by Peter Rabe
The wing of the gate ended. Then there was a big crack between that and the other wing and that crack was a cold draft and a clear view of the outside.
There was a long, flat-bed truck outside the gate, loaded with I beams. They were very big and painted red. The truck had jackknifed on the street and two of the I beams stuck far out in back. So far back, I could touch them.
The prison gate had tried to jaw shut on the girders but had made it just so far. There was a cold draft and a clear view “Gallivan!” Rand screamed. “Jump, Gallivan!”
There was a florist’s delivery truck on the street It drove up near the gate and then it stopped.
“You insane son of a bitch!” Rand tore into me from behind. “Move!”
I heard the sirens and then I said, “No.”
“You insane s — ”
I had never been so sane in my life. I said, “No.”
I stepped aside, but he pushed me the wrong way, back against the girders, and they cut into my spine.
I couldn’t see the street now, only Rand. He seemed very cool suddenly. Then he slugged me. I felt my breath knot up under the ribs and then felt my face come apart. I passed out, angry —
CHAPTER 2
The floor kept bucking into me and I thought I was having a nightmare, but then I realized I was inside the truck, a wet heap against the back door. How that place smelled of flowers.
It was the time to go to pieces or to get very calm. It turned out calm, like a flower. Phony and calm like a funeral flower.
I breathed in and out, in and out, feeling very little besides the cold air with the incongruous flower scent. I was too tired to do anything but huddle and breathe.
Maybe I blacked out Somebody said, “What kept you?” and then Rand answered with something filthy, but he wasn’t breathing hard any more. He had talked the way he usually did, very dry, and above all, without showing effort Then he said, “Lend me your comb, Jack.”
There was the man Jack, who sat in back with us and gave Rand a comb, then a driver, and next to that one a man who was holding a flowerbox. He passed back the flower box in a while and when the man with the comb put it down on the floor the box made a heavy thump.
Rand gave the comb back and asked for a cigarette. When he got it he gave it to me and took a second one for himself. He and I smoked while the car rocked back and forth.
“I was worried it was going to freeze,” the driver said.
“That would have been bad,” said Rand.
Nothing else was said for a while and the silence, in contrast to the remarks, showed the tension.
“Maybe two minutes,” said the driver.
Rand nodded and looked at me. “Two minutes,” he said, “and we jump again.”
I nodded as he had. I smoked faster, the way Rand did. If he had lain down and had gone to sleep, I think I would have done the same thing.
The man in back with us opened the flower box and took out a burp gun. He said, “Excuse me,” when he crawled over my legs, and then he sat by the back door. The car slowed, and as the motor became quiet we could hear the sirens in back.
“Which kind is that?” asked the driver, “chow line?”
“That,” said the man with the burp gun, “is a patrol car.”
“I didn’t think it sounded like prison,” and Rand crawled to the back and looked out of the small window.
“We’re going to ditch at the underpass,” said the driver, “so don’t get nervous ‘til then. Everybody know the move from there on?”
If Rand had said yes, I would have said yes, but Rand looked at me and put his cigarette out.
“We’re leaving now. Take your jacket off.”
“Do what?”
“Jacket,” he said, and unbuttoned his.
He was wearing an undershirt but I was naked under the jacket, because of the heat in the laundry.
“So we won’t show so much in the snow,” said Rand.
He took his off and I mine. The truck stopped; the back door swung open.
“Jump, Gallivan,” said the one with the burp gun.
I was sure that Rand hadn’t told him my name. I jumped and the truck took off.
On one side of the street was a railroad embankment and on the other was a big field. The snow was coming and the light was going fast but the field was like a bright, clean sheet. On the other side, in the distance, I could see town again. There were lights from a street front and moving lights, where cars drove along. I could also hear the sirens, more than one now.
Then we ran. Rand went first and I followed, because I couldn’t do anything else. Jump. Gallivan —
At first I could feel the snow touch my bare back and the melting cold where it ran down my skin, but in a while I didn’t feel that any more. I lost one shoe in a mud hole, but that made no difference either. We ran. There were plenty of sirens now and once a red blinker came along the street up ahead. In the low light I could just see the red light, which seemed to be gliding.
“The trees,” Rand called back. He could hardly talk, because of the running.
There were some thin trees to one side, and unkempt bushes. They looked fluffy and fat with snow and when we ran through there it felt like cold hands slapping my skin. On the other side of the bushes, a few yards away, was the street.
“From here we walk,” said Rand.
We walked slowly, the way one does in wind and snow.
There was a man coming along the sidewalk, bent over to keep the snow out of his face, but coming our way.
“If he looks up, or makes a wrong move, hit him,” Rand said.
It was almost dark now and the man coming was just a black shape.
Rand was cursing, but in a calm voice. “About time,” he said, and then, “Gallivan! Come on, get in, Gallivan!”
I turned to the curb and there was a long, low car pulling up. The back door on the near side was open and when it came close, Rand jumped in. The hood was just passing me and the fat tires made a squishing sound in the gutter.
This was no junky truck, like before. This was a big, maybe ten grand limousine, and Rand and I had the back seat to ourselves.
