He started to say something, but Homer came in again and sat at his table. People kept walking by and talking outside and the place seemed more open and lighter because now it was near sunset and the light was coming in on the slant. You could see it lying like patches of sand or like dust on the floor at the entranceway. Men came in, asking Homer things and going out again, talking to each other in the passageway. Then there was a commotion outside, a lot of voices and then stillness and right afterwards laughing and whistles and voices that seemed to be humming like water. Homer got up to see and went out the doorway. Jake stood up in his cell and then I did too.
“Another prisoner?” I said.
“A woman, bet you anything. Probably Annie.”
Homer came back in sight. Annie was standing behind him, next to an officer who held her by the arm and grinned down at her. She said something to him, looking back into his face in a measuring sort of way, and almost smiled. He laughed and let go of her.
“I leave you to talk,” Homer called, and waved his hand towards us so she could see we were at the far end. Then he turned and motioned the other man to follow him out. Annie walked forward from between them, alone, across the center of the floor. She had her head up and walked easy, keeping her eyes on the side of the room where Jake was.
It was strange to watch how she was and know she didn’t know I was there, or looking at her. Stranger than seeing somebody you know walk by in a crowd. She looked hard. Full of devilment, able to take care of herself, and ready to talk back. It made me almost shy, seeing her, the way she was when she wasn’t at home and wasn’t a sister—a woman coming to see her husband in jail, which was a thing she’d done lots of times before.
She sauntered up near the cell, flicked her eyes past me, lazy and sneery, and then looked. She stopped in the middle of walking so she nearly tripped, and her face changed.
“You? I thought it was Jake.”
“Right behind you, honey,” he said. She whipped around.
“You, oh you—this is the last straw. Lord, this is the limit. It’s all right for you to go taking chances, but why you have to drag my kid brother into—”
“He didn’t,” I told her.
“This was one he done all by his own fool self,” Jake said.
She turned around again and curled her fingers closed on the bars of my cell and leaned forward like she wanted to put her head through.
“Ain’t you ashamed?” she said. “And what’s Maddie going to do now you landed yourself in this place? Ain’t you shamed?”
“No,” I said, “I am not.” I started to explain, but she didn’t want to listen. All the time I was talking she was giving me her own talking-to. I couldn’t listen to her and talk at the same time, and I suppose she couldn’t have been listening to me either, for the same reason. But it didn’t seem important. At the time it only mattered that I was getting the explanation out.
“I was hungry,” I said, “and I stole some bread. That’s all there was to it. I was hungry enough so’s I didn’t bother much about who was going to be looking at me. That’s all there is to it. I’m not ashamed, I’m just worried, sick with the worrying. And you don’t make it any better. Do you think I like being here?”
“You should have thought. Oh my Lord, why didn’t you come to me and say? You should be—”
“Cut it out, Annie,” Jake said.
I said, “Listen, you’ll tell Maddie, won’t you? And tell her not to worry.”
“Not to worry?”
“And see there’s somebody can look after the kids for a while, so she can come and see me. I got to talk with her.”
“I bet she’ll enjoy that, walking through that line of studs out there and at night-time, too.”
“How many out there?” Jake asked.
“About ten.”
“Come over here, Annie.”
She dropped her hands. They came away from the bars all at once as though they’d been stuck there instead of holding on. She went over to Jake and he put an arm through the bars and around her shoulders.
“They been giving you a hard time?”
“Just the usual, saying things. Asked me how much I cost.”
“How much did you say?”
“Told them to ask my husband.”
He put his other hand through and started to touch her face and neck. I had the feeling I shouldn’t look and turned to the side, to the wall.
“Something I want you to do for me,” he said. He began to tell her names of people and where to go and what to say.
“Keep your eye on the entrance, will you, Seth?”
He started whispering something to her and she answered, and after a while sighed and said all right. Then he squeezed her to him against the bars and drew his arm back so it was just lying along her shoulder. She turned around and told me not to fret, that she’d see Maddie was all right and try to keep her from worrying. She looked tired.
“Somebody coming.”
I could just see Homer’s head moving into view and another man’s hand, waving fingers in the air as he walked. Jake looked, too.
“What were you giving him the eye for?”
“Who?” she said.
“That tall number had you by the arm when you came in. Who is he?”
“How should I know? He was standing outside. Said he’d show me where you were.”
“You have to play up to him like that?”
“I didn’t play up to anybody. Anyway, who’s talking? I bet you missed me last night, didn’t you?”
“I missed you,” he said. He was looking over her head at the other man and his face turned peaceful and set, getting angry.
“If I died,” he said, “you’d get married again before the year was out, wouldn’t you?”
She didn’t move for a while. Then she lifted his hand, knocked his arm away, and walked back to the entrance without looking at either of us or saying goodbye. Jake leaned up against the side wall and ran his hand over the bars where she’d been.
“What are you looking at?” he said.
“Just looking.”
He let go of the bars and turned his back.
