Hard Rain Falling

by Don Carpenter

  The guard—night watchman, really, but a man who thought of himself as a guard—had called them out of their cottage late at night just to brace them against the wall and accuse them of unnatural sex practices and walk up and down in front of them, daring them to make a move, while he sent his yellowish eyes up and down their bodies looking for signs of perversion; a stupid, illiterate central Oregon hick who couldn’t get any other kind of job, lantern-jawed and snaggle-toothed, ordering the boys around because they were the only humans on earth who had to stand still for it, his awful eyes gleaming with desires he didn’t have the guts to satisfy—and when the kid next to Jack giggled sleepily and muttered something, the guard shot his hand out and grasped the kid by the neck and jerked him out of the line, down onto his knees, and backhanded him across the face. The kid yelped in surprised anger, and Jack, out of control, feeling the pure blast of pleasure, moved toward this perfect target for his ambitions, spun the guard, hit him twice and knocked him against the wall of the cottage and fell on him, driving his fists coldly and carefully into the guard’s face and throat, Jack’s knee coming up into the guard’s groin sharply; picking him up and slamming him against the wall, one hand on his throat and the other smashing into his face—murdering him with his hands. And he would have killed him, too, if the other watchmen hadn’t heard the noise and come and pulled Jack away from his victim, clubbed him and dragged him down to the punishment cells—the hole—and left him there naked, the murder urge still burning unsatisfied in his heart; left him there for four months and three days—126 days without light—to remember, to think, to dream about his discovery.

  The punishment cell was about seven feet long, four feet wide, and six feet high. The floor and walls were concrete, and there were no windows. In the iron door near the bottom was a slot through which he passed his slop can, and through which his food and water were delivered to him. They did not feed him every day, and because of that he had no way of knowing how much time had passed. After a while time ceased to exist. Time stopped in a strange way. First, he was aware that there was no present, no such thing as a moment; there was only the movement of his thoughts from past to future, from what had happened to what would happen. Then what had happened ceased to be real, as if his mind had invented a past his body could not remember; his senses were betraying him into dreams and the dreams eventually lost all contact with the senses. At first, he could not see because there was no light in his cell; then that became a delusion, and he could not see because he could not see, and then even that lost its reality, and he could not see because there was nothing to see, and never had been—his mind had tricked him into believing that there were colors and shapes, and he knew that there were no such things. At times, all his senses deserted him, and he could not feel the coldness of the concrete or smell his excrement, and the small sounds he made and the sounds that filtered in through the door gradually dimmed, and he was left alone inside his mind, without a past to envision, since his inner vision was gone, too, and without a future to dream, because there was nothing but this emptiness and himself. It was not uncomfortable, not comfortable. These things did not exist. It was colorless, senseless, mindless, and he sometimes just disappeared into it.

  But then there would be a clank and a rattle at the door, followed by the smell of the food, and everything would rush back into him as the smell of the food hit him and aroused him and he would begin to tremble and slather and giggle, quickly locating his bucket and passing it out in exchange for the food and the cup of water; and for a few seconds every sense in him would rush into full operation and his mind would unfold in a glorious picture of what the food would be, and he would stick his fingers into it, whatever it was, and he would begin to gobble the food wolfishly, stuffing it into his mouth and swallowing, greed and terror knotting his stomach so badly that after only a few seconds he would feel engorged, and as likely as not begin to vomit up the food. Afterward he would lie back, panting from the exertion, and wait for the excitement to pass; then he would slowly and carefully eat what was left, and then drink his water. Then he would sit cross-legged in the middle of the cell, waiting for the reaction. Because sometimes they put soap powder into the food, he did not know why, and he would have to put up with the humiliations of diarrhea for hours. Jack never knew whether his food was going to be dosed or not; he could not, after the first few times, taste the soap, or feel the grittiness on his teeth, and so he would just have to sit and wait for the first cramping pang to hit him. There was no question of not eating; when they put the food into his cell he gorged himself without thought. It did not matter if they fed him twice in an hour, the same thing would happen. After a while he did not even hate them for it.

