Henry read these and returned them to the sack with the others. He rolled the sack closed at the top, and he propped it at the foot of his bunk. With his blankets he closed himself off for a time and listened to Nat listening to the television and to Leonard’s mumbling progress through his long, troubled, artificial sleep. Henry Brusett tried to make his way in his mind up a mountainside, to the side of a bursting creek; he tried to think of himself with any kind of tool in hand, tried to recall the scent of dawn, but he could not for all his wanting it, needing it, bring any of that back. Once he’d had a purpose, and he’d fit that purpose, and that had been his luck. His memory worked best, though, when he was remembering where he’d been wrong. Henry opened the sack with the letters again, but withdrew from it only his glasses. He rolled the sack very tightly then and set it again at the head of his bunk. He popped the lenses out of the glasses. It was a long while since he’d asked much of his thumbs, and it pleased him to see they were still strong. Having decided the lenses were not worth trying to sharpen, he slipped them in his pocket.
There was a camera aimed at the picnic table, and a camera for every corner of the barracks cell, and one for every other cell in the jail, but prisoners here came to know very quickly that these were blind, that no one was watching. There had been a budget shortfall many years earlier, and since then no one had been watching, and though the eternally-lit jail had originally come about because of the cameras, when the cameras blinked out, the lights stayed on. A policy had been established. Prisoners here would live under forty-watt bulbs, and if they wanted the comfort of darkness, they could get it behind their blankets, or they could close their eyes.
Henry Brusett placed his glasses on the floor and crushed the heavy wire frame beneath his heel. He rolled the resulting tangle ninety degrees on the floor, and he crushed it again. He twisted the earpieces away from the mangled frame, and then twisted them back onto it, reinforcing the weak center, the nose piece. There was a badly welded gusset plate in the picnic table, and a gap forming a small V, and using this as a vice, Henry twisted tight his crudely braided wire and brought the whole assembly to a sharp, barbed point. He’d made himself a dirk, but a short one.
“Remember her?” Nat said, talking equally to Henry Brusett and to the television. “Remember that girl? She always plays the ditz.”
“Why don’t you go lay down?” Henry told him.
“Lie down?”
“Yeah, if you don’t mind.”
“I’m . . . what is . . . what’s that?”
“These things can cost up to twelve bucks apiece,” Henry said, “even a half-decent pair. I had ’em laying around all over my house. But, yeah, you better lay down. Just for a little bit.”
“I . . . well, whatever you say, Henry. You’re the man tonight. But I thought maybe we’d stay up and, I don’t know, ‘reminisce’ wouldn’t be the right word, but . . . shoot the shit. I know you’re not too social, but tonight of all nights, I’d like to share. How you must feel. You must feel like a million dollars. Like you’ve won everything back. Your good name, your freedom. Wow. Don’t blame me if I envy you, man, especially under the, under the circumstances. I promise—no more crying, either. Not until you leave. Why bum you out?”
“Why don’t you lay down? Get back in your bunk and lay down.”
Nat could not recall him previously asking anyone for anything. “Sure, Henry, I guess I can . . . oh sure, if I turn like . . . I can watch about as well from right here. Quite comfortable. Chat with you, too. This is not too bad at . . . Henry,” he said, “Henry,” he said. “No.”
Just over two inches of tangled wire came out of Henry Brusett’s fist, all the blade he could make of it, and there were only just the few places where his tool might suffice. He struck at Leonard’s neck, hoping for the big artery, but Leonard, sensitive above all things to the coming blow, turned from it as it fell, and the dirk lodged in a crease between two heavy sheaves of muscle, and then an adrenal gland like a rotten, bursting melon brought Leonard up off his bed and out of his long funk, and a single thrust of his heel broke three of Henry’s ribs and drove him to the far wall where Leonard caught him, pinned him, pinned his arms to his sides and lifted him off his feet. “Hey wait a minute,” said Nat from where he still lay. “Come on. Come on, you guys.”
Leonard squeezed, and as he squeezed he rammed Henry’s nose with his forehead, and Henry’s nose became granular and soft and wet. He swallowed very fast so that he wouldn’t drown in his own blood and snot. Leonard rammed him again, and Henry tasted his chalky teeth. He saw blood beginning to well around the mangled metal still jammed in Leonard’s neck and, just when Henry Brusett’s legs were at long last numb, he saw that Leonard was gathering himself for another effort, and so he seized the hideous dirk in his broken teeth, and he twisted and he pushed at it until a thrilling new pain shot through his teeth and a wet warmth surged onto him. Leonard shuddered.
They were on the floor. Leonard had dropped him.
Henry Brusett heard the rattling gasps and could not distinguish his own from Leonard’s. He could not be very happy about it, but he no longer felt any pain at all.
Later, Nat would tell them that he had screamed and screamed and no one had come. Later, Nat would ask them to consider that if the county couldn’t do a little more to ensure inmate safety, should the county be holding prisoners at all? He was sure he’d been yelling almost the whole time it was happening. It seemed like it had taken hours for them to go down, and he was pretty certain he must have yelled at hearing bone break, really loud, but no one came to help. Nat said that when they fell, they fell on their backs and lay parallel on the floor. He’d gotten off his bunk then and gone to them to see if anything might be done, and as he stood over them he felt Leonard’s blood lap his naked toe, and he screamed, he knew for sure he’d screamed then, and still no one came, and that’s when he understood he’d be watching them die, and that’s when he felt he must owe each of them a little something for their dying. Any obligation was strange to the cheat, but they were leaving now, and it had fallen to him to watch them go. They lay face to face, not two feet apart, and he could see that they wished to speak to each other, their eyes were full of that intention, but their mouths could shape only gurgling blood and pink bubbles. Nat, for once in his life, was not dying, and he felt he owed these men something for it, and he wished he might translate for them so that at least they could tell each other whatever needed to be said. But what could that possibly be?
The Other Shoe Page 30