On the Yard

by Malcolm Braly

  “It don’t exactly knock me out, but it doesn’t shake me either. There’s a point you keep sloughing aside, Red—” Chilly had fallen back on his educational voice, and he paused to make sure he had Nunn’s attention as well. “We’re at war. The bulls are the army of the country we’ve set ourselves against. Now you may not like it, but it doesn’t shake you to discover the enemy carries guns. You see?”

  “Yeah,” Red said.

  “You see, but you don’t like it.”

  “They’ll shake everything up, Chilly, and it’s been going good.”

  “If you’re going to get hooked on quiet routine, you might as well grab that lunch bucket because there ain’t no good reason for you to be hunching around here in blues with a number on your ass. There’s many a place more comfortable than jail if you’re willing to pay the price to stay in them. Myself, I never felt like joining them.”

  “He’s got you figured for five tampings this last year,” Red said.

  “He’s giving me a little more credit than I deserve.”

  “That’s what I tried to tell him.”

  Nunn spoke up to ask, “Why do you think he took the trouble to send you a warning?”

  “I think he’s trying to play with my head. He’s no knight to send a goddam challenge. If he had us by the balls he’d start pulling. No, he’s putting a little shit in the game—psychological warfare.”

  “You think that’s it, Chilly?” Red asked.

  “That’s the way it looks.”

  “He told me I’d better cut you loose.”

  Chilly looked severe. “And?”

  “I ain’t going to do it. Hell, I wouldn’t do that if they were going to shoot me in the morning.”

  Nunn smiled, his eyes satirical and faintly bitter. “That’s a little more than Chilly requires of you.”

  “Radio,” Chilly said. He slapped Red lightly on the arm. “You’re all heart,” he told him. Red smiled awkwardly, feeling a warmth of affection for Chilly he would never be able to express. He listened, for once without jealousy, as Chilly and Nunn decided the practical measures they would take in face of the captain’s warning. They decided to cool the trade in nasal inhalers for the time being. There was a stock of approximately eighty tubes stashed in the gym and these would remain frozen except for their own use and the use of important friends. But they would continue to make book. If they didn’t someone else would pick up their action and it wouldn’t be as easy to get back as it would be to lose. Since with the death of Gasolino they had lost their slack man, it wasn’t necessary to make any decision as to further collections. Until a new slack man turned up they were grounded, which was just as well.

  These matters decided, they fell into the idle conversation of a thousand other days, and began to argue as to who was the greatest fighter, pound for pound, of all times. Chilly liked Sugar Ray Robinson and Nunn liked Harry Greb. The argument meant nothing. None of them had seen either fighter in action. They loosely quoted what they had read of one authority or another, and Nunn defended for Greb because he denied the present, the time of his own life. Everything good had faded from the world at his birth.

  14

  WHEN CHILLY made the four o’clock lockup, he found another man in his cell. For a moment he thought he had caught a cell robber—then he saw the upper bunk made up, and the immediate shiver of revulsion he experienced was similar to the sensation he felt when he was touched by someone he disliked. It flickered briefly through his nerves like the cold chemical glow of phosphorescence, and gave way to an equally cold anger. He paid a box a month to the head inmate psych clerk to see that his cell card was stamped: To Be Housed Alone. Fat Abbott wasn’t taking care of business.

  When Chilly looked at his new cell partner it was as he would examine a nuisance that needed to be fixed—a plugged sink, a toilet that wouldn’t flush. A brat, Chilly thought, and so firmly fixed was his habit of thinking of himself as older than he was it never occurred to him that this “kid” was, at most, only a year or two younger. The boy was small, slender, good-looking, and his hair and eyes were dark, so dark they made his complexion seem pale. He stood awkwardly, obviously embarrassed to be in another man’s home, and reluctant to appear comfortable until some form of permission had been granted.

  “Hello,” he said as Chilly entered the cell. “I guess I’m going to be your cell buddy.” Chilly didn’t answer and the boy continued defensively, “They told me to come in here.”

  “It looks that way,” Chilly said.

