On the Yard (21 page)

Nunn answered anyway. “From all over. He figures he's going to work his way out of the textile mill and go into the King business.”

“What was wrong with him?” Red wanted to know.

“He was taking up space,” Nunn said.

“Your mammy takes up space.”

“Knock it off,” Chilly ordered. “Give mom a rest.”

After this they fell silent again. They would have preferred to pass the time talking, but for a while each of them before saying anything considered that he already knew exactly what the others would find to answer to it, and what he would say to that ... and it didn't seem worth the effort.

Chilly saw Charlie Wong, the warden's houseboy, coming down the yard in a yellow slicker, probably making a run on the hospital. On impulse, Chilly stepped out and intercepted him.

“Hey, Wong, I want to talk to you.”

Wong nodded, smiling, his dark eyes bland as he watched Chilly with a show of polite interest.

“I hear you're getting some pot in,” Chilly said.

“Pot?” Wong grinned. “You catch cook. Plenty pot.”

“Marijuana,” Chilly said.

“Ah, velly bad!” Wong made a swift clawing gesture across his forehead. “Plenty devils.”

“You can drop the Oriental Uncle Tom,” Chilly said quietly. “I don't buy it.”

Wong drew back and studied Chilly alertly. “Uncle Tom?” he asked.

“I've talked to someone who knew you on the streets.”

Wong smiled thinly, his eyes suddenly wise. “And you would expose this poor Chinaboy?”

“Did anyone ever tell you I was a cop?”

“Hardly.”

“What about the pot? I'd like a piece of it.”

“Have you ever heard of a Chinese smoking pot?”

“My information was pretty good.”

“I hope you didn't pay for it. I never bring anything through that gate, and I don't intend to start.”

“Is that the way you want to play it?” Chilly asked.

“It's the way it is.”

“All right,” Chilly said mildly. “It was just a notion I had.”

Wong's eyes went bland again like a picture going out of focus, and he reached out to tap his finger against the air a half-inch from Chilly's forehead. “Many wheels,” he said. “You catch plenty notions.”

Chilly smiled. “You're something else, Chinaman.”

Wong gave a slight bow and turned to continue down the yard, while Chilly walked thoughtfully towards Nunn and Red.

“What've you got going with that nut?” Nunn asked.

“Nothing. He's in a good spot to hear things.”

“Yeah, if you could understand the sucker when he tried to repeat it.”

“That's a problem,” Chilly said without emphasis.

The crowd under the rain shed began to shift and there was the sudden silence they all knew too well. They turned to watch a pair of hospital attendants pushing a gurney through a corridor forming for them in the crowd. They moved at a quick trot. The inmate stretched out on the gurney trailed his hand, wet with blood, over the side. Red stains like a trail of irregular poker chips marked the path the gurney had taken.

“Another cutting,” Nunn said. “That's three just since I came back.”

“It's gang action,” Chilly said. “They're not looking to kill. They want to make their mark, get blood on their knife. The Chingaderos. The No Names. The Flower Street Gang. Someone was telling me a new bunch was beginning to come in—the Vampires.”

“They got their mark all over the joint,” Red said. “Must be a hundred of them kids to draw all them bastards with fangs.”

“Shit, there's three of them,” Nunn said. “Two little punks and a duke, who could probably cause some trouble if he wasn't a stone nut. Big, tall, skinny-assed kid, who thinks he's Genghis Khan, or something. They were in the county with me, came to the joint on the same chain. The nut made the shelf before he even got inside the walls. He didn't want to flash his prune for a skin shake.”

“That's what we need here,” Chilly said. “More nuts.”

Again they fell silent. This time it was almost ten minutes before anyone spoke, then Chilly said, in his educational voice, “The problem for today is—why does shit stink?”

“Who says it does?” Nunn offered in immediate contrary motion.

“That Lola Peterson,” Red said, naming a starlet in the last movie they'd seen. “I'll bet hers don't stink.”

“I'm serious,” Chilly said, “Why does it?”

“It just does.”

