On the Yard

by Malcolm Braly

  Most of the big yard thought it was probably some rapist turned hank freak who was cutting the sex scenes from the L and L books, that somewhere in one of the blocks there was a hidden scrapbook filled with the erotic passages removed from the hundreds of novels found mutilated, and nightly the hank freak would read of one coupling after another while he masturbated.

  It was a natural theory to evolve since many of them had done the same thing—reading late at night, with their cell partners already asleep, they might come on a vivid cartoon of perfect sexual encounter, no fumblings, no failures, no fizzles, and their hips would unconsciously begin to work in sympathetic rhythm until they seemed to join the glorious phantoms rolling like colored shadows cast on the page below, and labored far above them until they spilled their own strength across the page like a solitary god who, unable to form the conception, might still know loneliness, and even in the rush of final white light sense his purpose pushing unconnected against the emptiness around him.

  But Chilly didn’t support the hank freak theory—on one count of evidence—the work was too neatly done, it was surgical, and he couldn’t picture the hank freak taking the pains. No, Chilly thought, here was the hand of a puritan, a censor, working with the antiseptic precision of righteousness.

  Chilly was still watching Juleson, and his restless displeasure had found a focus. Most of the things Chilly hated were safe from his anger, but here was this superior fool walking the yard like he was no part of it. Chilly walked over to the edge of the rain shed, and when Juleson went by again he called him. Then he worked his way back to the bakery door, aware that Juleson was about twenty feet behind him. He turned around to catch Juleson’s expression of uneasiness, and he felt, without seeing them, that Nunn and Society Red had automatically moved to back him up.

  “I’ve been meaning to see you, Oberholster—” Juleson began.

  “You got my stuff?” Chilly asked, automatically falling into the tone and vocabulary he used for these exchanges.

  “Well, no, as a matter of fact I haven’t. That’s what I wanted to see you about.”

  “How would it do you any good to see me if you ain’t got my stuff? If you can’t come up, I’m the last guy you want to see. You didn’t draw?”

  “No. I’m sorry. I was expecting some money for my birthday, but it ... it hasn’t come yet.”

  “You know how many times I hear that?”

  “This is the first time you’ve heard it from me.”

  “All right, when do I get my stuff?”

  Juleson shrugged, meeting Chilly’s level gaze with difficulty. “To be honest with you, I don’t know.”

  “You be honest. That’s a keen virtue. But I can’t smoke it, and I can’t pay the people I owe with it. How much you figure you’ll owe me next month?”

  “Why fifteen packs, a box at three-for-two. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “No, that isn’t right,” Chilly repeated with satirical patience. “You had one month to get up fifteen packs. Now it’s twenty-two packs. Another month and it’s three cartons. Are you following me?”

  Juleson took a half-step back, his face flushing. “Nothing was said—” He paused and then continued in a more reasonable tone, “You’re defeating your own purpose. I can probably scrape together fifteen packs.”

  “What do you know about my purpose?” Chilly asked. “You pick up mind reading out of one of them books of yours?”

  “I assume you want your cigarettes back.”

  “I’m going to get my cigarettes back. If it were a gambling debt, some bet you lost, I might lighten up. I write off a lot of bad paper. But I handed you a box cash, three-for-two, and you’re no fish, you know three-for-two figures every month, or did you think you were dealing with the Bank of America? Now I want my stuff, or I’m going to get in your ass.”

  Juleson started to walk away. He turned after a few steps. “I’ll pay you the fifteen packs I agreed to pay you as soon as I can.”

  “You’ll pay what I think you owe, not what you think you owe, and I’m telling you like it is. You got any weird ideas you can handle me, forget it, I don’t bother with collecting. That’s Gasolino’s speciality.”

  Juleson was clearly growing angry. “Why do you have to pull this sort of thing?” he asked. “You’re not one of these brainless assholes. You surely don’t need the cigarettes. What do you get out of it?”

  Chilly turned to Nunn. “You notice how this joint is beginning to crawl with amateur psychs?”

  Nunn smiled tightly. “As one of the brainless assholes I hope you don’t expect an intelligent comment from me.”

  Society Red started laughing, like water collapsing deep in a drain.

  Juleson stared at them white-faced. “Sure, I know. Big joke. Catch some guy short and scare him blue just to be getting a little of your own back. But sometime you’re going to pick the wrong man, and you’ll be the one who ends up with the shank in him. Then I’ll do the laughing, me and everyone else who tries to do his own time and get along without turning this place into a jungle.”

  Chilly had listened to this, his face quiet and still, but now he stepped forward and began to tap the air an inch from Juleson’s chest. “Now, you listen. You’re digging a hole with your own fat jaw. You want to pay fifteen packs? All right, you got one week to come up with fifteen packs. That’s it. Otherwise I turn the debt over to Gasolino. Now, get in the wind.”

  They watched Juleson walk away. “There goes a mad sucker,” Nunn said.

  “What’s he going to do?” Chilly wanted to know. “Write a letter to the warden?”

  “You really going to put Gasolino on him?”

  “I didn’t creep up and slip that box in his back pocket. He came and asked for it.”

