Charles had been vis­it­ing the Scott County Jail every Sat­ur­day for two years. He taught a va­ri­ety of courses to the in­mates, from el­e­men­tary sci­ence to cre­ative writ­ing and U.S. his­tory. For the last fif­teen years he had spent five days a week teach­ing world his­tory to un­ruly sev­enth and eighth graders, and he some­times won­dered why he chose to spend his Sat­ur­days at the jail. He won­dered when no one showed up, when some­one cursed at him, and when the one in­mate charged at him (fol­low­ing Charles’s sug­ges­tion that the in­mate work on his hand­writ­ing in­stead of play­ing so much hand­ball).

The jail class­room was a mostly peace­ful place, but since the in­ci­dent, the war­den had paired each in­mate with a guard, mak­ing for a new dy­namic in the small room. Sud­denly there were a dozen men in the cramped space, the guards shuf­fling in the nar­row pe­riph­ery be­tween wall and table, un­sure of how to oc­cupy them­selves. They po­litely de­clined Charles’s in­vi­ta­tion to par­tic­i­pate, in­stead lean­ing against the walls with their arms crossed, lis­ten­ing to class lec­tures and dis­cus­sions, be­com­ing more re­laxed each week.

Of all the courses of­fered, Charles es­pe­cially en­joyed teach­ing cre­ative writ­ing but had no­ticed the ab­sence of one in­mate who at­tended every other class. One Sat­ur­day after a les­son fo­cus­ing on the Civil War he asked Lyle--a po­lite, at­ten­tive young man--if he’d have any in­ter­est in speed read­ing. Lyle looked sur­prised, but said that he’d come if Charles taught the class.

The next Sat­ur­day Lyle walked into the nar­row room and sat across from Charles at the long metal table. Charles had no­ticed the young man when Lyle had first ar­rived at the jail seven or eight months be­fore, had stud­ied the re­laxed pos­ture of his strong, slen­der frame. He looked like some­one who would prob­a­bly al­ways be a great ath­lete, de­spite thin­ning so much dur­ing his sen­tence. His long greasy hair made Charles think that he would have looked like a Je­sus-wannabe hip­pie if it weren’t for the or­ange jump­suit. But it was Lyle’s calm ex­pres­sion that struck Charles the most—he looked kind and gen­tle, and there was an open­ness in his eyes, one that Charles felt he didn’t often see, in or out­side of the jail.

A group of four guards soon fol­lowed, walk­ing into the room talk­ing. They didn’t no­tice the un­usual si­lence, Lyle and Charles watch­ing them. They were all abuzz of some ex­cite­ment, and sud­denly stopped all to­gether. One of the guards nod­ded at Lyle and then said to Charles, “Small group. You al­right today?”

“Yes, I think so. Thanks.” And the guards re­sumed their con­ver­sa­tion as they moved out of the room, leav­ing the metal door open be­hind them.

While the guards had been talk­ing, Lyle had set two books on the table: Daniel Silva’s Por­trait of a Spy and a fat physics text.

“One of those speed reads by it­self, you know. The other one—well, I don’t think is meant to be sped through,” Charles said, lean­ing for­ward on the table and clasp­ing his hands.

Lyle sat back, re­laxed into his chair. “I know. I just wanted to show you what I’ve been read­ing.”

“Good. Why two such dif­fer­ent things?”

Lyle looked down at the books as if con­sid­er­ing the dis­tinc­tion, but not too se­ri­ously.

“I just enjoy them both,” he shrugged. “I stud­ied art in col­lege, so I like these mys­ter­ies that in­te­grate art his­tory, but I’ve also al­ways loved math­e­mat­ics and physics. I have a brain for both, I guess.”

Charles sat look­ing at Lyle for a mo­ment. He felt a sur­prise that he hoped wasn’t ap­par­ent on his face. He reached across the table, pushed the fat mys­tery aside and picked up the physics book. Flip­ping through it he caught glimpses of equa­tions on most every page, graphs and ta­bles full of num­bers and sym­bols, and black-and-white pho­tos of ex­per­i­ments from the 1950s.

