We hadn’t spotted any antelope at play, not one roaming buffalo. This high desert, an arid remote scabland choked with scrub brush and soil erosion, lay as far as we could see. Gerald Peyton was behind the steering wheel; I rode shotgun. The rental Dodge’s air-conditioner had crapped out a few miles west of the Mississippi River. All windows were cranked down to blast us. My mouth cork dry, I couldn’t spit out the savage grit.

“Then Madonna turned to Brittany Spears,” Gerald was telling me. “And she locked her lips on that young thang's. Lord, I damn near went nuts -- ”

“Gerald,” I cut into his sentence. “Is the radio still broken?”

The bounty hunter’s wry glance settled on me. “Does my talking bug you, Frank?”

“Maybe you could put on a different record,” I said. “Madonna kissing a couple of junior divas bores me. I could care less. She’s a pig.”

“Shut your mouth,” Gerald said, then after a little added, “Watching ladies kiss turns on most dudes.”

“How much damn further?” I asked.

“You didn’t wanna fly,” said Gerald. “Now don’t try and put that on me.”

“Jetliners gimme the willies,” I said. “Especially after 9-11.”

“Hm. Florence can’t be but ten or so miles,” Gerald said.

As the rare silence between us lengthened, I took advantage of it to
mull over this journey. Our destination was ADX Supermax Prison,
nicknamed “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” less than fifty miles south of
Colorado Springs along State Highway 115. Gerald’s cousin, Wesley
Colchester, bunked there along with 450 other hard-ass inmates. Wesley
had sent a letter asking Gerald to pay him a visit. I didn’t know why.
Though curious, I hadn’t asked Gerald. But when he needed a road buddy, my name came up.

We were friends. If Gerald wanted to drive cross-country from Pelham,
our hometown in Virginia, to Florence, Colorado, then I was up for it.
He’d pulled my feet out of the fire plenty of times. Hoo boy. I stole
another look over at three hundred pound sculpted on his big-bone frame.
Years ago, the Washington Redskins had a defensive tackle named Manny
Sistrunk. Gerald was dead dabs for Manny, only bulkier through the shoulders and neck. And meaner if he so desired.

“Frank, you went to Red Onion to see your cousin,” said Gerald as we rode on. “Gimme the straight skinny.”

Red Onion prison was Virginia’s super maximum prison erected on a
desolate, remote mountaintop. My head shook as certain images leaked
into my mind. “It was gray. Zinc gray. I likened it to a zoo. Yeah, that’s it. Red Onion is a zinc zoo.”

“I figured as much,” Gerald growled.

“All I thought about once the steel doors slammed was getting out.”

“Well, I appreciate your making this trip,” said Gerald. Our eyes, sore
and squinting, stayed riveted to the heat waves shimmying off the endless tarface pavement.

“It ain’t no thing,” I said. “You’d do as much for me.”

“Man, we’re like brothers,” said Gerald. “But I couldn’t believe my eyes
when Madonna sucked on Brittany’s mouth. It wasn’t played for the cameras either. They enjoyed it. Immensely.”

“Yeah, well, don’t get any ideas,” I said.

“Don’t you fret none," said Gerald. "I’m straight as an arrow.”

“Gerald, I’ve got a sour feeling hanging in my chest,” I said. “My Irish ancestors called it a premonition.”

“It ain’t nothing we can’t handle,” he said.

Famous last words, I thought.

***

We skirted the tailings ponds left by the uranium milling company and a
short distance later the new Bear’s Paw Golf Course. Prisons were big in
the local commerce. Once the coal and cattle industry petered out,
something had to sustain it. The townspeople of Florence had bought 600
acres and deeded it over to the Federal government. Besides the ADX
strongbox, nine state prisons were also located in the county. The
community college offered academic courses for prospective prison employees. AFGE Local 1300, the prison guards’ union hall, flew by us.

Within Florence’s corporate limits, State Highway 115 turned into their
main stem. Gerald and I didn’t say a word, only gaped at the vacant
sidewalks and silvery tumbleweeds bouncing over moonscape yards. All we needed were a couple of saddles, lassos six-guns, and harmonicas.

“Their welcoming committee must’ve forgot us,” commented Gerald in a hoarse whisper caused by ingested dust.