  “Yeah, but a lousy box?”

  “It’s principle.” Chilly smiled thinly. “That’s something he’d understand.”

  They finally booked a bet. A man whose hair and jacket looked like animal pelt, so solidly were they matted with the white cotton lint from the textile mill, stopped to bet a single pack on the outcome of the Cotton Bowl game. Then feeling around in his jacket pocket he came out with a cigarette holder that appeared to have been made from a toothbrush handle and some scraps of abalone.

  “Three packs and it’s yours,” he said.

  “I’d give three packs to get rid of it,” Nunn said.

  Society Red took the cigarette holder and waved it with his notion of elegance. “Pretty smooth pimp stick for only three packs.”

  “Red,” Chilly said, “you’d go for fried ice cream.” He took the holder from Red and returned it. “We make book. We don’t collect handicraft.”

  The man studied the cigarette holder for a minute, then looked up doubtfully. “Think she’s worth three packs? I give two.”

  “Old buddy,” Nunn said, “they saw you coming.”

  “Yeah, I’m beginning to think so.”

  The man moved on.

  “Where do fools like that come from?” Chilly asked in a tone that didn’t suppose an answer.

  Nunn answered anyway. “From all over. He figures he’s going to work his way out of the textile mill and go into the King business.”

  “What was wrong with him?” Red wanted to know.

  “He was taking up space,” Nunn said.

  “Your mammy takes up space.”

  “Knock it off,” Chilly ordered. “Give mom a rest.”

  After this they fell silent again. They would have preferred to pass the time talking, but for a while each of them before saying anything considered that he already knew exactly what the others would find to answer to it, and what he would say to that ... and it didn’t seem worth the effort.

  Chilly saw Charlie Wong, the warden’s houseboy, coming down the yard in a yellow slicker, probably making a run on the hospital. On impulse, Chilly stepped out and intercepted him.

  “Hey, Wong, I want to talk to you.”

  Wong nodded, smiling, his dark eyes bl
and as he watched Chilly with a show of polite interest.

  “I hear you’re getting some pot in,” Chilly said.

  “Pot?” Wong grinned. “You catch cook. Plenty pot.”

  “Marijuana,” Chilly said.

  “Ah, velly bad!” Wong made a swift clawing gesture across his forehead. “Plenty devils.”

  “You can drop the Oriental Uncle Tom,” Chilly said quietly. “I don’t buy it.”

  Wong drew back and studied Chilly alertly. “Uncle Tom?” he asked.

  “I’ve talked to someone who knew you on the streets.”

  Wong smiled thinly, his eyes suddenly wise. “And you would expose this poor Chinaboy?”

  “Did anyone ever tell you I was a cop?”

  “Hardly.”

  “What about the pot? I’d like a piece of it.”

  “Have you ever heard of a Chinese smoking pot?”

  “My information was pretty good.”

  “I hope you didn’t pay for it. I never bring anything through that gate, and I don’t intend to start.”

  “Is that the way you want to play it?” Chilly asked.

  “It’s the way it is.”

  “All right,” Chilly said mildly. “It was just a notion I had.”

  Wong’s eyes went bland again like a picture going out of focus, and he reached out to tap his finger against the air a half-inch from Chilly’s forehead. “Many wheels,” he said. “You catch plenty notions.”

  Chilly smiled. “You’re something else, Chinaman.”

  Wong gave a slight bow and turned to continue down the yard, while Chilly walked thoughtfully towards Nunn and Red.

  “What’ve you got going with that nut?” Nunn asked.

  “Nothing. He’s in a good spot to hear things.”

  “Yeah, if you could understand the sucker when he tried to repeat it.”

  “That’s a problem,” Chilly said without emphasis.

  The crowd under the rain shed began to shift and there was the sudden silence they all knew too well. They turned to watch a pair of hospital attendants pushing a gurney through a corridor forming for them in the crowd. They moved at a quick trot. The inmate stretched out on the gurney trailed his hand, wet with blood, over the side. Red stains like a trail of irregular poker chips marked the path the gurney had taken.

  “Another cutting,” Nunn said. “That’s three just since I came back.”

  “It’s gang action,” Chilly said. “They’re not looking to kill. They want to make their mark, get blood on their knife. The Chingaderos. The No Names. The Flower Street Gang. Someone was telling me a new bunch was beginning to come in—the Vampires.”

  “They got their mark all over the joint,” Red said. “Must be a hundred of them kids to draw all them bastards with fangs.”

  “Shit, there’s three of them,” Nunn said. “Two little punks and a duke, who could probably cause some trouble if he wasn’t a stone nut. Big, tall, skinny-assed kid, who thinks he’s Genghis Khan, or something. They were in the county with me, came to the joint on the same chain. The nut made the shelf before he even got inside the walls. He didn’t want to flash his prune for a skin shake.”

  “That’s what we need here,” Chilly said. “More nuts.”

  Again they fell silent. This time it was almost ten minutes before anyone spoke, then Chilly said, in his educational voice, “The problem for today is—why does shit stink?”

  “Who says it does?” Nunn offered in immediate contrary motion.