There was a pile of clothes on the seat next to me and Rand was putting a white shirt on. Then he humped himself up to be able to get the prison pants past his rear, and when he had them off, and his shoes and socks too, he got dressed with fresh clothes from the inside out. I noticed he was now wearing a dark blue suit and a silk tie which was almost as light as the shirt. His blondish hair was combed again and he looked very presentable.
I got dressed — mine was tweed, and a blue shirt — and when I put on the knit tie I looked down at the ends of my sleeves. They were long enough. But sleeves were never long enough and I wondered vaguely why the clothes fitted so well.
“You haven’t got any shoes on yet,” Rand said.
“I’m not sure they’ll fit, Rand.”
“I’m not either, but put them on.”
“I’m beginning to think they’ll fit, Rand. Sight unseen, I’m getting the feeling they’re going to fit.”
There wasn’t any question that Rand knew what I was talking about, what I was asking him, but he ignored it.
“All you have to do, Gallivan, is follow along, not look behind you, and act sort of bored. It’s the best way to cover the shakes, looking tired or bored. Besides, it’ll fit the place.”
“Are you having the shakes, Rand?”
“Here we are. You just follow. Put your hands in your pockets and look bored. It’ll go with the tweeds.”
I hadn’t noticed that we had stopped but I saw Rand get out of the car. A man in uniform was giving him a hand.
I got out and saw where we were. I didn’t dare have a reaction but just followed Rand into the hotel.
There were black and white marble columns holding the ceiling high over the lobby. There wasn’t one desk, but two, with the sign saying Reservations over one, and Overnight by the other. I think I counted five
different uniforms on the personnel in the lobby.
We had a reservation, or Rand did, at any rate. He talked a while at the desk and then we took the elevator to the fifth floor, which was perhaps half way up, and went to our room. Two big windows with view, two big beds with expensive covers, two easy chairs, one couch, one liquor cabinet.
“Tip the boy,” said Rand.
I reached into my pocket and found money there. When the boy was gone I locked the door. I went up to Rand, who was by the liquor thing, and didn’t know how to start talking.
Rand said, “We stay here two days. Safer than trying to beat out of town or trying to hide in a hole.”
I went to one of the windows and looked at the night city view.
“I can see the prison from here,” I said.
“Have a drink, seeing you’re out of it.”
He came over with it and I took the glass. I sat down with it, in one of the chairs, because I couldn’t look at the view any more and my legs were giving out. Everything, suddenly, was giving out.
“It’s a switch, coming out,” he kept talking. “Every con knows it. Look at Smitty. Such a switch for him, he crapped out even before he got out.”
“He stayed in,” I said.
“Drink your drink.”
“I should have stayed in.”
“Gallivan, you talk like a dummy.”
“I feel like one. Stuffed with straw.”
“You look it.”
“I am.”
“You’re out, you dumb bastard. Think of that.”
And that tore it I threw the highball glass at the place where Rand was standing.
“I am thinking of that! All the time! Three weeks from now damn you to hell and I was going to be done!”
CHAPTER 3
I got drunk, but that took care of only half of the night It kept me from thinking anything through and it kept me away from Rand, because when I drink like that I’m not sociable. But, as I said, this just lasted half the night.
Rand was sitting under a lamp, his hands folded across his middle, and there was a stare on his face like a print in two colors. Gray and off-gray. I had a liquor cloud in each eyeball.
The light in the bulb looked gray, too, but the big window, when I looked at it, was glassy black, like something without a bottom. I could walk right through there and nothing would stop me, like free fall. There were no bars. And the door was a door, and not bars.
My hand shook and the brown liquor in the glass made small, nervous lights, until I tipped the glass up and drank it clean.
That killed the shakes for the moment It left me stark naked, alone with the reason for which I had been drinking. I put the glass down on the floor and got up, sober now. Fake-sober, maybe, but sober.
“Don’t go out there,” said Rand.
I let go of the door handle, but only to turn around and see him better.
“I don’t know your plans,” I said, “but I know mine.”
“You’re drunk. Don’t go out there.”
“I got three weeks to go and then I’m done with my seven lean years. And not before. No liquor and no big, black view from a clear glass window is making that any different.”
“You walk back to the hole,” he said, “and it won’t be for any three weeks.”
“This way it’ll never be over,” I said.
I tried the door and it was locked.
When I turned back to the room Rand wasn’t sitting any more. He had his hands in his pockets and was coming across, calm enough. It made me feel very excited.
“You going to tell me not to worry?”
“You’re out and shouldn’t worry.”
“Who’s paying for the liquor bill, Rand?”
“You’re my guest Cigarette?”
“No. How come I’m your guest, Rand? I stand here and think about being your guest but I don’t get the proper feeling of gratefulness.”
He was fairly close now, leaning against the wall.
“I told you before, Gallivan. The break cost me a lot of money and a long time to plan. A little thing like a helpless nut, like you, Gallivan, isn’t going to spoil all that for me by walking around loose out there.”
“You sound like a screw. And I thought I was out.”
