“We need a wagon,” Clock said. “It’ll be spring and the phone books come out, and my wife can deliver them but we don’t have a wagon. She used to get five cents a book, but in the last election the townships all merged and the book is much thicker. They’d give her a dime if she just had a wagon. The wagon she used was stolen last year, but it wasn’t no good for it was too small. She needs a new big one—an American Cart. They’re twenty-eight bucks, and she ain’t got the dough. If she just had the wagon she was promised the job.”
“I’ve—” Feldman said.
“Flo doesn’t drive,” McAlperin said. “She never learned how and the car’s up on blocks. There’s no one to teach her, and lessons are high. She ain’t got the nerve, to tell you the truth. Her first husband died—he was creamed by a truck. But if she could drive she could get a good job. Selling cosmetics, or maybe those books. You make a commission, they pay very well. They’re crying for help, and Flo would be good. People all like her, she knows how to talk. Presentable too, attractive and neat. Now she’s a waitress, but that’s not for her. If she just learned to drive she’d be better off. The car could come down. It’s not good for a car to be idle like that. I don’t like the idea of her being out late, waiting on tables and talking to men. You know how men are, what they want from a girl. If she’d just learn to drive she could sell door to door, talking with housewives and doing some good. Getting those books into their homes. If she’d just learn to drive.”
“I’ve got—” Feldman said.
“It’s like this,” Munce said, “my wife saw this ad on the side of a bus. For finishing high school on home-study plan. A place in Chicago, and in her spare time she does all the lessons; they come through the mail. But she can’t buy the books that they want her to read—biology, English, big books and dear. What makes it so bad is she can’t get a card, or she’d go to the library and take them all out. But I’ve got a record, and that nixes the deal. Of course she could read them right there at the desk; they’d let her do that, but she’d have to stand up. She might use her sister’s, but that girl’s a bitch. They ain’t spoke for years, and my wife is too proud. If they only made up she could borrow the card and take out the books and study at home and get a diploma and then a good job.”
“I’ve got—” Feldman said.
“My daughter’s fifteen,” Case said, “and don’t know I’m here. We told her a lie to save her the shame. She just had turned six when they took me to jail. I made an arrangement with an old friend of mine, a guy off in Europe—Fred Bolton’s his name. Fred was a pal that I knew from the block. Smart as a whip, we knew he’d go far. A scholar, you know, but a regular guy. He won all the prizes and went off to Yale, where they paid his tuition and gave him free board. He got his degree and then left the States. He writes to my daughter and signs himself me. For years Fred has done this—a letter a month and often a gift. Once perfume from Paris and leather from Spain. She thinks we’re divorced, but she’s proud of her dad. But Fred has sclerosis and now he may die. There’s one chance in a million—you see, they’re not sure. It might just be a nerve. Fred always was jumpy, even in school. So they’ve taken a test and we’re waiting to hear. They’ve sent it to Brocher, a big man in the field. But Brocher’s in Russia, he defected last year. And Fred writes these books that the Communists hate. They might want him to die—then what will I do? Who’ll write my daughter? Who’ll save her the shame? How can we tell her I’m supposed to be dead? A girl needs a father—she’s only fifteen, and though she don’t see me it keeps up her heart. If only they’ll let Brocher look at the tests—if only they’ll tell him, okay, go ahead. Then if only the tests turn out to be good and they locate the nerve that’s bothering Fred, they can probably treat it, and in time he’ll get well—then maybe in time he can write her again.”
“I’ve got—” Feldman said.
“And send her those gifts, those prizes she loves—”
“I’ve got—” Feldman said, “the picture.”
“They say you listen,” a convict said to Feldman one evening, moving beside him.
Feldman had another image of the grapevine, pendent with talk, with talk about talk. “I’ve heard a few,” he said noncommittally, not looking up.
“I want to tell,” the convict said.
