On the Yard (36 page)

How they wanted you to feel as they did—or as they pretended to feel—for if you didn't join their cause, it was somehow weakened. A single holdout seemed to cast a shadow of doubt far out of proportion to his substance.

“I had no one killed,” Chilly said.

“I heard different.”

“You hear wrong.”

“Who did the pipe work, Oberholster?”

“Still wrong. If those rats of yours can't bring you the straight scam, they'll bring you a straw man. I'm convenient. You already hold me responsible for most of what comes down. What's a piping?”

“A death, Oberholster. A death. You want to walk over to the morgue and take a look?”

“I've seen dead men before.”

“I don't doubt that.”

“Shouldn't I be talking to the district attorney?”

“Why, are you guilty?”

“If I'm suspected of complicity in a capital crime, isn't that the business of the district attorney?”

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

“How about the warden, why isn't he here?”

“That's enough!” Captain Blake closed the folder. “I knew it was pointless to talk to you. What made me think I might find a shred of decency in you?”

Still the same theme—the captain appealed to the better nature he pretended not to believe in. “You earn your living running this prison,” Chilly said. “That's not how I earn my living.”

“You don't earn your living.”

“So you want me to help you earn yours?”

“Wait outside.”

Chilly left the office and resumed his seat on the bench. The confidential clerk followed him out, careful to avoid his eyes, but Chilly saw that the steno pad was still blank. Window dressing. He sat smoking, and when he saw the Spook coming through the door at the far end of the corridor, he dropped his cigarette in a butt can and stood up. The Farmer and the Indian crowded behind the Spook, bears led by a fox.

“Well, well,” the Spook murmured, his head tilted and his full lips creased in a bitter and intelligent smile. “The big man.” He addressed his partners over his shoulder. “We have the honor of dealing with the legendary Chilly Willy for the first time.”

The Farmer said, “How do you suppose a little bastard like that causes so much trouble?”

“Ohhhhh.” The Spook drew the sound out, cocking his head again to watch Chilly with a soft knowing alertness. “He works hard at it. Don't you, boy?”

Chilly made no answer. He stood waiting.

“Well, you know we got to do this,” the Spook continued. “So you might as well come along.”

The Farmer and the Indian moved to either side of Chilly and locked both his arms. They marched him on his toes, at a quick step, through the garden, past four-box, three-gate, and through the big yard into the north block rotunda, where they took the elevator to the shelf. The sergeant in charge of the shelf looked Chilly over and asked, “What've we got here?”

“An important guest of the captain's,” the Spook said. “For A-twelve. Just let me have the key. We shouldn't be too long.”

Chilly had heard of A-twelve. It wasn't a regular holdover cell, but a padded cell used for the occasional psych case too violent to handle on the psych ward. They were held in A-twelve until they could be transferred to one of the hospitals for the criminally insane. The Spook unlocked the door and sketched the be-my-guest gesture characteristic of his mocking courtesy. Chilly stood in the doorway looking at the canvas walls.

“Is this me?”

“Yes, right in there.”

As the Spook was speaking, the Farmer pushed Chilly, sending him sprawling into the cell. He lit on his hands and knees; the canvas floor felt like a wrestling mat. The goon squad moved into the cell to form a rough circle over him.

“Would you like to stand up?” the Spook invited.

He stood up and the Indian shoved him towards the Farmer, who shoved him towards the Spook, who, surprisingly strong for his size, shoved him back at the Indian.

“Hey,” the Spook said, “how's this? This move you?”

Chilly, stumbling and half falling between the three men, grasped their object. He was supposed to become enraged and swing on one of them, and as soon as he did they would book him for striking an officer. He smiled slightly. The Spook, ever alert, said, “He likes this. This is his idea of fun.”

They began to throw him harder. The Indian was huge, three hundred pounds of hard rubber, and the Farmer seemed made of steel and leather. They slammed him against a wall, his shoulder collapsed and he felt the canvas burn his cheek. When they picked him up again he seized on the tactic of going limp, and each time they shoved him he fell to the floor. They picked him up again and again. He saw that the Indian was beginning to breathe heavily and the Farmer was red in the face. Finally the Indian drew his foot back, and the Spook quickly cautioned him.

