THE SUB A Study In Witchcraft

by Thomas M. Disch

  Many of the talents that have been ascribed to witches were not within Diana’s range of powers. She had no special prevision of the future. Her evil eye might spook those, human or animal, with a special sensitivity, but except for the single, radical power of metamorphosis, she could not induce illness or injury by the sheer force of a baleful look. She’d focused all of her ill will on the squirrels that came to thieve from the birdfeeder, and she knew with the first trial that D-Con was not about to lose a customer because Diana had found herself to be a witch.

  She could not read minds or leave her body to enjoy nocturnal flights, nor could she summon other spirits—though she might visit her father in the smokehouse if she was patient and he was in the mood. But this was not a power she was eager to exercise. Like the preserves in the food cellar, he was there for emergencies one hoped would never come.

  Altogether, there seemed to be little practical advantage to being a witch. But it was undeniably an empowering awareness. Whomever she found herself with, Diana felt in charge. The whole world had become an elementary school, and she was its principal. In a sense, this had always been her relation to the rest of the world—if not effectively, at least wishfully. When she’d first majored in psychology as an undergraduate, before being persuaded to switch to education, that had been the attraction. One of the required texts in her junior year had been by a Frenchman with a thing for prisons. In his ideal prison, there was a central observation tower from which one could see all the prisoners in all their cells at the same time. Diana felt like the warden of such a prison. Indeed, this was no new observation, for Diana’s mother had often claimed she thought of the old ladies under her charge at Navaho House as being her prisoners, confined there by feebleness and poverty. “The Turneys,” she would say, “are prison people. It’s in the blood.”

  Diana’s powers as a witch were limited in one other crucial regard. She could entrance a man’s attention, but she could not compel his performance. She had tried, on the night of Alan’s visit, when he’d found her unconscious by the smokehouse; she’d given hours to the task, and she had failed. When his lips barely brushed hers, she could feel his incipient hard-on straining at his blue jeans, but any determined effort to encourage a fuller erection produced the opposite result. Even to talk about sex had proven next to impossible, for Alan became morbidly shy at any mention of his own body, or hers. Did they make anatomically correct dolls for this purpose, as they did for children who had to be coaxed into discussing the trauma of abuse?

  At last he had revealed that he was a virgin—not just in the sense that he’d never had sexual relations with another person. He’d never had an orgasm. Guilt and sheer embarrassment had kept him from trying to achieve satisfaction by masturbation, and his few dates, before meeting Diana, had never advanced beyond hugs and handholding. His nearest approach to an orgasm had been in wet dreams, but even then without the relief of spontaneous ejaculation. Diana had never known such a man, eighteen years old and still a virgin. Perhaps that was his secret attraction. Perhaps virginity affects the pheromones, intensifies a man’s sexual aura and makes him more desirable.

  For she did desire him, she could not deny that. Witches can feel every degree of need, of want, of hunger, of sexual appetite. But did they (Diana had to ask herself) experience love in the usual sense of the word? Diana had always supposed that what she’d experienced with the men to whom she was attracted was love. That was how people spoke of such things, that was what songs were about. It was the stuff of books and movies.

  Tenderness, yes. She would often feel a tenderness toward her sexual partners, especially in the aftermath of their union, during the postcoital tristesse, when the man would lie there inert, or panting like a tired dog, mere meat. Their helplessness at such times could be so saddening, and when she’d first seen Alan, after his fall from the roof, she’d felt the extremity of such sadness.

  But was that actually the same as love? She wasn’t sure, but she was determined to find out. One way or another she was going to have his cherry. She realized that her new feelings toward Alan—the ambition simply to take possession—were the way she supposed men must feel toward women. The way rapists must feel—downhill with the brakes off. It was disgusting and piggish—and irresistible.

