by James Jones
“Okay,” Prew said. “She’s fine.” He swung with all his strength with his hammer. Alma, he thought sickly, Alma, Alma; and swung it again. No, he told himself furiously, no, you stupid fuck, no. He swallowed and set his jaw tight and kept his tongue pressed up against the roof of his mouth and it went away a little bit.
“We’ll have you all moved in tomorrow,” Angelo said. “We’ll pull it tomorrow at noon and when you come out of the Hole your stuff will already be moved for you.”
“Whats wrong with today?” Prew asked him wildly.
“I want to take it home with me first and talk it over with Jack Malloy,” Angelo said. “I aint takin no extra risks, not on you. I want to get Jack Malloy’s seal of approval on the whole thing before we make a move.”
“Jesus Christ,” Prew exploded. “I dont need Jack Malloy’s permission to complain about the goddam food, do I?”
“Take it easy, buddy,” Angelo said. “Jack Malloy knows the ropes a hell of a lot bettern me. You aint in no hurry. You got three whole months yet.”
Prew felt a murderous rage crack and burst in him like an orgasm. Three months! Ninety days!! Fourteen weeks, it would be! Oh, Alma, he thought. Oh, Jesus! Alma. He wanted to beat Maggio over the head with his hammer and beat him down into a bloody bonejagged mess on the ground, for reminding him.
“Jack Malloy knows the little things that help make pulling a job like this easy on you,” Angelo said, “things I either forgotten or dint even ever know. And in this place, that’s important.”
“Okay,” Prew said. “Okay, okay. You’re the boss. You run it. If you want to make it next week, make it next week.”
“We’ll do it tomorrow,” Angelo said. “A day or two dont make no difference to you, and theres a right way to do things like this and thats plan everything out that you can figure.” He took off his wrinkled denim hat and wiped his face with it. It came away gray black but there was no noticeable difference in the color of his face. “These hats,” he said. “These goddam hats. Nobody knows how I hate these goddam hats. I wouldn’t wipe my ass on these goddam hats,” he said, wiping his face, and put it back on and grinned.
The grin, Prew thought, there was something about the grin. Then he remembered. It was like the grin that was in Hanson’s face and Turnipseed’s. He could even feel it some now on his own face already, as he looked at Angelo Maggio, the grin, the same special grin, that was in Maggio’s and Hanson’s and now in his face, a stiffness that pulled the lips up stiffly, tightly, you started out to smile and it turned itself into this grin, stiff, wolfish, feverish, wild. Probably after a while you did not even notice it?
“Old Angelo,” he grinned. “The Gimbel’s Basement Terror. Take up thy sledge and work.”
“You men!” the guard yelled from the road. “You Maggio! and you that new man! You’re suppose to break them rock. If we was afraid you’d hurt them we’d of give you rubber hammers. You’ve had time to say hello, now cut out that goddam talk and get your ass back to work!”
“See what I mean?” Prew grinned at him.
“Up him,” Angelo said. “Up em all.”
Chapter 37
THEY TALKED OVER the plan the rest of the afternoon, working on the rockpile. It made a good thing to talk about, working on the rockpile. It was exciting and since the excitement was intrinsic it could not go bad and leave them working on the rockpile.
Bad things, Prew thought, were never quite so bad, if you could force somebody you knew and liked to suffer them with you. Usually you couldnt; they were too busy suffering something themselves and trying to force you to suffer it with them. But if you could, it helped thin that sense of seeing the whole damned world move past you on the corner without knowing you were standing there. Of course, it was hard on the friends. You hated to see them suffer.
One thing about the Stockade, it made the bad things general so that your sufferings were equivalent. You did not have to get into a fight and accuse each other of your lack of sympathy.
