The Warden's Mark, Page 2

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  Whether I am alive or dead, or if I linger in some purgatory in between, my memory drifts to the day I received Luke Turner's special mark.

  "Good of you to come so quickly, Wilson," my master and prophet greeted me as my guard escort left me before Mr. Turner's unlocked cell. "You always promptly answer any of my summons."

  "I've no other place to go," I replied, "and every visit to your cell is a special occasion."

  Mr. Turner's congregation possessed no church nor chapel. Warden Gillespie never honored our faith by allotting us a place outside our cells for assembly. Thus Mr. Turner transformed his prison cell into our temple. Through his influence, he acquired fine, Persian carpets to soften the hard, mason walls. In appreciation of the protection Mr. Turner offered them from the savage brutes of the Brotherhood, artists throughout the prison donated fine watercolors and oils to my master's cell. Patchwork quilts gifted by many in our congregation made Mr. Turner's cot warmer and more comfortable than any other the prison had to offer. The shelves of Mr. Turner's cell teemed with sculptures chiseled from soap and wood, fine carvings of feminine forms and predatory animals. Every piece was a devotion offered to Mr. Turner, who became a master of so many of the prison's fragile, but creative, souls by offering them shelter from the beasts who would otherwise rule inside our thick and tall walls.

  I never tired of visiting Mr. Turner's cell. To all who followed his word, it was a most sacred kind of a temple.

  Mr. Turner nodded towards the wall opposite of him. "Knowing your enthusiasm for cleanliness, Wilson, I doubt you know this man."

  A burly inmate with a bleach-blonde anvil of a beard stepped towards me from the wall. So many tattoos twisted across the man's arms and face that I thought the stranger must've blended into the patterns of Mr. Turner's fine carpets on the wall behind him. The man offered me a stiff, curt nod as means of a greeting, and I had the impression he must've been another piece of art Mr. Turner recently acquired.

  "I do not, sir." I answered Mr. Turner with the respect he deserved, but my eyes burned at the man who stood beside my master. "His tattoos mark him as a member of the White Hoods. They're a dangerous collection of thugs."

  The stranger didn't flinch. His face remained a slate blank of emotion. Before Mr. Turner's ascension in our prison, that man would've thrown terrible violence upon me for simply looking at him too long. But in Mr. Turner's company, that tattooed stranger didn't growl at all.

  "Would you believe me, Wilson, if I told you he can be counted among the converted?"

  "I would believe anything you told me."

  Mr. Turner winked at the stranger. "No one's more devoted among my flock than Wilson Greene."

  A rare teapot shrilled on Mr. Turner's electric range. He poured a china cup of steaming tea for the three of us before proceeding any further in conversation.

  "Here is another artist for our simple church, Wilson," Mr. Turner started after we all had the opportunity to taste our tea. "Don't be fooled by his muscle. All that is but a mask, nothing but the garb survival forces him to wear in this prison. But his soul is, like ours, of a more sophisticated kind."

  "Of course, Mr. Turner."

  Mr. Turner smiled. "You're not very good at hiding your thoughts, Wilson. You're terrible at Poker. Hold no secrets from me. You don't trust this stranger. Tell your master why."

  "It's difficult for any animal to change his stripes," I answered, "and that man has so many. All those tattoos mark him as our enemy, and soap will wash none of that ink away. The decision to taint himself with all of those tattoos was his own. His page is no longer clean. It doesn't look to me that he has any room left for any new writing. His marks still hold meaning, Mr. Turner, and they cannot easily be ignored or forgotten."

  Mr. Turner's smile turned to a wide grin. "You do yourself credit. It's not easy to find a man in this prison who understands what it means to accept ink beneath the skin. No one appreciates the tattoos' old magic. And it is harder still to find a man whose skin doesn't bear a single tattoo, not a wisp of ink. But you, Wilson Greene, are such a man. You have blood on your hands, but your skin is clean."

  Mr. Turner bent to a knee before retrieving a cardboard cylinder from beneath his cot. Unfurling a sheet of vellum contained in the cylinder upon the floor, I failed to recognize any meaning in the design written upon that canvas.

  "That piece took me years to acquire," Mr. Turner whispered. "Who would've thought simple, indigo ink could look so beautiful on a tanned hide of human skin?"

  I couldn't resist a shudder as a looked upon that strange conglomeration of shapes traced upon the vellum. The longer I stared upon the design, the more the strange ellipses, triangles, rectangles and lines appeared to shift and move. Shadows drifted upon the canvas as I looked upon it, moving like some murder of crows propelled in an unfelt wind. My head swooned, and I ripped my eyes away before falling to the cell floor.

  A flame burned in Mr. Turner's eyes. "You too feel its power, Wilson. Many sacrifices have been made in the creation of this canvas, in more ways than you can imagine. But those geometries are our keys out of this prison. The power inherent in those shifting shapes will grant us our freedom."

  My heart raced at the thought. Freedom from those walls. Freedom after I had been sentenced lifetimes for my crimes. Freedom from the smell, from the sweat, from the heat in the summer and the chill in the winter. Freedom from the savages who plod behind our tall and thick walls. I would not have believed it had anyone but Mr. Turner promised it.

  "And there's more, Wilson," Mr. Turner whispered. "Those symbols will grant us freedom from the grave."

  I knelt before my prophet and master.

  "I don't deserve such a gift."

  Mr. Turner laughed. "Who in this prison does? Though you have so much blood on you hands, you'll not find anyone behind these walls who does not. Your skin remains a clean canvas, ready to accept the runes and shapes of that design stretched upon the floor. Your skin is a blank slate, an open canvas that will not dilute any of the magic that will flow just below your skin's surface, that will pulsate and raise us both beyond death's touch. All you need to do is willingly accept it, and the magic will make you more angel than man."

  I hesitated no further in accepting Mr. Turner's offering.

  The stranger of so many tattoos did all the rest. He tied my hands and feet to rungs in the walls so that I would not squirm upon the cot while his needles penetrated my skin. The first bites of that artist's tools flashed with pain, but the sensation soon numbed as so much of the ink was injected beneath my skin, covering my back, twisting along my arms, growing, like vines, up my neck and twirling about my face. The stranger's implements hummed through the night as he worked his trade upon me, so masterfully transferring those shapes of the dead canvas unrolled upon the floor onto my breathing skin.

  And those hours of the stranger's work passed quickly as I listened to Mr. Turner, my prophet and my master, tell me how the brutes of the yard would deliver him murder, how the darkness would follow before their knives fell upon me as well, before we would be reborn as free and immortal men.