“Easy, Fred.”

Chilly heard them above him and he could almost sense their congested violence—for the first time in his life he was grateful for the protection of the courts.

“He's a smart little cocksucker,” the Indian said.

“Sure he is,” the Spook agreed. “He's real smart. That's why he's such a big wheel. He's holding aces. But we're holding big casino, little casino, cards, and spades. He'll find that out.”

“It can't be soon enough,” the Indian said.

“Oh, we'll get him,” the Spook said. Then to Chilly, “I hope you're not so shook you can't make it back to the yard?”

Chilly stood up. They allowed him to walk out of the cell and down to the end of the corridor, where the Spook handed back the key.

“He's not staying?” the sergeant asked.

“Not this time,” the Spook said. “We just wanted to talk to him.”

They released Chilly outside the north block, and as he watched them walk away, the Spook a step ahead, he took his comb from his pocket and reshaped his hair. A few of the unassigned inmates walking the yard had paused to stare at him. Ignoring them, he loosened his belt to smooth and resettle his shirt.

“Chilly!”

Red was running towards him, grinning with relief. “Jesus, am I glad to see you. I heard they had you gaffled. The goon squad. Someone said they marched you right across the yard.”

“You think it'll ruin me socially?”

“Did they cut you loose?”

“No, they got sloughed on the shelf. Now stop running your gibs and do something for me. Go up to the gym and tell Cat to send me a tube. And tell him that business I gave him is still cool, and still on. Then bring the tube back to me. And you better make that two tubes.”

“You gonna hit the cotton, Chilly?”

“Jesus, Red—no, I've got a cold. Now, get going. And pick up a tube for yourself.”

“How about Nunn?”

“He knows where it's at.”

Chilly decided not to return to his job. He didn't want to look at Olson's face. He moved to the nearest domino table and sat on the end of it. The action was slack in the middle of the afternoon, and the table was empty except for another man sitting at the far end. He was whittling a toothbrush handle with a piece of razor blade, whistling over his work. Chilly touched his cheek with the tips of his fingers. The canvas burn still smarted, but it was nothing compared to the burn in his chest. He understood the text of the lesson they had worked on him—any power he had gathered was illusionary, he was existing on the margin. They had pointed out that the only considerations that stopped them from smearing him were the very rules he held in such contempt.

Red returned, making his way across the yard like a worn but still cocky rooster. He took a seat beside Chilly and placed two tubes, held together with Scotch tape, near Chilly's hand.

“Cat says he did the thing.”

“Good.” Chilly dropped the tubes in his jacket pocket. “I want that lame to get what he's got coming. If he gets bent out of shape there's no way to predict what he might do. That's the trouble with nuts.”

“Did they work on you, Chilly?”

“No, they wanted to play with my head some more. Relax, nothing's going to happen.”

“Yeah ...” Red rubbed his hands together and looked around at the walls, and Chilly following his gaze wondered if Red too was realizing for the moment that they lived here, as much as they were allowed to live, on the sufferance. In the post above three-gate a gun bull stood, his rifle at port. An old man with a red puffed face who wore round rimless glasses and smoked a pipe. When he worked ground posts he was known to be good-natured and a little simple, but lift him twenty feet and put a rifle in his hands and he became a symbol of the cold and untiring mechanism that held them prisoner.

“How's your cell partner?” Red asked.

“He's in there.”

“You haven't forgot me have you?”

“How could I? You remind me every day.”

“I guess I do. I'm still on the single-o since that nut Turnipseed moved out, but one of these nights I'm going to lock up and find some hairy-assed old bastard in there with me.”

“That's the same thing he's going to be thinking.”

“I don't care what he thinks. I wish you could get that brat in there.”

“You don't wish it any more than I do.”

