Linhart's Beautiful Beast

Chapter 1-2

“Could you spare a sheet of paper?” Dubois asked, turning to him again. “I’d be much obliged.”

Joe had a lot of paper. He wrote most inmates’ love letters to their wives or girls. He’d started doing it two years ago. He wrote about two or three letters a week, depending on the period of the year. Christmas was coming. He’d be writing up to ten letters a week by December fifth. His paper was precious.

“Could I have one of those?” Dubois meant the loose sheets Joe kept tucked away near his pillow. “I desperately need to write my father a letter.”

He could afford to give him one sheet. But there was no use in writing his father a letter. The letter would be censored, every suspicious word struck out with ink, and if it did, in fact, manage to get to its destination, the letter would be unreadable. A paper full of cut up sentences. Joe wondered why he bothered with writing those long letters to women who probably never read them anyway. It was something to do. A skill to hone.

“Thank you,’’ Dubois said, taking the sheet from Joe’s hand. He settled himself on his cot, leaning up against the wall behind him, with his knee upright, and Joe waited for him to realize he didn’t have a pencil. Pencils were very hard to come by, but he had a stash of them hidden away under his cot. Buck, the librarian, gave them to him. He’d once had a Waterman fountain pen, but it had run out of ink a long time ago.

Nothing lasted in here, not even men.

After a few minutes of staring at the paper, Dubois delicately placed the blank sheet under his pillow. He tucked his knees under him again and leaned his head back on the wall. He said something Joe didn’t catch, before turning his eyes to the bars once more.

Joe went back to reading.

“They wouldn’t send it out to him.” Dubois said, after a long moment of silence.

Joe wasn’t sure if he needed some kind of response from him, or if Dubois was merely speaking his thoughts out loud. A lot of men talked to themselves in here. He preferred to read.

“Wouldn’t they burn it or censor it?”

Joe suddenly felt like he was sitting across a hot cauldron boiling over with something. This ginger-head was trouble.

“Well, it doesn’t matter anyway.” Dubois drew another cigarette out of his case and lit it. His hand was shaking. He had the hands of an aristocrat. Joe wanted to tell him to save his cigarettes for a rainy day, because he wasn’t going to have access to that kind of tobacco in here, but Dubois inhaled the smoke deeply and sighed it out as though his life depended on it, so Joe kept quiet. Dubois smoked and smoked, until the ashes made up half of the cigarette and dangled limply over his cot. He shook a thought off and laughed a nervous little laugh.

“You’ll burn a hole in your blanket.” Joe didn’t know why he cared. There was nothing else to do.

Dubois glanced down at the long tube of ash between his fingers. “Quite right.’’ He carefully stood and dropped the ashes into the pail, then spat into it.

They resumed their positions, but soon, Dubois stood and began to pace. There wasn’t much room to pace in the cell, but five steps was enough to keep a man pacing all day and night.

“The horses were spooked tonight.” Dubois finally stopped and looked out through the bars. “The escorting guards had to drag me through the blizzard, and I tell you, it was so cold, that after an hour, I was longing to see the prison doors.” He had a very cynical smile, but his eyes were young and naive. “Can you believe that? I never knew one could be so cold and not die.”

New arrivals got here by carriage every last Friday of the month. If this man had walked through the blizzard last night, he was stronger than he looked.

“And do tell me, Joe, how did you get so big?” Dubois frowned at him as though he was studying an animal he’d never come across until now.

Joe’s father had been six-foot six and could carry a horse in his arms. Joe had inherited his father’s stature and worked on the rest. There had been nothing else for him to do in the old neighborhood, but get big and shove his way through everything.

“You don’t say much, do you?” Dubois raised a thin eyebrow at him.

Joe found himself sitting up, leaning in. “I guess I lost the habit of talking,” he blurted out.

Dubois’s whole countenance changed. Suddenly, he looked terrified and lost. “Would you like a cigarette?” he asked Joe again. “I’ve only three left, and three is a terrible number, don’t you think?” He plucked two cigarettes out of his golden case and Joe took one without touching his finger. He lit it. He hadn’t smoked in a very long time, but the taste was still the same, golden and dry, and now Joe knew he’d be wanting more tomorrow. It didn’t matter. What did it matter if he smoked or not?

“Bonté divine,” Dubois said, in French, and under his breath. He sat and smoked angrily, casting quick glances up at Joe. “I hope he dies while he’s buggering one of his precious uptown boys.”

Joe watched Dubois through the thin cloud of smoke between them.

What had the man just said?

Dubois jumped to his feet and leaned his forehead to one of the iron bars. “God, God.”

Joe put his cigarette out and closed his book.

“They must let me out,” Dubois said, suddenly, looking over at him. “How do I get out of here? Tell me!”

He couldn’t help him. He was no good to him.

