“You married too?” Homer asked him.
“That’s right.”
“Children?”
“No.”
“You?” he asked me.
“Two. A boy and a girl. One of each.”
“Is good. Me too. My boy Alexander, twelve year old, and the little girl is ten, Cora. We disagree about the name, so we just call her Cora which means girl. My wife has a beautiful name, is Phyllis, which means a green bough.”
“The which?”
“A green bough. How you name your children?”
“Ben, he’s seven, going on eight. And Mary. She’s, oh almost six now. Every time somebody asks me I have to think. They grow so fast. And my wife’s name is Maddie, Madeleine.”
“Madeleine, is nice. But you are young to have a boy eight year old.”
“Twenty-five,” I said. “I told you, I married young.”
“You ever regret?”
“Not about that, no.”
“Is very young,” he said.
That’s what they said when we got married. And afterwards somebody always says don’t you have second thoughts about it now. I don’t see it, like asking a man does he regret being a man, does he have second thoughts about his own family. Everything else could go, and does, and that’s the bitterness. But if that went, that’s your life, the people you love. Jake says it’s freedom and ideas that move the world, but the men who keep pushing freedom and ideas know that’s a lie, and if instead of just burning us out they’d tried to do something to Maddie and the kids, they could have had me doing what they said, for a while anyway, till I figured out how to stop it. They know that. They just must have thought I wasn’t worth their time.
“It’s been hard sometimes. It would have been harder alone.”
“Twenty-five,” said Homer. “If I was twenty-five again, oh, that is young. Me, I am forty-seven. Forty-seven.”
“Old enough to be my old man.”
“No,” he said. “I was not here then.”
He turned to Jake, who was laughing at what he’d said.
“You are older a little?”
I thought how funny it was that out of the two of us Homer liked Jake better, but I was the one that trusted Homer. I forget just when it was I began to trust him, but now I’d have told him anything about me and I didn’t believe he’d carry it to anybody else. But Jake didn’t trust him. He never trusted anybody unless he’d known them nearly all his life and even then you could count the ones he really trusted on your fingers. And there were things he wouldn’t let people know just because he said it wouldn’t be good for them to know.
“Oh, I’m bowed down with age compared to him.”
“How old?” asked Homer, and Jake decided to tell him.
“Twenty-nine.”
“Old? That is young. Very.”
“Young for some, old for others. I’m no spring chicken any more.”
“What’s that?”
“Just a phrase. Means not in the first flush of youth, not green, not younger than most. Old Abe there is what you call green.”
“Green?”
“Lacking in experience.”
Homer thought about that and I thought: that’s why he likes Jake better, because of being experienced, which is true, though Maddie always said not to mind. That day after I lost my temper she said not to mind, she’d rather have a fool with a good heart any day than a worldly man who said bitter things. “He’s what you call cynical,” she said. “And you don’t know what he’s thinking. I know, when you get mad you just roar and break things and lash out, and when you think something you say it. But what it is he thinks, Jake never shows, not anything. It makes me nervous. I wonder it don’t make Annie nervous. Maybe he shows it to her. I’d rather know where I stand.” And I told her, “Annie knows where she stands, all right.” That was early, when we were first married, and I was ashamed to lose my temper, I didn’t believe it could happen where you were contented. Some little thing it was, and all my life I been careful not to get mad like that, because being stronger than most through the chest and arms and shoulders, you have to be careful or your own strength can turn against you and break you. Like I never like to get into fights or even be in crowds that might be about to demonstrate or something, I always try to avoid it, because I get that feeling once I was in I’d kill somebody. Or hurt somebody by mistake. And you can get so you like it, I’ve seen that happen too. Once when we were kids, I remember, hitting Jake harder than I’d thought, turning around and seeing the blood on his face, and it made me want to die. He didn’t say a thing. It’s as though you can’t hurt him. And he still loves a fight, but not for anger. For fun. I know when he’s angry: he gets very calm, his voice goes gentle, and it’s worse than if he hit you or shouted or smashed something. Like that day he came in the door and he’d heard the rumor the neighbors started, saying the Lord had put a judgment on him for his way of life and that was why he and Annie didn’t have any children and wouldn’t ever. He put down something he was carrying and said very quiet, it only took one spiteful tongue to take away the good name of a thousand people and what did it matter to him, what the hell. Annie tried to run out of the room but he caught her by the elbow going around the doorway and just said, “Let’s have my dinner, it’s been a long day.”
We talked a little more and Homer left us for a while. He said there was a friend he had to see. As he walked off through the entranceway he called out, “Don’t run away.”
“A lot of speechifying you been doing,” Jake said. “You don’t usually talk so much.”
“It’s the worry.”
I thought how all the time, even when I was talking, I kept thinking about things that happened a long time ago. And thinking about Maddie and Jake and Annie and my life, like I was far away someplace or like maybe inside I knew I was never going to see any of it again.
“Quit that. Nobody knows, we may need all the energy we’ve got in a while. You just quit worrying and sit tight. Keep your eyes on me and if there’s ever a chance for a break, I’ll give you the sign.”
