Tattoo the Wicked Cross

by Salas, Floyd;

  He pressed the smooth protruding button of the buzzer attached to the bed frame for distraction, and tried to think of something to ask the nurse for, in case she, instead of Buckshot, answered his call.

  He never asked her for the bedpan.

  He pressed the button again, then remembered that Buckshot had already picked up the dinner trays, his last job, and was gone. He tipped the pitcher to check it, saw a little liquid near the bottom, decided to ask the nurse for more water, and set the pitcher down as the door opened.

  Barneyway stepped timidly in, but held onto the door knob, as if ready to leave. His large eyes were tremulous with anxiety and the cleft in his chin quivered with a tentative smile.

  He then raised his hand in an awkward salute, and a compassionate pang tightened Aaron’s throat, and he let his own jaw sag in a swollen smile.

  “They beat you up bad,” Barneyway said, lifting a timorous finger toward Aaron’s black eye as he approached, and lifting it higher and almost touching the knot on Aaron’s forehead when he stopped.

  “They kicked you, huh?”

  “They had to kick me,” Aaron said; and Barneyway pulled his hand away, held it as if he didn’t know what to do with it, then sneaked it down his side, below the level of the bed, and out of sight, in such a humble manner that Aaron tried to apologize.

  “Sit down, Barney. You okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “The Buzzer bother you any?” Aaron asked, with only a slight huskiness in his voice.

  “No. He’s been real quiet since you got hurt. He’s afraid to try anything. Big Stoop has come around every day and even asked about his eye.”

  “What’d the Buzzer say?” Aaron asked, excitedly.

  “He said he tripped, and Rattler backed him up and so did some other guys, and Big Stoop believed him because he’s cadet captain.”

  Aaron let his head settle into the damp pocket of the pillow, disappointed, but tried to picture the Buzzer scared, peeking over his shoulder with pursed lips, and, unable to, he said, his voice quavering with emotion:

  “I’m glad you came to see me, Barneyway. It took me this messed-up body and this face to really see what you been up against. I mean really see. I know what kind of pressure you were under when you didn’t fight the Buzzer back. I’d like to stop fighting, too.”

  Tears welled up in Barneyway’s eyes, and he lifted his hands as if to grab Aaron, to touch him at least; but Aaron shied away in distaste, and Barneyway hid his hands below the bed again, and sat back in the chair.

  “We’ll be friends again,” Aaron said to make him feel better; but he was discouraged by Barneyway’s weakness when he needed encouragement so badly himself, when he needed somebody, anybody, to give him a reason to fight; and trying to revive his own spirit, he added:

  “And don’t worry, either, because I’ll figure out a way to make sure the Buzzer never bothers us again.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know what I mean. But I know I gotta do it. Only power counts, man. If you’re not big enough to be bad acting, then you gotta do what you can do. I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but I know I’m gonna do something.”

  “Don’t get in trouble, Aaron. It’s not worth it. It’s not. It’s not.”

  “Why not?” Skip honked from the doorway and swaggered in, hopping with each step, as if hitching up his pants.

  “Why not? Get in trouble, Aaron, and I’ll get in trouble with you,” he said and crushed all of Aaron’s shame with his stubby hand.

  “I’ll help yuh get ’im, Aaron. We’ll get him together. It ain’t over yet.”

  He shoved Aaron’s leg aside and hopped onto the bed, causing a small quake, but made Aaron’s discomfort insignificant by his willingness to do battle for him, by the strength of his knuckle-battered face.

  “You didn’t have your blade when they jumped yuh, did you?” he asked, gruffly, and with complete confidence.

  “Did you?” he asked again, and Aaron shook his head, feeling like a coward, and saw further proof of his cowardice in Skip’s reply:

  “Well, I’ll get yuh another one, man. And I’ll get one for myself, and we’ll catch that Buzzer in a cross and nail him with two shivs instead of one. How about that?”

  He brushed at a blond lock of hair on his face, but wiped it flatter instead, and noticed Aaron’s glum expression.

  “Let me tell yuh something, man. Regardless of what the guys might say or think, I know what kind of a battle you put up, and I know you didn’t give in. I—”

  Aaron’s blush caused him to pause, and he looked from Aaron to Barneyway and back to Aaron again.

