The Widow Bereft

by James Blake

  The fog had rolled in from the coast around daybreak, and still hung here and there in isolated patches. Cons called it parole-dust.

  Waiting at the gate that led from the inner compound of the prison, Ronnie impatiently watched the hand on the gate clock lurch ahead. It was already eight o'clock, but the guard on the gate refused to pass anyone through until the fog had cleared.

  It had to be old man Larkin. Senile old prick. He pressed his face against the bars. "Hey, Mr. Larkin? I'm gonna be late for work, Boss."

  Larkin swung quickly on his high stool to locate the threat. A fallen chin, incipient goiter and protuberant eyes gave him the witless alertness of a pigeon. His darting eyes pinned Ronnie. Twitching his sunken lips in dismissal, he aimed an expert jet of tobacco juice at the can beside him, and turned again to stare into the yellow tunnel carved in the fog by the gate searchlight.

  "Late for work, shit," he said to the fog. "Yew got your first day's work yet to do, Bracken. Awright, get your ass on out here then."

  "Gate!" he called to the man in charge of the mechanism.

  With his habitual air of loathing, he watched Ronnie disappear into the mist.

  Doug was dressed in a thin gray suit, white shirt and black tie. The change made by the civilian clothing was dismaying. Without the prison uniform, Doug seemed diminished. For two years in the prison band, he had worn the immaculate whites of a Trusty; saturnine good looks deeply tanned against a dazzling white, a vivid and dominant figure at the center of Ronnie's existence. Now there remained an uncertain stranger in a flimsy gray suit.

  "Wow, man. You look like -- like -- "

  "Ex-con?"

  "Naw, man, It ain't a bad suit. You look like the night clerk in a hot-sheets hotel."

  "Don't worry about it, Bracken. I'll buy a topcoat in Tampa and cover up this outrage on the plane. Or else freeze my ass in Chicago. I'll miss their lousy Florida sunshine."

  "I see you got your axe. You think they'll let you blow?"

  "No sweat. I give them a year on parole. After that, I'll be blowing my horn again somewhere."

  "Doug -- how about -- well, how about, you know, the hang-up?"

  He forced himself to look at Doug. As he feared, the gray eyes were hard.

  "How about discussing something else? Or how about you dummy up?"

  "I don't care, man, I got to say it. You kicked the habit while you were locked up. And the shit was available. Why couldn't you -- ?"

  "Did you come all the way out here just to get on my back? You ought to know by now that any promise made in here stops at the gate. I'm going back on the streets, man. It's a new ball game."

  "It makes me wish I had something to pray to -- "

  " What? Bracken, for Christ's sake. You better pray to the cat that takes care of half-assed whores. St. Pandarus, I think it is. Pray. Holy Jesus."

  A runner approached to say that Doug was wanted in Control Room. They walked slowly along the shiny enameled echoing corridor, halted often by convicts and their good-byes, all of them bawdily instructing Doug as to his first night on the streets. He promised to perform for the honor and glory of alma mater.

  Talking to Doug, the convicts slid their eyes over to scrutinize Ronnie, looking for signs of distress.

  These cats inhale disaster like it was pot. Take a good look, you motherin' buzzard.

  When they were alone again, a shy silence fell between them. "You'll be all right, Bracken. Larrabee will be a good cell partner for you. He'll defend the ranch from the bandits and varmits around here."

  "Now if I knew somebody to defend me from Larrabee."

  "Don't start again with that, Bracken. You got no idea how remote your troubles are becoming to me. You wanted to move Artie Dugan in, and he'd have moved your ass out. I didn't leave all that stuff with you just to give it to a pinball hustler like Artie. God knows you worked for it. Maybe I should have let it happen. You and Dugan. How about a chorus of 'When Irish Eyes are Smiling'?"

  "You know why you did it, Doug. Because you're twisted. So forget it."

  They were at Control Room. Other parolees stood around, each surrounded by a group of cons.