  The boy touched the top bunk. “This bed was empty.”

  “That’s all right, but don’t get settled down up there.”

  They stood the bars for count. To Chilly, with the boy beside him, the cell suddenly seemed smaller. For the first time in several years he sensed the reality of his confinement. He half turned to examine his cell. Everything was superior to mainline. The mattress on his bed was from the hospital, as were the blankets. The toilet was fitted with a seat. The sink had a hot water tap, an incredible luxury installed with connived materials on a forged work order. The walls were freshly painted, the floor covered with throw rugs. The shelves were curtained with an expensive drapery material stolen during the redecoration of the associate warden’s residence. Compared to the cells on either side, Chilly’s was luxurious, and usually this was how he saw it, but tonight he realized it was a small concrete box into which he was forced at gun point.

  When the count was clear, Chilly told the boy, “Go ahead and wash up.”

  “I already have. Thank you.”

  There was something mannered in the boy’s intonation. Every syllable was separated and precisely stressed. And he moved his hands oddly as if they were tethered by short cords to his belt. Chilly stared at him a moment trying to define the beginning of a suspicion in his own mind, then he shrugged and brushed past the boy to get to the sink. He washed carefully, applied a colorless dressing to his hair, and brushed it straight back. A few years before, his hair had been so blond it seemed white, but now it was beginning to darken, except for a few months in the summer. His own face, looking back at him from the narrow mirror, meant less to him than an illustration in a magazine. He cleaned his brush with his comb and replaced it on the shelf. Then he settled in his bunk to wait for dinner and to plan the moves by which he would get this kid out of his cell.

  When the bell rang, the upper tiers were released first. In a few moments he saw Red’s legs, and he smiled as he saw them hesitate knowing Red had glanced at the boy in the top bunk and assumed this wasn’t Chilly’s cell. He started past, hesitated again, and turned back. Red squatted to look in at Chilly.

  “What’s up?” he asked, rolling his eyes at the top bunk.

  “Someone goofed.”

  “They sure did.” Red grinned with a broad slyness Chilly didn’t like or understand.

  As soon as Chilly was released and they were jostling down the tier towards the center stairs, Red leaned close to whisper, “That kid’s stuff.”

  “Red, you think the warden’s stuff.”

  “No, square business, Chilly, that kid’s stuff. When he came in on the fish line this morning I was walking the yard with a guy who knew him in Tracy. That kid was a queen in Tracy. They called her Candy Cane.”

  “The guy told you?”

  “He was there.”

  “You know, Red, a couple of days ago someone told me you were stuff.”

  “Chilly, I’m trying to pull your coat. Fuck what the guy from Tracy said, that kid came on the big yard swishing like she had a license to run wild, and if she ain’t stuff Marilyn Monroe ain’t pussy. I just wish the mothers had put her in my cell.”

  “We’re together there. I wish they had too.”

  They entered the mess hall and started inching down the long line that led to the steam tables. On the wall above them, an enormous mural depicted the history of the state. The painting had never been developed beyond a brush drawing rendered in various shades of burnt sien
na because the inmate artist had been paroled before he was able to finish more than the underpainting. Red’s and Chilly’s progress towards their dinner was roughly synchronized with the progress of California history. They moved past the early Indian tribes and the Conquistadores, and, as they were beneath Father Junípero Serra, his hands raised in benediction over a group of Indian converts, Red asked, “You going to take advantage of that stuff?”

  “You know that’s not my game.”

  “I don’t know why not. You might just as well.”

  “You think so?” Chilly said distantly.

  “Well, why not? You’re here, and you’re going to be here, with every break in the world, at least another ten years. So what difference does it make. You might as well get something out of the miles you’re putting down.”

  “And you think poking some guy in his hairy ass is really living?”

  Red shrugged equitably. “It’s all hairy, Chilly, the world over. Least those parts of it where I’ve been.”

  “Did you ever hear of a guy named Loudermilk?”

  “Isn’t he the stud that was out at the ranch, and they caught him sticking a pig?”

