Tattoo the Wicked Cross

by Salas, Floyd;

  “Chudini! Chudini!” Rattler shouted in pachuco slang, meaning pussy, and he pointed at Barneyway and began to undress for bed. He limited himself to peering over his skinny shoulder, laughing with a husky, rattling wheeze, and making encouraging motions; and Aaron believed he was too ashamed of his bony build to show off. Barneyway kept his face completely covered by the book and only allowed his eyes to skim over it when he turned a page.

  Yet checkers clicked on the plywood board with an unbroken, indifferent regularity. An occasional grin of satisfaction would crease either Dominic’s or Jenson’s face when an opponent’s man was taken, and Aaron began to doubt his own impressions. He wondered if he was making the same mistake, but in a different way, he had made the night before. He decided to play it safe and stay by Dominic and Jenson, and suffered over a decision that shriveled all his fine hopes down to a “safety-first” in just one day, when a burst of laughter stopped the game.

  The Buzzer was stripped down to his white boxer shorts, posing with flexed muscles. He stuck his chest out, sucked his stomach in, and twisted his upper body into profile, so that with his tiny waist and deeply swayed back, he looked deformed. His biceps popped up like eight balls on his arms and the black dress gloves he had put on made glistening leather fists.

  Gold sparkled between his black lips with a chanting, rolling song. But guffaws and laughter drowned out the sound, and he had to begin again:

  “Now thee Buzza’ is bigga’ than thuh bee,

  e-ven

  thee hor-net is smalla’ than he.

  So, tonight,

  thee Buzza’

  sting a lit-tel.

  Tonight,

  he

  bee-wrap a lit-tel

  punk-honey,

  bee-wrap a flaow-wa,

  get him some

  punk-honey.”

  He kept singing as he shuffled down the dormitory on the swollen, knotted thighs and thin crooked calves of drumstick-shaped legs, slowed the shuffle to a slow dance, swayed his muscle-banded body in time to short steps, skipped a step sometimes and gave the shuffle a sort of contrapuntal rhythm, posed for every boy he passed, with his head stiffly upright, corded muscles fanning down his swollen neck into his trunk like thick roots, posed and leered at Aaron, who dared to stare back from his safe place, then stopped and posed at Barneyway’s bed, where he did a circling dance.

  Guffaws and laughter applauded him.

  The paperback was lowered with fearful slowness.

  A bloodless face, with compressed lips and eyes as glazed as porcelain was propped against the pillow, and Aaron told himself it wasn’t true, that it didn’t look like that, that he was just … seeing.…

  “Get me some

  some

  punk-honey,

  bee-wrap some

  some

  punk-honey.”

  The Buzzer shuffled around the aisle as he sang, then stopped singing and began to boogie: snapped his pelvis as if he were screwing, cupped his gloved hands over his groin, narrowed his eyes, and sucked in his breath as if he were at the peak of a come.

  “Chudini! Chudini!”

  “Pussy! Pussy!”

  And Rattler’s husky, wheezing laugh reverberated in Aaron’s head like Buckshot’s warning in the isolation cell, which he denied because it couldn’t be: not that! and not in front of everybody!

  But the boogie in front of Barneyway’s bed and the cries of pussy continued until the lights blinked mercifully off, back on, off, on, and the Buzzer shuffled down the dormitory to his bed, still dancing and smoothing his black gloves.

  Then his low wailing chant floated into the ceiling rafters as all the guys got into bed. It became staccato barks when Barneyway took off his clothes:

  “Punk-punk-punk-punk-honey!” It stopped long enough for the man to count, started again with the clash of the gate, the rattle of keys, increased in volume, floated eerily in the darkened dormitory, until Aaron imagined he could see the white snapping banner of the shorts and the ghostly black body performing its macabre dance against the faint white wall behind it.

  Bare feet began to shuffle again and the moaning chant broke into song:

  “Get me some,

  some, some, some …”

  And white shorts took shape before Aaron’s eyes.

  The shuffling steps came closer.

  The song stopped.

