Guarding the Indigo

Guarding the Indigo

The cell was dark and bleak, tucked away in a little corner of the many-halled prison, with little air or light to penetrate its bars or cold floors. Every now and then, after hours of souring air sinking slowly into the mattress, clogging nostrils and thoughts with its overpowering stench, a thin stream of fresh air would slip its way into the bleak cell and cut through the thickness before it died on the grainy windowsill. Mason Haller lived in this, lived out his days and nights in it, each day blending into another like a sheet of black gauze draped over his eyes as he wandered, without meaning, without purpose, through a vast maze that was nothing but stone walls and thick, sour air. He lied on the mattress amongst it, his hand draped casually but not comfortably across his forehead, his brow beaded with cold perspiration, as it often did, his head tilted left almost as if it had been broken, and his legs cramped sideways, bent awkwardly. Staring out at the room, he looked past the gray haze that filled the room, past the cell completely, and upon the man standing stoically in front of him. He saw the man, but as of yet did not say anything to him. The man was clothed entirely in black, and he was holding a small leather bound book in his hand, an old bible. A prison guard, thick of neck and mid-section, tromped heavily over and, clanging the keys harshly until Mason’s head throbbed and pained him greatly, opened the heavy cell door.

“My name is Reverend Kent, Mr. Haller,” the man said.

Mason gave no answer, staring through him, unblinking, his steel gray eyes blank and murky. The man walked in and pulled up a cracked wooden chair next to Mason’s cot, keeping his distance as he slowly settled into it; the guard slammed the bars shut behind them, saying he’d be close if there was trouble.

“I think you know why I’m here,” Reverend Kent started again.

Mason shifted slightly and closed his eyes, rusty springs beneath the decaying mattress squealing sharply. “It had been a routine trip,” he said suddenly.

“I’m sorry?” the reverend asked, looking confused, his brow furrowed. Mason continued, and the reverend said nothing.

“They’d been moving us inmates back and forth for months on those ships, first one prison, then the next, as if it made any difference. And the way they did it! Shipping us up, herding us onto the loading dock of those cold, stinking ships like we were cattle, or hogs, herding us on in shackles with billy clubs at the back of our heads. We followed without question, the line of men winding through those docks like a dusty string of cattle descending into the slaughterhouse. There were guards everywhere, vicious and brutish things with nothing for brains but cotton wrapped in barbed wire. I wouldn’t have dared made a move, at least not those first few years. They were like pit bulls tethered with frayed string; not much could keep them from killing you if they got the notion. You could have given me a gun and I wouldn’t have done a thing, would’ve dropped it then and there for fear I couldn’t shoot fast enough before they killed me. Yeah, they had me beat. Two cracked ribs and a broken nose the first day, you bet they had me beat. Of course, they had us all beat anyway, ‘cept Jimmie Ray. He never cracked, not once, not until that last day you know. He had an unshakeable, unwavering confidence that ran through every last detail of him. It coursed through his veins and radiated upwards, outwards, like the magnificent glowing embers of a dying sun. We were inseparable from the moment we first encountered one another, and roomed together in that horrible, bleak place. Both in for murder one, and I guess that was how our lives entwined in the first place, because after those years we never took it back, never thought twice about if we’d do it again, and I still don’t regret any of it.

“There came a riot once in our cell block, an enormous affair, and I remember Jimmie and I took the first chance we got at taking that guard down. The screaming was like metal on metal, discordant and beautiful, and the riot pulsed and moved with a life of its own; we moved within it also. My knife was dull but it did its job, and it went in like a boat cutting through the river, cutting through and tearing apart the rushes and undergrowth that choked its path, slipping through the crimson waters without a sound...

