unhappy ending.”
Mathers rolled her eyes. “Do you ever take anything seriously? Listen, I’ve been working on the appeal, and I finally managed to get hold of your psychological records. The problem is that they don’t show you having any serious troubling issues. This histrionic blunted affect disorder that it talks about, that’s considered a high-functioning mental condition that doesn’t prevent you from acting rationally, and even makes rational decision-making easier, because you naturally think in logical sequences.”
Noah shrugged and grinned. “Sure, as long as I’ve got somebody to copy. Rational? I wonder if there’s an accurate definition for that word. My real concern is that maybe I’m too rational, rather than irrational. To me, seeing what I saw when I got to the lieutenant and the platoon that day, I took what I considered to be rational action. I put a stop to the situation. Seems to me it’s the rest of the world acting irrationally, by trying to eliminate me from the gene pool.”