They were just outside the shower stalls, sitting on the benches that ran along the walls of what might have been a locker room if this had not been a penitentiary. Feldman was undressing. The room was damp, the stone floors clammy, mucoid. He remembered his own carpeted bathroom, the cut-glass decanters with their bright sourballs of bubble bath, and he felt like crying. (It was the toilet he missed most. He thought of his golden hamper. It was really beautiful, a piece of furniture practically. He thought of it stuffed with white shirts hardly soiled—he loved the generous reckless act of throwing shirts into the dirty clothes. The memory of his shower almost brought tears to his eyes. There were long rubber treads built right into the smooth tile floor of the shower stall. One wall was clear glass, much sexier than the milky glass of your ordinary shower. There were recesses along another wall for shampoos, soaps, rinses, and there were roll-out men’s and ladies’ razors on nylon cords that worked on the principle of a window shade. There were marvelous flexible tubes that pulled out of the wall, and cunning, splendid brushes and a nozzle complicated and delicate as something in a Roman fountain. The dancing waters, Feldman thought.)
“I’m Hover.”
“Pipe racks,” Feldman said, thinking aloud of the prison’s crude plumbing. “Drainpipes with rain water trickling out,” he said.
“I want to tell,” Hover said.
“Listen,” Feldman said, looking up at a naked man. “I don’t want to hear about it.” He had not recognized Hover’s name. Now he placed him. The man had a legendary stupidity; he was someone the others tormented without mercy. Feldman had never been alone with him before.
Hover was an illiterate, but more than that he knew nothing, understood nothing. He was almost without memory. In the dining hall it was only with difficulty that he was able to match the number he was given with the one on his table. Several times Feldman had seen him, confused by the oversize numbers painted on the tables, hand his number to a prisoner to read it for him. Hover seemed to know the prisoner might lead him astray, and his expression at these surrenders was one of hope and terror. Feldman had heard that the man could not even recognize his own cell and had to be pushed into it each night. His cellmate beat him because he could not remember to flush the toilet. He could do no work, of course, and he usually wandered aimlessly through the corridors, lost, uncomprehending, unable to distinguish between the prisoners and the guards. He probably did not even know that he was in a prison, let alone why. (He used to walk into grocery stores when he was hungry and take fruit from the bins and eat it on the spot, the juice of oranges and lemons dripping down his hairless chest. Or he would bite into breads, and after someone had shown him what was inside an egg, crush it in his mouth. He could not button a shirt, but someone had taught him to put on a jacket, and someone else had gotten him a pair of flyless elastic pants. It was these clothes he wore in the prison.) Incredibly, he had not been placed into an institution for the insane. Feldman was sure the warden had asked for him, though he did not understand the strategics of it yet.
Hover moved closer to Feldman on the bench. He reached out and touched Feldman’s thigh.
“You mustn’t do that,” Feldman said, standing up.
“I want to tell,” Hover said indistinctly.
Ignoring him, Feldman moved into the shower room, and Hover followed. He stopped just inside and stared while Feldman adjusted the taps of a shower and moved under it. Hover was saying something, but he could not make it out in the big, resonant room. He could see that Hover was excited; the man pointed to the shower above his head and frowned.
“You have to turn it on,” Feldman said. “Turn it on. Turn on the water,” he shouted. “Wait. Here, I’ll
do it for you.” He walked over to Hover, but the man jumped back clumsily, raising his fists in an obscure gesture of anger and fear.
“Hot,” he shouted, “hot.” He started to bring down his fists on Feldman’s shoulders, but Feldman pushed him away. He had no coordination, and his reactions were so slow that one might have done almost anything to him.
Hover stumbled awkwardly backwards. “What’s wrong with you?” Feldman demanded. “Did you think I was going to scald you? Is that what the others do to you?”
“Hot,” Hover whined. “Hot. Hot.”
“It’s not hot,” Feldman said, turning on the water. “Here. Feel it yourself. Put your hand out.”
“Hot,” he said, shaking his head.
“No,” Feldman said. “Tepid. Tepid.” He stuck his hand beneath the forceless spray.
“Hot,” Hover said again.
“All right,” Feldman said, “so it’s hot. Leave me alone then.”
