Bull Head (2 page)

“Here to see my little brother.” Earl spells out Hammy's name.

The guard flips through pages on his clipboard. He picks up a phone, murmurs into it, hangs up, returns to the booth. A pretty, heavyset woman enters wordlessly, snaps on a pair of latex gloves, rummages through Earl's duffle bag. Her breasts push at the buttons of her uniform. Handcuffs jingle on her hip. She pulls out his nitroglycerin pills, pens, and flask. She digs through his clothes, yanks out shirts and briefs, shakes and leaves them on the counter in a heap.

“And this?” She holds up a crumpled naked woman, a deflated life-sized plastic doll.

“What else should a guy bring for his brother in jail?”

“All gifts must be registered.”

“Let's register it then.” He looks around, shifts from foot to foot, grateful no one else is in the room.

She drops the doll on the counter, makes a note on her clipboard. “Flask. Car keys. Wallet.” She glances at his belt. “That, too.”

He grins, slides the Leatherman and pouch off, and hands it to her.

“The belt, too.”

“I like the way you think.”

She dumps the contents into a small Rubbermaid bin and
drops it in a locker, locks it, and hands him the key. “They'll be here for you in three days.”

“I'm looking forward to that.” Earl stuffs the clothes in his duffle bag without folding them.

He walks through a metal detector. The guard pushes his bags through an X-ray machine, hands him a clip-on badge with a large “V” for “Visitor,” buzzes him through two separate doors leading outside. The woman escorts him to a miniature house, a dreary slap-it-up-quick covered in the grey siding that characterized much of the company town he drove through to get here. A neatly clipped lawn and a waist-high chainlink fence surround unit B202, usually reserved for conjugal visits. A concrete picnic table sits bolted to the ground. Beneath it, a plastic pail is filled with sand and cigarette butts, a shovel jabbed upright in it.

“My tax dollars hard at work,” Earl says.

“Don't make yourself too comfortable.”

“How about a tour?”

She unlocks the front door and leaves.

He had expected bars on the windows, cots for sleeping, cold cement floors, metal toilets without seats, and bad-ass dudes at every turn. Instead Earl finds wall-to-wall broadloom, a large-screen TV and a boombox, a queen-sized bed, and a night table filled with packages of condoms. In the smaller bedroom there are two single beds with Bugs Bunny comic book sheets, a chalkboard, and broken sticks of coloured chalk. Nothing bolted down. It's a nicer house than he owns. He looks out the window; cameras pointed at all angles.

Another stocky woman, nothing to look at, strides toward the house. Hammy limps behind her carrying a small mesh sack. His
hair hangs, stringy, receding; there's a triangular patch of fuzz beneath his lower lip. Despite the oversized T-shirt, Earl can make out his well-defined, muscular arms.

Earl offers a hand. “Hey, little man.”

“Well, ain't this something? You showed up.”

They embrace with one arm. The bones in Hammy's back and shoulder are sharp and feel brittle. Earl lets go and glances at his brothers face, pasty white, pockmarked with small scars, not clear and tanned as Earl remembered. Hammy's eyes jitter back and forth, marbled with red lines.

“You make sure you clean up after yourself and leave the house in the same shape you got it,” the guard says. “You hear?”

“Yes, ma'am.” Hammy keeps his head down as she walks out of the house.

“What's up with the women here?”

“To begin with, there ain't many, if that's what you want to call them.” Hammy wanders through the house and stops at the children's room. “I'll take this one.”

“No way, little man. Take the master.”

“Nah, looks like you could use the space.” Hammy chuckles, nods at Earl's stomach. “Hell, it'll just make it harder to go back inside, anyways.”

“Suit yourself. I'm beat from the drive.”

“Sleeping one off? That's all right. I'll be out here. I ain't going anywhere.”

For dinner, Earl minces a head of garlic, sautés it in olive oil, and adds a can of tomato sauce. He simmers it for a few minutes,
adds a pat of butter and a tablespoon of sugar, tosses in a pinch of chili flakes and serves it over a mound of rigatoni. His signature dish—Hammy's favourite. Earl watches him pick at his food. “Something wrong?”

“Nah, it's real good, Earl. I just can't eat spicy food anymore. Stomach can't take it.”

“What's wrong with your stomach?”

“Nothing serious. Just these ulcers I got. The food's good. Nice to taste something with flavour compared to the tasteless crap they serve in there.” Hammy flips his thumb toward the main building of the prison and pushes his plate aside.

“What's it like?”

“What's what like?”

“In there. What's it like in there?”

“What do you think it's like?”

“I don't know. That's why I'm asking.”

“You're the smart one. You tell me.”

“Must be tough, having to watch your back all the time, not knowing who you can trust.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” Hammy shakes his head. “That some lame-ass attempt to show you know something about what I'm going through?” Hammy stands and spreads his arms across the width of the table, checks to see if it's sturdy, then climbs on top.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Hammy pops the shade off the light, unscrews the bulb with his sleeve. “Just as I thought.” He hands it to Earl. The bulb is hot.

“Huh?

“How many watts?”

“Forty.”

Hammy lifts his eyebrows. “And?”

“And what?”

“Doesn't that strike you as strange?”

“No.”

“Not sixty or a hundred?”

“No.” Earl looks around the room. Even though all the lights are on, the room is dim.

“Try again.”

“So guys won't electrocute themselves? So the prison can save money on their power bill? How the hell should I know?”

Hammy laughs. “When you start spending time alone, when your world is stripped down to its bare essentials, you get to see more clearly. It's the one thing I've gained in here. Clarity.” Hammy screws the light bulb back in and hops off the table.

