Homeboy

by Seth Morgan

  “Mama!” she called out the door. Still no answer. Must have fallen asleep at the kitchen table. She could smell the pan gloria burning.

  Kitty gained her feet and headed to the top of the stairs where she waited until the fourth came and departed; then, holding the steep bannister with both hands, she descended. She decided to call a cab, Mama’s driving was too crazy in that old Plymouth.

  Kitty stood gripping the frame, swaying in the kitchen door. Mama’s head lay peacefully on her arms amid the profusion of bright paper. Kitty didn’t have to stagger across to touch the utterly still shoulder, though she did. Neither did she have to look into her face to know her eyes would be upturned like those of the illumined Virgin on her bedside table. She knew it as plainly and implacably as she knew she was bringing forth life. Shitfire, Mama, you’re dead.

  She was dialing the wall phone, staring at Mama across the kitchen, when the next two hit one right after the other. Her strained voice said hold just a second; when the blood cleared her eyes and she had enough breath she said: “One to collect, one to deliver, boys. Toot sweet, as in pronto.”

  Hanging up, she noticed smoke rolling out of the oven and lunged clumsily for its knobs.

  “You havent had any writeups? No fights or sexual misconducts?” were Maas’s first questions in the Interview Room between gates.

  Joe could answer that one confidently. “Nope.”

  The attorney was surprisingly young, with a keen glint in his eye. “It’s the sexual hankypanky the board frowns on most,” he explained. “Violence is winked at, within reason. It’s considered a symptom of the system. But their studies show that inmates who succumb to homosexuality are the worst parole risks. They view sexual deviance as a prime characteristic of the recidivist.”

  “Studies.” Joe’s repeated tonelessly.

  “Right. Studies,” chirped the young attorney. “Dull, unimaginative sorts like parole board members rely on studies. They risk nothing on personal judgment and initiative … But writeups arent our problem, are they?”

  “I guess not.”

  Since Maas hadn’t had time to review his Central File, Joe spent some minutes briefing him on his institutional and criminal records. As a rule Joe was honest only to doctors he saw for genuine ailments, not narcotics, and lawyers paid for by himself, not appointed by authorities. Offering silent thanks once more to Earl for relieving him of the obligation to explain Pious Wing’s killing, he tried to be explicit and forthcoming concerning all the rest. Maas propped a fist beneath his chin and blinked attentively.

  Joe felt queer. Reeling off his depredations like this made them seem as petty and insignificant as last year’s World Series scores or canceled gambling debts. The longer he was in, Joe realized, the more his transgressions were of lasting importance only to him, not to the state which codified and catalogued them. Long after they were erased from computers and relegated to dead files, they would cast cold shadows in his heart.

  When he was finished, Maas made several notes on the legal pad before casually asking, without looking up: “Any silent beefs on your jacket?”

  Joe hesitated, nonplussed. “No,” he said then testily. “If there were I’d be wasting my money shooting for a coffee break parole.”

  “Not necessarily,” Maas said brightly, busying himself with fitting the legal pad back in his briefcase, adding airily: “There are motions I could file for suppression …” Then the attorney’s classic closing query, always posed delicately, like a knife to the throat: “Now about my fee …”

  This had been on Joe’s mind since the day he was wiped out by Big and Little Casino. The axiom that it takes money to make money held true in the pen as well, and it was taking Joe a long time to rebuild his nestegg. Every night after Lights Joe wondered how Earl had hurt him more, by sacrificing Spencer’s health or postponing his own parole. Yet in a secret way he was glad Earl had betrayed him; it relieved him of having to chose between Spencer’s life and his own freedom.

  “I’ll tighten you up soon,” he promised.

  “If you cant,” smiled the attorney, “I could postpone my fee until after your release …”

  Joe laughed. “You mean until I got a job?”

  “I mean until you could get your hands on the money or … something which might be exchanged for money.”

  “What the fuck are you talkin about?”

  “I … I was under the impression you had something of value stashed on the streets, something to cash in …”

  “Where the fuck you get that idea?” Joe sized him with a slitted sidelong.

  “Never mind.” Maas laughed a little forcedly, his mouth and eyes too wide. “I must’ve got you mixed up with another of my parole clients. I have so many.”