  “I’m with you, man. Don’t let this guy make you like him, man.”

  “I’m not, Skip,” Aaron said. “It’s not him.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m pretty messed up right now, man,” Aaron said. “You know.”

  “I know that I’m gonna help you get even,” Skip said and turned sidesaddle on the bed, purposely ignoring Barneyway, and ignoring Aaron’s blush, too, he talked on.

  “Every real guy gets even, Aaron,” he said. “Every real guy, man. Look at Dillinger! He shot the guy to death that put the finger on him. Remember that movie with Laurence Tierney, man?”

  He stopped and thumped a knuckle into Aaron’s thigh, and forced him to answer.

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “Remember how he pulled out that wooden gun that he carved to escape from jail with and made the stool pigeon cringe?

  “Remember?

  “Remember that when the guy looked like he was gonna pee his pants, he showed him that it was just a play gun, handmade, and blackened with shoe polish?

  “Thennnnn, when the guy starts to laugh and yet almost cry, he’s so happy, Dillinger puts his hand in his pocket and shoots him with the real rod he had stashed there?

  “Remember? Remember?

  “Ain’t that cold? Ain’t it?” he said, gleefully, and slapped his thigh, and grinned at Aaron’s lopsided grin.

  “Did you see Paul Muni when he played Scarface? and shot George Raft down in the hotel for making his sister? and they were married and he didn’t even bother to find out? Did him in in a silk bathrobe?

  “All the real guys get even, Aaron. Al Capone! James Cagney! St. Valentine’s Day Massacre! Pretty Boy Floyd! Edward G. Robinson! All of ’um, Aaron! All of ’um!” he shouted, making quick, finger-barreled, hammer-thumbed, trigger-fingered motions, throwing mock punches and jerking the bed so much that Aaron had to spread his arms and legs to lessen the jolts; but he was pleased and affected by Skip’s excitement, and he nodded eagerly in reply to Skip’s question:

  “Man, you wantta really hear about revenge? I mean really?”

  Skip scooted closer and knocked his knee against Aaron, but didn’t notice it; and Aaron, although he flinched, didn’t care, because he wanted to hear the story.

  “Well, man, I knew some pachuco dudes once. You know, some real pachucos, Mexicans, bad actors with pachuco crosses on each hand. And this one pachuco, name of Hector, he used to wear a great big silver cross around his neck, and even had a six-inch cross tattooed on his chest, and he was the baddest, coldest, revenge-gettingest dude I ever saw. Man, listen to this,” he said, and Aaron lifted his head higher on the pillow.

  “Once I escaped from a foster home over in River County. They put me there after my second burglary job because my old man had taken off on my mother when I was about ten. Well, anyway, I was cutting across country to stay off the highways and clear of the highway patrol when these chicanos in a fruit-picker camp took me in. I stayed a whole week with ’em, and when I was there, I saw this Hector corner a guy who had given him the finger with both hands from a passing car full of guys from another camp. That was about a week before I got there, and he got this dude and slapped his face about ten times, and, then, talking some kind of fantastic Mexican slang, he made the guy kneel down and cup his balls in his hands without squeezing ’
em. Do you know what that means?”

  Spittle bubbled in the corners of Skip’s mouth, but unwilling to pause for a long breath, let alone an answer, he gasped a whistling short wind and kept talking.

  “Man, when you grab a guy’s nuts, you gotta squeeze ’em or you’re a punk, a bitch, a whore. And this guy practically cried. He begged and begged Hector, and said he’d do anything for Hector except that. But Hector, and, man, his arms were as big as tree branches from pickin’ fruit all his life, man, Hector, he made the guy cup ’um or fight, and the guy lifted his hand right up between Hector’s legs and held ’em, man, and when he did, Hector spit in his face for doin’ it, man. Now, tell-me-like-it-is, man? Is that revenge, man? Now, tell me, Aaron? Tell-me-like-it-is? Is that revenge? and just for a guy giving you the double-barreled finger? Revenge, man. Wow!”

