Sam and Colby: The Penitentiary

58

As the summer season drew to a close, it began to get darker outside earlier. We used this to our advantage.

"Paper was passed to the guard tower this morning," Blaze whispered as we dumped our trays after dinner.

"And Mike?" I asked.

"Only took three packs to convince him. He hates Lee anyway," Blaze replied.

"Good," I said. We all made our way out to the yard, congregating with Ray in our normal spot on the bleachers. I patted Red on the back when I saw him watching some other guys play basketball, slipping the note Big had given me into his shirt. He'd find it later, telling him that it was his turn to take over now. "Go on. You too, Rock and Shag. I know you want to play."

"Ain't gonna disagree with that," Shag said. The three of them got up and went over to the court, leaving us alone to go over the plan a final time. Blaze and Ray had managed to get reassigned to construction duty a few weeks ago and had begun accumulating small sections of PVC pipe. We'd all been given a couple pieces in a manner such that we'd be able to quickly connect them all together and build the ladder we'd use to climb to safety.

There were eight guard post towers on the edge of the yard. The eighth was left unoccupied and the seventh was manned by a guard Red had been able to read into. He never did his job, just sat at his post and read the paper all day. He usually picked the paper up from the guard room, but Blaze had planted a nicer, longer paper in there for him to take to ensure that he'd still be fully submerged in his reading by the time evening yard hour rolled around.

Ray made his way over near the tower first, sitting down in front of the section of gate closest to it. I went next, raising no suspicions since Ray and I had sat and talked daily for weeks. Colby came next, then the trap guys, all of us sitting in a row against the fence.

My heart rate shot up when I realized that we were really doing this. It was happening now. And one wrong move could mean death.

"Ready to go back home, baby?" Colby asked quietly.

"How's that going to work, anyway?" asked Jake.

"My hope is that once we've got both feet over this fence, we just disappear into thin air," Corey said.

"I think we're going to wake back up in our own time. Not dissolve into the future right away," Sam said.

"What do you think, Mom?" asked Jake. What did I think? I wanted to believe them both, that we'd get transported back nearly immediately. That all we would have to do is fall asleep. But something was telling me it wouldn't be nearly that easy. Lord knows that being in the prison and escaping were no simple tasks.

"I think... we'll be able to figure it out," I said slowly.

"It's happening," Colby quickly whispered. I looked up to see Blaze give a subtle salute to Mike, then get up and walk over to us. Mike started shouting on the opposite side of the yard, drawing a crowd as he initiated what would soon turn into a full fledged fight with Lee. Jinx wasn't on yard duty today, just Porter and Waco.

We waited until Porter and Waco had just barely noticed the fight to spring into action. We all pulled the piping we had out of our clothes and quickly snapped them all together, forming a flimsy ladder. It'd barely support our weight, but it would have to do. We could definitely only go on it one-by-one, though. We'd need to get to the top and jump over the coil of barbed razor wire, and then fall ten feet to the ground on the other side. That was a risk on its own, increasing the possibility of a broken ankle or strained hip.