A Bad Man

9

One morning when Feldman could not endure the thought of being in the prison, or of going to his job in the canteen, or of fencing one more time with the guards and trusties and pencil men, or of having to cope one more day with the elaborate rules of the community, complex and arbitrary as the laws of a boxed game, he chose to remain in his cell. It would cost him. It was bad time and did not count toward the fulfillment of his sentence. He lay on his cot, seething. The idea that it was costing him, that in several months he would have to relive this day, made him furious. He couldn’t afford his holiday. Ah, he was a sucker, he thought angrily. The shame and guilt he felt came from his recognition of how futile it is to defy one’s poverty.

He heard someone humming tunelessly and looked up. It was a prisoner on his hands and knees. The man pushed a scrub brush before him and pulled a pail. He crawled along like a chipper pilgrim, scrubbing forcefully with the brush. Feldman stared at his soapy hands and at the brush, its thick, plain wooden handle like something baked in an oven.

The man paused for a moment and raised his sweat shirt to wipe his face. “Whew,” he said, “whew,” and saw Feldman. He dipped into the pail. “Son-of-a-bitching brown soap,” he said, holding it up for Feldman to see. “What the hell’s wrong with you guys in Seven Block? In Five, where I’m from, we get Tide, Glo, all the latest products. Brown soap’s for poison ivy, clap. It’s medicine. It ain’t no more effective on floors than fucking spit. It’s your maintenance screw, Jerrold. I told Dean I wouldn’t be able to get along with him.” He looked at the floor. “Who does this floor anyway? Who’s Crew in here? I hope he gets better soon, so’s I can go back to Five. Who is he?”

Feldman shook his head.

“Me neither,” the man said. “The guy wouldn’t last ten minutes in Five. He’d be thrown the hell off Crew like that. Dean doesn’t take no shit. You know Dean?”

Feldman shook his head again.

“Chief of Crew in Five. The best maintenance screw in this place, I don’t care who you work for. He works us hard as hell. When I first come with him I thought: Why, you son of a bitch, I’d like to get you on the outside sometime. But that was just to see if we could take it — he was testing. You play ball with Dean, Dean’ll play ball with you. That guy ain’t put me on report once in fourteen years.”

“You’ve got it made,” Feldman said.

“But let him catch me talking to you like this, he’d kick his boot so high up my ass I’d be three days crapping it out,” the man said, chuckling.

“He kicks you?”

“Hell yes, he kicks me. Dean’s old school. But he won’t kick a man unless that man’s disappointed him.”

“Fair enough,” Feldman said.

“A guy has to bug out once in a while, though,” the man said. “Dean knows that.”

“It’s human nature,” Feldman said.

“I don’t care how hard a worker a man is,” the man said. “There’s more to life than scrubbing floors.” He stood up. “Let me go get my rinse water.” He disappeared and Feldman lay down again on the cot.

“Our detail picks up the supplies for all the other crews.” Feldman looked around. The man was rubbing the bars of Feldman’s cell with a cloth.

“It’s treated,” he explained, showing Feldman a dark purple-stained cloth. “It’s yellow in the tube. Ferr-all. It turns that color on the cloth. It’s a chemical. I seen Dean use it on his pistol barrel once. He let me borrow it to try on the bars.”

Feldman winced at the odor.

“It stands to reason. They got the same base. It works too. Look at that. He showed Feldman the bar he had been working on. The dark iron bristled with light. “I wanted you to see that because you work in the canteen.”

“You know that?”

“Sure. You’re Feldman. I’m pleased to meet you. I’m Lurie.”

He pushed his hand and wrist through the bar, and Feldman shook it. “It’s my forearms,” Lurie said apologetically, “they’re too big. I can’t get them all the way through. It’s from scrubbing.”

Feldman released Lurie’s big, clean hand.

“Excuse the stink,” the man said. “It’s this stuff, the Ferr-all. I don’t mind it, but I guess you’ve got to get used to it.” Feldman smelled his hand. It smelled ferrous, dense, like the odor of pistol barrels. The bars had such an odor too, of pistol barrels, spears, chains, the blades of knives.

“It’s too expensive for the state to buy for the inmates. They just get it for the guards. The men use it for their armor. I was the one first found out it works on bars. I told Dean, and he took it up with Requisitions. I’m glad I ran into you. If you stocked it in the canteen the men would buy it and do their cells. You see how it shined up this bar? And it wouldn’t take that much effort. Three, four times a year tops, that’s all it takes. It makes a difference.”

“I don’t have the authority,” Feldman said.

