There had been a discussion about whacking Brett Mulvaney's thumbs off with a cabled-knife from the kitchen, but Bill Percy said Colby wouldn't be able to get the proper leverage and that we'd be better off using the papercutter in Chaplain Radford's storage area. I tried to defend Brett-just a little. I guess I could've done more, turned the whole damned thing around, focused on someone else's hang-ups with laser sharp accuracy.

But I didn't.

Brett and I had lived together. Both of us came from dysfunctional families. Myself-rescued from a Hazel Park neighborhood where tool-and-die shops and party stores stood on just about every corner; where weed-choked railroad tracks met rusted-out boxcars, and broken pallets soaked in the misery of idleness. My childhood home two blocks away, a bluish-grey bungalow with a fatigued yellow porch and rusted-metal awning. From that porch, I last saw my father standing in the front yard, sporting a hunter's orange cap and matching rain slicker; A sot with a balled-up fist clutching mother by her frizzy blond hair while she swung her cast-iron frying pan, not in defense, but as a tool of her emotion. You turned downed overtime, didn't you? Against her wishes, Father had decided deer hunting in the Kalkaska swamps with Raymond Stovall, his childhood friend, took precedent over any unpaid bills, and before she'd had her say, he argued in favor of putting venison on our table. Mother shouldn't have followed him outside, frying pan cocked. I stood on that paint-peeled porch, Father in my sight. He was getting the best of her. Hitting her. She struggled to free herself. I didn't know what to do. I was shaking so badly. I looked inside, found my answer ... and squeezed. I was fifteen. I remembered the 911 call, the sobbing into the receiver, the anguished words behind the Plexiglas, and the high-pitched deadening sound of "Why?"

Brett brought it all back to me that morning; my thoughts shrouded in darkness the night prior to his dismemberment. The moonlight had raked across his face, onto his shoulders, down his biceps, and stretched somewhere behind the top of his footlocker. He kept a Polaroid of his father inside. When he opened it, I asked him, "If you hated him so much, then why the picture?" He didn't have an answer. He shrugged it off. His father was just like mine, carbon copy, except for the fat bank account he'd left his wife.

Brett told me his father died of lung cancer. He told me how he helped his mother scrub the kitchen walls with Soilax and warm water; how he refilled the buckets and swore off cigarettes and alcohol on that very day. He told me his mother would sneak Absolut into her morning orange juice while he ate breakfast. According to Brett, she didn't want to hear how knowledgeable the goddamn teachers were; she needed a man in the house. A real man. "I was a preteen for Chrissake," he said. "My dad died and she wanted me to assume more responsibilities."

Brett was a thinker. You could tell he was studying the picture, wondering why things turned out the way they did. Then his Great Wall of China story. I'd heard it a million times before.

"Do you remember me telling you about that one school project where my mom asked, 'What's that big chunk of cardboard for?' and I told her I was studying topography? Do you? The Great Wall of China? The various elevations? The lake?"

I envisioned him pointing his kid-finger toward some blue glob of cracked model paint nestled between dull brown cardboard-stacked patterns; his kid-finger tracing a grey, jagged line from the Yellow Sea to Beijing. I thought of that painting-The Scream-was the tormented subject screaming, or was he covering his ears? Didn't the artist, Edvard Munch, lose part of his finger when a female acquaintance shot him? I turned sideways in my bunk, facing the wall, no longer looking down on Brett. I'd had enough.

He continued. "Did you know it's the only man-made object visible from the moon? I worked on that project for well over a month and she glanced at it briefly. Do you know what she did? She offered me a garbage bag. 'It's gonna rain honey,' that's what she said. Can you believe it?"

I curled up into the fetal position. I thought about Vincent Van Gogh; how he cut his own damn ear off and gave it to a prostitute. Don't ever let someone get the best of you, Father had warned me, especially a woman. I buried my head under the covers as Brett went on about his mother, about not hearing from her. Shut up, I wanted to say, Shut up or I'll cut my ears off! I popped my left thumb into my mouth and bit down hard. I felt the pain. I grabbed my fefe can, wedged it between two pillows, stabbed at it, and felt the rolled-up liver inside. The bunk slapped at the wall repetitively, rhythmically. Brett stopped talking. I felt somewhat relieved. Morning would come soon enough.

When Brett hired in, he requested a stylebook, and we had laughed in his face.

"Do you have one or not?" he asked.

