“What’s your secret?”
“What do you mean?”
“The moon always faces the same side to the earth. That’s what scientists say. You are like the moon. You show us one face. What are you hiding?”
“I told you before, I have no secrets. How could I? I’ve been in institutions or in jails all my life. Everything is documented. Everything!”
“Yea, that’s a wonderful cover, isn’t it?”
The agent has long brown hair tied in a bundle on top of her head. She wears just enough make-up to smooth out her skin and be feminine. Not that she isn’t; she is very attractive to her male co-workers, and she’s attracted to them. It’s that a woman makes a certain kind of statement if she does not wear make-up, and as a representative of the law it is not the kind of statement she is welcome to make. Her badge says she is FBI.
Russell does not have any reasons to doubt that. He does not have any reasons to trust it either. And it barely matters. The end result would probably be the same. They are after him and he may very well end up dead no matter what he says or does not say. He isn’t sure it is worth fighting for his life. He isn’t sure it isn’t either. He is in for the ride, as always, being born in a family that did not get along, his parents separated when he was 7. He became a ping pong ball between his mom and his dad. Whenever at his dad’s, he found himself alone. His dad would disappear. He would end up in tears and scared. His mom kept letting his dad take him anyway when it was his turn, so he had to go through this over and over again until he was old enough to realize that when his dad disappeared, he was shooting heroin in the bathroom.
He never got upset at his parents. It’s at school that his anger showed up. A teacher got the worst of it a Monday after a rough weekend at home. One too many stern look at him and he stabbed her hand with a sharp pencil. He was 11. He was diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder and placed in a juvenile detention center until he was 18. He started using drugs there. He also made all the connections he needed to live off of drugs once out, both selling and using. In his spare time, he covered city buildings with graffiti. Drawing came easily to him and gave him moments of peace. He became known as the graffiti king. His friends carry on his work for him while in detention with the FBI.
“I bet you’re dreaming about your freedom,” the agent continues.
“How can you tell?” Russell launches back sardonically.
“You’ve always been detained one way or another. I know you’re tired of it. The short time you have been out there must have felt good.”
“So what’s it to you?”
“I can tell because your body language tells me you’re getting frenetic; you don’t like to see your freedom in my hands.”
“They all tell me that same crap. All I need is a joint.”
“Your parole officer would know immediately from your urine samples.”
“And why should I care? I could give her a fake sample. It’s easy to do. I’ve done it many times. I stopped playing that game a long time ago. I am who I am. The system can’t change me, it never could.”
“The reason why you don’t give fake samples anymore is that your last sample showed you were pregnant. You don’t trust anyone to give you a safe sample. I don’t blame you. Besides, no one here is clean. And I know you want out.”
“Why should you care?”
“You’re right! I don’t.” She has a facile approach to conversations, never really disagreeing. She is like water on a river bed, a bed that moves eventually in the direction she chooses. “But I know you’re still getting your graffiti out. They still get sprayed all over town. I know you’d rather paint them yourself than have your friends do it for you. You want your freedom. I want your secret. Let’s talk.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“Well you don’t have to trust me. I can match playing hard ball and I have the law on my side. You don’t. You don’t have much of a bargaining position. And … you’d hate to lose your hands.”
“I don’t care.”
“Don’t give me that shit! You care. Without your hands how are you going to keep making your art? Give us the code.”
“What code?”
“We know your graffiti are coded messages.”
“Funny.”
“Why deny it? We can break it! We’d rather hear it from you.”
“That’ll be the day!”
“So you’re admitting it?’
“There is nothing to decode. What you see is what you get. I got nothing to hide.”
“We got the best code-breakers in the field. They’re very …”
“… fastidious, I know.” Russell looks at the walls around him, all pristinely hospital white. He hates white walls. He feels the urge bursting in him to cover them with art. “Do you know how many people have tried to change me? From the time I stabbed my teacher’s hand, I was called an angry kid. There’s something wrong with me. From counselors to parole officers to police officers or FBI agents, they all try to figure me out. I’m just a bad kid. That’s all there is to it. I put graffiti up on city property. Period. There’s no hidden message.”
“When you blasted a pencil through your teacher’s hand you made your first graffiti. It was violent and bloody. But the graffiti you made after your release from the juvee show no violence. You’ve learned that violence will get you incarcerated, so now you hide it. You code it. Your work has become insidious. And you no longer work alone. That’s why this case is in our hands. You’re a danger to this country. It is my job to break you down. You ought to think this over.”
Russell is escorted back to his empty cell. He thinks of his girlfriend. He knows she is sleeping with his best friend. Why should she wait for him? Why should he be upset? She does not know how long he’ll be in custody. But he’s upset all the same. Why couldn’t he be loved for being himself? She could be patient knowing they’d be together soon enough. What’s the rush to be in someone else’s arms? He’s learned one thing from being in custody most of his life. He’s learned he could wait one more day, always.
His cell walls are covered with carved names and foul language. He furtively looks around for a piece of something hard he could scratch the walls with. He always thought he was messing with authority because he was bad. And what if messing with authority is the cause of my troubles? What if I stopped messing with them? I’d be alone except for those who want my drugs, but I’d be alone. I’ve never been wanted.
Russell feels the urge to carve on his walls, something that would stand out from all the other scribbles. He does not care for foul stuff. He cares to make his walls beautiful. He wants to be seen for his talents and not only by other outlaws. Instead, he gets wrath from authorities. You can change that. The words flutter inconspicuously through his mind. He notices them and they come together into a thought. He’s never given them much attention before. He still doesn’t believe there is any sense in them. But the thought is in him now, and that it crossed his mind many times. Inevitably the question forms itself and stands before him, humble and innocent: How can I?
The answer is clear to him, but it triggers a mountain of rebellion he wants to escape. He wants a joint. He fantasizes that he can come up with a secret code hidden in his graffiti. He would fool the agent and buy his freedom. But the more he plays with this idea, the more forlorn he gets. He knows that playing with authority is not going to buy him freedom. It is like a nightmare. For the nightmare to vanish, one has to let go of all ties to it. He has to let go of his drama with authority. And that only brings agitation within him. At first, it is meaningless chaos. But then he sees a thread; the emptiness he felt as a kid. He longs for a real family. Can he imagine starting one of his own and maintaining it? He’d have to let go of all he knew. He’d have to let go of the drugs his parents introduced him to, because he could see the disconnections drugs created between each of them. After all he went through, does he even want children? It seems both important and overwhelming. Children or no children, he needs a different outlet for his art. He knows the answer to that. He’ll find an artist he respects to mentor him. He’ll have to make new friends. The easiest way to go is to leave town, start fresh somewhere.
His door opens abruptly.
“Come with us.”
“Where are we going?’
“You’re being transferred. You get to grab your stuff on the way out.”
The agent sees him before he is escorted to the FBI car. “Where you have no connections, you won’t be able to disseminate your messages.”
Russell smiles to himself. There is both innocence and pride in his way, what freedom is made of, and it affects the agent. She has a glimpse of self-doubt that she discards quickly, but not quickly enough.