Salem Falls by Jodi Picoult Read Free Book Online Page B

Facility knew about Jack’s bet with Mountain Felcher. The guards wagered with each other, a pool for the day that Jack would eventually stumble. The maximum- and medium-security pods followed his wins through the jail grapevine. And at 7 P.M., every TV in the prison would be tuned to Jeopardy!
One night, as had become the custom, Jack sat to Mountain Felcher’s left, his eyes riveted on the television screen overhead. The leading contestant was a woman named Isabelle with wild curly hair. “Quotable Quotes for six hundred,” she said.
The historian Cornelius Tacitus said these beings are “on the side of the stronger.” The other inmates stared at Jack, waiting. Even the correctional officer on duty had given up on his crossword puzzle, and he stood nearby with his arms crossed. Jack felt the response bubbling up from his throat, easily, carelessly. “The angels.”
In the next breath, he realized he’d given the wrong answer. “I meant-”
“The gods,” said the contestant.
A bell rang and $600 showed up in Isabelle’s account. The common room grew so quiet that Jack could hear his pulse. He’d grown so sure of his skill that he hadn’t even stopped to think before he spoke. “The gods,” Jack repeated, licking his dry lips. “I meant the gods.”
Mountain turned to him, eyes flat and black as obsidian. “You lose,” he said.
Out of sympathy, the others left Jack alone. When he threw up in the bathroom, when he stalked in silence to the cafeteria, they pretended not to see. They thought he was terrified past the point of speech, and it was something they could understand-by now, everyone knew that the forfeit of the bet was Jack’s free will. It was one thing to be raped; it was another thing entirely to offer yourself as a sacrifice.
But Jack wasn’t frightened. He was so angry that he could not utter a word, in case his fury spilled out. And he wanted to keep it inside him, glowing like a coal, hoping to burn Mountain Felcher and scar him as deeply as Jack himself was sure to be scarred.
The night that Jack lost the bet, Aldo’s voice drifted to him as he lay on his bunk. “You just do it, and then you put it behind you and never let yourself think about it,” Aldo said quietly. “Kind of like jail.”
Jack stood in the shadows of the barn, watching Mountain’s arms bunch and tighten as he lifted another bale of hay onto the stack he was making in an alcove. “Cat got your tongue?” Mountain asked, his back still to Jack. “Oh, no. That’s right. I got your tongue. And the whole rest of you, too.”
Mountain stripped off his work gloves. Sweat gleamed on his forehead and traced a line down the middle of his T-shirt. “I had my doubts about you paying your debt.” He sat on a bale of hay. “Go on, drop those pants.”
“No.”
Mountain’s eyes narrowed. “You’re supposed to show up wanting it.”
“I showed up,” Jack said, keeping his voice even. “That’s all you get.”
Mountain jumped him and set him in a headlock. “For someone who thinks he’s so smart, you don’t know when to shut your mouth.”
It took all the courage in the world, but Jack did the one thing he knew Mountain wouldn’t expect: He went still in the man’s hold, unresisting, accepting. “I am smart, you asshole,” Jack said softly. “I’m smart enough to know that you’re not going to break me, not even if you screw me three times a day for the next seven months. Because I’m not going to be thinking what a tough guy you are. I’m going to be thinking you’re pathetic.”
Mountain’s grip eased, a loose noose around Jack’s neck. “You don’t know nothing about me!” In punishment and proof, he ground his hips against Jack from behind. Denim scraped against denim, but there was no ridge of arousal. “You don’t know nothing!”
Jack blocked out the feel of Mountain’s body behind his, of what might happen if he pushed too hard and sent the man over the edge. “Looks like you can’t fuck