Only you, Roy. Dolly stood, fully readjusted, and kissed him on both cheeks, kisses with weight and movement and pressure exquisitely calibrated. But he leaned right out of her force field when Alice picked up the line. For godsakes, Alice. He was almost screaming. Dolly moved toward the dining room. She twirled around and waved. Roy threw back a kiss, like he was throwing a grenade.
Alice, listen, he said, then looked up to watch Dolly wriggle her way into the first section. Fine. Oh my God. He was just remembering something about Will and Dolly, a momentary thing. Nothing of any consequence. And nothing to worry about, now that he thought about it. If anyone knew how to exhibit complete disengagement, it was Dolly. Without even a signal, she’d pretend he didn’t exist. Alice was talking to him.
Alice, one small thing I ask, that you answer the phone. Is that too much? Am I placing an unnecessary burden on you, because if I am, tell me. Please. Do this. Call Dr. Bronson. You haven’t heard from him? All right. Call Dr. Bronson, leave a message, like before. But do it twelve times in a row. I want you to count, make lines on a paper, and tell me what his receptionist says each time. But twelve calls. And we’ll see what happens. Thank you.
Now maybe he could eat in peace.
July 7
Will was most aware of the shield Pasteur created between the eighteen execs of Kentucky and the rest of Woeburne when Pasteur was gone. And he was nearly always gone at night. There was another guard, Martin Patton, aka Pat’em, known for running girls down between the orchards and the greenhouse, who took over most night shifts on Kentucky. Then the guard-station telephone rang until dawn. Martin making various arrangements with his employees. Sammy Finlandor took an enormous interest in Martin, predicted that if he played his cards right, he could retire very handsomely at forty.
Woeburne was always loudest at night, loudest and brightest. Spotlights washed out all shadow. And the sound rose from all the floors below, accrued, spiraled up to the glass roof and ricocheted down again in sharp notes, as if the roof were shattering and exploding, over and over. At night, men screamed and cried and made no more sense than howling babies, a hundred at once. The sound was deafening. More frightening than anything Will had ever heard.
All the worst things happened in the night. Things Sammy Finlandor sifted out from the fusillade of sound and defined. Someone had been doused with urine collected in a cup. Thrown on the face, the worst insult, thrown on the feet, the least. Someone had been burned, again. Lit on fire in his bed. Sammy knew the sound of the fire extinguisher, and that particular shriek of pain, the medical kit detached from the wall, the cot to carry the burn victim to the infirmary where he would wait until morning, wrapped naked in cold wet sheets, until the doctor came. One man had died this way since Will arrived. And the hanging game. The men who rigged themselves on the water pipes with a torn cloth noose, a braided bedsheet, so the guard on timed walk-bys would catch them, cut them down, and send them to the infirmary too, where night was quiet and dark. Someone’s just been cut, Sammy would say into the walkway between the barred doors, Will could not see him. No one could see anyone because the bars were spaced that way. Someone’s just been cut. And Sammy could tell whether the cut was cautionary, just a way of saying I’m the one you should be thinking about. Or a direct aggression, when someone’s intestines needed to be stitched back in. Another trip to the infirmary, someone else in line for a quiet night.
All this happened on the tiers below Kentucky: on Nebraska, and Nevada, Dakota, and Carolina, where the mental defectives lived and the hard-time aggressives. On Michigan the cells were dorm-style, and though the most trouble happened there, nothing changed. In Kentucky, each executive had his own cell, just about the size of Kay Clemens’s blue Thunderbird. A cot, a table, and a toilet. The toilets were relatively new, within the last six years, Sammy said.
In July the sun began to light the glass dome with a red slick just after five, and the guards would extinguish the overheads. For the hour between sunrise and first head count, Will would sleep and dream. When he awoke, Pasteur was already there. His fat ass swayed down the catwalk. He tripped his lucky key chain along the bars, a small silver bell with the sound of a baby’s teething ring, before he threw the master bolt and opened Kentucky cell block for the business of the day.