  A black body loomed as vaguely as a specter in the aisle, and Aaron got ready to kick, but it floated past him, no longer dancing, crossed the aisle, and disappeared in one swift motion into Barneyway’s bed.

  “Hey!” Barneyway cried, but it was too feeble and Aaron had no hope.

  Blankets rustled.

  “Get out!”

  The words hissed as if coming from between clenched teeth, and Aaron heartened at the sound, doubled his fists for Barneyway, and fought the battle from his own bed, for he was afraid to help, and afraid he couldn’t help.

  “Get out!” Barneyway cried again, and Aaron propped himself on his elbows, aware of an audience of blurred faces, and whispered to Barneyway to fight.

  “Get away! Get away!”

  The bed skidded, blankets thrashed, the struggling increased, and Aaron began to hope that Barneyway might hold him off.

  But a gloved fist connected with a muffled smash, and Barneyway yelped and, then, pleaded:

  “Oh, leave me alonnnnnnnnnnnnne.”

  The gloved fist struck again and again, thudded, thudded, thudded; and Aaron lifted his blankets, held them, trying to get the nerve to throw them back and jump up; but Barneyway cried out:

  “Please! Oh, pleeeease!” and Aaron dropped them back upon himself, tears burning his eyes, but without the courage to lower even one foot from the safe comfort of his bed to the cold floor.

  “Shut up!” the Buzzer said and struck once, twice again, and the struggling stopped.

  Whimpering.

  Stifled sobs.

  A grunt that ended in a shriek.

  Another guttural warning.

  A big hump in the dull light from the screened window high above Barneyway’s bed.

  A final useless screech, and Aaron ducked under the covers, packed the pillow around his ears and tried to deafen himself to the terrible mechanical creak and pause of the bedsprings, which kept growing louder and more furious, louder and more furious, louder and more furious, until it reached the pitch of a laboring, broken, ear-shattering scream!

  Part Seven

  Pledge for a Crime Partner

  I

  After-lunch chatter on the visitors’ lawn had faded into garble when Aaron saw Barneyway stop by the white ribs of the baseball bleachers, swing his arm in his stiff-elbowed way, as if to occupy himself, then look toward the fields across the road from him, where the wild grass and the clumps of trees were hot and still under a noon sun.

  The slant of the hill lengthened Aaron’s steps, increased the pace he had kept since he left his warm spot against the mess hall wall, without any comment to Dominic or Jenson, and started following Barneyway, who now, as Aaron drew closer and the noises grew fainter, strayed over to the home plate backstop, apparently unable to decide what to do, then swung his arm again, but held it out behind him, and spun around with fright.

  The purple bruise on the swollen cheekbone was frightening to Aaron, but he was determined to fulfill the penance he had promised in the cool atmosphere of the chapel, a promise as hard to make as the prayers were to say, a promise made to the memory of his mother but now to the image of Judith, a promise it had taken a whole Tuesday to make, a promise he was going to keep, and he kept walking at the same speed until he saw how the bruise edges had yellowed like a wilting blossom, then faltered, took a long, slow step, raised his eyes, concentrated on the bristle tips of Barneyway’s crewcut, and kept moving.

  “Hi!” he said, trying to appear casual, yet unable to keep from glancing at the pale currents of discoloration running through the bruise, which then disappeared behind an ev
asive profile.

  The profile itself had such a strong brow and such a powerful, clefted chin, it was hard for him to associate it with the cries and the whimpering of Monday night, and when he stopped, the brow, the whimpering, the screech of springs, the drudgery of praying, the image of Judith hooded by long hair, all clashed and tangled within him so that the intended vow couldn’t take form in his mind.

  His tongue felt tightened by the shame that paralyzed his good intentions within him and charged the very air between them.

  Traffic noises filtered through the wire backstop and by their faintness intensified the silence:

  Thin cry of a car horn.

  Truck drone.

  Tire ripple on hot asphalt.

  Distant hoot of a train whistle.

  The tiny tick, tick, tick, tick of boxcars on railroad tracks.

  “Hot today … huh?” Aaron said, finally.

