CHAPTER 11

 

A little more than halfway to Indiana the Ford broke down, threw two rods which was my fault as I knew it liked oil and I hadn’t been feeding it enough. I got thirty bucks for it from a junkyard and caught a bus out of Paducah, hit the Fort about three-thirty in the morning which is a good time to arrive at a bus station, no hookers or winos bothering you. I copped a few zees on a bench and bright and early the next day called Mr. Brooks my P.O. and sure enough, it was like Bud said. Mr. Brooks came down and chewed my ass out which I had to sit there in his car and take; that was fine, it was what I deserved, but he was a stand-up guy, held up his part of the bargain and drove me over to the halfway house himself. Going in I seen three, four guys I knew from Pendleton and some times at the city lockup and I knew things were going to be all right.

I wasn’t in the halfway house a month and Mr. Brooks let me leave. There’s lots of stories, mostly bad, about P.O.’s but I drew a decent one. Your P.O.’s God, believe me and you get a good one like I did, well!

Brooks got me a job over at Danny’s Tonsorial Emporium, which wasn’t nothing but a fancy name for a barber shop that did some styling. Same kind of work as everywhere else but we shampooed the hair before we cut it and then we blow-dried it. Triple the price. “You make your money on the shampoo,” Danny said. “Give ‘em a good one.” Danny also had the biggest gambling operation in town. I don’t know if Mr. Brooks knew that or not but I don’t know as how he could have missed it. We had six phones in the back room was used for nothing but taking and laying off bets.

I always liked to gamble but at Danny’s I sort of went wild. It got to the point where I was betting upwards of ten grand a week. Some weeks double that. That was kind of risky being as I was knocking down maybe four hundred in salary on the busy weeks. Except I wasn’t losing or winning that much; that was just what changed hands. Like on Sunday I’d start out with five hundred on five, six football games and maybe I’d come out a few hundred ahead or so and then I’d do the same on Monday, on basketball, plus a couple on the Monday Night Game in football. Tuesday the same thing. Wednesday and so on. End of the week, I might be up three, four hundred or down the same even though the total I’d’ve bet was five figures. More than once, I ended up with a good score, maybe two, three thousand on the week. One week, I hit for almost six thousand. One thing. I never once lost on football overall but basketball was a killer. Too many games, too many teams to follow smart.

Football was different. Especially college football. Danny taught me how to bet smart.

The way he did it, the way he taught me, was to pick out four or five really obscure teams. Slippery Rock University, places like that. Follow those teams, know everything there is to know about them. Danny’d get the town newspaper, the college paper, everything he could get that might have an article or something on the local team. He knew when their left guard was gonna take a shit.

“The way it is,” he explained. “There’s a guy in Vegas what sets the spread for the whole country. Same guy’s been doing it for years and years.”

We had a lot of opportunities to “middle” bets. That’s where the smart money was. Middling was hard to do if you were an average schmuck, but being as we had access to bookies all over the country it was a piece of cake. Danny was in with the local goombas and they let him lay off money just like he was connected.

Most people don’t understand professional gambling. They think bookies want everybody to lose. Bookies thought like that they’d be out of business in a week. What they want is the money on a particular game to come out fifty-fifty. You got Notre Dame vs Southern Cal, for instance, you want a hundred grand on N.D. and a hundred going on U.S.C. The bookie don’t care who wins or loses—he makes all his money on the juice, the ten percent vig the loser pays. It’s a business, pure and simple. A true gambler never gambles—that’s a sucker’s game. That’s for the chumps out in the tool room at Bendix Automotive, guys that drive bread trucks, amateurs like that.

That’s why the point spread goes up and down all the time until time for the kickoff. The rule of thumb is, for every twenty-five hundred bucks bet on one team over the other the bookie jacks up the spread a half point to entice money to go the other way and even it up. If the bookie can’t get it even before game time he calls Vegas and lays off the extra.

It’s like this. Say Notre Dame plays Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. Naturally, most of the money bet in South Bend and Fort Wayne and Gary is going to be on the Irish and the same thing is happening down in Birmingham and Selma, only the money is going to be on the Tide down there. Bookies in both places get overloaded so they call Vegas and swap money until it comes out even. This is going on all over the country. Ma Bell makes a killing. Ma Bell loves gamblers to death.

What this does is make an opportunity to play the middle. You can’t lose on a middle. A middle is when you take advantage of a shift in the point spread.

Say it’s the Monday before that ND-Alabama game. The Fighting Irish are favored by seven. You bet five hundred on Alabama, get the points. By Friday the spread has shifted to where ND is only favored by three. That means you’ve got a four-point spread to middle. Now you get five hundred down on Notre Dame. The most you can lose is the juice on the loser, fifty bucks. But...if Notre Dame wins by say, four points, you win both ways. You win the five you bet on Alabama when you had seven points and you win the five on ND where you were only giving up three. You win a thousand and all that was at risk was fifty bucks.

