Handsome Harry

by James Carlos Blake

  The judge agreed. He gave me two to five in the state reformatory at Jeffersonville.

  There isn’t much to tell about J-Ville, as we called it. According to the rules-and-regulations booklet every inmate received on his arrival, the reformatory’s purpose was to help young offenders become useful citizens through vocational training and character guidance. In truth, the inmates were little more than slave labor for the private companies that contracted with the state to provide work inside the walls. J-ville had a small factory for making shoes, plus a carpentry shop and a garage for teaching auto mechanics. I’d heard plenty about the reformatory from guys who’d been there, so I had some idea of what to expect. Still, it took some getting used to, the constant whine of machinery and electrical saws and steam whistles, the smells of sawdust and exhaust smoke and disinfectants.

  I’d only been there about two weeks when I got jumped. One minute the shower room was full of naked guys and the next there was nobody there but me and the three hardcases who came at me. Their intention, as one of them so explicitly put it, was to break the cherry in this pretty boy’s ass. They must’ve fixed it with the guards, because the fight lasted a while and we weren’t quiet about it, but not a hack showed his face until I got a grip on one guy’s balls and twisted as hard as I could and he screamed like he was on fire. That’s when the hacks came running and found him folded up on the floor and bawling like a baby. One of his pals was down too—I’d rammed his head against the wall and he was out cold. The third guy took off before the hacks showed up.

  I had a broken nose and what felt like cracked ribs and a shiner that almost closed my eye, but I’d retained my rectal virtue. None of us finked and the superintendent gave us each three days in solitary confinement, although the other two couldn’t serve their punishment till they got out of the infirmary.

  The solitary cells were in the guardhouse basement under the mat room. The mat room was large and windowless but brightly lit and didn’t have any furnishings except for a few chairs for the guards and a dozen straw mats arranged in a wide circle in the center of the room, each mat two feet square. Commit a minor infraction and you were brought in here and made to stand on a mat for six hours in your underwear and with your hands cuffed behind you. Step off the mat without permission and you got a beating and a stretch in solitary. But the two fastest ways into the hole were by fighting or trying to escape.

  The hole cells were along the rear wall of the basement, which was always chilly and smelled of piss and shit. Of the guys I’d known who’d been in J-ville, only one had done time in solitary, and he said it was no big deal. He was right. They made you strip naked but they gave you a small blanket, and the cell was big enough to stretch out in. The door had a small window that admitted some of the hallway’s light, and there was a big can of drinking water, and at noon you got a plate of beans. That was a reformatory’s idea of harsh punishment—making you sleep on the floor and piss in a can, eat beans and be alone. It was nothing like the holes I’d heard about from guys who’d been in real joints like Joliet or Michigan City. I could’ve done a month in J-ville’s hole standing on my head.

  When I was let back into general population I had a lot of new friends. The three guys who’d ganged on me had been regarded as the toughest mugs in the place and they’d been lording it over most of the other inmates, who were glad to hear I’d settled their hash. Guys came around to introduce themselves and ask if I needed anything.

  One of the older fellows said he could set my busted nose, so I said go ahead. He positioned his thumbs on either side of my nose and told me to brace myself. It took him three tries to get it right and I couldn’t keep the tears from running down my face, but he did a good job. There you go, kid, he said, Handsome Harry rides again.

  The other guy who’d jumped me in the showers, the one who got away before the hacks showed up, was named Kruger. He’d been the leader and the one to make the crack about busting my cherry. I hadn’t been able to give him anything worse than a shiner and some loose teeth. Now he was being careful to keep his distance from me, and he kept a pair of goons at his side for protection. I affected indifference to him for more than a month before he started to lower his guard. Then one morning in the mess hall I made my move.

  At my signal, a handful of guys started a sham fight in the food line to draw the hacks over there and get everybody’s attention. Some other guys closed up around the two goons, blocking them off from Kruger, who was at the far edge of the crowd and up on tiptoes trying to get a look at the fight. I came up fast behind him and gave him a roundhouse to the kidney with all my might. He made a sound like he’d been stabbed and I was walking away as he fell. By the time they broke up the crowd and saw Kruger curled up on the floor I was already out in the yard.

