Eureka Man: A Novel (3 page)

“Are you kidding me?”

“Do I sound like I'm kidding?”

“That's real funny. First, she's not my type.
Second, she's too old for me and third, she's crazy.”

“Not your type or not your gender?”

“What?”

“Maybe you don't like women. You walk on the
wild side, Priddy?”

“Very funny.”

“Why aren't you laughing then?”

“Cut the shit, Jimmy.”

“OK, let's talk business.”

Oliver opened his locker and took out his
soap dish, washcloth and towel. “What's on your mind?”

“What's on my mind is I want a piece of the
action.”

“What action?”

Jimmy Six sighed as if his patience was being
tried. “You think I'm stupid, Priddy? I see you passing off
cigarettes to that nigger Philly Dog almost every day and I know he
trades them off for cupcakes and postage stamps and all kinds of
other shit for you. I know everything that goes on around here.
You're pretty fucking slick. I've got to give you that. But dig
this. I've got a real bad nicotine Jones, and four Buckhorns a day
ain't getting it. You're gonna cut me in on your little racket and
that's all there is to it.”

Oliver smiled and so did Jimmy Six. “Wait a
minute, I get a few extra cigarettes and you think I'm supposed to
cut you in, is that it?”

“Not exactly. See, it ain't what I think,
it's what I want, and what I want is four Kools every day starting
tomorrow.”

Oliver slung the towel over his shoulder.
“I'm not giving you shit, Jimmy.”

“Listen, Priddy, you're a real smooth dude,
and you're probably real tough, I don't know. But I want to show
you something. Come here for a minute.”

“Look, I'm going to wash up, man.” He was
decisive, too, and he was proud of the arrogance in his voice.

“No, no, you have to see this now. It won't
take a minute.” Oliver sighed and followed Jimmy Six to his locker.
Jimmy opened the door and pointed. “Look at that.”

In what seemed to him like a nonchalant and
slow motion, Oliver looked inside Jimmy Six's locker and saw a
men's magazine sitting on top of a bag of Oreos. Black Amazons.
“OK, so what? You've got a smut magazine. Congratulations.”

Jimmy Six smirked. “Look at the address
label, dumb ass.”

After Oliver had time to read Joe Plenty's
name, Jimmy Six lowered his voice. “Now if you don't want that
magazine to wind up in your black mammy's hands you'll do what I
tell you. Starting with four cigarettes a day.” Jimmy Six slammed
his locker. “And I already know that you stole more than just this
one cause I saw your nigger buddy with two other ones last night
when he rented this one to me. You're slick, Priddy. Real goddamn
slick. I'm looking forward to being your partner.”

Oliver smiled but he was not amused. “Are you
kidding? I'm not going to be your fucking partner. No goddamn way.
Go ahead and show her the magazine. That's the same as being a rat,
Jimmy. If you want to be labeled a rat, go ahead and give it to
her. I don't give a fuck.”

“Who you calling a rat?”

“You're standing here trying to blackmail me,
Jimmy. That's some jive shit. I'll take an ass whipping before I
let somebody blackmail me.”

Oliver sensed the blow was coming a split
second too late. Just as he was backing up, Jimmy Six punched him
in the center of his chest and knocked him to the floor. He got up
quickly and backed up to give himself more room. The ebony handle
of the knife glittered in his hand.

Jimmy Six laughed when he saw it. “Well, I'll
be goddamn! There's only one place you could have gotten a
switchblade in this joint. First you stole Mr. Plenty's woman, then
you stole his smut magazines, and now you've stolen his knife. I
like you, Priddy, I really do. You've got balls, kid.”

Oliver smiled. “That's right, Jimmy. And if
you put your hands on me again, I'm gonna cut your fucking
throat.”

The other boys were forming a circle around
them now. Jimmy Six pulled his sweatshirt off and wrapped it around
his left fist while the boys jeered and shouted.

“It's on now!”

“Give 'em room to swing!”

“Stick him! Stick him, Priddy. Stick that big
motherfucker!”

The shouts provided enough curiosity for the
Man to push through the circle and interrupt what was about to get
good.

“All right, all right! That's enough of
this.”

Oliver put the knife away as fast as he'd
brought it out.

