Page 3 of Deliver Me

Everyone had ignored her then, and Mia ignored her now, though she noticed Lilly’s eyes narrow as she reached for her own letter and knew she hadn’t been the only one to notice Mrs. Newberry’s behavior.

One by one each of the other ladies held up a similar envelope to the one in Mrs. Mitchell’s hand.

“Wonderful. Did anyone have any problems? Issues?” Mrs. Mitchell scanned the group, but everyone shook their heads,denying any upsetting interaction with the prisoners. They had been polite in their responses, and most had seemed genuinely grateful for the letters. “Then the Lord must have ensured that our letters found their way into the right hands.”

The rest of the meeting went smoothly, and soon the only people left were Mia, Lilly, and Kennedy Daniels. Kennedy was the third member of their friend group and had been since she’d started coming to their church in high school. Her parents didn’t let her come every week—making her go to the one they attended on the other side of town at least once a month—but when they did, she was reluctant to leave and always stayed after to help with the cleaning.

“I love that Mrs. Newberry objects to all of my suggestions by pretending she doesn’t actually want to help people in trouble and thinks that’s better than admitting she’s a racist who hates me because my grandmother is Vietnamese,” Lilly muttered, tossing her long black braid over her shoulder as she stacked the orange chairs a little too forcefully in the corner.

“She gives everyone a bad attitude and I guess that makes it easier for her to hide it,” Mia mused. “She’s never been easy to get along with, but I’ve noticed we’re having more problems with her since she started volunteering.”

“She does always seem to have something negative to say when she’s not the center of attention,” Kennedy said. “Mrs. Mitchell’s talked to her about it but...”

Mia glanced at Lilly as Kennedy let the words hang meaningfully. “If she makes you uncomfortable, we can talk to Mrs. Mitchell or my dad about her.”

Lilly pondered that for a moment, the plastic chair in her arms cradled against her chest. “Not yet,” she said. “If she does anything more obnoxious than whine about my project ideas then we can, but I want her to see the success of the programs for herself.”

“Are you sure?” Mia asked. “You don’t have to prove anything to her.”

“I’m sure,” Lilly said, setting down the chair and tossing the last of the used paper cups in the trash. “I don’t want her to cause bitterness in my heart, but I do kind of want to watch her sit there every week, knowing she can’t stop us from doing good things and being kind to people.”

Mia laughed. “If that bothers her then it’s a misery that she brought on herself.”

Kennedy nodded in agreement, and they went back to working in silence until she looked over her shoulder and said, “I noticed you didn’t say anything about the guy who got your letter.” She huffed a strand of blonde hair out of her face with a grimace. It hung loose nearly to her waist, softly curled at the ends. With her strikingly blue eyes and even ivory complexion, the pink dress she wore made her look like a porcelain doll and everyone knew how much she hated it. Kennedy would have cut her hair years ago if her parents would have allowed it.

Mia reached her hand into her pocket and rubbed her fingers over the stiff paper. “I was going to, but I haven’t decided yet if I should write him back or ask the warden to send my next letter to someone else.”

“What?” Lilly said in surprise. “I thought you agreed that it seemed like our letters went to the right people?”

“I didn’t want to worry the other ladies and put a damper on your project,” Mia admitted.

“Did he say something mean to you?” Lilly looked ready to fight, her usually cheerful face set in angry lines.

“He barely said anything to me at all,” Mia said quietly. “He says he’s dangerous and I should write to someone else, but he didn’t give me any more information than that.”

Kennedy’s expression was doubtful. “I guess you should stop writing to him if that’s what he really wants but maybe he’s not used to having someone care about what happens to him?”

Mia nodded. She had gone into this because she wanted to reach someone that might otherwise have been unreachable. After all, someone had once reached out to her, taken on a difficult challenge with no promise that things would work out in the end, and it had made all of the difference.

“I’ll pray and ask God for guidance,” Mia promised them, and she listened with a smile as the conversation turned to Lilly’s boyfriend and Kennedy’s excitement about going back to college at the end of summer. These women were a blessing to her, and she was convinced God had helped them find each other, knowing they would help guide one another through life’s challenges.

Perhaps that was what He had planned for Gabriel Myers. Maybe he needed someone in his life to encourage him and guide him toward God. She had gone over every inch of his letter several times since it arrived yesterday, looking for clues to what kind of person had written it. The evidence didn’t paint much of a picture. Neat handwriting and evidence that he lived as she imagined a prisoner would—cheap pens and scraps of paper that smelled vaguely of cigarette smoke.

There was nothing to tell her what kind of man he was, or how he spent his days, or what he’d done to deserve being sent to prison. All she knew for sure was that he must be lonely if no one wrote to him.

3:30 am

He didn’t need the wake-up call anymore. After so many years on the same schedule, he woke on his own at exactly the same time every morning, allowing himself a few seconds to become oriented to his surroundings before the rest of the prison began to stir.

There was no need to think about what to wear since all inmates were stripped of their individuality and made as indistinguishable from one another as possible in white jumpsuits and black shoes, and they dressed in silence before filing into the dining hall. Breakfast was questionable oatmeal, browning apple slices, and shitty black coffee all served precisely at 4:30 and eaten elbow-to-elbow on long metal tables. They ate in silence as well, though this was as much from habit as lack of desire.

Talking during mealtime was prohibited.

By 6:00 a.m. they had been shuffled along with most of the other inmates to their shift in the prison’s garment factory. The shifts were long, twelve hours a day, and the work was hot, sweaty, and miserable.

It was also mandatory. Every able-bodied prisoner was required to work. Some worked the kitchens, or the laundry unit, and a lucky few even got to work outdoors in the garden. The rest came here, to a large room that was loud and busy and filled with complicated machinery and rows of sewing machines, where they would spend their sentences making clothing and textiles that would be used in their prison and others around the state.

None of them were paid, Texas didn’t bother giving their inmates financial compensation for their labors, but while the other inmates hoped that they might at least earn time credits for an earlier release date or a good behavior stamp that would increase their chances of parole, Gabriel’s only benefit was a way to kill the endless stream of time that threatened to drive him mad.

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