About this story
Through the wall, a fellow prisoner named Ed Morrell taps out a way to leave the pain behind, not by fighting the straps, but by finding another self, centuries gone, aboard a ship breaking apart on a Korean cliff. The chapter ends between two dangers at once, with no way to answer both.
How it opens
Darrell Standing had entered prison for murder and survived years of darkness without surrendering his anger.
Warden AthertonStanding, thirty-five pounds of dynamite vanished, and Cecil Winwood says you hid it.
Cecil WinwoodI have given the warden his culprit; he need not prefer your account to mine.
Cecil WinwoodA professor should appreciate how neatly the evidence now supports my account.
You denied knowing the hiding place, which Atherton interpreted as defiance rather than ignorance.
Pain cannot supply knowledge that was never placed in me.