As soon as the count cleared, Chilly cracked one of the inhalers to remove the cotton cartridge. His face worked into an expression identical to anguish and his throat stiffened with revulsion as he caught the aromatic fumes of oil of lavender—a beautiful name, but the smell alone was enough to make him sick with the memory of the hangovers he had endured behind this wino's drug. It recalled the many sleepless hours lying alone in his dark cell, his skin so sensitive the tiny creases in his sheets were an irritation, when he had tasted the oil of lavender flooding back up his corrupt throat, smelled it in his sweat and woven it into his depression as he drifted out on the far edge of his courage and hopefulness where nothing seemed possible or worthwhile.

He removed the blade from his razor and cut the cotton into four sections. He drew a glass of water, tossed a section of cotton into the back of his throat, gulped at the water, gagged reflexively, and succeeded in swallowing. He clenched his teeth against the taste and threw his head from side to side as a fierce shiver of revulsion went over him. He turned to find the boy watching him from the top bunk.

“You want some of this cotton?” he asked.

“What is it?”

“It's something like bennies—
blancas
—only not as good.”

“I've heard of it.”

“You want some?”

“All right.”

The boy gagged on the cotton and coughed it into the washbasin. He started to reach for it, but Chilly said, “Let it go. Here's another piece. Throw it to the back of your throat—” He illustrated. “Most of your taste buds are in your tongue, and if you can get it past them, it goes down a whole lot easier.”

The boy succeeded in swallowing the second piece, but he had to control the impulse to vomit as his face turned red, his eyes sick.

“Thanks,” he said weakly.

“Better save your thanks until tomorrow. You might not be so grateful.”

“Why does it taste so awful?”

Chilly smiled. “It's not part of their product planning to have anyone eat it, though I don't imagine they really care what you do with it. You could rub it in your armpits as long as someone buys it for some reason. Personally, I think I've been supporting the company single-handed.”

“How long does it take?”

“Just lie down and wait.”

By the time the bell rang for dinner, Chilly's stomach had tensed, his throat had dried, and his appetite had failed. He went to the chow hall with Red to pick up the meal, but neither of them ate. They sipped at the hot black coffee. Gradually the slack in Chilly's confidence tightened over a ringing uneasiness and his view of the day's events began to undergo a subtle alteration. Once again he had moved beyond them—beyond the range of their control and beyond the power of their imaginations. He smiled into his coffee, and saw his reflection rippling on the dark liquid—the shadows around his eyes banded his face like a mask.

Red was tearing up the five slices of bread allowed him as his issue to decorate his tray with the scraps. The drug prodded him beyond his normal talkativeness into garrulity and extinguished his sense of humor as if a nerve were frozen. His usually amiable eyes grew pointed with a tension indistinguishable from anxiety, and the muscles at the corners of his jaw moved like balls beneath the skin. He was trying to explain to Chilly why the inhalers bum-kicked him.

“It shrinks the walls. It brings jail right down around me. For days, hell, for months I never think about the outside, but all I have to do—” He mimicked dropping cotton. “Domino! I'm strung out. I start thinking about real pussy.” He waved his hand over his tray. “Real food.”

“When did you ever get any real pussy?” Chilly asked deadpan. “A skunk would have to be deaf, dumb, blind, and not smell none too good either before she'd put out to you.”

Red didn't smile. “I wasn't always fucked up like I am now. I used to be a pretty foxy-looking youngster.”

“Red, I've seen your mug shots. You had more hair. Otherwise you haven't changed a bit. What would change you? You haven't done anything but lay up in these jails. And don't tell me you don't like it here. You're happy as a sissy in Boy's Town.”

“Maybe. But not when I start chewing this cotton.”

“I don't remember putting no gun to your head.”

“That's right.”

“Why do you take it then?”

“I don't know.”

“Probably because it's hard to get.”

Red shook his head. He was laying a long strip of crust over the cold mound of mashed potatoes, concentrating on the job as if he were inlaying fine wood. “Most of the time it's like I was half dead. You see. I know I'm a clown—I play the fool, but that's not all there is to me. I feel like I've got to force myself to wake up, but then it's painful—”