“I just can’t stop wondering.”
“Well, try.”
“I thought you said we couldn’t break out of this one.”
“Not yet. Later, when they take us out.”
I thought: I should have tried to get away before they brought me here. At the time I never even thought of it, I couldn’t think of anything except I’d been caught. Not till they closed the door.
Homer came back in with a friend, the same one I’d seen him with when they first brought me in. They sat down at the table in the center of the room and played dice again. They were talking in a language I didn’t know the sound of, so I guessed it must be Greek. The friend spoke it slowly and let Homer correct him every now and then. In the middle of the game Homer turned around and said, “You gamble?” Jake told him yes but he didn’t always play it straight.
“Nobody else I gamble with does either, so it works out the same.”
“I used to play,” Homer said, “here, with men in the cells, but just pretend, no real money. One day a man’s widow come to me and she swears her husband dying words was I owe him twenty-five thousand and she is to collect. You see, we play very high because is pretend. So now I don’t do that no more.”
The friend didn’t do much talking. Just once he looked us both over and said to me, “You fight?”
I didn’t understand.
“Fight. You fight ever, for money?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t like it. With the money or without. I figure why hurt people you don’t even know.”
“You got the build.”
“Not me,” I said, and pointed to Jake. “He’s the one fights. He’s been a boxer.”
“I mean wrestling, that’s the game. Too short in the legs to box. You’d be all right as a wrestler.”
Jake was giving me a long, dirty look. The man said to him, “Where you box?”
“Oh, just here a
nd there.”
“Professional?”
“No, just amateur stuff.”
“With the army?”
“Against the army.”
“You know Big Quint? Old One-Punch Joe and the Sicilian Lion and Cassius what’s-his-name?”
“I did,” Jake said. “But a long time ago.”
“And Killerboy Dexter? What a slugger that one was—and a fine left he had too, that fooled a lot of fighters. I suppose that was before your time. Best of the young ones coming up is that boy Rufus, comes from somewhere up North, someplace outside Syracuse, around there. Rufus—I forget his other name. I hear they’re keeping him hid on a farm down in the country somewheres, training him with some of the oldtimers. Rumor is they’re grooming him for the Olympics, but nobody admits to seeing him fight yet. Everybody just says he’s the best coming up. A lot of money’s started changing hands on that boy. I’d bet myself if I could be sure. You hear anything on that score?”
“I wouldn’t know anything about it,” said Jake. “I haven’t been around to the gym for a couple of years now.”
“Wrestling’s the game,” the man said, and he went back to the dice.
It was hot. And it was getting darker. All the light came in from the entranceway and now that the sun was beginning to move, the place was almost in total darkness. Homer had brought a light in and put it on the table, and there were two more lamps up on the walls in front of the middle cells. But from where we were the light came dim and uneven and the place seemed cruder than before as the sun went. I began to long for air and the light that was still shining outside.
Another man came in suddenly and said something to Homer. The game broke up and all three went out.
“Listen,” Jake whispered to me. “You’re so nice and friendly today, but we all know already what a pal you are, so let’s just have a little less of this exchanging birthday dates and how old people were when they got married and what’s your great-grandmother’s name and where you were when and what’s your favorite color, right? And if you can’t shut up about your own life-story, just at least leave mine out of it. What are you looking so pleased about?”
“I was just thinking about Homer and his wife. Shaped like a whale, with a name that means a green bough. That’s nice.”
“You goddamn fool,” he said.
There was some shuffling around outside and a loud, firm voice I hadn’t heard before. Homer’s friend mumbled something and Homer began to talk, too. The big voice went on, lower and impossible to tell what it was saying. When he came back in Homer told us there’d been a big riot about two hours ago.
“Lots of arrest. Then there was two small riots in a different part of the town. Everybody say it look like she was plan like that, to take away attention and let the leaders escape. That’s what they look for now because there are so many and you can’t arrest allbody. Is bad, riots. Lots of people they don’t even know there’s riot going on, they just standing there doing nothing. Then the law bring them in to me, saying this is a dangerous criminal, and sometimes it’s just girls and boys, so young and all beat up. Once I have a mother and child in the cells, very dangerous, they tell me. What they call—agitators, is it? Very dangerous agitators, this mother and child.”
“How long do you keep them?” said Jake.
“Oh, that one, I mark it down and let them go, and lose the record later. That was on the other side of town, bigger jail and always full. Also I work with my friend, you see him? The one just leave. We have arrangements, you know.”
“How’d we stand for an arrangement here?”
Homer looked over at the entranceway, rubbed his chin, and moved over to Jake’s cell, right up near the bars.
“Here is different. I don’t take the names, so I can’t fix.”
“But you got lots of friends in that department,” Jake said. “Ain’t that right?”
“Some, yes.”
“I got friends too. What do you say to combining?”
“Not for theft,” Homer says, and he pointed at Jake. “You, you do something. You know what the law is, but you do that anyway. I only fix it if people are here by mistake.”