There was a time when that’s all the smart money did, bet middles. But they fucked up. They let too many of their friends in on a good thing and the bookies shut it down, quit giving the spread out early. Most of them wouldn’t release the point spread until just before game time so there wasn’t enough time to develop a good middle.

Us guys at Danny’s could still do it though, as Danny had bookies all over the country he was connected with, had different spreads than the ones we had locally. Everybody knew what was going on. The bookies knew and Vegas knew but as long as only a few people were making middle bets they looked the other way. It was kind of a bonus check for bookies and a few of their friends. If they started to abuse it Vegas would figure out a way to stop it, so everybody tried to be cool.

It was about this time that I got a chance to go to the Super Bowl. A local bar owner had formed a sports club that had its own plane and everything. They went to all kinds of things. The Kentucky Derby, the World Series, you name it. Danny and a bunch of guys from the shop had joined up and were going to the Super Bowl which was being played in Houston that year. Miami Dolphins versus the Vikings. I decided to go, too.

It was a sweet deal. The club flew us down to Houston in their private plane, all you could eat and drink (beer) on the way down. Once we were there, they bussed us all over to Rice Stadium, which is where they moved the game to at the last minute. This was before the game got to be so big. The club had seats on the 40-yard line. After the game, they took us to a big seafood place named the San Jacinto Inn, where you ate as much as you wanted. They had big oil barrels full of ice and beer and you just helped yourself. There were platters everywhere, full of shrimp and oysters and all kinds of seafood. We stuffed ourselves so we could hardly walk.

Then, they bussed us back to the airport and our plane and on the way home they furnished us all we could eat and drink then, too.

The whole deal cost a hundred bucks. That’s all. Like I said, this was before the Super Bowl got to be such a big deal.

At the game I sat right behind Jimmy Wynn, the slugger for the Houston Astros they nicknamed “The Toy Cannon,” on account of he was kind of a little guy. He’d hit 45 dingers that year for the Astros. Really a nice guy. I talked to him most of the game and he was just a regular guy.

Sounds like a good deal, doesn’t it? Only it wasn’t. Most of the guys in the club were gamblers and bookies and that was my downfall. That was the year Fran Tarkenton had led the Vikings to one of their best years ever, and he was scrambling and throwing the ball better than anybody in the league. He’d made me a fan. So...before the game, I got down $1,500 on the Vikes. When I got on the plane, I found myself sitting next to Buddy Lake, who was one of the bookies we used at Danny’s. He got to mouthing off so much about how the Dolphins were going to cream the Vikings that I just had to get another bet in with him. Fifteen hundred more on Tarkenton and his pals. Then, at the game, I found myself sitting next to Stan DeAngelo, another bookie and the same thing happened. Mark up another $1,500 on the Vikings.

I felt pretty good just before the kickoff. Minnesota was going to kick those sissies from Miami’s butts, big-time. I knew it in my bones. Nobody was going to stop Tarkenton.

Only they did. It was pitiful. The whole game the Vikings are behind and the whole game Tarkenton had receivers wide open. There were receivers didn’t have anybody within twenty yards of them. Did Fran throw to any of them? You guessed it. He kept throwing little dinky five-yarders even when there was another guy twenty-five yards out who must have had the worst bad breath in history, the way the other team was avoiding him. I’ve never seen receivers so wide open. Tarkenton must’ve had a speck of dirt in his eye, since he didn’t seem to notice any of them. Only guys he ever threw to were guys he could reach out and touch and who were double- and triple-teamed. The whole game went like that, even in the last minutes when they were only a touchdown away from tying. I know he’s considered a straight-arrow and all that, but if ever a game was fixed, I swear that one was. The whole place was screaming and pointing to all the wide-open ends that were begging for the ball, but ol’ Tark just kept tossing it to guys surrounded by Dolphins and when he wasn’t doing that, he was running around, playing tag in the backfield until somebody caught him. Some scrambler. Gained 5,000 yards. Sideways. Never saw anything like it. I picked up the paper the next day, fully expecting to see front-page headlines on how Pete Rozelle had busted the “Georgia Peach” for laying down in the game, but there was never word one about anything like that. I shoulda known something was up, the way all the bookies were snickering and had their tongues out when they took my bets.

It was the longest plane ride home I’d ever been on. Took forever. All I could think about was the forty-five hundred big ones I was going to have to pony up.

I was just lucky I’d had a good week the week before, so it didn’t wipe me out. And right after, I went through a four-week period where all I did was win. I even won on one of those sucker cards, where you have to pick all winners. Went ten for ten on one and won a measly $150.

I was doing pretty good after the Super Bowl fiasco, winning most weeks and then I took a hit. A big hit. Over six grand. There was no way I could make it up, even middling. Not in time. It wasn’t like they were going to break my legs or anything. That’s mostly in the movies and not for a measly six thousand dollars. For six thousand dollars they might threaten you if they thought you were the kind ran scared, but guys like me they did something worse to. They just wouldn’t take any more bets. They’d write the loss off but I couldn’t bet anymore.

I’d rather they break my leg and call it even, let me get back in the action.

