Chapter 2

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 whore. 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 knewthis 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.