Valentine by Jane Snyder

A prison officer plans for Valentine's Day with his wife and daughter, but first must get through a challenging day at work.

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Ten years ago, Bob McClean killed his four-year old stepson Dakota for the insurance money, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He's been here ever since.

We have other offenders who've killed a child, their own mostly. The baby wouldn't stop crying or the wife had it coming and the kid got in his way.

Bob wasn't impulsive. When he bought the policy, he didn't tell Dakota's mom.

He was running a scam involving churches at the time, had no fixed address. On the night Dakota died, he said, Dakota's mother had gone shopping, and he and Dakota were in their motel room, sitting up in bed, watching TV. Cars, Dakota's favorite show, was on. Bob fell asleep.

When he woke Dakota was gone. Oh, he was frantic, he said, went running down the motel steps into the dark, crying.

The EMTs fished Dakota out of the motel pool, saw the marks from Bob's hands on Dakota's shoulders.

"Just five minutes in a cell with him, Sergeant," my officers said when Bob got here. "That's all I need. Just him, me, and a rubber hose."

Lisa, my wife, had her first miscarriage by then and I thought a nice little boy like Dakota would have suited us down to the ground, but I told my crew we do not allow our personal feelings to interfere with our responsibilities.

I saw him today when I was doing hearings in Protective Custody. Bob had been infracted for exposing himself to Officer Tammy Moyers. He stood behind the bars of his cell barking while she made rounds. Woof woof.

Tammy couldn't stop shivering, the unit sergeant wrote in his witness statement.

If we didn't hire women, Bob claimed, he wouldn't do it. A treat for Tammy anyway, he said, a real Scooby snack.

I've been the hearings lieutenant in Closed Custody for nine months now, seen Bob eight times. Same infraction, different women. You never ask him to look at the victim's point of view, tell him he hurt her, because that excites him.

It's a challenge, punishing someone who's already in prison. I gave him four weeks of extra duty. Night shift would roust him from bed at three in the morning to shovel snow on the offender walkways. Some guys like being outdoors and we give them a cup of real coffee when they're done, but Bob prefers to stay in his cell, where the other offenders can't get at him, eating pogey-bait and reading romance books, the kind where the girl is a virgin, saving herself for marriage. Every month he orders the maximum amount of commissary allowed, five hundred dollars. His mother gives him the money.

He grinned at me, man to man, said he'd just been giving his pecker an airing.

"We've done, Mr. McClean."

Two officers came to escort him to his cell.

The cuffs chafed his wrists. "Lose some weight," they said, when he complained.

You could hear him all the way to the salleport.

I've also seen it spelled sallyport but I believe salle is correct, from the French word for room, the room formed when the officer in the booth shuts the gates in front and behind offenders, a way to control offender movement.

At lunch in the break room they were talking about tomorrow, Valentine's Day.

Too much pressure, Hank said. It isn't only the money. You've got to make her think you know what she really wants, that you "get" her.

"And you should give her something funny too," Jake said. "Something whimsical."

We laughed at his disgusted tone.

My daughter Lorrie loves Valentine's Day.

Can't see it myself. When I was a kid we had the party at school. I liked the treats, didn't like being asked if I had a girlfriend. My father always gave my mother a big red heart-shaped box of Russell Stover chocolates, told her not to let my brother Garth and me eat them all. "I got them for you."

I told Lorrie I was still worn out from Christmas.

But how can there be too much of what's good, she wanted to know.

Last night she showed me the little plastic containers of the pink glitter slime Lisa had helped her make, one for every child in her class. It was rosy when you stretched it, sparkling with pink heart sequins.

She's the youngest in her room, gets teased for being so smart and intense. I pictured them calling it unicorn vomit, saying no one wants you for their valentine, Lorrie.

At breakfast Lisa put Lorrie's present next to her plate. A grey sweatshirt printed with hearts of flowers. Good, I thought. She'll be warmer when she goes running out at recess without her coat.

Lorrie hugged us both. It was going to be the funnest day ever, she said.

"Funnest is baby talk," I told her. "You should say something like today will be the most fun ever instead."

I knew I'd hurt her feelings, even before she left the table without asking to be excused, leaving her breakfast.

Lisa said if I kept correcting Lorrie she'd stop talking to me. "Is that what you want?"

"I don't want her to sound dumb." Though the hyperbole in the phrase I'd proposed as a substitute sounded childish as well.

"Gosh, no."

I hadn't gotten anything for Lorrie myself, though Lisa said, when the subject first came up, Lorrie would like something just from me.

A Hallmark holiday, I said. Lorrie got plenty at Christmas. I didn't tell her I hate the Daddy's little sweetheart aspect of the holiday, treating your child like your girlfriend.