“I know that,” Lurie said. “But you could talk to the men. You’re in a position. If enough guys wanted it, the warden would stock it.” He put his face close to the bars and lowered his voice. “You know what would happen if a few guys started treating their bars? Pretty soon it would become mandatory. For the uniformity. That’s what happens,” he whispered. “They’d make it a rule.” Feldman sat down on his cot. “Some of these soreheads would grouse. Sure. What the hell? Cons. But it makes a difference.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Feldman said.

“It’s all I ask,” the man said. “Here, as long as I started, let me do the rest of these. Then I’ll slip the tube through and you can do the bars over the window.”

Lurie rubbed the bars. They gleamed. They stank. It smelled like a munitions dump, a metal butcher shop. “I was telling you,” he said as he worked, “we pick up the supplies for all the crews. In ’57, during that railroad strike when the trains weren’t rolling, it was a pigpen around here. There was even a comment in the paper: ‘It isn’t a pen, it’s a pigpen.’ That was printed right in the paper. Well, there weren’t any supplies. After a while we were trying to keep this place clean just with water. There wasn’t any antiseptic, nothing. (And your cons are dirtier than your Honest Johns anyway. It’s not just the way they live, it’s the way they are.) The infirmary was filling up. Well, Dean picked me and another guy, and we drove seventy-five miles into Melbourne to pick up some emergency supplies. The warden wanted Shipman’s crew to go, but old Dean said, ‘Fuck Shipman’s crew. Does Shipman’s crew take the stuff off the cars down to the depot when the stock is rolling? Does Shipman’s crew wind the toilet paper after a riot?’ You should’ve heard him. This was one screw talking about another screw in front of the warden. But Dean stands up for his boys, and the warden went along. So we got our ride in the deuce and a half all the way into Melbourne. I asked Dean if I could drive, and he let me for fourteen miles. Well, the part I wanted to tell you about is this. We picked up the stuff in a big supermarket. I pushed one cart, and Millman the other. And Dean come along behind us with the shotgun. You should’ve seen them housewives. We scared them whores right out of their panties. ‘It’s a stickup,’ Millman would tell them, and one time he reached right into this whore’s cart who’d got the last box of Duz and took it right away from her. I’d take the ammonia bottles and hold them up with the top unscrewed and I’d turn to Millman. ‘Do you think this wine will go good with dinner, dear?’ I’d ask him. ‘Delicious,’ Millman would say. Even Dean had to laugh. It was something.” He paused, chuckling. “You ever been in one of them supermarkets?” he asked Feldman.

“Yes.”

“They got the products, Gleam, Oxydol, Shine, Spic and Span, Jesus. I don’t see how they keep them all straight. Dean let us take one of everything just to sample. You know what we done? We give Shipman’s crew all the pansy, perfumy kind.” Lurie laughed. “You should of seen. They had a time, those bastards, trying to get this place clean with all that shit the broads use on their cruddy underwear. That must have been something. I got down on the floor where Shipman’s crew works, and it smelled like some fucking cunt-castle. Jesus!”

Feldman stretched out on his cot.

“Sick?” Lurie asked him.

“Yes.”

“Go on sick call?”

“I’m taking care of it myself.”

“That’s it,” Lurie said. “Stay away from these sawbones. A man with your history. They wouldn’t be allowed to patch a tire on the outside. I haven’t gone on sick call since Brunner left. He was terrific. He really knew medicine. He was a genius.”

Feldman had wearied of the man’s incredible loyalties, his fierce spites. This was prison, he thought. In his office there were a million ways to defend against bores. He could make a telephone call, go to lunch early, plan a trip, have an appointment, get off a letter. There were things to do with his hands. He remembered filling his water carafe, taking a cigar from a humidor that played “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” lighting it with a lighter shaped like a cash register (you punched No Sale), adjusting the Venetian blinds, slanting the sun in a visitor’s eyes. Or the toys — the absurd executive toys: the gold Yo-Yo’s on silken strings, the pointless machines with visible moving parts, the kaleidoscopic paperweights, the office golf (he only played golf in the office), the tiny TV set on which he caught the noon news. There were conferences, committee work (he was a downtown merchant, public-spirited, the inventor of the Free Friday Bus Ride and the Shopper’s Nursery Service in the public park). And there was his basement. But here he could not even pull down a shade or open the window. He lived in a cage, bored as a beast.

Lurie was still talking. Feldman had a thought, a wish so clear and incisive it could almost have been an idea. He wanted Lurie to die. He wished desperately that this bore might be suddenly seized with something angry and irrevocable, that he would disintegrate! But he had thick forearms and hadn’t gone on sick call since Brunner. A collapse was unlikely, but Feldman knew that if he had a gun and the opportunity to get away with it, he would kill Lurie. It didn’t surprise him. It was the system which shaped these thoughts. It did not provide for the splendid half and quarter measures of freedom — executive toys and committees and the heft of a paperweight in the palm of your hand and the rest.