“You two boys cool it. We're not going to
have any fighting in here. Priddy, you go in the television room.
Six, you stay in here.”

Everywhere he went for the next three days,
Oliver listened to the two/two beat of his own footsteps while he
gripped the switchblade inside the front pocket of his pants. Each
time he and Jimmy Six crossed paths, he held his finger on the
button and waited. On the fourth day, when there were no more signs
of hostility in Jimmy's demeanor, Oliver returned the switchblade
to the back of Mrs. Viola Plenty's utensil drawer where he had
found it. Confident for having stood up to the biggest bully he had
ever known and won, and sixty-two days away from gaining his
freedom, he stepped into the shower room and was immediately
blindsided by a haymaker that knocked him to the floor and almost
into a coma. He tried to call out who was the coward cocksucker,
but the only syllable he could utter was cow. Dazed and dizzy, he
swiveled his head in Jimmy Six's direction, squinting through
watery eyes and white sparks as he attempted to push himself
up.

“Where's that blade now, Priddy boy? You were
gonna stick me the other day, weren't you? Weren't you, punk?”

Jimmy Six banged Oliver's head off the
concrete floor twice and then turned him over on his stomach and
yanked off his boxers. Oliver tried again to get on his feet, but
Jimmy kicked him in the ribs and then slammed his boot into the
side of Oliver's head. With the last blow he lost
consciousness.

What came to him when he came to a couple of
minutes later, what rose above the bells and flashing sparks in his
head, were vials of battery acid, switchblades and baseball bats.
Slowly, gradually, he sat up, his arms around his knees, staring
through the slits of his swollen eyes as though he were in a movie.
His lip was split in three places and he thought his cheekbone was
broken, and though both his hands were soaked with the blood
pouring from his nose, a little still trickled down.

He got to his feet and staggered along the
wall until he reached the corner shower. After he retched and
vomited up nothing, he turned on the nozzle, lifted his hands to
shield his eyes from the sting and saw rivulets of shit and blood
flowing over his ankles, turning into mud. He squatted in the muddy
water, peed in it. He waited and he killed. The vandals who had
stolen the Welcome to Pennsylvania sign; the judge who had sent him
there; and Ernie Boy the Second for what he had done to his mother.
After he washed himself a hundred times, he walked out of the room,
still panting. Four of Jimmy Six's boys were standing in the hall
staring at his nakedness as he walked past them and into the
equipment room at the end of the hall. Their eyes were wide but
noncommittal when he walked back out of the room with a Louisville
Slugger leaning against his shoulder. A tear was trapped in the
corner of one eye as he walked past the four boys and through the
door. Jimmy Six was reaching for the baby powder in the back of his
locker when Oliver raised the bat over his head. He did not ponder
the force or angle of the blow, but merely followed in its
wake.

HE FELT THE NIGHT watchman's long, cold fingers
thrust between his shirt and his belt. Beneath his feet he could
feel the winding steel of the staircase to the basement of the
solitary confinement cottage, could smell the moldy, stale air. At
the threshold of the cell door, he placed his hand on his chest and
turned slowly to the night watchman, his face a pious oval in the
shadows. The night watchman's mouth was open and he closed it
before saying, in a voice made paternal by experience, “Let me give
you some advice, young man. When you get to the penitentiary, keep
your head up and lose that fear in your eyes.” The man gently
placed one of his large hands on Oliver's shoulder. “Step in, son,”
he added softly.

The door slammed behind Oliver and his chest
rose and fell, rose and fell under his hand.

RIVERVIEW PENITENTIARY'S FIRST
annual Memorial
Day fast-pitch softball game between the Vanguard Jaycees and the
Pennsylvania Lifers Association had been brazenly advertised as the
“Mother of All Softball Games.” This was because it was known that
the Lifers Association's new pitcher, Calvin Africa, had once
pitched a one-hit shutout against the internationally famous King
and His Traveling All-stars. According to the bold print on the
bulletin board flyers, Calvin would pitch to every Vanguard batter
from behind second base while wearing a blindfold.