  They took him to the hospital but there were complications and in another two days he was dead. Internal hemorrhaging, they said. Because the brass had no idea who’d done it or even how, they wrote it up as a factory accident in order to cover themselves.

  I’d heard that a kidney punch could be lethal but I’d had my doubts. I’d figured I would hurt him plenty but hadn’t expected to kill him. Still, I can’t say I was sorry when I got the word. I’ve never been given to casual use of vulgar language—unwarranted profanity implies mental laziness—but there’s no other way to say this: A guy tries to fuck me…well, fuck him.

  A few inmates had seen the whole thing, and the story got around J-ville fast, but nobody ever ratted me. Just like that, I was one of the top hardcases in the joint. Now even more guys were eager to get on my good side, including the two apes who’d been with Kruger.

  The trouble with a hardcase reputation, of course, is having to hold it against all comers. The toughest of them was a guy named Joe Pantano, a big curly-haired Wop out of Jersey. The day we slugged it out in the laundry even the hacks were laying down bets. The smart money was on me and it paid off. I broke Pantano’s nose, then put him down and cooled him with a kick that raised a knot big as a plum behind his ear. We both got a week in solitary, but I was now the top dog in the reformatory and everybody knew it. Only the occasional true fool ever took me on the rest of the time I was there.

  My first job in J-ville was in the garage. I didn’t mind it too much since I’d always liked cars. But after a few months they transferred me to the shoe shop, where I was taught to operate a machine that attached the sole to the rest of the shoe. I stitched soles all day long. It was stupefying, mindless labor that could drive you insane if you didn’t have something to think about while you were at it. And what I thought about, month after month, was busting out. But my mother and the lawyer had never quit trying to get me released, and near the end of my second year behind bars, just as I was putting the finishing touches on an escape plan, they came through and I was paroled.

  I returned to Indianapolis and went to work at a garage job my parole officer arranged for me. I did oil changes and lubes, installed batteries and fixed flats, now and then tuned a motor. I still loved cars—the look and sound of them, the feel of driving them—but I’d come to hate working on them. I hated being smeared with grease and skinning my knuckles and breathing gasoline fumes all day. I hated being within earshot of the morons I worked with. At the end of the day I’d wash my hands so vigorously with detergent soap that they’d burn and turn red, and I’d still smell oil and gas on them, still feel like there was grease under my fingernails even when they were spotless. The only difference between this joint and Jeffersonville was that I could go home at the end of my shift. I had sworn I’d never work for wages again, but I was determined to bite the bullet until I settled on a solid plan. I didn’t want to go back to robbing gasoline stations and grocery stores. That was small-time stuff for kids and suckers lacking in self-respect.

  Banks were the thing. But all I knew about robbing a bank was that only a fool would try it single-handed. What I needed was a partner.

  The only partner I’d ever had was Earl Norther
n. We’d known each other for a couple of years before I went to J-ville, and he’d been with me on half my stickups. He was a husky guy with a badly pitted face, a little older than me, and he’d been in the reformatory twice, doing a year for car theft the first time and then six months for parole violation. He’d been arrested more than once in the time I’d known him, but he’d managed to avoid being convicted again.

  I’d received a letter from him while I was in the reformatory, a half-page in uneven script in an envelope with an Urbana, Illinois, postmark and no return address. He said he was sorry to hear of my bad turn of luck and that he’d recently had a close call himself, but of course he didn’t give any details, not in a letter he knew would have to get by the censors. He hoped I was doing good and said he would write again soon, but I heard no more from him before I was paroled. When I’d got back to Indianapolis I searched for him high and low but nobody knew where he was. His family had moved from their old neighborhood and left no forwarding address. That wasn’t too surprising, since Earl’s stepfather was constantly on the lam from creditors. He’s a stepfather, all right, Earl once said—always a step ahead of the bill collectors.