“Nothing
just
happens,” Chilly began to educate. “There's always causation.”

“Chilly, you've been reading again.”

“It wouldn't hurt you none. Maybe you could figure how to stay out of these joints. How many times have I seen you come back? Three?”

“Two,” Nunn said, half angry. “Just two.”

“Just two,” Chilly repeated mockingly.

“Two times is nothing,” Red said. “This is my fourth fall.”

“Radio, Red,” Chilly ordered. “You're a special case, all heart and no brain, but Nunn here he's supposed to be a schooled hustler, down with all games, so how come he lets a bunch of numb-brained fuzz catch him time after time?”

Nunn was hot. “Because some lousy rat mother fucker always splits on me. That's why. Every other stud you meet on the streets belongs to the bottles. They got four snitches on each block. Every morning the heat knows what you had for dinner the night before, whether or not you took a crap and how many times you made it with your old lady. Studs who used to be solid regulars are out there giving up their own mothers, and that ain't—”

“Hang up,” Chilly broke in. “Hang up a minute. Say that's all true, you still knew it when you hit the streets last time. You were down with it. If a snitch gets close enough to turn you that's still your goof. Snitches snitch just like snakes bite and you're still left to do your own dying. The point is, they're whipping you to death out there and you're not even trying to figure out why. If you got your ass torn up every time you shot craps, after a while you'd put craps down and maybe try low ball. Now you tell me why you haven't got sense enough to do at least that much when you're out there on those streets?”

“All right, Chilly,” Nunn said, no longer angry. “You made your point. You win, man, as usual. Why does shit stink?”

For a moment Chilly stared at his friend. Then he smiled.

“That's easy. It stinks so you won't eat it.”

J
ULESON
spent a bad week. The Christmas music disturbed him. Hearing it on the big yard was somehow like watching very old people dressed up for a tea party in the terminal ward. Christmas itself, an institutional holiday, he spent in the cell reading. He had long schooled himself to indifference, but he had been aware that Manning was suffering—the holiday season brought a cruel focus to the sense of loss. Christmas dinner was the best meal of the year and he would have ordinarily enjoyed it if anxiety hadn't taken the edge from his appetite. That evening the Salvation Army had distributed bags of hard candy, nuts, a banana, an orange, and an apple, and in each bag was a wallet-sized calendar.

Juleson had held the calendar and tried to persuade himself that one of the blocks of numbers that made up the new year was the date on which he would leave the prison—”go home” was the universal expression, but this expression seemed as fierce a mockery to Juleson as the carols piped over the institution radio.

Now the week of grace was gone, and nothing had worked out. He had never been able to convince himself that it would. First, he had always been reluctant to discuss his troubles with anyone, a habit he had formed in the county homes where he had spent his youth, and, secondly, it would have to be a very good friend to loan him fifteen packs to pay a debt already gone bad against no better security than he was able to offer. He knew no one that well. He had made it a point to know no one that well. Now, when it was probably too late, life was instructing him that it was always dangerous to stand outside your community.

He had been able to borrow five packs from a friend in the library. They had sat on the shelf against the day he could add ten more. Last night, knowing he would fail, he had impulsively opened one of the packs and shared it with Manning. Now as he stood the big yard waiting for the gate to open he was smoking one of the cigarettes and there were two more loose in his shirt pocket. He stared at the butt in his hand and wondered grimly at the kind of man he was becoming.

He had passed Oberholster, moments before. Nothing had been said, but he had felt Oberholster's eyes on him and he knew that sometime in the hour before the gate was opened he would have to talk to Oberholster. He had tried to dismiss Chilly Willy as a shallow poser who was just playing a part, but he was unable to convince himself. Whatever Chilly was, he was deeper than that, even though what he did made no sense.

Juleson didn't see Gasolino often. Looking at Gasolino was like watching a gun or a grenade—he was nothing until he was used—but like a mortal weapon Gasolino had a deadly aura, rendered grotesque by his constant smile. A grinning knife. Juleson shuddered. The thought of a knife unnerved him. He had faced bullets with nothing of the same terror. A bullet was somehow impersonal, a knife intimate.