  JINGLE BELLS

  Christmas morning broke clear and cold as the bells of Coldwater heralding it. Joe rolled out of his bunk and brewed a cup of coffee with his contraband heating coil, the hottest selling item in the Maintenance Yard. He tuned his radio to the shitkicker station and, humming along to a chickenfried “White Christmas,” pumped hot water into his sink. At least the Boiler Room was manned this holiest of feast days. Joe listened while he shaved to the voices from the other cells:

  “Whachoo wan for Chrusmuss, baby buoy?” “Jes gimme a date, fate.” “All that motherfucker wants is a punk in his bunk.” “World! Jes leaves me what I got, three hots and a cot.” “Yall shet up! Christmas done got canceled. They picked up Santa’s merry ole ass las night on a B&E and booked his elves for Receiving.”

  Charity baskets were distributed to the convicts on Christmas Eve. Joe’s sat on his writing shelf, crinkling the sunlight in his eyes. Nested in its green plastic grass were peppermints, sourballs, a few musty chocolates, a shriveled apple, and a sack of Bull Durham. A sticker on the cellophane read: GIFT OF THE CLOISTERED SISTERS OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD PURGATORIAL SOCIETY. Sounded like a leather cult to Joe, one allied with that spurious order dispensing rubbers like alms that longago Strip night.

  Holiday procedures were in effect for Christmas. Other than the Visiting Room clerks and porters, only inmates assigned to sections essential to plant maintenance were called to work. Of these, the most essential from the convicts’ point of view were the Culinary workers. The Chowhall stayed open all day, the steam tables serving up a holiday fare of turkey, yams, mustard greens, and cornbread. The fresh pineapples meant for dessert, unfortunately, had been stolen for pruno. Joe went through the line three times until he had to waddle back to his cell to read and sleep away the afternoon.

  With twilight slanting golden through his window bars he awoke and felt the penitentiary buzzing in anticipation of the Christmas Show. It was an annual event put on in the Gym by the Chowchilla Jaycees. Convict bands, guest musicians, variety acts … even dancing girls, they said.

  All day long Joe had resisted the holiday spirit. He tuned out the relentless falalas and jinglebells yapping from the Mainline P.A., ignored the convicts trading excited news of their families, ducked the platitudes they flung like slapstick pies. But now he couldn’t withstand his own sentimentality; recollections of yuletides past rose in him as irresistibly as bubbles in hard cider.

  What the hell, get into it, he exhorted himself reaching into his locker for his boneroos. As he dressed, he looked around his cell, fondly inventorying the accumulations of … How long had he been down? For the first time in ages he calculated … almost ten months behind bars.

  His writing desk and custom toilet cover, the balsawood airplane hanging by a wire from the center of the celestial map on his ceiling; the posters on the walls, one of a ketch on a close reach in tall seas, another Earl had given him of an armadillo; the gewgaws on his window ledge, the legal files beneath his bunk, his personal library recently expanded when the arsonist in the next cell paroled and willed Joe his mystery collection; his zuuzuus and whamwhams, his toiletries, the broom hiding
his reefer in its straw. An ordinary prison cell with ordinary cell clutter, T-103 might appear drab and depressing to a freeworlder, but to Joe it was opulently appointed; each item was rich with significance.

  He frowned and puffed his cheeks, however, taking in the multitude of pinups on the walls; the cunts and assholes aimed inward as though it were genitalia, not guns, which held him impotent. Quickly he danced around, snatching them all down, and when he was finished wondered how he’d ever surrounded himself with such blatant reminders of what he was bereft.

  The bell announcing the show rang. Grinning into the scarified cell mirror, he fitted the cap low over his brow, snapped its bill with his finger, and hooked out of his cell for the Gym.

  Moonpie and the Coldwater Cold Cuts were playing a diddybopping Christmas medley as the convicts flowed through the doors and down the bleachers. The band was set up on the basketball court in front of a stage erected just that day and trimmed with bunting, balloons, and tinsel. There was much activity behind the stage, indicating the outside acts had already arrived. Once or twice a female head poked around a curtain’s edge, eliciting a storm of cheers. Along the stage’s base, Gooners faced up the bleachers like centurions from Saturn. Joe saw they were armed with tasers tonight, Thomas A. Swift Electric Rifles. Joe had heard McGee had acquired these highpowered stun guns; he supposed he’d issued them to his squad as Christmas gifts.

