I can just walk out that door? That's what you're saying?"

The warden held back a smile and said, "You can stay here if you'd like. But if you do, I'll have to start charging you room and board. I can pretty much guarantee you won't like the rates."

The two men were standing in the sterile public lobby of the Colorado State Penitentiary. The spacious front room of the modern prison was all concrete and light. Some tile. It only hinted at what was inside -- "inside" meaning the other side of the security doors.

Just hinted.

A dozen steps away, near the guards who acted as the gatekeepers/ receptionists for the public, one of the warden's assistants leaned against the wall.

From where the warden stood near the front doors, the tall, electrified chain-link fences were visible through the glass, and above them coiled rows of concertina sparkled with the earliest indication of a summer dawn. Beyond the fences, miles of high prairie loomed. Beyond that, the Rocky Mountains hovered ominously.

Tom Clone's mind wasn't on the far horizon yet. He found himself examining the details of the room. He was uncomfortable with its unfamiliarity, and with its spaciousness. He said, "How do I get somewhere? I mean somewhere else besides here?"

"Your lawyer's sending someone to get you. I would guess they should be here anytime now."

"So that's it?" Clone asked the warden. He fingered the collar of his new knit shirt with his left hand and touched the money in his pants pocket with the fingers of his right. "After thirteen years here, I sign some papers, get a hundred bucks and some clothes from Kmart, and then I'm... gone? That's it?"

"You want a brass band maybe? Some dancing girls? With a little more notice, maybe..."

"That's not what I mean."

"Most guys don't get the ride from their lawyer, Tom. All they get is a cold seat in a big bus to Pueblo or Denver." Usually get themselves a round-trip ticket, too, the warden thought, but he didn't say it. He was pondering the question of whether -- no, when -- he'd be welcoming Tom Clone back again.

"Most guys who leave here aren't innocent, Warden."

The warden shrugged. "You ask them, they'll tell you they are. Don't ask them, most of them will tell you they are anyway."

"But most guys who walk out that door don't have DNA tests on the murder weapon to back up their contention."

The warden considered his reply before he said, "I suppose they don't, Tom. I suppose they don't."

The inmate's sharp eyes read the time on the warden's Timex. "Why is this happening at five o'clock in the morning? Why not during the day?"

Completely deadpan, the warden said, "What? You wanted to sleep in? Damn, I hate it when the guests don't make their requests clear. We try so hard to please." He made a compassionate face. "Other than this one early wake-up call, you weren't disappointed with anything else during your stay, were you?"

"It's a serious question, Warden. I've never been released from prison before, but I'd be surprised to learn that it usually involves a personal visit with the warden and an opportunity to watch the sun rise."

"Well, if it's a serious question, then here's a serious answer. Once I actually received the order from the judge in Park County last night, I knew you were going elsewhere. Getting you out of here at dawn was my idea. Why? Because I don't want to give the press a chance to get themselves organized for your release, which they still think is scheduled for sometime this afternoon. As far as I'm concerned you can have your dog-and-pony show with the ACLU and the Innocence Project someplace else besides in my prison."

Tom didn't expect the honesty. He lifted his eyebrows involuntarily.

"As a general rule," the warden continued, "I'm not a big fan of commotion. You may have noticed over the years that we don't hold too many unnecessary group functions around here."

Tom Clone's eyes swept the big room again before they settled back on the warden. There was a time when Clone might have appreciated the sardonic nature of the man. But thirteen years living alone in a concrete room on death row had dulled his sense of irony. Anyway, the warden was a stranger to him, and Tom wasn't sure what to make of him. He'd noticed that the entire time they'd been talking the big man's tongue was busy in his mouth, as though maybe he had a poppy seed stuck someplace he'd rather not have one, and he'd really like to have a toothpick.

The warden looked away for a second or two before he returned his gaze to Clone. "Tom? You don't mind that I call you Tom, do you? Good. Listen, if you're waiting for an apology from me -- and I'm beginning to suspect that you are -- don't waste your energy. You won't get one. The courts told me to lock you up, and I did that. And now the courts have told me to let you go, so I'm doing that. I make it a practice not to apologize for doing my job."

Tom said, "How'd you know that's what I was thinking?"

"It's what I'd be thinking if I was standing in your boots." Both men looked down. "Or your cheap sneakers, as the case may be."

Tom Clone laughed. He heard the noise as though it had come from someone else. He thought, That was my first laughter as a free man, and said, "So what else might I be thinking?"

"Scared thoughts. Unless you're a fool, if you're not scared already, you'll be scared soon. Something tells me you're not a fool. You'll be scared soon. You can bet on it."

"I've been watching my back for thirteen years, Warden. Fear is nothing new for me."

"Not that kind of scared. Though that kind won't go away for a while, either. I'm talking scared that life's passed you by. Thirteen years is a long time to be institutionalized. Back then, you still had a life ahead of you; you were a hotshot kid who was about to become a doctor. Now you're an old-timer. You're used to this place. To us, to our ways. To being a small man in a small world."

The warden pointed out the door. "You don't know shit about what's outside that door anymore, and people on the outside are going to hear where you've been all this time and they're going to treat you like a con. That's scary to you already, or it damn well should be."

The words made him nervous, but Tom shook his head stubbornly. "I'm leaving here an innocent man. It's going to be different for me out there than it is for other people who walk out that door."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Some people may believe you're innocent, but most won't. Sorry, but that's just the way it is. Look, that there's your ride, I bet." He pointed at a green Buick sedan that was pulling into the otherwise empty visitors' lot half a football field away. "Good luck, son. You'll need it more than you know." He pushed the door open. "Now grab your duffel and get out of here before somebody up in Park County comes to their senses."

Tom hesitated as though he didn't trust what the man had said. Finally, he leaned down, picked up the blue canvas bag that was filled with his few personal belongings, and began to walk away. As Tom Clone cleared the front door and took his first steps outside as a free man, the warden's assistant sauntered forward and stood beside his boss. "How about twenty bucks?"

The warden replied, "I said I'll do up to fifty. But it's your call, Hank. If I were you, I'd save my money."

"Twenty's fine, Warden."

The concrete path that led through the gate in the fence ran about fifty yards to the parking lot. Almost exactly halfway down the path, Tom Clone tossed his duffel far ahead of him and immediately sprang forward. He took a little hop, picked up some speed, and launched himself into a cartwheel. When he completed the cartwheel -- which he accomplished with some skill -- he leaned backward and then, with an additional little push of his strong legs and a fluid thrust of his arms, he finished with a nicely executed back flip.

He planted the landing well. Only one little extraneous hop.

The warden held out his hand; the assistant warden carpeted his boss's palm with a twenty-dollar bill. "How did you know he'd do that?"

"For the last month, since the rumors started about him getting out, that's how he's been spending his hour a week in the yard. Cartwheels and back flips. Cartwheels and back flips. Over and over again. I figured we were going to have a little recital as he left."

The assistant shook his head and said, "Damn. I think these guys can't surprise me anymore and then..." He let the morning breeze carry the thought across the high prairie.

Eyes still on Tom Clone, the warden said, "I can't tell you how glad I am that there weren't any news cameras here to see him do that. I would have had to watch his gymnastics twenty more times on the news. There would have been a thousand e-mails and everybody including the governor would have been calling wondering how we could have allowed him to do that."

"That's why we were up at four o'clock in the morning? So the press wouldn't see him play Olga Korbut?"

"Nadia Comaneci. But yeah, that's the only damn reason."

Copyright © 2003 by Stephen White