  "I got to split, Doug. I can't take any more jive from these gossiping jerks."

  Doug put out his hand. "Well -- " Ronnie stared down at it in confusion. Strangest of all, to be shaking with Doug.

  They touched hands. Doug said, "Don't forget, Bracken. Don't forget." Ronnie touched him once more, turned away and did not look back.

  At the prison chapel, the other church mice were already at work in the office. He walked quickly past the door of the chaplain's office and went into the empty church. Paused at the piano, sat down, and after some random chords, began "Like Someone in Love." It was damp and chilly in the deserted chapel: the music floated disconsolately up into the rafters. Courting sadness, he went into "I Get Along Without You Very Well." His eyes wet, he crossed the sanctuary to continue his mourning on the organ. Until the chaplain stuck his head in the door, eyebrows raised in his favorite phony attitude, a mixture of consternation and benevolence. This time meaning, Knock it off.

  Sinking into a pew behind a post in the chapel balcony, hidden from view, he considered the future. Doug and Larrabee had decided it between them, so he had no choice but to let Larrabee move into the cell as Doug's replacement. Larrabee: unpredictable, volatile, violent. Whatever was done would have to be done with guile and scorpion cunning.

  Shortly before lockup, he was lying in the upper bunk in his shorts, trying to read, when Bud came into the cell. He carried a big box of books and a pillowcase stuffed with his gear. Under his arm, a chess set.

  Chess? He'll have to kill me first.

  "Which bunk, Ronnie?"

  "Lemme see, Bud. I'm in this one -- "

  "I get the lower? Hey, thanks man, beautiful."

  "I'm used to this one, so I'll stay here."

  "Well, I want you to know I didn't come empty. Can I come up?" An effortless bound and he was sitting on the edge of the upper bunk. "I brought a tube for us. For opening night."

  "A whole tube? Baby, I'm witchoo. Break it out."

  Larrabee reached into his sock and brought out an amphetamine inhaler. He removed the plastic cap to show the roll of impregnated cotton inside. Two pieces had been sliced off the roll and wrapped in cellophane. He passed one to Ronnie.

  "Wow, Bud, that's a bomber, it'll knock me on my ass. Turn on now, or wait till after count?"

  "Frig the count. You got any coffee to wash this down?"

  "Everything's over the washbowl. You want me to make it?"

  "I'll do it. Put something groovy on the box."

  Ronnie tried to avoid the records Doug had liked. He chose Andre Previn as suitably noncommittal. Bud heated water in a jar with the homemade immerson heater. When he handed Ronnie his coffee, they exchanged a conspiring smile. A tube of cotton would not only keep them turned on tonight, they could freak out on it for most of the week. Ronnie's spirits lifted a little. He felt the amphetamine taking hold and stoked it with the hot coffee.

  Larrabee said, "It's hot as hell in here," and pulled off his T-shirt, then kicked off his pants. He stroked his belly, looking down at his tapering muscled torso. Ronnie watched him.

  "How long was Doug in here with you?"

  "About two years."

  "And how much time left on your bit?"

  "Something like two years."

  "No reason we can't make it together till you go home, right?"

  Ronnie shrugged. "Pretty early to tell, isn't it? Let's do it as it comes. It's hard by the yard, by the inch it's a cinch."

  The bright brown eyes regarded Ronnie for a long minute and were abruptly veiled by thick lashes.

  Christ. already I'm irritating him. "You got a lot of books, Bud. What are they?"

  "Aw, just a lotta shit."

  He glowed shyly as he showed his books. Ronnie saw Kahlil Gibran. (Kahlil? Gibran?) Slddhartha and the Bhagavad-Gita. Metamorphosis and Buddenb
rooks.

  "And hey, I got some stuff of mine I'd like you to read. Some poetry. At least it's supposed to be poetry."

