Angels (23 page)

“Have a seat,” Brian said. “Make yourself at home.”

Bill Houston tried to laugh. But he failed.

“No—seriously. Nobody would care. You want to try it on?”

Bill Houston saw that he made this offer not simply because it was in his power to make it, but because he really believed it might be accepted.

A group of men from the yard had gathered near the entrance—men who'd been going to the clinic to sell blood plasma under the supervision of a tall guard who now stood among them hatless under the hot sun, looking almost like their prisoner. Brian talked to them with true friendliness: “Anybody want to go for a little ride today?”

The men laughed—a burst of sound like the outcry of startled game birds. It carried out over the field and echoed off the walls that dwarfed them.

Through Bill Houston there raced an impulse, which he felt was not his alone, to say all right, sure, yes. But he said nothing. Swiftly on the heels of curiosity came the habitual yardbird fear and trembling, the knowledge that these people could get away with murder and the suspicion that they would like to try. It was the wholesale dream of these prisoners that they would be gassed to death while trapped in their cells. In their wild imaginings the borders of their confinement talked to them, and they were waiting for whatever would come, waiting for another name, waiting for giant times, waiting for the Search of Destruction. He knew a rush in his veins—he felt their need baked into these walls—and he wanted to make himself a sacrifice and his death a payment for something more than his stupid mistakes. If Brian could promise him he'd make the crucial difference for somebody, he would walk through the door and be slaughtered here and now.

He came within a yard of the opening and looked around inside the chamber. The seat of the chair rested on a cast-iron case perforated with holes to permit the escape of gas. Two straight two-inch pipes ran from directly beneath the witnesses' window and into the base of perforated metal. He assumed these pipes fed the pellets of cyanide into their bath of acid beneath the chair. The thick leather straps for the arms and legs were plainly darkened by the sweat of those who had preceded him here.

He was wordless, and when it became obvious that he had nothing to report to them of what it was like to stand here condemned, the other prisoners moved on toward the clinic.

The guards waited patiently for Bill Houston, and Bill Houston stood waiting patiently to be terrified by the means of his death, which was after all just a little room like a diving bell, or a cheap amusement park submarine ride, with a large wheel on its door for screwing it tightly shut. He just felt obligated to experience more than mild interest. But the sight failed to move him until he saw the stethoscope—one with an unusually long tube—built into the door. He comprehended that the shiny flat end of this listening device would be attached to his chest after he was strapped in, and it just didn't seem fair to him. It meant he wouldn't be allowed to wear a shirt, he'd be half naked before strangers—and now it came over him vividly that his death would be attended, observed, and monitored by people who couldn't appreciate how much he wanted to live. They would probably think, because he offered no resistance, that all of this was all right with him. But it wasn't. They just didn't know him. They were strangers.

He peered around at the other side of the door, the side he wouldn't see after they closed it, and was disgusted to see the stethoscope's rabbit ears dangling there helplessly. It wasn't all right with him at all!—that somebody would be hooked up to him while he was dying. It wasn't all right that a doctor would hear his pulse accelerate in the heart's increasing frenzy to feed him with airless drained impotent blood, until the major arteries burst. And all the while, this doctor would probably be wishing he'd hurry up.

But he thought of how he'd wanted to cover the bank guard Crowell with death, like paint, until no dangerous rays of life were shining out of him. I got this coming. He moved his trigger finger slightly. That's all it took. And now it's my turn under the wheel.

“What's that supposed to mean?” he asked Brian. Over the small window cut into the door, on the inside, ran a semicircular line of words in Old English lettering, something to read while the hydrocyanic gas swirled up toward your nostrils: Death Is The Mother Of Beauty.

“I don't know what it means,” Brian said. “I guess you'll find out, won't you?”

But Bill Houston already knew.

