The Book of Duels (15 page)

John Ernest Joseph “Pap” Bellocq, 43,

Photographer

 

C
ora and Vivian tuggled and tussled and upset the lit flambeau though I caught it, screaming,
Watch da flames
, my voice high and shrill like the horror of a baby’s wail—
Watch da flames
, my
parrain
yelled—him, swatting mad with a blanket in both hands trying to put out the blaze that climbed up Sister’s crib; her, squalling as fire caught her flannel gown and hair; me, having begged for him to leave the lamp lit while I slept a bit longer and who in dream-terror of wild worms and rutting rats in my brain had kicked it over and burnt my baby sister damn to death—gone now my father and mother and my sweet big sister too, my only brother off in the ministry—I alone am left to stand against Death like Madame Josie, the grand demimondaine, whose portrait I made to hang on her crypt door beneath the statues of the little girl and the twin pillars of flame, and though I set her likeness a mere three years ago, the sun has bleached it back to a silver-slabbed mirror and now when you visit her memorial you stand agawk greeting your own gape-mouthed visage on the bronze door of her tomb, which reminds me of my own burial plot—I can see it from my bedroom window and there too I can hear the pistol fire from Marcet’s shooting gallery and see the government eviction posts on every building in the District and the paint peeling off Willie Piazza’s mansion in great white swaths long as funeral tunics—all this after I’ve returned from my pleasure at Anderson’s Annex where the boys belly to the hand-carved bar and snook schooner after schooner of beer under the one hundred electric bulbs blasting the dark back in a blaze of
white light, but up in my room it is quiet and dim and I wash my face in the basin and remove my clothes and put on my nightshirt that smells clean from powder and climb into bed to sleep with the lamp lit beside me.

Cora and Vivian continue to wrestle, both now nude, and they spill onto the sofa like champagne outflowing its flute and in a flash I uncover the lens and shoot their picture even though I know full well the glass will not contain their image any more than our bodies can hold our souls and the portrait will be a blur, a pale smear like smoke rising dark against a darker wall or like cotton sheers billowing in an open window, because nothing here ever lasts.

Shanks in the Courtyard: Ramirez v. Nu’man

In the Yard of the “Walls” Unit, DOC Facility, Huntsville, Texas,

February 13, 1962

Miguel Ramirez, 21,

d.i.n. 59-68-11, Convicted of Manslaughter, Serving Twenty to Life

 

I
n last fall’s rodeo, during the Hard Money Event, I went between the bull’s horns to grab the cash bag while two other boys got gored and carted off in the old meat wagon—I took the 1,500 bucks and the wild-headed applause of forty thousand strong—since then every swinging dick in here has asked me for stamp money or fags, candy bars or stag rags—I been racking up favors enough to be mayor of this joint, ’cept from this punk here who runs the commissary, how I knew he’s the one that ganked my dough—I can’t let him go with that, so I got my boy D-Train to make me a shank wrapped at the base in shoe lace and boxing tape and I been just waiting to find him alone in the yard—there he is now, bow-headed and kneeling on some A-rab-looking rug, and though the sun is out, ice still clings thick on the chain-link fence and when it catches the light, the razor wire looks dead-on like glass and my breath twists from my lips like the cigarette smoke that rose out Papi’s mouth the one and only time I saw him—he was leaning against Nguyen’s liquor store with his hair creamed into waves, ’stache trimmed pencil thin, dark skin peppered with darker freckles—we two looked like tomcat and older tomcat—I had all these things I wanted to ask or say or to hear him say to me but I gummed up, mouth dry as an old lady’s snatch, and a vomiting sissy feeling seized my guts and my voice shrank so tiny I couldn’t speak—I just stood there like a dummy till this white gal came out, a pint in a brown bag, and took the Slim cherried between her thin lips and put it right
into his gold-tooth smile and he sucked as deep as I do now to steady my nerves and he blew circles past me, like I circle this thieving punk here, and Papi winked at me, as this metal winks in sunlight, and then he was gone and that was the end of me for him—but for me, it was just the start: I went home and put my thumbs into the throat of the sleeping man who’d called himself my dad for eighteen brutal years—

And I have to live forever knowing I strangled the wrong motherfucker.