  When he was first thrown into the hole what bothered him most was not the lack of a blanket, the cramped space, or the early terrors of the dark; it was the fact that he was naked, that he had been stripped of his dignity. It did not matter that there was no one to see him; what mattered in increasing dimensions of hatred was the humiliation of his nakedness, which seemed to deprive him of any kind of pride, took away his self-esteem, his humanity, his right to think of himself as a man. Squatting over his bucket, waiting for the next hapless squirting from his agonized bowels, he would dream of a future in which they would eventually let him out and there would be somebody there for his rage to murder; dreaming of the glory of that murder. It was a thought he clung to as long as possible, and it was always the last thing to desert him as he slipped again into nothingness: they had taken away his dignity, and he would kill them for that.

  He went through self-pity very quickly. It occurred to him after he had been in endless darkness beyond all question of time that he would die in there, simply die of the immense loneliness, and that when he died no one would know about it for days, and when they finally did find out, they would unlock the door and remove his body and put it into a wooden coffin and bury it somewhere, without a marker, and that they would put into the files that his case was terminated, and that Jack Levitt was no longer an administrative problem. He would be dead, and gone, and nobody would mourn his death. They would be relieved, because they could terminate his file. They would get a sense of satisfaction from having the whole file completed, and maybe they would send to the orphanage and get all the papers on him there, and send to Portland and get the police report on him, and write to the places he worked and get his work cards, his pay records, every piece of paper on earth with his name on it, and make a big bundle (no, not so big, a small folder, maybe a Manila envelope) of it all, and take that out of the ACTIVE file and put it into the INACTIVE file, and then in a few years when they needed the space in the big green filing cabinet, they would take his folder out of the file and burn it, and he would be gone from the earth, and not one single human being on the face of the earth would know or remember who he had been, or care that he was gone. Not one single human being on the face of the earth would mourn his death.

  Thinking about this made Jack cry to himself. But then, another thought came to save him from it; his mind told him that he would not care if any of them died, either. People were out there dying, and he did not care. If they all died, he would not care. It did not matter to him. So why should they care for him? He did not care for them. Fuck them. Each and every one of them. He laughed to himself, a rusty, creaking sound. He felt almost hopeful.

  There were six punishment cells, and communication of a sort could be made by yelling, but most of the time it required too much effort, or Jack’s senses were gone and he could not hear. But sometimes he did. He could hear other boys being brought in, yelling, cursing, some of them crying, and he himself suppressed all feelings of pity for the others; they did not pity him. They probably thought he was some kind of hero. Well, fuck them, too. Maybe in the cells they would learn the truth as he had, and know that nothing existed but a single spark of energy, and that spark could die for no reason, and existed for no reason. Then they would understand that it does no go
od to cry out, because a spark of energy has no ears; the ears are a lie, a joke, a dream, to keep the spark going, and there is no reason to keep the spark going. And more than there is a reason for letting it go out. Maybe they would learn not to hate the guards, either, because the guards and everybody else on earth were prisoners in dark cells like themselves and just did not know it, and in fact they were in a worse prison than Jack was, because they were imprisoned by their own limits, and he was only imprisoned by them. He had found their limits—they would not, could not, just take him out and shoot him, and they could not let him run around loose, because he would not take any of their shit, and so they had to lock him up and feed him and dump his piss and shit for him, all because they had these limits that he did not have. If he had an enemy, he would kill that enemy. He would stop at nothing. He would kill that enemy quickly, get him out of the way, and then he would not have that enemy any more. But they couldn’t do that. They were goddam lucky he did not have an enemy. Because if he did he would get out of there and find his enemy and kill him. As it was, there was nobody he hated, no single human life he needed to kill, and so, instead, he would just sit here and wait for them to let him out, and then he would kill the first living human he saw. That would teach them.