Only way I could get back in the game was pay them off and the only way I knew to come up with that kind of money was to steal it. No problem—I figured after a good Saturday night, Smiley’s had at least that much for the deposit. Chances were fifty-fifty Smiley would just hide it in the bar until Monday, especially since I knew he had a broad on the side, kept her in an apartment over by Riley High School and liked to take her up to Chicago once in a while on Sundays to watch the Bears game. The times he planned on going to the Windy, I guess he wanted some serious money to impress her with, take her down on Rush Street, wine and dine her to the max after the game. All I had to do was sit around the bar, see if his little girlfriend was there and if they were lovin’ it up, figure he would just leave the money there overnight, pick it up on their way to Chicago next day. No way he’d deposit it if he needed it and no way he’d take it home so his wife might find it, figure out what he was doing with his bimbo.

That was my plan.

***

I finally run into Donna, day before I robbed Smiley’s. I was down at Alexander’s over on State, came in for the take-out ribs and I turned around and there she was, big as shit, tits hanging half out her blouse and looking like sex with All Caps. It was about three months after I got back. I didn’t know what to expect, it being sudden like that and a surprise, this not being a place where we’d ever gone together so I wasn’t on my guard but you know what? I didn’t feel anything. Not a goddamned thing.

That was something, that.

I can’t say this hadn’t crossed my mind, about running into her. Shit, it was the reason I’d really come back but I’d just kept putting off looking her up. Once or twice I even dialed her number but I always hung up before she answered. Maybe I thought a guy might answer and I didn’t know how I’d handle that.

“Hi, Jake,” she said and I could tell she was trying to figure out how I’d react to this, knowing we’d had our violent times and that felt pretty good, knowing she was up on her toes so to speak, but all I said, and this I couldn’t fucking believe, all the speeches I’d rehearsed, even the way my eyes would be, frosty, was—”You owe me a new razor cord, sugar.”

We stood there a few minutes, toe to toe, just looking at each other, her folding and unfolding her hands down in front of her, her eyes big and wide and...and bright...glittery-bright, and I tried to think of something else to say, come out on top, she must think I’m crazy what I just said, not knowing the circumstances but it wasn’t worth the effort; it just didn’t matter.

“I got your postcards. And your letter.”

I just stared, trying to get my mind untracked.

“Oh. Yeah. Well, I thought of you a couple of times. I’da written more, but...” But what? “But, I was hooked up with this girl,” I said, not knowing I was going to lie like that. I wish I’d had more time to think of something else, something better. “A black girl. Her name was Saundra. You’da liked her, Donna. You probably wouldn’t even try and stab her like you did Patsy.”

Oh, man. This was the lamest thing I could have done but how do you haul something like that back into your stupid mouth? You just have to go on with the program once you start some shit like that.

“I had to leave ‘cause her dad didn’t like white boys. Honkies.”

Fuck. I wouldn’t buy this lame crap myself. I did the only thing I could do at that point. I walked past her, just barely brushing her shoulder and went on out the door of Alexander’s and out into the cold. It was January and snowing and there was gray slush on top of the clean snow, the snow plows having just been by, flinging crap all over everything, the sidewalk, all over my windshield, this piece of junk I’d just bought for fifty bucks, another Ford. I didn’t have a scraper so I just used the Styrofoam box my ribs were in, trying not to spill them, but got the fries and the French bread and ribs all mixed up, sauce on everything.

Back in my room I kept getting this picture of Donna and the way she kept folding and unfolding her hands and right behind it I got this image of Bud and the guy in Tennessee, the one whose hand he squooze and broke and that we left holding his goodies wishing he had a fig leaf. The whole time she was doing that with her hands, it was like she was doing it to my insides, same as Bud did to that big hillbilly.

Way it turned out, I got shot in the leg breaking into Smiley’s over on Vance Avenue and now here I sit in city lockup awaiting transport back to Pendleton. There was a lot of boozy nights and days, I suppose, led up to me making that kind of mistake.

I usually don’t go for the sauce that much and I hate guys who blame everybody but who they ought to blame which is themselves when they lose control, take up drugs, booze, whatever, and so I got to do the same. But all I know is I kept thinking of that fucking bitch Donna. I’m not saying it’s her fault—I’m not saying that—fuck, I’m a big boy and ought to be able to keep it cool. I’m not even that sorry I lost it there for a while and I’ll be damned if I even knew how it happened. I’m sitting in a bar one day, tossing back a quick one and just about ready to leave when I thought, what the hell and I had another one and ended up spending the rest of the afternoon when I should have gone back to work. That was pretty much it for work. It was that second drink did it. Just like that. That’s when I started making bets that weren’t too bright.

I did a lot of thinking during that period, which is what you do when you drink. Unless you got a compadre wants to sit around getting stinking with you, which don’t happen as a rule, all you got to do is think. Think and drink.

It’s funny. I’ve read as much as anybody about why guys like me end up spending half their life behind bars and they’ve got all kinds of theories except for the right one. Doing crimes is like drinking. It’s the same, exact thing.