Angelo Maggio’s face had changed during the past two months. There was no longer any trace of the naively-cynical, city-bred, lovable young Italian boy. This face had discarded cynicism as being as useless a pose as optimism, and it was a face without nationality, now that the long wop nose was broken. Then there were the scars, all new and still red yet with youth, not faded brown yet by memory, a gradual accumulation the beginnings of which Prew had only noticed vaguely at the queer investigation down town that time, but which had grown considerably since then. His left ear was cauliflowered now, not badly, but enough to give him that wild lopsided ribald look of a punchie. He had lost three upper teeth on one side that satirized his grin and his lips were thicker, like an old prizefighter’s. There was one scar that ran up over the point of his chin almost to his lower lip, and another lower-case-v-shaped one on his forehead. He looked competent.
He was still the same personality, just changed. Except for that wild wary miserly look that he got whenever he inadvertently mentioned his secret plan which he could not keep from doing every five minutes; that was new. Then, when he was like that, it was as if Prew did not know him and he did not know Prew.
But when they knocked off for the day and split up to go to their separate trucks for the separate barracks, his little black eyes were clear and he gave Prew a quick deliberate wink to remind him of tomorrow.
The next day he did not show up for work on the rockpile.
Prew had to content himself with wondering in silence. He was a new man and a stranger, to everybody but Angelo. It would have been useless to try to get any of the men around him to talk to him.
Under the steadily heavier morning sun the rockpile was like some dim, dust haunted, fear crazed fantasy out of a madman’s imagination. The half moon quarry caught all the available sun and reflected it back on them blazingly. Prew worked on doggedly, wondering crazily after a while if he had only conjured a vision of Angelo yesterday maybe. The heat threatened to sizzle his brains in their pan. That anyone could actually take a man of his talents and sensibilities and unconcernedly hold his nose against this grindstone nine hours a day seven days a week for three months was not only inconceivable, it was patently impossible. He refused to believe it. There had been a mistake somewhere. He knew there had been a mistake somewhere, in a minute an MP giant would come up and touch him on the arm and inform him obsequiously that there had been a mistake, that he was not like these other craven wild-glaring wolfish-grinning animals and had no business here, please to come with me, back into civilization, where men are men, he thought bitterly, and women hate them for it, and they hate the women for not loving it.
My God! he thought horrifiedly, I’m getting to talk just like The Warden!
He hated to think Angelo would actually ditch him deliberately. If he wasnt back in the Black Hole or something like that, then it must have been this Jack Malloy character. This latter day Robin Hood who ruled Major Thompson’s Stockade with an iron hand. This 20th Century Jesse James who was iron enemy to the railroads, symbol of hated authority, and protected widows and orphans. We have become a nation of cop haters, he thought sadly, we have taken for our hero a Robin Hood myth that never existed except in the history books, and only then 500 years after, when it was safe to print it. It must be hard on a man, being a cop. I’m glad I’m not a cop. I’d rather be a Robin Hood iron man, like Jack Malloy. The iron man has probably turned thumbs down on Prewitt, cold, he thought, hating both of them wildly, as if all this were their fault. Angelo had to choose, and it was easy to see which way he had.
He went on swinging his hammer wildly, in a kind of rhythmical frenzy, feeling the new blisters squash wetly and burst on the already grittily sweatslick handle, and relishing it—until finally, a long, thin, ferret-headed, gimlet-eyed old man of twenty named Berry who said he was from Number Two barrack managed to convey to him guardedly, with the secrecy of a conspirator helping to lay a vast Global Plot, that Maggio was back in the Hole.
“I figured that,” Prew whispered back, wanting to yell with relief. “I knew something like that had happened. What’d he do?”
The guard on the road had turned him in last night for talking yesterday. They had come and got him after bedcheck, their favorite time, and worked him over and given him 48 hours. The Wop, Berry whispered lovingly grinning wolfishily, sent Prewitt his love and his deepest regrets that their business arrangement would have to be postponed temporarily, but that he had every assurance of its early success, as soon as this other little matter that had come up had been attended to.
“That’s the message,” Berry chuckled. “Word for word. He’s a hot one, The Wop is. Aint he a hot one?” Scrupulously, Berry did not inquire of Prew into the nature of the business arrangement.