  "That's great, Bud, I want to see it. After lights-out when the joint is quiet, okay? You don't expect to sleep tonight after that wad you swallowed, do you?"

  "Reckon not. You got a night-light?"

  "I got a blue one, kid. How does that grab?"

  "Groovy."

  When lights-out bell sounded, they waited till after the guard had passed on his last patrol, then blacked out the barred door of the cell with a blanket. Ronnie took the night-light from concealment, a Christmas-free bulb and. socket he had stolen from the decorations at the chapel.

  He plugged it in. The blue glow showed a shadowy cavern. They went to the back of the cell, where the FM played softly. Bud sat on the toilet, Ronnie on the chair. They swallowed more cotton, drank hot coffee, and rapped in the feverish careening tempo induced by the amphetamine.

  Bud described his days as a street kid in Detroit, ending with the night in Palm Beach when he was discovered prowling an ocean-front mansion by the banker who lived there. And killed the banker with one shot. And beat the chair because he was only sixteen. Now he was seven years into "all of it," a life sentence.

  The voice was a flat uninflected monotone. Ronnie could see, in the dim blue light, the shadowed hollows where Bud's eyes were, the embers glowing in the depths.

  Bud broke off to rummage in his box of books. He handed Ronnie a sheaf of papers. "See what you think of this."

  Ronnie read, holding it up to the blue light. Frantically high from the speed, he thought the poetry was banal doggerel, and felt strongly urged to say something definitive about it, something lucid and precise. Gravely, earnestly, he began to outline to Larrabee what was wrong with his verse. Larrabee listened for a while, then rose abruptly to go to the lower bunk and stretch out on it, where he lay smoking in ominous silence.

  Apprehensive, Ronnie sat on the edge of the bunk and laid his palm on Bud's hard ridged belly. "Look, Bud, I'm sorry if I came on too strong. I'm wasted behind the shit, dig? But I still tried to tell you honestly what I thought. Why play games, right?"

  Larrabee's low voice from the darkness of the bunk was pensive. "And that's what you thought."

  The blow hit the side of his head like a hammer. Ronnie saw flashes and livid streaks of light behind his eyes.

  "What the hell was that for?"

  "If I ever hear that snotty superior tone out of you again, Bracken, I ain't gonna stop with one clout. I'm gonna stomp you, dig?"

  Ronnie started to rise. "Wait a minute, baby. I didn't do so good in the culture bag. Maybe I'll do better in the sleeping bag. Let's make it."

  Daylight found them gray faced and empty eyed. They ate more cotton and drank more coffee. And when the sliding bar was pulled to unlock the cells for breakfast, they went instead to the shower room and stood for a long time without speaking under the warm soothing water.

  They had scarcely spoken all night after Larrabee hit him. In silence, save for a few curt commands, Larrabee had methodically blasted him with virtuoso variations on the prison sex canon.

  As they were dressing, Ronnie tried again: "Bud, listen man, please don't be salty."

  Larrabee smiled. "It's all right, forget it, babe. Now we know what we gotta do. I'll learn to write better and you learn to blow better."

  Later in the day, Ronnie slipped away from his job at the chapel and went to the captain's office to consult the convict clerk.

  Billy Lane, inmate secretary to the captain, was a thin, intense, waspish queen who ruled the captain's office, and thus much of the penitentiary, with an iron imperious hand. Anyone wanting a cell transfer, a road-camp transfer, or other unspecified accommodations had to go to Billy with the bread in his hand.

  Though intimidated by the acid-tongued Lane, Ronnie had established a rapport of sorts with him. Lane played the organ, and Ronnie had arranged for him to make use of the chapel instrument, on which he played earsplitting, window-rattling, inexact Bach. Their relationship was based on the theory they were both cultured beings marooned in an encampment of Tatar hordes.

  "Hey dahling! What brings you to the Gestapo? Oh, let me show you something fabulous. Look what my cool captain managed to dig up. Dope, my dear. Soul-corroding shit corrupting all those clean-limbed convicts. Oh it's a wicked world."

