On the Yard (22 page)

Oberholster smiled. “Do anything you got balls enough to do—go crazy, sucker—but you better think carefully, and lock up, that's what you better do.”

Juleson turned and walked away heading towards the gate, and Chilly, still smiling, watched after him.

Nunn said, “You're not leaving Gasolino much cover.”

“He'll lock up.”

“What if he doesn't?”

“Then we should see some action. Don't worry about it.”

“Why should I worry? I just thought you could have let Gasolino pick his own time and place. He might have wanted to creep on this dude.”

“I don't think Gasolino would bother creeping on King Kong.” Chilly glanced back towards the gate Juleson was just now passing through, his shoulders held unnaturally square. “Anyway,” Chilly continued, “I'd lay long odds he locks up.”

Red said, “Chilly's run many and many a stud off the yard.”

“What're you?” Nunn asked with humorous contempt. “Chilly's fan club?”

“I work for him—just like you do.”

Chilly rocked back on his heels. “Tell him, Red.”

Juleson found himself unable to make sense of his job. He was trying to post grades and again and again he found himself, pen poised over a card, staring at the bland yellow wall across from him. He wasn't thinking. His mind was disabled by anxiety.

His supervisor arrived, flushed with enthusiasm. “Paul, come in here, will you?” he said and went into his office. Juleson automatically picked up a pencil and pad and rose to follow.

“Paul, do you know what we're doing here?” Mr. Cleman asked rhetorically, seating himself at his desk. His thinning gray hair was cropped so short it seemed to spot his broad forehead like silver frost. He immediately picked up a freshly sharpened pencil and began to turn it in his hands, hands still marked from the years Mr. Cleman had worked as a plumber.

“We're trying to turn out journeymen trained on obsolete equipment. I was talking to Bob Tribble—you remember him? He's on our printing trade advisory committee. He told me the whole industry's shifting to automation ...”

Juleson watched Mr. Cleman's hands shifting in illustration, still anchored by the pencil, two worn red birds struggling over a glossy yellow worm, and he wondered what Mr. Cleman would find to say if he were to interrupt to tell him someone had threatened to have his clerk killed. What could he say?

“... and that isn't all, Paul, much the same sort of thing is happening to our machinist trainees—” He broke off, his face sharpening with concern. “Don't you feel well?”

“I'm all right.”

“You don't look well.”

“Maybe I'm catching stomach flu—the block's been full of it.”

Mr. Cleman shook his head in warning. “You don't want to play around with that stuff. My brother-in-law came down with it last year ...” After he had related the course of his brother-in-law's illness, Mr. Cleman asked, “Do you want a pass to the hospital?”

“No, thank you.”

“If you don't feel better tomorrow, lay in.” He looked at Juleson with a sympathy that was no less genuine for its remoteness. “I often think the ordinary hardships must be doubly difficult to bear here. I didn't know what to say when I went home Christmas Eve—I never do.” He looked down at the thick green glass that topped his desk. A line of photographs were pressed beneath the upper edge, two sturdy blond boys caught in a series of poses. “Sometimes I have a feeling of shame that I'm able to go home. Why should I be able to go home? I wonder. But then I can.” He tapped the ID badge above his breast pocket. “I have this.”

Juleson tried to say something comforting. “You might not know why you're not here, but we do know why we are.”

Mr. Cleman smiled vaguely. “You may have something there, Paul.” He reached for his telephone and placed a call to the auto mech shop, and began to ask the instructor how grave a disadvantage it was to his program to have to train his students on old model cars.

Juleson passed up lunch as he usually did, but he didn't go to the library, and he was sitting at his desk, still trying to work in the almost empty building, when he saw Oberholster step through the front door. Oberholster paused by the information desk, looking around, and when he saw Juleson, he turned to motion to someone outside. Gasolino came in. Even at the distance of thirty yards Juleson could clearly discern the mad quality of Gasolino's smile. Oberholster pointed, and Gasolino started down the central aisle, moving with a peculiar gliding slouch. Automatically Juleson stood up—his hand reached out and closed over the Scotch tape dispenser on top of his desk. He didn't pick it up, but stood waiting.