  “Exactly. That was ten years ago. Loudermilk’s been out twice since then. He married some bitch and got a couple of kids out of her, and pulled off some sharp capers. He’s the kind of stud that if you were his friend and you needed it, he’d duke his last butt on you. But do you think when you mention his name anyone says, Yeah, he’s a generous stud, he’s good people, or a sharp thief. Or a husband or a father, or all the other things he’s been and done in these last ten years? No, they say, Loudermilk, isn’t that the stud they caught fucking a pig.”

  Red started laughing, and Chilly continued, “Loudermilk doesn’t think it’s so funny.”

  “Yeah, all right, Chilly, but that sweet freak in your cell ain’t no pig.”

  They moved through the serving line without acknowledging the man who worked there. This was a lower class job —the paper hats, the shapeless white jackets mutilated the personality and fortified the illusion that these inmates were servants rather than just other prisoners doing the jobs assigned them within the rigid commune of the prison. In much the same spirit with which they snubbed the food handlers they pulled their trays away, with a weary and cool scorn, when they were offered string beans, diced carrots, spinach, or salad—kid’s food, old man’s food, the food of those so prideless they could admit they were hungry and still couldn’t supply their own needs.

  They reached the table that fell to them in order with only their issue of chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, thin white gravy, and a square of apple pie, which was baked in a sheet pan and extended with corn starch until the flavor was almost neutral. Red began to unload the bottles of condiments, bought on the inmate canteen, which it was his task and privilege to carry and share. Pico Pico Hot Sauce, Heinz’s Chili Sauce, three different flavors of Kraft Cheese Spread (Cheddar with Bacon, Blue Cheese with Clams, Garlic Spread), a jar of Skippy peanut butter, and a jar of Mary Ellen’s loganberry jam. He could have carried no more. They doctored the steak with the hot sauce, smeared cheese spread on the pie, and filled out the meal with peanut butter and jam sandwiches. They ate swiftly, in silence, and finishing pushed their trays to the center of the table to sit waiting for the release signal.

  It was a violation of the rules to smoke in the mess hall, and this was a rule Chilly obeyed. To disobey was too much trouble for too small a reward, and he wasn’t going to give some bull the satisfaction of being able to tell him to put out his cigarette as if he were some high school kid sneaking a smoke. But Red lit up and avoided detection with an elaborate technique he had learned years before in reform school. He cupped the cigarette inside the curl of his half-closed fist, and dispersed the smoke with a constant winnowing, precisely the motion one would use shaving a square stick into round, and each time he finished a drag he slapped the air smartly with his cupped palm to clear the fat puff of white smoke that trailed the cigarette from his mouth. He exhaled into his lap in a tight thin stream.

  Chilly watched with idle amusement. “Red,” Chilly told him, “you look like a monkey trying to bugger a basketball.”

  “Your old white-haired granny buggers basketballs.”

  “My granny, huh?”

  “You told me to lay off mom.”

  “And you think there’s a difference?”

  “Be a mighty pee-culiar family you come out of if there weren’t.”

  Chilly smiled thinly. “Red, you’re too much.” At this moment a dependable instinct caused him to look up. His boss, Lieutenant Olson, was coming towards them. “And,” Chilly continued, almost without pause, “you just bought yourself a beef.”

  Red followed Chilly’s eyes and immediately stuck his hand, cigarette still cupped, into his pocket.

  Lieutenant Olson had been supervising night feeding, leaning, arms folded, against the back wall, watching the last of the main line pass before the steam tables. Unless there was serious trouble, a fight or the beginning of a riot, he had nothing to do except just be there. When the mess hall was secured his shift was finished and he was free to pass through the main sally port and walk up the hill to his house on the reservation where his wife, a big-hipped, thin-legged woman who worked in the inmate trust office, would be starting dinner. A shadow of weariness passed over his normally goodhumored face and he rubbed his flushed cheeks with his small pale hand. He made a fractional correction in the rakish set of his uniform cap, and started to patrol the central aisle, automatically looking from side to side. He wasn’t looking for anything. It was beneath the dignity of his position and damaging to his reputation as a good head to notice the routine smuggling of chicken fried steak sandwiches, but he took a mild and familiar pleasure in the effect he was causing, not unlike a boy breaking bottles with a BB gun to demonstrate his ability to work a change in the world around him. Olson’s glance was an invisible ray that caused convicts to fall silent and stare at the table in front of them.

