In the spring of 1994 Ms. Carolina learning to love Montana. She pinned the accelerator of the premiere-class rented Chevy to the floor. We got places fast and left faster. After leaving Garrison Junction she drove down I-90. A roadside billboard announced the State Prison was open for visits.

“What you think?” She was already slowing down for the exit.

“No problem. I’m an innocent man.”

“Ha.” Ms. Carolina knew me better than that and slung off the Interstate at a less than safe speed. She liked the sound of screeching tires.

No cars were parked before the prison. Ms. Carolina braked the rented car before the entrance.

“Are you nervous?” She was a good person. Her crimes were strictly vehicular.

“Those are thick walls.” The granite blocks rose about twenty feet behind which rose a brick castle. This prison had been built to keep prisoners kept inside.

“What’s the worse thing you ever did?” Ms. Carolina had been educated in a nunnery. She was an outstanding member of her community in the South. I was her Jean Genet, except my stories had never been published in the mainstream.

“The worse thing?” I had been arrested in Boston, New York, and Paris. My offenses had been minor. The cops had never tagged me for a felony. “Nothing really bad>”

“What about in the eyes of the Church?”

“I am guilty of sin, but never ‘Thou shalt not kill.”

“And the others?”

“Maybe.” I couldn’t remember all the other commandments, especially since Ms. Carolina and I were more friends than adulterers. We both loved the road.

We got out of the car and after paying the entry fee crossed the dead man zone between the outer wall and the administration office.

Before its closing the towers had been manned by expert marksman.

“You think anyone ever escaped from here?” Ms. Carolina had been free her whole life. Her husband liked her taking these trips with me. He preferred to play golf with his doctor cronies.

“Not over these walls.” Any convict on the grass was dead meat.

We entered the cellblocks. The cells were no joke. Two cots were bolted to the wall. The iron bars on the windows were strong. Those facing the corridor were thicker.

“No one got out of here, unless they were paroled or dead.” I had read about the 1959 riot. The uprising had been repressed by the National Guard.

“Could you survive here?” Ms. Carolina thought I was tougher than I was. She liked my writing.

“Maybe.” Thieves, cons, dirty police, and whores existed in another world, but prison only had convicts serving time and all of it was hard time. “But I’d try and escape.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.” Breaking out seemed impossible even without guards.

We wander to the execution hall. A thick noose hung from the gallows. The length of the rope was set for a long drop.

“So what’s the worst thing you ever did?” Ms. Carolina wasn’t giving up on an answer. She wanted to know my soul.

“Nothing to deserve a hanging.” I had sold weed, whites, and cocaine, bribed police, beaten a few people who deserved worse, and stolen $20 from my mother’s pocketbook. I had yet to give it back. “What about you?”

“Meeting you.” She said those words too fast for comfort and put her arm around my waist.

“That’s only a sin.”

“Adultery is still considered a crime in many places in the world.”

“Don’t remind me.” Stoning was only one of the punishments.

Dixie loved God’s wrath of the Old Testament, but we were far from the South.

“Let’s get out of here.” Chico Hot Springs was an hour away and the bar had good drinks for sinners and saints alike.

“To freedom.” Ms. Carolina crossed herself. She believed in God and forgiveness.

Any good person does, whereas a condemned man atop the gallows knows that release come with your last breath joining the wind blowing across Montana plains.