  25

  A spring drizzle hung in the air, light enough to allow the exercise oval to be used but thick enough to be a soothing balm on Clay’s face as he did laps. The drizzle had turned the landscape surrounding the prison tower into a black-and-white photograph, with the mists above Leech Lake a single luminous, opalescent glow. The scrub pines of the Wabasha reservation were brush strokes of Chinese calligraphy on a painted scroll. Very spacey. Outside of dreams, the illusion of freedom here was as close as you could get in the joint, and Clay was not happy when, with ten minutes of yard time left, Carl Kellog cued him with a wiggle of his finger to leave the track.

  Clay slowed to a trot and stopped in front of the C.O. “Sir,” he said, his chest still heaving pleasantly. The first beads of sweat started to form across his forehead and scalp and trickle down to the collar of his sweatshirt.

  “Hi there, Clay,” Carl said in that officially neutered voice the guards used when they were performing some official function.

  “Sir,” Clay repeated, in his own zombied-down, I’m-just-a-number-here voice.

  “I was wondering if there was anything you could tell me about this fracas outside the Lutheran Church.”

  “No, sir. I was not there. My knowledge about events outside the prison is limited to what we’re allowed to see on television.”

  “Mm-hm. So, you would know nothing about the protesters?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Or what they expected to accomplish?”

  “I’ve never talked with any of them, sir. But if you’re asking me if Jim knows anything about it, I would guess not. He was taken to the hole on Sunday afternoon, and he’s been there ever since. I don’t know for what infraction. I do know that there’s been concern among the men here. I would say the concern has reached only a low simmer at this point. There’s speculation. I guess that’s unavoidable.”

  “To what effect?”

  “Some guys think if a guy goes to the hole, there must be a reason. None has been given. Did he commit some infraction? Is he in protective custody? From whom? The guys are puzzled.”

  “If you need to know the reason, there have been harassing phone calls to local citizens.”

  “And you think that Jim made those calls from here in the facility? I thought security was tighter than that.”

  “The calls were made on his behalf. The protesters at the church are protesting on his behalf. The warden believes Jim knows who’s behind it all.”

  “But if he doesn’t know? It’s not as though he needs a protest. Because Jim is a remarkably patient guy. He’s bided his time for over eighteen years. Does the warden think he can get him to withdraw his appeal at this point? The word is out, Officer Kellog. Jim doesn’t need to stir up that bunch from the rez. They were out there last Sunday just for the hell of it—that’s my guess. No doubt some of the older people outside the church remember the trial. Even back then, Jim tells me, a lot of his people thought he was set up, and now it looks like they were right all along. So when the shit hits the fan, they want to be sure that Judy Johnson is covered with her fair share of it. I mean, if it turns out she was lying, and it sure looks that way from what I hear, then she’s responsible for Jim Cottonwood’s false imprisonment for eighteen years. I assume it was her or Reverend Johnson getting the harassing phone calls?”

  “It’s for me to ask the questions, Clay.”

  “Oh, absolutely, sir. I don’t want you thinking I’m some kind of agitator. I’m just telling you what the ‘tude is here, as I understand it. And it’s a combination of suspicion that Jim is about to get shafted and a feeling that he can take care of himself.”

  Carl nodded a dour concurrence.

  Clay
cracked his knuckles, avoiding eye contact by focusing on his tattoos. “Anything else, sir?”

  “Uh, yes. But it’s not official. In fact, the warden would be pissed off if he thought I was meddling in this. But when you see Jim again, which’ll probably be tomorrow at the latest, you can pass it along—but don’t say where you heard it—”

  Clay nodded. “When I see him again…?”

  “Tell him the Johnson kid is still busting his balls for him. There’s been pressure from some of Reverend Johnson’s friends at the state capitol, but you won’t see the warden caving in to Avo Kubelik. Jim’ll get released, but what the kid tells me Jim’s lawyer is saying is that there’ll have to be an appeal for clemency. The rape conviction may be overturned, but Jim racked up another fifteen years during the ruckus back in Eighty-eight.”

  “He saved a guy’s life. That was another setup, and everyone here knows that. Anyhow, Jim’s already served eighteen years for something he didn’t do. And when he gets out of here, he’s going to be able to sue this place for millions.”

