Tattoo the Wicked Cross

by Salas, Floyd;

  “All I remember, really,” Aaron said, trying to start the conversation, “is that I got jumped by the Buzzer and some of his boys and got knocked out. I don’t really know what happened. But I do know that I cracked him across the face with the hose nozzle.”

  “So that’s how he got that mouse on his eye!” Buckshot exclaimed and looked directly at Aaron for the first time.

  “Is it swollen bad?” Aaron asked, hopefully.

  “Well, not bad. But he’s got a good lump, and the lump is blacker than the rest of his ugly head, and there’s a skinny little scab on it.”

  “Good. I only wish I could have done more. Did I get any of the others?”

  “No, man. Not that I know of. But you did get the Buzzer so it shows. You know, man?” Buckshot said, and the shade cutting across the back of his neck made his cocked head look disconnected and wobbly. “You’re surprising me how good you act. You been out a whole day, counting the shot the doctor gave you when you started screaming. You looked like you might die when they brought you in here. I’m glad you’re getting well so fast.”

  “A whole day?”

  “A whole day this noon. You looked real bad, like you got hit by a truck or something.”

  “Does the man know what happened?” Aaron asked and lifted himself slightly, for the pleasure of a chest pain.

  But Buckshot pushed the corn flakes bowl into the middle of the tray, and set the spoon next to it, and shoved them both toward Aaron before he answered, simply:

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, what, man?” Aaron said, irritably. “Man, you make me nervous! Why don’t you tell me what happened? Mother’s Honor, I don’t know myself.”

  “I gotta go deliver some trays to the big ward, man. Those guys are gonna start squawkin’,” Buckshot said and stepped back.

  “Say, man, what’s the big problem?” Aaron asked, worried, lifting from the pillow, disregarding the pain, for Buckshot’s kinked curls glinted quickly past the window.

  “Tell me, man! You got me scared. I’m not crippled or something, am I?”

  The brown shadows on Buckshot’s fat face sagged with pity.

  “You gotta tell me, Buckshot. You gotta tell me. You gotta!”

  But Buckshot’s round-shouldered back concealed the opening door, and Aaron commanded, in a rasping voice:

  “Tell me!”

  Buckshot stopped again. But he didn’t close the door. And he spoke to the door, slowly:

  “They … gang-banged you … man.”

  A hot shock kept Aaron bent forward for an embarrassing moment, but tingled into a chill, as he let himself, while breathing heavily through cracked lips, while trying to deny what must be an undeniable fact, what even a fool would expect from the Buzzer, sink back onto the pillow.

  “I gotta go, man,” Buckshot said and closed the door behind him with a quiet click of the latch, leaving Aaron in a semi-stupor, the untouched tray on his lap, unable to get mad or even cry, unable to feel anything but shame, unable, also, to fit the splintered recollections together in his mind, for they were like some fragmented puzzle: cold and wet on the dairy floor, nausea, a dry smell of manure and straw, but nothing else, nothing else, and even these fragments were as unreal as the illusions of a dream; and the corn flakes turned soggy in the tin bowl as a thin layer of scum soon covered the chocolate.

  II

  Black bars picketed the open space between the window frame and sill and a foot of barred sunlight slanted onto the floor. Aaron had watched the bars lengthen on the floor and increase in number, like extra sentries, as the morning had passed and the sun and his shame had risen higher.

  Steel-rimmed glasses had sat like microscopic specks upon the large ruddy nose of the stocky nurse who had straightened his blankets, lifted his tray with one thick hand, folded and smoothed the sheet back over the blankets with the other, and who was as crisp and white and clean and antiseptic smelling as the rest of the room.

  She had tried to coax him into eating the corn flakes and had lifted him by an underarm to a higher sitting position, while she placed an extra pillow behind him. But he had gasped at a sharp pang in his rectum, and she had then stared at him through the steel-rimmed glasses with such intense steel-gray eyes that she had intensified the pain and made him fear food, for it would have to come out, and he could not forget Barneyway’s cry about the toilet paper spotted with blood.