There’s a jolt you get when a job goes down. Ain’t nothing like it in the entire universe. Better than whiskey, better than coke, matter of fact, it’s better than sex in a lot of ways. I sure never got as high after a mattress marathon as I have after I stick up a guy. That sex high lasts about ten seconds but the buzz you get when you just got off some motherfucker’s poke can go on for weeks. It’s a drug is all it is. The body’s own natural drug. Adrenaline. I finally figured it out and that’s the secret. Which means nothing’s gonna change in society. Only way it’s gonna change is take out the gland makes the adrenaline. It ain’t even about money only you couldn’t convince the do-gooders of that. They got this idea that if everybody gets a big piece of the pie then crime will disappear. They just don’t get it—it’s not about money or any of those things.

Besides that jolt, there’s one other reason guys pull crimes. For control. Most of us haven’t ever been in charge of even a little bit of our lives. Holding a .45 on some clown in a liquor stores makes you God, at least for a few minutes. In the back of your head, you know that situation’s gonna come to a crashing halt eventually, but for a few minutes you get to be in charge, make the other guy feel the fear you carried around with you all the live-long day.

When I was pulling jobs, when I first started doing burglaries, stuff like that, I had all the money I ever wanted. Give me twenty bucks, I’d say to my mom and she’d fork over thirty. Any time I wanted. Money wasn’t why I broke into places. I did it for the high. All the money in the world, all the things that all the money in the world could buy legitimately for you couldn’t duplicate that high. Nothing there is can match that ‘cept you pull the crime. If you had a million dollars in your back pocket and you got the crime monkey on your back then you’d hold up somebody for his thumbs, for the lint in his pocket. Whatever. Like they always say about guys who wheel and deal on Wall Street—money’s just a way of keeping score. That’s all it is and until the sociologists and other book freaks figure that out, there ain’t no way criminals are going to disappear.

Once you’ve had a rush like that it’s only a matter of time before you get around to it again. We’re like alkies or dopers, us thieves. Same for other kinds of outlaws ‘cept maybe rape but I’m not even sure about that since that doesn’t happen to be a trick in my own bag.

You got to get away from anything that makes it easy for you to take up the habit again, get a fix. The Man kind of knows that. That’s why they have all these rules when you make parole, like no drinking, no drugs, can’t associate with known criminals or other parolees, stuff like that. They know that even if you got the best intentions in the world, you get with other guys who’ve got the habit same as you, sooner or later one of you is going to get an idea and before you know it, you’re out there with a cut-down 12 gauge in your mitts, looking over the counter at the local 7-Eleven at some punk who’s stuffing money into a paper bag. It’s like being a smoker. You can break the habit for a while, but if you hang out with enough smokers one of these days you’re gonna reach over and pick up a butt and then you’re smoking again. That’s exactly how it happens.

The thing is...there just ain’t nothing on earth like crime. Slashing and ripping and tearing up, that’s a kick can’t be had anywhere else. There was nights when I was going good, had the juice going, when I’d rip off eight, nine, ten places in a row. Not even plan none of them. Just do it. I’m God in a getaway car.

I’d be driving around town see a bar all dark and it just drew me in. Park the car a block away, hike on over, check out the layout. No tools, nothing but my smarts. There’s those think burglars have all these fancy-schmancy burglar tools, and sure—there’s some do, I have myself, but usually it’s nothing that complicated. Most places have glass someplace and wherever there’s glass you can get in with nothing more than a rock or a brick. Get in, get out.

Even if there’s no glass, at least none you can break through easily, you can go through almost anything. I seen businesses where they had all the fancy locks in the world on their back doors but the wall itself was basically wallboard, something thin like that. A five-pound sledge and a crowbar will take something like that down in two minutes. It always made me laugh I seen a setup like that. They must figure burglars can only go through doors or windows. Hell, if the wall’s thin that’s the best place to break through.

I went in a house once, had these big heavy-duty sliding glass doors on the back. I knew the owners were gone and it was out in the country so nobody could hear me break the glass. Once I was inside, I had to admire the locks on that door. Nice ones, must have cost a lot of money. The owner even had a steel bar he’d put down at the bottom of the runner. Guy like that must think people who break into houses can’t figure out any other way than to pick a lock to get in. Picking locks only eats up time and gets you caught. Bust the fucker down’s the ticket.

The bolder you are the less likely you’ll get caught. One time, over in Bremen, this little town south of South Bend, I pulled into this strip center had about seven businesses in it, along about two in the morning. Everything was closed up except an all-night laundromat. Just across the street was a gas station and there were two state police cars parked by the pumps and both the guys were standing outside their cars jawing, probably about what master criminal-catchers they were. I give ‘em a little wave which they gave back and went into the laundromat. In the back was a coin changer bolted by two steel bands to the wall. I went back out to the car, got a crowbar and hammer and went back in and ripped the machine off the wall. Made all kinds of racket. I carried it out and put it in my trunk, climbed behind the wheel and drove off. On the way by the cops I give ‘em another wave and they waved right back. Being bold’s the only way to fly.

