Jacobson’s cell was one of twenty along a long corridor. An officer, a round, baldheaded black man, was seated at the end of the hall. Another officer, a tall slender man with strawberry blond hair and pink cheeks, was crouched down by a food slot about five cells down from me.

“Nothing I can help you with?” I asked. “Nothing you’d like to talk about?”

“I said, fuck you motherfucker.”

From the next cell an inmate yelled, “MOTHERFUCKER DON’T TALK TO THE CHAPLAIN LIKE THAT. YOU STUPID SON OF A BITCH AIN’T YOU GOT NO RESPECT.”

Deciding to change my approach, I said, “From what I hear, you would, but I’m not interested.”

“Ain’t no punk,” he said.

He may or may not have been a punk, but what he looked like was a neo-Nazi serial killer. Shaved head. Pale white skin. Sparse beard. Prison-green tattoos. Shark eyes.

“What are you then?” I asked.

“I’m Satan, man,” he hissed.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” I said.

“Shee-it, don’t be so hard on Satan,” the inmate to my left said, and started laughing.

“You come to cast me out, Holy Man?” Jacobson asked.

“Actually, I just wanted to see if there was anything I could do for you and maybe ask you a few questions.”

Somewhere in another corridor a steel door slammed. The noise bounced off the concrete walls and floors and reverberated through Confinement.

“We’re locked in now, boys,” another inmate said.

“Nothin’ you could do for me,” Jacobson said. “I’m well taken care of. What you really mean is, there’s something I can do for you. You need something I have.”

“CHAPLAIN, CHAPLAIN,” Starn continued to call.

“Which is what?” I asked.

“Secrets.”

The officers’ radios sounded at the same time, and because of their distance apart and the cement surroundings, every word was doubled.

“What makes you think I want to know your secrets?” I said.

“I see evil. I hear evil. I speak evil.”

“What sort of things?” I asked.

“I’ve crossed my heart, hoped to die. Watch it, or I’ll stick a needle in your eye. I’ll cast you out, Holy Man. I can have you stuck, just like Johnson. Was it in his eye? COs are so sloppy. I heard it was messy. Did all his blood drain out? There’s power in the blood. Life and death. Atonement’s in the blood. But I guess you know that. You think he atoned for his sins?”

“CHAPLAIN, CHAPLAIN. CHAPLAIN, I NEED YOU,” Starn yelled.

“You had Johnson stuck? What was his sin?” I asked.

“I can have anybody I want to stuck,” he said.

As he talked he widened and narrowed his eyes.

“But I like sticking pigs best,” he added. “Hickory, dickory, dock—Johnson didn’t have a cock, but he got one . . . every night, and now he’s taken flight.”