“This place needs to up­date their li­brary.” He set the book down and pushed it back across the table. “Why are you here Lyle?”

“To learn speed read­ing. I’m so bored here, so it’s just nice to learn some­thing new. And after you men­tioned it, I re­al­ized that I don’t al­ways fully pay at­ten­tion to what I’m read­ing—my mind wan­ders, you know? There are so many dis­trac­tions here—peo­ple yelling, sounds echo­ing every­where, heavy doors slam­ming—but it seems like if I’m speed read­ing my at­ten­tion will be more fo­cused.”

As the teacher of a sub­ject, this was what Charles wanted to hear. But as a man sit­ting across the table this was not the ques­tion he had asked.

Sit­ting back again, Charles crossed his arms, strangely aware of how unan­i­mated Lyle’s con­ver­sa­tion was. The young man was speak­ing gen­tly and de­lib­er­ately, at what struck Charles as the per­fect level for the echoey room.

Charles took a breath and dropped his hands to his lap.

“Well, I think speed read­ing can help with focus, but that’s not what I meant. Why are you in jail? You’re ed­u­cated, po­lite, thought­ful. I usu­ally don’t ask that of my stu­dents, but I’m re­ally cu­ri­ous about you.”

Lyle smiled, and nod­ded. “Yeah, I don’t seem crazy, right? Well, I’m not in here. It’s out there where I have prob­lems. In here I can just read and draw.”

“And not deal with the pres­sures of ‘life be­yond the walls’?” Charles asked, smil­ing and air quot­ing the phrase.

“Ex­actly. They keep telling me I’m an al­co­holic, but I think it’s just that I don’t like it out there.”

Charles was sur­prised at the se­ri­ous tone, and had the thought that he shouldn’t be push­ing his luck, but Lyle seemed per­fectly com­fort­able with the con­ver­sa­tion. Both men were now lean­ing back in their chairs, ap­pear­ing per­fectly re­laxed as if they were sit­ting at a street­side café some morn­ing shar­ing cof­fee and cig­a­rettes.

“But not enough to kill your­self?”

“Well, no. That’s al­ways an op­tion, but it isn’t a very good one.”

“Nei­ther is being in here.”

“I know,” said Lyle. “But I don’t have to worry about much here. No job, no bills, no peo­ple nag­ging you about your prob­lems. Here you’re just sur­rounded by other peo­ple who couldn’t deal with it ei­ther.” Lyle looked around as he said this, as if gaz­ing at the oth­ers he spoke of.

“So, it’s bet­ter in here?”

“Not bet­ter,” said Lyle, “Just eas­ier. Some­days. I’ve been in and out of here four times, same stu­pid crime, which makes you start to feel pretty dumb. And after a few months I’m al­ways eager to get out and start my life over. So that’s where I am now--over the re­gret, but stuck in that place be­tween bore­dom and rest­less­ness.”

“Sounds fair enough,” said Charles. “So why learn speed read­ing?”

“Why did you learn it?”

The ques­tion caught Charles off guard in its sim­plic­ity; but even in his flat tone Lyle sounded cu­ri­ous.

“Be­cause I do a lot of read­ing, and like you I wanted to still ab­sorb as much in­for­ma­tion as I could while speed­ing up the process.”

“Ex­actly,” said Lyle, his voice be­com­ing more ex­cited. “I want to read every book in here dur­ing the next four months. That’s what’ll get me through this. I don’t know if it’ll make me any smarter or any­thing, but it’s a goal to set, and my coun­selor tells me that will help me ‘be­yond the walls’.”

Charles smiled and nod­ded. He leaned down and took a stack of pa­pers and a slim book from his bag, then placed the ma­te­ri­als on the table and looked at Lyle. “So let’s get to it.”