  “That’s revenge. Yeah, now that’s really revenge, man,” Aaron agreed, and the Buzzer was on his knees before him, pink palm upraised, gingerly cupping the crotch of his dungarees. “I’d love to make the Buzzer do that in front of everybody, and I’d love to spit in his face.”

  “Make him do it then,” Skip said and slapped Aaron’s leg. “I’ll help yuh. We’ll make that black queer bastard kneel down and cry.”

  “I’ll get him,” Aaron said. “I’ll get him for me and Barneyway. That’s the only answer. I’ve got nothin’ else. Do it and all the way. I’ll get him for both of us. For both of us, Barneyway!” he cried, filled with exuberant hate, although Barneyway sat in rigid silence on the chair.

  “On my Mother’s Honor, I’ll get him for both of us,” Aaron said and raised his fist; and Skip reached out and grabbed it with both hands and raised it higher, like a winning fighter at the end of a bout; and Aaron liked the test of pain that streaked across his chest.

  IV

  Sunday visits were a muffled, saddening chaos through the hospital walls of voices, cries, laughter, the boiling rap of exhausts, car hum, and the static and crackle of names from the office loud-speaker; but pain pills had eased the numbed discomfort of Aaron’s back and buttocks and allowed his brain to absorb these sounds as half-formed sensations, like those which occur midway between sleep and daydreaming; and he basked in an artificial calm of pride and lonesome boredom, lulled by the pills and by his decision to strike back at the Buzzer.

  It was a decision which, with Skip’s enthusiasm, had helped carry him through the lonely hours of doubt before sleep and the dull morning hours when the impulse to pray began to bother him. He had soothed the nerves that demanded relief in the sanctuary of a church with a memory of the chaplain and with a self-reminder that it took tough fists not prayer-clasped hands to make it in the institute, and he then tried to satisfy his spirit with glorious thoughts of revenge.

  Steps and voices in the hall loomed upon his conscious mind like the pressure of touch, and he fought the desire for a visit that rose within him at the sounds by trying to absorb them, too, in his mental haze, and he was beginning to succeed, for he was starting to forget them, when the door pressed a block of air upon his swollen face, and he opened his eyes to the sight of his family and Judith filing into the room as if it were a sanctified tomb at the end of a grueling pilgrimage.

  Nora came in first on slow, carefully spaced, spike-heeled steps, wearing a black gabardine suit which accentuated her somber carriage; her black hair swooped down to her cardigan collar like a mantilla worn for mass; her face had the pale, guilty complexion common to older girls awaiting their turn in the confessional booth; and she clasped her black purse like a prayer book in one hand and led Judith by the other.

  The blue in Judith’s eyes seemed to shrink to the size of her beauty mark with her first step past Nora, and she did not say hello, nor did anyone else speak.

  Not his father, who waddled in and stopped at the foot of the bed, hat in hand, the ball of his belly snugged in a vest, suit coat hanging loose and heavy padded at his shoulders, light creasing across his olive-skinned skull.

  Not John, who strode in with the arrogance of a naval officer until he, too, saw Aaron, then faltered with the shock that snapped across the taut skin of his face like an elastic band, and almost tiptoed into a corner.

  Not Stanley, either, who entered last, and who closed the door with an almost reverent attempt to prevent a noise, and who, then, leaned against it as if cornered, broad shoulders clothed and magnified by a V-neck sweater, and the breadth of his chest intensified by a triangular patch of T-shirt at the neck.

  A loud-speaker pronouncement of a name was nearly intelligible in the silence, and the promise of happiness it carried for some unknown prisoner mocked the unhappy beginning of Aaron’s visit in the hospital room.

  “It looks like a funeral procession,” he said, making a joke and instantly clearing his mind, although incapable of laughing at it himself.

  “Do I look that bad? It’s been three days, you know. I could barely see out of my eye at first. My jaw doesn’t even ache when I open it now.”

  The frog was gone from his voice, which was both agreeable and regrettable to him, for although he wanted to shatter the thin layer of discomfort with frank speech, a cracked tone could have made his wounds seem more serious and could have punished them more.