  “Personally, I hope he gets it, though it’s a long shot. No one’s saying it wasn’t a fair trial, so the State of Minnesota would be off the hook, liability-wise. But where Jim might stand to gain some money is from the Johnsons. Judy perjured herself. The statute of limitations has passed on that, but—”

  Clay lost his cool momentarily: “You mean, because it was eighteen years ago that Judy told her lies, the meter’s expired? He’s been rotting here, and she could have let him out anytime she found her conscience.”

  “Hey, Clay, I didn’t write the law. That’s what Jim’s lawyer told the Johnson kid. He says Jim has a good chance of suing Judy and Reverend Johnson in civil court. So Jim might end up owning the church and rectory. I understand that when the higher-ups in his church wanted to close the place down ten years ago, he finagled a deal to buy the buildings off them real cheap. Anyhow, none of that is official information, though it’s common knowledge. But if you’d pass it along to Jim, I think he might feel a little easier in his mind.”

  “Basically, you don’t want him stirring up trouble. Is that it?”

  “Out there or in here. Right.”

  “Sure, I’ll pass it along. Oh—and while there’s still some yard time, has there been any word about Officer Wagner?”

  “That’s a subject we’re not supposed to discuss, Clay.”

  “It’s a weird situation. All that mayhem, and him just disappearing at the same time.”

  “I can’t talk about it, Clay.”

  Clay acknowledged this with a nod and, returning to the track, went through the motions of jogging until the bell sounded half a lap later.

  26

  In the middle of April, just as daylight saving time was kicking in and short sleeves were an option, word was passed down to Carl from on high that he had to lose forty pounds or else. He deeply resented being told what he had to weigh, but the union had agreed to the state prisons’ Personal Appearance Code when they’d negotiated their health-care package back in 1986, and who would have thought back then that Carl, with his thirty-four-inch waist, would ever blimp up to his present XXL dimensions? But he had. The flab had spread down his torso like a fucking glacier. So now, when he passed along the cafeteria line at 3 a.m. (he’d just been moved to the graveyard shift), his lunch was waiting for him wrapped in its film of Saran Wrap: cold cuts and sliced tomato on Mondays, fruit salad on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, which was today, a tiny can of tuna fish with half a grapefruit.

  Diana, when she looked over his list of suggested dinners, told him that the prison nutritionist must have copied out the Scarsdale diet, invented by Dr. Herman Tarnower back in the ‘70s. The elderly Tarnower had been the victim in a celebrity murder case of that era, when his uncredited coauthor and jilted lover, Jean Harris, avenged herself for this double sleight with a pistol. Eating the prescribed daily menus (Diana adhered faithfully to the prison nutritionist’s list), Carl felt as though Jean Harris were still enjoying her revenge through him. This morning’s dinner had been a miniature lamb chop and a mouth-puckering salad that was basically just lemon juice on lettuce. Carl was already wired on black coffee from working the night shift, and booze was prohibited, though he did allow himself one vodka tonic as a sedative before he went to bed at 11 a.m. He’d never had a problem adjusting his sleeping patterns to fit the prison’s schedule before, but this time he was lucky to get three or four hours of sleep before it was time to get up, fix breakfast (half a grapefruit, one slice of unbuttered toast, and the first cup of his daily river of black coffee), and watch the ABC news on channel 7. Diana shared the news and Jeopardy, and then he’d catch the last of the daylight outside with Kelly, futzing around in their so-called garden. Carl believed in growing all his own produce, but the garden rarely yielded more than those crops that grew themselves. At some point during the summer, his life would get too busy, and the garden would self-destruct.

  By the time he had to head for work, Carl was grateful for even the meager distractions of the graveyard shift. It was only six weeks out of the year that he had to work on the skeleton crew that kept the joint running during the hours the rest of the world was asleep. The system of video monitors was state-of-the-art, so there was no need to patrol the corridors of the cellblocks. From the desk of the monitor station each cell was open to surveillance twenty-four hours a day. Some patrolling was still required, more for the sake of keeping the guards alert than from any other practical necessity, but for a good part of the shift he was allowed to read.