He moved back under his own shower and began to soap himself. Hover still stood in the doorway, watching him. “Go on,” Feldman said. “Get away from me, you dummy.” He was made uneasy by the man; it was like being observed by a brute, Feldman turned his back, but it was no better; his neck and spine began to prickle. (Once his son had brought a cat home, and Feldman had not been able to eat while the animal was in the house.) He turned back to face Hover. “Go on,” he said, “go away from me.” He was beginning to panic. He cupped his hands and threw water at Hover. The man screamed. (At the fairgrounds, as a boy, he had gone to a cattle show. One brute, on its straw, in its own piss and dung, had bellowed meaninglessly. Thick yellow saliva hung in drooled strings from its mouth. He had wanted to smash its face with a club.) Feldman threw more water; Hover screamed again, and Feldman went for him.
“Why are you screaming?” he shouted. “Why are you screaming?” Why are you afraid of the water? I’m going to put you under it, you son of a bitch, and show you.”
Hover yelled and tried to move away, but backed into a corner. His abjectness enraged Feldman, and he wrapped his arms around the man and pulled at him violently. In his confusion and terror Hover could not distinguish between resistance and its opposite; he fell heavily against Feldman, seeming deliberately to rush him. The two fled backwards over the slippery floor, and Feldman bruised his back against the tap. In his pain he punched Hover’s face as hard as he could. The man brought his hands slowly to his head, and Feldman smashed at his belly. This defenselessness enraged Feldman even more and he struck out at will, clipping Hover’s ears and chest and neck, hitting him with great, round swinging blows.
“Stupid,” Feldman screamed. “You thing!”
Hover slipped to the floor and buried his head in his arms. Feldman, above him, desired to kick him in the groin, to smash his useless head. Oh my God, he thought suddenly, terrified, that’s the strategics!
He leaned against the dun-colored tiles, panting. I’m sorry, he thought. I’m so sorry. He looked again at Hover, collapsed on the floor, and knew he must apologize, must try to find some language outside of language that would make Hover understand. He squatted down beside the man, his long scrotum brushing the back of Hover’s outstretched hand as he grasped his shoulders gently. He had fallen beneath the shower and sat sprawled and somnolent in the warm water.
“Hover,” Feldman said quietly, “Hover.”
But Hover had already forgotten the blows, and he looked up at Feldman with a question he could never ask.
Feldman—thinking trouble was something outside, like a sudden freeze or extended drought; or something mechanical, like fouled ropes or defective brakes; or something inside and mechanical, like a broken tooth or cholesterol deposits—met the bad man Herbert Mix.
Mix winked. Feldman tried to brush past him.
“It takes one to know one,” Mix said.
“Excuse me,” Feldman said, “I’m on Warden’s Business.” It was the phrase for official errands. On Warden’s Business a convict could go anywhere, even places forbidden to trusties, and no one was to interfere with him. Feldman carried a small warden’s flag the size of a pocket handkerchief, folded and hidden inside his suit coat. Theoretically, he could approach a guard, show him the flag and ask to be conducted outside the walls. It was, however, the most serious offense in the prison, punishable by irrevocable loss of parole, for a convict on Warden’s Business to deflect that business to his own ends, and a few men, accused of using the flag to effect an escape, had actually been killed on these errands. (The death penalty in the state had not been imposed for eight years, but the men feared assassination by the guards. It had happened that men who had induced enmities in a guard had sometimes been shot and then had a warden’s flag planted on their persons. It was necessary for the guard to produce supporting testimony that the convict had used Warden’s Business to attempt an escape, but everyone knew the guards were thick as thieves. Indeed, it was not impossible to get another convict to back up the guard’s story, for just as there were prisoner mentalities among the guards, there were guard mentalities among the prisoners.)
Because there was always a threat to the life of anyone on Warden’s Business—the men speculated that at all times there was always some guard plotting against the life of some prisoner; several prisoners actually claimed to have been approached by guards and obliquely invited to join with them in vendettas against their fellow convicts—only two kinds of men were ever sent on these errands: men who were generally liked by the guards, and men whom the warden felt he could afford to lose—the bad men themselves. Complexities of timing and circumstances, and the difficulties implicit in the conspiratorial nature of an assassination, reduced the chance of death to little more than an outside possibility, as subject to thin contingency as a trip at night, say, on an unfamiliar highway in an automobile that requires some slight mechanical adjustment. Still, the possibility was there, and it troubled Feldman.
