The Weight (6 page)

Eddie, he was welcome all over the place. So I was glad he was there that day—you couldn’t want a better guy to ask.

“You know what
azúcar
means, Eddie?”

He was on the last rep of the set he was doing. I thought he’d let the bar down first, but he kept the weight up and answered me between nose-breaths. “Sure.” “Means.” “Sugar.”

Soon as he said that, I turned around and looked over at the PRs, trying to find the one that had said that word. I let them see me staring. That way, whoever said that about me, he’d have to step out.

Eddie put the weight down so quick it was a good thing the spotters saw it coming. He hopped off the bench and stood next to me.

“Hey! Don’t chump yourself off, kid. You want to be like every other paranoid peckerwood in this joint? Just ’cause guys’re talking a different language don’t mean they’re talking about
you
.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Take a deep breath; you’re gonna feel like a blockhead in about a minute. Listen: You know there’s still Spanish guys in here for blowing up buildings and stuff, years ago? Older guys. Not gang-bangers—like political prisoners, okay?
Los Macheteros
, they call themselves. That comes from slaves who had to spend all day in the cane fields. What they wanted was to cut Puerto Rico loose from America, be its own country.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“I’m pretty tight with some of them,” Eddie kept going, like he never heard me. “Good men, you get to know them. Smart as hell, and stand-up, too. You with me? Okay, now, some of them were watching that day you got jumped by those Muslims. The way they told it, you went through those fools like you was working in the cane fields. Chopping ’em down like you had a machete.”

“I still don’t see—”

“That’s your last name, right? Caine?”

“Yeah …”

“I know you spell it different, but it sounds the same. Cane fields, they’re talking about
sugar
cane, get it?

“Nobody was downing you, kid.
Azúcar
, it’s all in how you say it. Like when people say a boxer’s ‘pretty,’ you heard that, right? ‘Pretty’ don’t mean he’s a punk; it means he’s slick and smooth.”

Eddie reached up high, then brought his hand down into a fist. Held it in front of his mouth, like it was a microphone.

“Ladies, gentlemen, and those who have yet to decide,” he boomed out. “Tonight we bring you fifteen rounds of boxing for the heavyweight championship of the world! In this corner, weighing in at a ready two hundred and eighty pounds, sporting a perfect record of twenty-six wins, twenty-four by knockout, two by fix … the challenger: Timmy ‘Sugar’
Caaaiinne
!”

Everybody standing around the weight stack clapped, like I really was going to go against someone. One guy even yelled out that he had major money on me.

“You like it
now
, kid?”

I sure did. Beat the hell out of people calling me “Tiny.” You know, “Tiny Tim.” Big fucking joke.

After a while, everybody started calling me Sugar. When I gated, I took it with me.

That was a long time ago. I hadn’t taken a felony fall since I wrapped up that first bit. Seven arrests, one misdemeanor conviction. The other cases all got dropped, one way or another.

My fall partners on that first one, the two older guys, they never did anything for me while I was Inside. Well, maybe one thing: they got the word around. I was taking the weight, like you’re supposed to. If I’d “cooperated”—I don’t know why I fucking
hate
that word, but I do—the Legal Aid had told me, I could probably get probation.

What was I going to do with probation, go to college?

But being known as stand-up so young, that gave me a head start. I was only on the bricks for a few weeks when a guy I didn’t know asked me if I was interested in doing a job. A job with him and a few other men.

I didn’t know that guy, but I’d sure
heard
of him. I felt proud he asked me.

I wished Eddie could have seen me then. But I knew he’d see the money orders I got this girl to send him. Not the money orders
themselves, but he’d see the jumps in his account. I had the girl write him one time, to tell him money would be coming. It was a short letter, but starting it off with “Hey, Sugar!” would be all he needed to make the connect.