At work, when you went in, it smelled sweet. The desk in the public access room was loaded with stuff. Flowers, big red roses, Teddy bears big as toddlers. I love you beary much. None of it is allowed in offender areas.

Captain Reese was standing at the desk, checking on who was getting what, speculating about the cost. He asked what I was doing for Lisa.

"I'm letting her put off cleaning the hen house till tomorrow," I said, more sharply than I'd intended, but it didn't matter because he went around telling everyone about the funny thing I'd said, how come we hadn't seen any of them eggs.

Cherry Spencer was clutching a white plastic vase holding two blue and two green carnations.

I stopped to admire them. Seahawk colors. Seth Owens, Cherry's occasional boyfriend, is a 12th man. "Aren't they beautiful?" She was cooking dinner for Seth tonight she said. Fried chicken. She marinated it in buttermilk first and he loved that. He'd asked her out, of course, but she thought the restaurants would be too busy.

I figured he'd said that about the restaurants and she'd invited him for dinner.

"This is really special." she said, sticking her nose into her mingy bouquet.

When she left to put the flowers in her locker Reese shook his head. "He'll string her along forever," he said, then told me to cancel my hearings today. There'd been a fight in the chow hall in Medium at breakfast. One of the civilian cooks, Mac Hall, a big, soft-spoken, Black man, who'd been working here a long time, was popular with the offenders, had taken a blow to the chin, didn't know who'd hit him. He was in the hospital and nineteen offenders had bruised knuckles. Reese sent me to help with the investigation.

We sat at the big table in the captain's conference room, drinking coffee, watching the video footage from the kitchen. At first all we saw were offenders' backs. Mac had said he felt a gust of air coming from his right side, and then he was sprawled on his back, struggling to his feet.

Like a bull rider after he's been tossed, trying to get away before the bull gores him.

The fight itself may have been spontaneous. Offenders don't get enough exercise in winter, would relish a chance to mix it up, but we figured the Boys called the actual hit. The chow hall is good for those. Dangerous equipment, blind spots.

The Dirty White Boys had been writing nuisance grievances about Black staff giving white offenders orders. You're not respecting our culture.

The tail doesn't wag the dog the dog here, we told ourselves.

The video wasn't good, but before lunch we knew Jason Hansen hit Mac. Six Dirty White Boys got between Mac and the camera, had him in a corner next to the cooler. We slowed down the film, enlarged angles. Jason was the right height, and what we could see of his movements placed him at the scene. Then we found an angle showing Jason's face, half of it, behind Mac as he fell. He'll get new charges, Second Degree Assault, I hoped.

Sometimes it happens that the inmate has been pressured into doing a hit. An outside contact could have threatened his family. Or he's a sex offender with a cover story, walks mainline as if he's as good as anybody. If one of the Boys figures it out, they own him. When the detective from the city police interviews him he'll ask Jason about it, sound sympathetic: "You were up against it, weren't you, son?"

I believed Jason wanted to do it.

In the afternoon I interrogated Dirty White Boys.

The last one I saw, Ed Johns, is due for release in a month unless he loses good time for the fight. When he sat down he slid a hand down the neck of his jumpsuit, smiled coyly. "I don't have a weapon, I promise."

He pulled out a folded piece of paper, a diagram of the chow hall drawn on the back of a commissary list, showing positions, alternative routes and so on, presumably prepared by the Dirty White Boys. "I brought it because I knew I was seeing you."

Ed was in the first unit I'd worked in, twenty years ago, had a finger in every dirty pie. "I always thought a lot of you, Lieutenant," he said. "Of course, I kept that to myself."

"Of course."

I figured the diagram was probably real. Ed had been in a holding cell since the fight was broken up, wouldn't have anything to write with. They should have found it when they searched him but Ed has been in prison a while, knows some tricks.

"I'm no snitch, Lieutenant," he told me, "but it bothered me about Mac."

Sergeant Kevin Ames, also Black, had been the planned target, there being more prestige in injuring a correctional officer than a sixty-year-old known for his banana bread, but Kevin had been standing with his back to the door looking into the room, would have seen his assailant coming. Mac was easier.

"I understand," I said, as if Ed was a man of honor, as if he couldn't have stopped the whole damn thing, as if what he was doing now wasn't an attempt to keep his good time. "That prosocial attitude will serve you well on the streets, Mr. Johns." I told him. "Whenever that may be."

He looked out the window into the hall. No outside windows in the interrogation rooms. A heavyset officer I didn't know came out of the breakroom carrying a plate of pink frosted cupcakes.

"Pigs is pigs," Ed muttered.

I didn't answer.

We should, I told Captain Shaw, be able to bring charges against the ones who'd surrounded Mac and everyone who had one of the diagrams.

Justice for Mac, he said.