I’ve seen it happen so many times before and every time it jars me up, because I don’t understand how it can be. I’ve lost my temper with Maddie, hit her because I couldn’t help it. But I never wanted to hurt her. And afterwards, knowing I’d hurt her, I felt as scared and miserable as if I’d killed her, so in the end she was the one who had to comfort me, though she was the one got hurt. With Jake and Annie it’s different, they set out to hurt each other. That’s what I can’t understand about it, that they love as much as we do, and still they can plan out a hurt the way you would prepare a pleasure.
He’s treated her so bad sometimes, not beating her around, but just saying something mean. She does the same. Both of them wild with the notion that the other one could be fooling around with somebody else. And all of it is uncalled for. I don’t believe either one of them has stepped over the line since they got married. But they talk about it all the time, and threaten each other with it, and hint it might be so. At first I used to think it happened because they didn’t have any kids, that they needed an extra thing to be in their marriage. But then I met up with other married people who were jealous that way, with two or three kids, and that just meant two or three more weapons in the battle as far as they were concerned.
Jake said to me once I was lucky I wasn’t jealous. “I got no cause,” I told him. “You don’t either. So why be jealous,” and he answered, “There don’t have to be cause. You’re born that way or born without it. Jealous means jealous from the start—possessive.” Maybe that’s what it is, that people just have different ideas about what belongs where. So if you are jealous that way, you imagine it should be possible that a body is yours when you have possessed it, and everything inside the body. I know he thinks that way about other things, like a horse or something like that belongs to the man that can take it, and if you c
an’t hold on to what you’ve got you don’t deserve to have it. I don’t hold with that—I don’t approve. When I stole, I knew it belonged to somebody else. I knew it perfectly but I took it anyway. But for Jake, the horse was his as soon as he began to lead it away. Finders keepers is what he thinks about things, about objects.
But about people, how can you say that? I told him, the people you belong to, it’s in your mind, in your soul. They could be a hundred miles away and living with somebody else but it would be the same inside you, wouldn’t it? And you could belong to somebody who never belonged to you, who didn’t give you a second thought, not even if you were married. “I’m not talking about love,” he said, “just who she sees in the afternoons.” I’d only be worried if Maddie didn’t love me any more. As for anything else, I don’t think it would happen, but if it did it wouldn’t be the end. “You don’t even have any cause, Jake,” I told him. “And even if you did, you know where her heart is, so can’t you stop treating each other like that?” He said, “A change of bed can cause a change of heart.”
I couldn’t get anywhere talking about it with him. Maddie used to talk to Annie too, after a quarrel, till we got dragged into it that time and I had to tell them. I told them both it was all right for them to get into these fights and come ask us to take sides, but in a week they’d be together again and meanwhile they’d have broke up our home so in the future they would have to settle it alone. Mostly it was just all the talk that went on, that’s what I couldn’t stand. Both of them, it’s as if you could almost see them sewing or weaving with the words, as if they are ornamenting—a jab here, a stitch there, and it’s obvious they enjoy it, but it makes my head ache. I figure if you think something, then say it and don’t take all day over it, but if you aren’t sure what you think, shut up till you’ve made up your mind.
Jake can talk. Like anything. I think he used to make up his mind while he was talking. It’s not so much like that now, he’s quieter now. But at the wedding when he came with Annie, Maddie’s mother said, “Can he talk? That boy could steal the brains right out of your head with his talk.” Now he keeps a lot to himself because of politics, and you don’t know all he’s thinking.
“Will you quit looking at me like that?” he said.
“Just looking.”
“She’ll get over it. It don’t mean a thing. Just keep her so mad she won’t have time to think about anybody else till I get out.”
I said, “You know if anything happened to you she’d kill herself.”
“Maybe.”
“You know she would. Maddie’s the one would get married again.”
“You think so?”
I’d never thought about it before but now it seemed like I’d known all the time.
“Sure, and I’d want her to. If anything happened to her, I’d get married to somebody else again too. Not right away, but I would. I couldn’t live alone like that. And neither could she. It would be worse for her—I’d want her to get married again. How’d she live with two kids and no man in the house? It’s bad enough you’d have the grief, why should she be unhappy too?”
“You wouldn’t be jealous?”
“What do you mean, jealous? I’d be dead. But I’d like to know she’s all right. I’d like her to get married again to somebody would make her happy.”
“You mean you’d want her to love some other man? Really, like she loves you now?”
“Yes, I would. After I’m dead.” I wouldn’t want to leave somebody and have the world turn black and be dead to them whenever they think of me not being there. Much better if they think of me kindly and know I want them to be happy. For the children, too. Isn’t that love?
Jake said, “Well, you don’t know what it is. My, I feel like I’d be jealous even after I was dead.”
“That’s why she wouldn’t be able to go on afterwards,” I told him. “You wouldn’t either. Think about it. What would you do if anything happened to Annie?”
“I don’t want to think about it. I don’t know.”
Homer came in with his keys and began to unlock one of the middle cells.
“She is pretty, very,” he said. “Lots of what you call it? Temperament. We got girls like that at home.”
“You got everything back there,” Jake said.
