The Brave Cowboy (7 page)

Ah hah. You tried to. Good knife?

Seven ninety-five plus tax.

Good, good, son. You shrewd like a chicken.

Butt, Timothy?

Butt me no butts. Already spoken for. Hoskins gets it. Rev’rend Hoskins on his Flyin Machine, waitin for Peter to open the door, got hog drunk and hit the floor.

Lay off it, Greene.

Never!

I’m tellin you.

Never!

Paul Bondi smiled as he listened, his hands clasped under his head, his body stretched out at full length on his steel bunk. A gray Navy blanket, a pad and a steel bunk for tonight. He lay watching the stripes of sunlight on the steel ceiling, listening to the others but thinking his own thoughts:

These fellows have something, he thought, have something which I lack. The vital impulse, along with their lice and bad-smelling itches and wino-red eyeballs. They—

Someone flushed a toilet; the powerful gasping explosion of water sent a wave of reverberations through the steel walls over the cement floor; the entire plumbing system strained and vibrated with the detonating ferocity of a heavy machinegun. Bondi could feel as well as hear the clangor and clamor of outraged steel; the vibrations passed in sine curves through his skull, vertebrae and the bones of his legs.

That plumbing, he thought—like a siege, jazzy and vigorous. Suction strong enough to drown a man. Why? Must be a reason. A reason for everything in the county jail. County jail is a thoroughly rational institution, is it not? What could ever take its place?

Crazy, man!

Crazy is right. See that ole cat there, steppin on his tongue, belly bulgin with beans—?

Fuller’n a tick—

That’s right, fuller’n a tick. Ole Hoskins, thass who; ole black-balled sonsabitch. Hoskins!

Ho?

Les hear tell about the man what ate electric eels to give the girls a charge.

Go long, man. You divin for Hell, talk like dat.

Rev’rend Hoskins is now gonna say a prayer for us all, poor sorry sinners like we is.

My butt, Timothy?

Take it and keep it, friend, or pass it on, as you please.

Thanks, Timothy. You can have my oatmeal in the morning.

Keep it, friend, I beg you.

Character or depravity, what does it matter? Under the aspect of eternity, so to speak? Now you’re talking like an old balding philosopher, tovarish. Watch that stuff. Keep it screened out. Serenity is for the gods—not becoming in a mortal. Better to be partisan and passionate on this earth; be plenty objective enough when dead.

Again the explosion of a flushing toilet and the barrage of anguish from the pipes; through bone and marrow the vibrations jittered, grinding down delicacy, grace, tact, the arts of sense and human concord. Forty men locked, barred and sealed in a cage of steel and cement. Forty bellies semi-bloated with gas, intestines packed with the residue of half-digested pinto beans. Long conversations lost in the shuddering roar and rattle of plumbing.

Sic transit gloria mundi
, he thought.

Think we’ll get a break tomorrow?

Quien sabe, cuate?

Well we should. They got men sleepin on the floor downstairs. Hate to think what she’ll be like come Saturday night.

Who said Saturday night is the lonesomest night?

They got worse jails. Ever been in the one at Juarez?

Ho, Jackson! Gimme light, man, light.

Oh I’m walkin to the river, gonna jump in, I can’t float and I can’t swim, but I’m an easy man… to drown. Cause my baby done leave me, yes my baby done leave me down. So I’m walkin to the river, gonna jump in and drown. And drown. And drown.

Flush that noise! Pass it on to Texas!

Go fly a kite on the moon, you slew-balled old fart.

Chinga madre! Eh, cabron!

You shut up, Greene.

Never!

I said shut up.

Never!

Who got a match?

I ain’t got a match. Ain’t nobody got a match. What you want a match for, man?

Gimme a match before I spit in your eye.

Sure, sure. Don’t get mad.

Don’t get mad, he says. Don’t get mad, the man says.

When they gonna let me outa here? Why don’t the Judge gimme a break? I ain’t no bad boy; just a happy little wino.

You’ll get a break all right—right over that thick dumb empty halfbreed skull of yours.

Ah, chinga tu
…

Greene?

Never!

Where’s that little book I give you?

Ain’t here, man. All gone, man. I give it to that smooth cat in Cell Number Three. Now that’s for a fact man.

Well I want it back.

