Linhart's Beautiful Beast

Chapter 1The Great North, Quebec, 1934 Joe sat at the edge of the cot, sweating under his bloodied coat. He’d never been in the prison infirmary before. The room was barely stocked up and smelled of ether. What could they possibly do for a wounded man here? Near his cot, a man slept under a pile of heavy blankets, moaning words in French. “This might sting,” the doctor said. His stained frock hung loosely on his shoulders. “Don’t move, Joseph.” Joe forced himself not to look down at his hand. There was blood on his pants. His blood. There was some on his boots too. In the woods this morning, when that ax had come flying in his direction, he’d had a strange moment of quiet lucidity. For a split second, Joe had watched the ax slicing through the air as though the blade might stop on its own. Everything had happened so fast. First, there had been the yelling, and then a guard had been aiming a pistol around at them. Joe had turned to see that ax flying his way. He still didn’t know why he’d tried to stop it. It had been close today. Too close. The blade had missed his head and caught the side of his hand. An inch more to the left, and Joe would have come down like those larch trees they murdered every day. While the old doctor stitched up Joe’s hand, Guard Williams watched on, standing stiffly next to Joe’s cot. “Hurry up, Doc,’’ Williams grumbled, clutching his stick. “You were very lucky, Joseph. The blade scraped the skin off but didn’t damage the muscle.” Doctor Fisher looked up at Williams. “Why wasn’t this inmate wearing proper gloves?” Proper gloves? There was no such thing as proper gloves in this kind of cold. The cold inside and outside of Linhart prison, the Icebox, as the inmates called it, was a hateful thing. This prison didn’t really need a warden. The cold was their true master. No man had ever escaped the Icebox. If the cold didn’t get you, the wolves eventually would. “He was wearing standard prison work uniform,” Williams said, unchaining Joe’s ankles from the bed. Brutally, he pulled Joe up. Joe was a head and a half taller than Williams. “Come on. On your feet.” Williams’ eyes flashed at him. “And don’t gimme any trouble now.” Joe stared into Williams’s face; he could crush him, wounded hand or not. But he couldn’t take being sent down to solitary confinement again. He’d never go back to the hole. Never. So, docile, Joe walked alongside Williams, down the tier, back to his cell. As they walked along the row of cells, Joe stared straight ahead, not wanting to answer any of the other men’s questions. The doctor had given him some type of medication and he could feel it now. His eyes wanted to close. Midway, they passed Guard Gauthier. When Gauthier noticed Joe’s bandaged hand, he stopped in his tracks, his eyes narrowing. For a second, he reminded Joe of his brother Peter. But Peter was dead. Peter had died for this country eighteen years ago, as a soldier. “Vega? What happened to you?” Gauthier’s English wasn’t very good. He was French-Canadian, and in here, being a Frenchman was almost as bad as being an inmate. He had no respect from the other guards, but Guard Gauthier was nice to Joe. Always fair. He hadn’t forgotten where he came from: they’d grown up in the same neighborhood. “He cut himself shaving,” Williams said, pushing Joe onward. “You shave with an ax?” Gauthier winked at Joe and walked past them, whistling. He was tough. Wouldn’t let the other guards get the best of him. “Son of a French w***e,” Williams muttered under a breath. They came to his cell and Joe waited while Williams anxiously fumbled for the right key to unlock the gate. “All right, walk backwards to the wall.” Joe knew the drill and went through the motions, following the orders with no expression at all. But when Williams bent down to his ankles, he stared at the back of Williams’s thick neck and imagined the day he’d have it inside his hands. Soon, Joe was unshackled and free, but one sudden move on his part would cause Williams to blow the whistle around his neck and a stampede of guards would immediately come rushing into his cage. They’d pummel him as they had before. There was no use in that anymore. He’d learned his lesson. Williams stepped back into the hall, watching him with those beastly little eyes of his. He shut Joe in and turned the key. “You’re off work duty for two weeks,” he said, with a contemptuous smile. Joe couldn’t stand sitting here all day. Two weeks was too long. But he wouldn’t give Williams the satisfaction of an argument. Williams was already walking away. “Enjoy your little vacation.” For a while, Joe sat on his bunk, staring at the bars of his cell. But staring was no good. Thinking was even worse. It was only noon. Five hours before their next meal. Lying on his side, he faced the empty bunk across from his. He was lucky enough to have his own cell. Most men didn’t last very long in the Icebox. Many transfers meant many empty bunks. He enjoyed his space. Loneliness was his only religion. Joe closed his eyes. Heard his mother’s voice. It was the medication they’d given him. He didn’t want to think about all that. He’d probably never see his mother alive again. No, better to sleep, than to remember the living. * * * * Joe woke to the sound of keys turning in the lock. Whatever they’d given him was wearing off, but he still felt slow. Williams was pushing a man into his cell. “You’ve got company,” Williams announced, grinning. Williams unshackled the man. “Okay, Dubois,” he said, to the inmate whose face Joe still couldn’t glimpse. “Don’t you worry your pretty little ginger head about this guy, all right? Vega here might look like a big stupid beast, but he won’t hurt you.” Williams’s eyes flickered with malice. “Not with his hand like that, right, Vega?” “Look,” Joe said, breaking his vow of silence for the day. “Warden Cooke said he wouldn’t force a cellmate on me, if I kept out of brawls and did the work―” “Yeah, well, as