Suddenly Feldman stood up and dropped his trousers and went to the toilet between the two cots. He squatted on it and strained and stared at Lurie. The man continued to rub the bars. Feldman might have been doing nothing more private or offensive than biting his nails. I don’t know, he thought, this would have cleared them out back at the office. He sat hopelessly, beginning, despite himself, to nod as Lurie talked.

“Cancer,” Lurie was saying, “the big one. That’s what they finally diagnosed. After all that time. So he’s finally lying there — my cellmate — in the infirmary. They ain’t doing nothing to clean it out of him. Too late, they told him. What do these guys care? You know something? This is a guy that always worried about himself. He kept up. He used to drive me nuts with his grousing. You know those seven danger signals they’re always talking about? My friend had a match cover that listed them, and he had four out of the seven. Four out of the seven danger signals, when only one’s enough. He went to the infirmary each time he’d get a new danger signal, but they didn’t know it was cancer until his third danger signal. That’s the kind of doctor they got over there in that infirmary. He’s laying there now. Last week a guy on infirmary crew fucked up and got thrown in solitary, and Dean fixed it so I could clean my friend’s room. It tore me up. He was a strong guy, my friend. He’s nothing now. He told me he’s up to six of the seven danger signals. He laughed about it.”

Feldman flushed the toilet.

“Listen,” Lurie said, “if you’re sick you probably don’t feel like getting the bars over your window. You can do it later, or — I’ll tell you what — I’ll come back sometime when your cell is open and do it for you myself.”

Suddenly, irrationally, Feldman was moved. “Thank you,” he said. He wanted to cry. I’m crazy, he thought. They’ve driven me crazy.

“No, it’s nothing,” Lurie said. “You can see yourself what a difference it makes.”

“It’s very nice,” Feldman said. “I’ve got the shiniest bars in my cellblock.”

“It makes a difference.”

“It certainly does.”

“I enjoyed talking to you,” Lurie said.”

“I enjoyed talking to you.”

“It’s a terrible thing to say, but it makes the day go faster when I run into a sick con.”

Feldman nodded.

“This ain’t fun,” Lurie said.

“No,” Feldman said.

“Scrubbing’s no deal.”

“No,” Feldman said, “I guess not.”

“Even when you got a crew chief like Dean.”

The man folded his rag and pushed it up the sleeve of his sweat suit, where it lay on the thick ridge of muscle along his big forearms like the handkerchief of a gentlewoman. “Everybody’s got troubles,” he said.

Feldman decided to eat his lunch with the men.

Tables with large black numbers painted on their tops were assigned them, and twice each month everyone was given a new number corresponding to one of the tables. They had to carry this number with them and show it to the dining-hall official if he asked to see it. The men had their special friends, of course, and sometimes moved beside them regardless of their assigned numbers. It was a major offense if they could not justify their seating, but they often took the risk. The dining-hall official moved arbitrarily among the tables, spot-checking.

Feldman, studying the men as they took their trays and moved silently to seats, could tell, just as surely as the dining-hall official, from the gestures and nudges and shufflings, which men were falsifying their assignments. It was queer how men properly assigned to a place noiselessly submitted to those who would force them in turn to seek false positions. To break silence if one was being pushed away from one’s proper place was permitted, of course, but such an action was considered a betrayal by the men and was severely punished by them. And since to scuffle openly in the dining hall was an even more serious offense than either sitting at an unassigned table or breaking silence, the displaced and expelled stalked nervously under the eyes of the official toward some hopefully unassigned space. (There were several such spaces: “free spaces” deliberately kept open by the warden; the unoccupied seats of the sick, of men on special-duty rosters, of men brooding in their cells.) Usually, so suspicious did they look, an official did not spot-check in vain, although the man caught was more frequently the moved than the mover. The official, silent himself, would tap a man on the left shoulder, and all the men at the table, so no con at the right table could slip his number to an interloper, had to place face up in a vacant corner of their trays the laminated plastic numbers they were forced to carry.

Occasionally there was an attempt to divert an official. Taking circuitous routes among the tables, prisoners might deliberately try to seem suspicious so as to make a fool of a guard, or to serve some friend actually counterfeiting a table assignment as a decoy. The men did not seem to understand that they were serving the warden’s ends and not their own when they played these jokes, by bringing astute and astuter officials into the dining hall. The beauty of the warden’s system did not escape Feldman, however. Like many other rules in the prison it seemed unbeatable, and provided the warden with still another means of testing the convicts. (“It accomplishes several things,” the warden later told Feldman. “For one, it exposes the queers. It gives me an insight into who might be planning an escape. It speeds up meals. It saves the state money. The men grab their trays and move on to their seats rapidly so as not to be shouldered out of the way. They take less food on their trays.”) They might have tried to trade numbers, Feldman thought, but they were a disorganized bunch, and this never seemed to occur to them. They relied instead on risk and change. Yet Feldman was aware of the astonishing fact that it was love — the conspirators, the escape-planners, could always meet in holes and corners; the rules, if they had to contend only with the plotters, would have forced them to plot elsewhere — which made the system work, that there would always be those who would take the risks.

