He took a good look around the room and stopped when he saw the iron bed frame standing from floor to ceiling in the front corner of the cell. The frame was covered with a navy blue mover's quilt and made a perfect privacy panel. And a perfect place to hide behind. Oliver turned his body sideways and eased between the wall and the frame. He pictured the point of attack, the angle of the blows. He was excited.
He opened Fat Daddy's cell door and stepped out on the tier.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Donnie Blossom asked. He was standing there with his lips apart, eyebrows arched, one hand on his hip.
“I was looking for a friend's cell,” Oliver said, “I think I'm on the wrong tier.”
“You're the same guy who passed by here fifteen minutes ago.” Donnie didn't say it accusingly. “I remember your face. And those green eyes.”
“Sorry, man. I got the wrong cell. Do you live here?”
“I live next door. It's okay. Everybody makes mistakes. You didn't take anything, did you? Maybe I should frisk you.” Donnie smiled salaciously when he said maybe I should frisk you.
“No, I didn't take anything. I wouldn't steal from another convict.”
“Okay, then. No harm done.”
Oliver slid his hands into his front pockets and walked away. “No harm done,” he repeated. “See you around.”
“I hope so.”
Oliver descended the back stairs two at a time. When he got to his cell he let out a heavy sigh of relief. He had started smoking a couple of months after quitting the boxing team to go to school full time and now he reached for the Camel package. He stretched out on the bed letting his long fingers rub his shirt pocket where his lighter should be. Everything's cool, he thought, before he lit up. He closed his eyes and threw his arm over his face to keep the light coming through the bars from overexposing his thoughts. In the darkness he could see a rain of ten-penny nails coming down faster than hail pellets had when he had tried to catch them in his hands as a boy. Ten-penny nails that would puncture holes in everything he had going for him. His runway model, the job he loved so much, his friends and all his books and new ideas were about to go south.
chapter six
AT EIGHT O'CLOCK in the morning, the setup committee for Prisoner Appreciation Day was putting up a canopy over the outdoor grills, and Little Freddie the sound man was wiring the outdoor stage for the live bands that would play all day: Paul Savoy's Motown Memories; Faruq Wideman's jazz quartet, Mellow Mood; and Al Byna's classic rock band, Red Licorice. In two hours the yard would be transformed into one big festival complete with hidden wine stands, reefer parties and an array of scheduled activities: sack and bicycle races, softball throwing and pass, punt and kick contests, handball and chess tournaments, and a game of softball played on the backs of ten rented donkeys.
Prisoner Appreciation Day was the one day of the year when the three prisoner organizations were able to give something back to the men who had supported them throughout the year by paying dues and patronizing their concession stands. The first round of hamburgers and hot dogs, sodas and popcorn, and ice cream sandwiches was on the house. Seconds would cost.
It was also, unofficially, the one day of the year for a truce between all rival parties. For the five years Prisoner Appreciation Day had been taking place, not a single fight or dispute had been settled on this day. The beauty of it all was that even with five hundred men in the yard at one o'clock in the afternoon, not a single guard would be in the mix. Why would they be? What would they accomplish? Two with shotguns kept watch on the catwalk outside the number one and two gun towers, and who knew how many pairs of eyes were watching through binoculars from the top floor of the administration building? It didn't matter anyway, for the administration believed in the old cliché, let sleeping dogs lie.
The scene outdoors was picture-perfect for a prison picnic: a cool breeze, sunny blue skies, birds singing in the hundred year old oak tree, on the barbed wire and in the rooftop gutters. The sidewalks were still wet from Early's garden hose and plastic garbage cans were being set out along the fence line and wall of the big St. Regis. Inside the two cellblocks, some prisoners were still sleeping while others were just waking up and heating water for their morning coffee, or on their way to the shower or curled up in their beds watching cartoons. The guards patrolling the tiers stayed on the move for the entire hundred yards down the tier, around the back and up the other side. They didn't stop when they smelled overripe fruit, hashish or reefer, or when their peripheral vision picked up six in a cell or a curtain blocking the entire view. The guards believed in a variation of another cliché: hear no evil, see no evil.