  Buckshot had picked up the tray, but had balanced it, to prevent spilling the corn flakes and chocolate, like a man on a tightrope, who could not risk a glance nor spare a word for Aaron.

  Every set of footsteps which passed in the hall after he left revived the shame, for Aaron feared that each set would stop at his door, and the walker would enter to stare at the “new queen,” the other Barneyway. He began to dread the day he would be well, too, for it might be Queens, Row for him or, just as bad, the main grounds with a ruined reputation.

  Judith’s tattooed dot was a nasty perforation now, an abscessed pore, and Nora was a navy-base chippy, and Stanley was a punch-drunk fighter who took dives; but it didn’t help. Nothing helped, and all he wanted was help. And the heavy tread in the hall did not promise help. Nor did it walk lightly away, but slowed, and stopped, and the door latch clicked, and Big Stoop stepped into the room.

  The sharp brim of the khaki cap shortened and strengthened his big head, but it was contempt which slanted his cold eyes, glazed the parchment dry skin of his broad cheeks, and crackled from his lipless mouth with the depth and sharpness of the loud-speaker:

  “Woke up, huh?”

  “Huh?”

  “Gimme the names of the guys who jumped you.”

  “Huh?”

  “The names … kid,” Big Stoop said, eclipsing the window.

  “I … I don’t know.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t remember,” Aaron said, mechanically, drawing back into the pillow, away from the big looming head.

  “Don’t give me that stuff. You saw who hit you, and it was the same guy, and maybe some others, who was bothering you.”

  “I didn’t see,” Aaron insisted in a grating but level whisper, lying easily, without guilt, without fear of being slapped in a hospital bed, with resentment breeding a stubborn loyalty in his sickened body where there had been only a void, and beaten up and even gang-banged, he was no punk fink.

  “I still don’t know. I was in a stall cleaning, something knocked me down, and I woke up here. That’s all I know.”

  “Gonna play hero, huh?” Big Stoop said, and Aaron could have thanked him, because his own half-shut eye had either blinked unwittingly or he had actually seen an involuntary waver of sympathy soften the harsh outlines of Big Stoop’s face before he heard his voice. And he sensed by the hope the waver had aroused in him that if Big Stoop had shown a fraction as much concern for him as for the idea of catching someone and punishing them, he could have been conned into telling the whole story: names and everything.

  “You really don’t remember, huh?”

  “No.”

  “You know that you got raped though, don’t you?” Big Stoop said, and although Aaron didn’t answer, he asked: “How do you know that and not who it was?”

  “I was told.”

  “Who told you then?”

  “The orderly,” Aaron replied quickly and, as quickly, wanted to kick himself for getting trapped, certain Buckshot would get in trouble.

  “You know,” Big Stoop said, apparently satisfied with that part of Aaron’s answer, without being taken in by it, “you guys don’t have any sense. Here some guys have seriously beaten you up, have even raped you, the very worst thing that could have happened to you, outside of murder, and yet you protect them. You’ve got a twisted sense of honor, of what a man is, if you ask me. Nobody’s ever really taught you what’s right and what’s wrong by planting a swift kick in your ass every time you even look the wrong way. There’s some man in you, I’ll grant you that. But it’s so far off base, it’d be
better if you didn’t have any. Then, I might be able to get some sense into you, maybe. I bet a hundred bucks your old man spoils you, lets you have your own way. The way your brother did all the talking Sunday, I figured something like that.”

  “I’ve got a good father,” Aaron said.

  “Well, I’m your father now, kid,” Big Stoop said, with a thin smile at Aaron’s reply, “and you listen to me. You’re gonna need me some time when you’re here, maybe for a probation recommendation. You won’t get it, kid. I don’t care how good you act. You don’t like getting raped and yet you won’t help me put a stop to it. You got no sense, no sense, kid. Stay here in this goddamn hospital, and when you get out, go out on the main grounds and take your chances again with the same filthy bastards that got you this time.”

  He waited, evidently to see if the double warning had any effect; but Aaron, although scared, wanted to spit in the hulking face above him, hated it so much he would have sided with the Buzzer against it at that moment; and he wanted to shout his defiance as the face moved away on the towering frame, turned, and vanished behind the door.

