The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld

shot caller talking.
    When they come back, both are laughing. Conroy grips Risk on the shoulder as if they are good buddies.
    The entire enchanted place sighs with sadness.
    The next day Risk saunters across the yard to the old black telephone hanging near the activities room. It is one of the few phones that is not recorded. Risk dials the extension by heart.
    The phone rings in Conroy’s office. Conroy calls it his yes telephone because when it rings, he picks it up and says one word: “Yes?” And then he listens. “The Norteños are bringing some black tar in through that dirty guard up front,” Risk tells him. “The one that picks his teeth. They’re dropping it for keister tomorrow. Enough fucking tar to pave this place twice.”
    Conroy hangs up the phone, and a loving smile wreathes his face. He knows exactly what to do. He will turn on the cameras in the visiting room and catch the guard accepting a package of black tar heroin—thousandsof dollars of tar. He will catch the guard passing these bindles of heroin to one of the Norteño inmates working the visiting room. The camera will show the inmate going into the restroom with the package under his shirt, where he will tuck all of those bindles one by one up his works, in practice known as keistering.
    Conroy will later show the incriminating video to the guard. The guard will grow pale and stammer. He knows this is not only a firing offense; it is a criminal offense. He could be convicted and thrown in here as an inmate. All the beatings he has given, all the twisted arms while cuffing, all the times he has walked away from the sounds of rape—those are the times that will be remembered by the other inmates if he returns as one of them. Nothing is despised more in our enchanted place than a castrated duck.
    Conroy knows exactly how the guard will react. The guard will sweat and ask, “What do you want?”
    After they negotiate, Conroy will pull the keistered inmate. He will take him down for a search and retrieve the bundles himself with his own probing hand. The Norteño gang member will say it was all his idea. He will refuse to name his leader. This is what Conroy wants. He will tell the inmate to tell the leader of the Norteños what it will cost to preserve that silence.
    The inmate will go down for a short sentence, though he knows he will do easy time, cherished by his gang for his loyalty, and then advance up the chain. The teeth-picking guard will feel so much gratitude—and fear—toward Conroy that he’ll give him a cut from now onfor every drug deal he supervises. The addicted inmates will be happy as the flow of heroin inside our enchanted place continues, and everyone knows there are few other buffers to the raw edges of boredom inside. Every week the leader of the Norteños will leave an envelope filled with cash in Conroy’s locker—another envelope to join the others, which is why Conroy has a fancy motorboat and a vacation home in the mountains while the warden goes home to a modest ranch and an old sailboat he never gets around to fixing.
    The best part? Conroy will get written up with an official commendation for busting the inmate. It is one more rung on his way to the top. He wants the warden’s job.
    The bosses love him. There is no corruption on his watch.
    I n return for sharing this information, Risk gets his reward.
    The next day the white-haired boy is rolled, with no warning, from his cell.
    He was going to classes and making a few careful friends, even laughing at his work assignment in the clothing factory. His cellmate was an ancient fart who snored too much but other than that was harmless. Life was not that bad; he could begin to imagine making it two years. After so much confusion and fear, hope was beginning to well up inside him. Maybe he could finish school. Go to college, even.
    The guard at his cell door tells him brusquely to gather his kit.