When Oliver returned from his morning shower he was setting his Brute shower kit on the shelf when he heard sudden footsteps behind him. In the time it took him to shift his feet he felt the palm of a hand slam against the side of his face and then his world went black. The culprit rammed Oliver's head into the brick wall a second time and watched him crumble to the floor. Then he closed the door and pulled the curtain, grabbed Oliver's legs and slid his body to the middle of the floor. Oliver was bleeding from his nose and a gash over his left eye. Fat Daddy stood over him smiling while he touched himself. “Got you now, you white bitch!” he said softly.
Slowly, Oliver began to move. As he pressed the palms of his hands against the floor, Fat Daddy stepped on his neck and held him down while he dug in his back pocket for the red cord. After tying Oliver's hands behind his back, he grabbed a handful of Oliver's hair and yanked his head back. “You yell or try to fight this and I'll put you to sleep, you hear?”
Fat Daddy knelt between Oliver's legs, lifted Oliver's bathrobe over his back, and then reached for the tube of Vaseline in his sock. He was unscrewing the cap when the steam whistle over the boiler house suddenly blasted one long shrill note, paused and blasted again and again.
“Come on, Fat Daddy! The guards are at the front of the tier! Hurry!” Donnie Blossom yanked open Oliver's door. “Come on, Fats! You didn't hurt him, did you? Oh God!”
“What the fuck's going down?” Fat Daddy asked, his face flush with anger.
“Come on! They're telling everyone to lock up! Something happened! I don't know! Is he okay?”
“Why the fuck do you care? Get your ass out of here!” Fat Daddy kicked Oliver's footlocker and looked down at him. “I'll be a motherfucker!”
“Come on, Fat Daddy!”
Fat Daddy started to untie Oliver's hands, but changed his mind. He stared down at Oliver's bare buttocks one last time before he said, “You're mine, Priddy! I'll be back!” Then he hurried out of the cell, carefully closing the door behind him.
Oliver lay there trying to distinguish left from right. Stars flashed in his head and random words surfaced. Help! Momma! Get up! The left side of his head throbbed and pulsated; he could hear a high-speed train and the wail of a whistle. Oh, shit! He rapidly blinked his eyes and the more he did, the more the stars faded. He tried to move his arms but they were fused together behind his back. He moved his hands, wiggled his fingers and turned on his side. Something familiar brushed up against his fingers. Soft strings. Shoelaces. He touched his sneakers and heard shouts and an awful banging, then the loud rick-racking of a train hightailing it down the track. He managed to sit up, his back pressed against the cold steel of the bed frame. It was making sense now. He traced his memory. In the shower. Singing. Up the steps, down the tier, into his cell and wham! He vomited into his lap-two waffles and Rice Krispies. Get up, get up!
He moved his wrists back and forth but there was no give. He heard voices drawing near, shouts, more banging. “This is an emergency lockdown! Everyone take it in immediately!” The banging he heard was the long iron lever at the end of the tier the guards pulled to secure the cell doors. The guard was striking the bar against the wall, that much he knew.
It took several tries before he was able to stand. He backed up to the sink and felt for the razor blade he kept on the ledge. With his thumb and index fin
ger, he picked it up and slowly touched the blade close to his wrist. Feeling the restraint, he pressed the blade into it and sawed away. Halfway through he nicked his thumb. His fingertips were wet with blood now, and he lost his grip on the blade. Frustrated, he balled up his fists and with a violent jerk he forced one fist down and the other one up at the same time. No sooner was he free then he heard the guard's boots thumping down the tier. He turned his back to the door and when the guard stopped in front of his cell, Oliver was sure he was going to be told to turn his light on, but the guard said nothing. Oliver stood there until he heard the guard's footsteps fade away down the tier and then he went to the mirror.
The gash over his eye wasn't deep, but the blood was still oozing from the wound. He filled the sink with cold water and stuck his face in it, shaking his head from side to side to loosen up the blood that had dried in his nose. When the water turned pink, he emptied out the sink and repeated the process.