He found himself staring into the rain-pocked water flowing slowly through the concrete gutters that drained the yard. A wadded candy wrapper turned slowly, and a few burnt-head paper matches clustered on the dull current like a small school of blind fish. A number of cigarette butts were disintegrating—none exceeded an inch in length.

What a mindless indulgence. What had he once paid for a carton of cigarettes? He discovered it was an effort to remember—an effort that required a conscious sharpening of the focus over that whole span of his life preceding his first night in jail. Though the details of that night were still sharply etched, the events of even the week before were beginning to fade and blur like an ancient photograph.

Two dollars something—two and a quarter? As he stood trying to remember, still staring into the gutter, he seemed to relive a moment where he saw a fresh carton of Camels slide across the smoothly worn and darkened wood of a grocery counter.

—That be all?

He nodded, holding out the money—two worn dollar bills and a bright new quarter—but Mr. Caporusso waved it aside with a slow thick arm, sleeved with a paper butcher's guard.

—It's you birthday, huh?

The time came back to him. It was four years ago, four years, one month, and a few days. Anna Marie was still alive.

—Yes, Paul said. I'm twenty-six today.

—Then keep you money. And Happy Birthday.

Juleson saw himself offer the money again and again Mr. Caporusso refused it. Imperceptibly memory began to shift into fantasy as the grocer seemed to go on.

—You keep it. Maybe someday those few bucks save you life.

—Thank you, but I hope I never see the day my life's worth only a few bucks.

—Only a few bucks! Listen, my poppa's poppa bought a wife for a few pennies. Prettiest girl in her village. Natch'ly she's in love. Natch'ly she threaten she gonna kill herself—

—The poor girl.

—And, natch'ly, she no really kill herself. But she cry a long time, and then bitch even longer. Then my granpoppa catches her laying for a young man, and kills both of them.

—The boy she loved? Juleson asked.

—What boy?

—The one in her village. The one she loved?

—No, not him. Some other.

Juleson approached Oberholster just as the gate was opening. “I want to talk to you.”

“Go ahead,” Oberholster said.

“I'd prefer to talk to you in private.”

Oberholster looked at his two friends. The old Redhead was smiling, and Juleson noting the quality of the smile felt his anger stir. He wasn't here to eat their shit.

“If you can't pay, say so,” Oberholster said. “Don't make a production out of it.”

Juleson held his hands out. “I don't have anything.”

“All right.”

“Listen to me for a minute. I made a mistake. But it was an honest mistake. What I'm saying is that I didn't set out to burn you. And I'm not the kind of guy who would go around talking about it.”

“What kind of guy are you then?” Oberholster asked.

“What do you mean?”

“That's what puzzles me. You walk this yard like you were wading through shit, like you were caged with animals. But then you wanted something the animals had, and you held your nose and asked for it, and you got it. Now you don't think it should cost you anything.”

“You have it wrong.”

“Have I?”

Juleson found himself without an answer. His face seemed hot, and he knew his heavy sense of uncertainty confirmed at least some truth in Oberholster's observation. Unconsciously he straightened his shoulders and said slowly, “I have to tell you I can't pay. I can give you four packs—that's all I have.”

“That's not enough, is it?”

“That's up to you. If you want them I'll bring them out tomorrow morning and I'll have to owe you the rest.”

Oberholster shook his head. “I'll give you this much of a break, and no more—lock up. Get yourself some protective custody. If you hit this big yard tomorrow morning you're in serious trouble. One way or another I'm going to cure myself of having to look at you.”

The old Redhead started laughing.

“Shut up, Red,” Oberholster said. He turned back to Juleson. “You got that charted? Lock up, but if you come on the yard tomorrow morning, you better have your stuff.”

“My stuff?”

“Your shank, your knife.”

“I don't have a knife.”

“Borrow one.”

“Suppose I do. And suppose I come after you with it.”