  The problem was that Carl had less of an appetite for reading these days. He used to be able to settle down with a book for hours at a time. The C.O.’s had dibs on all the prison library’s recent acquisitions, so Carl got to read all the best-sellers while they were still fresh—Grisham, Clancy, King, Crichton. Lately, however, since Janet had been put away, and especially since going on the diet, he couldn’t focus on anything but the newspaper for fifteen minutes before his attention would get derailed.

  He knew what it was. It was sex. Or, rather, the lack of sex, combined with the lack of calories, and the new rule against smoking anywhere in a public building in the state of Minnesota. He was just one big twitching Hunger, with no likelihood of satisfaction anytime soon.

  His one shot at getting Janet knocked up when he’d visited Mankato in March had misfired. Three weeks later she let Carl know that she’d had her period right on time, and by then it was too late to try again. There was no way they could claim that a new pregnancy predated Janet’s arrival in Mankato. They would know that Carl had flouted the rules, and that would mean the sack. So he would just have to go on being horny until Janet had served out her full sentence, which would be early next year. (She’d already forfeited any time off for good behavior when she was caught sneaking smokes from a secret stash and then caught again, in a sting, buying a carton. Mankato ran a tight ship.)

  In hindsight Carl could see that having another kid would not have been a great idea. Neither he nor Janet was exactly an ideal parent. Diana, that was another matter. If they could keep her on as their own private Mary Poppins, another kid would have been a snap. Carl had come round to thinking of Diana as a major convenience. She’d completely cured Kelly of her temper tantrums, something neither Carl nor Janet had been able to do. She kept the house shipshape, and she was a super cook: his waistline was proof of that. Carl still had his little spats and boundary wars with her, but they no longer escalated into major quarrels. The fact was, Diana was easier to live with than Janet—smarter, better able to cope, more interesting company.

  And even (Carl reluctantly admitted to himself) sexier. She’d filled out since she’d moved in, but in all the nicest ways. Her flesh was no glacier of flab; it was fruit, ripe for plucking. Even overripe sometimes. She was definitely one of those women for whom deodorants were not optional. Last night when Carl had come in from his stint of quality time with Kelly, Diana was curled up on the couch with
a book and giving off a smell of pure Roquefort funk. Half toe jam, half crotch sweat, the smell seemed to wrap itself around him. During the entire drive to the prison the smell never left his nostrils and she never left his thoughts.

  That morning at six, as he was clocking out, he had his first slip from grace. There was a dispenser in the corner of the C.O.’s lounge that offered, for seventy-five cents, a choice of regular or barbecue potato chips, Fritos, Cheez-Its, or pretzels. His first choice was Fritos, but the dispenser had been cleaned out of them. It was as though the god of diets was giving him one last chance to turn back, but instead he went for the Cheez-Its. In the time it took to get to the parking lot he’d wolfed down the whole bag.

  “I’m off the diet,” he informed Diana when he got home two doughnuts and a half-pint carton of chocolate milk later.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I am. Really. Maybe if I weren’t on the night shift. But sitting around twiddling my thumbs, I can’t think of anything else but the hunger. It’s driving me crazy.”

  “I’ve been on a diet, I know all about it. But I’ve got something for you. And it works. Brenda Zweig, my astrologer, just lost thirty pounds when she was in Mexico. It’s this herbal tea, and she swears nothing else kills your appetite like this stuff. Brenda’s short, so thirty pounds off her would be like fifty off you.”

  “An herbal tea?”

  “Oh, don’t worry, it won’t turn you into a Democrat. Just try it. I knew you’d crash, so I brewed up a half-gallon in advance. It’s in the bottle at the back of the fridge. Pour yourself a glass and just chug it down. It tastes awful, but it does the job. What have you got to lose? Except your job.”