Robert B. Parker’s the Hangman’s Sonnet

21

Hump was going stir-crazy in that motel room. Made sense. Being inside for half his life had trained him to hate confined spaces. But inside you didn’t have a choice about it, so you lived with it. You couldn’t just slide the bars back or swing the cage door open and step out. There were a million rules governing everything you did inside — written and unwritten, official and unofficial, guard rules and prisoner rules. When to talk. When to wake up. When to sleep. When to do everything. Who to look at in the eye. Who your friends could be and who they could never be. Rules enough to choke an elephant.

The fact that he could open the motel door and leave if he wanted to made it all worse somehow. There was something about freedom that gnawed at his gut, always had. He didn’t understand why. Hump had never been good with understanding the why of things. That was the reason he kept finding friends like King, inside and out of prison. Men who understood things and could explain them when he asked. What Hump never needed anybody to explain to him was how he felt, and he felt itchy in there.

King had warned him about spending too much time outside the room until he got back with the money. He guessed he understood that. There was a chance maybe that the cops had gotten a line on them as more than a day had passed since what they’d done in Paradise. At the same time, he didn’t understand why King didn’t say anything about him going to church yesterday. It was almost like King was happy to have him out of the room. Hump looked at himself in the mirror and shrugged. It wasn’t like he didn’t trust King. When you spend so much time locked up with someone else, alone time becomes special. People on the outside didn’t understand that. Inside, the only things that really belonged to you are in your head and heart. Truth was, Hump had liked his alone time, too. The first few hours with King gone felt good, but now it was wearing on him like a belt sander dragged across his face. The sound of the TV became a shrill and constant howl. Even after he turned it off, he could hear it in his head.

He looked in the mirror, pinched his spare tire, slapped his belly, and made a disgusted face. His midsection used to be tight as a snare drum. That was something else being inside gave you, time for crunches, sit-ups, push-ups, dead lifts, squats... Maybe he’d take some of his money and join a gym. He stepped away from the mirror, went to the window, pulled back the curtains, and made sure no one was coming. Even after that, when he saw he was as alone as he was ever likely to be, he looked over his shoulders just to make sure. Then and only then did he reach into his duffel bag, find the right pair of socks, and take out the dragonfly ring.

King had made him promise before going into the old lady’s house on Saturday that he wouldn’t take anything out of the house except what they’d been paid to take. That was all part of the deal King had set up with the man who had hired them.

“Remember, Hump, if we don’t find what we come looking for, we don’t take nothing. We’re getting a nice payday for the work, so we can’t afford to get caught fencing stuff.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“‘Yeah, yeah’ ain’t good enough. Promise me.”

“Jeez, King, what am I, five freakin’ years old? What’s with this ‘Promise me’ shit all of a sudden? We spent five years together. Ain’t I always had your back?”

“Promise me.”

He promised and he meant it when he said the words, but after the old lady kicked he figured all bets were off. There was no guarantee they would get paid after that. Given the risks, the guy who’d hired them might just blow them off or disappear. And Hump figured he needed to get something out of it, especially if he was looking at manslaughter or murder two. He knew people thought he was stupid. He guessed maybe he was, but he had an instinct for survival. Even insects and the dumbest animals had that, an instinct to survive.

Hump ran his thumb over the stones on the dragonfly’s wings. He liked the way the edges and facets of the gems felt against his skin. He held the ring up close to his eyes, moved it around so that the light made the red and green stones sparkle. But it was the two big diamonds that were the dragonfly’s eyes, the way they seemed to make the light dance and break up like a rainbow, that he loved most. He didn’t know much about jewelry. He was mostly good at breaking things, at being muscle, but he knew something worth a lot of money when he saw it. And he was staring at something worth a lot of money. He’d found it in the old girl’s bedroom, in a box under the bed that King must’ve missed. He liked thinking about how the old lady must’ve worn it when she was young. He liked thinking about the man who had loved her enough to shell out all the money it must’ve cost. He never loved nobody that much and nobody ever loved him that much. Nobody ever loved him at all.

He plopped himself onto the bed and thought about how much he could get for the ring. He tried sliding it onto his pinkie, but he couldn’t even get it over his nail. He laughed at himself for trying. He stopped laughing when he remembered the old lady was dead and the way she smelled before he cleaned her up and put her back in her bed. He put the ring in his pocket and wondered where King was. It felt like he’d been gone a really long time.