Mail Call

Mail came at four in the afternoon, after yard, before count. The officer brought it in a plastic crate. He read names. You stepped forward when you heard yours. You took the envelope. You walked back. You did not open it in front of him.

Some men got mail every day. Some men got mail once a month. Some men got mail never. I learned, over time, which men were which, and I learned not to look at the men in the third group when their names were not called.

I was, for the first six months, in the second group. Then in the first. Then, after a while, I was the kind of man whose mother sent letters every week, whose sister sent cards on holidays, whose grandmother — who was not supposed to have figured out how to send mail to a state correctional facility — sent envelopes addressed in a careful old-person handwriting that I would, years later, be unable to look at without crying.

Inside, I did not cry over mail. Inside, you saved that for things that earned it.

I read the letters at night, after count, after lights had gone soft and the unit was as quiet as it ever got. I read them slowly. I read them more than once. I folded them and put them in a manila envelope under my mattress, and when the envelope was full I started another one, and another after that.