“It was a mistake. Mistaken identity. They mixed me up with somebody else. Some fool yelled stop that man, and I looked around, saw him going around the corner, and the law grabbed me instead. I tried to tell them at the time, but they were so all-fired happy to get their hands on anybody at all, they wouldn’t listen.”
“No?” said Homer. He didn’t believe it.
“Truth,” Jake said. “What do you say?”
He shook his head.
“No bad feeling, I do it if I believe is just. But is not so bad, you get out soon.”
“Not soon enough. Look, Homer, you know how it is.”
“Enough. Don’t say no more, you make me angry. Sure, I know how it is. I always take what is coming to me. You do the same now. Is not so hard. I know how it is, so I know also what stories people tell the jailer and how you try to make sympathy and so on. See, I used to do it too, she’s the first trick after telling the story to the law. All the things you say, I say them a long time ago.”
“No harm trying,” said Jake.
“Understand, I have sympathy, yes. What do I care? so they catch you, they take away what you try to take, so you don’t profit. I think people should be charge money as punishment for theft. Charge them more money than the value of what they try to steal and give it to people they steal the thing from. You can’t pay the charge, you can work it off. Then for small things, why make a thief stay in jail? Is not sensible. Because nobody is really hurt by it, not like hurting somebody’s health or murder or other things. But that is personal opinion of mine, I don’t let that change my mind. Is a question of law, you know. I know what is law. You know what is, and you know before you come to my jail. And also, here it is more difficult than any other place I been. Very difficult. Other people are working here that I don’t know. This place here, even if I think you are bad-treated when they bring you in, when they take you out, I cannot change it. Is my job, is my job to see you stay here till they have a trial. What else happpen is not my job. Beside, I could help at the beginning if you get arrested by the regular authority, but it was soldiers bring you in, isn’t it? I got no friends high up there, up at the top where you need. Only with the local force I got friends high up. All I can do with the army is fix food and transportation and transfer, not take the name off the record.”
I remembered what Jake said about how rickety the other jails were and how the best time to try for a break was when they took you out into the street.
“Could you get us transferred to a different place?” I said.
“Not now. All the jails is full now. But later, if they keep you here a long time, maybe.”
“Thanks.”
“No, no thanks. I only say maybe and if. It depends maybe on how many arrest they make with the riots and how they do the trial. Sometimes after riots they try all together in a block, get the jails clear quick, but sometime they wait and wonder who they got, specially if they think this riot was plan careful, not just a lot of people standing around. I see later if there’s another place. But is too difficult, then I don’t push. You understand is difficult for me without giving reasons why I change you. It use to be easy. I could do something even here, four, five month ago. Not now.”
Jake asked him how long he expected they would keep us here.
“Hard to say. Maybe they keep you a long time here to wait for the trial. I hope is what they do.”
“Like our company, do you?”
“Sure, sure, you and me we get along, right? I understand‚ you joke. Is not that. I mean, if they decide fast, give you a quick trial, it is with military trial and you get a harder sentence.”
“But I was under civil arrest. I only met up with the military when they handed me over.”
One of Homer’s friends looked in at the doorway and said something. Homer turned a
round to answer him from where he Stood.
Jake said, “Listen, Homer, if you would, there’s something we’d both appreciate.”
“Unlock. Yes, I bet.”
“No, just if you could find out exactly how they’ve charged us‚ civil or martial law, and when they plan to try the cases.”
“Sure, I do that anyhow. I always do that for my prisoner to save the worry.”
“But don’t lean too hard on the questions if it looks like some official’s going to let it slide. I mean, if there’s a holdup maybe I could get someone to change things from the outside, if you see what I mean.”
“Sure,” Homer said. “Is fair enough. Good luck to it. I cannot say exactly till the end of the day, maybe till tomorrow when they have gone over the day record. But I ask around, I find out what happen to your record, who got it, what they think happens to you. Meantime, I think you have company tonight—I hear there is some arrest to be transferred here, and maybe more people from riots, we see. Hope it don’t mean you must double up. I keep saying to them it looks big but is small, only big walls is all.”
“You’re right there,” said Jake.
He sat down on the floor. I’d been sitting on mine for some time, even though Jake had told me not to stay on the floor too long and not to sit totally still there because you’d lose the strength in your legs, and we might need it for a break later on. He kept moving back and forth and doing a kneebend up and down every once in a while. But I didn’t believe any more it was going to be a question of getting out. Now I believed in the trial and didn’t think it was going to be as bad as I’d imagined. I was feeling generally better about the future, except for what was going to happen to Maddie and the kids, and how she’d take it. If I was away for a long time, Annie could look after them. Jake always had plenty of money put by for when he was up against the law. But it couldn’t turn out to be such a long time, not for just a piece of bread, I didn’t think. I wasn’t sure about the horse.
“Do you think they’ll try us about the same time?” I asked him. “I wish it could be together. What’s it like at the trials?”
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