  With no idea where Earl might be, I’d been on the lookout for another partner. I’d talked to a few guys but none of them struck me as having the right stuff. I’d been working at the garage for almost three months—and knew I wouldn’t be able to take it much longer—when one sunny morning a brand-new Franklin roadster pulls up to the pumps and there’s Earl behind the wheel.

  Fill ’er up, Junior, he said, grinning around a toothpick and adjusting the brim of a fedora that nicely complemented his new blue suit. I’d always been something of a natty dresser myself when I could afford it, but I’d never seen Earl looking so spiffy, and I was impressed.

  I smiled back at him and leaned on the car door and said in my best flatfoot voice Pardon me, sir, but I wonder if I might see the registration and title to this vehicle?

  Registration? Earl says. Title? We snickered like school kids sharing a dirty joke.

  He told me he’d been in Illinois for the past ten months. The close call he’d mentioned in the letter happened while he was robbing a filling station in Martinsville. He took his eyes off the attendant for a second and the man swung at him with a tire iron and missed his head by a whisker. It scared Earl so bad he shot the guy. He didn’t kill him, but he thought it wise to absent himself from Indiana for a time, just in case the fella was able to give the cops a solid description. He’d gone across the state line to lay low for a while but ended up staying longer than he’d planned.

  I said I’d bet the longer stay had to do with a girl. It did, he said, but it wasn’t what I was thinking.

  He’d been faring all right, getting by on small stickups and an occasional break-in, and then one night he met a sweet young thing in a speakeasy in Effingham. She told him she was recently divorced, and they hit it off so well she took him home with her at closing time. Earl couldn’t believe his luck. He knew he wasn’t the best-looking guy in the world, plus he’d never had a smooth way with the ladies, and things like this didn’t happen to him.

  He and the sweet thing were in the middle of hitting it off even better when her husband came charging into the room and started doing some hitting of his own. Earl said it was like fighting a jackhammer in the nude. They fairly well tore up the room—breaking the bed frame and busting lamps and bringing down the curtains, everybody punching and kicking and cursing. The neighbors must’ve thought murder was going on and called the police because the next thing Earl knew the cops were pulling them apart. They slapped the cuffs on hubby and let Earl put his clothes on before cuffing him too. The sweet thing took her time about picking out some underwear to put on but the cops didn’t mind at all. She had a knockout body, Earl said, and not a modest bone in it, and she tried on two different outfits before deciding to go with the first. It was a swell show and everybody enjoyed it except for hubby, who called her a cheap-ass whore and got smacked by a cop who told him it was no way to talk to a lady. Then they all got hauled to the station.

  It turned out that hubby worked the night shift at a cement plant and got a call from a buddy who’d seen his wife leaving the speak with some stranger. Sweet thing was irked with hubby because of his recent misconduct with an office girl at the cement plant and was getting back at him by way of Earl. There was a lot of finger-shaking and loud assertion of having each other’s number and singing different tunes and what’s good for the goose and so forth, till the cops got tired of it and let them go with a warning not to disturb the peace again. Earl, on the other hand, wasn’t going anywhere except in front of a judge, not after the cops checked out his car and discovered it had been stolen on the other side of town earlier that day.

  The judge seemed sympathetic on hearing the details of his arrest and even remarked on the treachery of unfaithful wives and the misery they caused. His honor’s bitter tone made Earl suspect the man was speaking from personal experience. He asked if Earl had damaged the stolen vehicle in any way, and Earl swore that he had not, that he had cared for the car as if it were his own. Rather than send him to the penitentiary—which is what Earl expected, considering the state’s introduction of his previous conviction for car theft in Indiana—Judge Nicefellow fined him a hundred dollars, then reduced it to forty-two because that’s all Earl had to his name, and gave him six months on the county work farm.

  I said he’d been lucky to get such a light sentence on a second car theft conviction. Earl said if he was lucky he never would’ve run into that no-good Effingham bitch.