Colby, our layout man, grumbled something about putting a wig on Brett's ass. Everyone laughed harder, including me. Sometimes you can laugh so hard you forget who your enemies are. Sometimes the comments just pile up, like tectonic plates colliding, a mountainous terrain, an icy obstacle. Yet, I stood on the precipice of that mountain, waiting and listening, while Colby and Brett chipped away at one another.

One time, Colby and Bill caught Brett snooping around my workstation. They wanted to teach him a geography lesson involving ethics-our own personal code of conduct. I thought of kindergarten: how I traced a hand-turkey on brown construction paper and pasted red, orange, and yellow precut feathers to it. I wore a tall black pilgrim hat and gave thanks. No matter what, you should be thankful. That was Brett's problem. He needed to ask for things, to say "please" and "thank-you."

"Put your left hand on the table," Colby commanded, "with your fingers together and your thumb out. Go on, do it!"

Bill and I helped flatten Brett's palm on my desk and using a Sharpie, Colby drew a line from the base of Brett's thumb to the tip of his nail. Colby quickly explained the drawn line as M-53 and made references to Jefferson Avenue, to Detroit, and to Port Austin at the tip of Brett's thumb.

"Let go," Brett pleaded. "I'm looking for a copy pencil."

"We're somewhere in the middle," Colby continued, "Lapeer. That's where we reside."

Brett jerked his hand away. I gave him a pencil. He held it like an ice pick. I told him that in some countries they cut off entire hands.

"Don't try anything foolish," Colby said.

Brett's thumbs symbolized our own failures in life. No one wanted to be reminded of their mistakes, their insecurities. Not Colby. Not Bill. No one. Not even me. Brett should've left well enough alone, instead of constantly telling Colby to shake the leaves out of his back pockets. Of course, it didn't help when Colby found leaves, Northern Red Oaks, stuffed in his top desk drawer and file cabinet. He knew who had done it. We all knew.

During these confrontations, Arn would appear and calm things down. He was our editor. The black-tags called him Arn-the-Yarn because he very seldom spoke to them. He told Brett they didn't have a stylebook, or that they didn't have a need for a stylebook-I can't recall which. Arn often praised my writing. He said it met the needs of our readers, especially my last two articles: Male Responsibility Seminar and Testicular Self-Examination. I guess I gravitate toward the self-help pieces. I guess that's why I developed an interest in journalism.

When I was eight, my grandfather, on Mother's side, drove his Buick off a dock and drowned. They'd said he'd been drinking and that the bartender knew better than to serve him. Mother kept a scrapbook on our coffee table: wedding and birth announcements, anniversaries, newspaper clippings ... obituaries. My favorite article showed Father promoting safety glasses. He'd been involved in a shop accident. If not for the glasses, he would've lost his right eye. There were other articles: Uncle Leonard's accidental winnings at the racetrack. "I'd been cheering for the wrong horse," he recounted at our last family reunion while playing Euchre, "and damned it all to hell," he continued as he slammed down the wrong suit, "if I didn't win." Then there was the front-page article and photo of my grandfather's dripping wet Buick. After this, the scrapbook was relegated to the top shelf of my parent's closet. Even today, I can see that Buick in a Salvador Dali painting, next to a fried-egg-clock.

I wrote for a prison newspaper, a monthly called Thumbprints. We never covered accidents or fires or robberies or homicides or rapes. We never wrote about mutilations. Pictures were forbidden; cameras weren't allowed. Words sufficed. Sure, we had editorials, but overall, you'd think we were writing about Utopia. Our newspaper didn't cost much either-only your valuable time reading it. We had this tradition of interviewing our newest staff member for a feature story. No tape recorders. I couldn't play back the naive confidence in Brett's voice. However, Bill Percy gave me his hand-scrawled notes as a testimonial to Brett's motives:

Interview

Q: How did you become interested in journalism?

A: I worked for Ableman Estate Services inventorying, pricing, and liquidating householditems. What didn't sell, we took on consignment. I came up with a newsletter.

Q: You sold more that way?

A: Yeah! I even hooked up with a reputable antique dealer.

Q: Who?

A: I'm not at liberty to say. I'm trying to get back on appeal.

Q: The money was that good? You put antiques, collectibles, into the right hands?

A: Let's just say I helped myself.

Bill Percy had double-underlined this last statement. In summary: Bill's feature story showcased Brett's talents, his creativity, and quoted him predicting a much larger circulation.

