Undercover Prison King novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: The Yard
The yard boss tests the new man in front of two hundred inmates, and Sawyer wins without killing him. The warden sends for him.
Breakfast was a gray scoop of oatmeal and a carton of milk with yesterday's date.
Sawyer sat at the end of the bench with Wicks.
He ate with his left hand, his right wrist wrapped in a strip of torn sheet.
The runner from last night stopped behind him.
"You feel better about your debt?"
"Much," Sawyer said, and chewed.
The runner waited, then moved on.
He had not swallowed the pill, and nobody had checked.
The block did not think a new man could be much trouble.
"They don't watch the first day," Wicks said into his milk. "They watch the second."
"What happens on the second?"
"The yard."
The yard was a dirt rectangle ringed with razor wire.
It held a basketball hoop without a net and a weight pile under a tin roof.
Two hundred and eighty men in orange spread out across it.
The wind was cold enough to hurt.
Sawyer walked the fence line slowly, learning angles.
Tower, tower, a guard on the roof of the laundry building, the gate to the blocks.
Hargis stood at the gate with a coffee in a steel cup, and he did not look up as Sawyer passed.
That was the second thing that felt wrong.
A man who had hit him with a threat yesterday should have been watching him today.
Instead the yard slowly arranged itself around him in a loose ring.
Men just stopped what they were doing and moved aside.
The man who came through the gap was the biggest Sawyer had ever seen outside a boxing ring.
He stood six foot five, shirtless in the cold, with a chest like a barrel and a neck as wide as his head.
His knuckles were flat white scars.
Two men trailed him a step behind, one on each shoulder, and neither of them was smiling.
"Maitland," said the big man. His voice was surprisingly soft. "I'm the yard boss. You owe the block."
"I owe nobody anything."
"Everybody owes. It's how the block eats."
The big man glanced at the sheet on Sawyer's wrist.
"You broke a bracket yesterday. Heard it was brave."
"Heard it was stupid."
"Both." The yard boss gave an easy nod.
"You pay the welcome pack with two weeks of commissary, and you carry for us in the laundry."
"Or?"
"Or I find out how brave you really are."
Sawyer looked at the faces in the ring.
Most were young, and some were terrified.
A few, at the back, were older, and watched him.
Wicks stood among them, very still, with his book pressed to his chest.
"A boy died yesterday," Sawyer said. "Danny Dellis. He owed you too."
"Everybody dies owing something."
"Did he carry?"
The yard boss said nothing.
Sawyer heard Hargis put down his coffee, clink, on the gate post.
That sound was the whole yard's answer.
The first punch came from the left, wide and slow, because the big man did not believe he needed to be fast.
Sawyer slipped it by the width of a hand and felt the wind of it pass his ear.
The second came from the right, a hook that would have taken his head off, and he stepped inside it instead.
He drove his bad wrist into the man's solar plexus and then his shoulder into the man's ribs, and the barrel chest finally moved.
The yard boss grunted, staggered back one pace, and was still the size of a door.
He swung a forearm.
It hit Sawyer across the cheek and the world went white at the edges.
He tasted copper.
One of the lieutenants rushed in from the left.
Sawyer caught him by the collar without looking, turned, and put him into the dirt with a hip throw that left him gasping.
The second lieutenant froze and stayed frozen.
The yard boss came again, lower this time, arms wide, trying to take Sawyer to the ground and fall on him.
Sawyer let him.
He rolled with the weight, hooked a leg, and took the man's thick arm with both hands.
Nine years in the Army had taught him which angle made a shoulder pop.
The big man went down on his face in the dirt.
Sawyer's knee sat in his spine, and his arm was bent to the point of breaking.
The yard went quiet enough to hear the wire sing.
"Say my debt is paid," Sawyer said, loud enough for the whole ring.
"Go ahead," the yard boss said. "Break it."
Sawyer could have, and he knew it, and so did every man watching.
He let go instead and stood up.
"Get up," he said. "Nobody is taking your arm today."
The big man rolled over and lay a moment staring at the sky.
Then he laughed, short and winded, and spat blood into the dirt.
"Who are you?"
"Cole Maitland."
"No," the yard boss said, and got slowly to his feet. "Nobody who fights like that is called Cole Maitland."
The ring did not cheer.
It simply opened, one row at a time, and let Sawyer walk out of it.
At the gate, Hargis finally looked at him.
Behind the captain stood a guard in a pressed grey uniform, holding a clipboard.
"Maitland," the guard said. "Infirmary, now."
"I'm fine."
"Not your call." The guard read from the clipboard. "Dr. Neumann asked for you by name. The warden signed off an hour ago."
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