On the Yard

by Malcolm Braly

  He added a number of new words to his list—rodomontade, callipygian, corybantic—and lost himself in the cool delight of Roget’s categories. The work of identification had always been pursued by the few, the elite. Above him on the wall Albert Einstein appeared friendly and a little dull.

  When he returned to his cell that night he had his mind made up that he was going to take a shower. His crotch was beginning to chafe, and his feet and ankles were black. But when the shower bell rang and he stepped out on the tier, naked except for a towel knotted about his waist and his shoes, he found Sanitary Slim leaning on his broom watching him. Lorin wouldn’t have been more frightened if Slim had been a crocodile that had somehow learned to walk erect and use a broom. A strange wild animal, urged by unknown hungers. Lorin retreated into his cell. He went to bed and turned his face to the wall.

  He listened to the sound of the showers until the water was ringing on the empty concrete as the fortunate few, the block workers, took their showers alone. Then silence.

  “Hey, boy. You, boy! You let me shine up your shoes, I’ll give you five packs of smokes. Spit polish and all.”

  Lorin rolled over to stare up at Sanitary Slim’s face—bisected by one of the bars, a raw green eye stared from either half. The split mouth was riven with tension.

  “You’re psychotic,” Lorin said.

  “What’s that you said?”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Don’t you go talking like that. That ain’t no way to talk to a friend. You talk nice to old Slim and he’ll do up your shoes till they sparkle like new money.”

  “No, not now. Not ever. Now you leave me alone.”

  “You ain’t being nice,” Sanitary Slim accused.

  Lorin was silent.

  “How come you don’t never take a shower?” Slim asked.

  “I shower at work.”

  “Ain’t no shower in the ed building,” Slim said triumphantly. “Now what you want to lie for?” Slim’s face grew severe. “Maybe you showering somewhere with your jocker? What you letting him do to you, boy?”

  “I fail to see where my personal habits, whatever they might be, are any of your concern.”

  “Punk!” Slim hissed. “Smart-talking little punk. You take keer, boy, you hear me? You just take keer.”

  That night Sanitary Slim dreamed he was being cut up by huge knives that hissed all around him. The light flashed from the blades as they beat like the wings of metal birds. His blood boiled out. Corrupt and warm it rose around him until he awoke choking on his own saliva. Lying there in the dark he conceived the first of his plans to get Lorin’s shoes.

  8

  MANNING spent his first days in prison submitting himself to various measurements. He had deliberately constructed a mood of passivity with which he endured this. In a room still titled Bertillon they had recorded his height, weight, body build, coloring, distinguishing scars or tattoos (he had none) and taken six sets of fingerprints. The next day he was given a thorough physical examination, pronounced fit, and certified for “light to medium heavy work.” The following day he was given a battery of tests—AGCT, Kuder Preference, MMPI, and many others. Finally he was interviewed by a psychologist.

  The psychologist kept Manning waiting for an hour and fifteen minutes. He sat on a narrow white bench in the hospital corridor watching the doctor through the glass windows of his office. He appeared to be deeply involved in another interview. From where he was sitting Manning could see only the inmate’s back, but he saw the doctor clearly enough to make out the thin black hair sketched on his white skull, as even as ruled lines, and the foreshortened ellipses of his glasses. The name on the door was A.R. Smith.

  A few feet further down the corridor an old man was lying in an oxygen tent. The gently pulsing mask covered the lower part of his face, and his eyes were closed. One bone-thin arm hung over the edge of the bed, the hand stirred slowly. A very tall blond nurse came to take his pulse. When she looked up her eyes were cool, inward, and her face seemed as small as a child’s. She left and in a moment was back with two orderlies who wheeled the old man away. As they passed Manning, the patient’s eyes opened, but his expression didn’t change in any way.

  The coming interview made Manning nervous. He counseled himself against hope, but Juleson had told him the psychiatric department’s recommendation would weigh heavily in his case and he was shading his acceptance of imprisonment by hoping it might still somehow be dissolved. More than he was caught in concrete and steel, he was caught in words and paper, and someone might nullify these legal charms, someone who could look into him and recognize his essential guiltlessness. Perhaps A.R. Smith. Manning combed his hair, and wiped his hands on a handkerchief. Once he looked up to find the psychologist’s eyes on him.

  When the inmate already being interviewed rose to leave the office, Manning was surprised to discover it was the boy called Stick. He hadn’t seen Stick at all since they had led him from Receiving and Release. Now he was smiling at the doctor, talking with considerable animation. But a moment later when he passed Manning on his way out of the hospital, Stick’s face had gone dead. He walked swiftly, affecting a sort of glide Manning had noted in some of the younger inmates, and as he continued down the corridor he flipped up his shirt collar. If he had noticed Manning at all he had decided to ignore him.

  When he was finally called himself, Manning found his hand so sweaty he had difficulty turning the doorknob. He entered the office wiping his palms on his pants.

  “Willard Manning?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sit down, Mr. Manning.”