“You wouldn't believe how good this stuff tastes,” he told Brian, as he ate Wonder Bread with margarine-flavored lard on it and anonymous reconstituted soup. “That's what that sign on the door is trying to say.” He gestured with his plastic spoon. “When you only got two weeks coming at you, a shit sandwich would be just fine. Even a shit sandwich without no bread.”

Brian took off his cap and rubbed his head all over briskly. He was thin and handsome with short light hair and a big Adam's apple that made him look like the country boy he was. He didn't smoke, and he claimed not to drink whiskey. “They'll never get me dirty in here,” he had told Bill Houston that afternoon. “They fired twenty-three dirty staff two months back. But I'll never go—you can't corrupt me. I don't have any vices you can get a pry into, if you understand what I mean.”

“I ain't trying to corrupt you,” Bill Houston said.

“Well don't bother trying, is what I'm getting at.”

“Are you religious?” Bill Houston asked.

“Of course I'm religious. Everybody's religious in the Death House. The way I see it, we were meant to be here together at the end of your time.”

“Well,” Bill Houston said, “yeah.” And he did agree. But he was embarrassed to say so.

The Death House was not air-conditioned. Against regulations, Brian left the Waiting Room door open to catch the breeze and presented Bill Houston with a meager view of some dirt and a stretch of concrete wall. Somebody had planted a twenty-foot row of as yet unidentifiable vegetation along the wall's base, and Bill Houston watched all day without any real interest to see if the person would come along sometime and water it, but nobody came. On the other side of the wall was the prison's medium security South Unit, and farther south than that was the self-contained maximum security Cellblock Six, where he'd spent only nine days before his transfer to the Waiting Room.

At sundown, just before the stars came out, the sky went deep blue and the yards and buildings seemed as yellow as butter under sodium arc-lamps. The air cooled swiftly, but the walls stayed hot for a while into the darkness, and the generous loops of razor-barbed wire coiled atop them were the last things to catch any daylight. The desert outside was asleep: it was the time when the animals of the day took shelter, and the animals of the night kept hidden a little longer. Across the highway to the north, the Department of Corrections' fields of alfalfa breathed green heat into space. If it wasn't peace, still it wasn't war. The prisoners had eaten their dinners and were quiet. Those serving sentences of a comprehensible length could blacken another day.

After a while an energy came out of the dark, a tin-foil singing of wind over the walls. The animals of the night set out. Inside, the TVs got louder and more lights came on. Voices were raised, and in lowered voices bargains were struck, and transactions took place among confederates. Prisoners or not, people had to make a living.

In his new quarters Bill Houston felt closer to the prison's life—closer to being in circulation—than he had in CB-6, which shared nothing, not even a kitchen, with the rest of Florence Prison. But he knew he was no part of that life, and never would be again. James would eventually come into it, and Burris might, too. Bill Houston felt sorry for himself tonight. All he could do was talk to Foster, the wheezy old suppertime guard, or taste the air. He'd never noticed before that the air had a flavor to it. It had a taste. It tasted wonderful.

That he might spend only three weeks in prison now seemed one of the worst parts of his punishment. It was inside the level, uniform dailiness of these surroundings that the wonder of life assailed him. Minute changes in the desert air, the gradual angling of supposedly fixed shadows along the dirt as the seasons changed, the slow overturn of all the familiar people around him—they spoke of a benevolent plot at the heart of things never to stay the same. But on the streets events jumped their lanes. Everything turned inside out, flew back in his face, left him wide-eyed but asleep. He'd never known himself on the streets. It was here at the impossible core of his own accursedness that they were introduced.

In this version he laid the bouquet of flowers disguising the Remington on the check-writing counter and suddenly had a thought. “Hold it, Dwight”—quietly; nobody took any particular notice.

Dwight, up by the desks, was confused. He came forward. “What is it, Bill?”

“I just think we better hold off.”

“Well, we'll hold off, then. But what's the trouble, Bill?”

“Dwight, I have an uneasy feeling about today. Can you trust me on it?”