Kiss it goodby, friend. Give it a wave,
cuate.
Don’t cry.

Goddamnit, Greene.

Never!

Greene—

Never!

Now defiance is all very well (said Bondi to himself: the last thread of sunlight had vanished from the steel ceiling) and very sweet, an ideal tonic for the delectation of the soul. Pure naked sheer defiance—defiance for the sake of defiance—sweet and precious as liberty itself. The act of liberty. Timothy Greene and his perpetual thundering Never. But is there a blind edge to it? Should be tempered, no doubt, with good manners. Also, it might be enslaving. Always defiant, a man would be mad, would have destroyed his power of choice. And the power of choice—that is what I am here for.

What are you in for, Rev’rend, anyway?

Me, son? My body’s here but the spirit’s free as a bluebird.

Okay, then why is your body here?

Well now, the Judge he calls it assault. I done hit a man and he falls down. Didn’t hit him hard but he falls down like a log. Maybe he wasn’t standin very good.

Why’d you hit him, Rev’rend?

Well now, you see it was like this: this here fella and me was workin together in this barbership. He was barber, I was porter and shoeshinin man. One day we have a argument about who left the soap where. A argument.

Hoskins, you ain’t got sense enough to pour piss out of a boot.

What happened then, Rev’rend?

Well now, we’s havin this here argument about who left the soap where when the boss walks in. The boss. Manager.

What soap, Rev’rend?

This soap we use for washin up our hands and so on. In the crapper. Both of us usin the same piece of soap. I disremember what kind of soap it was, exactly. White, that’s all, and not very big. Kinda little.

What happens when the boss walks in, Rev’rend?

Well damned if he doesn’t tell me to get my hat and
coat and get out. Just like that Don’t even wanta know what we arguin about. Well I tell him about the soap and he just gets mad. Like that Just gets mad.

What’d you do then, Rev’rend?

Nothin. I get my hat and coat only I ain’t got no coat and starts to leave and then ole boss he thinks I ain’t leavin fast enough so he tries to gimme a kick. Don’t that beat all? Tries to kick me cause I ain’t movin fast enough to suit him. Man musta been crazy.

Is that when you got mad, Rev’rend?

Oh I don’t get mad. I never get mad. I’ll punish a man, maybe, but I never gets mad. It ain’t right for a man to get mad. A man ain’t no dog, even if he smell like one. That’s the way I feels about it Yessir. Never get mad.

Well, why’d you hit him, Rev’rend?

Oh I didn’t hit him. I hit t’other fella.

The other fella. Which fella?

The barber. The fella I hit No sir, I don’t get mad never. It ain’t right. No sir.

Well, which one did you hit, Rev’rend, the barber or the boss?

Well now, the boss be was a barber too. Yes, he barbered there just like t’other fella. Only he owned it too. Owned ever bit of it Yessir. Only he don’t own me. No sir.

You got me kinda mixed up, Rev’rend.

Yessir, thass just the way I felt: kinda mixed up. I weren’t mad, no sir, but I hit him and he falls down. Didn’t hit him hard but he falls down anyway like a dead log. Falls right down.

You kill him, Rev’rend?

No sir, I don’t think so. He’s all right. Leastways he look all right when he come to court. Not a mark on him, except on his left eye. No sir. He looked fine. I shoulda hit him harder.

Well, Rev’rend, I still can’t figure which man you hit.

Well now, I don’t remember too good myself but I sure hit one of them. Yessir. Knocked him right down.
Right down on the floor. Now I weren’t mad but I hit him. Not hard but he falls down. Down like a log. Thass the way it was.

I wish I’d seen that fight, Rev’rend.

Well now, it was really somethin. Sure was.

An aquatic implosion and the rattle of strangled pipes: the steel bars hummed, the steel walls vibrated, the resonance flashed through the recumbent bones of forty living men. Again, from a different cell, another roar of water: again the plumbing shook and groaned and whistled with the intensity and lunacy of impending disaster.

While Bondi wrangled with himself: Oh, that dreary old paradox? The libertine-anarchist choosing himself into prison? That? A little simple conviction would help here. My emotions become ideas, my ideas emotions. But here I lie, a victim of both. Should be home milking the goddamned goat. Minding my own business.

He watched a breath of moisture evaporate from the steel barrier three feet above his face. He sniffed and rubbed his eyes.

