“I say Freedman,” Walls said suddenly.
“I say Victman,” Flesh said.
“All right,” Sky said, “I say Dedman!”
F
eldman lay on his cot, thinking: Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh.
Across the cell, Bisch farted in his sleep.
It was the bad man deal, Feldman thought. They would give him the business, like the Duke of West Point. What a place, he thought. Thieves, he thought, safe-crackers, bookies, guys who jump cars. Pickpockets, he thought. Larcenists and arsonists and murderers in all degrees. Rapers, embezzlers, hit-and-run drivers. Fences and inciters to riot. Bagmen, wheelmen, fixers and bribers. Kidnappers, he thought, counterfeiters, short-changers, pushers and pimps. Menslaughterers, drunken drivers, and guys who didn’t give fair measure. Jack-offs. Disturbers of the peace. Vandals. Scoff laws. Bad sports.
The homunculus seemed to stretch in its death. Pain flared briefly at his heart.
Blackmail
, he thought. The perfect crime.
He paced the cell like a benched athlete stalking the sidelines, stalking the game.
Ed Slipper was the oldest inmate in the penitentiary, the fourth oldest inmate in the country. Two years before, he had been only the seventeenth oldest prisoner, but the succeeding winters had been hard. Many of the old-timers had died and Ed had moved rapidly up the list. “You watch my smoke now,” he would say to the men gathered about the television set in the recreation room as the announcer on the screen stood before the weather map and spoke of storms developing in the northwest, of cold spells in their ninth day, their tenth, their eleventh.
“Did you hear that, Ed?” a prisoner said one evening as Feldman, on a break, sat watching television. “Thirty-eight below in Medicine Bow, Wyoming.”
“Shit,” the old man said, “that’s unimportant. That’s a fucking wasteland up there. There’s no prison, no jail even. All that place is is a ton of ice and a thermometer. Nobody never died of the cold in Medicine Bow, Wyoming. You tell me what the cloud cover is in Leavenworth, Kansas, in Atlanta, Georgia, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Then I’ll listen.”
Feldman remembered the old man when he saw him the next night at the canteen. Walls was in the infirmary, and Feldman had taken his place behind the candy counter.
“Have you got the chocolate-covered cherries?” the old man asked.
Feldman pushed a box toward him.
“That’s a quarter,” Sky said. “You got the chits for it, Ed?”
“Aw Sky,” Ed Slipper said, “it’s not but a week till payday.”
“You know the rules. No credit.”
“I only got ten cents.”
“Try the licorice.”
“Sky, you bastard, I ain’t eaten the licorice since Cupid was warden here in ’37. I’m the fourth oldest inmate in this damn country, and I ain’t got the teeth for no licorice.”
Sky shrugged. “Get your warden pal to help you out,” he said.
“Your ass, Sky,” Slipper said. He took a small Hershey bar without nuts and a cylinder of cherry Life Savers. “Home brew,” he explained to Feldman. “I have to do that sometimes.” He gave him the last of his chits and turned away forlornly.
Later that evening Feldman, by-passing the pencil man, used the permission slip the Fink had given him for the cigarettes. The new Fink on duty in his cellblock gave him a pass for it, and he showed this to the guard.
“It is important?” the guard wanted to know. “I ask because you’re entitled to only two round trips in a quarter. You’ve already had one this quarter.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Feldman, troubled. “When is the next quarter?”
“The warden declares the quarters,” the guard said. “No one knows.”
What a place, Feldman thought uneasily. A guilt factory.
“It keeps it interesting,” the guard said.
“Sure,” Feldman said.
“There’s got to be calm and there’s got to be excitement,” the guard said as Feldman moved off.
He passed Warden Fisher in the corridor, but the man did not return his nod.
He found the old man. His room was in the wooden, school-building structure which Feldman had first entered when he came to the penitentiary. With its armchair and wooden bed and small bedside table and single lamp, it looked like a room in a wicked hotel. There were no bars on the window. Slipper lay on top of the bed—there was a thin green linen bedspread across it—eating his candy. “You like my room, kid?” he asked.
“It’s nice,” Feldman said.
The old man laughed. “Sure,” he said, “it’s wonderful. I’m eighty-seven years old. How long you in for? You a lifer?”
“No,” Feldman said, “I’m only here for one year.”