  But even this thought, which could build itself to manic proportions, would fizzle away, and he would be left with nothing, not even madness.

  Only once more, after the episode of self-pity, did he approach breakdown. He had just eaten, and for a change there was nothing in his food, and for a few moments he was experiencing a kind of contentment, hearing the sounds out in the passageway, thinking about nothing in particular. He heard the guards bring in a boy, and the boy was sobbing. Jack could tell from the sound of the sobbing that the boy was probably very young, maybe only twelve. Jack heard the cell door being opened, and then closed, and the sobbing muffled. He heard the guards go past and out. Then the new kid started screaming. It was a shock to Jack. He had never heard a sound like it. It was a sharp scream, as if the boy were in agony. Then Jack heard him calling for his mother, and then the boy screamed again, even louder than before, and Jack got frightened. He could feel a scream of his own rising in his throat, a terror in his own heart; he yelled for the boy to shut up, and heard the other boys in the cells yelling at him; but the new kid would not stop, and Jack and the others started yelling for the guard to come in and get him out of there. Jack was feeling panic; he was afraid that if the other boy did not stop screaming he would go crazy, but the boy would not stop; the screaming went on for hours, and then finally a single guard came in. Jack knew it must be nighttime, because it was only one guard that came in. During the daytime, or any time they brought a boy in or let a boy out, the guards came in pairs. So it was night, and the one guard went past Jack’s cell and called in to the new kid, “Shut up in there, God damn it.” The kid cried out that his stomach was hurting, and the guard was silent for a moment, and then said, “He’s only fakin,” and left. Jack and the other boys started yelling and screaming in rage at the guard’s cowardice, because they knew the guard had been afraid to open the cell without a partner along, and Jack again thought he was going to go crazy; he yelled and swore and sobbed in rage, until there was nothing left in him and he lay on the floor of his cell face down, trembling with his hatred of the guard and his rediscovered terror of the dark. The only sounds that could be heard now were the low moans of agony from the new kid, and eventually they, too, stopped, and the punishment cells were silent. This silence was even more terrifying, and Jack bit his lips bloody to keep from screaming himself.

  In the morning, when the doctor and three guards came, the boy was already dead. He had died of a burst appendix, and Jack could hear the furious anger of the doctor and the mumbled embarrassment and self-defense of the guards. But the boy was dead, a boy Jack had never seen, and he felt despair for himself again.

  There was an investigation, and the night guard was fired. When the State Senator who was in charge of the investigation got to Jack’s cell, he asked through the door how long Jack had been in there, and Jack did not answer. The State Senator sent one of the guards for the punishment records, and Jack for the first time learned how long he had been in there, the State Senator saying in an amazed, almost hushed voice, that according to these records, this boy has been in this cell for 87 days, and with shock making his voice tremble, the State Senator demanded that the cell be opened and the boy brought out, and Jack did not know whether the State Senator was planning to free him or just wanted to see what kind of animal could live in total darkness for 87 days without dying, because when the door opened and the faint light blazed against Jack’s eyes, something dark and joyful exploded inside him and he hit the State Senator, grabbed at him, and tried to murder him, out of control, feeble, fumbling, helpless, nevertheless with his hands on the State Senator’s throat and his fingers squeezing, odd noises in his ears, almost drowned out by a roaring sound from within; and then the guards pulled him off the Senator and threw him back in his cell, and the State Senator went back to Salem and the investigation went into file thirteen, and that was the end of that.

