On the Yard (32 page)

Chilly heard a distant surge of music and turned to walk through the weight-lifting section. A single iron freak was making dead lifts of what looked close to a thousand pounds. The veins stood out at his temples like blue rubber tubes.

“Hi, Chilly,” he said, smiling sweetly.

Chilly nodded and passed on. At the end of the weight-lifting section an iron door led on to a primitive theater where movies were shown as a part of the recreation program. Chilly heaved at the door. It opened to the side in tracks and was difficult for one man to handle. He managed to crack it a foot, slip inside, and close it after him. A group of fifty or sixty men sat in the semi-darkness watching a Standard Oil travelogue. Most of them were seated on metal folding chairs, but a few, the gym regulars, had homemade easy chairs, pieced together out of scrap wood, cotton waste, and old blankets. One of these chairs was understood to belong to Chilly, and as he approached, the man who had been sitting in it stood up quickly and moved to the side.

“Any good?” Chilly asked.

“No, same old crap.”

The same films were rotated over and over again, but Chilly didn't tire of them. Repetition couldn't make the exotic landscapes any less strange, because the richness of all their possible realities was only implied and at each reviewing subject to fresh interpretation. The present sequences had been filmed in Equatorial Africa. On the screen tribesmen were dancing beneath huge straw hats—crouching into a deep squat so the great brims trailed in the dust, they whirled and whirled like a cluster of giant lilies broken loose to toss and spin on the current of a stream. Then the scene shifted to another group dance where they pranced in a long line, holding spears, led by a man in a devil mask. Their faces were blank, hypnotized, streaked with dust and sweat.

In the seats just in front of Chilly, one Negro leaned over to whisper to another, “Ever' time they put a brother in a flick they either got him holding a broom or a spear.”

And the other whispered back, “Yeah, but them some
fierce
-looking suckers they got there.”

A dozen drums boomed on the sound track, and smoke shifted in silvery folds through the cone of light from the projector. A dim yellow glow filtered through the boarded windows, making the faces in the audience appear almost as alien as those on the screen. Chilly shifted uneasily and rubbed the back of his neck. He lit a cigarette and as he turned back to the screen he noted, with an electric shiver of his nerves, that someone was staring at him. A gunsel, he thought immediately, using the term they applied to any kid on the make for trouble or a reputation as a hard rock.

The gunsel lounged against a twelve-by-twelve, thumbs hooked in his back pockets, and something in his posture, combined with his height, his thinness, his small smooth triangular head reminded Chilly of a praying mantis. Chilly met the gunsel's eyes briefly, without challenge, then turned back to the screen. He was used to the curiosity of others, he knew he was pointed out on the yard by men whose names he would never know, but a part of his awareness detached itself from the travelogue and remained alert for any move. The gunsel didn't stir, but he continued to stare, and after a moment Chilly shifted around to stare back. The gunsel's eyes were lost in shadow, but Chilly sensed the life there as he would sense the presence of an animal in a cave. Their gaze remained locked like children trying to stare each other down until Chilly tired of this exercise, and beckoned with his head.

The gunsel straightened, still taller, and came towards Chilly. As he drew closer, Chilly was able to see that he was bonerooed—pants glazed with starch and pressed to knife creases, and he had decorated his cap with a leather band, anchoring it at the sides with white buttons. His mouth seemed only half formed.

“You got nose trouble?” Chilly asked softly.

“Nose trouble?”

The gunsel didn't lower his voice. The men around them stirred and turned to watch.

“Why are you gunning me?” Chilly asked. He was still relaxed in his chair, but a cold center of tension was forming in his chest. This might be a nut. If something came down and he was made to look bad it would be all over the joint by four o'clock lockup.

The gunsel leaned forward, holding one hand out in a gesture of quiet, and Chilly saw a fresh tattoo, still scabbed over in places, on the inside of his forearm—the tattoo of a vampire.

“You Chilly Willy?”

“You know I'm Chilly Willy.”

“I want to talk to you.”

