A Bad Man (13 page)

“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 guard 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.”

“What do you want?” Feldman asked.

“I don’t fix prices,” Mix said. “This is a new line with me. You don’t think the crappy fence would ask me what
I
thought a thing was worth.”

Feldman tried to remember if he and the guard had had any dealings. In the early days he had made certain mistakes, but surely the guards took into account a man’s newness.

“From the look on your face,” Mix said, “I’d say you know that feller. He’s got a quick temper. Look at that fucking red hair under his cap. That old Irishman sure hates the Jews.”

“All right,” Feldman said, “say what you want or leave me alone.”

“I’m a bad man,” Mix said. Feldman waited for him to go on. It was true, he thought; he could not make demands. He could only sneer his griefs and object and schnorr around for reasons. “I’m a bad man,” Mix said again, “and a heavy smoker, and I like my candy and my stick of gum, and most of the guys around here have radios and I don’t. Where’s
my
five bucks a month from the outside that the rest of you get? Is it my fault my old man’s a prick and pretends I ain’t alive? I’ve got expenses too, you know. And because I’m a bad man and still paying for this jerk suit”—he pointed to his costume, a satire on the new blends, which, dimly phosphorescent, shone on his pale wrists like fishskin—“I’m docked a buck a month in canteen chits.”

“I’m a bad man too,” Feldman said. “They dock me.”

“Fifty cents a month,” Mix said, ignoring him. “I could have asked for a buck.”

“It’s ridiculous for me to buy you off at all. Why should that guard kill me?”

“He’s seen your record,” Mix said. “He knows all about you.”

That was true, Feldman thought. He was wondering if he should offer Mix a quarter.

“Give me a dime,” Mix pleaded. “For two months.”

“You haven’t sense, Mix,” Feldman said. He turned away from him.

“I’ll tell,” Mix said. “I swear it.”

“I know that,” Feldman said quietly. He cupped his hands over his mouth. “Guard,” he called suddenly. “Guard.
Guard
.”

“What’s that racket?” the guard yelled.

“Hey, what is this?” Mix said.

“I’m on Warden’s Business,” Feldman shouted. “I’m Feldman the bad man and I’m on Warden’s Business.” He took out the warden’s flag and waved it furiously. “Feldman the bad man coming through here on Warden’s Business,” he called. “Feldman the bad man on his way to Records and Forms in the supply wing, to pick up requisitions for the canteen. No more requisitions in the canteen,” he yelled. Some civilians and other prison officials from the administrative offices stared at him from beyond the barred gate. Feldman continued to wave his flag and shout. “Feldman the bad man on Warden’s Business for Lieutenant Crease. Feldman the bad man on Get the Requisitions from Records and Forms in the Supply Wing Business. Coming through.”

“Cut out that screaming,” the guard roared.

Feldman marched toward him, waving his flag.

“All right, all right, I see it. Go on the hell through.” He unlocked the gate, and Feldman marched through. He looked back over his shoulder and winked at Mix, but the troubled man had turned away.

In trouble
: These were the words of Feldman’s dream. He awoke. He sat up.
In trouble
. As
in atmosphere
. Or
in China
. It was an ambience, a dimension. Sure, he thought, the turd dimension. Something in nature. Something inside and mechanical. Something inside and not mechanical at all. Doom, he thought, the house struck by lightning, the wooden leg in flames, the poisoned heart.

Then why, he thought, why am I smiling?

He had been awakened by a noise. Was someone escaping? Was a cell open? Had a prisoner thrust his hands through the bars to catch a guard’s throat? Would he be made to run with them? He listened.