Sammy Finlandor couldn’t get the thought of Martin Patton’s orchard girls out of his mind, or he couldn’t stop putting them into Will’s. Said these were professionals, really experts, many traveled from New York City, came here in the summer to rest and make some money. He listed the things they would do. It was as if he were trying to hypnotize Will. Sammy’s experience in Martin’s orchard, as far as Will knew, was limited to imagination.
Pasteur was always reluctant to change a work assignment once he had a man placed. He said that continuity calmed restless hearts. But at suppertime, Sammy studied the faces of the men assigned on a rotating schedule to the orchards and the greenhouses. Sammy saw a higher calm there, men washed clean of the accumulating irritations of Woeburne by sexual transport. He troubled Pasteur every morning, called out to him before the doors were even open. Said he was longing for air and trees, that he’d be reconditioned for the better, given just one chance. Once he even stilled the tongue of Pasteur’s silver bell, caught it in his hand, so Pasteur would listen. This worked against him.
On Tuesday afternoon, Will was catnapping in the dry goods when Sammy pulled hard on the toe of his wrecked rubber sole. Get up, get up! Pasteur’s looking for you. Will was confused. His inner clock was so attuned, so regulated, to the head counts and mealtimes and number of vegetables to be peeled that his stolen slumber was equally precise. He knew just when and how much. Sammy’s interruption was disorienting. Will thought the place must be on fire.
But he stood up, pushed back his mussed hair. He shaved two parsnips into long white bones before Pasteur—who had been having a loud, lengthy talk with Chef Brodie about appropriate nutrition for teenage girls, Meat, said Brodie, and lots of it, builds all kinds of things—showed up at his work station. Pasteur carried a small pink message slip in his fist, the sort favored by Nancy Campanella, Warden Flagmeyer’s secretary. He stood by Will’s sink and read the slip again, as if to be certain. Well, he said, look’s like you’re about to get some sunshine. You’ve been reassigned to the pruning squad. Pasteur lifted one of the parsnips. You give those poor trees this kind of treatment, we won’t have any apples at all.
I’m fine right here. Send Sammy, he wants to go.
Sending you, sir. Come with me.
Will handed his peeler to Sammy, who seemed unaccountably pleased. Will guessed he was hoping for a reliable assessment of Martin’s goods. Keep your hands dry, Sammy, you never know, it could happen to you.
Now, Clemens, or I tear this pink slip up.
He’s coming, said Sammy.
The orchard was as romantic as any musical stage set Will had ever seen, except for the perimeter. Miles of looped razor wire spun over three steel-link fences, set one inside the next, like transparent Chinese boxes. But within, erasing that, the trees were gnarled and beautiful. None of the other executives worked in the orchard, so Pasteur’s consistency was not in force here. Will saw two entirely different work crews in his afternoon cutting branches, and he never saw Martin Patton. He learned from Sammy that Warden Flagmeyer considered orchard work rehabilitative, especially for the hard-time aggressives. Temporary assignments often came out of his office, as Will’s had.
The orchard had only two armed guards. Each paced three sides of an interior corridor between the fences. A fourth side, closest to the greenhouses, didn’t need a guard. A trusty, a lifetime prisoner with a sense of responsibility, who had graduated to light meds, kept watch there. Although Woeburne had many interesting escape attempts in its lore, none had ever taken place in the orchard, despite its relatively mild surveillance.
The trusty who spent the most time doing apparently nothing, leaning on the back legs of a wooden library chair
set out of the sun near the greenhouse, was Hank Williams. Self-named. His real name, Will learned from Sammy, was Norbert Swan, and he had killed his wife with a waffle iron on a Sunday morning. Now he was slow and mostly silent with regret. On some occasions he’d bring it up, though, and say how sad he felt that as a very young man he hadn’t had more patience, hadn’t known that cooking and conversation could be learned. He came to Woeburne when its doors opened, transferred from Elmira. For many years he’d been the chief sorter of scrap iron.
But Martin Patton had seen other ways that Hank Williams could be spending his time, rather than separating nuts from bolts. The men were frightened of him, frightened of his slow movements and his widespread crocodile teeth; killers of such clear intent were actually rare at Woeburne. Martin Patton put that fear to good use. He petitioned Warden Flagmeyer for a compassionate reassignment. Hank Williams was old now, his hands unsteady. So for half a decade, in the work season, from late April until the end of October, the hardback chair was set by the greenhouse.