  Joe had never seen so many convict eyes brimming with sheer delight. For one night they were to be catered to by free people. It was an honor few received on the streets. They laughed and shouted and called holiday greetings to men they hadn’t spoken to in months. The lights dimmed and instantly came back up, warning of the show’s commencement, and the convicts came to order as quickly as any ladies’ church group. Joe found a seat halfway down between two men he didn’t know; he felt like observing anonymously tonight.

  The lights went down and Moonpie grunted undah one undah two and the Cold Cuts turned the refrain of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” into a boogiewoogie fanfare and the spotlight followed an Emcee strolling out with Warden Gasse in tow.

  The Emcee was a slimy, bald exile from the Borscht Belt. He was draped in a shiny blue tux he could have stolen from a singing Albanian waiter. He opened with a couple of bad lounge jokes about Santa’s sex life at which the convicts howled, then he introduced Gasse. So thrilled were the convicts to be getting a show that they applauded the Warden.

  “Gentlemen,” Gasse held up his hands and cried, “I want you all to enjoy this offering of the Jaycees. It’s been a wonderful year and I want to say I am proud to be associated with such a wonderful group of men. Merry Christmas! And Happy New Year!”

  The Emcee regained center stage, applauding Gasse as he backstepped behind the curtain. Then he turned back to the bleachers and lowered his voice confidentially. It rasped through the mike like tearing underdrawers. “Just wanted to check one thing with you gents … I’m sure you all know what they call a bull who doesnt let his meat loaf, dontcha? Huh? You dont? Beef strokin off! Get it? Beef Strogin-off …” To make sure he pumped a fist into his crotch. There were scattered calls from the restless dark of “Stroke this, punk” but most of the convicts laughed politely. “Gents,” he continued, “we got a show so hot tonight the fire department said we had to coat this stage with asbestos, but please … no strogonoff! Ha ha ha …” He laughed like a rabid monkey. “Let the show begin!” The bleachers thundered with feet.

  The first act was an old showbiz couple on roller skates who looked with their glassy eyes and Halloween grins like moonlighting kidnappers. Around the stage they twirled to the strains of “Greensleeves,” doing dips and pirouettes and for a finale a propeller spin, in which the skeletal male skater swung his aged kewpie doll over his head, spinning faster and faster until she was a sequined blur grinning like a sick cat at both ends. The convicts endured the geriatric rollerskaters silently.

  “Awrite! Awrite!” screeched the Emcee. “That’s what all the lil girls are doing these days on the public beach boardwalks. So you best get yourself a pair or you’ll never catch em! … And now, some of your female counterparts from down Frontera way …”

  His last words of introduction for the Fallen Angels, the California Institute of Women at Frontera’s choir, were drowned in stomping and cheers as the female prisoners marched out swinging saucy bottoms and shooting sultry looks into the dark. A matron bowed to the bleachers and turned to lead them with a little baton. To the spirited if ragged accompaniment of the Cold Cuts, they ripped right into “Jingle Bells,” really laying it on for the chorus, “Laughing all the way … Yah! Ha! Ha!”

  Hearing forty bustout whores laughing all at once gave Joe goosebumps; the Gymnasium went wild. With the matron leading them off, two of the girls in blue flipped up their skirts and flashed twin moons grinding a slow tandem orbit and bumping at once. The cons loved it. One of the asses had eyeballs tattooed on either cheek like a dirty old man in the moon. Joe thought the roof was going to blow.