It wasn’t really a girl sending the money. What I did, I picked a name. Conchita. Then I got about a hundred sheets of notepaper, and I paid this hooker a buck a page for her to sign at the bottom. All different ways, like:

Except for those words at the bottom, the notes were all typed. I did that. The envelopes, too. After a while, I got pretty good at it.

I kept sending the money orders every few months or so for about ten years. Then the girl got a letter at the PO box I was using. One of those form letters. It was a whole page, but all I remember is: “Inmate Deceased.”

In my head, I could see Eddie. Back to the wall, facing slicers and stabbers with his bare hands. Grinning like it was all a big joke.

I learned a lot. Every job, I learned more.

It’s no different from those guys who work high steel. They know they
could
fall, but the more time they spend up there, the less they expect to. Still, they never forget it could happen.

Even though I didn’t expect to take this fall, I knew
how
to take it. So, when they put me in a double, I knew what that was all about.

My cellie turned out to be a white guy; skinny, eyes still yellow from whatever he’d been using before they snapped him up. He was probably around my age, but he looked way older than me. Covered in cheap tats, kind of a hillbilly sound in his voice.

“You got a preference?” he said. “To me, they’re all the same.”

He meant the bunks. Me, I always like the top one. Figured the guy was saving face by claiming he didn’t care.

He was good at the game. Pretty much kept to himself. Told me his name was Sandy, touching his hair when he said it, to tell me where the name came from. “Farin,” I said, like I was giving my name, too.

“Like Faron Young? Damn, you don’t look like—”

“I’m not. Born and raised right here. It’s ‘Farin,’ ” I said, spelling it for him.

“Never heard that one before.”

“It’s a nickname. Short for ‘Warfarin.’ ”

“Viking name?” he said, pretending he was asking if I was a White Power guy. But he’d already seen me with my shirt off, so I was even surer I was right about him.

“No. See, warfarin is a chemical. They use it in rat poison.”

I’d been waiting over ten years to use that line, ever since I first heard Eddie tell the story. Now I could tell it, too.

He tried to bluster up. “You trying to tell me something?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I am. I know why they put you in here. Take as much time as you think you can get away with; that’s fine with me. But you’re not cutting a deal for yourself off anything
I
tell you … because I’m not telling you nothing. And I don’t talk in my sleep.”

“You got me all—”

“Try and work me, you won’t like what happens next,” I cut him short. “No matter where they put you.”

I learn from my mistakes. I got it down to such a science, I could be one of those counselors’ wet dreams. Learning from your bad choices, they
love
that stuff.

That’s why I never showed anyone my new shank. I know—I know
now
, I mean—that you never show a guy who might be a problem for you that you’ve got something for him. If he’s not bluffing, that won’t back him off, just make him bring something himself for next time. And if he was bluffing, showing him steel
might just turn him serious. You can buy anything Inside. Even guys to do your work for you.

Whoever wants you, if he knows you’re carrying, he’s going to come in careful. Maybe even bring along some backup. And you never want that.

A guy who’s gunning for you should never know you’re carrying steel, until he feels it go in.

After a few weeks, I started to get steady mail from a woman. The letters sounded like we’d been together for a long time. And she always put in a little note, telling me she’d just put more money on the books for me.

This woman, she was always promising to wait for me, no matter how long that turned out to be. Solly, paying the premiums on his insurance policy.

I knew that much just from the woman’s name. Marcy. That’s what they call the loony bin—where they put you if they decide you’re “criminally insane.” Solly telling me, maybe I wanted to go the NGI route, say I got hit on the head and I couldn’t remember anything, crap like that.

He was just reminding me that I could take a plea to the rape, and nobody would think it was for real. Wouldn’t hurt my rep when I got out.

You pull off a job, every man gets his share. The planner, he’s supposed to take care of anyone who gets caught, make sure they stay quiet. That’s one of the reasons he gets half of the whole haul.

So, yeah, I got the messages. Both of them. I was being railroaded on the rape charge, but there was no point in me taking passengers along on the ride. And my money would still be there when I finally got off the train.