Hank Williams sat there from nine in the morning until sundown. He was given a black metal lunch box, all the orchard workers were. And if anyone needed to use the facilities, Hank Williams directed them to three I-shaped cuts in the knit and purl of the metal fences. A man could squeeze through, one, two, three, and find accommodation on the north, shady side of the greenhouse.
Although Martin Patton was making a small fortune, he had expenses. He paid the orchard guards a straight fee for walks they cut short, eyes they kept averted. The girls worked on a per capita basis. Hank Williams was given Mass cards for his service. Convinced that he was doing a kindness for the men and the girls, he would not take money. Martin Patton made a monthly stop to the rectory in Woeburne Heights to purchase indulgences for Hank as a regular part of his personal schedule. And Hank collected the cash the men gave him in the bottom of his black metal lunch pail. For twenty dollars a month, one of the mental defectives pocketed that pile of money when he washed the pails coming back to the kitchen from the orchard. Hank Williams had scratched a broken heart near the handle of his. In the evenings, Martin took a break from the management of his incoming calls to recoup the day’s receipts on Nebraska.
At the end of Will’s afternoon in the orchard, he got the tap. A young man stood at the bottom of Will’s stepladder and shook the rung. Hey, man, Hank Williams wants you. Pronto. Will pushed away the branch. Hank stood just beyond the shadow of his chair, shading his eyes with his forearm, those eyes trained on Will. Will backed down the ladder and put his heavy shears on the ground. The grass was wet. He picked them up again and carried them with him to Hank.
What you gonna do with those? Cut off something? Hank smiled.
Did you want to talk to me?
Hell no. I want you to put your skinny self through that fence there and collect on the goodness that someone, not saying who, provided for you. You have got a friend. You just leave those clippers here with me. I’ll keep an eye.
Hank Williams pointed to the left, and Will could see the tear in the fence. Just squeeze on through, you won’t have no problem.
Will dropped the clippers in the dirt and wiped his hands on his pants. He pulled back the fold of metal, hot from the sun, and wriggled through, feeling the metal scratch all the way down his body. He did it twice more, in the two other fences, and turned back to look at Hank Williams. Who gestured, whole arm, to go around the side of the greenhouse. Will followed a path of pressed dirt along the east wall and around the corner. No bushes. But a field of grass and tall uncut weeds stretched out, and a path continued through it. The grass was nearly waist-deep. There was a smell of old urine. He stopped, turned back. Where you think you’re going? a small voice shouted out, maybe twenty feet away in the grass. Back, said Will. He felt anxious, and stupid for feeling it. God knows he wasn’t afraid of a hooker. The voice was the voice of a child.
Come on over here, let me see you. I heard about you.
Will pushed slowly through the ragweed toward the sound.
Over here!
The path stopped abruptly. Nowhere. He looked out into a field.
You’re slower than God. Get over here. And Will saw a small hand wave above the Queen Anne’s lace. He walked toward that hand, separating the thick grass to get there.
Well. You’re worth the wait.
Lying in a kind of mare’s nest, the grass all tamped down in an oval shape, was a young girl in a yellow and white summer dress, big daisies tacked to the hem of each pleat. Will stared at her for a while. She wore thick pink shiny sandals. Her breasts poked out, small and round, like two eggs tucked into the bodice. What are you doing here?
Ought to be plain as day.
Will sat down. Dizzy all of a sudden from the heat.
What are you doing here? the girl said. She winked at him like a kid who had a secret already told. Then she made an unskilled grab at his zipper.
Wait.
No waiting. I don’t have that kind of time. Then she laughed. Really convulsed with laughter. Then she started to cough. She gripped Will’s knee with her hand. She had three tiny plum-colored bruises just above her wrist.
Will pointed. What’s this?
Some people and their own strength. You can’t believe. But you do, you know your own self. I’ll bet on that.