The game drew a bigger crowd than the donkey
softball exhibition between the guards and the Jaycees had two
years earlier. Packed in the bleachers on the first base side of
the infield was a mural of black and white faces belonging to the
prisoners from Homewood, the Hill District and other ethnically
mixed Pittsburgh neighborhoods. On the third base side was the
entire entourage of North Philly prisoners who had shown up on the
breeziest, sunniest day of 1977 just to keep an eye on their
downtown rivals who were sitting in the shade fifty feet away down
the left-field sideline. After eyeing their foes back, the South
Philly gang seemed convinced that the sky-blue hue of the sky would
keep the blood-red red of the Norris Street, Oxford Street and
Diamond Street boys content for at least a day. Pigeons that had
escaped the city streets and pebbled sidewalks agreed and found
refuge on the rooftops of the hundred year old clapboard buildings
beyond the outfield fence--the prison chapel, the Young Guns Boxing
Gym, and the Free Yourself Law Library. Even the thirty or forty
rednecks and born-agains sitting behind home plate felt safe enough
to cheer for their team, the all-white Vanguard Jaycees, and wave
their homemade banners while the sandwich peddlers, clothing
merchants and queens walked by.

Early Greer, the head orderly and only
horticulturist inside Riverview Penitentiary, was sitting in the
top row of the Pittsburgh bleachers reading the Post Gazette and
socializing with his friends, Peabo, Oyster and Bell. Early tapped
his index finger against the front page and said, “Another niggah's
on his way to jail. This guy caught his wife fucking a dog and shot
her three times.”

Peabo didn't take his eyes off the batter,
but said, “That's a crime of passion if ever there was one.”

“What about the dog?” Oyster asked. “He kill
the dog too?”

“We betting or what, Peabo?” Early said.

“Read the details first.”

Early straightened out the paper and read the
story. “'Forty-six year old Maurice Wiley from Bruston Hill in
Homewood was arrested yesterday morning for killing his wife in
their home at 461 Mayview Street. According to police, Wiley
discovered his wife, forty-two year old Mabel Joyce Wiley, engaged
in a sexual act with Wiley's American Bull Terrier and shot her
once in the head and twice in the chest. Wiley is being held
without bail in the Allegheny County Jail.'”

When it was apparent that Early was through,
Peabo said, “That's a simple crime of passion.”

“Nah,” said Early. “Three shots was overkill,
man. I say he gets life.”

“Life!” said Oyster. “For a crime of passion?
Shouldn't no man get life for a crime of passion. That's what those
crackers did to me.”

Bell looked at Oyster when Oyster uttered the
word cracker.

“Okay, Early. Let's bet. How much?”

“The usual,” Early said. “Loser buys ice
cream for a week.”

“You're on.”

“What about the dog?”

“What about the damn dog, Oyster?” said
Early. “You're not making one bit of sense. It wasn't the dog's
fault. A dog ain't got no sense.”

“Well, it'd have to go just the same. I
wouldn't want no dog hanging around my house after it's been with
my woman.”

Early pulled out a stack of three by five
index cards from his shirt pocket and wrote Maurice Wiley's name on
one and then recorded the bet Early and Peabo had just made. Ever
since they had made a game out of betting on new arrestees, Early
had been keeping stats on each one: name, age, race, type of crime
and location, amount of bail, name of the judge, and any other
relevant facts he could glean from the newspaper or the six o'clock
news. Before laying down a bet, he usually studied his facts like a
statistician, unless the bet was a sure thing. Maurice Wiley was a
sure thing. Maurice Wiley had committed premeditated murder and
Early was certain the man would receive nothing less than a life
sentence.

A band of young bucks walking by the
bleachers transfixed them for several seconds, as did Tommy
Lovechild, a born-again pedophile who was sitting on the bottom
bleacher handing out Jesus Saves tracts. “Give yourselves to Jesus,
brothers, and you can enter the kingdom of heaven.” Two of the
young bucks stared at Tommy, not sure if they wanted Jesus' kingdom
or to knock the smirk off Tommy Lovechild's pitted white face.
Tommy stared back and said, “You can curse me out, brothers, and
you can beat me black and blue, but I'll love you just the same.”
The taller of the two young bucks smacked Tommy's hat off his head
and told him to shut the fuck up.

“That man's out!” cried Bell. The runner on
third base tagged up and scored on a shallow fly ball to
left-center. “He's out, ump!” Bell's protest was drowned out by the
B&O railroad cars rattling along the banks of the Ohio River
just beyond the prison wall.