“He sure is,” Prew whispered. “Thanks.” He was beginning to feel conspiratorial, too. He was careful to keep on swinging his hammer and not look around, as Berry was doing beside him. Poor old Angelo, he thought feeling better than he had felt for some time. “I mean that:” he said, “thanks a lot.”
“Dont thank me,” Berry whispered. “Thank The Malloy.”
“For what?”
“It was him give me the message.”
“All right, I’ll thank him,” Prew conceded. “When I see him.”
“He’ll appreciate it,” Berry whispered. “He’s the roughest drill in this factory—but he’s got a heart just like a great big baby,” Berry said with great sentiment.
The Wop, Berry whispered, had slipped the message to The Malloy before Mister Brown and Handsome Hanson and Hayseed Turniphead had taken him out. Berry had been up at the other end talking to Billyclub Burke. The Malloy had told Berry, later, to tell Prewitt.
“An whats your nickname?” Prew whispered foolishly.
“My what?” Berry whispered.
“Your moniker. What they call you?”
“Oh,” Berry whispered. “Why? Call me Blues Berry some time. Razz Berry, Jazz Berry, Fuckle Berry, Goosy Berry—all them like that. Why?”
“Just curious,” Prew whispered happily.
“Use to call me Beer Belly,” Berry grinned wolfishly, “but not any more.”
“But will again,” Prew whispered.
“Sure,” Berry grinned. “I should live so long. This time’s The Wop’s fifth trip since he been here,” Berry whispered proudly. “You know that?”
“He dint tell me. I seen he was pretty scarred up though.”
“Hell,” Berry snorted, “you think he’s scarred? The Wop aint scarred. Look at that.” He showed a long line down his jaw. “Look at my nose. Someday I show you my back and chest, where Fatso work me over, one time.”
“You mean he used a whip!”
“Hell no!” Berry exploded indignantly. “Dont you know whips is unlegal in this country? He just use a plain grub hoe handle but he’s good with one. Someday I’m going to kill him for it,” Berry chuckled, as if that would be a joke on Fatso.
Prew felt something cold. “Does he know it?”
“Sure,” Berry grinned. “I told him.”
Prew felt something colder, as if he were standing out in a raw wind in a thin shirt and with no jacket to put on. He remembered Fatso’s eyes. “What’d he say?”
“Dint say nothing,” Berry chuckled. “Just hit me again.”
“I wonder why they didnt come get me too, last night?” Prew asked him.
“They got it in for The Wop,” Berry whispered. “Because he wont take none of their shit. They wear themselves out on him and they still cant get a peep out of him. He’s a tough little baby, pal.”
“He sure is. He’s from my Compny, you know.”
“They bang him around like a tackling dummy,” Berry chuckled. “Till their old ass is draggin the ground. And they cant make a dent in that boy. They’ve made plenty them on him,” he laughed merrily, “but they sure cant make them in him. He’s got them stumped. The Wop’s got that old college try, pal, I mean. Next to The Malloy he’s just about the hardest artery in this hospital.”
“He’s a good boy,” Prew whispered proudly.
“You just bet your sweet life he is, pal,” Berry chuckled. “Well, I see you later. I got to shove before that guard sweats me. They all fartin fire today.” He slouched off thinly, through the gray cloud of rockdust that Prew swore made as much resistance to a hammerswing as water, a long thin phantom-shape straight out of a good citizen’s nightmare, moving unrepentently through the hell to which they and himself had consigned him.
Prew remembered to let him go a few seconds, before he risked turning to get a better look at him. Angelo was really getting up there, when he had earned the unreserved admiration of an old hand like this Berry. He must have used his time well and worked very hard, to amass such an enviable reputation in only two months. And now Prewitt was getting to ride in on the skirts of the garment he had once helped to fit, in a way.
He felt a twinge of envy, like the schoolteacher watching her star pupil get the medal for winning the county spelling bee. But he also felt suddenly warm and protected, as if the invisible cloak of the long-termers’ secret brotherhood that was as hard to get into as the Elks or the Country Club, was being wrapped slowly around him.
