Page 27 of A River Red With Blood
“Then I may look for a different lawyer.”
Vose drank half his water and smacked his lips like it was the best he’d ever tasted.
“How are you doing in here?”I asked.It might have sounded like a dumb question, prison being prison, but prisoners liked to be asked how they were, and whether everything was as well as it could be.In that, they resembled the rest of us, but with fewer opportunities to act poorly with impunity; often, they held themselves to a higher standard of behavior.Incarceration broughtout the best and worst in men and women, and an outsider made privy to its workings might have been surprised by how closely prisoners looked out for one another.You didn’t steal from your own.You tried to protect the weak.You held on to your humanity.Sometimes you had to walk away and leave a body to the law of the jungle, because you always kept a piece of yourself apart, untouched.You were not Christ, but if you were convinced otherwise, the system would happily martyr you, though you would not come back from the dead.
“I’ve been better,” Vose answered.“So has this place.Soon we’ll be walking the Bloody Mile again.”
The Bloody Mile was a term that dated back to Thomaston, where violence was so prevalent that the walkways between units were said to run red, and each year, when winter was over, younger inmates were incited to “spring clean” by beating up transgressors: sex offenders, thieves, snitches.The move to Warren didn’t end the violence, but it marked the beginning of an end, aided by the appointment of enlightened wardens who understood that brutality, like blood, trickled down.That era, according to some, had since come to a close.The system was alleged to be tilting back toward repression, with prison attacks on the increase, which would make it harder to retain good staff.The ones who replaced them would be less experienced and more fearful, which meant they’d favor further repression and be quicker to resort to force, a spiral that led only in one direction.
But there was no point in trying to explain this to people who advocated opening detention facilities for immigrants in alligator-ridden swamps, or cutting food and healthcare budgets for inmates.Maine spent about four dollars per prisoner per day on food, which was laughable, but only until one considered that most states spent less than three dollars.And why should this matter if you weren’t a prisoner, or related to one?The answer was self-interest: If the system can get away with doing it to the weak—and few are more powerless than prisoners—it’ll eventually get around to doing the same to you, because the powerful always start with the most vulnerable and work their way up.Perhaps that was why, Moxie’s wishes notwithstanding, I’d agreedto see Ward Vose.For better or worse, I stood between Vose and nothing.
Vose clasped his hands before him but otherwise did not move.Incarceration had taught him the virtue of stillness.
“You know about my boy?”
“I know what Alcock told me, and what I’ve read.”
“In the newspapers?”
“And elsewhere.I’ve seen the autopsy notes.I have to say there’s not a lot to make me doubt your son’s death was accidental.”
“I’d feel the same way looking at it from the outside,” said Voss.“When you say ‘not a lot’—”
“I’ll admit it’s odd that he headed into the wilderness and not toward civilization,” I said, “or what passes for it up in the Kennebec.The break to his leg is uncommon but not inexplicable, especially since he’d been drinking.Like I said, it’s not much.At the risk of sounding callous, there are better uses of my time and your money.”
Vose said he understood, and took another sip of water.
“Here’s what I’d say in reply.First, Scott knew how to survive in the wilderness.I taught him—when I was around, which I accept was less than I ought to have been.But when I wasn’t there, my father did what he could to educate Scott about the woods.My pops died during the pandemic, but if he were still around, he’d confirm it.”
“Anyone can have an accident in the wild,” I said.“Bad luck is blind.”
“And there’s the alcohol, right?”
“There is.”
“Scott didn’t drink alcohol.”
I’d heard that before from so many parents about their children that I could have set it to music and lived off the copyright.
“With respect, Mr Vose—”
“Let me correct that: Scott couldn’t drink alcohol.He had an intolerance.It was diagnosed when he was fourteen, after he took off with some buddies and a couple of stolen cases of Silver Bullets to go drinking.He’d sneaked a beer or two before,or taken a sip from a bottle of hard liquor when no one was looking, but he never paid much attention to the effect it had, or blamed it on something else if he did, like a cold or hay fever.Because who knows about alcohol intolerance in their teens?I’ve got fifty in my sights and I didn’t know about it until Scott was diagnosed after overindulging on the Coors.
“At first, they thought it might be asthma, because that’s in my family on my mother’s side.Some of the symptoms were the same: nose all blocked, trouble breathing, but then Scott also had real bad cramps, so severe that he collapsed and his mom was all set to take him to the emergency room.But one of her neighbors was a doctor, and by the mercy of God, she happened to be parking her car in her driveway when Scott hit the floor.She was the one who suggested the problem might be an intolerance.”
“Was there a formal diagnosis?”
“I don’t know,” said Vose.“I just know that Scotty kept away from booze after.He never wanted to be as sick again.”
“Or so he claimed.”
Vose conceded the point.“Sure.He was a kid, and kids get tempted.I swore I’d never drink again after my first hangover, and I’ve lost count of the number of hangovers I’ve had since.There would have been more of them too, had the forces of law and justice not done their best to protect me from myself.But Scott was a smart boy: he didn’t just look older than his years, he acted it too, when he chose.If he did drink, he’d have done no more than swill it in his mouth to fit in with the company he was keeping.He certainly wouldn’t have drunk so much he could hardly stand.Even if he’d wanted to, he wouldn’t have been able.He’d have started hurting badly long before he became intoxicated.”
I let it go.
“And where were you when a possible intolerance was first identified?”I asked.
“Doing nine months at the Northern New Hampshire Correctional Facility,” said Vose.“For receiving.”