The old man seemed relieved. “Well, they give shorter sentences nowadays,” he said. “Except in the South. Hell, even in the South you don’t hear that ninety-nine years plus seven any more. Them other three old guys—they’re in the South. It’s no accident those bastards are still alive. Balmy breezes, clear skies. Goddamn South. I have to be twice as strong to last out the winter. You heard any weather reports? And more humane parole laws too. Don’t forget that. I’m the last. Fourth to last. A young man today don’t stand a chance of breaking our records. You noticed, didn’t you, you had to get a guard to unlock this chickenshit room? I demanded that lock. I don’t want no favors. I’m no martyr, but I didn’t do what they said I did. Hell, I don’t even remember what they said I did. There are innocent men in this place, don’t kid yourself.”
“I know,” Feldman said.”
“What?
You?
Don’t kid yourself.”
“Couldn’t you get out?” Feldman asked. “Your age? A parole?”
“No, I can’t. No. I can’t get out. I
could
of got out. Cupid was working on it. But I’m a bad man. That’s what that new warden says. You should have seen
my
outfit. I wore one. But the doctor said I’d get sick, and they gave me this. This room too. And the soft job. Trusty. It’s the jerk’s own rule. After seventy-five every con is a trusty. Age has its privileges, he says. It’s
Chinese
, he says. Shit. Don’t do me no favors. Why are
you
here?”
“To do you a favor,” Feldman said. He went to the side of the old man’s bed. His Hershey bar had been broken into little squares. On each chocolate square he had placed a cherry Life Saver. “You shouldn’t have to eat that,” Feldman said.
Slipper shrugged. “You make do in this life, kid,” he said.
Feldman pulled a long thin box of chocolate-covered cherries from the pocket of his suit. “Here,” he said.
“You bastard,” the old man said, taking the candy.
“I keep the accounts,” Feldman said. “At the canteen.”
“You got a swell job,” the old man said glumly. “I got a swell room, and you got a swell job. We’re doing terrific.”
“I keep the accounts,” Feldman repeated, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice. Here we go, he thought. Here we go and here we come. Out of retirement. In from lunch. Business as usual. He stared pitilessly down at his customer, the old man on the bed, struggling to sit up, his face radiant with suspicion, seeming, looking, sniffing, a victim
manqué
. He was just an old man, proud only of an oblique statistical distinction. It was enough. You make do in this life, kid, Feldman thought. But circuitously, he cautioned. “Whoever it was died sometime in 1945,” Feldman said. He glanced down briefly at the note he had made on the box of candy. “February or March,” he said casually. She, probably. We’ll say ‘she,’ old-timer. And we’ll say ‘died.’ Love goes, people forget, but we’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and we’ll say ‘died.’ She died in February or March of 1945 and you haven’t had your five dollars a month from that time to this. I keep the accounts.”
“It was my sister,” the old man said.
“I’m sorry for your trouble,” Feldman said. “So I thought: It’s been almost twenty years, and in twenty years there’s time to break any habit.”
“Is there?” the old man said. “Is there?”
“
Any
habit. And don’t give me
that
, old man. This is twenty years I’m talking about. You weren’t such an old man then. You didn’t have the habit of your old age then. You were just a seasoned con with years until your seventy-fifth birthday.”
“I was innocent then too,” the old man said petulantly.
“
You listen to me
,” Feldman commanded. “So I thought: Twenty years ago it was cigarettes, an extra pint of milk, an occasional cigar maybe. The candy is as recent as your grudge, as your age and your obsession with it. Maybe it dates from your being declared an ancestor. I’ll bet it does. You’re never too old, old man. Sky says there’s a fortune in dread, that doom’s a gold mine. Doom is peanuts. Obsession—
that
’s where the money is. There’s a king’s ransom in other people’s dreams.”
“What are you talking about?” the man protested. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Feldman lifted the tiny chocolate wafers with their cherry Life Savers from the bedside table. They seemed like hors d’oeuvres for a children’s party. He dropped them into the wastebasket. “I’ve written my lawyer,” he said. “There will be five dollars in your account by Thursday.”
“What is this?” Ed Slipper said. “You think you can buy an old man for five dollars?”
“No,” Feldman said, “you don’t understand. This would be five dollars a month.
Every
month. You’re going to live forever. You’ll be rich.”
“No sale,” the old man said.
“That’s not your decision.”
“Whose is it you think?”
“Mine. The money accumulates no matter what you do. Every month—five dollars. All sales final.”