  But the door shut louder than the unspoken shout, and its white surface gave him nothing to hate, yet it stood before him like a blank promise of an uncertain future; and he watched it change shades with the passing hours, saw it deepen from a plain white to a somber tone, with the deepening of the day and his own spirit, saw it tint with pale tones at sundown, then finally blot and discolor with the black habit of the chaplain, when he had long stopped trying to defy it and there was only despair where there had been shame and then hate in his spirit.

  The soft down on the chaplain’s cheeks seemed to feather with the scrape of the chair he pulled next to the bed. And the twin suns on his rimless glasses, reflections of the burlap-textured shade, glimmered like silk screens over his gray, nearly colorless eyes.

  “Your face looks pretty bad. It’ll probably take about a month for the swelling and the bruises to go completely away,” the chaplain said, smoothing the covers down in front of him, as if to remove all possible obstructions and allow a smoother flow of language, of feelings, and of understanding between himself and Aaron.

  His words were so soft they seemed to seep through the dry and bloodless lips and pop apart in the harsh reality of air like bubbles of spittle, and Aaron, although he warmed to them, had to lean toward the chaplain in order to hear all of them.

  The tiny bones and cords and slim blue veins under the transparent flesh of the chaplain’s slender, almost deformed hands, reminded Aaron of Buckshot’s story about how little the chaplain ate, how he picked at his food, and tasted this, and sampled that, and spent the better part of an hour in doing it, but how his blond and buxom, southern wife cleaned her plate and had seconds, too, and how her breasts and hips rippled with such unsatisfied, sexy undulations under her plain dresses that the guys in the officers’ mess had a jack-off contest over her, while imagining how wild she was and how she scratched when she came.

  “Do you pray, son?” the chaplain asked, swallowing with effort, the bony point of his Adam’s apple bobbing up and disappearing into the meatless sack of his double chin, as if he had to squeeze the words up and through the strangle hold the banded collar had on his scrawny neck.

  “Yes, but not like I used to,” Aaron said, feeling guilty over the nights he had fondled the blade instead of the rosary, wondering if his wounds were a sort of penance for this sin.

  “Your religion?”

  “Catholic,” Aaron replied, grateful for the chaplain’s choice of a topic, impressed by the great difference between him and Big Stoop, guessing that a man as little and delicate as the chaplain had to be a chaplain just to get by in the world, and had better be a chaplain just to stay alive among the bad actors in the institute.

  “Have you made your Holy Communion?” the chaplain asked, smoothing down his scalp-flat colorless blend of blond and gray hair.

  “Yes,” Aaron said, proud of the implied virtue of his answer. “And I’ve been confirmed, and I was an altar boy, too.”

  He shifted uncomfortably between the sheets with this partial lie, for he had only served mass twice before his mother died, and he had not returned after her funeral.

  “Aaaah,” the chaplain said, with an enthusiastic flicker of his lenses. “You have something most of the boys don’t have. You have faith. You know what it is to put all your confidence in God.”

  The colorless eyes blinked in a monotonous, irritating manner, as if prompting Aaron to agree, and he nodded a noncommittal reply, partly because he really didn’t understand what the chaplain meant and partly because he felt insincere, for he was no longer a good Catholic.

  “Confession is a wonderful thing,” the chaplain said, still blinking. “Though we Protestants don’t practice it in the same manner as Catholics do, we realize how it can soothe the suffering soul and bring peace to the troubled person. Don’t you agree?”

  “Yes,” Aaron said, feeling a tone of insincerity in the chaplain’s voice now with the too gracious respect for his opinion, but he did really agree. “I do feel good after I’ve been to confession. But I’m always a little afraid I’ll commit a sin before communion the next morning.”

  “Ah, yes, yes,” the chaplain said, warming to his subject, sliding the chair closer to the bed, resting both clasped hands upon the bedspread.

  “But after Holy Communion, you feel like a changed person, a much better person, I bet. Isn’t that so?”

  Half-moon hollows curved sharply down pale cheeks to a pinched mouth, which leaned so close with Aaron’s nodded reply, with the black-sleeved elbows that now appeared on the bedspread, that Aaron could smell the sour breath when it opened to speak; and he held his own breath to keep from turning rudely away.