  From there the show went downhill: a magician whose idea of a good trick was sawing his rabbit in half and a female vocalist mooing “You Light Up My Life” while the cons screamed specific anatomical parts worthier of ignition. Then the Emcee duckwalked out and snatched the mike, yoyoed it on its cord, did a sudden corny dip and growled: “Awrite, gentlemen and you not so gentle men, I want you to check see if your seat belts are fastened because here she comes packin those fortyfour magnums which she aims to please … Live and direct from the fabulous Blue Note Lounge, pound for pound the most effishunt sex machine in the animal kingdom”—he shot a smarmy aside behind his hand—“Gents, they say everybody needs milk. But does she have more than her share? … You be the judges!”—the Colds Cuts’ drummer started a big rolling beat Bomp ba-ba-ba Bomp, and the opening bars of “Fascination” were Bronx cheered through a saxophone—“Here she is, the shape that lunched a thousand faces, the sex-otic sex-sashun, Brrrrrr-muda Schwartze!”

  And damn if ole Bermuda didn’t leap through the curtains shaking like a catfish on a pole. She wore a floppy Santa cap on her head, and on her feet velvet fuckme booties with turnedup elfin toes. Every square inch in between was covered with party balloons. She looked like a lifesize model of a Crisco molecule.

  Bermuda curled her fingers around the mike, bringing it to her mouth as if she meant to eat it. The Cold Cuts struck up “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” and she purred: “He’s knows when you’ve been naughty, he knows when you’ve been nice …” while the convicts whistled and stomped and screamed. At the song’s conclusion, she motioned the band for silence and bubbled: “I get the feelin you fellas dint come to hear me sing. Maybe you wanna see what’s under all this hot air …” She tweaked and burst a balloon baring some belly and the Gym went wild.

  “Well, I’ve got a little Santa’s helper who’s gonna help you do just that … Oh Dwah-neee …” And here came Dwan Wand skipping through the curtains in pink dropbottom pajamas. He was smoking a long black cigaret. Now the Cold Cuts segued into “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” while Dwan shrieked and cavorted along the edge of the stage and Bermuda started singing squeakily: “I saw Mommy”—BOMP BA-BOMP, Bermuda rolled and swung her hips and shot them north and south, showing what talent Mommy reserved for the merry old elf—“Santa Claus underneath the mistletoe …” Dwan skipped around her popping the balloons with the cigaret.

  Then she segued into “Santa Baby, Hurry Down My Chimney Tonight,” and Joe thought the Gym was going to implode with the collective intake of breath as one after another the balloons burst revealing her biomorphic blimpoids. The atmosphere must have been compatible with the silicone; Joe had never seen them more perfectly lifelike. When at last they were totally revealed, she stood stock still for one of those suspended intervals that could have been a millisecond or millennium, who could tell under the spell of those vast and shimmering meringue globes radioing lust into t
he dark.

  Then Dwan, in a paroxysm of jealousy, skipped in and jabbed one siliconic spheroid with the cigaret as though he mistook it for a last very large pink balloon.

  “That’s my bwest, you bwat!” Bermuda screeched; and the spell was broken. The convicts howled and hooted, thundering their feet on the bleachers. One Viking whiteboy leaped up and yanked down his pants and wagged his penis at the stage. “This bud’s for you, baby!” he cried. Bermuda leaned forward, shading her eyes against the lights. When she spotted the offensive turkey neck shaking just for her, she clutched her throat and gagged.

  By now the Gooners were advancing menacingly and the lights went up. The P.A. announced the show’s conclusion and instructed the convicts to return to their housing in an orderly fashion. Joe stood with the rest and started shuffling out.

  It was then that Bermuda’s squall pierced the tumult: “Joe! It’s a boy!”

  He spun, but she was being hustled back through the curtains by one of the matrons detailed to escort the Fallen Angels. He shook his head dazedly and turned back into the press of bodies thronging out onto the Mainline.

  Earl was standing by Custody. Joe felt the gray eye soldered to him as he passed and heard the softly lilting voice, “Merry Christmas, amigo. And congratulations, yeah.”

  After Lights, Joe stood at his cell window, thinking. He knew what Bermuda was talking about: a child born to Kitty, a boy she said was his. She must have called the Blue Note from Texas. He couldn’t understand why Kitty was being so persistent unless the child truly was his. He thought back: yes, the arithmetic was right, it was some weeks over nine months since they’d been together. He could think of no motive she could have for lying. She didn’t know about the diamond, not that it looked like it could do either of them a lick of good anyway. Why continue linking her fate with Joe’s unless it actually was, through commingled blood.