Gasolino stopped halfway along the aisle and made an odd little gesture, much as to say,
I see you
. Then he turned back.

The guard came out of the custody office with a sandwich in his hand. He was still chewing as he asked, “What you guys want?”

“I think maybe I go to school,” Gasolino said. He touched his forehead with two fingers, and smiled out at the guard from under his hand. “I want to get keen.”

“Open line's at three o'clock,” the guard said automatically.

Oberholster walked out without looking back, but Gasolino turned to wave at Juleson.

Juleson sat down slowly. His armpits were wet, and his legs continued to tremble for moments after. By the dull ache in his jaw he realized how hard he had been gritting his teeth. He went on working and wondered why he bothered. However it came out there was little chance he would be sitting at this desk tomorrow. Still he went on with his everyday chores and was still at them when in the middle of the afternoon he was called to the captain's office. He walked across the garden and presented himself at the pass window. He was told to have a seat on the benches. His name was called after a few minutes and he was directed to one of the interview rooms where he found himself facing the warden. It was the first time he had seen this famous man up close, and he wondered if the smooth white hair was not a little too theatrical, the warm blue eyes a little too candid.

“Sit down, Mr. Juleson.”

The warden smiled disarmingly and indicated a case file in front of him. “I've been looking over your record. It's impressive, quite impressive. There's good reason to believe that when your case comes up in front of the board in—” He paused to check the date. “In March. They will most likely grant your parole at that time.”

“That's encouraging.”

“Yes, but—” The warden paused delicately. “We hear things. All sorts of things. Some of them are true, many of them are not, but we feel we have to check up, particularly when it concerns a man whose potential for successful readjustment is as high as yours.”

The warden picked up a square of paper and passed it to Juleson, “Do you know this man?”

Juleson recognized Oberholster's mug shot. The photo was dated three years earlier, but Oberholster seemed to have grown no older. Except for his eyes, he looked like a boy. His smooth blond hair was hardly darker than his white face.

“I've seen him,” Juleson said.

“We hear you're having trouble with him.”

Juleson looked into the warden's eyes and found himself saying, “I don't even know him.”

“This is a dangerous man, one of the most dangerous in the institution. It would be very unwise of you to protect him.”

“I'm afraid you've been misinformed, sir.”

The warden took the mug shot back and studied it briefly himself. Then he stood up and went to a file cabinet. “I want to show you something.” He sorted through several folders before he pulled out a glossy eight-by-ten-inch photograph which he handed to Juleson. The subject was the corpse of a Mexican boy. It was photographed from above, and from the throat to the groin there were a great number of small round holes. They appeared black, darker than the primitive tattoo of the Virgin on the boy's chest. His unmarked face would have seemed peaceful except his mouth gaped emptily.

“He was nineteen,” the warden said flatly. “He was stabbed thirty-two times. The morning before the fight he wrapped newspapers and magazines around himself, but the man he fought had used two of the trays from the mess hall. We can't prove it, but we believe Oberholster paid to have this done.”

Juleson pushed the photograph away. He had had to look at mortuary photographs more distressing to him than any others ever could be, including the thought of his own. The dead boy was an abstraction.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I can't help you.”

“And you won't help yourself?”

“But I don't need help, Warden.”

The warden closed the file drawer, nodding in close agreement with whatever he was thinking. “You seem to have learned something here,” he said, “but it is not what we would like to have had you learn. I didn't come into prison work as a warden—you've probably heard that—I've worked the blocks, the towers, the big yard, and I've learned too. I've developed certain instincts. I think the word's out on you, and I think you know it.” He paused studying Juleson closely. “I should order you locked up for your own protection.”

