IT DIDN’T WORK. THE words just swam on the page, thoughts that wouldn’t focus. It was just like it had been when he first came here, when he was new, and after two weeks of kicking the walls and iron bars he’d realized that it was simply a matter of putting up with it, that he had to keep breathing while his appeals filled space, to find a way to pass the time without counting. But today, today was different. Today he wasn’t doing it for his own sake. He knew that. He was thinking of Marv. It was Marv he was reading for. John, every morning the same question, what’s it going to be today? It was important to Marv. Steinbeck? Dostoyevsky? Four uniformed officers had just escorted the sixty-five-year-old man down the long corridor of locked cells. He was dribbling, thanks to the sedatives they’d given him, and his legs had buckled under him several times, but he’d kept his composure; he hadn’t screamed or cried, and the sharp barbed wire above their heads had twinkled dismally in the weak light that managed to force its way in through the small windows even farther up by the ceiling.