  Anyhow, that’s where he’d been, on an Illinois work farm, slopping hogs and shoveling pig shit until about three weeks ago, when he was released a few weeks early for good behavior. They took him to the bus station and bought him a ticket to Terre Haute just over the state line and told him Bon Voyage, grifter, and don’t come back.

  Earl figured the filling station shooting in Martinsville was ancient history by then and it was safe to come home, so as soon as he got off the bus in Terre Haute he scouted around for suitable transportation and settled on the Franklin roadster. He was ten miles down the road before it occurred to him that he didn’t have a red cent. The Franklin was already low on fuel and he supposed he’d have to steal a car with a lot more gas in it. Then he thought to take a look in the door pocket and, oh baby, there’s a wallet, and it’s holding 132 bucks. He stopped off in Greencastle and bought himself the spiffy suit and fedora and treated himself to a steak with all the trimmings before swapping license plates with a car parked in an alley. Then he went to Kokomo to visit a certain cathouse he’d heard a lot of good things about, and the place had lived up to its reputation. Since getting back to Indy he’d been working at a lumberyard, but he hadn’t gone by to see my parents and say hello till this morning. Mom gave him the news of my parole and the job at the garage.

  He was in the middle of telling me more about the Kokomo cathouse when my boss, Larkins, stuck his head out the office door and hollered for me to quit flogging the dog and get back to work.

  I went over to the office and told Larkins I was quitting and wanted the pay I had coming. He said I was making a big mistake and would be sorry, but he counted out eleven dollars and handed it to me. He said Mr. Hollis wasn’t going to like this. Hollis was my parole officer. I said to give Hollis my regards, then went back to the roadster and got in and said Let’s go.

  I accepted Earl’s offer to let me move in with him, but before going to his place we stopped at my parents’ house so I could get my clothes, and Mom insisted on fixing us lunch. She didn’t blame me for breaking parole. She didn’t think it was fair that somebody of my intelligence and charm should have to work in a dirty garage under threat of getting sent back to the reformatory. My mother’s name is Lena. She’s bright and well spoken and doesn’t take guff from anybody, and it’s safe to say she has ever and always been devoutly partisan in disputes involving her Harry.


  My father sat at the table and ate with us and as usual didn’t say much. He’s a man of intelligence and a good egg, but by his own admission he’d never been in a fight, not even as a kid, and he’s always been content to let Mom wear the pants. In all his life he’s probably never said anything more often than Yes dear. His name’s Gilbert. I have a brother too, Fred. Unlike my mother, who nobody could’ve stopped from taking up the spear for me, neither my dad nor my brother got mixed up in any of my misdeeds—I want that understood—and I’ll leave both of them out of this as much as I can.

  I was packing a suitcase in the back room when Hollis pulled into the driveway. I knew Larkins would call him about me quitting and I figured he might show up soon, which was why I’d had Earl park the Franklin out of sight around the corner.

  My mother greeted Hollis at the front door but didn’t invite him in. Earl and I stood out of sight in the hallway and listened as he told her I’d walked off the job and he’d see to it my parole was revoked quicker than she could say King James if I didn’t present myself at his office to talk things over no later than noon tomorrow.

  She affected vast motherly alarm at the news and told him that the minute I showed up or got in touch by telephone she would insist that I go see him immediately. She stood out on the porch till he drove out of sight, then came back in and said, Good Heavens, what a sorry specimen of a man. She gave me a kiss and admonished me to be careful.

  Earl knew he’d been holding on to the stolen roadster for too long already, but it was a sweet car and he hated to part with it. Still, Larkins had seen it and for sure given its description to Hollis, and the Franklin would be hotter than ever. So we went to a certain repair garage not too far outside of Indy, a place run by an ex-con named Elmore Brown who accepted fine-quality cars of unspecified ownership in exchange for a car of less worth but with a legal title. We arrived at Earl’s place in a well-used Maxwell coupe.