On the Yard (44 page)

“They didn't make her, that's all.”

“Bullshit. How long did it take you to make her?” Cat asked.

“About one hot second.”

“You think some of these old-time bulls don't pick up just as quick, if not quicker, than we do?”

“I suppose—”

“And out of three thousand cells, they stick her in Chilly's, and tear up his psych department hold to do it.” Cat was silent a moment, shaking his head. “You think they could actually be that keen?”

“What do you mean?”

“That they might have figured what was going to happen?”

“Cat, you talk like a man with a paper asshole.”

“I don't say that's the way it came down. I was just thinking.”

Red smiled wryly. “You've been doing your fair share of thinking, but far as I can make out you ain't got no particular talent for it. You best stick to rasslin', and” —he backhanded Cat's softening belly—“pushing iron.”

“The new gym's going to be double tough.”

“Nunn would be glad of that.”

Just then a line of fish began to enter through the gate at the head of the yard, and they moved closer to search for familiar faces among the new arrivals, as well as to draw some measure of security from the awkward uncertainty of the fish, their skins bleached dead white in the county jail, their hair mutilated from the amateur barbering they practiced on one another. Red saw one man he thought he might know. An old man, wrinkled as a prune, bald except for a few strands still straggling across his white scalp, who moved with the indefinable air of one who had entered many strange jails and prisons, and found them all much the same. His face was oddly familiar to Red, but for a long moment he couldn't summon a name, or place this old con in either space or time, then he suddenly remembered a kid he had always paired off with to chop cane, or pick cotton, his running mate in the Southern prison farm where he'd pulled his first jolt. Anson Meeker. The name came back over the years, and he saw a cocky kid grinning at him from the other side of the row as they worked furiously through the last hours of the afternoon to just make their task, having spent the morning coasting while they planned in excited whispers the big scores they'd take off once they were free.

But even as he recognized him, Red knew this old man couldn't really be his long forgotten buddy, and he called out, “
Hey, Meeker
,” to prove the impossibility, not to see, as he did, the old man turn and cast along their faces trying to determine, almost anxiously, who had hailed him. His eyes met Red's, flickered, and passed on.

“Someone you thought you knew?” Cat asked.

“For a minute. Might be an older brother.”

But Red knew it wasn't an older brother. Red realized Anson's identity clearly enough, but he couldn't begin to form any notion of the terrible and mysterious forces that had so swiftly transformed Anson Meeker from a husky, good-looking kid into a creeping old man. It was only—

Red had to stop and figure. Rather than mark his age and so the year, he counted slowly back through his own confinements, marveling at the growing total, until he realized it wasn't “only” at all, but somewhere well over thirty years ago that he and Anson Meeker had squatted together in the fields eating the usual dinner of boiled cabbage, while they swore to each other (always in whispers) the moment they were free they'd light out for California where they'd heard, at the very least, they had decent-feeding jails. Red had jumped good to his word. But it looked like Anson had held off awhile. Red congratulated himself for once having the good sense to avoid the years of Southern jailing that had worked and starved Anson Meeker into just one more of the beaten and hopeless old bastards who drift in and out of prison, staying on the streets only long enough to drink up their gate money, because they find behind the walls the only life which doesn't frighten and overwhelm them.

For a moment Red experienced an unfamiliar sense of depression, a massive aching dullness as if he had been systematically beaten, but had somehow forgotten it and could now offer himself no explanation for his discomfort. Again he sensed Anson Meeker's eyes crossing his own, saw them stir faintly, grow flat, and pass on.

He turned to Cat and said sharply, “You done thinking, or can I score another of your tailor-mades?”

“It won't break me,” Cat said, producing the pack. Red took a smoke and lit it quickly, flipping the match, which fell spinning towards the blacktop, like a burning plane seen at a great distance.

“Thanks for the light,” Cat said tonelessly.

Red shrugged, smoking hungrily. He found himself listening to two kids, just brats, who were standing a few feet away, whispering together over a score they were going to take off as soon as they made parole. Some third kid had clued them to an old broad who lived alone, and kept a half-million cash in a shoe box under the bed.

Red shook his head in sour wonder, trying to remember how many times he had heard of this same shoe box.

“Well,” Cat said finally. “What else is new?”

“Nothing,” Red said.

This is a New York Review Book

Published by The New York Review of Books

435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

Copyright © 1967 by Malcolm Braly

Introduction copyright © 2002 by Jonathan Lethem

Cover photograph: Felice Frankel, Player Piano Roll; © 1997 by Felice Frankel, courtesy of the photographer.

Cover design: Katy Homans

The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier printing as follows:

Braly, Malcolm, 1925–

 On the yard / Malcolm Braly ; introduction by Jonathan Lethem.

p. cm.

 ISBN 0-940322-96-X (pbk. : alk. paper)

 1. Prisoners—Fiction. 2. Prisons—Fiction. I. Title.

 PS3552.R28 O5 2002

 813'.54—dc21

2001006227

eISBN  978-1-59017-610-8
v1.0

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www.nyrb.com
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