The table sat unassuming in Mr. Woodson's small engine repair shop. A dusty stack of manuals splayed across its stained surface. Names like Briggs & Stratton and Tecumseh emblazoned on the tattered wiring diagrams and part lists. There lay the remains of a Car & Driver magazine—picked apart over the years. Four legs and a top. Four chairs from four different mothers. But the otherwise humble table held a secret.
On certain afternoons in summer when the boys had gone back to their units, the light would change. After the teachers and administrators had filed out of the school and down through the yard and checked out at the gate and driven away through the razor wire. Out into the rest of the world. On certain afternoons, the black men—the old heads—would stay behind. Inside. They would move the booklets and the magazine bones and remove the hidden brass pins under the square table.
They would put on jazz and open the garage doors so that the smell of honeysuckle would mingle with gasoline and White Owls. And they would flip the stained top to reveal their favorite secret—an immaculate poker table. Fine as any casino. Friday night games. Twenty dollars and some smoke. And keep it on the down-low.
The men were different after hours. Doing the two-step to Dizzy around an abandoned crankshaft. Shooting the breeze. Silly. Woodson would round everyone up and get the stacks going. Bills in the drawer, chips all around and cards into calloused old hands that had been waiting all week to hold them. Two hands, five cards each, and five fingers missing from the clear glass bottle underneath the tool cabinet—metallic licorice and fire. And the wine—red and strong in paper cups.
Beaver was dealing stud. No front teeth and no pinkie or ring finger on his right hand from the knuckle. He runs the wood shop. Woodson was on a streak. Then again, the felt is always greener on the other side of the table. Gotta pay to play. His family had worked this county since before the razor wire and the fences and the guard tower. Since before the State came in and built the low brick units with the slit windows. Before it was a school for boys it was a labor farm and before that it was a plantation. The Woodsons have been here that long.
These were men in the business of redemption of a sort that's a long time coming. Most boys that went out the main gate would be back within the year. Put their orange back on. "They call that 'recidivism'," Beaver would say, "which is Latin for 'this shit ain't working.'" He'd give that sad broken window grin. All the men nodded at their cards like they were in the front pew. More wine. Sticky velvet twilight crept down the hill and through the wire. Out into the rest of the world.