CHAPTER 7

 

A couple of days after the Tennessee thing and after our stop in New Orleans there was this little incident in Houma a day before we hit Lake Charles. Houma’s this little coonass town that’s fulla offshore riggers and such; mean, ornery fellas that work the oil rigs out in the Gulf for weeks at a time and then come to town with a pocketful of green and a hard-on that ain’t gone anywhere nice in weeks, looking for pussy and fun, fun being the chance to crush somebody’s cheekbones into their face with a fist.

We drove into this town at high noon just like Gary Cooper and the OK Corral and spied this bar on the outskirts of town that looked like our kind of place. They had a wooden sidewalk. I think they had a wooden sidewalk, but that mighta been another town we stopped in. I guess we stopped in pretty near every place that had a bar. We was pretty drunk that whole time. I said to Bud, let’s get us a camera and take a picture a’this.

As I say, it was high noon, Louisiana noon, which meant it was brighter outside than a J.C. Penney’s White Sale and we walked in the door and couldn’t see a thing for something like two, three minutes, it was that dark. When we could make out objects like tables and a bar and a bartender, we seen that he hadn’t had time to do his housekeeping as there wasn’t a whole stick of furniture in the place. I mean, tables, chairs, everything, was just plain busted up. It looked like a sawmill ten minutes after a wildcat strike.

We go over to the bar and sat down on the only two stools that had a couple, three legs still on ‘em, acting like this looked like every bar we’ve ever been in and the bartender sauntered over, toothpick sticking out the side of his mouth and said, in a cocky way, “Y’all ain’t Yankees, I hope.”

Well, I didn’t know it showed, but I went, “Well, pard, I was born in Texas but have lived in Indiana and Chicago and some other places. Does that make me a Yankee? I got to say, though, that I always lived in the south end of town, wherever I was, and that’s a fact.”

He said, “Me, I don’t care what you are, asshole, Chinese for all I care but I got to tell y’all, the riggers’re comin’ back in about an hour.”

I looked at Bud and he at me, and I imagine we both had the same question, but before we could articulate it the barkeep said, “See this mess? The riggers done it. They was in yesterday and they got a little bored smacking each other around so one of ‘em bet Whitey he wouldn’t coldcock the first person walked in the door and you know, ol’ Whitey he done it, he’s that crazy. Sucker-punched that sumbitch, who was Jeffrey Rousseau, broke his nose and Jeffrey went out and got his cousins and brothers and in-laws and whatnot, which is a considerable bunch a’fellas and they come in here and done this.” He swept his arm to show us, like we hadn’t already noticed the A-bomb that had gone off and this little smile played on his kisser like he was really enjoying himself.

“Those ol’ boys went to it and they broke bones, Jim. I think they’d like t’find a couple fellas like y’all here, they come back. In an hour.” He looked at his watch and shook his wrist and looked at it again. “Just a friendly warning.” He shined us his Kiwanis smile.

I expected Bud to maybe give a snort and order us up a couple of brewskis, and frankly, I wasn’t too hot on that idea but thank God, he only nodded to the bartender and turned around and headed for the door, me naturally following behind, climbing in the Fairlane and on down the highway, never mind taking a snapshot or two of the wooden sidewalks.

Partway out of town we seen a liquor store and went in and got us a twelve-pack of Pearl and a bag of ice, and when we got out of town Bud said, pull over on that road over there, which I did and drove down in the middle of some kind of swamp that looked like the kind Boris Karloff lived in. It was one of them dirt roads didn’t look like it got much traffic ‘cept on go-to-meetin’-day, run over a snake or an armadillo about every five yards and we found a little turnaround place where we could pull off. Bud had stuck his knife in the ice bag and rigged up a poor-man’s cooler, jamming the beers down in the ice. We kicked the doors open and sat with our backs to each other, legs hanging out onto the ground. Well, Bud stuck his legs out, feet on the ground, but I kept mine up on the floorboard. I could just see some twenty-foot alligator or a mess of water moccasins creeping up under the car and taking a chomp out of my appendage.

“Jake,” he said, after we’d chugged down a cold one and had us each a new soldier in hand. “You ever get scared?”

