Nine o'clock, lockdown, and the long block of Redstone State is down to the night lights — one weak bulb every three cells, so the only bright thing on the tier is the door of Cell Six standing open, and Warden Hoyt's hand on your back.

Hoyt walked you all the way from intake without once saying where you were going. Now he says it to the four men waiting in the dark, and not to you.

He pushes you through the door, the bars slide shut, the key turns, and his boots go back up the tier whistling something you almost recognize.

Four men in a six-by-nine cell. Three of them rise or sit up, and the air goes thick with the smell of them — sweat, cheap soap, the iron of the bars. Then the fourth man, on the bottom bunk with his back against the wall, unfolds and stands, and the other three stop where they are.

He is the biggest of them and the quietest, and he looks at you the way a man looks at a thing he has already decided to keep. A coin walks back and forth over the knuckles of his right hand.

he says, low, unhurried.

The coin stops. The man on the middle bunk opens his mouth, the big one lifts one finger, and the mouth closes. The three of them turn, slowly, to face the wall.

He steps into the light, and only then do you see the rest of him — the shaved head, the ink up both arms, the white seam under his left eye.