Reckless, reckless people, he thought contemptuously as a new man, obviously an intruder, moved into place beside him. It was a stunning fact, he thought, that whoever the man’s friend was, he would not even be able to talk to him. Watching the man’s eyes, Feldman spotted the friend. The new man looked at him with something like love, and the friend smiled briefly and looked down at his tray shyly.

The others at the table were as conscious as Feldman of the friendship. They smiled openly, fondly, as at lovers who have overcome difficulties and earned a sympathy which costs no one anything. Indeed, Feldman himself felt a fillip of kindredness and had a sense of being at table at a resort, or aboard ship.

So they sat, each man conscious of the number that gave him the right to be there, but each with a little viciousness in reserve, his self-righteousness underwritten by the fact that he could produce his number on demand. However, the viciousness may have been softened by the jeopardy of the intruder and regard for his lover’s boldness, they would, if the need arose, have dissolved in a moment the accidental community which that boldness had made manifest, and brought guiltlessly and quickly to bear their detachment, even the man who had inspired the risk, the surprised friend like the obligationless guest of honor at a party.

Feldman was aware that the enforced silence made the companionship of the two friends somehow deeper, more meaningful. They all felt it. They felt, too, all the significance of the pair’s proximity and were charged with a kind of sympathetic giddiness, a sense of the glowingly unstated, of the imminent. It was just as if someone they did not hear stood behind their backs, or as if, in the dark, they could sense the nearness of walls, the presence of furniture.

Then something happened that had never happened.

“The Talking Lamp is lit,” a voice said suddenly over the loudspeaker, startling them. It was Warden Fisher.

“How did you know where I was? I haven’t seen you since the new assignments,” the friend said.

“I was behind you in the line last night, Joseph. Are you angry?”

“Of course I’m not angry,” Joseph said. “But you took a risk. You could have gotten us both into trouble.”

“I didn’t think about that, Joseph,” the man said gloomily. Then he brightened. “But isn’t it wonderful?” he asked, reaching across the table. “We can talk. It’s a miracle.”

“No. You mustn’t touch me, Bob.”

Feldman wondered how the other men took this. He looked around the table, but no one seemed interested in the pair any longer. They were more concerned with the warden’s announcement, clearly puzzled by the opportunity to talk in the dining hall. They contained themselves, halting in their silences, like inexperienced people asked to give their opinions into a microphone. Then, gradually, they found things to say.

A man leaned toward Feldman and spoke in a low voice. “I thought it was you he come to see, Feldman. It surprised me.”

“No, of course not. I don’t know him.”

The man laughed, and Feldman was conscious suddenly of hips touching his on the crowded bench, conscious of shoulders brushing his own, conscious of hands lifting spoons, conscious of men’s tongues. Under the table someone stroked his thigh.

“Stop it.”

“Sure,” a man said, winking. “You’re not my type.”

“Feldman isn’t anyone’s type,” Joseph said.

Feldman couldn’t eat with them. (I’ll starve, he thought, thinking of the dozens of meals he had still to eat with these men.) Undeclared, in the silence, their friendship — their love — had a certain dignity, and even the imagined possibility of their acts together had a built-in innocence: the allowance one made for life under difficulties, life against odds. Talking, they seemed grotesque. What lay behind it all was more of the same, importunateness, rough will. Probably Joseph did not even care for Bob.

“How long has it been, old-timer,” one man asked a trusty Feldman had seen in his own cellblock, “since the Talking Lamp’s been lit?”

“Not in my time,” the old man said. He turned to the man on Feldman’s right. “You ever know it to happen, Bob?”

“Once,” Bob said. “When Fisher had been here a year,” he said. “Isn’t that right, Joseph?”

“It was on the first anniversary of Fisher’s system,” Joseph said.