  “… Yeah …”

  “I been thinking, Barney …”

  “Yeah …”

  “We been … we been buddies a long time …”

  Humped blanket in dim light. He heard his voice begin again.

  “We been best friends for three years.”

  Facts were the way. They didn’t take thought. Mouth open, but he couldn’t think of any more facts, and he started over again.

  “Three years. Three years is too long, too long not to stand by each other when one guy needs help.”

  He stopped, needing help to continue, and a discolored, wilting bruise came slowly into his view. But a close sight of the bruise shocked him as badly as his first sight of it on Tuesday morning, and it took his speech away again. Then, only the moist gratitude in Barneyway’s eyes gave him the courage to finish.

  “I’m sorry, Barneyway, for not being your friend. If I’d ’uve stuck by you, he might not even … have tried,” he said and watched the slow rise of Barneyway’s arm bridge what had seemed an unspannable distance between them, and he grabbed its wrist, declaring:

  “I’ll stick by you, Barney. To hell with the Buzzer. I promise on my Mother’s Honor. I … promise!”

  Boxcars ticked slowly out of hearing, leaving a moment of silence in which he stood locked to his friend by an arm, a hand, and a promise, but a moment which the movement of Barneyway’s finger, lifting, pointing at the bruise, threatened to destroy, a moment in which Barneyway’s optimistic voice saying, “Look! It’s going down,” did not destroy, but Aaron’s too quick reply of: “Yeah! It’s almost gone!” did destroy.

  He felt foolish, caged by the backstop, and afraid he had ruined everything, for Barneyway pulled free, turned away from him, hiding the bruise, and crossed the road, but then stepped into the field and stopped, plucked a long strand of grass, and held it up for admiration.

  Aaron hurried across the road and, in his enthusiasm, called to Barneyway to follow him, and forced a path through the fields, his pant legs swishing through the tall grass, whipping past the stiff branches of stunted manzanita, scraping against the rough trunks of tall oak trees, and led his friend on an unplanned noisy course into a small secluded meadow, where the musky odor of untilled earth blended with the mint-sharp grass smell, the dusty reek of weeds and bushes, and hung motionless in the warm air like a pleasant, intoxicating ether.

  In the meadow, far from the danger of the Buzzer, the contempt of Dominic, and the sullen dislike of Jenson, he began to feel as if they were old friends again. And he forgot all unpleasant memories, forgot the fact that barbed wire and a watchtower were near by. He forgot that they were doing time. He forgot Judith, too, and when he heard the song of a meadow lark, he called to Barneyway to help him find it, and they searched for it, with what he was certain was a shared delight, until Barneyway spotted it on a high oak branch, then squatted together in the shade at the base of the tree to listen to it.

  The song kept reverberating in the bellows of the bird’s throat as if the bird were swallowing the notes, but increased steadily in volume and wind until the throat swelled and seemed about to burst, then rolled out of the open beak in a mocking higher-toned, note-swallowing echo of itself.

  The notes kept repeating, repeating, one beginning before the other had ended, sounding off across the meadow, lulling Aaron into a complacent peace, in which only the song and the meadow and Barneyway existed, in which the supreme pleasure he felt, the beauty which seemed to envelop him convinced him that he had made his pledge as much for himself as for Barneyway, as much for his own sense of well-being as for Barneyway’s safety or for his need to prove that friendship did, really, exist.

  But when the lark had reached and swallowed the final and weakest echoing note, it paused, as if it were through, and both Aaron and Barneyway waited anxiously until the throat swelled again, the gulped note reverberated in the throat, gathered in volume, intensity, and burst out of the open beak into a rolling echo of itself all over again, and they relaxed again, but it was short-lived, for the lark stopped singing abruptly, ruffled its feathers, and sprang from the branch into flight, accompanied by their long disappointed moan.

  But the bold flutter and chatter of a flock of blackbirds caught their attention next, and they watched with eager amusement until they were distracted by the scratch and scurrying of a small gray squirrel, which vanished as quickly as it appeared. A rustling of leaves above them failed to produce anything, and trying to find something to share together and keep their happy mood, they tried to follow a trail of nervous ants up and around the broad trunk of the tree, each pretending to see the trail a branch higher than the other, higher than the other, until they reached the tip of the tree, laughed, and finally agreed on an area of rough bark where they really lost it.

