Saudade

Curtis says it’s his family he misses the most; he has a young wife and two daughters. He speaks fondly of them during those interminable nights when neither of us can sleep because of Blake’s shouting or screaming. At those times, I imagine smothering Blake with a pillow, and I might actually go through with it if he were in the same cell as us.

I like to hear Curtis speak; he tells a good tale, pacing events, building up suspense, even if the story is only about picnics or trips to the seaside. But it’s when he’s describing those family excursions that you get a sense of the depth of longing to be with his girls again. The Portuguese – my mother is third generation – have a word that encapsulates that feeling for someone or something that’s absent: saudade.

I don’t feel saudade like Curtis does because I’ve never been married, and I don’t have any kids … that I know of. As for my close family, well – what can I say, other than I hate them with all my heart?

My father was a tyrant who would beat us – my older brother and me – on a whim. And after the beating, he’d lock us in the cellar, for days on end if we didn’t have school. I despise my mother for allowing it to happen. Occasionally I caught her looks while the stick was being applied; I would see glee there!

My brother and I should have been in solidarity with each other, but he took every opportunity he could to land me in trouble. Sometimes he escaped punishment that way, even if he’d been involved in whatever minor sin my father had discovered – like stealing apples from old Mrs. Taylor’s tree next door. It was him who told the cops what I’d done to our father. They both testified against me at the trial.

No, I don’t miss my family, that’s for sure. What I do miss the most, apart from the predictable things – proper food, a good whisky, women – is the sky. Oh, we’re able to see it all right, during the day, above the high concrete walls of the minute exercise yard, but you can only tell if it’s sunny or cloudy. Seeing the magnificence of the sky cramped like this is nothing short of excruciating for me.

To while away the time – and we have plenty on our hands – I’ve learned all the cloud types, like stratus, cumulus and altostratus, so that I can pick them out and name them when we’re in the yard; Curtis is impressed when I do that. Cirrus are my favorites because they’re the highest ones you can see during the day. They remind me of freedom.

Noctilucent clouds are the very highest, though, as much as eighty-five kilometers above the Earth’s surface. Eighty-five! But they’re pretty rare, and as the name suggests, they’re only visible at night. We're not allowed access to the yard when it's dark because of security concerns, and our cell doesn’t have a window. Of all the deprivations we suffer, this for me is the worst. So, forget a T-bone steak, a good bottle of Jim Beam, an expensive hooker; my most intense saudade is reserved for the glorious vastness of the sky.

I’ve been with Curtis now for seven months. He’s a lifer, like me, and like me, he’s desperate. In those night-time conversations, we’ve fantasized about being back on the outside and always ended up practically crippled with frustration, knowing that it was impossible. Impossible, that is, until a realization hit me the other day.

In cheesy crime shows on the TV, prisoners often escape through the laundry – hiding amongst the dirty sheets, getting loaded onto the laundry van, sailing out through the front gate. It’s a terrible cliché, but last week I saw that it’s actually possible. Perhaps the obvious nature of this means of escape has somehow made the prison authorities and the guards complacent. Whatever, on this particular morning, I saw that it’s doable.

I’m on laundry detail for the next week and a half. Curtis has just wangled a spot on the crew too. I suggested that I incapacitate someone who’s already there so that he could take their place, but he’s a gentler soul and said he’d find another way. Then yesterday, a spot opened up; someone slipped and broke an arm (I had nothing to do with it), and Curtis replaced him.

So, a week and a half – that’s how long we have to plan and execute our escape. We need two people: Curtis will create a diversion (we're thinking a fire in the storeroom), and it’ll be me who overcomes the van driver; I’m not squeamish about a bit of violence.

Maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves, but we’ve already started to beef up our respective plans once we’re out. Curtis will contact his wife, using a code they’ve devised; the cops will be watching his place and tapping his phone. He’ll arrange for the family to move south, then find a way across the border into Mexico, where they’ll meet up.

My plan will be easier to carry out and takes in two locations. First stop will be my family’s house, where I have some unfinished business with my mother and brother. Sure, the police will be staking that out, too, but I know of a way in that they don’t, and I’ll only need five or ten minutes.

If I had more time, I’d stick around in the back yard and watch the sky, like when I was much younger. I used to get home from school on a winter’s afternoon, wrap up well and sit out on the patio in one of the loungers meant for the summer. In mid-winter, we’d only get five hours or so of daylight where we lived, so I’d be sitting in the dark. And because our house was out of town, the sky wasn't corrupted so much by light pollution.

And then I’d just gaze up and try to identify constellations, spot shooting stars, and occasionally get the chance to marvel at those shimmering sheets of green, yellow, blue, violet – the aurora borealis, the northern lights. When they were floating up there, a better world – a better life – seemed possible somehow. But all the time I knew that the moments of wonder would be brief because my father would be home soon.

So, while Curtis misses his family, it’s this sublime gift of nature that I miss the most. I won’t have time to enjoy it to the full at the house, but once my business there is done, I’m planning to head north to Fairchild, or Coldfoot, or Utqiagvik, where the lights are the most spectacular.

If I’m honest, I’m not sure I’ll be able to avoid recapture for very long – and I will not be recaptured. In the meantime, I hope to be able to witness the aurora borealis in all its glory one last time, para matar a saudade, as the Portuguese say – to kill the longing.