Chilly remained silent. The gunsel straightened again and glanced briefly at the men who were still watching in the hope they might witness some violence. Their interest was avid. He turned back to Chilly.

“I want to get on the night gym list.”

Chilly smiled and someone else laughed in the darkness. The gunsel jerked around, stung by this mockery. “It's important,” he said less to Chilly than to the man who had laughed and his tone was one of high seriousness that was almost convincing.

“What makes you think I can get you on the gym list?”

“You're supposed to be the wheel.”

Chilly pointed at the tattoo. “You a Vampire?”

“I'm the duke. They call me Stick.”

“Where do you guys come in from?”

“All over.”

“There are a lot of you here?”

“More'n you guess. But we're not scheming on you.”

“That's good.” Chilly studied Stick, and though there was little physical basis for comparison, Stick reminded him of Gasolino—while in the face of even the weariest slob there was some faint resonance, Stick's face was numb and the numbness was like armor.

“We'll talk night gym,” Chilly told him. “But on the yard. Right now I'm watching the flick.”

“Can you fix it?”

“See me on the yard.”

Chilly waited for the duke of the Vampires to contact him as they gathered before the four o'clock lockup, but the gunsel didn't show. Chilly brushed it off—he would hit again or he wouldn't—and went to join Nunn and Society Red who were watching a domino game.

“Big stuff down here,” Nunn whispered.

“How much?”

“Ten boxes a corner.”

“These suckers are ready for Vegas.”

The players had a high-stake sheen to their faces and they played with relative quiet, studying a long time between moves. Chilly checked the diagram of the game trying to determine the outcome.

“There's your cell buddy,” Red said, and he followed Red's nicotine-stained forefinger to see the boy walking the yard with another man. The man, a player named O'Brien, leaned over the boy with a patently conning sincerity, and the boy was moving with a studied gracefulness that was somehow too exaggerated to be truly feminine. It was mimicry.

“Tell me that kid ain't pussy,” Red continued.

“He's pussy,” Chilly said, “but that don't mean I'm interested.”

“You going to have her moved?” Nunn asked.

“When I can.”

“Listen. Listen, Chilly.” Red had his coat sleeve. “You have that sweet bitch put in my cell. Can you do that?”

“I don't know, Red. Right now I can't get him out of my cell.”

“Uh-huh,” Red said knowingly, “huckily buck.”

“What do you want with a freak?” Nunn asked. “I thought you laid up every night and dreamed about movie stars.”

Red grinned. “That's right, but they're sometimey bitches. Sometimes they show, sometimes they don't. But that little freak—” Red looked back to where the boy was clearly playing the coquette with O'Brien. “She'd be there.”

“Well,” Nunn observed, “it looks like O'Brien'll have her wired up before you get the chance.”

“Chilly, you going to 'low that?” Red asked.

“Jesus, Red, give it a rest. Isn't it bad enough I've got the sissy sonofabitch in my cell?”

That night after dinner, when the ducat officer passed the cell, he called “Cain,” laid a ducat on the bars and passed on. The boy climbed down from the upper bunk to take the slip of paper. He studied it for a moment, then turned to Chilly.

“What's this?”

“It's a ducat. Didn't they use ducats in Tracy?”

The boy's eyes flickered and he colored faintly. “No.”

“Let me see it.”

Chilly read it at a glance. “You have to go to the psych department for an interview at nine-thirty. You know where that is?”

“Back in the hospital?”

“That's right.”

“What do they want with me?”

“If you don't know, how would I know?”

“I don't like psychs.”

“That doesn't surprise me,” Chilly said dryly. He paused for a moment, then asked, “What'd O'Brien want?”

“O'Brien?”

“O'Brien had you jacked up just before lockup. What'd he want?”

The boy colored again. “He wanted me to move into his cell.”

“That's out.”

“All right.”

“I'm going to move you in with a friend of mine.”

“A friend of yours? Maybe I won't like him.”

“You'll like him. He's real likable.”

The boy studied the floor and Chilly noticed how long his lashes were. He sighed and said, “I have a friend on the streets. Do you think he'll come over here to visit me?”