  “That Lola Peterson,” Red said, naming a starlet in the last movie they’d seen. “I’ll bet hers don’t stink.”

  “I’m serious,” Chilly said, “Why does it?”

  “It just does.”

  “Nothing just happens,” Chilly began to educate. “There’s always causation.”

  “Chilly, you’ve been reading again.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt you none. Maybe you could figure how to stay out of these joints. How many times have I seen you come back? Three?”

  “Two,” Nunn said, half angry. “Just two.”

  “Just two,” Chilly repeated mockingly.

  “Two times is nothing,” Red said. “This is my fourth fall.”

  “Radio, Red,” Chilly ordered. “You’re a special case, all heart and no brain, but Nunn here he’s supposed to be a schooled hustler, down with all games, so how come he lets a bunch of numb-brained fuzz catch him time after time?”

  Nunn was hot. “Because some lousy rat mother fucker always splits on me. That’s why. Every other stud you meet on the streets belongs to the bottles. They got four snitches on each block. Every morning the heat knows what you had for dinner the night before, whether or not you took a crap and how many times you made it with your old lady. Studs who used to be solid regulars are out there giving up their own mothers, and that ain’t—”

  “Hang up,” Chilly broke in. “Hang up a minute. Say that’s all true, you still knew it when you hit the streets last time. You were down with it. If a snitch gets close enough to turn you that’s still your goof. Snitches snitch just like snakes bite and you’re still left to do your own dying. The point is, they’re whipping you to death out there and you’re not even trying to figure out why. If you got your ass torn up every time you shot craps, after a while you’d put craps down and maybe try low ball. Now you tell me why you haven’t got sense enough to do at least that much when you’re out there on those streets?”

  “All right, Chilly,” Nunn said, no longer angry. “You made your point. You win, man, as usual. Why does shit stink?”

  For a moment Chilly stared at his friend. Then he smiled.

  “That’s easy. It stinks so you won’t eat it.”

  12

  JULESON spent a bad week. The Christmas music disturbed him. Hearing it on the big yard was somehow like watching very old people dressed up for a tea party in the terminal ward. Christmas itself, an institutional holiday, he spent in the cell reading. He had long schooled himself to indifference, but he had been aware that Manning was suffering—the holiday season brought a cruel focus to the sense of loss. Christmas dinner was the best meal of the year and he would have ordinarily enjoyed it if anxiety hadn’t taken the edge from his appetite. That evening the Salvation Army had distributed bags of hard candy, nuts, a banana, an orange, and an apple, and in each bag was a wallet-sized calendar.

  Juleson had held the calendar and tried to persuade himself that one of the blocks of numbers that made up the new year was the date on which he would leave the prison—”go home” was the universal expression, but this expression seemed as fierce a mockery to Juleson as the carols piped over the institution radio.

  Now the week of grace was gone, and nothing had worked out. He had never been able to convince himself that it would. First, he had always been reluctant to discuss his troubles with anyone, a habit he had formed in the county homes where he had spent his youth, and, secondly, it would have to be a very good friend to loan him fifteen packs to pay a debt already gone bad against no better security than he was able to offer. He knew no one that well. He had made it a point to know no one that well. Now, when it was probably too late, life was instructing him that it was always dangerous to stand outside your community.

  He had been able to borrow five packs from a friend in the library. They had sat on the shelf against the day he could add ten more. Last night, knowing he would fail, he had impulsively opened one of the packs and shared it with Manning. Now as he stood the big yard waiting for the gate to open he was smoking one of the cigarettes and there were two more loose in his shirt pocket. He stared at the butt in his hand and wondered grimly at the kind of man he was becoming.

  He had passed Oberholster, moments before. Nothing had been said, but he had felt Oberholster’s eyes on him and he knew that sometime in the hour before the gate was opened he would have to talk to Oberholster. He had tried to dismiss Chilly Willy as a shallow poser who was just playing a part, but he was unable to convince himself. Whatev
er Chilly was, he was deeper than that, even though what he did made no sense.

  Juleson didn’t see Gasolino often. Looking at Gasolino was like watching a gun or a grenade—he was nothing until he was used—but like a mortal weapon Gasolino had a deadly aura, rendered grotesque by his constant smile. A grinning knife. Juleson shuddered. The thought of a knife unnerved him. He had faced bullets with nothing of the same terror. A bullet was somehow impersonal, a knife intimate.

  He found himself staring into the rain-pocked water flowing slowly through the concrete gutters that drained the yard. A wadded candy wrapper turned slowly, and a few burnt-head paper matches clustered on the dull current like a small school of blind fish. A number of cigarette butts were disintegrating—none exceeded an inch in length.

  What a mindless indulgence. What had he once paid for a carton of cigarettes? He discovered it was an effort to remember—an effort that required a conscious sharpening of the focus over that whole span of his life preceding his first night in jail. Though the details of that night were still sharply etched, the events of even the week before were beginning to fade and blur like an ancient photograph.

  Two dollars something—two and a quarter? As he stood trying to remember, still staring into the gutter, he seemed to relive a moment where he saw a fresh carton of Camels slide across the smoothly worn and darkened wood of a grocery counter.