“Well, there’s time’s when I’m more cautious than others if that’s what you mean.”

“Fuck it, Jake. I’m askin’ you a serious question. You ever been scared of anything?”

Before I could answer and maybe because he really wanted an answer and knew I wouldn’t admit it—having fear, that is—he said, “I been scared most of my life, Jake. You believe that?”

This is a few days after the thing in Tennessee—and after we’d been in New Orleans—and I thought of that and some other stuff I seen him pull in the joint with some really bad dudes.

“Well, Bud, truth is, I was scared pretty much in Pendleton. Not that I was chickenshit,” I hastened to add. “You seen me. You know I never backed down to nobody not even Baby Black Jefferson. Not none of those niggers in J, them weight-lifting sissies, neither.”

“Yeah,” he said. I couldn’t see his face, back to back as we were, but the tone in his voice told me he was somewhere far away in his head.

I started thinking about being scared. Hell yes, I was scared. Every blessed minute of every fucking day. You’re not scared in the joint you’re dead or terminally stupid.

“What scared you there?” Bud asked, taking a pull on his beer.

I had to think about that.

“Being raped, I guess was the biggest thing.”

“Yeah. There’s that. How about somebody going off ‘cause their wife just sent them a Dear John and all they wanna do is stick a laundry pin in somebody’s eye!”

“Oh, man! I seen that!” I remembered an old con that had happened to. Bud remembered the guy too and said so.

“Yeah. Me too. That old lifer, Mopey Dick we called ‘im. Do you know there’s blood in an eyeball, not white stuff?”

We both fell silent and sucked our beers.

Then,

“How about not getting your parole, Jake? That’s scary, huh?”

“No shit. Or getting it and not being able to maintain, on the outside. How about that? I feel that all the time.”

“How about syph,” he came in with.

“Solitary,” I countered.

“That hack, whatshisname? Jacoby? Or Huck? One of the twins on solitary that like to drop a bench on your nose? Mental defectives!”

“You’re a mental defective, Bud!”

“Screw you!” He turned around, shook his beer and sprayed it all over my back when I ducked down. We were both laughing but my hands were sweating. We played on. Name The Fear.

“Scared your lady will leave you,” started up Bud again.

“Scared she won’t,” was my offer.

“Scared somebody else will know you’re scared.”

“Scared you’ll find that out about somebody and have to do something about it.”

“The train.”

Yeah. The train. That was a good one. Every night, this same train would roll by, half a mile away, just on the other side of the wall and blow its whistle. Fucking whistle used to drive everybody nuts. Guys used to start screaming when that whistle started. First the whistle, then the screams. The screams always used to sound like they came from high up in the cellblock. I don’t think I ever heard anybody on the lower levels scream at that train. Cry, though. I heard plenty cry. I heard myself cry. Especially when you heard that whistle and were listening on your earphones to that sad drippy CW shit the prison deejay liked to play about the same time.

We went through the whole list. It was good, in a way, to know someone else had felt like I had, that I wasn’t weird, or weak, or something like that. Bad, too, ‘cause it surfaced up a lot of junk I’d forgotten. We just sat there in that swamp and played Name That Fear and guess what? It felt good. I guess that’s ‘cause we were out of there.

The fear of going crazy (Bud’s).

Fear in the shower (rape-mine); fear in the chow hall (ground glass in the food—a berserk inmate suddenly attacking you-Bud’s); fear of betting too much in a cellblock poker game (death for slowwalking on the debt you’ll owe-both of us); fear when you shoot up with contraband drugs (who knows what you’re really pushing into your arm?-mine); fear on your job (in the barber school, where we were, of who might grab your razor and give you a lower-case smile-mine, again); fear in the recreation yard (rape, maiming-Bud’s); fear of the enemy race (blacks for us whites, whites for the blacks-mine); fear of the hacks (some of them were more sadistic than any twenty cons put together-mine); fear in your bunk at night (a black inmate in the cell next to me had acid thrown in his face and screamed all night-mine); fear on visiting day (that no one will show up—that someone will show up-both); fear that the buddy who helps protect you will get paroled (or killed)(or horny himself-mine); fear that the hacks will find your shank during a shakedown (loss of parole—loss of your weapon-Bud’s). Fear.