  When they came to let him out, the day before his eighteenth birthday, they opened the door and jumped back, four guards crowding the passageway, one of them holding a white canvas restraining jacket. But Jack stood up and walked out into the passageway calmly, his eyes shut. The first thing he said to the guards was, “My eyes hurt like hell.” He was blindfolded, to protect his eyes, and taken, inside the restraining jacket, to a place where there were two psychiatrists to examine him. The plan had been to transfer Jack from the reformatory to the State mental hospital, because the authorities did not feel in all conscience that they could let him go and the law said they had to give up his custody when he turned eighteen. The two psychiatrists asked Jack a lot of questions, and he answered them calmly, blindfolded, and in the restraining jacket and the pants that two guards had slipped onto him, sat in his chair and lied to the two doctors and told them he felt ashamed of himself, and that when the Senator had opened the door Jack had been having a nightmare and he was sorry; but to be on the safe side he was transferred to the State mental institution in Salem, locked in a room in a long brown corridor, and given thirty days’ observation by the staff. He actually saw a doctor only four times, for fifteen minutes each time, and after the first visit he was given mopping to do and was permitted the use of the observation ward dayroom. At the end of the thirty days he was let out, still wearing dark glasses, his skin pale and raw. He knew he was just lucky. He knew that it was an accident that they had come for him at a moment when he was perfectly rational. If he had been deep in his dream of murder, as he had been when the State Senator visited, then he might have spent the rest of his life in the insane asylum. He was just lucky they had come for him in one of the few moments of sanity. He had happened to be urinating at the moment he heard the guards in the passageway. So he had not been off-balance. He had managed in all the time of transition afterward to keep a tight control on himself, and his eyes helped. His eyes hurt so fiercely that he concentrated on the pain as a way of keeping from thinking of murder; and by the time they let him out of the insane asylum, he had himself under control. He worked in eastern Oregon, bucking logs for a wildcat outfit in the mountains between Oregon and Idaho, for half a year, letting the sun and the hard work burn strength and calm into him, and when at last he got fired for fighting, it was all right, because he was not trying to kill the man; the man had gotten drunk and started bothering Jack, and so they fought, but as men fight, not animals, and after they both got fired they went to Boise together and got good and drunk together, and Jack knew that he was going to be all right. He was afraid that he would dream about the hole, but he never did. Or if he did, he never remembered it in the morning, and that was what counted. Jack wanted to have a good time for himself, and nightmares would have spoiled the delicious pleasure of sleeping in a bed.

  When the
girls finally burst into Denny’s room Jack felt a little depressed, but at the same time there was the usual excitement new things, especially girls, brought. They were two of a kind: long-haired, thin, with sharp, wolfish faces and children’s mouths gone hard. Their thin hard bodies were dressed in new, almost identical, black cocktail dresses, shiny blue pumps, and black hose. Too much eye makeup, cheeks too pale, eyes too small, brows too sharply drawn, voices brittle and toneless with self-imposed coolness. Beneath it all Jack could see that the girls were both plain. But the attempt to be hip, to dress like four-bit New York whores, was in itself stimulating.

  Denny jumped up from the bed and introduced the girls as Mona and Sue, and they nodded, neither of them meeting Jack’s eyes, poured themselves glasses of whiskey, and plopped down on the bed, each with a comic book, and began with apparently deep concentration to read.

  Denny grinned at Jack. “They’re shy,” he said. “How was the movie?”

  “What a drag,” one of them said.

  Jack sighed, and sat back down. He had been through so many scenes like this one. Everybody knew what was what, but nobody wanted to be straight about it. They would go on like this—bored, indifferent, edgy, too hip to live—until they got drunk, and then somebody would turn on the radio and they would dance in the tiny space between the beds, and somebody would push somebody down onto the bed, and in the darkness the four of them would be sorted out into fornicating couples almost at random, with the light coming in through the window shade, and later somebody would throw up, and some time after that somebody would suggest that they switch partners, and after an hour of dull bitching they might or might not, and everybody would fall asleep from alcohol and boredom, and the radio would keep playing through their fuzzy dreams, and eventually they would all have to wake up. So much waste, he thought. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of this overwhelming sense of waste. He had come to San Francisco to think, and he was not going to do it. He was always doing the easy thing, the thing that first came to hand.