1984.

It helped his case that Hank had come along peacefully when the arresting officer arrived, “showing sincere remorse and a desire for rehabilitation,” his public defender said. 

What didn’t get said — not out loud, anyway — was the fact that the Crimson Wraith had been on the scene. But the judge and assistant district attorney were aware, and Hank ended up receiving five years for one count of manslaughter, the minimum sentence for that felony conviction.

Still, those who commit violence against women can find themselves targeted for violence in penitentiary. Hank found that out on his third day. He was sitting in the dining hall with his lunch tray when another inmate approached. 

“Heard you killed your wife,” he said. 

Hank was a big guy, but this guy was bigger. He loomed over Hank with fists clenched, hard and heavy fists that had clearly done some swinging. Looking at those fists, Hank could just imagine their granite knuckles cracking open his jaw. 

And imagining that image, he wanted it. He wanted to hurt for what he’d done. So, he nodded and extended his chin, readying for the blow.

But another inmate interrupted. “Easy, Vito,” he said, speaking low. “You know who brought this guy in, right? Scarlet Stranger…”

Vito looked at the interloper, clearly unhappy with this piece of information. The force he had been preparing to put into his punch huffed out his nostrils like a locomotive engine letting off steam. His fists relaxed, unclenched, and he pointed a finger at Hank. “You watch yourself,” He said and turned to walk away.

Denied the punishment he craved, Hank sprang to his feet and slammed his lunch tray against the back of Vito’s head. Whatever grace the Crimson Wraith’s touch had given him vanished instantly. 

Vito spun around with bulging eyes, shocked at such a move. A guy had to be crazy to do a thing like that. And Hank thought, Yeah, maybe I am crazy. The fist crashing into the side of his face felt fantastic though, and Hank threw punches back, just to make sure Vito would keep swinging. 

Guards swept in to pull them apart, bringing their batons down on both combatants. Afterward, Hank savored every ache that radiated through his body as he spent twenty-four hours in “the hole,” solitary confinement.

When allowed back into the general population, though, he found that others kept their distance. Being captured by the Crimson Wraith was like a plague. It made him untouchable.

“Scarlet Stranger don’t like you hurting one of his,” explained an old timer who’d earned the privilege of making a little money mopping floors — and had cleaned up a fair bit of Hank’s blood in the process. “Messes with their rehabilitation,” he continued. “And if you do…” He just whistled low and shook his head, leaving the consequences to imagination.

Hank couldn’t have that. He craved their violence, and when the craving became too much for him to bear, he picked a fight wherever he could, maybe a new inmate who hadn’t heard of his protected status yet. 

That first year, he spent a lot of time in solitary, and with each infraction, his time got longer. Sometimes he got a little stir crazy in there without anyone else to punish him, so he would punch the walls and let the concrete bloody his fists.

In time, his reputation for being a “batshit motherfucker” started keeping more inmates away from him than the Crimson Wraith. Finally, there came a day when he couldn’t seem to get any response. 

Hank had gone up to a member of one of the Puerto Rican gangs while he was sitting with his group in the yard and stepped on the toe of his shoe. All of them saw it. The inmate stood up fast, reflexes honed by the penitentiary’s atmosphere of imminent violence. But when he got eye-to-eye with Hank, he cast a look over to the gang’s leader — their El Jefe — who shook his head.

“Pendejo loco,” he muttered and sat down again.

Hank felt the need to point out what he’d just done. “I stepped on your toe.”

“You sure did,” said El Jefe, a man with more gray than black in his mustache who projected the strength of a king on his throne as he sat with wrists draped across his knees and legs spread wide. “He’s real sorry about that. His toe shouldn’t have been in your way.”

“I stepped on your toe,” Hank repeated.

“Hey, gringo, listen to me,” said El Jefe. “You ain’t getting your fix here. Not today. Not any day. You see, if a man is a man, he doesn’t go kicking a dog. And that’s all you are. One crazy, fucked-up animal. So, go on, dog. Get out of here. We ain’t got nothing for you.”

An animal. That’s what Carla had called him. As sharp as the frustration was that clenched inside of him, Hank felt something else too with those words. He felt shame. This was how they all looked at him. He had become too low, too pathetic to even bother with. 

Then he thought about his promise to the Crimson Wraith, his promise to make things right, whatever it takes. This was not doing it.

Hank signed up for a psychological rehabilitation course, three hours a day of sitting with a state-appointed therapist in a group of other inmates convicted of violent offences. They talked about their backgrounds — their families, their neighborhoods, their schools. Conversations came haltingly. Some days they didn’t come at all.  

When others spoke, there were things Hank got from listening. Some had terrible things done to them when they were little, or else they saw terrible things done to others, and it changed the way he looked at them, made them seem more human, more like him. Whatever part of the city they grew up in, whatever their skin color or background, they were all just different shards of the same broken thing.

Finally, Hank talked about Carla, and it surprised him when one of the other guys said, “You didn’t deserve the way she treated you. I’m not saying what you did was right, but that wasn’t a way for anyone to act, man or woman.” 

It felt strange to hear. Hadn’t he failed to be the man she needed? Wasn’t that why she did those things? It didn’t make sense to him, but Hank listened anyway. 

Their therapist tried to teach them new ways of expressing their emotions verbally instead of physically. Hank learned how to have a conversation with himself inside his head and to ask what he would get out of doing whatever it was he felt like he needed to do. Will this action help take me where I want to be? He’d always thought talking to yourself made you crazy, but apparently it was a way to stay sane.

Hank completed six months of rehabilitation therapy. Then he went back in for another six as mentor for the next batch. By the end, it was like his head was clearer. Maybe he wasn’t the same dumb animal he had been when he entered. Maybe this was what the Crimson Wraith had wanted for him.

In his last three years of incarceration, Hank got a job in the laundry room, which put a little money in his pocket but also just gave him something to do. He never had been a reader before, but there wasn’t anything else to occupy him most days, so he read a bit here and there, books like The Mark of Zorro, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and a cowboy story by Louis L’Amour called Sackett. He didn’t think any of that made him any smarter, but it helped the time go by.

And eventually, his time ended. The guards came to tell him he would be going out into the world once more. 

Five years gone, and in all that time, only once did he hear from anybody from the outside, a letter from his father during his very first week, saying how ashamed his family was that he had turned into a killer, how he was no longer their son and no longer welcome there, so don’t even bother ever trying to contact them in future. 

No one came to meet Hank when the prison gates opened to release him. So, he started walking down the street with only the clothes he came in wearing and, in his pocket, a little piece of paper that he’d written a note to himself on in therapy — Whatever it takes.