by James Blake
"Jilted." He tried it aloud, and decided not to repeat it for fear of hysteria. Or whatever it was, lying there in ambush. Later it would be funny. Now, somehow, it was not.
He took a pill, and sat waiting for it to hit. Then he went to see Billy.
"Artie told you." The brassiness was absent, the hard black eyes were wide, almost demure. "We couldn't help it, love, believe me."
"I think it's charming."
"You really do? You really don't mind, baby?"
"What's to mind? It was an arrangement, Artie and me. Only thing is, what do I do now? I got to move, you know that."
"Yes, I think that's wise, love, but I hate to see you go."
"I hate to go, love. But find me a place to move, okay?"
"Of course." Billy took out a chart and studied it for a moment. "Jesus, baby, I don't know what I can do, though. There's no vacancy on Trusty Range. Before all this goddamn heat, I could move them around like dominoes. But now I got to watch myself." He studied the chart again at length, and looked up at Ronnie, eyes wide.
"This is absolutely nutty. The only vacancy there is, is in the Rock: J-fifty-seven."
Ronnie searched the smooth, concerned, slightly pained face raised to him. "What kinda stupid jive is that? The cell I came out of? Larrabee's still in there, isn't he?"
Billy nodded. "He's in there alone. Everybody that moves in, he muscles out."
"What are you trying to do to me?"
A note of the familiar arrogance and asperity was heard. "Listen, baby, you asked me for a move, and that's what I'm giving you. I told you I have to watch it now. You want to go back in the Rock or don't you? Are you scared of a numb-numb like Larrabee?"
Ronnie let the smile come on slow, delaying the shaft. "Why shouldn't I be? Artie is."
Billy said icily, "I think we can agree that it's not quite the same thing. Do you want it or don't you?"
"Oh, shit. All right, run it."
Bud was in his shorts, lying on his belly in the lower bunk, when Ronnie opened the door of the cell just before lockup. Behind him were two spades, on loan from Black Daddy, to carry the phonograph, records, FM, and the books.
Larrabee looked around startled, and jumped to his bare feet. "Hell's goin' on? You on safari?"
"I got moved, Bud. They assigned me here. If you say no, I'll go down and get another assignment. If I can."
The liquid brown eyes were fixed on him, and again he had the sensation of immersion, sinking.
Larrabee scratched his shaven head. "I'll level with you, Bracken, I don't dig it worth a shit. But Doug was my friend, and when he left he asked me to look out for you. He said you'd be a pain in the ass, and I got to go along with that."
He began to remove the books and clothing that littered the upper bunk. "It might be kind of dull for you here. After you bein' with the Billy Lane Circus and all."
He turned and transfixed Ronnie with the hypnotic gelid gaze.
"I got some new poetry I want you to read."
A week later, Ronnie lay stretched out on the grass at the side of the chapel. Screened by some shrubbery, he was stripped to his shorts, letting the hot Florida sun soothe him, ease his tension.
Billy suddenly appeared around the bushes, and dropped to the grass beside him. "So peaceful here. Mind if I join you?" He pulled off his shirt and lay down on the blanket. There was a silence.
"Pretty sly, Bracken. You really sold me a blind mule, didn't you?"
"I don't understand, babe."
"Oh god. I'm beginning to see how you do it. Artie , I'm talking about. All-Boy Artie."
"You may have bought it. I didn't sell it."
"Uh-huh. The way you do the suffering victim. It'a too much."
"Just living is suffering, Billy."
"All right, okay, but don't bleed on me. How is it with the mad Larrabee?"
"I found out he isn't mad. Just maddening. You know what it is? He's simple. Intolerably, deviously simple. Anyway, I'm on probation. I'm studying Poetry Appreciation. Well . . . at least, nobody else is bugging me. The wife of the centaur, whoopee."
Billy lighted a cigarette. In the bright sunlight, there was a sudden flash of gold at his wrist. Ronnie sat up and lowered his shades to look.
"Isn't that the Rolex? That started all the hassle?"
Billy regarded the watch fondly. "The only thing that hasn't turned to shit for me."
"Do you mind if I ask you -- ?"
"Not at all. I did a favor for a friend."
"For Larrabee."
"I think you could say Bud's a friend of mine."
"Devoted, it would seem. Such handsome payment. A difficult favor."
"Difficult, no. Peculiar, maybe." A trace of testiness in his sigh. "He was looking for a cell partner who understood poetry."
"Ah. And you delivered this -- rarity."
"In a way. In a way."
The sun beat down. They lay motionless and silent.
"You turned Polack up, didn't you?" Ronnie asked.
Billy didn't answer right away. When he did, he sounded tired.
"You know what a rumble like that would have done? Locked everything up, tight." He propped himself on his elbows and looked down at the recumbent Ronnie. "And you, little flower, and I would now be across the river. In that birdcage with the rest of the parakeets." He lay back and raised his thin arms, stretching luxuriantly. "This is nicer, don't you agree?"
"Expediency." It was a murmur, bemused. "I wish I knew how to do that."
"Oh Bracken, c'mon. You? You with the laminated motives? All I can say is, I hope I never have you for a victim."
Biographical Notes
James Blake was born in 1920 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and grew up in
Chicago. He studied to be a concert pianist during his childhood and
adolescence, and attended the University of Illinois and Northwestern.
He was evicted from both for the sin of sloth and became a jazz pianist.
From 1950-1952 he served time on a county chain gang in Florida. Letters
he wrote to Nelson Algren from there came to the attention of Simone
de Beauvoir and were published in Jean Paul Sartre's Les Temps
Modernes . George Plimpton published the letters as a prison
chronicle in 1957 in the Paris Review. From 1955 to 1968,
Mr. Blake served three sentences in the Florida State Prison, with
brief periods of freedom. In 1967 George Plimpton suggested compiling
a collection of Blake's letters from the penitentiary, and the book,
The Joint , was published in 1971. He is now living in Woodbury,
Connecticut, and working on a novel.