"How can I do anything without advertisements or classifieds?" Brett jokingly asked me one night. "My options are rather limited, don't you think?" He suggested we concentrate our efforts on real news and "for God's sake, doesn't anyone believe in deadlines around here? Let's increase our subscriber base. Push for a wider audience. Let's cover the occasional stabbing."

I told him to be careful, that most of the writing was fine. "Leave the assignments to Arn. No sense in upsetting anyone."

"Where's the money coming from anyway?" he asked.

I told him vending machines, friends, and relatives. "Donations actually. But not many," I said.

"I'll come up with something," he assured me.

And he did: FAKE BULK RATE STAMPS. We found out from a letter addressed to Burgoyne, our newspaper supervisor, a green-tag-turned-black-tag. Her main duty: censor our writing, deliver our layout to the printer, and bring the finished product back to us. No one paid attention to the counterfeit stamp printed on the bottom right corner. We were too busy admiring our own editorials, our own human-interest stories, our own sidebars. The stamp was right under my article on hobbycraft jewelry boxes. No one thought to question it.

When the newspapers arrived, Brett took three bundles and affixed address labels to the front of each issue. He'd been sending copies to various special interest groups and to his mother. Here's the real kicker: Brett gave Arn a fictitious list of paid subscribers and Arn actually thought it was legitimate. That is, until Leon, our lead sportswriter, presented a letter from the Postmaster General's office. Burgoyne was supposed to screen all incoming mail, but because of her other duties, she became careless. Leon boosted it.

"Postal fraud?" Arn said. "Let me see that." He snatched the letter from Leon, peered through his bifocals, and grimaced. He examined our latest issue and saw the counterfeit stamp. "You're our layout man," he reminded Colby, "it's your responsibility to make sure nothing's altered. No physical changes."

Colby was caught off guard. Arn was doing the Marquette thing, eyeballing him from the top of his glasses. "He tricked me, Arn."

Arn thought about it. I think he realized he'd been suckered. "No, he did not trick you, Colby. If he had wanted to trick you, he'd've paid somebody to dress you in a wig and thong and parade you across the mall area."

We laughed.

Arn called a secret meeting. "Nothing leaves this room," he said.

We discussed the implications behind Brett's actions.

"Why don't we explain it to Burgoyne?" I asked. "You know, damage control."

"Don't go clear-tag on us," Leon said before addressing the whole staff. "The newspaper's a goner. Let's put our locks in socks and beat him blood-purple."

Our music writers agreed.

Then Colby spoke. He said it was a pleasure working with all of us and that we should do something special, a reminder of our newspaper's legacy. He mentioned Brett's thumbs and the cabled-knives. Bill Percy improved on the plan. "A papercutter, gentlemen."

"No, please," I said at one point, "You must leave his thumbs intact. We don't know his true motives."

But it was too late. A plan was formed.

When Brett woke up that morning, I wanted to say something. In fact, I was ready to, until he complained, "My mom refuses to send any more money." I caught a glimpse of myself as his eyes narrowed to watery-slits. I wanted to tell him about my mother, about what I had done. But I didn't. "You know what," he said, "I loved my dad. He never did anything to harm me. It just pisses me off that he died. I feel cheated. He'd've sent me money."

At that moment, I hated Brett. He needed to repent. "Aren't you on a call-out to cover a wedding?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm helping Chaplain Radford with the Bibles."

"You're late," I said.

Seven years ago, before the visitor restrictions, Raymond Stovall came to see me. My security level did not warrant a handshake-the Plexiglas prevented it-so he told me over the phone that my father was remarrying and that he forgave me.

"You should write him sometime," he suggested.

I asked Raymond if my father would visit.

"No. That's why I'm here."

I didn't know what to say. "I guess," I said, "a woman got the best of him after all."

In a way, Brett's ideas about journalism made sense. We should write about real people with real tragedies. I should write about Brett, call the headline: Embezzler Loses Thumbs at Thumb Correctional Facility. But what's the point? Why implicate anyone? In my world, there are no such things as deadlines-unless you're thinking about the ones near the razor-wire fence; the ones where the black-tags look down from their gun towers and take careful aim. But I have learned not to run, and more importantly, not to react. I just stand there-waiting, hoping.

James R. Tomlinson (MI) is a teacher with the Michigan Department of Corrections. He is the recipient of Wayne State University's 20th Annual Judith Siegel Pearson Prize for fiction.