Chapter 19 - The Letters to Nowhere
Inside Cell Block C of Central Prison in Raleigh,
the concept of time did not move in seasons;
it dripped in agonizing increments of gray,
fluorescent monotony.
The cell measured eight feet wide by ten feet deep,
its walls constructed of rough cinder blocks painted a nauseating institutional beige.
A narrow slit of reinforced,
wire-meshed glass,
six inches wide,
offered a view of a concrete exercise yard surrounded by three layers of twenty-foot razor wire.
Evan Brooks sat on the edge of his steel bunk,
his elbows resting on his knees,
his hands gripping a yellow legal pad.
He was forty-two years old,
but his reflection in the polished steel mirror above the metal basin showed an old,
broken man.
His hair was almost completely white,
cut roughly against the scalp,
his frame skeletal,
his spine permanently bowed from years of involuntary deference to guards half his age.
His hands shook with a persistent,
nervous tremor,
the aftereffect of chronic high blood pressure that no longer received imported medications or special dietary care.
He had spent the last three months writing.
With a short,
three-inch institutional pencil,
sharpened against the concrete floor,
he had filled forty pages with dense,
desperate script.
He had written to his mother:
Mom,
I know you think I am a monster,
but if Dad were alive,
he would tell you that every man stumbles.
I had bad partners.
I was blinded by the corporate pressure.
Just send me twenty dollars for the commissary so I can buy warm socks for the winter.
He had written to the board of Apex Logistics:
To the Executive Committee:
I am willing to provide sealed affidavits detailing competitor price-fixing in the Southeast region if you support my petition for medical commutation.
And every single Sunday evening,
he had written to Claire:
Claire,
I know you hate me.
I know you think you have won.
But you cannot erase eight years of our lives.
I still remember the orchard in Maine.
I still remember the way you looked at me when we bought the house.
Nobody will ever know you the way I knew you.
Nobody will ever understand the rhythm of your heart like your husband.
Write to me.
Just one word.
Just tell me you remember.
He folded the letters meticulously,
placing them into the small brown envelopes provided for weekly inmate outgoing mail.
He handed them through the food slot to the corrections officer on morning duty,
his bloodshot eyes following the guard’s cart down the tier with feverish,
desperate anticipation.
Week after week,
he waited for the mail cart to stop at Cell 114.
Every afternoon at 3:00 PM,
the heavy metal wheels of the cart squeaked against the concrete corridor.
Evan would stand at his cell door,
his face pressed against the narrow glass viewing strip,
watching the guard hand white envelopes to the inmates on either side of him.
“Brooks,”
the guard would grunt,
stopping briefly before his door.
Evan’s heart would leap into his throat,
his breath catching in wild hope.
The guard would slide a piece of paper through the slot.
It was never a letter.
It was always his own envelope,
stamped with the heavy purple ink of the United States Postal Service:
RETURN TO SENDER.
Across the front of his mother’s envelope,
stamped in red:
ADDRESSEE REFUSED DELIVERY.
DO NOT RETURN TO THIS ADDRESS.
Across the front of Apex Logistics’s envelope:
REJECTED BY LEGAL COUNSEL.
UNOPENED.
And across the front of the envelope addressed to Claire Brooks Interiors in Charlotte,
stamped in bold,
indelible black letters from the county clerk’s enforcement registry:
PERMANENT JUDICIAL REJECTION.
VIOLATION OF PROTECTIVE INJUNCTION.
INMATE MAIL PRIVILEGES FLAGGED.
Evan stood in the center of his cell,
holding the three returned envelopes in his shaking hands.
The paper was cold,
lifeless,
carrying no scent of perfume,
no warmth of human touch,
no sound of a living voice.
He tore open Claire’s envelope,
staring at his own frantic,
pleading handwriting:
Nobody will ever know you the way I knew you.
The silence of the cell mocked him,
bouncing off the cinder blocks with suffocating force.
She didn't hate him.
She didn't wish him harm.
Worse than hatred,
worse than fury,
she had simply rendered him non-existent.
She had erased his voice,
his name,
and his memory from her reality so completely that his words could not even penetrate the postal sorting facility of her city.
He fell back onto his steel bunk,
the metal creaking beneath his diminished weight.
He buried his face in the thin,
coarse prison blanket,
a dry,
hollow sob shaking his chest.
Ten days.
He had thought ten days of silence would make her desperate for his return.
Instead,
those ten days had become a lifetime of absolute,
May you like
impenetrable silence,
locking him in an iron tomb where no one would ever hear him scream again.