“It’s cheaper to keep you close,” he said.
“For two days?”
“Yes.”
He lit a cigarette and we both watched it He, because the smoke seemed to interest him, and I, because I was trying to concentrate.
“And then you take off?”
“Yes.”
“Where to?”
“I won’t tell you,” he said to the cigarette. “I’d have to keep you around.”
It struck me that I had no idea what to do after the two days in the hotel, that I had no idea what one does after a prison break, that Rand was, in a manner of speaking, all I had in this world. I had no buddies who came to jam the big gate open with I beams, who brought burp guns in flower boxes, who supplied shuttle service in a ten grand limousine.
“And this gratefulness I feel for you, Rand, this cold dish of tripe and stiff grease, did you figure on that when we walked, hand in hand, out of the big gate and into freedom?”
“What?”
I had a little trouble with my focusing and my imagery but I knew very well what I had in mind. I was getting riled that he didn’t know it.
“This trouble you’re going to have, Rand …”
“What trouble?”
I almost lost my temper. I got confused and began stuttering, but Rand was a patient man, patient with a drunk, though I wasn’t so drunk that I’d lose hold of my point.
“At the gate,” I told him, “I didn’t want out Three weeks, Rand, and why should I ruin that? Three weeks and you had to clip me on the jaw. Why?”
I suddenly had him by the lapels, wishing he would say the right thing, something that would cause me to choke him.
“I wanted out,” he said. “And you were in the way.”
Then I grabbed him by the throat.
“And that’s why I woke up in that ice-cold truck with a smell in it so that every time I see flowers from now on I’ll have to throw up?”
I had had just so much clear-headedness left, and it was gone. I backhanded him over the mouth, then swung the other way, then back again before I let go and he stumbled into the wall.
“Answer me!”
I didn’t feel done though, and because my reach is good and he was still rocking, I slammed him again so his head made a sound on the wall.
After that it got less one-sided.
The difference between me and Rand was, he had a pretty clear and a sensibly circumscribed aim; to keep me off and hold his own. Me? I’m not sure what I was beating down. The big joke, the wrong luck, the crazy laugh, the useless scream that kept balling up in my gullet —
I had him down on the floor and I felt his foot in my stomach but he wasn’t using it yet.
“Why? Why, Rand?”
“Gimme my wind,” he said, his face red and his neck swelling big under my fingers.
“How, Rand? Was it piggyback? Did you and me gallop out of there piggyback, onwards toward freedom and a truck full of posies?”
He kicked me in the stomach and I flew off. But when he jumped up he didn’t come after me. I grabbed his leg and he fell on top of me.
“Because freedom shared is such double bliss, you flower-stinking hood?” I yelled, and I got him on the side of the ear with my elbow so that he jerked over with a dizzy look on his face.
“Because anyone would have done for the job,” he said, quietly. He spat, and it was a little bit pink. “Because if I was going to get hit I was going to be cushioned on the way in by whatever I could haul, drag, or tote on my back for the distance it took from the gate to the truck. Your meat was as good as any, and your meat was the handiest!”
I sat there and was tired suddenly.
“You got any more questions, about why you s
hould be grateful?”
I felt tired. I looked at the blood which made one of his nostrils look big and I shook my head.
“No. I’ve said mine. About how grateful I am.”
“Done?”
“Done, Rand.”
“And the business part, that’s clear too?”
“You need me and I need you.”
“That’s all.”
“I stay on your back and you carry me.”
But he was getting tired of this. He wiped his nose and looked at his shirt. I felt sure he was dying to change it.
“Go back for your three weeks,” he said, “and they’ll give you three hundred. Walk back in there, Gallivan, and I might as well be back there too. Which is not what I’m planning.”
He walked to the bed and took off his jacket. Then he unbuttoned his shirt and looked at the spots on the front.
I got the idea what a reasonable man my boy was. I got the idea what would happen to me if I tried to walk out. If I didn’t get it from him, I’d get it from the powers that be in the bucket.
I was confused, but I wasn’t an idiot.
“To liberty,” and I walked over there to the bottle.
Rand shrugged and took off his shirt.
• • •
The bottle took care of the rest of the night.
In the morning, I saw the blue sky and the sharp sun outside. It had turned colder and there was a lot of snow on the city. I stood at the big window and saw everything clear and neat, like a high-gloss photograph. The prison was in the distance, like a castle with towers, and as meaningless.
I was very hungry and ordered a great feast of a meal, and when it came I managed a little hit of coffee. Then I slept I woke up in the late afternoon, stiff, my joints creaky like wagonwheels. One night and a day to go without problems.
Once Rand left, that would be another matter. But before this could worry me I sat down with a bottle again. It took care of the second night.
On the second day, I had one bun and some toast Then Rand and I smoked.
“This night,” I said, “wasn’t as blind as the other one.”
“You drank more.”
“But I never fell into the pit I kept balancing on the edge all the time, the most godawful edge, afraid to fall and afraid to stay. And dizzy. You know, when I’m dizzy while drinking, then I know the liquor isn’t taking a hold.”