“What do you think?”

“I hope he does.”

Chilly raised his book, tacitly indicating he wanted to read. “Excuse me,” the boy said. “I didn't mean to interrupt you.”

“That's okay. In a week or so you'll move in with Red.”

“If you say so.”

The boy jumped back into the upper bunk. Chilly read a page, then lowered the book to ask, “You got cigarettes?”

“No.”

“There's plenty on the shelf. Take what you need. If you want coffee, or some scarf—help yourself.”

“Thank you.”

“It's all right.”

Stick approached Chilly for the second time in the morning before work call. Chilly, noting that this kid looked even stranger in full daylight, took him aside to ask, “How bad do you want on that gym list?”

Stick answered as he had the day before, “It's important.”

“You Vampires do any collection work?”

“We can.”

“All right. I got a guy I want whipped on. You do the job and you're on the night gym list.”

“How bad?”

“I want him to know he's been worked on. You don't have to kill him.”

“That's worth a little more than a gym assignment.”

“You want to bargain?”

“No. Okay, who is it?”

“Come on, I'll point him out.”

They walked the yard twice before Chilly spotted Juleson squatting on his heels, leaning against the east block wall. As usual he had a book in his hand, but he wasn't reading—his eyes were watching something in the sky above the mess hall roof while his finger marked his place.

“You see the stud with the book?”

“Yeah.”

“That's him.”

Chilly started to walk away, but Stick called after him, “When will I be on the list?”

Chilly paused, “You don't have to ask that. When the job's done.”

If it gets done, he thought, studying the buttons sewed to the side of Stick's cap.

That evening at dinner, his new cell partner stuck close to Chilly in line and ended up seated at the same table with Chilly and Red. Chilly told him to help himself from the various bottles Red was producing from his pockets. Red watched the boy, his eyes bright.

“Takes the mean edge off that shit, don't it?” Red asked.

“Yes, thank you.”

“No reason for you to eat mainline,” Red continued. “You never ate mainline in Tracy, did you?”

“No,” the boy said. “I had a friend in Tracy.”

“You've got a friend right here, Candy.”

“Where did you hear that name?”

“It's your name, isn't it?” Red asked.

“I've used it—for a stage name.”

“Candy Cane. Yeah, I heard about it, I heard—”

“All right, Red,” Chilly said quietly. “Let it wait.”

They finished the meal in silence, but as soon as they were locked in the cell, the boy said, “I don't like him.”

“You don't like who?”

“Your friend. Red. I don't like him.”

“He's all right.”

“And you're just going to give me to him? What do you think I am?”

Chilly stared levelly. “All right, what are you?”

“I'm a person. You can't take that away from me. I'm a person.”

“I'm not trying to take anything away from you. Listen, you silly little bitch, this is
not
Tracy. If someone doesn't stand in front of you, you'll get your little ass killed, or someone will be ripping you off every time you try to take a shower. Not that I give a damn one way or the other, but Red says he wants you, and that's good enough for me. No one, and I mean
no one
, is going to mess with what's Red's, because that's the same as messing with me. So call yourself lucky and knock off the highsiding. I'm going to catch the night gym line. If you need anything, help yourself.”

Chilly left the cell on the six-thirty unlock. It was already coming on evening. The big yard always seemed strange to him at this time of day, empty and still wet from the daily hosing. He crossed quickly, listening to his own footsteps which he could never hear in the daytime. A frail moon, just beginning to show, lay above a scud of cloud, and for a moment Chilly tried to sense how it would feel to be walking down a street in San Francisco, or Cleveland or Paris, France. For the moment that the dream lasted it seemed he could hear the music of a sidewalk speaker and the horn of an approaching car.

In the gym, he went to the inner office to talk to Caterpillar. In Caterpillar's face, already going solid and lightless, Chilly saw the mirror of his own aging, although he knew his was interior. Caterpillar sat with his feet on the assistant coach's desk. The wall behind him was solid with flicks clipped from different tit magazines.