“What kind of folks begs for prisons to built in their backyard?” I wondered aloud.

“That strikes you as peculiar, too, huh?”

“AAA reserved us a berth at the Skull Bone Motel. A block past Fremont
Kawasaki but before Trails End Café and Daylight Donuts. Who do we tell the motel proprietor we’re with if he should inquire?” I asked.

“Amnesty International,” said Gerald.

“Brilliant. That’ll tick them off for sure.”

Gerald’s grin cracked his parched lips. “That’s the idea.”

“I want no trouble,” I said. “Don’t you start anything with these people. Better yet, let me do all the talking.”

“I got no heartburn with that,” said Gerald. “The first time a damn
desert rat sneers at us, though, his face gets slammed into the cinderblock wall.”

“You see, that’s what I’m saying. That attitude is dangerous. Check it
at the door.”

Ignoring me, Gerald chin-jutted. “There’s our twenty-two-bucks-a-night motel. Now I can see why, too.”

Gerald had a valid point. The Skull Bone Motel squatting in front of us
hadn’t seen a fresh coat of paint since the Carter years, if then. A
tripod sign advertised “VACANCY” in arsenic green, hand-scrawled
letters. I could only suppose that was its permanent status -- not too many tourists drifted this far off the Interstate.

After parking the Dodge, we filed into the office, a squalid and hot
stall. A stout lady behind the beaverboard counter leaned her lardy
elbows between a magazine. It was a Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Her
red-rimmed piglet eyes narrowed on our approach scuffing her
floorboards. Their shade of green matched the signboard’s. Her gray-shot raven hair was combed up into a lopsided witch’s knot.

“Can I help you, gents?” she asked in a man’s gruff voice.

“We have a reservation,” I replied. “Under the name Frank Johnson.”

“Sign this here guest card,” she said. “Payment in advance. Clean towels are on the way. Who are you with?”

“Amnes -- ”

“Salesmen,” I interrupted Gerald’s cute reply. “We’re aerosol vitamins salesmen.”

“No kidding,” she said. “I use those myself. They ward off old age and keep my girlish figure.”

Gerald started to snicker so I stepped in front of him. “What’s the
quickest way to the prison, ma’am?” I asked.

“It depends,” she said. “Federal or state?”

“ADX.”

“Mm. Stay on Main Street, suck a dogleg right at the second traffic
signal,” she said. “That puts you on Pikes Peak Avenue. Go north
following the signs. You’ll espy it. Selling vitamins to jailbirds, are you now?”

“No,” said Gerald, quicker than me. “For the guards. Gotta keep up your strength inside that zinc zoo, you know.”

“And how,” she said. “Those animals would slit your throat for a laugh.
Worst of the worst riot behind those bars. We got that Unabomber creep
-- Ted Kaczynski. Terry Nichols whom I pray will soon get the big jab
and leave us. The nutso with a bomb planted in his shoes. What’s his name? Oh yeah, Richard Reid. Watch your backs is my advice to you.”

Gerald’s smirk toughened. “Some ADX inmates proclaim their innocence,” he said.

Biting a corner of her lip, she scratched an elbow. “Saying it doesn’t make it so now does it?”

“Yes ma’am,” I said.

Leaving, we didn’t argue. Trembling with rage, Gerald was too livid. Our
room, an end unit, sat closest to the kidney-shaped swimming pool filled
with only a dust devil. I grabbed our bags out of the trunk and caught
up with Gerald inside fiddling with knobs and dials on the ancient air-conditioner mounted in the window.

“That old gas bag frosts my ass,” he said. “Like no innocent black man
ever went to jail. Like no innocent black man ever waited on Death Row. Like no innocent black man ever rode the lightning.”

“Aw, forget about her,” I said. “Excuse my nosiness, but what was your cousin’s offense?”

“Wesley shot a man in Reno just to watch him die,” said Gerald with a deadpan face.

“Ha. Ha. All right. So, it’s none of my business. Sorry I asked.”

“Simmer down, Frank. Wesley was sent upriver for allegedly sticking up a
Korean’s liquor store in Mobile, Alabama. Years later, he shanked a sadistic guard bent on corn holing him in the laundry room. That stunt
sent him out here to ADX.”