A thousand fears, ten thousand fears.

Loneliness. That’s just one emotion that’s with you always. There are others. Despair.

Jealousy.

Rage.

Other emotions. Lots of other emotions.

Fear of losing yourself, who you are inside.

Fear, man.

I knew now that even as big and bad as Bud was he had the same fears, maybe even more, since he was a big guy, had a rep and was therefore subject to being a target more. There’s nothing more some guys want than to get them a reputation for taking down someone everyone else knows is bad to the bone. It’s kind of like that Indian thing I heard about once, when you kill your enemy you take on his strength.

We drank some more beers and talked about some other things, mainly about girls; what we’d do to them when we got them, what we’d done other times when we had them and what they did to us that proved that we was irresistible and incredible lovers. The kind of stuff guys always talk about. I figured out a long time ago that talking about fucking later a lot of times is more fun than the fucking itself was at the time. There have been some incredible fucks I was in the middle of and I remember thinking the whole time she’s scratching my back that I can’t wait to show somebody what she done. That’s weird, but that happens all the time. I’ll be laying the wood to some babe and you’d expect I’d be all wrapped up in the here and now, but the truth is what I’m thinking about more than the action is how great it’s going to be telling everybody about it a week from then.

Bud only said one more thing before we killed the twelve-pack and moved on. He said, “Sometimes I get so scared, I get the bravest I ever been. That’s what it was like back there in Tennessee. When I seen that guy’s eyes I knew if I couldn’t Jeff Chandler his ass I was dead.”

Don’t that beat all! He sure had me fooled is all I could think, only I didn’t say that to him. What I said to him was, “Yeah, right.” Then he laughed and I laughed too but something happened because of what he said. I got a little scareder inside...and I got a little gutsier at the same time. I can’t tell you how that works but it felt just like that.

Something else Bud said made sense to me. That part about being so scared you get brave. I did that so much in the joint that right before I made parole I was brave all the time. Guts out the wazoo. I wasn’t scared of nothing. It only lasted a little while, until I walked out the front gate, parole papers in my hand. As soon as free air hit my lungs the greatest feeling of fear I had ever known washed over me. But for the month or so before I hit the bricks I was the cockiest mother in the joint.

The minute I took my first free breath when I walked out the front door something else hit me. Lots of older cons were all the time saying they’d rather do straight time than be on the street on parole and I thought: That’s just jail talk, bullshit. How can anybody in their right mind think it’s better to do ten years inside than five in and five out on parole? Shit, you’re on parole, sure, and things aren’t the same when you’re on parole as when you’re a regular citizen but cut me a break—you’d rather do the five inside so when they cut you loose you’re totally free? I used to ask those guys that and they said, we know, we know, it sounds nuts but that’s the way we feel. When I walk out I want to be completely free they’d say. Nobody fucking with my shit is freedom they’d say and I’d think, you’re wacko, friend.

But they weren’t. I saw that the second my foot hit the pavement and they closed the door behind me. All of a sudden I knew I was going to have this asshole watching every move I made. Every time I took a shit I was going to have to fill out a report, fuck; call and get permission before I even sat on the crapper. At least in the joint you do what you want mostly. Hacks leave you alone you do your time in a righteous way.

I still didn’t agree all the way but I could see their point. Parole to some guys is worse than time in solitary. There’s always that little parole officer genie shithead sitting on your shoulder the whole time.

I thought about all that shit on the bus ride home, first time I got cut loose on parole, but in the end I just said fuck it, no matter what you do, no matter what your situation you end up doing time. The freest cocksucker in the world has probably got a wife got his nuts in a wringer afraid to look at her cross-eyed and lose his pussy or else got him a boss who’s got him kissing his big fat ass so he keeps his lousy job. Everybody’s got a parole officer of some kind I guess.

Best thing is to get on a desert island someplace, jack off and eat oysters all day long, fuck everybody in the universe. Then you be free, man. You’re in control.