That was a serious rush. You get a rush like that no way you’re gonna be happy sitting home watching “I Love Lucy” reruns. No, you got to have more.

They figure out something a guy can do that will replace that kind of high that’s legitimate they can start tearing down prisons. Ain’t likely that’s gonna happen. Put too many lazy fuckers out of work. What would cops and hacks and judges have to do? Get a real job? Coffee shops would all close up and doughnut factories would start laying off. You got a whole entire economy depends on criminals.

***

I’ve got to come back in three months to stand trial for the thing at Smiley’s but first I had to go on back to Pendleton, begin serving the rest of my other sentence, the one I was on parole for. Brooks came down to see me but didn’t say much, just kept shaking his head till I let him off the hook, told him it wasn’t his fault, there was just some folks are gonna always be in the joint and that I was one of them. Nothing you can do about it, pardner, I told him and when he left we were still friends. He even left me a carton of butts. Show me another P.O.’d do that.

Vance has always been a bad luck street for me. I got my nose broke in this same bar—probably why I hit it—Smiley’s—and my teeth rearranged in the same circumstance. Smiley’s changed my smile that time and now Smiley’s has changed the way I walk, least till it heals. The bullet went clear through and I found out something. Getting shot in real life isn’t anything like you see on TV. On TV, those guys get up after they been hit and keep on doing whatever it was they were doing before, smacking the bad guy, running over the tops of buildings, whatever. Bullshit.

When I got hit I just laid there and bawled like a baby. I admit it. I ain’t ashamed of it. I thought I was dying it hurt so bad. I couldn’t have walked on that leg any more than I could have flown the first spaceship to Mars. The cops didn’t even have to work hard to find me. Just follow the screams to the back room where I’d crawled. I had this idea that if I tried to get up and make it out of there I’d bleed to death, push the blood out faster, something like that. The way my heart was thumping, I figured I’d have all my juice pumped out in about three minutes flat.

Smiley himself popped me. He was laying up on a rafter like he was making love to it, his .22 rifle in his hands. Later, I find out somebody snitched and he knew all along his place was going to get hit that night. Teach you to talk about a job in a booze-joint. It’s for sure you never know who your friends are.

Fuck it is what I thought, once the paramed tells me I’m going to be all right. I wasn’t even that upset about being caught. You can’t do the time, don’t do the crime is the motto of every man jack’s ever been behind bars and it was a motto I held to in heart and head. Sooner or later they’re gonna get you is what I figured and it was just my time again. It’s funny—once I got shot and busted I didn’t even much care about the gambling. It’s like that happening cured the bug.

What got me in long-range trouble was getting shot. Not getting caught—that’s not the trouble I mean. The trouble I’m talking about is the trouble I got into with a black prisoner while I was in lockup waiting for the bus that was going to take me back to Pendleton. The guard said they wouldn’t send a bus until they had at least five prisoners and they only had three. Me and two black guys who got popped trying to get rich at an ATM. Frick and Frack. That’s what I called ‘em. Little Raisinet and Big Raisinet. The gal they pulled a knife on happened to have a gun on her and she even said that old joke when she pulled it out, I heard. “Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, bozos.” The black guys didn’t tell me that, one of the guards did. Barry. That was the guard’s name. Nice guy. We both got a laugh out of that.

None of us knew how long it’d be before they drove us down to the joint. There was another guy who’d already had his trial and was having the presentence investigation being done. He wasn’t in with us, was out on bail working at this straight job hoping the judge would see this and be lenient with him. No way, Barry said; I was this guy I’d have my nose up as much pussy as I could or I’d be on a bus smoking south. He’s headed for a fall. Judge Donegal don’t cut no repeater loose, Barry said; his lawyer just don’t want this turkey to run until he gets paid. Soon as the guy turns his paycheck over to him the lawyer’s gonna call Donegal and the presentence investigation is gonna be over. Probably tomorrow bein’s it’s Friday. You’ll be heading back first thing Monday, Tuesday morning.

“You’re right,” I said to Barry. “Lawyers are all assholes. They got you by the short hairs. Fuckers all sit around the country club with their hands on each others’ dicks and then get in court and scream at each other like they hate their guts. Everybody knows it’s a scam, but we all put up with it, buy into the deal. Hell, you got to. What else you gonna do? It isn’t like you can go get somebody that’s going to be square with you. Lawyers, judges, prostitutes, what’s the difference?”

Barry just nodded. He was a righteous guy.

Like when I was out on bail for the first bust and pulling jobs right off the bat as if I hadn’t never even hit a speed bump, when I got popped again. The thing at the motel with the dog. My lawyer from the first time came up and saw me, got them to take me over and sew up my back and he said it was kinda bad, getting arrested while out on bond but he thought he could handle it. It’d take another grand, maybe fifteen hundred but he could pull it off most likely.

One of the guards, guy I thought was a righteous dude named Robin something, told me the lawyer I was using was a dirtbag, couldn’t get the Pope off for a parking ticket but he knew this public defender named Brockman was the best legal eagle outside of F. Lee Bailey and I wouldn’t even have to pay the guy, just plead poverty and the court would assign him if I asked.