“I don't have a clue what you're talking about.”

“Least you ain't lying.”

“Does that make you feel good?”

“Yeah.”

“What's the deal with the light bulbs?”

Hammy laughs again. “So we can't cook speed.” He limps toward the kitchen, searches the cutlery drawer, pulls out a couple of jagged steak knives and holds them out. “Here, this might be something you can relate to.”

Earl turns the knives over in his palm. The tips are blackened. It makes him nervous to hold the knives, sharp objects in the room that Hammy can access at any time. He places the knives back in the drawer, slides it shut. “Looks like high school all over again.”

“There you go.” Hammy smiles, leaves his plate on the table, and slaps Earl on the shoulder. “You bring those pens?”

“Yeah. You're not planning on smoking them or frying the ink or something, are you?”

“Nah. Not unless you want a homemade tattoo.”

“I'll pass.”

Earl goes to the bedroom and rummages through his bag. He lifts the doll, her mouth a ragged line. Jesus. Bad idea. He drops it in his duffle bag, grabs a four-pack of pens. He walks back down the hallway into the living room where Hammy sits in front of the TV. “Here you go. Twice as many as you asked for. Should keep you plenty busy.”

“That's mighty generous of you.” Hammy tears open the package, tests each pen on the back of the package and smiles. He opens his notebook and begins writing.

“Yeah, you're welcome for dinner, too.”

After Earl cleans the dishes, he watches TV with Hammy. The phone rings, startling them both. Hammy picks it up. “Hello?” He hangs up, opens the front door, and waves at the control booth. A flashlight flicks on and off, confirms he's been seen. Hammy sits down and turns to Earl. “So, why'd you come here?”

“Jesus, little man, how about a little foreplay before you bend me over and stick it to me?”

“Foreplay's a waste of time.”

“Not in my experience.”

“In here it is.”

Earl meets Hammy's eyes; they flit side to side in quick
succession but remain fixed on Earl.

Hammy blinks and leans forward. “I know you, Earl. You're not here for the hell of it.”

“Maybe I am. Is there anything wrong in that?”

“Who you running from?”

“Nothing. Nobody. I'm here for you.”

“All of the sudden you're here for me, huh?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Because you haven't changed a lick. You can't take your eyes off yourself anytime you pass a mirror. Hell, you were checking out your moustache in the reflection of the toaster while doing the dishes. Christ, you look like hell.”

“Thanks.”

“You drinking again?”

Earl glares at Hammy. “Not your business.”

“I figured as much. But you're gonna lecture me on drugs this, drugs that, let me know what a mess I've made of things, tell me you'll always be there for me.”

“Who's the one preaching? I don't need this crap, especially coming from you.”

Hammy leans back into the couch, shakes his head. “Got it all sorted, huh?”

The brothers watch TV in silence until Hammy falls asleep. Earl wakes him, offers his hand to help him get up, puts an arm around his neck, and limps down the hallway with him, says goodnight, shuts the door.

“Leave it open.”

Earl sits in the living room, flicks through the channels, the sound muted. His skin feels clammy. A headache pounds at the base of his neck. He wraps himself in a blanket but still shivers, turns off the TV, and sits in the dark; the silence rumbles in his ears. He could be back home now lying on the hood of his truck with Arlene, parked at the mountainside lookout, stars glittering above them, enjoying the murmur of her voice in his ear, her palm resting on his chest.

Earl gets up, goes to his room, and closes the door. The room glows with prison lights outside; there are no curtains on the windows to block it out. He rummages through his duffle bag and takes out the doll. It sags in his fingers. He stretches the plastic to unfasten the nipple and blows air into it until it's inflated and he can admire the full roundness of its face. It wobbles before him, eyes unblinking, mouth wide open as if in surprise. He listens to the quiet of the prison, lifts the doll in his arms, turns it around, examines it in the dark. Breasts like cantaloupes, legs all the way to the ground. It's young and has a firmer body than anyone he's seen or held in a long while. He turns it around so they face each other, and glides along the carpet with it. Quick-quick, slow-slow, quick-quick, slow-slow. He moves alongside the bed toward the door before spinning it around and, quick-quick, slow-slow, glides across the rug back to the other side of the room. Earl smiles, whether it's Arlene or Flo or Bonnie or even that crazy one, Millie, that he holds in his arms. He twirls the doll one last time before propping it up in the closet, resists a bow, closes the door.

He lies down panting, the sweat cooling against his shirt, his breath wheezing in the silence, a rasp that catches on something
in his throat on each inhale. He strains to breathe more evenly until he doesn't have to keep his mouth open. His chest rises and falls, the moments between each breath long and drawn. But he can't fall asleep. The light through the window, Hammy across the hall, the silence. He gets up, opens the closet, grabs the doll and lays it on its side, draws up the covers, and curls up behind it. The plastic skin squeaks against Earl's as they settle in together, and all is quiet again.

The phone rings for count at seven a.m., jars Earl awake. His mouth is dry and his head pounds something fierce. The doll stares back at him. He rolls out of bed and stands it up in the closet, squeezes the sides of his head with his hands to relieve his headache, stumbles to Hammy's room. Hammy sleeps with his arms stretched over his head, bent at the elbows. In comic book sheets, Hammy looks like a child sleeping in on a Saturday morning, not someone hooked on meth and coke who robs handicapped elderly women. His fingers are smeared with black ink. After Hammy was born, their father lifted Hammy's tiny fingers, turned them over, sniffed, and announced to their mother, “Hands like a thief.” The phone continues to ring. Earl shakes Hammy's leg. “Little man, you gotta answer the phone.”