“Did he kill the bastard guard?”

“In a flash of an eye.”

“Good for Wesley.” I flopped our bags on one of the two twin beds. The mattress was stone hard.

“As for your original question, I can’t answer it,” said Gerald. The
steel-toe tip of his boot smashed into the air-conditioner. No go. It
remained inert and mute. “Wesley didn’t specify why in his letter. Only that it was a matter of grave urgency. Being family, how could I refuse
him?”

“You ready to go pay your respects?” I asked him.

Gerald moved to the bathroom no bigger than inside a VW Bug. “Bet on it,” he said. “One thing else. Like the old lady said, better watch your
back.”

“Hey, I already know it,” I said. “Been there, done that.”

“I hear that,” said Gerald. Conversing in cryptic clichés somehow
comforted us.

***

No doubt I had opinions on America’s penal system but at that moment all
my intellect was tied in knots over putting in our appearance at ADX
Supermax Prison. If I was lucky, maybe I’d ask the Unabomber for his
autograph and auction it on Ebay for a minor fortune. Hell, didn’t art
lovers collect lurid watercolors done by Charles Manson and John Wayne Gacy, Junior?

I shivered. “What the hell ails me, coming here like this?”

“Huh?” asked Gerald.

My stare went out the Dodge’s window. “Never mind,” I muttered.

The average sentence at ADX dragged on for 36 years. That predated the
gleam in my mother’s eye so I lacked any frame of reference. I did know
that all the prisoners rotted in solitary cells measuring 12 feet by 7
feet. A window strip looked out on the dismal desert. There were two
cell doors, one barred steel and the second solid steel. Strip searches and sleep deprivation inside ADX were as natural as yawns and freckles.

An uniformed guard waved us through the first gate. Our Dodge farted by skeins of razor wire, tall chain link fences, and rifle towers. A continuous Death Valley wind strafed the parking lots and broad yards. Exchanging knowing glances, we hustled out of the Dodge and entered the Administrative Building. Processing was efficient, thorough, and degrading. I don’t care what they showed on Court TV -- any time spent inside a jail sucked butt. It was far from glamorous.

A pair of washouts from the School of Bar Bouncers, a.k.a. as guards,
escorted us through a labyrinth of low-lit, windowless corridors. Our
brisk footfall caromed off the soundproof walls. I sniffed and the image
I got was a batch of rancid cheese. Phew. My overfed usher was armed but I didn’t cut over my vision to inventory his lethal toys.

The Visitors Area, such as it was, felt cramped. Two booths separated by
grimy thick-paned Plexiglass were rigged with telephones to facilitate
communications to the other side. Gerald sighed. We waited. Five, ten,
fifteen minutes. Our two gun-toting ushers never stirred a whisker. The
cheese smell grew more rancid. I needed a stiff rinse of neat gin to wash the dreck out of my mouth.

Further inside the prison down unseen mazes, doors clanged and slammed
shut. This intentional clamor, I suspected, went on twenty-four hours a
day. More harassment. I wondered what it felt like sleeping on a gym mat
spread over a concrete bed. I guessed that’s why they called it prison. Punishment. Paying a debt owed to society.

By and by, Wesley Colchester, Number 26540-056, leg-ironed and manacled,
shuffled through a narrow ashy white door. He blinked under the florescent light built into the low ceiling. Hammy hands mashed him down
by the shoulders into the plastic molded chair. He picked up the handset. With a hasty eye flick to signal Gerald, we did likewise.

“How have you been hitting them?” asked Gerald’s hollow-sounding voice.

“Striking out,” said Wesley in a baritone that belied his flyweight physique. “Every then and now, I hit a loud foul.”

“Are the cowboy guards leaving you alone?” asked Gerald.

“Yep. I married one of ‘em.”

A sonorous command barged into our conversation. “Mister Colchester, enough with that disrespect. Hear me?”

“We best get down to it,” said Wesley. “I’ve got some bad news.”

Gerald didn’t exaggerate his cringe. “Worst than caged up in this hellhole?”

“The prison infirmary has diagnosed me with lung cancer,” said Wesley,
no hitch disturbing his mellow confession. “It’s inoperable, the doctors tell me.”

“Jesus,” said Gerald.