I bought it, the whole deal—what’d I know?—and fired my lawyer, Mr. Connors, and sure enough, it worked just the way Robin said. I told the judge I was broke and wanted a public defender and could I please have Mr. Brockman and the judge smiled and said, why not, that’s fine with me, only it’s on record you paid Mr. Connors so I’m not buying this poor routine, you’ll have to pay Mr. Brockman you want to use him.

A month later, I’m sitting in quarantine at Pendleton and a couple of inmates let me know how stupid I was. It seems Brockman used to be a fair lawyer but he’d spent all his time these last few years trying to break the land speed record for getting to the bottom of a bottle and had lost his job and family and everything and the only work he could get was what was doled out to him as a public defender. Robin Jones, that was the guard at the lockup’s name, was Brockman’s shill. Sent him customers and Brockman took care of him. The guy I fired, Connors, was a for-real attorney, won about eighty percent of his cases which was about the opposite percentage for Brockman.

I ended up paying Brockman the same as I would have paid Connors and the mistake I made was paying him upfront. If I’d slowwalked him or told him he wasn’t getting his fee until I got cut loose I most likely wouldn’t’ve ever seen Pendleton. As soon as the check cleared—I had to ask Mom for the money for which I’ll be forever sorry—Brockman says the best thing to do is forget this not guilty plea crap and plead guilty—waive my right to a jury trial and take a bench trial and he’d get it assigned to this judge who owed him a favor. Just plead guilty and I’d be back on the street in no time at all, he said.

You don’t never pay your attorney upfront, an old con told me. They don’t have to do no work then and most of them won’t.

Only problem with that advice was that I didn’t get it until I was back in Pendleton. Timing is everything in life.

“Your Honor,” says Brockman, and that’s the only words he got out without slurring his speech. He was dead drunk but did that matter to the judge?

“My client...” and here he had to look down at the papers in front of him to remember my name, “Mr. Mayes wants to plead guilty but also wants the court to know he’s truly contrite over his actions and will never commit another crime as long as he lives if you will but grant mercy in this instance.”

Whoop-de-do. Some long-winded, flowery speech. I sat there and groaned aloud, at which both the judge and my legal eagle both gave me the eye.

The judge was this little ol’ baldy peckerwood looked like he was about three sheets to the wind himself and he looks up over the edge of his throne and said, “Mr. Mayes, your words are handsome but I look at your record and all I see is an incorrigible criminal. Two to five, including time already served. Next case.”

The whole shebang must have lasted all of six minutes. Last I saw of my lawyer, he was walking at a fast clip out the door. On his way to a meeting with Jack Daniels I figured, way he was stepping smartly, his cheeks twitching. You live and learn.

Anyway, in my present situation, that made four ready to be sent down and Barry said there was a warrant out on somebody else for parole violation and his cop buddies knew where the guy was, they were trying to decide who would be the unlucky stiff who’d go bring him in. The guy was a head, always high on skag or something and he liked guns. The dangerous ones nobody likes to have to pick up, Barry said and that made sense. No way I’d ever be a cop. Too many assholes out there anymore putting shit in their veins, thought they was Superfly, The Green Hornet. Some of these clowns, a bazooka wouldn’t bring down, only make them crazier. I done dope, who hasn’t? But I never let it get to me like some of those weak mothers.

He’d be coming in tomorrow morning, Barry said. Barry was always pulling me out of the cage to mop the floors downstairs, give me a break from the drunks and other derelicts in the tank where they kept all of us. We did more talking than I did mopping. Some of the guards are all right, guys like him.

We’re sitting there having a smoke and Barry said the captain has put the word out—get this creep in jail before the weekend. I want good statistics this week he said, so somebody was going to have to go and roust this bird before the second shift on Friday came on so his bust would go on this week’s sheet and the captain could tell the mayor that he was doing his job and that he could let another week go by without threatening to fire him or demote him to turnkey status. That would be like the chief of surgery being ordered to fetch bedpans, Barry said. There’s more than one of us would like to see that, he laughed.

My leg was on fire that night when I laid down. I couldn’t even set up and play in the pinochle game like I usually do, but hit the rack early, not that it helped, laying down.

Lying there on my bunk when the card games broke up and the bullpen quieted down, everybody hitting the rack, it started to hit me that I was going back to the joint and I thought about what that would mean.

Survival is what it meant.

The main thing was to maintain a low profile. You get nowhere but noticed and dead or hurt in a significant manner if you walk around like some kind of badass. Fucking up badasses or those who think they’re bad is what makes reps, and reps are what lots of guys are after. Guys in the joint, some of them anyway, are doing shitloads of time and they’ve got egos like anybody else. Like some dudes who are doctors, say, or musicians or whatever, they’re out to make a name for themselves. About the only way a guy who thinks like that can be a big shot is to kill somebody. There’s just some cons who love to walk around with everybody whispering behind their hands when they go by. Gives them a rush, makes them feel like they’re somebody. I guess that’s it. Erasing some fucker is not something that appealed to me, even if it made people want to line up for my autograph, but there’s plenty in the joint who want exactly that.