  “I’m sorry that you’re so seriously hurt as this. I know that you must need someone, an adult, to depend upon. And because of your good religious attitude, and since there is no Catholic priest here at the institute, I’d like you to count on me. Any time you need help, any time, no matter what it is, I want you to come to me, and I’ll see what I can do for you. All right?”

  Thin hands separated, smoothed a blanket fold, and re-clasped. But the chaplain stayed at the same close, uncomfortable distance, waiting for an answer; and Aaron nodded yes, quickly, for he did truly appreciate the offer, especially since he had nothing else to depend upon; but he breathed with gratitude when the chaplain leaned back and smiled with false teeth and pale-orange gums.

  “We’re going to become good friends,” the chaplain said. “Really, son, and I do mean this, under God, it’s too bad we didn’t know each other this well, had this understanding, I mean, before this other happened, or maybe.… The leader of those boys who attacked you.…”

  Gray eyes drifted from a close unblinking scrutiny of Aaron’s face into a wandering gaze.

  “The … leader …?”

  Ivory fingers touched and prompted the bloodless lips.

  “What’s his name?”

  “The—” But Aaron’s answer was stopped by a bullet-swift glance, and a wave of disgust and anger swept over him as he clamped his cracked lips together.

  “His name?” the chaplain asked. “His name? His name?”

  Aaron twisted his swollen face into the most obvious sneer he could manage, and the pinched mouth fell open, the half-moon hollows drooped into straight lines, and the twin suns reappeared on the lenses.

  “I, I … I really must be going,” the chaplain said, and the chair scraped, the bed quivered and rose with his frail black figure, and he walked with hurried and jerking steps out of the room.

  III

  Aaron formed spectacles by touching his thumbs and forefingers together, limited his sight to small circles of the pimpled plaster ceiling, and tried to make a design out of the rings of light. He noticed, with disappointment, that the rings weakened in intensity as his gaze glided away from the center bulb to the ceiling corners. He then noticed that the corners
were darker than the walls supporting them but were much lighter than the drab yellow of the drawn shade. But the whitewashed room was as monotonous to look at as the bleat of the crickets was to hear, and he wished that he was back on the garbage run and busy enough to evade all thought, then rejected this thought, too, because it included the complicated and fearful idea of appearing on the main grounds.

  Two full days of twisting and sweating had taken all the crispness out of the sheets and all the energy out of his hate. The hot damp pocket of the pillow was a discomfort that kept him constantly aware of his swollen forehead, his jaw, and his eye. The tape, the flannel nightgown, and the covers encased his fractured ribs and heated his body flesh into steamy wrinkles. His loins were soft and slippery with sweat, and his rectum often itched, too, and rather than scratch it or rub it, he had devised a way of rocking his body and squeezing his buttocks together, which permitted him to ignore it for a while.

  He lifted all the covers but the sheet and threw them back, with a flick of his right hand, upon his legs, and only the sheet covered him from the crotch up. The fingers of his left hand were bruised and stiff from some kick, and he wondered when he would be able to close it into a fist and whether he would ever be able to jab with power again.

  But his body felt liberated, and he did not move until the aching numbness settled into his back and buttocks again. Then, although he tilted first to his left and then to his right side and held each position for a minute or two before settling once again upon his back, he could not forget who he now was nor where he was nor why he was there.

  For the waxy face of the chaplain haunted the mental haze caused by the pain pills and the daydreaming. Aaron’s thoughts kept revolving around and around a flickering tattoo, which kept reappearing and reappearing on the sallow cheek, and the sleepy bliss and the escape into laziness which he had expected to enjoy were completely poisoned. The struggle to keep himself clearheaded and awake was equally discouraging. For the idea of revenge as his only pass to the grounds festered upon his mind like a pimple beneath the skin: painful, but without enough pus in it to erupt. He then had to face the fact that he couldn’t whip the Buzzer without help, and he couldn’t expect help of any kind from any person, not even from Skip, for there was the lost blade to explain.