“I’ll return it. I won’t touch it.”
Feldman laughed at him. “Then I don’t know my man,” he said affably.
The old man groaned. “I’ll touch it. I always touch everything.”
“It’s your sweet tooth, Ed,” Feldman said.
“I liked stuff.”
“All you criminals do, Ed. You all do.”
“I couldn’t see why I should have to be the one to go without.”
“You’re on the staff then, Ed. I’ve put you on the staff welcome aboard.”
“What do I have to do?” Slipper asked dully.
“Whatever comes up,” Feldman said. “You’re a trusty. What’s your work?”
“I’m in Administration. I clean up the offices.”
“I want my file,” Feldman told him.
The old man looked at him as if he were crazy. “Your
file?
”
“I’ll give you four days,” Feldman said.
The man stared.
“All right, say six. What’s the matter, don’t you think you can do it?”
The old man smiled.
“Sure you can,” Feldman said excitedly. “You old dog. Let’s see those fingers. Spry. Pretty spry, flexible, strong still. Spry old man. Thank your sweet tooth.” He pointed to the candy. “Expensive tastes are a blessing, hey, old man? That’s crap about dissipation. Indulgence is the thing to keep a guy in condition. Afford, afford and enjoy. Meaning of life, money in the bank. Live soft, live long. Hope those bastards down South never find out.” Feldman clapped the old man’s shoulder. “I’m a good boss. A good boss doesn’t rub it in. We’ll get along,
you’ll
see. That’s right, eat, eat your chocolate cherries. Goodnight now. Suck, chew. Sweet dreams. Goodnight, kid.”
Feldman started back toward his cell, almost happy. It sets a man up, he thought, it sets a man up to get away with something. He didn’t see Warden Fisher approaching until they were almost abreast of each other. He decided to cut him.
“Hold it there,” the warden said as Feldman passed. “What are you doing in here?”
Feldman showed him the permission slip he had gotten from the opposite number. The warden took it and tore it up without looking at it.
“That’s my permission slip,” Feldman said. “I need that to show the guard to get my pass.”
The warden stuffed the pieces of the permission slip into his pocket. “Why are you in these halls without a permission slip?” he demanded.
“I
had
a permission slip. You tore it up. Hey,” he said, “what is this?”
The warden smiled broadly and winked at Feldman.
Feldman blinked back, startled. He has to take care of me, Feldman thought. He
has
to. He’s the warden. It’s civil service.
The warden turned to go. Feldman started after him and held his elbow. “There have to be rules,” he insisted crazily.
The warden turned on him suddenly, shaking his elbow loose from Feldman’s grasp. “
Yes
,” he said, “there
have
to be rules. It had grease on it!
Your permission slip had grease on it!
”
“No,” Feldman said, “no. It didn’t. You’ve got the pieces in your pocket. See if it did.”
“Not this one,” the warden said, tapping his pocket. “This one is just the wages of sin. The
other
one. The one you gave the Fink tonight. I look at the permission slips and I see the grease on them and then I have you guys.
Grease. Grease
. You bad men are all the same. You live in grease.”
I wish I were seventy-five years old, Feldman thought.
“
Privilege!
” The warden almost spit the word. “I hate that word. Angles, cut corners—there’s nothing else in your geometry, is there?”
Feldman stared at him.
“The Finks change daily. Didn’t you think of that? Corner-cutter, didn’t you think of that? I change my Finks daily.”
Like sheets in a hotel, Feldman thought.
“What did you have to give him? Cigarettes? Probably cigarettes. Two? Three?”
Six, Feldman thought. I’ve been screwed.
“You’re a laughingstock, Feldman. Evil is clumsy, funny. Get back to your cell.”
The guard would stop him. He would be put on report. “I request a permission slip, sir,” Feldman said.
“You’ve already had two this quarter,” the warden said.
“I’m entitled to a round trip.”
It was hopeless. There was something wrong somewhere. He had cheated, but someplace it had all been canceled out, and now they were cutting corners on him.
The warden considered Feldman for a moment and then took a pad of fresh permission slips from his pocket. He wrote one out. “Here,” he said magnanimously. “The warden declares the quarters.”
Feldman hesitated. It would be charged as his first permission slip of the new quarter. He would be forever one half a round trip behind—maybe a whole trip. He couldn’t think. You had to be a Philadelphia lawyer to serve time here.