“I can if I have to. And I think I have to, Bill. Why don't we come back and try tomorrow?”

“Let me make a suggestion,” Bill Houston said in this version. “Let's come back when a different guard is on duty. I have an uneasy feeling about the guard.”

“I don't want to come back tomorrow,” Bill Houston said in another version. “I don't want to come back ever again. I have a chance at a pretty good life—a woman, a couple of kids. There's no sense me being here. I haven't been appreciating all the gifts surrounding me.”

‘Neither have I, Bill,” Dwight agreed in another version.

“Neither have I,” James said.

“Neither have I,” Burris said.

“Neither have I,” Jamie said.

T
hings hummed, and things trembled. But things held.

She wore a pink skirt and a black teeshirt. It was wonderful to feel panty-hose against her skin. But the tennis shoes made her feel like a shopping bag lady.

“About how much alcohol—what was it? Wine?” the Welfare lady asked.

“Yes. That's right. Wine.” Dr. Wrigley was looking at his charts attached to a clipboard. In this situation, he was Jamie's champion.

“How much wine did you drink daily, on the average, let's say,” the Welfare lady asked.

“I had it down to a real regular thing there,” Jamie told the assembled officials. “I did away with the most of a half-gallon of purple wine ever night. Then I had the rest for breakfast.”

Everybody nodded. There were four of them around the conference table with her. They took notes.

“And the drugs?” This question came from a small woman who was also a doctor. Jamie liked her because she seemed to be on Jamie's side, and because she wore tennis shoes. “Can you tell us what kind, or about how much?”

“There was nothing regular about that,” Jamie said. “I just took every opportunity that came along to get as ripped as possible.”

“How are you feeling today?” the Welfare lady asked.

“Nervous,” Jamie said.

Nervous was the wrong word. She could see that instantly.

“I mean, I have my problems,” she said, “but I don't think this is the Empire State Building, or anything like that.”

They shifted in their seats.

“You're just nervous about being here,” Dr. Wrigley said. “You got it,” Jamie said.

Everybody nodded. When she said the wrong thing, the bodies shifted. When she said the right thing, the heads went up and down.

Dr. Wrigley wasn't the only man with a chart. There was another, Dr. Benvenuto, who flipped his pages and said, “Jamie, what do you see yourself doing ten years from now?”

She closed her eyes and it came before her like a vision. “I'll be watching a color TV and smoking a Winston-brand cigaret.”

That made their heads go up and down wildly. They loved that one.

“My two girls, they'll be right in the next room. Miranda'll be going on sixteen, she'd probably be talking on the phone. Got a boyfriend on the other end.” She was definitely putting it all in the proper slot now—four happy faces surrounded her. “Ellen would be ten, right? She's—playing the piano. Practicing on a few tunes for the big debut thing, I guess. The recital.” She looked into their smiles, and beyond their smiles, she looked into their homes. “That's what I want. A piano, a vase with flowers inside of it. A little economy car. A regular kind of life.”

She lit a cigaret. “Everything would be organized into monthly payments.”

Oops.

“I mean, all my current debts and stuff.”

“We understand,” Dr. Wrigley said, and the other guy, Dr. Benvenuto of the Outpatient Program, actually laughed.

Back in the Express Lane. She backed up a space in her head and saw the room as one sheer piece, all of itself. Actually, they were all on her side here. They were all giving her the signals: This Way Out.

When the Welfare lady and the lady doctor with the tennis shoes had gone, Dr. Wrigley stayed behind and introduced her to Dr. Benvenuto. “I think you belong in the Drug and Alcohol Rehab program,” Dr. Benvenuto said right away.

“On an outpatient basis,” Dr. Wrigley said.

“Out,” she said. “I love the sound of that word.”

“You've got a long way to go—I hope you understand that,” Dr. Benvenuto said.

“I'll take it on an inch-by-inch basis,” Jamie said.

“Are you willing to do whatever's necessary to stay away from chemicals?”