  The small office was decorated with reproductions of paintings, clipped from some magazine like Life, mounted on sheets of colored paper. Otherwise it was featureless. A desk and two chairs. From A.R. Smith, Manning received an impression of neatness and very little else. Many another small, balding man might have worn a mustache and heavyrimmed glasses, but Smith was clean-shaven and his glasses were as functional as a tool. A manila folder was open on the desk in front of him and Manning was able to see that the contents were charts and duplicated reports, but he was unable to read any of it. His own last name was neatly lettered on the tab, followed by the number they had assigned him.

  “Are you familiar with the term pedophile?” Smith asked without looking up.

  “No, sir.”

  “This is a term we use to describe a person who finds his love objects among immature children—”

  Manning winced, and Smith, who looked up just at that moment to catch the involuntary spasm, continued evenly, “Would you say such a term described you?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “The probation report describes your stepdaughter as appearing younger than her true age.”

  Manning remained silent. Smith had not quite turned his statement into a question. Now he persisted. “Is that an accurate description.”

  “She’s a delicate girl—small.”

  “Small in what way?”

  “Just small. She’s a little girl, but very active, healthy.”

  “Small for her age?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is her age?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “A small, delicate girl who looks younger than her fifteen years,” Smith stated as if he were making an entry in a ledger —his voice was free of challenge or judgment.

  Manning heard the door open behind him and he turned to see a civilian, holding several memos.

  “Excuse me,” he said to Smith, “I didn’t realize you were busy.”

  “One moment, Dr. Erlenmeyer, I have something here ...”

  Smith opened his desk drawer and removed a folder identical to Manning’s, except it was lettered Wilson. He handed the folder to Erlenmeyer and asked, “Have you encountered this young man? The one they call Stick?”

  “Briefly. When he was testing.”

  “Would you spend an hour with him? There is something about him—” Smith glanced at Mannin
g. “Something disturbing. He’s too cooperative in light of the probationary report.”

  Erlenmeyer looked up from the folder with an expression of interest. “He apparently has bright-normal intelligence and I would have guessed dull-normal.”

  “Yes, yes, he’s alert. You will see him?”

  “Of course, if you think it advisable.”

  Erlenmeyer withdrew quietly, and Smith shifted back to Manning, his expression preoccupied for a moment. Then his attention returned. “Now, Mr. Manning, would you tell me how you feel about the crime for which the state has imprisoned you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You feel something, though?”

  “Yes, yes—of course.”

  “Why do you say, ‘of course’?”

  Nothing came to Manning’s mind. It was as if his brain were disabled. He sat silent, sensing the color rising in his face for Smith to note and interpret. Something had to be said.

  “It was an impulse.”

  “An impulse?”

  “That night, what I did. It was an impulse.”

  Smith rolled back in his swivel chair, and Manning noticed the dark hair growing deep in his nostrils. “An impulse,” Smith repeated, and Manning became aware of how keen this man’s eyes were, a pale blue that now flashed with a cool light as if just turned on. “Suppose you try to tell me just what happened and how you felt about it at the time?”

  Again Manning was unable to make any immediate answer and he sensed his silence stretching like a fissure in the earth between them. He found himself trying to remember why it had been necessary to use the upstairs bathroom. He hadn’t intended to climb the stairs or he would have put on his slippers. But at the door of the downstairs toilet he remembered that the water flushing in the bowl sometimes woke Pat up.

  “I got up to go to the bathroom—sometime after mid-night, I guess—and on the way back I looked in on Debbie. I wasn’t thinking anything. I don’t remember thinking anything at all ...”

  The wedge of amber light from the small bulb at the head of the hall had spread like a path across the carpet exposing one saddle oxford with a white sock crumpled in it, and climbed the edge of the bed to discover her face and shoulder. Her blankets had slipped to the side. She stirred.

  —Debbie, he called softly. Are you all right?

  When she didn’t answer he thought perhaps he should cover her shoulders. The house had grown cold.

  “I touched her,” he told Smith, “and then I couldn’t let go.”

  “You don’t mean that literally?”

  “That was the feeling I had.”

  “Did she wake up?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She didn’t say anthing? Make any outcry? Ask you to stop?”

  “No. I thought she might be asleep, even though that didn’t seem possible, and then—”

  “Then what?”

  “She responded,” Manning said defiantly. “At the end she responded.”

  Smith nodded. “I see.”

  And Manning felt like a sick animal, its teeth bared in this last shred of corrupt male vanity. Still it was true. He had been both shocked and delighted at the vigor of her response.

  “How had she acted around you previous to this?” Smith asked.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Was she affectionate?”

  “Yes, she was always an affectionate girl, very affectionate. Even after she began to ... to mature.”

  “And how old was the girl when you married her mother?”

  “She turned eleven the week after we were married.”

  “Did you think of her as your own daughter?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Nothing like what?”