I wondered if Mac would lose any teeth.

I was thinking of what to tell Reese about Bob next week. I wouldn't say I felt sorry for him and a little TLC might persuade him to be less disgusting. I'd say his behavior isn't improving and it's affecting staff morale. How about sending him to the mental health unit at Tarrydale, see if they can help?

Tarrydale will just send us somebody worse, Reese would say.

"Haha," I'd say, "yes, they're known for that, but it won't be anybody we can't handle," He'd present sending Bob to Tarrydale to the superintendent as his own idea.

It was snowing when I left, the sky full with the promise of more. When they got Bob up to shovel I'd be in bed, spooning Lisa, loving her even in sleep.

At the bookstore Lorrie's favorite clerk showed me graphic novels for kids. King Arthur, Dickens, Greek myths, Bible stories, by someone called Marcia Williams. I got the Robin Hood book, liking the shades of greensward on the cover.

At home Lorrie and her kitten Nigel were playing with the mouse toy she'd made him for Valentine's Day.

Like Little House in the Big Woods, she said, us in our cozy house with plenty to eat, waiting out the blizzard. She'd put her candy from school in a bowl on the kitchen table. To share, she said, "We'll make our own good time."

I didn't say if we ran out of food, the Tacoma has four-wheel drive.

Lisa took a red lollipop, sucked it in a way that interested me. I warned her about spoiling her appetite.

"Nothing to worry about there, Cowboy."

Lorrie looked up, trying to figure what that was about. At supper she said the party was the best ever.

Her slime was a hit. The teacher from the room across the hall asked for the recipe and they'd played Fruit Basket Upset and Honey, Do You Love Me. It was so funny Mrs. Swenson almost wet her pants, she laughed so hard.

After supper she gave Lisa a pink and white heart shaped pincushion my mother helped her make. Exactly what I wanted, Lisa said, hugging and kissing her. "Thank you, thank you, thank you. Won't it look pretty on my dresser?"

"Put it in your sewing basket," Lorrie told her. "The heart should come to a sharper point at the bottom."

She stayed doubtful, even when Lisa said it was perfect.

She pushed a piece of folded up paper toward me. "I was going to make you something in personal choice time today but I was too mad. This is just a valentine, not a real present."

I love you Daddy, she'd written on the front, because you take care of me. She used to write I love you, I love you, without giving a reason.

Inside she'd drawn a picture with colored pencils of a little girl and her much bigger dad in front of a rollercoaster. The little girl is pointing to the rollercoaster. The balloon over her head says: Please, Daddy. Please let me.

The dad's balloon read: When monkeys fly out of my butt.

"This is a wonderful present, Lorrie."

"It's no good."

"Look how well you drew the rollercoaster, Miss Lady." I ran a finger over the scoops, dips, curves.

"I got lucky."

Lisa reminded Lorrie of the first time she'd heard me say that about the monkeys. She'd been disappointed to learn there weren't any monkeys.

I said I was glad she'd told me and I was sorry. "Please always tell us when something is bothering you."

"Oh, sure." She smiled proudly.

She'd never be able to keep a promise like that. I pulled her onto my lap, kissed her springy curls smelling of berry-scented little girl shampoo.

I'd gotten Lisa earrings, pearls with a faint pink glow, set in yellow gold. Purchased long before our fight this morning. Which we'd made up when I called her at work between White Boys. I'd apologized, of course, but mostly I told her how much I didn't want her to be angry with me.

"I hate it too," she said. "Feeling that way."

Now she told me the earrings were beautiful.

"Not as beautiful as you."

Lorrie liked this. "Daddy's romantic isn't he, Mommy?"

Lisa leaned over, blew into my left ear, then onto the back of Lorrie's neck, making her giggle.

I gave Lorrie my gift.

A comic book, that was all.

"Please read it to me."

"You can read it to yourself. You don't need me."

She said the book looked really good and she was sure I'd like it too.

I didn't want our nice time to be over. Lorrie stayed on my lap and Lisa leaned into my side.

It wasn't like most children's books. The peasants' suffering was too close.

Much, the Miller's son, laid down beside his father's body, pleading with him. Don't be dead, Dad.

"If this is too sad, Lorrie, we don't have to finish."

"No," she said, rubbing her finger on the page, over the miller's putty-colored face, "it's good."

"Read it again," she said when I finished.

Past her bed time but I wasn't ready to let go yet. I read it to them both again.

We tucked her in. Nigel settled on her stomach. "Maybe I'll draw you another cartoon tomorrow, Daddy."

"Maybe I'll draw you one."

She fell asleep at once but I stayed with her for a few minutes while Lisa got ready, thought banal things about how quickly she was growing up, wouldn't be a little girl much longer, before I went to Lisa.