You’re smart, you try and become invisible. Blend. Into walls, furniture. You walk into the day room, say, you pick a spot along a wall. Never in the middle of the room. Paint a bullseye on your back you do that. Never in a corner where lines of sight converge. Not in the middle, even along a wall. Somewhere between the middle and the corner, up along the wall. By an object. Not in the open. A trash can, something like that, something that can take the focus off of you.

Never make eye contact. That’s definitely a big rule to follow. Never. If you do you keep your gaze flat, unemotional. You don’t look away too quickly or hold your gaze too long. A second either way can get you noticed.

You adopt a gunfighter’s attitude like in the Westerns. Quiet and controlled, as if you could explode from stillness and wreak devastation. You play-act in your mind, get the mindset, force your body so it’s a top gun’s attitude.

Quiet means strength. A loudmouth is a motherfucker who’s headed for an I.V. hookup in intensive care, or worse.

When you go into a room the first thing you do is take a photo with your eyes and locate possible weapons. Even with every precaution you can take, some silly mother can still walk up and front you. You want a mop handle or a heavy ashtray, something to use as a weapon, that happens. You assume the worst will happen and be ready.

The main thing is, you always try to disappear.

The times you have to pass by a group of guys who aren’t friends, you do it with quiet, controlled force, not enough to appear threatening, but with your eyes slightly averted, or better yet, looking through the men like your mind is elsewhere. Like, you’re so confident in your badness and abilities you don’t even think to be aware of their potential threat.

You never smile with your eyes. There’s a trick of smiling with your mouth only and you better learn how to do that. Only with your lips and never a full smile, only a hint. If possible, with a little bit of a sneer, not enough to antagonize, enough to make someone else believe you don’t even know you’re sneering—it’s just the way life has forced your lip to go.

There’s a lot of shit to staying alive. A lot of acting. You better be going for the Oscar every minute you’re on camera which is always. In some ways, the joint is a place where even the good times are bad.

***

Along about two in the morning, it happened. I should have seen it coming, but no, not me, I’m so wrapped up in my leg that’s killing me I couldn’t see an elephant if it was bearing down on my monkey ass.

“Wake up.”

I could feel his breath on my cheek. I started to raise up but the feel of the razor blade on my neck forced me to forget that idea.

“That’s good, Jim. Now. I want you to swing your legs over and hop down. Easy, white boy.”

I knew what was coming, but I didn’t want to think about it. I couldn’t see him, he was behind me, but I knew it was Little Raisinet.

I did what he said, dropped my pants, didn’t talk, all that. All the time, I’m waiting for my break, a split second when he would drop his guard. And I’m thinking about my father. The whole fucking time. Like, what would he’d’ve done if he got caught in this situation. That was a no-brainer. He wouldn’t care if the nigger cut him from ear to ear, he’d have to make a play.

I wasn’t my father. I found that out in that moment. My father, I knew, would rather die than have someone do what this guy was going to do to me. Me? I guess I just don’t have the guts my father did, the guts I always thought I had. Because I didn’t want to die. I’d rather be shamed than die.

All I could feel was that razor blade against my throat. Wouldn’t it be something I remember thinking: if this motherfucker screws me and then decides to cut my throat anyway?

Part of me was somewhere else, logical and detached. Would a little razor blade like that cut deep enough to reach an artery? If I twisted to the side could I escape? If I did, could I still keep this asshole from cutting me and killing me? I considered each possibility as it occurred, all the while he’s doing his thing and the longer I hesitated and didn’t commit to some kind of action the less chance there was of doing anything at all. It was like being in a football game with the clock winding down and you’re out of time-outs and you’ve got to call a play, you’re the quarterback and you’ve got to come up with something, save the day and while you’re still thinking about it time runs out.

I hardly felt his dick. It was crazy—I almost laughed. I almost said to him, “Hey, I thought niggers were supposed to be hung. You feel like a Bic lighter.” I didn’t, of course but isn’t that wild? I’m getting nailed—raped—why call it anything but what it was and I’m thinking up funnies. It was all over in a couple of minutes and then he was out of my cell and I just stood there another minute wondering if it had really happened or if I was still asleep, dreaming, and then I went over to my bunk and climbed up and laid down on my stomach. I lay there awhile and then pulled off my pants and underwear and wiped myself with my shorts. I wanted to go out to the bullpen to the sink and wash myself—but all I could think of was that everybody there—in the cells that ringed the bullpen—that everybody had heard what was going on. I was too embarrassed to show my face. I closed my eyes, blanked my mind and tried to sleep. I guess it must have worked because the next thing I knew it was morning and the hack was hollering that our rolls and coffee were here.

Gotta get up sometime I thought and walked out and got one of the day-old breakfast rolls and a tin cup of coffee and took it back to my cell.