He was picking it up fast. It was like a different universe, and when you were out of it for a while you forgot it was there and almost had to learn it all over again. It was so easy to forget it, on the Outside. Then when you first came back it shocked you a moment.
That Berry would get Fatso some day, or literally die trying. Remembering Fatso’s eyes again, Prew felt cold again. He hoped he would never get himself into the position where he would have to make up his mind like Berry had had to. He hoped that was one test he would not be put to. Because he did not know if he could cut her.
He remembered suddenly, with a strange sense of disbelief, that there were people living on the Outside who did not even know this other world really did exist, except in the movies. But there was always a Skid Row, somewhere, in every town, where the great dividing line between the Guilty and the Innocent melted away before the one real immediate need, Mutual Defense. In France we called it the Underground, which was a heroic term. Here we called it the Underworld, and gave it a different connotation. But it was the same world, and the same kind of people, and with the same purpose. He had almost forgotten all of it, in the last five years, but he was beginning to get the feel of it again.
He had already had his first taste of the daily inspections.
In one way, to an old jailbird like him who had lived on the bum so long, it was almost like coming home.
First Call was at 0430 hours in the Stockade. Breakfast was at 0530 hours. The inspection started at 0600 hours and usually lasted till seven.
They inspected unarmed, Major Thompson and S/Sgt Judson, carrying their grub hoe handles loosely in their right hands just after of the balance as they moved down the line, S/Sgt Judson always just two paces in the rear. Major Thompson also carried his plumb bob and the white cloth dressglove he used for dust. It was the first dressglove Prew had seen since Myer, in the Old Army. S/Sgt Judson carried the demerit notebook and a pencil. That was all they carried, but there were two giants armed with riotguns at port arms and also wearing pistols standing just inside the locked double doors that a third riotgun-and-pistoled giant standing outside held the key to.
That first day there were only three men in the west barrack to get demerits. The almost weird versatility, speed, and accuracy of a grub hoe handle administering a demerit in the hands of these experts made Pfc Hanson look like a rank amateur. Berry had been right: Fatso was good with one. So was Major Thompson. And you had to admire their skill.
The first of the three men had his right foot an inch or so out of line. Major Thompson pointed to it with his grub hoe handle in passing and went on around the bunk to inspect the man’s equipment without looking back. The man tried frantically, during an infinite second to retrieve the offender but S/Sgt Judson, tw
o paces in the Major’s rear, had already raised his grub hoe handle and reversed his grip in midair without breaking stride or stopping and said “Dress it up” and brought the square-sawed headend down sharply on the foot like a man driving down the piston of a churn, and went on around the bunk behind the Major without looking back before he stopped and entered the demerit in his notebook. The man’s face went white with a grimace of outraged affront at both himself and his goddamned stupid foot, and Prew had to smother the same tickling impulse to laugh out loud that you get when you have just watched the look of surprise on the face of a man who has just slipped on a banana peel and broken his hip. The man’s equipment passed the inspection perfectly and the Major and S/Sgt Judson went on down the line without looking back.
The second man had a belly which was out of line. He was a fat man from the 8th Field, a former cook, and he really had an unusual belly. Major Thompson, as he passed him going back up the other side some fifteen minutes later, raised his arm and drove the butt of his grub hoe handle backhand into the belly and said “Suck it in” without stopping to look back. Instead of sucking it in as he was told, the fat man, still staring straight ahead as if he had not had time yet to be surprised, grunted protestingly and raised both hands to his belly tenderly, and S/Sgt Judson, moving two paces in the Major’s rear, raised his own grub hoe handle and rapped the fat man across the shins as he came up abreast and said “You’re at attention, Prisoner. Suck it in” and went on around the bunk to the Major before he stopped and entered the demerit in his notebook. The fat man, like a runner caught off base flatfooted, still without time yet to think of moving his head, dropped his hands as if he were trying to throw them away. Still staring straight ahead, his fat lips began to quiver and two single trickles of tears began to run down out of his eyes into the corners of his mouth so that, watching him, Prew felt so painfully embarrassed he had to look away. By this time the Major and S/Sgt Judson were already three beds away.