  “How would you like to be an ant?” Aaron asked, with a blade of grass between his grinning teeth.

  “And climb trees?” Barneyway asked, being equally ridiculous. “No thanks. But if I was.… If I was,” he said, the bruise making his expression serious, “I’d like to be a biiiiig red one and sting the Buzzer right on his big black ass,” and with a smirk at Aaron’s laughter, he stretched out on the ground and lapsed into a self-possessed silence.

  Aaron watched him for a few minutes, pleased that after the turbulent events of the past week they could relax together, and chuckling to himself at the joke, he, too, stretched out and used a thick root as a pillow.

  He stared through the slightly shifting branches and leaves at a peaceful blue sky, pleased by his pledge, too, satisfied that the past mistakes of both of them no longer counted, and that together, they could make sure they both did good time the rest of their stay in the institute.

  But the sky seethed with obscure movement. One moment, he was sure it was the quivering of the leaves. The next moment, the blue seemed to swell and come alive with swimming indistinct worms of white. He tried to blink them away. But each blink only increased them. And they began to bristle like sparks between the branches and the thorny leaves of the tree. He was suddenly seized with fear. And he sat up, feeling very, very small.

  II

  The shadow of a tall eucalyptus tree leaned out of the gully between the schoolhouse and the main office, spread over Aaron and Barneyway, who were standing on the walk below the school steps, zigzagging up the steps, into the entrance of the school, out again, and cut its peak off at a sharp angle on the edge of the flat roof.

  As if it had reached too far, Aaron thought, zigzagged under the strain and lost its head, but he replied:

  “Let’s go to the library then. I’m tired of walking around, tired of—” He almost said talking. “We been walking around since school let out.”

  “Okay!” Barneyway said, enthusiastically, and his wiry body kept up an electric, restless movement as they started down the walk and moved out of the tree’s shadow.

  Three days had dried the bruised petal of ruptured blood vessels on Barneyway’s cheekbone to the color of a wilted violet, and the swelling was gone; and Aaron was more affected now by the pocked texture of the
sidewalk which reminded him of the tiny pimple craters, with the whiskers sprouting out of them, in the hollow of Dominic’s cheek, playing him for shine, the most he had seen of that friend’s face the past day.

  “In a week or two, she wrote,” Barneyway said, when they reached the paved road and started up the hill. “As soon as she gets somebody to drive her. I hope Stanley does so we can have a visit together.”

  The letter and the proposed visit were all Barneyway had talked about for the past day, while Aaron had been concerned with the snub Dominic had given him when he ran up the walk with Barneyway to get into line for school, with Dominic’s change of seats in the classroom, and with the beauty mark that had been turned to him and stopped him at every approach.

  “It’ll be good to be with her. A guy don’t have to put on a show with his mother. You know. Act rough. Talk bad. Don’t have to pretend he likes to play ball or box. I can talk about music to her, and Carmen Cavallero, too. Boy, I wish I could practice on a piano.”

  The sun sliced Aaron’s legs across the knees, and shortened the shadow on each leg with each of his steps up a hill on which Jenson’s legs had marched into tall shadows with each step down it and away from him that very day.

  “Carmen Cavallero is a bitch on the piano, Aaron. No jive. Mother’s Honor. Oh! Sorry!”

  He paused and with his sleeve brushed off the spit he had sprayed on Aaron’s shirt.

  “Carried away,” he explained, but talked on. “You oughtta hear him on Polonaise. Man! I’m telling youuu, he’s a bitch!”

  Waves of hill shadow splashed against Aaron’s ankles as he waded upward into the sun, wondering if he and Barneyway would reach a point where they’d be respected, where Barneyway’s speaking voice wouldn’t sound like a solitary shriek in the dormitory, and if his own support would give Barneyway the guts to fight the Buzzer. For everything depended upon that. That would bring them respect. That would revive his dying friendships and only that would justify his pledge.