Feldman, frightened, perceived something complex and astonishing: Bob and Joseph had been softened. They confronted him, he realized, not as men but as changed men. Feldman saw that very plainly. They might have been old acquaintances with whom he had lost contact for twenty years and suddenly saw again in their acquired differences as in a costume. These softened men had once been dangerous. The length of their terms here proved the violence of their crimes. It meant that if love was what lay behind the efficiency of the warden’s vicious system and made that system work, then it was viciousness that ultimately made love work. Character tumbled, and even these men could not finally hang on to themselves. They’d had the tenaciousness of murderers, of men who took guns in their hands and pulled triggers. But even these — they were talking quietly now, courting sedately — hard cases had proved malleable in the end. Appetite died last; nobody lost his sweet tooth. It was the most nearly immortal attribute of men. As a businessman, Feldman was impressed by the warden’s techniques (What an operation this is, he thought), but as a man he was terrified. Oh, men’s troubles, he thought; that warden, he’ll get me too.

That evening he asked Bisch about his life. For all his apparent formidableness, his cellmate was a gentle man (After all, Feldman thought, he’s a tailor, he makes men’s clothes), and he began to talk about his life as if he had only been waiting to be asked. Telling Feldman of his troubles, the gloomy man seemed to brighten. Feldman remembered the expression. He had seen it before, in his basement when people had come to him for his favors. He had not wanted their stories — only their demands, the swooped desperation of their terrible solutions. But nothing could keep them from talking. They became debaters, makers of speeches, articulating grievances as if they had been statements of policy, listing troubles like logicians posting reasons. On their faces too he had seen the same queer gaiety, the high hilarity of their justifications. It was not gaiety, of course, or even nervousness, but a kind of awe, as if, hearing what they said themselves, they were not so much touched by their griefs as impressed by them. They smiled as they spoke. It was the smile anterior to sin. Priests never saw that smile, policemen didn’t. All confessions were bawled, whined, whispered from trance. Trouble only sounded bold, choppy with detail like the breathless report of a messenger from a burning city.

“She had this infection,” Bisch said. “In her face. She’d get a fever. A hundred. A hundred one. It would swell. My wife’s beautiful face. The gums drained. In her sleep. One night she almost choked on it. It stank. I made her pillows in my shop. She slept sitting up. She wouldn’t let me sleep with her. She was ashamed of the way she smelled. I would wipe her lips in her sleep with a tissue. I flushed it down the toilet. I wanted her to think she was getting better. But I couldn’t wipe the taste out of her mouth.

“The doctor said it was sinus. That’s what they treated her for. But it wasn’t sinus. They gave her tests. All the tests. She was always in pain. She said it was like having cuts inside her mouth. Then they said she had to have all her teeth out. What was she — twenty-eight? She didn’t want to. They weren’t even sure, she said. It changed the face. She had a very beautiful face. The muscles collapse. Something happens to the jaw, the lips. The expression is different. It looks like spite.

“But I made her do it, and it was terrible for her. She was a beautiful woman.

“But she was right. It didn’t make any difference. She still had the fever after they pulled the teeth. They said it would go down when the gums stopped draining, but the gums didn’t stop draining. It was as if there was a fire inside her somewhere and they couldn’t find it. They couldn’t do anything.

“Her jaw was too small. The teeth they made her didn’t fit. I got her others. She couldn’t wear them. She said what difference did it make. I tried to kiss her, but she wouldn’t let me. We didn’t sleep together any more. One night I went to wipe her lips and I bent down to kiss her while she slept. It was soft — her mouth. I never felt anything like that before. It was as if there was just this soft skin over her and she was empty inside. I threw up. It was awful. I still taste my wife’s mouth.

“She couldn’t forgive me. She was always crying. I made her beautiful dresses. I always made her beautiful dresses, but these were even more beautiful. She wouldn’t wear them. She thought I was laughing at her. Laughing at her—Jesus!”

He killed her, Feldman thought. The poison flowed from the high ground of her fever and he couldn’t stand it and he killed her. He looked away from Bisch’s shining eyes. Why, he’s like a soldier, he thought. He serves his trouble. Feldman shuddered and nodded helplessly.

Bisch sighed, observing him.

Ghost stories, Feldman thought.

He went to the television room, where he saw a documentary on migrant workers and their families and a situation comedy about a little boy with divorced parents who goes to visit his father or mother on alternate weeks in the series. Feldman had seen the program before. The kid, obsessed, conspired to bring his mother and father together again, and tonight he shammed infantile paralysis. The news program reported white reprisals in Philadelphia for the attack of two fifteen-year-old Negroes on a nun. It told of cold war and plane crash and storm. Today the President, after a flying trip covering eight states, had declared seven new disaster areas. The governors in the Midwest had asked for only five. He knows, Feldman thought. He returned to his cell. Bisch, asleep, was groaning in a dream. Feldman wondered if he should wake him, wipe his lips.