  “You look okay,” Stanley said. “I thought you’d be in worse shape than that. Eye’s still black, but the swelling’s down. Jaw looks a little big yet. That bruise on your forehead will take longer to go away than that little bump it’s on. There isn’t too much wrong. I’ve looked worse after a four-rounder. Remember that battle I had in San Jose? You look pretty good, considering.…”

  “Pretty good?” Aaron repeated, trying, but unsuccessfully, to prompt Stanley to continue, for the unfinished sentence left the deceptively mild atmosphere, in which the half-drawn shade filtered and softened the rays of the sun, tense and charged with his shame.

  Considering what? he then wanted to say and force everything into the open, force them to admit what had happened, force them to confess what they had caused, and, most of all, force his father to speak and suffer. He wanted to hear his father suffer, as well as see him suffer. For the big man wasn’t trying to bluff his way out of his distress as usual, but stood heavily by the bed and, finally, made a clumsy attempt to straighten the folded bedspread, when Aaron quickly attacked him.

  “Too little, too late, huh?” he said, his voice wavering and unsure, but he didn’t back down.

  “Why didn’t you do more sooner? I might not even be here if you did.”

  The bald crown darkened with an angry rush of blood, but bowed and turned, so that Aaron, who lifted himself from the pillow, tolerating the tender pressure in his buttocks, had to speak to the fan of dark hair below it.

  “You let me down. You didn’t get me transferred like you promised.”

  “Listen, Aaron,” Stanley said. “Don’t blame Dad. I was the one who should have made sure you got transferred. I guess I left too much of it up to the superintendent. You can’t tell him what to do, you know. I guess since I was so vague about it and who the bully was, he didn’t think it was that serious.”

  “Why did you, you take the knife? You’re the guy who’s always talking about how tough you are and how important it is to be a good fighter. I might have kept them off me with it. You took away my only protection. You let ’em get me.”

  “Do you think it would have been better if they had allowed you to kill someone?” John asked.

  “I didn’t want to kill anybody. I just wanted them to leave me alone,” Aaron retorted, still propped on one elbow, using the sore strip in his side as justification for his lack of respect.

  “Why didn’t you tell them it was so serious then? Stanley thought it was just a fight and tried to prevent it from becoming serious. You weren’t honest with them. How could you expect them to understand?”

  “Do you think anybody would have believed me?” Aaron countered; and John’s swiftly lowered face was a wide but sharply beveled plane of intense
concentration—square boned, yet molded by lean flesh—and who, when he spoke again, spoke with a firm but very soft voice:

  “You have to try and understand the family’s position, too, Aaron. I, we, don’t deny yours. They tried to help you last week. They didn’t really know what was going on, and they have to suffer in their own way for what happened to you. But they’re still interested in keeping you from turning into a savage dog, and if you keep up this self-pitying attitude, you’ll destroy yourself. Do you understand that?”

  “Do you know what they did to me?” Aaron shouted.

  “Do you?” he said again, and John didn’t answer, but this only increased his urge to whip them with himself, all of them, Judith, too.

  “Do you know what they did?”

  “I don’t care what they did,” John said. “You’ve got to forget what they did.”

  “Forget what they did?”

  “Forget what they did,” John insisted, “or you’ll destroy yourself.”

  “They’ll destroy me if I try to forget. Don’t you understand that? If I don’t get them for getting me, everybody’ll try it sometime. The whole institute’ll think I’m a weak punk. A punk! Do you know what a punk is? Do you?”

  “Aaron,” John said, and ignored the question. “You’ve got to be big enough, strong enough to live without thinking of revenge. I hear you tried to be nice to that boy, but you probably overdid it, and that’s why he thought you were afraid. Now you’re going to the opposite extreme. You’ve got to learn to compromise. We’re not going to try and get that boy punished because we can’t prove anything, and it won’t do you any good. So, we’re compromising, we’re going to concentrate on getting you out of here. We don’t care about revenge. We want to help you. But you’ve got to compromise, too. You’ve got to be bigger than the inmates here or you’ll end up just like them. If I could only make you see that. You’ve got to make up your mind that you belong to a bigger world than the vicious one behind the barbed wire of this fence.”