Agua!

The word passed with telegraphic speed from one end of the cellblock to the other.
Agua!
Water! Douse your lights, hide your smokes, your weapons, hide your words and thoughts.

Agua, agua, agua!

The five cells occupied about half of the block. They were divided by a narrow corridor from the single rectangular steel cage called the bullpen, where the prisoners spent their daylight hours and ate their meals. The corridor had one entrance, or exit, a steel door heavy and ponderous as the gate of a bank vault, which permitted passage from the cellblock to an adjoining anteroom and the rest of the building. This door was now being opened, screeching on its bearing-less hinges, rumbling and grinding and scraping on the cement floor.

The forty men in their five cells became silent, cautious.

The door stopped, fully open, and a man came in, stooping under the lintel. A huge man, shambling like a trained bear, and wearing the khaki uniform and leather harness of a Bernal County deputy. His holster was empty; in his left hand he held a billyclub. Slowly he lumbered down the corridor, stopping for a minute or more in front of each cell, carefully inspecting each man within, then moving on.

No one would look at him; all eyes were turned to the floor under the pressure of his red stare. Only when he had passed to the next cell did some of the men dare to glance at one another with shamed and half-frightened faces.

No one spoke a word; no one whispered. The only sound was the shuffling tread of the huge man in the uniform; when he stopped to examine the inmates of a cell the silence became complete.

He came, this bear, this dark enormous man, to the cell in which Bondi lay. He stared balefully at the seven prisoners crouching on their bunks, studying each one in turn, and then raised his eyes to Bondi. Bondi, who had never seen him before, stared back.

He saw two red eyes, small and intent and without depth, as if made of tin, sunk deep in a welter of corrugations and protected by an overhang of bone and leather and ragged Mack brows. He saw these two eyes, dangerous and animal and implacable with power and hatred, and could see nothing else. And as he looked and waited he became aware of the challenge passing and growing between them, of the silent instinctive struggle for recognition and submission. Bondi felt the chill of fear on the skin of his neck, at his fingertips, and a deadly dryness in his mouth; he turned his head, looked away and though instantly conscious of shame, even of anger, could not compel himself to return that man’s unblinking gaze. Could not, though he hated himself for his cowardice. Instead he lay still and silent
on his bunk, watching the black forearm of Timothy Greene braced rigidly against the opposite wall. And until the guard moved away, for a full five minutes he lay fixed and tense in the same position looking at the same object, waiting with a burning face and cold queasy stomach for the enemy to release him from the implied violence of that stare.

Gutierrez the guard tramped the length of the corridor, huge and silent and malevolent, crouched to pass through the doorway and was gone. After him the massive door swung slowly shut, dull gray iron grinding in friction, harsh and cold in its finality.

An instant of silence and then the men remembered their humanity, became unrigid and looked at each other and talked, grinned and laughed uneasily, relit cigarettes and talked.

He’s after somebody.

Now that ain’t no lie. The Bear is a-lookin for somebody. Somebody is in bad trouble.

He’s in for it.

That ain’t no lie. He’s gonna git it. Yessir.

Glad it ain’t me. Brother!

You said it, chum. You done said it.

Bondi sat quiet on his bunk, saying nothing aloud, busy at disemboweling his own soul, examining with an attempt at a sterlized logic the soft glistening blue-veined innards of his spirit. While darkness gathered within and around him and the bad air of the cell settled under its own weight of smoke, sweat, human vapors. The sun was gone—its light was gone. Through the filthy frosted glass of the window beyond the grid of bars he could see the muted glow of evening neon, the swing of automobile lights, the yellow rectangles of lighted windows, all the multiple refractions of the great American night.

And then from far below, from somewhere deep in the heart of the labyrinthine jailhouse, came the sound of a man’s voice—singing. As if from far away, muffled by barriers of steel and brick and cement, the thin
sound of a man singing, a wild drunken singing with the quality of an Indian’s wail and the wind’s intoxication, the music that a wolf might make if it could sing like a man.

I’m dreaming, thought Bondi, sitting up suddenly, hearing that old and remembered song, that familiar voice, I’m dreaming like a kid on the night before Christmas, like an angel the day before Easter. He sat upright on his steel bed, listening tensely, straining his senses to hear and feel. I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming, he thought.