Until now Feldman had tried to ignore his fellow convicts. He feared them, of course. They were hostile men and seemed to know more about him than he wished. The famous grapevine, he thought, and imagined a sort of demonic pony express. It’s all that talking out of the side of the mouth (he fancied a great hoarse chain of whispered intimacies). What was astonishing was their accuracy. Because they were accustomed to conspiracy’s low tones nothing was lost, and because they had no imagination nothing was distorted. So he kept out of their way.

Now, however, he was interested. Appalled by their horror stories, he wondered about them. (Wondering about them, he wondered about himself. Is this character? he thought.) He had none of their desire to gossip. Yet he discovered a quality in himself that he had been unaware of before. Surprised at their unhappiness—how unhappy? why unhappy? weren’t all men happy? — he wished now to know about other men, to ask them questions.

He thought it would be difficult, but it was easy. People were willing, even eager, to talk. There was in them, he supposed, a respect for his wealth, his differences from them. Then they were losers, and losers were accustomed to talking about themselves. They spilled the beans and exposed the linen to guidance counselors, juvenile parole officers, social workers, free psychologists, free psychiatrists, sob-sister reporters, and at last to their court-appointed lawyers. They would mourn to anyone who might help them, to anyone not in trouble who might get them out of trouble. Open not to advice but to miracle, they rattled away in any ear.

So he made it his business to find out about them. With their permission he peeked into their moneyless wallets, stared fascinated through the yellowing plastic windows at wives and fathers and sweethearts and mothers and sisters and sons and daughters, the human background of even the loneliest men. (Staring, he thought: Everyone has been photographed, everyone in the world; everyone, smiling, posing, has made the small, poor holiday before a camera, thinking: Catch me, hold me, keep me.) How thin they all were. Even in pictures, which normally added pounds, these people seemed light, foreign and a little like Indians. They looked to have frailty’s toughness and wiry strength, but they would not last, he knew. The children had the sharp vision of the poor, their clever legs. They could see long distances down alleys and run quickly through city streets, making fools of their pursuers, but they would not last either. What attracted Feldman most were the women — thin, hard-armed, hard-breasted, and with babushkas on their heads. Yesterday’s B-girls and waitresses and bench workers and bruised daughters, foulmouthed, pitiful and without pity, their suspicion misplaced and their trust too. Kid-slappers, Feldman thought, smokers in bed, drinkers in taverns while the apartment is burning, runners amok. Whew, whew, he thought, tricky in bed, tricky, tricky, too much for me—I wouldn’t last — clawers of ass and pullers of hair and suckers of cock.

“What is your wife doing, now that you’re in jail?” Feldman, looking up from the picture, asked Coney.

“Tricks,” Coney said gloomily.

“Ah, a magician.” (I’ll bet, he thought, seeing the girl’s grim mouth and long nails. He suspected palmed hatpins, bold kicks to the groin, all the rough whore’s holds. He thought of Lilly, who had no trade and knew no tricks and couldn’t take a punch. He thought of Lilly’s dull loneliness.)

“How does your family make out?” he asked Maze, in the cell across from his.

“On relief,” Maze said. “On A.D.C On Community Chest.”

“I’m a very big taxpayer in this state,” Feldman said thoughtfully.

He saw a picture of a big boy in one of those double strollers for twins.

“My kid is sick,” Butt said, “he needs an operation on his back. He can’t move his legs, and the nurse at the clinic says he has to get fresh air so he’ll be strong enough if we ever get the money for his operation. We live on the third floor, and my wife has to carry him up the stairs. She ain’t strong and he weighs a hundred pounds and we have to move into a building which has an elevator if he’s ever to get enough fresh air and sunshine. We ain’t got the rent for that kind of building. They’re asking a hundred dollars. She’s moved his bed next to the window, but the night air gives him a sore throat.”

“We need a wagon,” Clock said. “It’ll be spring and the phone books come out, and my wife can deliver them but we don’t have a wagon. She used to get five cents a book, but in the last election the townships all merged and the book is much thicker. They’d give her a dime if she just had a wagon. The wagon she used was stolen last year, but it wasn’t no good for it was too small. She needs a new big one — an American Cart. They’re twenty-eight bucks, and she ain’t got the dough. If she just had the wagon she was promised the job.”

“I’ve—” Feldman said.

“Flo doesn’t drive,” McAlperin said. “She never learned how and the car’s up on blocks. There’s no one to teach her, and lessons are high. She ain’t got the nerve, to tell you the truth. Her first husband died — he was creamed by a truck. But if she could drive she could get a good job. Selling cosmetics, or maybe those books. You make a commission, they pay very well. They’re crying for help, and Flo would be good. People all like her, she knows how to talk. Presentable too, attractive and neat. Now she’s a waitress, but that’s not for her. If she just learned to drive she’d be better off. The car could come down. It’s not good for a car to be idle like that. I don’t like the idea of her being out late, waiting on tables and talking to men. You know how men are, what they want from a girl. If she’d just learn to drive she could sell door to door, talking with housewives and doing some good. Getting those books into their homes. If she’d just learn to drive.”