Her face was so pale it took on the green of the grass all around her. Her eyes were dark, irises like a grainy wood. She had a tiny mouth. Her long, thin neck was rubbed with dirt near her daisy-petal collar.
What’s your name?
Why would you ask me such a thing?
Will saw a movement in the grass, looked over.
That’s nothing, a skunk or rabbit. No one’ll come unless you stay too long. Or I blow my whistle. Look here. She reached into her square pocket with rickrack trim, and pulled out a silver guard’s whistle.
What happens if you blow it?
I go home. Maybe for good. Means I can’t handle my own security.
What’s your name?
Loretta Lynn.
Will looked at the small greenish face. You any relation to Hank Williams out there?
Do I look like that old man?
No. Not a bit.
You gonna fool with me or not.
No. I don’t think so.
Well, you’re no fun.
You go to school?
I finished two years ago, what do I look like to you?
Will looked at her hands. She was pushing back the tip of her left index finger with her right thumb. All her fingernails were bitten down except this one, which was long, almost curled with length.
What’s that fingernail for?
What do you think? She scratched a thin red line on the top of his hand. The nail was incredibly sharp. Imagine that was your eye!
Imagine. Will could see the blood but felt nothing, as if the cut was only a picture. Anyone ever blow that whistle for you? For your own good?
Who’d be that stupid. Who’d want to go and do that?
I don’t know.
They’d be begging for trouble.
I suppose.
And I don’t know if I’d get back here again after that. That would be a problem.
Yeah.
She plucked a grass shoot and severed it down the center with her fingernail. She chewed on a tiny sliver, head bent, the part in her hair exact and fine. Her hair, light brown, was cut in an uneven bob around her chin. Well, I’m not looking at you anymore.
Will picked up the whistle where it lay in the grass beside a folded yellow daisy on her skirt. The back of his hand had a thread of blood now. You need a license for that thing. He held the whistle between his fingers. It was lighter than it looked. You could go in the army, be a spy.
Do you think I’m still listening to you?
Do you play an instrument?
My head hurts, she said and shaded her eyes as Hank Williams had done, with her forearm.
Will took the whistle and rubbed the
length of one yellow pleat from hipbone to knee and back up again.
There you go. That’s the ticket.
I have perfect pitch, said Will. He touched the whistle to his lips.
Give me that thing. She held out her palm. Hand it here. She laughed.
Do you know what that means?
You want to see something funny? She fluffed the petals of her collar.
Will put his teeth down on the whistle, inhaled, and blew. Her brown eyes went flat. C sharp, he said.
He thought he would hear something. He thought there would be more time. But Loretta dropped her grass blade and stood up. Her legs were bowed and freckled. Just before the handle of Will’s clipping shears came down on the top of his head, swung with an accuracy and a force that seemed nearly impossible from arms as old as those of Hank Williams, she looked down and said, I know that. I know that because I can sing.
Kay was getting used to things at the St. Regis. She lived on scrambled eggs. They came anytime she liked, and that didn’t seem a luxury anymore. The St. Regis was the condition of her living, the place she directed the taxi to when she left the hospital. It took care of her dry cleaning, her laundry, it collected her phone messages. She could dial two digits, strong coffee and a decent Scotch arrived before she thought about it again. She was grateful for that and oblivious. She was oblivious too of the tab. Since Rita’s sad visit a month ago, Roy had worked out a deal. Kay’s father remarried for the second time, a woman he met on shipboard on the Baltic Sea, but from his honeymoon, he’d cabled Kay’s bank a renewal on her line of credit. In another month’s time she would be thirty years old.
Most days she felt excused from the demand to pay attention to her surroundings in any way. If a desk clerk looked as if she’d wept all night, or the elevator boy’s hand shook, it happened beyond Kay’s notice. Except at odd times, when a remark by a passerby would penetrate, something bizarre about Kay being a what? A gangplank? I’m on board, the woman crooned, pull up the gangplank. Or a whore. Had the woman in the yellow cape really called Kay a whore? Maybe she hadn’t heard anything at all. That’s when Kay would dial Merrill, when strangers started saying things she didn’t understand.
Wavemaker II Page 13