He looked at himself in the mirror again. His eye was swollen but no more than it would have been on his worst day of sparring. The side of his head was swollen, too, and he could still hear a train running through it. He had a splitting headache and wanted to lie down and go to sleep, but he didn't. He had read somewhere that it could be dangerous to fall asleep after suffering a head wound. He was sure he had a concussion.
After a moment he sat on the toilet and noticed that his feet were wet. When he looked down and saw the puddle of urine in the middle of the floor, he put his head in his hands, leaned forward and began to cry. Not for Oliver the Victim, but for Oliver the Optimist, the Oliver who had thought he could put off for tomorrow what he should have done weeks ago. He had thought through the details like a battlefield strategist, first exchanging the ten-penny nail for a ten inch lead pipe, then practicing the force of the blows on a balled-up mattress so he wouldn't kill the nasty freak, but merely maim him so he'd drool spit and slur his words for years to come. The one important thing he had failed to do was mark the calendar and the time of his attack. He had been having too much fun studying and going to college and flirting with girls to carry out a preemptive strike. As he wiped his tears in the crook of his arm and consoled himself at the same time, he was firm in his resolve not to play the waiting game a second longer than it took for the doors to open again.
After washing his feet and cleaning the floor, he got dressed and listened to the conversations around him. Someone up the tier was relaying information down the tier. Police boats had been spotted near the banks of the river in front of the administration building. A coroner's van had just pulled up in the visitor's parking lot. “Somebody drowned!” a man up the tier shouted.
But there had to be more to it than that. Someone drowning in the Ohio River had nothing to do with the orderly running of the prison. Swimmers had drowned right in front of the prison before and they'd never locked down the joint.
Five minutes later the sergeant's husky voice boomed over the PA system and the prisoners thought they had the answer. “Count time! Count time! This is an emergency count! Stand by your door! Lights on!”
Maybe someone had escaped and couldn't swim. It had happened before and they'd locked down the prison just like they did this morning. More chatter along the grapevine confirmed that they had found a body. The bodybag was coming up over the riverbank just now. Oliver looked out the window and could see two speedboats from the McKee's Rocks side of the river, heading straight toward the prison. As they came closer they veered off toward the administration building.
Even though they had all been gypped out of a free picnic, the prisoners were excited over the events that were unfolding. The media had come to Riverview. Channel Two news trucks were in the parking lot, along with real cops and the county coroner.
“Holy fuck! This is serious, y'all! They just found another body! They're bringing it up the bank right now!” Some fool yelled they were probably just filming an episode of “Hill Street Blues,” and that was what the commotion was all about. Someone else discredited the fool when he yelled back, “'Hill Street Blues' ain't filmed in Pittsburgh, dumb ass!”
“Oh yeah? Well, this episode is! And who you calling dumb ass?”
“You, dumb ass!”
It went on like that all morning until the reporter Cindy Burns of KDKA news brought them the truth on the twelve o'clock news. “Two bodies were found floating near the banks of the Ohio River this morning in front of Riverview Penitentiary on the North Side of the city. An unidentified white female believed to be in her late twenties, and a black male in his early thirties were discovered a little after nine by passing boaters. Both victims were fully clothed. Police have identified the male victim, but are not releasing his name at this time. We'll have more details on this story tonight at six.”
After hearing the story the prisoners' emotions were jolted from excitation over the speculation that one or two of their own had almost gotten away to sheer indifference over learning that the victims were probably just some white trash hooker and a trick, and then to blatant anger over their day having been ruined for no good cause. The mood in the cellblock reminded Oliver of being in the dining hall on evenings when liver was the main entrée-in a fume. It stayed that way for several hours.
To take his mind off his own anger Oliver wrote two letters. One to his mother June telling her he might be losing his phone privileges and not to worry if he didn't call for a while; he was fine, just a blunder in judgment. He would let her know when it was okay for her and Skip to visit. Then he wrote a letter to Albert and told him the whole story about Fat Daddy and what he had to do to settle the matter once and for all. When the doors opened again he would give Early the letter to deliver to Albert before he climbed the back stairwell to the fifth tier and split Fat Daddy's head open to the bone.