“I’ve got—” Feldman said.

“It’s like this,” Munce said, “my wife saw this ad on the side of a bus. For finishing high school on home-study plan. A place in Chicago, and in her spare time she does all the lessons; they come through the mail. But she can’t buy the books that they want her to read — biology, English, big books and dear. What makes it so bad is she can’t get a card, or she’d go to the library and take them all out. But I’ve got a record, and that nixes the deal. Of course she could read them right there at the desk; they’d let her do that, but she’d have to stand up. She might use her sister’s, but that girl’s a bitch. They ain’t spoke for years, and my wife is too proud. If they only made up she could borrow the card and take out the books and study at home and get a diploma and then a good job.”

“I’ve got—” Feldman said.

“My daughter’s fifteen,” Case said, “and don’t know I’m here. We told her a lie to save her the shame. She just had turned six when they took me to jail. I made an arrangement with an old friend of mine, a guy off in Europe — Fred Bolton’s his name. Fred was a pal that I knew from the block. Smart as a whip, we knew he’d go far. A scholar, you know, but a regular guy. He won all the prizes and went off to Yale, where they paid his tuition and gave him free board. He got his degree and then left the States. He writes to my daughter and signs himself me. For years Fred has done this — a letter a month and often a gift. Once perfume from Paris and leather from Spain. She thinks we’re divorced, but she’s proud of her dad. But Fred has sclerosis and now he may die. There’s one chance in a million — you see, they’re not sure. It might just be a nerve. Fred always was jumpy, even in school. So they’ve taken a test and we’re waiting to hear. They’ve sent it to Brocher, a big man in the field. But Brocher’s in Russia, he defected last year. And Fred writes these books that the Communists hate. They might want him to die — then what will I do? Who’ll write my daughter? Who’ll save her the shame? How can we tell her I’m supposed to be dead? A girl needs a father — she’s only fifteen, and though she don’t see me it keeps up her heart. If only they’ll let Brocher look at the tests — if only they’ll tell him, okay, go ahead. Then if only the tests turn out to be good and they locate the nerve that’s bothering Fred, they can probably treat it, and in time he’ll get well — then maybe in time he can write her again.”

“I’ve got—” Feldman said.

“And send her those gifts, those prizes she loves—”

“I’ve got—” Feldman said, “the picture.”

“They say you listen,” a convict said to Feldman one evening, moving beside him.

Feldman had another image of the grapevine, pendent with talk, with talk about talk. “I’ve heard a few,” he said noncommittally, not looking up.

“I want to tell,” the convict said.

They were just outside the shower stalls, sitting on the benches that ran along the walls of what might have been a locker room if this had not been a penitentiary. Feldman was undressing. The room was damp, the stone floors clammy, mucoid. He remembered his own carpeted bathroom, the cut-glass decanters with their bright sourballs of bubble bath, and he felt like crying. (It was the toilet he missed most. He thought of his golden hamper. It was really beautiful, a piece of furniture practically. He thought of it stuffed with white shirts hardly soiled — he loved the generous reckless act of throwing shirts into the dirty clothes. The memory of his shower almost brought tears to his eyes. There were long rubber treads built right into the smooth tile floor of the shower stall. One wall was clear glass, much sexier than the milky glass of your ordinary shower. There were recesses along another wall for shampoos, soaps, rinses, and there were roll-out men’s and ladies’ razors on nylon cords that worked on the principle of a window shade. There were marvelous flexible tubes that pulled out of the wall, and cunning, splendid brushes and a nozzle complicated and delicate as something in a Roman fountain. The dancing waters, Feldman thought.)

“I’m Hover.”

“Pipe racks,” Feldman said, thinking aloud of the prison’s crude plumbing. “Drainpipes with rain water trickling out,” he said.

“I want to tell,” Hover said.

“Listen,” Feldman said, looking up at a naked man. “I don’t want to hear about it.” He had not recognized Hover’s name. Now he placed him. The man had a legendary stupidity; he was someone the others tormented without mercy. Feldman had never been alone with him before.

