Change of Heart Read online

  "B-believe," Shay stammered.

  I turned around, as if I could see him through the wall between our cells. "What did you say?"

  "It's what you said," Shay corrected. "I read it right, didn't I?"

  I had not told anyone of my plans for my sixth tattoo. I hadn't shared the prototype artwork. I knew for a fact that Shay, from where he stood, could not have seen into my cell as I worked.

  Fumbling behind the brick that served as my safe, I took out the shank that I used as a portable mirror. I stepped up to the front of my cell and angled it so that I could see Shay's beaming face in the reflection. "How did you know what I was writing?"

  Shay smiled wider, and then raised his fist. He unfolded his fingers, one at a time.

  His palm was red and inflamed, and printed across it, in Gothic script, was the same exact tattoo I'd just given myself.

  MICHAEL

  |||||||||||||||||||||||||

  Shay paced his cell in figure eights. "Did you see him?" he asked, wild-eyed.

  I sank down on the stool I'd dragged in from the control booth. I was sluggish today--not only was my head buzzing with questions about what I'd read, but I was also--for the first time in a year--not officiating at this evening's midnight Mass. "See who?" I replied, distracted.

  "Sully. The new guy. Next door."

  I glanced into the other cell. Lucius DuFresne was still on Shay's left; on his right, the formerly empty cell now had someone occupying it. Sully, however, wasn't there. He was in the rec yard, repeatedly running full tilt across the little square yard and leaping up against the far wall, hands splayed, as if hitting it hard enough meant he'd go right through the metal.

  "They're going to kill me," Shay said.

  "Maggie's working on writing a motion at this very--"

  "Not the state," Shay said. "One of them."

  I did not know anything about prison politics, but there was a fine line between Shay's paranoia and what might pass for the truth. Shay was receiving more attention than any other inmate at the prison, as a result of his lawsuit and the media frenzy. There was every chance he might be targeted by the general prison population.

  Behind me, CO Smythe passed in his flak jacket, carrying a broom and some cleaning supplies. Once a week, the inmates were required to clean their own cells. It was one-at-a-time, supervised cleaning: after an inmate came in from rec, the supplies would be waiting for him in his cell, and a CO would stand guard at the doorway until the work was finished--close by, because even Windex could become a weapon in here. I watched the empty cell door open, so that Smythe could leave the spray bottles and the toweling and the broom; then he walked to the far end of the tier to get the new inmate from the rec yard. "I'll talk to the warden. I'll make sure you're protected," I told Shay, which seemed to mollify him. "So," I said, changing the subject, "what do you like to read?"

  "What, you're Oprah now? We're having a book club?"

  "No."

  "Good, because I'm not reading the Bible."

  "I know that," I said, seizing this inroad. "Why not?"

  "It's lies." Shay waved a hand, a dismissal.

  "What do you read that isn't a lie?"

  "I don't," he replied. "The words get all knotted up. I have to stare at a page for a year before I can make sense of it."

  " 'There's light inside a person of light,' " I quoted, " 'and it shines on the whole world.' "

  Shay hesitated. "Can you see it, too?" He held his hands up in front of his face, scrutinizing his fingertips. "The light from the television--the stuff that went into me--it's still there. It glows, at night."

  I sighed. "It's from the Gospel of Thomas."

  "No, I'm pretty sure it came from the television ..."

  "The words, Shay. The ones I just said. They came from a gospel I was reading last night. And so does a lot of stuff you've been saying to me."

  His eyes met mine. "What do you know," he said softly, and I couldn't tell if it was a statement or a question.

  "I don't know," I admitted. "That's why I'm here."

  "That's why we're all here," Shay said.

  If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. It was one of Jesus's sayings in the Gospel of Thomas; it was one of the first things Shay Bourne had ever told me, when he was explaining why he needed to donate his heart. Could it really be this simple? Could salvation be not a passive acceptance, like I'd been led to believe, but an active pursuit?

  Maybe it was saying the rosary, for me, and receiving Holy Communion, and serving God. Maybe for Maggie's father, it was meeting with a bunch of die-hard congregants who wouldn't let the lack of a physical temple dissuade them from prayer. Maybe for Maggie, it was mending whatever kept her focused on her faults instead of her strengths.

  Maybe for Shay, maybe it was offering his heart--literally and figuratively--to the mother who'd lost hers years ago because of him.

  Then again, Shay Bourne was a killer; his sentences curled like a puppy chasing its tail; he thought he had something phosphorescent coursing through his veins because a television had zapped him in the middle of the night. He did not sound messianic--just delusional.

  Shay looked at me. "You should go," he said, but then his attention was distracted by the sound of the rec yard door being opened. Officer Smythe led the new inmate back onto I-tier.

  He was an enormous tower of muscle with a swastika tattooed on his scalp. His hair, sprouting out from a buzz cut, grew over it like moss.

  The inmate's cell door was closed, and his handcuffs removed. "You know the drill, Sully," the officer said. He stood in the doorway as Sully slowly picked up the spray bottle and washed down his sink. I heard the squeak of paper toweling on metal.

  "Hey, Father--you watch the game last night?" CO Smythe said, and then he rolled his eyes. "Sully, what are you doing? You don't need to sweep the--"

  Suddenly the broom in Sully's hands was no longer a broom but a broken spear that he jutted into the officer's throat. Smythe grabbed his neck, gurgling. His eyes rolled back in his head; he stumbled toward Shay's cell. As he fell beside me, I clasped my hands over the wound and screamed for help.

  The tier came to life. The inmates were all clamoring to see what had happened; CO Whitaker was suddenly there and hauling me to my feet, taking my place as another officer started CPR. Four more officers ran past me with pepper spray and shot it into Sully's face. He was dragged out of the tier shrieking as the closest physician arrived--a psychiatrist I'd seen around the prison. But by now, Smythe had stopped moving.

  No one seemed to notice that I was there; there was far too much happening, too much at stake. The psychiatrist tried to find a pulse in Smythe's neck, but his hand came away slick with blood. He lifted the CO's wrist and, after a moment, shook his head. "He's gone."

  The tier had gone absolutely silent; the inmates were all staring in shock at the body in front of them. Blood had stopped flowing from Smythe's neck; he was perfectly still. To my right, I could see an argument going on in the control booth--the EMTs who'd arrived too late and were trying to gain admission to the tier. They were buzzed in, still shrugging into their flak jackets, and knelt beside Smythe's body, repeating the same ineffective tests that the psychiatrist had.

  Behind me, I heard weeping.

  I turned around to find Shay crouched on the floor of his cell. His face was streaked with tears and blood; his hand slipped beneath his cell door so that his fingers brushed Smythe's.

  "You here for last rites?" one of the medics asked, and for the first time, everyone seemed to realize I was still present.

  "I, uh--"

  "What's he doing here?" CO Whitaker barked.

  "Who the hell is he?" another officer said. "I don't even work this tier."

  "I can go," I said. "I'll ... just go." I glanced once more at Shay, who was curled into a ball, whispering. If I hadn't known better, I would have thought he was praying.

  As the two EMTs got ready to move the body ont