you may have noticed, times are hard these days, and you French nationalists and dirty immigrants are piling up at our doors.” “I ain’t no dirty immigrant. I was born in Montreal same as you―” “Sure, Vega. That’s a real blue-blooded name. Sure, your father was a loyalist soldier born in Upper Canada. Right. Right.” Snickering, Williams shoved his shoulder into the young man. “And Dubois, I suppose you ain’t French either.” He laughed and shook his head. “You’re both sons of whores, for all I know.” Once, Joe had almost killed Williams for calling his mother a w***e. He’d given Williams that scar under his eye. But he knew better now. Williams seemed a little surprised at his poise. He walked back into the hall and locked them in. The young man, Dubois, looked down at the empty bunk. “Is this mine?” The man couldn’t be a day older than twenty. His pale face was tense with fear, but his eyes were strangely serene and very green. And that ginger hair. Joe knew that hair. He knew this man. He’d seen him before. Joe nodded his head and looked away. He hadn’t had company, a visitor, in three years. He didn’t even think he remembered how to carry on a conversation with anybody, except for Levin and Novak, his only friends in here. On the opposite bunk, Dubois curled himself into the fetal position, facing away from him, staring at the wall. Joe tried to go back to his book, but suddenly, Dubois flipped to his back and turned his face to him, looking straight into his eyes. “What happened to your hand?” he asked gently. Joe looked down at the white gauze wrapped around his hand. “Well,” Dubois said, before Joe had had a chance to answer, “I want you to know that I won’t be a nuisance to you very much longer. My father will sort all this out. I’ll be released very shortly.” He looked back at the ceiling. “A matter of hours, I suppose.” His father had better come for him, because Joe knew this young man would be dead in a week. Men like him didn’t make it in here. They barely made it out there. “Your name is Vega?” Dubois looked at him again. He had a thick French accent and a voice too soft for this place. “Is that your first name?” The sound of his own voice was strange to Joe. “No,” he said, surprised at himself. Dubois seemed to be patiently waiting for more. “I’m…I’m Joseph,” he finally said. Joe couldn’t remember the last time he’d said his name out loud. Dubois sat up. “Christophe is my name.” He extended his hand. “Pleased to meet you.” He wasn’t sure what to make of this man. Joe shook his cold hand and sat back again. “Well,” Dubois whispered, patting himself down. “I’ll be out of your way in no time at all.” In his front pocket, he found what he’d been looking for: a golden cigarette case. He put a long thin cigarette to his lip. “Do you smoke?” He was looking at Joe through a strand of that unruly, ginger hair. Joe’s mother had always feared redheaded people. She’d said they were in cohorts with the devil. Joe wasn’t sure he believed in all that. “No,” he said. “I don’t smoke no more.” Dubois blew a curl of smoke out, looking away at the bars. There was something about the way he sat, cross-legged, and the way he held his cigarette, very elegantly, that told Joe he wasn’t going to make it in here. Joe went back to reading. The book he’d borrowed was one of the last few he hadn’t read in here. The prison library contained five-hundred and thirty-seven books, and he’d read five-hundred and twenty-two in the last three years. Most of these books were sweet romances―donations from the good nuns in Montreal. Warden Cooke had faith in their “corrupted criminal minds” and wanted to educate his inmates, but Joe had yet to get his hands on a book that could teach him anything worth his while in here. The one he was currently reading wasn’t so terrible. It told the story of a Russian man who dreamed of being someone important but ended up killing a man. Joe would have to return it this week. They weren’t allowed any possessions. Especially not books. Across from Joe, Dubois dropped his cigarette to the ground and crushed it under his polished boot. Those leather boots would be torn in a month. Joe wondered why Dubois had been allowed to keep them on his feet. And how had he managed to smuggle his fancy cigarette case in here? To Joe’s surprise, Dubois gathered the extinguished butt and pushed it into a crack in the wall. Now, he stood by the bars, looking out. There was no use in looking out at the hall, at the cells across theirs. No use in it at all. Then Joe noticed how badly Dubois was shivering. He remembered his nights here. Nothing had warmed his body in those days, not even his anger. Despite the fact that he was dressed in Linhart’s standard uniform; thick denim blue pants and shirt, under a heavier sweater of coarse wool, Dubois’s teeth were clattering. Joe no longer needed to wear the wool sweater. He could go days without even wearing the shirt. He could sit here in his under shirt and stand the cold in a way he couldn’t explain. The cold was inside him now. They were one and the same. But after a while, Dubois’s shivering bothered Joe. “Wrap that blanket around your shoulders,” he told him. “It’ll help with the chills.” Dubois looked at him as though he’d forgotten he was even here. “The blanket.” Joe pointed to it on the bunk. “Put it on.” But Dubois didn’t bother with his advice. He looked back and through the bars, at the silent hall. The cold kept them all sedated. There was barely any noise in here. Not like the mental asylum a city jail could be. Their thoughts never had a chance to thaw in the Icebox. Joe returned to his book, but every sentence got lost before his eyes could trail down another set of letters. He needed to clear his throat, but that would call attention, and he didn’t want Dubois to look at him. He didn’t want him here. Yes, it came over him, quick and urgent, like the need to empty his bladder in the night: Dubois had to go.