“It was March 17th, the night we left. That was the night the fog rolled in and captured me, silent and complete, settling in over everything until you could barely see ten feet in front of you, and it never left, really. We were to be shipped to Marlain Correctional Institution, for spacing reasons, for political reasons I’m sure. We were on the most beautiful ship I had ever seen—the Indigo. She had a hull as black and smooth as the rippling waves beneath her, a tremendous vessel without markings, without color, like a polished onyx stone dropped into the depths of these waters. We boarded under the watchful eye of the guards around us, all of which carried with them such choler that you wouldn’t dare make a sound for fear of what they might do. They did not touch a hair on me, though, because when the fog rolled in around us, rippling across the black water like a serpent, it touched me and cloaked me with such a strange, undeterminable calmness that I have never known. Strange, the way that fog wrapped around the Indigo so completely as we sailed silently through those impenetrable depths.

“Jimmie was roomed in the same cell as me that night, like it had always been, and I think now that we had never really minded being shipped on those boats once we got used to the routine. Anything was better than the prison and its dank cells, the dull, adamant walls holding you in, enveloping you, crushing you. You see, when you were on those ships, you could breathe for once, take in the salty air and let it fill you, even if your wrists were shackled and bound by the cold steel. This trip was like any other, and we were used to it. We were used to the hard biscuits, white and crumbly, meal worms crawling throughout, and no way getting around eating them; we were used to the hard, salty meat, one strip per day if you were lucky enough to have any; the cramped cabins that sealed in every scent, every breath you took, and routine everywhere, but it was still better than those unchanging walls of the prison.

“I remember passing another vessel some time during the night as we glided through the blackness and the fog. It was while Jimmie and I were out on the routine poop deck scrub, which was our shift, and we saw the people inside that boat. They reminded me strangely of rats, the way they clung to the boat and each other, eyes staring hollowly out from their black hats and shawls, huddled and clinging, oblivious to us or anything but the rolling fog and that obscure, black sea. We had asked each other what could make a person do that, leave everything they had for the cold, certain death the water would bring? It seemed impossible to us that anyone would want to be here of their own free volition, but they looked as if were not even aware of this, aware of anything, for they were only black rats clinging to life.

“It was a routine trip, but this time we had plans to escape. It had all seemed so simple to us, as only escape plans do. We could see the light from the shore that gleamed dimly, yellow and distant, fading and shimmering through the fog, and it called out to us silently, beckoning. We figured we could make it that far, even with shackles. We were blind by our own hope and absolute determination, bonded together in this ultimate goal. Midnight was the plan, and after the last check on lights-out we would cross those cold, bleak waters to the freedom beyond, to the solid, certain shore. I waited in the cabin for Jimmie to arrive so we could finish it. I waited there, pitch blackness all around and the creeping scent of mildew from the belly of the Indigo seeping into my nostrils, with me crouched low beside the bed, waiting at a moment’s notice to take action of the escape, but something was definitely amiss, for my friend was not coming; it was midnight and he hadn’t appeared at the doorway as he was supposed to, as was planned.

I heard a rough scrabbling above me, yelling and running of people, and then a tremendous splash as if someone had jumped—or been thrown—into those icy waters. My heart seized at the sound, a sudden pressure crushing my lungs. I yearned to call out to him, to make sure he had not been thrown, that he was alive and with me, yet I knew already that he was gone, and a part of me ached with absolute emptiness, as if it had been torn bodily from me. It was like nothing else I had ever felt, a black emptiness consuming me, overpowering me, killing me, and I felt the fog rolling in, squeezing and choking until I gasped for air, but it clutched at my brain and twisted it, filling me with such insane, uncontrollable rage that would burst free from me. Maddening rage that they had taken Jimmie, that he was gone and we would never reach the shore, and I was all alone in the belly of the stinking, silent Indigo.

“I remember screaming my very soul and tearing my way out of the cell, thrashing outwards and leaping up the ladder that lead to her main deck, forcing this rage, this inhuman rage, onto the rotting core of my misery: the guards.”

He paused.

“After that I don’t remember much of what happened...no, not much of anything at all.”
Reverend Kent said nothing; he had nothing to say. He noticed a thin, twisting scar on the man’s left arm. He wiped his mouth and, after a few moments, asked, “Are you sorry for what you have done?”

Mason sat up, slowly, and turned to face him. Their eyes met, and for a moment the reverend saw into those still, silent pools that were his eyes, looked beyond their murky, impenetrable depths, and saw nothing but shimmering blackness.