Muhtady Nu’man (a.k.a. Ant’Juan White), 38, d.i.n. 48-12-67,

Convert to Islam, Convicted of Murder, Serving Life without Parole

 

I
am chaste, I am devout, and I have no doubt that Allah is love—He makes the grass green and the sky blue—though they have bound my body behind bars, my mind is free from this racist power structure—survived in here eleven years and kept clean, studied my Qur’an, and lived one day at a time—converted to the True Way when I learned what a trap it is to be black in America—tried to hip youngblood to this knowledge but he called me eight shades of nigger—his slave mind holds him like a harness—he’s sworn to take my life over the white man’s money that his own braggarty boys robbed him of one dollar at a time—my ablutions performed, I stand,
Sami ‘allâhu-liman
amidah. Rabbana wa laka-l-
amd—
we brothers have killed enough of each other, still I stole a soup spoon from the staff dining hall, filed it down on my cell wall till the handle was needle sharp, packed the bowl full of clay, wrapped it in upholstery for a better grip, and wear it stuffed inside my waistband where it presses against my belly as I face Mecca for the second time today—his shadow runs cold on my side and I spin, shank in hand—he gouges my neck and I can’t work my jaw or hands, my weapon is gone and I collapse and think of Allah—
Cry your tears on me, O Lord, Your humble, faithful servant
, but there is only white clouds in a cold blue sky and I am forsaken: there’s nothing in life but cloud and cold sky and this last regret:

I am a thieving junkie in an alley off Liberty Street—I hide behind a Dumpster in a spitting rain, like a rat pressed greasy-backed against a brick wall, holding some old lady’s vinyl purse—above me there’s a woman on a covered balcony and she’s missing both her hands, nubs alone, yet her eyes shine as stars—she is the Nubian beauty of sculpted shoulders and long black legs—I stand from my shadow and she looks down on me and I am high and low at once—in her eyes I see my future until there is no more of it but I do not speak and now I am dead in this yard—yet her eyes look down upon me once again and I see she is Allah’s messenger and she is whole again, sent to make me whole as well, and her godly hands part the sky in two like veils drawn back and she is love and God is love and she is calling me to Heaven to be amid love forever and I am gone.

Douglas Wascom, 33,

Prison Guard for the Last Seven Years

 

T
hese men have committed murder before and I figure one will kill at least one man more but if I were in charge of being in charge I’d set em both in Old Sparky’s lap, flip the switch, and light em up, but it looks like they’ve gone and killed each other already and a circus erupts, two gangs wilding like the time Johnny Cash played here and sang that line,
I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die
, and the men got so jazzed they damn near rioted, blacks and whites alike howling and shoving and just like then I go to swinging my baton, clipping hamstrings and smacking skulls, when the stick bounces off bone, it vibrates through my knuckles and wrists and into my shoulder jambs—I find myself alone at the center of the sour-smelling fray, my billy club useless as a wet match with bodies pressed against me and where are the other guards?—I hear their whistles far off bleating lame as lambs in the field, hear a shank click my spine, a tiny sound like the lock on a window turning—the Dominican stands before me dumb, a shank jammed in his tiny left ear—I feel the blades biting me all over now and I flop to my knees, hold my arms up for mercy, steam rises from my wounds, blood rolls over my sleeves, and a flood of images, as if from a Kodak carousel, flashes before me:

Caught light in moving glass—jump blues on the crackling radio
—
Pa in my window, holding a finger to his lips
—
me in footy pajamas padding behind him
—
the hallway lined with clocks and black and white photos of people I’d never meet
—
the dark shadow with Ma in bed
—
a burnt sugar smell
—
the name
, Luke,
in Ma’s mouth
—
my neck hair standing on end like electric peppermint and the
wind blowing the curtains about like drunken dancers
—
a pistol miraculously in Pa’s hand—
I lie beside this dead Muslim with his dead Muslim eyes staring deadly at me, our blood soaking into the same rug—
the pistol roaring
—
smoke and dim moonlight in the window frame
—Johnny Cash—
Ma screaming on the front porch, her nakedness covered in a bloody sheet
—
Pa in handcuffs and in that squad car
—
a dead man in the bed—Ma dead now from her vodka and pills
—and me in a prison—I’m soon to join them all, my blood on this holy rug—
my eyes on that man’s eyes
—my eyes on this man’s eyes—my, oh my oh my.