“There's no need for that, sir.”

“You think you can handle this yourself—no, you think you should handle it yourself, yet if someone had threatened your home when you were still an ordinary citizen, would you have hesitated to call the police?”

“It's beside the point, sir, but there is a difference.”

“But why?” The warden leaned forward eagerly. “Your crime was a crime of passion. For a moment you lost control of yourself. That could happen to anyone. It doesn't make you like the majority of these men.” The warden waved his hand to indicate the prison beyond the interview room. “It doesn't make you subject to their laws.”

“I live with them. I've been living with them for three years.”

“Yes.” The warden sat down, his eagerness spent. “Yes, you have.” Again he turned the fatherly and faintly conning gaze on Juleson. “You won't reconsider? I don't like to order you to protective custody against your will.”

“There's nothing to consider, Warden. I don't know how to convince you, but you've picked up some bum scoop.”

“Bum scoop.” The warden mouthed the expression as if it had an unpleasant taste. “Yes, that happens. All right, Mr. Juleson, I'm going to take your word for this. But should you want to get in touch with me, I'll leave word at the captain's office.” He stood up and offered his hand.

They shook hands, Juleson conscious that his palm was damp.

“Good luck with the parole board,” the warden said.

That afternoon when he passed into the big yard before lockup he found they were operating the metal detector. This system was built into three-gate, and when it was activated it could be set to detect any concentration of metal greater than the sum of a man's belt buckle and the nails in his shoes. When someone tried to pass carrying more, even a Prince Albert can, a bell rang. Little was ever caught in the Eye, as they called it, but it served its purpose. When men approaching the big yard saw the Eye in operation they immediately dropped their knives, and after lockup the guards would gather the harvest. Knives were manufactured steadily in a dozen shops and custody was satisfied to hold the number down and as much as possible to keep them out of the blocks and off the big yard.

Juleson passed the Eye without incident. He hadn't considered acquiring a knife, not that he had any idea where to get one. He crossed the yard and joined one of the lines forming in front of the south block. When he met Manning in front of the cell he merely nodded at the other man's small talk. After the count had cleared he stretched out on his bunk and closed his eyes. He knew what had hardened him through the interview with the warden, and it wasn't the inverted morality the warden suspected, but simple pride—the sense of his own manhood. He wasn't going to give Oberholster the satisfaction of seeing him take shelter behind the guns of the guardline—even if it cost his life. And that was only one of many alternatives. That was always one of many alternatives. He realized there were things he could not do and remain the man he needed to be. If he locked up—and he had to smile at the irony that this was what both Oberholster and the warden had advised—if he locked up he would be finished in another way just as surely as if Gasolino were to stab him to death in the morning. This lesson lay close to the bone, but Juleson realized that an ordinary man, as he was, might go a lifetime and never have to test it. Yet this was the second time he had found himself facing the question, and he did not intend to fail again. Nor did he intend to make Gasolino's job easy for him.

He turned in his bunk, pressing his face into his pillow, and his quickened senses informed him his blankets were growing dusty again. Blankets were washed once a year—in a week they lost their scent of freshness, in a month the dust puffed when they were sharply slapped. If he had been called upon to symbolize the quality of his imprisonment in a single image he would have thought of himself exposed in a small poorly lit concrete box full of the odor of stale grease. His tongue would be coated with dust.

“Manning?”

Juleson looked up to see the mail officer paused in front of the cell. He heard Manning in the bunk below calling off his number. The officer lifted Manning's letter, automatically glancing at the one below to see if it were designated to the same cell, and in that moment Juleson experienced the swift and irrational hope that his aunt's check, now a month late, would be waiting there, but the officer moved on, his eyes lifted to the cell numbers stenciled above the doors. Juleson dropped back to his pillow. He recognized that his wild surge of hope had exposed to him just how badly he wanted the situation with Oberholster harmlessly dissolved. It would still be honorable to pay.