  “As if she were my own daughter. Nothing like that. I knew I was attracted to her. She used to come to breakfast in her robe, and I wouldn’t mean to look, I’d tell myself not to, and then I would be looking. I suppose I have a poor character. Her mother would tell her to put some clothes on and they’d start arguing, and Pat would say, Your father this, or your father that, and Debbie would say, But Will’s not my father. Then Pat would really blow up when she called me Will and Debbie would start crying, which I hated to see. It was beginning to be bad. Other times when I was passing her room, the door would be half open and I’d see her in her slip or less. She was so beautiful, so young, and sometimes it would come to me that in a few years at most she’d be gone, and Pat and I would be alone, alone and growing older.”

  Manning paused and Smith asked, “Were your relations with your wife normal?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “How would I know? She wasn’t very interested, but I was never much of a man with women. I didn’t get married until I was forty. Before that, well, I had a girl now and then. A few times I paid for it—particularly in the service. I think Pat wanted a home, and she was no young woman herself. She wanted to get married and I thought if I was ever going to marry I’d better do it soon. At first she was warm to me, but she cooled off and then it was one thing or another. I stopped asking her because I didn’t like to hear her excuses.”

  “It was your wife who reported you to the police, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, she did that. I told her myself. It wasn’t Debbie. I told her. I’m not sure just why.”

  “Were you afraid the girl would tell her?”

  “No, Debbie would never have told her. I told her a few nights later when we were in bed. I’d touched her and she’d turned away, and I found myself telling her. I couldn’t see her face, but she didn’t seem too upset. She said that she’d rather talk about it in the morning, but the next morning neither of us mentioned it, and then that afternoon they came to the firm and arrested me.”

  “Were you surprised when the police came for you?”

  “Not really. It was almost as if I had been expecting them. They told me I’d have to come with them, and I said, All right.”

  “All right? Did you mean that all had been put right?”

  Manning frowned, “I don’t know ...”

  Smith opened his desk drawer and took out a cigarette. He looked up to find Manning watching him. “Would you care for a cigarette?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Smith removed another cigarette. Manning couldn’t tell whether they were in a pack or loose in the drawer. They lit up and Smith took several drags like a thirsty man drinking, the cigarette held between the tips of his thumb and forefinger. He smoked awkwardly like a boy.

  “You were saying earlier that you acted on impulse,” he continued. “Do you still believe this?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You hadn’t thought of your stepdaughter in this way?”

  “No, not quite like that. I’d kept it out of my mind. Sometimes the thought would come to me, but I’d be disgusted with myself and push it aside.”

  “Now, the girl, what do you think she felt?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you think about going to her room again?”

  Manning looked away to answer, “Yes, I thought about it.”

  “Would she have received you again?”

  “I had that feeling.”

  “That she would have been willing to take her mother’s place in your life?”

  “At the risk of offending you, Doctor, she seemed to get a great deal more out of it than her mother ever did.”

  “That doesn’t offend me. The situation is a common one, it only becomes uncommon when it becomes an accomplished fact and also a criminal matter. How do you feel about having been sent here?”

  Manning shrugged, “I don’t know ...”

  “This is a real thing,” Smith observed mildly, watching his pencil doodle a frame for the game of tic-tac-toe. “You must feel something about it?”

  “It isn’t that—well, naturally, I’m upset.”

  “Why do you say ‘naturally’? We have men here, many more than
you might think, who aren’t upset at all. They—” Smith penciled a fat zero in the center of the tic-tac-toe frame. “They like it here.”

  Manning looked doubtful. “I’ve heard some kidding. The same as in the service when we used to say someone had found a home in the Army, but this is different.”

  “How is it different?”

  “The whole feeling’s different.”

  “You’re talking about your own feelings of guilt, but suppose you didn’t feel guilt, then how would it be different?”

  “You still have more freedom in the Army. We had passes, furloughs.”

  “The professional inmate takes his paroles as furloughs. Perhaps he doesn’t always realize this, but he leaves with some money and a fresh charge of energy, and when his money is gone in a month or two he does some desperate or foolish thing and finds his way back ... to his outfit. But that is not you. Mr. Manning, how do you plan to spend your time here?”

  “I’ll study. Try to equip myself to make a new life whenever I’m freed.”

  “You don’t sound too hopeful.”

  “I’m not too hopeful, but I don’t know anything else to do.”

  “I’d like you to think about entering one of our therapy groups. It may not help you, but it can’t do you any harm.”

  Manning began to shake his head, but Smith cut him off, “I’m afraid it’s not voluntary. I sometimes give that impression because I feel participation should be voluntary if it is to have the best chance of proving effective, but men with offenses such as yours are required to attend by the parole board, and any parole consideration is contingent on such therapy, though not necessarily on the recommendations of your therapist. There are several groups functioning at the moment. One that I share with Dr. Erlenmeyer and others conducted by Mr. Hamblin and Mr. O’Malley. Offhand, I should think you’ll be assigned to the group conducted by Dr. Erlenmeyer and myself since it is currently the smallest.”

  Smith closed the folder. He smiled faintly and said, “I hope things go well for you—as well as they can at this point.”