“Sure. I have a cousin like that a long time ago. You say something and her eyes flash and she tell you to go to hell. Then she wait till everybody leave her alone and she cries, cry like she will die. Is pride, is wonderful in a woman.”
“You know all about that too?” Jake said.
“Two years ago, three years ago—well. Now I am feeling old. Is the job, maybe.” He went over to the other middle cell and unlocked that one too so the doors stood open.
Jake said, “Is there anything you don’t have over there in Greece? By my count you invented poetry, politics, philosophy, women. What else is there you don’t have?”
“Money,” Homer said.
“How about religion, did you start that too?”
“You very religious?”
Jake laughed. I heard shouts out in the passage and stamping feet and a roar of people coming closer. And then an armed guard burst through the entranceway, about seven of them, and they were dragging eight or nine people with them.
“Five in here,” Homer said, and stood back. “Rest over there.”
The soldiers began to cram them into the cells. They were young kids, looking not more than nineteen or twenty and two of them girls. All of them were kicking and hitting at the military and calling them paid tools of the government and hired butchers of imperialist tyranny and things like that. Then they started shouting names and dirty words, the girls too. But they must have come from good families; they were rich, you could see that. Most of the boys, about five of them, were dressed like me, dressed to look like a poor man, a fieldworker. But if you looked you could see their poor man’s clothes were made out of real quality stuff.
The doors shut and they quieted down just for a moment. That’s the bad time, when the door closes and you know there’s no choice any more. But then they decided to put up a good front, and they yelled even louder than before, calling Homer names and jeering at him. I could see five of them, four boys and a girl. And if I got down into the corner I could see the other four on my side of the wall. But I didn’t like the feeling of having those five all able to look straight into my cell with nothing I could do about it except turn my back. I got into the other corner and stood sideways so I could turn around whenever I wanted to, and watched them.
Homer waited for them to get quieter and then he and the friend he’d been playing dice with, the one who liked wrestling matches, started to hand in water and pots and things. One of the boys got his arm through the bars and poked the wrestling man hard in the eye. He grabbed the arm and twisted it and I heard a snap. “You’ve broken my arm,” the boy yelled, “my God, he’s broken my arm!”
The girl in the cell started to scream: “You dirty bastard, you filthy motherfucking son of a bitch.” The ones in the other cell were shouting, “Police brutality, imperialist pig,” and then all of them smashed the pots against the bars and the walls and threw the water out over the floor and began to throw the broken pieces into the center at Homer and his friend. There was water and smashed pieces everywhere, and they begin to sing. One of the freedom songs, one of ours.
Homer stood by the table and put his hand to his friend’s face, looking at the eye. Then he took him by the arm and they both walked out, leaving everything on the floor. The singing went on.
When they’d finished there was a silence. The reaction’s coming, I thought. “Hey, how’s your arm?” one of them said from the other side. I moved over and looked out to the side and could see him with his face against the bars. I thought he must be the leader; he’d started the song. He had a little beard and a sunburn. I imagined he must have worked hard for both of them. The others were all very white from sitting up late at night talking about pol
itics. Jake says I should be aware of what’s going on but he didn’t appear to be too set on them either. I looked over and saw him yawn and do another kneebend.
Back in the cell I could see, one of the boys said, “What a filthy place. I’ve got to pee.” “Go ahead,” one of the others told him, “give them some work to do for all the money they’re getting beating people up.” The girl and some of the others began to giggle. “Me too,” said another boy and then they both did it against the wall while the rest cheered. After that they were quiet for a while. I could smell it coming through the place, a hot vegetable smell, going sour. There seemed to be less air than before.
A couple of them sighed and mumbled to each other. One of the boys said, “Well, what are we going to do to fill in the time?” and put his arm around the girl. I supposed she was his girl because she let him and they began to kiss up against the bars. One of the boys looked embarrassed and turned away, but the others looked on while they kissed. Then they began to do more, he started to undo her clothes, and I thought: Lord, they’re going to, right where everybody can see. But the girl appeared to be bored and pushed him away. “I’m not in the mood,” she said. He nuzzled up to her again and said, “Come on, you’re always in the mood, aren’t you?” She took his arms away and said, “Cut it out,” and moved away from him, one elbow out with her hand on her waist and holding onto the bars with the other hand. She tossed her hair back from over her eyes and stayed like that. I saw her face; she was still trying to look bored. And I thought: that one’s just lost her forever, and it’s a good thing. That’s what they come to jail for, to get right down to real life, to the truth, and if you’re looking for it there, that’s where you’ll find it.
Someone was crying outside in the passage. Everybody looked. “Beating up some poor kid,” one of them said, and the crying went on. Homer and his friend came around the corner of the passage and out through the entrance, supporting a man between them. He was one of us, and he was still crying and had trouble standing. But he wasn’t hurt, I didn’t think. It must have been grief. Because he was crying the way people do when it’s all over, and everything around you disappears so you can’t even see what you’re looking at and you don’t care any more. They put him in one of the big cells, the one to the right of the entrance, and closed the door. Homer said something to him but the man couldn’t answer. He sat down on the floor and kept on crying, running his hands over his head and face and not even bothering to turn away.
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