Others around him spent the day turning the wheel on the rumor mill. The dead woman was the superintendent's daughter. The black man was a former con named Bub Dukes. But it would take one ignorant prisoner to believe that story, for Bub Dukes was a notorious dope addict who had been out on parole long enough to have a heroin habit so vicious he couldn't get a hard-on if he'd wanted to. No, it wasn't that. It was simply two lovers who had been walking along the bank and fallen into the river. Maybe one fell and the other drowned in the rescue. And then there was the one about a white woman who was kidnapped and raped by a black man, and somehow they had both ended up drowning. With all their clothes on!
Before the six o'clock evening news came on, every gambler in the cellblock had put down a bet on the lead story. By the time Ed Burns told it all, the five hundred men in the little St. Regis were rattling their cages and laughing hysterically. The dead woman had been identified as thirty-two year old Melinda Cain, third wife of forty-five year old cult leader and polygamist Virgil Cain, a prisoner at Riverview. Virgil Cain was serving fifteen to thirty years for having sex with underage girls. The black male, thirty-one year old Caesar Holmes from Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, was a professional welder by trade. He had apparently been hired by the Cain wives to help break Virgil Cain out of prison. The medical examiner said the two had been dead for up to three days.
From there the story took on the details of a Hollywood blockbuster. There was a labyrinth of tunnels under the prison, the newscaster reported, and one of the tunnels led to the banks of the river. The opening was closed off with a two-inch thick steel grate that had been welded and padlocked shut for a hundred years. Apparently, the victims had climbed down the bank and entered the niche that led to the tunnel grate after the tide had gone out sometime late Wednesday night. Found ten feet from the sealed grate was a set of portable welding tanks, complete with a cutting torch tip. According to Port Authority investigators, the two victims were trapped and drowned when the high tide came in suddenly sometime around twelve thirty a.m. on Thursday.
A spokesman for the prison said that Virgil Cain had been moved to another prison upstate and that Riverview would remain locked down until invest
igators could determine how and where Virgil Cain had planned on entering the tunnels inside the prison.
The hype was enough to hold everyone's attention for the next two days. Virgil Cain was both hated and revered by his peers. Hated for being a low-life pedophile who, for reasons that baffled everyone, had been allowed to bounce his thirteen-year old stepdaughters on his lap during weekly visits; and revered for having whatever it was he had that made women worship him. This polygamist had a word game that Billy Graham would envy, or else he had a very long tongue.
But the novelty wore off with the passing of each meal-a bag lunch consisting of a bologna and cheese sandwich, an orange and a half-pint of milk. By Monday evening those who didn't have food in their cells that they purchased from the commissary were feeling the hunger pains and letting the guards know it. “Take it easy, men,” the sergeant told them when he was making his rounds. Chewing a wad of tobacco, he stood in front of Oliver's cell and spit a stream of the liquid shit over the tier and down the side of the wall. “You'll all be out in the morning.”
Two hours later the same sergeant placed the prisoners' mail on the bars of their doors. Oliver received two letters. A message from his mother June telling him they would be up to see him soon, and a notice from the communications office informing him that he would be moving to the big St. Regis, cell L-14, when the institution resumed normal movement in the morning.
Oliver sighed long and deep, grappled with his obstinacy, then smiled as wide as a farmer who had prayed for rain and been rewarded with a downpour. Before he changed his mind and Winfield Petaway's fate, he quickly packed everything he owned into his footlocker, thinking with absolute certainty that the big St. Regis was far enough away from the vilest thing he knew.
AFTER LUNCH the next day, Champ the boxer was standing in front of his cell on M tier when Oliver showed up to see him. “Come on in, Priddy.” Champ stepped into his cell, sat down and started rearranging piles of folded laundry. He was dressed for his morning roadwork. Purple sweatpants, two dingy gray sweatshirts, and black brogans. Champ stared at Oliver's swollen eye and grinned. “I thought you quit boxing a long time ago.”
Eureka Man: A Novel Page 9