  He opened the drawer of the desk to show plastic containers of various pills and capsules, and a quantity of amphetamine inhalers. "Not a minute too soon, either. Your poor old mother was running out of merchandise. Worse than that, she was starting to come down. Here, baby, you're always good to me, take this along."

  He handed Ronnie a white plastic inhaler. "Besides, If my man gets his hairy paws on this speed, the orgy won't stop. And we got too many hustles to stay on top of."

  He leaned back in the swivel chair and calculated Ronnie. "Now, what's on your mind? I heard the mad Larrabee moved in on you. Is that what's bugging you, baby?'

  Ronnie knew that whatever he said would be all over the joint in an hour. There was little choice. "I can't make it with him, Billy. Cat's paranoid. And when he hits you, it knocks your head off."

  Billy's nostrils flared and his black eyes flashed theatrically. "You mean that wig-sprung pugilist beat you up?"

  Already this harpy is embellishing. "No, no, certainly not. He just banged me up the side of the head, but I'm afraid it won't stop there. I always think I'm masochistic till somebody belts me."

  "And you want me to change your cell location."

  "I got to go somewhere , Billy."

  "Mmm. But if you simply transfer to another cell inside the Rock, Bud will find you. And maybe break your jaw. I know that one. It's really too bad. Such a wild lay, isn't he?"

  "Well -- he's diligent."

  Billy screamed. "You're too much for your old mother! Listen, I think I got the answer. You have a Trusty card, right? So you're eligible to move out of the Rock. Why not move onto Trusty Range where Polack and I live? In fact I don't know what the hell kept you in that miserable Rock for so long."

  "I was with Doug."

  "Well, you're going to move out before Larrabee gets back from the gym. We're in a four-man room upstairs and we have a vacancy. I'll move you in with Polack and me."

  "You said there were three in the room?"

  "Oh. Didn't I tell you? Artie Dugan."

  "Artie."

  "Don't exactly make you mad, does it, girl? Artie digs you. So you move in and play mother and father. It's a pain in the ass having a bachelor in the pad, he just lies there in the sack listening to Polack and me sexualize. Inhibits me something fierce. I'm sure you can focus his attention elsewhere."

  Ronnie went back into the Rock to collect his belongings. In the cell, a freshly laundered sweat suit of Larrabee's lay across the lower bunk. He looked at the books neatly lined up on Bud's bunkside shelf, and felt a twinge of guilt. Doug had told him to help Bud. Now he was running out on the lost and floundering Larrabee.

  With the help of a spade runner, he quickly gathered all the things that Doug had left to him -- the phonograph and records, the FM, the books, and his collection of pajamas.

  Trusty Range was another world from the drab and dingy Rock. The wide hallway immaculate, the floor waxed, two areas with benches for viewing television.

  In the big well-lighted four-man room, there were regular beds instead of bunks. Billy was there to help him unpack and show him what bed to take. A chest of drawers between the windows held a large urn with an enormous arrangement of cut flowers.

  "You like my flahrs? The spade from the greenhouse brings them to me. Sweet. I think you'll like our little home, darling. We live it up around here."

  Inserting a cigarette into a long rhinestoned holder, he sat down on a bed. "Do you know my Polack?"

  "I've seen him around and rapped to him a little, but I don't really know him."

  "I swear to God it's like being mated to a ma
ndrill. He's got to be the ugliest stud in the world. And the schemingest. But he has one lovable quality, he's free with his bread. Under that armor plate there's a dizzy Polack peasant buying drinks for the house."

  "Polack intimidates me. Oh hell, he paralyzes me."

  Billy turned to give him a sharply inspecting scrutiny. "Don't ever let Polack see you're afraid of him. He's got a rotten mean mouth. And it wouldn't be good for Artie."

  "Artie? I don't get it."