"Kit Reed - On The Penal Colony" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Kit)

Happy! What do you care about us? What do you know?

You see us sweating in our period costumes and you think, fine. Hardened
criminals working their way back into the fabric of American life. How
heartwarming. When they get out they'll be all-American, yes!

"I don't know, I turned the other way and the prisoner just..." The guard
produces two bloody ears.

"Shut up, they'll hear you."

"But Warden, what are we going to do?"

"Shut up. The state examiners!" Bullfinch Warden snarls, "Get him out of here."

"He's so deep in solitary that..."

"Not the perp. The tourist who got hurt. We can't have this getting out."

You think we look charming. If you think about us at all. Hester lays out
bayberry candles and you get all mushy: I love America. Delightful. You note the
glint in the 12-over-12s that us hard-timers clean every day at dawn and you get
all proud. American ingenuity. Quaint.

Well, you don't have a clue. See, you can watch us cobble or pot until you get
bored and then you can buy your barley sugar sticks and take the Ethan Frome or
Hester Prynne shuttle back to the Molly Pitcher or the Crispus Attucks Parking
Lot and get in your RVs and go. We stay.

I could tell you about charming. I could show you the underside of cute. Old
Arkham Village is our nation's heritage all right, but it's not what you think.
Rehabilitation, sure: let cons do time in pretty-pretty early America. Whittle
by the fireplace with the mantel painted in authentic imitation
cranberry-and-buttermilk paint, except we can't have knives. Press criminals
through the all-American grid. They come out the other side like potatoes,
mashed. Homogenized. You can mold them into anything you want. It's America all
right, America straight out of Lizzie Borden by Simon Legree. We, your model
prisoners, live by the numbers. Bullfinch Warden has thumbscrews and a gift for
hurting people so the marks don't show. Then there are the trusties with their
Red Devils and their cattle prods. And at night, stalking the catwalks in our
dormitory hundreds of feet below Betsy Ross Lot 3, the screws.

"Honey, let's fuck here."

"Eeek, what would our forefathers think?"

"Our forefathers are off duty. The place is closed."
The tourists are lying together on the greensward. A noise comes out of the
ground like a great, communal groan. She leaps out of her lover's arms with a
shriek. "Ernie, somebody's listening, let's get out of here!"