  Then he saw Oberholster, sitting with his clown and messenger boy, and he started through the tables towards them. He missed the implications of the warning Oberholster passed to Red, but since his doctor had forbidden him to smoke in the wake of his second heart attack his sense of smell had grown acute, and he caught the odor of tobacco.

  “What’s happening, hotshot?” he asked Chilly. He affected the hip idioms of the convicts unaware that their currency was already fading even as he became aware of them.

  “I don’t feel too keen,” Chilly said with a meaningful glance at his tray. “Do you think it might be something I ate?”

  The lieutenant eyed the bottles Red hadn’t yet returned to his pockets. “If it was,” he said in the same dry tone Chilly used, “it was some of that gow you smear all over our good state food.”

  At first he had thought it was Chilly who was smoking, but now from his look of cramped inwardness, like someone trying not to fart, he realized it was Red, and understood the significance of the hand bunched in Red’s jacket pocket.

  “You sick too, Red?” he asked fondly, smiling like an uncle.

  “Me? No, I feel swell.”

  Olson looked at their trays, registering concern. “It smells like that chow might have been burnt.”

  “Burnt?” Red smiled hugely. “Shucks, no. It was dandy. After we denatured it a taste.”

  “Good. We don’t want you getting sick.”

  Olson rocked back on his heels and folded his arms over his chest. On the edge of the vision he watched Red’s pocket writhe as his hand moved spasmodically inside. The smell of tobacco was lost now in the stronger and more acrid odor of burning cloth. Abruptly the clatter of pots and pans increased as the food handlers began to tear down the setup on the steam tables. Olson signaled one of his officers, the gesture of an Air Force major pointing out bandits at three o’clock, and the officer started the release. The first in began to file from the mess hall, each man tossing h
is silverware into a pail at the feet of a bored guard.

  “One more down,” Olson said to Chilly. “Time for me to make it out of this nut house.” Tantalizing Red he moved to leave, then turned back. “Say, hotshot, I see on the movement sheet where you drew yourself a cell partner.”

  Chilly shrugged. “I noticed someone in there when I stood count. I thought he’d wandered into the wrong cell.”

  “No, he’s in the right cell. I thought you were immune to cell partners?”

  “I did too.”

  Red was staring past Olson with the look of a man who has just had all his wind knocked out. His lips were white and his arm jerked.

  “Well,” Olson said, “maybe it will be good for you not to be alone so much.” Again he turned to leave, again he turned back, still with the uncle smile. “By the way, Red, if that’s a mouse you’ve got in your pocket, it’s against regulations to keep a pet.” He grinned and walked away quickly.

  “Mo! Ther! Fucker!” Red snarled and began to beat vigorously at his pocket. “Can’t you keep that tame cop of yours away from here?”

  “Red!” Chilly was laughing, mouth strained open, throat pulsing, completely soundless. “Red!” he said again, the word breaking and shivering with his amusement. “If you could have seen your face. Ha! You looked like—” He broke off again, overcome with laughter.

  “Chilly, you dumb cocksucker, this ain’t funny. I damn near burnt my ass off.”

  “Like a pregnant nun.”

  Red was still beating at the glowing char that rimmed a large hole in his jacket pocket. “Chilly, sometimes you ain’t got the brains of a pissant.”

  Chilly sobered suddenly and picked up the water pitcher. He dashed the contents at Red, wetting his whole side. The cons around them fell silent thinking a fight was starting. Chilly replaced the pitcher precisely. “I’ve got brains enough to know you put out fires with water, and—” He stared at Red with cool significance. “I’d like to think I’d have sense enough not to shit where I eat.”