Brothers and Keepers. John Edgar Wideman

decision that determines who winds up behind prison bars, then good and evil are superfluous. Nobody’s safe. Except the keepers, the ones empowered to say You go to the right. You go to the left. And they’re only safe as long as they’re keepers. If prisons don’t segregate good from evil, then what we’ve created are zoos for human beings. And we’ve given license to the keepers to stock the cages.

      Once, on a previous visit, waiting an hour through a lock-in and countdown for you to be released to the visitors’ lounge, I was killing time on the porch of the visitors’ annex, resting my elbows on the stone railing, daydreaming at the river through the iron spears of the fence. An inmate called up to me. “You Faruq’s brother, ain’t you?” The man speaking was tall and broad-shouldered, a few years younger than you. His scarred head was shaved clean. He carried extra weight in soft pads on his hips, his belly, his cheeks. Like a woman, but also like the overweight lions in Highland Park Zoo.

      I thought, Yes. Robby Wideman’s my brother. Then I said, “Faruq is my brother,” and expected more from the prisoner, but he’d turned back to the prisoners beside him, smoking, staring at nothing I could see.

      A few minutes before, I’d noticed two men jogging along the river. I recognized their bright orange running shorts later as they hustled past me up the steps into the prison. Both greeted me, smiling broadly, the sort of unself-conscious, innocuous smiles worn by Mormon missionaries who periodically appear at our door in Laramie. Young, clean-cut, all-American white faces. I figured they had to be guards out for exercise. A new breed. Keepers staying in shape. Their friendly smiles said we’d be delighted to stay and chat with you awhile if we weren’t needed elsewhere. I thought of the bland, empty stare of the man who had recognized me as Faruq’s brother. Somebody had extinguished the light in his eyes, made him furtive, scared him into erecting a wall around his brown skin, trained him to walk and talk like a zombie. The healthy, clean sweat sheen on the runners’ suntanned brows and lean muscled shoulders made me hate them. I wanted to rush after them. Smash them out of their dream of righteousness.