“Joe,” Dubois said, calling him by his name as if they were brothers. “There must be a way. How long have you been here? You must know of ways to―”

“Look,” Joe cut him off, standing, “forget all that, all right? Forget it. There ain’t no way outta here. And look at you. You wouldn’t make it three miles on foot. The wolves would get you. And if the wolves don’t get you, then the bears will, and if you ain’t eaten alive, the cold is sure to get you and freeze you mid step.” He hadn’t spoken so many words in three years and he was winded. “And besides, your father will get you out, like you said. It’s obvious you don’t belong in here with any of us, so why don’t you just stay calm and wait a couple of days. You won’t be assigned to work detail until you’re past your first medical check, and that’s gonna take a while.”

Dubois listened with a look of confusion on his face. “Work detail?”

“Yeah, work.”

“Oh.”

But Joe saw Dubois still didn’t understand. “Outside. Cutting down trees.”

Dubois blinked. “Yes, of course.”

“That’s the whole purpose of Linhart. That’s why we’re here. We’re cheap labor, all of us. Unwilling employees of the James Murphy Aluminum company.”

“Murphy, you say? The American millionaire?” Dubois was coming around now. “You’re cutting down trees for him?”

“That’s right. Phase one of the Murphy power station project is deforestation.”

“They want to bring electricity here? Why?”

“‘Cause it’s gonna take a whole lot of juice to power up Murphy’s new gigantic plant.”

“But aren’t we on Native soil? Doesn’t this part of the land belong to the people here?”

What they were doing here, against their will or not, Joe knew was wrong. It was the raping of the natives’ homes. This was where the people still hunted and taught their children their ancestral ways. The forest was their church, and they, the convicts, put an ax to it every day.

“Do you mean to tell me I’m expected to go out there in this hellish cold to chop down trees for man I don’t even care for?”

Joe looked at Dubois’s hands, his white neck, his clean red hair. “What’d you do for a living out there?”

“I’m a…I was a student. I was set up. I’m not supposed to be in here.” He looked out the bars again. “It’s all a sordid mistake. A plot for revenge.”

Joe half believed him. It didn’t really matter if Dubois was lying or not. Whatever he needed to tell himself to get through his first night in the Icebox was fine by him.

“Why are you in here?” Dubois asked. “Did you murder someone?”

“No, but I wanted to. I was drunk and he was lucky.”

“Will they ever release you from here?”

“Yeah, in four years.” He’d be twenty-five by then. The world would be a different place and his mother would be broken down from the washing and ironing she did for other people. People like Dubois. “How long d’you get?” Joe asked him anyway, though he knew he shouldn’t care.

“Two years.”

“What’d you do?” Joe sat down again, aware that he towered over Dubois when he stood. “Break somebody’s grand piano?”

Dubois scoffed, but didn’t answer him.

Joe picked up his book and opened it. But suddenly, the Russian’s man’s story was less appealing to him than Dubois’s tale. He tried to read.

“If you must know, I was arrested and charged with forging checks.”

“Forgery? That’s it?” The Icebox was for violent tempers who needed to cool down. Every man here was in for a violent crime. No rapists. No kidnappers. None of those child molesters. But forgery?

“Of course, it’s all lies. Why would I need to forge my checks?” The bell rang and Dubois stepped back from the bars. “What does that bell mean?”

“Time to eat.”

“Well, I’m not hungry.” Dubois sat and drew his knees to his chest. “I’ll eat tomorrow, when they release me from here.”

Joe heard the commotion in the hall and keys turning in locks. They were going to be let out for an hour. He stood at attention by the cell gate. “You’ll regret it,” he told Dubois.

Dubois waved his remark off.

Fine. Let him starve tonight.

Gauthier turned the key, and Joe was finally let out, but against his will, he looked over his shoulder at Dubois.

“Tu viens, oui ou non?” Gauthier asked Dubois. Coming or not?

Dubois didn’t answer.

Gauthier shrugged and looked over at Joe. “First night here, so I’ll let it go.” He looked back at the cell. “And the smoking too. But tonight, Vega, you explain the rules to him.”

Joe nodded his head. Yes, he’d explain the rules to the new brat.

* * * *

Dinner over, the guards opened cell gates, and within minutes, Joe was caged in. It had been stew and bread again tonight. He ate better in Linhart than he had in the city jail. Warden Cooke insisted on it. In exchange for better food, the warden agreed to keep quiet about what was really going on in the Icebox. Joe supposed Cooke was getting rich off Murphy’s dirty money. It worked for him. Yet he knew his mother hadn’t had any meat stew tonight. No, she’d probably gone to bed with nothing in her belly but hunger. Joe wished he could let her know he was doing all right, but if he wrote to her, she’d feel everything again.

His silence was the only decent thing he had left to offer his mother. She’d lost a son to a war she didn’t understand and the other was locked up in this jail because of his stupid fists.

Inside the cell, Joe found Dubois lying on his side again, facing the wall. From his breathing, he could see Dubois wasn’t really asleep. He must have been starving by now. After that blizzard. That long walk.