“Here’s the thing,” said Wesley. “My mother doesn’t know it and I can’t
have her come in here and see me like this.”

“What do you need?” asked Gerald.

Wesley’s amber eyes rolled over as if noticing me for the first time.
“Who’s he?”

“Frank Johnson,” said Gerald. “He’s with me, a good friend.”

A lean jaw knotted at its hinge. Wesley said, “This is private. Between family. Friends don’t count. Tell him to hang up his handset.”

I started to comply but Gerald wasn’t having any of that. “Nope. You say
whatever is on your mind to us both. Otherwise, we march. Like it or not, that’s the way it is, Wesley.”

White noise on the phone connection filled the silent pause. Cold sweat
dripped from my armpits. My stomach roiled. My tautening throat muscles aborted my swallows.

“All right, fine,” said Wesley, his teary slits for eyes now fixed on Gerald. “Have it your way. I need for you to break this news to my mother.”


“Christ, you want me to go home and tell your poor ma that you’re at death’s door?”

“Yep.”

“Man, you don’t ask for much, do you?” Gerald’s forefinger rubbed at an eye
.

Despite my better breeding, I interjected a remark. “Gerald, we can do
it for the man. It’s nothing too hard. If it brings Wesley any peace of mind, I’ll go along with him.”

“See, your sidekick grasps my point of view,” said Wesley. “Learn from it.”


“All right then,” Gerald relented. “Marvelous. We’ll go see Mrs. Colchester first thing when we get back to Pelham. I’ll lay it all out
for her.”

“You’re a prince among toads,” said Wesley. He may have smiled.

“How do you amuse yourself in here?” asked Gerald.

Wesley shrugged. “For now, I juggle balls of paper. Jog in place. Do jumping jacks. Pray and read. You know. Whatever kills time. You dig?”

“Yeah sure,” said Gerald. “We better kick. Man, keep your shit tight.”

“Are you coming back?” asked Wesley, the first emotion straining his words.

“Bet on it,” said Gerald, his words also thick. “My road dog and I’ll catch you in a month or so. How does that sound to you?”

“You’re a prince,” his cousin repeated.

One of the bullish guards hovering near leaned in. “Gas up, ass-wad. You’re out of here.”

Their good-byes were soul-breaking looks locked until Wesley was towed
through the narrow ashy white door. Its closing steel banged into our
ears. Gerald sat stock still for a few minutes. Once composed, he got up and I followed on his heels. I had another reason to detest prisons.

***

The Dodge’s radio only picked up Limbaugh and I would’ve rather heard a
toilet flush so I flicked it off and lost myself in the desert’s
wasteland whizzing by us. Gerald’s pale knuckles clutched the steering
wheel. We hadn’t said more than twenty words since the previous
afternoon after leaving Wesley Colchester at ADX prison. Gerald had
killed a fifth of Kentucky bourbon I’d bought him in town for medicinal
purposes. If he sported anything approaching a hangover, I couldn’t
discern it.

I rattled through various scripts in my mind to say something profound
and meaningful. It all sounded like cheap bullshit so I kept my lips
buttoned. I wondered what Wesley had on his breakfast try poked through
a slot in his metal door. We’d polished off a stack of flapjacks and King’s Syrup at the Trails End Café. They tasted like green sawdust. Gerald coughed before saying in a sober monotone:

“I guess folks do get sick and die in prison. What I mean is you have to die of something.”

“That makes sense,” I said.

“It’s a helluva place to die all alone,” said Gerald. “To breathe your last in a prison clinic. I’d rather go down fighting off the Aryan Brotherhood.”

“That makes sense,” I said.

“What Wesley wants me to do will break his mama’s heart in half,” Gerald went on. That doesn’t make sense. I ain’t going to do it.”

The flat, rocky desert spread in its infinity before us. “You gave him your word.”

“Nah. I agreed with Wesley to get the hell out of ADX,” said Gerald. “What’s more, I ain’t going back to see him.”

“Cold, man, cold.”

Set-faced, Gerald drove for a while longer. I heard myself breathing in harder spurts. The desert swelter made life hard here.

“Yeah, okay. I take your point. Let me chew it over,” he said.

My breath vented out before I said: “Take your time. We’ve got plenty ofdistance in front of us.”