Hover was an illiterate, but more than that he knew nothing, understood nothing. He was almost without memory. In the dining hall it was only with difficulty that he was able to match the number he was given with the one on his table. Several times Feldman had seen him, confused by the oversize numbers painted on the tables, hand his number to a prisoner to read it for him. Hover seemed to know the prisoner might lead him astray, and his expression at these surrenders was one of hope and terror. Feldman had heard that the man could not even recognize his own cell and had to be pushed into it each night. His cellmate beat him because he could not remember to flush the toilet. He could do no work, of course, and he usually wandered aimlessly through the corridors, lost, uncomprehending, unable to distinguish between the prisoners and the guards. He probably did not even know that he was in a prison, let alone why. (He used to walk into grocery stores when he was hungry and take fruit from the bins and eat it on the spot, the juice of oranges and lemons dripping down his hairless chest. Or he would bite into breads, and after someone had shown him what was inside an egg, crush it in his mouth. He could not button a shirt, but someone had taught him to put on a jacket, and someone else had gotten him a pair of flyless elastic pants. It was these clothes he wore in the prison.) Incredibly, he had not been placed into an institution for the insane. Feldman was sure the warden had asked for him, though he did not understand the strategics of it yet.

Hover moved closer to Feldman on the bench. He reached out and touched Feldman’s thigh.

“You mustn’t do that,” Feldman said, standing up.

“I want to tell,” Hover said indistinctly.

Ignoring him, Feldman moved into the shower room, and Hover followed. He stopped just inside and stared while Feldman adjusted the taps of a shower and moved under it. Hover was saying something, but he could not make it out in the big, resonant room. He could see that Hover was excited; the man pointed to the shower above his head and frowned.

“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.

There was only the breathing in all the cells. It was a sustained, continuous sigh, the men’s breath going and coming like hissed, sibilant wind. Somewhere down the cellblock he heard a toilet flush. Someone wrenched up phlegm from a sour throat. In their sleep men turned uncomfortably on their narrow cots. Rolling, they groaned. He heard farts, coughs, the clipped, telescoped declarations of dreamed speech. No one was escaping. All cells were locked. They were cornered, all of them. No one could get in.

He lay back down again and tried to sleep. How long had he been there? Two months, three? Would they really let him out in only a year? They had to. That was the law.

“Who’s up?” a voice asked suddenly, timidly. “Is someone up?”

The words were clear; they had not sounded like a sleeper’s mutterings.

“Is there someone awake in here?” It sounded as if the man were testing, like a soldier poking with his rifle into the rooms and corners of an empty farmhouse.

Feldman remained silent. Why am I smiling? he thought.

“Dear God,” the voice said. The speaker, someone two or three cells away from Feldman, had slipped out of his cot. Apparently he was on his knees. “Forgive my mistakes, God. Help me to think of a plan to get out of this place.”

Then another voice spoke. “Dear God, forgive and forget. Wipe the slate. I need a chance. Give a guy a chance.”

Another: “God in Heaven,” the voice said, “see the children get an education.”

Men were awake throughout the long, dark cellblock.

“Get the rat who squealed, who turned state’s evidence, Lord.”

“Dearest Jesus of my soul, give me courage.”

“Give me brains, God.”

“I want to go back to Kansas.”

“Make me lucky.”

“Dear God, look after my wife. See she stays true.”

“My kids, God.”

“Kill my enemies, Lord.”

“Please, help my mother to forget me.”

“Help me to learn a trade, Lord.”

“Dear God, please make the parole board see things my way.”

“Help me, God, to give up smoking.”

“To get ahead.”

“Dear Jesus, I can’t stop thinking about women. Help me to forget women. Make me queer.”

“Dear God in highest Heaven, let me win.”

“Place.”

“Show.”

“Grant that society sees fit to abolish capital punishment, Lord.”

“Teach me to get along with others.”

“I need a drink bad, Lord.”

“Dear God, give our leaders the wisdom and strength they need to guide us through these troubled times.”

“Keep China from developing the capability to deliver The Bomb, sweet Jesus.”

“Keep my daughter off the streets. Don’t let her run with a fast crowd.”

“Show me, Lord, how to commit the perfect crime.”

“Dearest Lord, don’t let them discover where the money’s hidden.”

“Gentle the guards, Jesus.”

“Sweet Jesus, protector of my soul, fix my life.”

“Amen.”

“Amen. Amen.”

“Amen.”

Feldman smiled. His joy was immense.

In his dream he had left his cot too. He was on his knees. Like the goyim. He felt he owed it. He was very grateful. “For having escaped the second-rate life,” he prayed; “for having lived detached as someone with a stuffed nose, for my sound limbs and the absence of pain, for my power, for my hundred-and-ten-thousand-dollar home in a good neighborhood, for the tips on the market, for my gold hamper and all the dirty shirts in it, for my big car and good taste, for the perfect fits and silk suits, for my never having been in battle or bitten by beasts; for these things and for others, for the steaks I’ve eaten and the deals I’ve closed, for the games I’ve won and the things I’ve gotten away with, for my thick carpets and my central air conditioning, for the good life and the last laugh — Father, I thank Thee.

“Amen.”