“I’ll walk with you,” Mix said. He showed Feldman a pass and winked again. It was probably a phony. (Feldman himself had been careful to obtain a pass to show to the guards in case he was stopped. Only one pass remained to him now for the new quarter, but he was proud of his caution. Most men would simply have flashed their warden’s flag in a guard’s face.) Feldman didn’t answer Mix, and quickened his pace, sorry now he had told the man he was on Warden’s Business. (Manfred Sky had said it was a good idea to let people know if they started to interfere with you.) “I don’t blame you,” Mix said. “It’s like a time bomb ticking away in there. Where you carrying it?”
“In my pocket,” Feldman said. “Please.”
“Why don’t you take it out and blow your nose in it? That’s what I’d do.”
“Please,” Feldman said, “I want to get this over with as quickly as possible.”
“You’re not very nervous, are you?” They had come into the exercise yard. “Hey, fellas,” Mix called, “Feldman here is on Warden’s Business.”
A few of the men laughed. One, off by himself, approached on hearing Feldman’s name. “I’m up for parole,” he said, “in two or three months. I’m up for parole and ain’t learned a trade.They made me a trusty as soon as I came. A trusty’s no good, I told them right then. The work’s not connected with anything real, it doesn’t prepare me for outside the walls. Then learn to be honest, they told me, instead. I begged to do printing, but one lung is weak—the dies and the filings no good for my health. I asked at the foundry, they turned me away. What the hell kind of deal is that for a man?”
“Not now,” Feldman said.
“So now I’m all honest but don’t know a trade, and up for parole in two or three—”
“Please,” Feldman said, “not now.”
Mix shoved the man away. “Warden’s Business,” he said. They came up to a guard. “Feldman is on Warden’s Business, Officer,” Mix said. He winked at the guard. “If you want to kill him, I’m your witness.”
“Are you on Warden’s Business, Feldman?” the guar
d asked.
“Yes sir,” Feldman said. He decided not to show the guard his warden’s flag until he was asked. He knew he wouldn’t be shot if he didn’t show it. The guard didn’t ask to see the flag, and they passed through a door leading from the exercise yard back into the main building.
“You don’t like me shooting off my big mouth, do you?” Mix said. “You don’t even like me walking along with you like this, right?”
Feldman said nothing.
There was a guard at the end of the corridor by a barred gate leading to the administrative offices.
“I asked you a question,” Mix said.
“All right,” Feldman said, “I’m a little nervous.”
“Stop here a minute,” Mix said.
Feldman looked up ahead at the guard and thought he recognized him. He stopped.
“Give me something,” Mix said. “Make a deal.”
Feldman stared at him.
“Give way, give way,” Mix said in a subdued voice. He was a pale man, and as he spoke he troubled to smile. He would trouble to smile, Feldman suspected, even at Hover. “You guys who don’t give way,” he said, “who hold on tight. Boy, every son of a bitch I ever met holds on tight. What am I supposed to do, jump overboard? Fuck that noise. You know what I’m here for? You know why I’m in this maximum-security rathole with the kooks and the killers and the kid-buggers and all the rest of you big time assholes? I’m a hat, coat and umbrella man. I work restaurants and theaters. Let me tell you, intermission is my busy season, ha ha. I steal from parked cars. Shit, everybody’s got an out. The restaurants have little signs, the garages do: ‘Not Responsible,’ blah blah. Only I’m responsible. Outless as the stinking dead. Who ever saw Mix’s sign? ‘Herb Mix Isn’t Responsible for Stealing Your Lousy Umbrella, Lady. Watch Your Frigging Hat, Sir. Do Not Blame Herb Mix.’ Well, I figure it different. I’m as entitled as any man born. You own a department store; I don’t. Who’s responsible for that little oversight? Why ain’t I rich, President, King? Why ain’t there broads lined up to kiss me? Where’s mine? Where does it say I have to be unhappy? Come on, come on, I’ve even got an ulcer. Everything I eat turns to poison.”
A Bad Man Page 10