I just stayed in my cell all morning and after a while I heard Frick and Frack’s voices getting louder and louder where they were playing cards at one of the tables. The louder they talked and the more they laughed, the more I couldn’t handle it. The big one wandered over and stuck his head in the door and gave me an exaggerated wink. “I’ll be by later tonight, sweet meat,” he said and went back to his partner, the one from the night before. They both laughed and I heard a couple of the other prisoners snicker this time.

For some reason, I couldn’t work up a mad. It was as if I had given up the right to be angry by allowing myself to be fucked like that. All the time before in the joint, I had thought about what I’d do in a situation like that and never had I imagined it would turn out like it actually did. What felt worse—getting nailed by a punk like that—or the fact that I let him do that to me, without any resistance—I don’t know, but it was as if all emotion in me had disappeared, like I was dead inside only my body didn’t know it yet.

I rolled that around in my head, trying to figure it out, what it meant, and an incredible sadness filled me the more I thought about it. The same exact kind of sadness you feel when someone you love has died.

An article I had read years before popped into my head. This guy was talking about relationships between men and women and he said most people get divorced at the seven-year mark in their marriages. The “seven-year itch” is what he called it. His explanation was that all the cells in your body died and were replaced by new cells every seven years and so what you had was two new people living at the same old address. He was wrong. You become a different person when you got raped or something big like that. It was like a big switch was thrown inside and you became this new person, nothing like the old one. Like maybe one of those Hindus who come back to life in a different body. Somebody had taken over my body, that was it. I died and someone else was born. Pretty soon I’d forget the old me and the new soul in me would go on until it too died and moved on. Or was killed.

Something in me clicked. I shoved my feet over the edge of the bunk and jumped down. At the other end of the bullpen I could see a mop bucket and mop. I walked out of my cell and straight to the mop, picked it up and broke off the mop part with my foot against the concrete. I walked down to the other end where Frick and Frack were and they must have been hypnotized watching me because they didn’t even get up when I came up to them, only sat there laughing.

I didn’t go after Frick, the one who’d raped me. Not at first. I swung the mop stick as hard as I could and caught the big one square in the mouth. I came from the right, just like I was hitting a baseball off a tee, like I seen little guys doing it out on playgrounds. I finished my stroke and came back from the other side, got him alongside his head, smacked his ear. I think I was screaming something.

Then, I just got the biggest shit-eating grin. I figured I was going to die and I didn’t give a shit. I turned around jabbed the end of the stick into the smaller one’s Adam’s apple—he’d gotten up and was sneaking around from my blind side—and it felt better than anything I had ever felt before in my life, better than the best sex I’d ever had. When I rammed the end of my stick into his neck I heard my old high school football coach, teaching us how to tackle. Drive through his body, he said. Pretend there’s a point on the other side of him you’ve got to reach. I don’t know how I didn’t kill him right then, hard as I poked that stick but he just went straight down, his hands at his throat, and blood started coming out of his mouth and he was choking but he was still alive. I drew back and hit him as hard as I could with the mop stick and it broke clean in two and over he went. Looked like the side of his head was caved in. You could see the dent where I’d smacked him, and this time he just lay there quietly, blood dripping out of his mouth onto the floor.

The big one was getting up. I’m six foot and a half inch tall and this guy had at least four, maybe five inches on me. I could see half his front teeth were gone and blood was everywhere but he acted like all he’d gotten was a bee sting maybe and he was trying to decide whether to get mad or not. Kind of slow on the uptake. Before he could react I hit him again with what was left of my stick, this time up along the other side of his head. I don’t know if his ears were ringing or not but he shook his head like he was hearing something in there.

He took a step toward me and that’s when the fear returned. And, lucky for me, that’s when the guard walked up to the cage.

“Hey!” he yelled, coming around the corner and seeing what was laid out in front of him. Some of the other guards must have been nearby because in a second there were four or five of them there unlocking the door and rushing in. I didn’t see Barry but I wouldn’t have since he didn’t come on until the second shift.

They put me in solitary which was fine. About an hour later a guard came up and got me and took me down to the day room, the place they use for visits from your family. There was a guy there, all duded out in a suit, tie, briefcase, the works. I sat where he indicated and he introduced himself but I forget the name.

“What caused the fight?” he said.

“I’m white and they’re black,” was my answer.

He didn’t like that answer.

“You attacked them for no reason?”

“You got it,” I said. “I asked them to shine my shoes and they got offended.”

There was some more of this and then the guard came and took me back to solitary.

The next day they took me on down to Pendleton in one of the blue busses they use for transporting prisoners. I was the only one on the bus so they must have relaxed their rule that said they had to have five before they made the trip. I guess I qualified for the deluxe ride by busting Frick and Frack’s heads.

I wondered when I’d see my new friends again. They were headed for the same place I was. I thought about that a lot all the way down. I’d have to figure something out. I felt good about one thing though. Actually, two things. One, I felt like I’d regained some measure of honor. Not a full measure, but some. Two, I was going home. I had family there, in Pendleton, homeboys. I was pretty sure this was the first fall for both those niggers. I hadn’t seen them around my first stretch. That gave me an advantage.

I just had to figure out how to use it.