CHAPTER 17

 

“Mayes! You got a visitor.”

It was the hack Franklin. I was lying on my bunk trying to read Moby Dick on Sunday afternoon and had just got past all the whale shit and about to get to the good stuff when Franklin called out my name. I’d read this book three, four times already; it was one of the few decent things they had in the library. Mostly what they had was Westerns and kids’ books. Hardly any covers on any of them. Guys would rip off the covers so they had something to look at in their cells.

It was my brother.

“Hey, Ray,” I said and shook his hand. This was a surprise. I think it was only the second or third time any of my family had ever come down to see me. Not that I could blame them. It was about a three or four-hour drive from South Bend.

“I put some money on your account,” he said. “Fifty bucks. I figured you could use it.” That was a double surprise. That last time Raymond gave me anything, pigs still had the ability to fly.

“I sold one of your coats for a hundred,” he said. “I figured half was yours.”

I thanked him and we just sat there looking at each other for a minute or two.

Normally, I hated getting visitors. All a visit from someone on the outside did was remind you where you were and where you weren’t. It fucked you up when they left, knowing they were going to get in a car and drive away, free as the wind and you were going to go back and sit in your fucking cell and give names to your toes. The worst kind of visit is the ones from your lady. All you can think of is that when she leaves she’s gonna be hitting the sheets with some motherfucker. That kind of shit can really fuck you up.

This visit didn’t feel like that, though. In fact, it felt pretty good. Ray was all right, a pretty good dude, matter of fact. He’d even gone on a job or two with us, a penny-ante burglary or two, but then he got scared of what could happen and quit. That was all right. Some are just not cut out for the outlaw life and Ray was one of them. Not enough of the right kind of guts. Oh—regular things, like fighting, there was no one had more balls than Ray—I seen him take on two guys at once lots of times and there’s no one else I’d rather have beside me in a bar brawl—but breaking into a bar at three in the morning—that took a different kind of cojones, the kind Raymond didn’t have.

There was this one time when we were kids when we were living down in Texas and I was maybe thirteen and Ray had just turned eleven and we got the bright idea to break into the Lack’s Sporting Goods store on Broadway. Ray was scared to death, wouldn’t go in with me. “I’ll stand watch,” he said. He always wanted to stand watch. So I climbed up this chinaberry tree in the back, dropped onto the roof and broke into the skylight. I had just grabbed a revolver, a .45 and a box of shells and was looking around for something else to grab. It never dawned on me at that stage of my crime career to look for cash. The whole reason I broke in was to get a gun. Just then, Ray started banging on the back door and yelling at me to hurry up. Thinking the cops were coming around the corner, I flew out the back door. There wasn’t anybody around except Ray.

“I heard something,” he said. He was sweating and wide-eyed.

“What?”

“I don’t know. A car or something.”

I just gave him my best disgusted look. For a minute, I thought about going back inside and seeing if there was anything else I could snatch but decided not to. We ended up walking over to the Brazos River, along the levee. There was an old barge, all busted up and laying stove-in along the shore, half-sunk and rusted all to hell. We walked down to it, thinking we might find some rats to shoot. We’d figured out how to load the gun on our way there. We no sooner climbed up on the deck when four Mexican kids, all of them a lot older than either of us, came walking around what must have been the pilot house.

“Hey, gringo,” one of them said. “We going to kick your little white asses, gringos.”

“Fuck you are.” It was my brother. I just stared at him. He was holding the gun and pointing it right at the Mexicans.

The one guy, the one who’d said he was going to whip our butts, just started laughing. “What you got there, chinga? A cap gun? You going to shoot us with real caps?” He turned to enjoy his buddies’ laughter.

Boom! Ray fired that cocksucker! He really shot it! The Mexicans didn’t even try to jump across to shore. They just hit the Brazos on the other side, kind of a synchronized diving team.

“Man!” I said to Ray. “You nuts or something? You mighta hit one of those guys.”

He just looked at me, serious-like, and said, “I was trying to. The thing just didn’t shoot where I pointed it is all.”

Ray had guts I guess, just a different kind.

Our visitor’s area wasn’t like anything you see in the movies, with glass partitions and headphones where you talked to your visitor. It was just a large room, up toward the front of the institution and it was laid out with two rows of chairs facing each other. At the back of the room there was a high podium and a hack stood back there, looking down on all of us while another guard walked around to make sure you weren’t doing anything funny. You could touch your visitor, hug and kiss them, stuff like that. I looked down the row and saw guys trying to do more with their girlfriends and wives. Cop a feel, stuff like that. The hack walking around would let them get away with some stuff, to a point. You could feel your girl’s boob, if you were quick and not too obvious, but then again, that depended on who the hack was who was walking around. Some were decent about that kind of thing but others would crack on you right now.

I saw Mitch Stiles with his twin brother Matt and sure enough they both had their shoes off. That’s how Mitch got drugs in. His brother wore the same kind of institution shoes we wore when he visited and both their shoes had false heels. During the visit they’d slip off their kicks when they thought the guards weren’t looking and exchange them. They’d been doing it forever and lots of us knew the scam but they’d never been caught. I made a point to look up Mitch when we went out for recreation that night. His brother always brought in pure-ass smack and Mitch and I were tight. I got to him quick enough, before he’d stepped on it very much and I’d have me a nice time tonight.

“Mom’s dead.”

I hadn’t been paying attention and I had to ask Ray what he said again.

“Mom. She died. Day before yesterday.”

I couldn’t get what he was saying.

“I was going to write you and then thought that would be a lousy way to break the news to you so I came on down.”

I didn’t say anything, just sat there staring at Ray.

“I asked the warden for you, if you could get out to go to the funeral. He said he’d consider it. The funeral’s day after tomorrow, on Tuesday.”

“What’d she die of?” is what I finally said.

“It was her heart. Heart attack. The doctor said she probably didn’t feel a thing since she was asleep when it happened.”

Yeah, right. Your heart seizes up, you don’t feel a thing. I’m gonna buy that shit. Fucking doctors, fucking everybody, always lying to you. Fucking punk doctor. Everybody was a punk.

We talked a little bit more, some stuff about when we were kids and things Mom had said or done and then Ray said he had to leave. Ruthy Ann was in the car, waiting.

“Why didn’t she come in?” I already knew the answer to that. My sister-in-law hated my guts, thought I was a “bad influence” on Ray.

“She couldn’t handle it. Too depressing, she said. She sent her love.”

I’m sure, I thought, but I didn’t say that to Ray.

“Well, that’s what I came down for, mainly. Let you know and give you the money.”

We stood up and hugged and the walking guard came over.

“Visiting hours aren’t over,” he said. “You still got a half hour.”

“I got to get back to my cell,” I said. “I’m expecting an important phone call from the Pope.” We shook hands, Ray and I and I turned and walked to the back door. In a minute, the guard on the other side came up and unlocked it and I went through. I looked back and saw Raymond’s back going through the other door. He turned around and waved and I waved back and then the hack had me put my hands up on the wall while he shook me down.

Later that afternoon, Warden Coffey came down to K himself and had me brought downstairs to talk to me.

“I checked your packet,” he said. “Pretty clean, Mayes. I think I can let you go to your mother’s funeral.”

“No thanks,” I said.

That night at chow I sat next to Stiles and we made a deal. For dope and fixings. I hadn’t run anything in a long time so I had to cop a rig from him too. Later on, about midnight I fixed up, ran the whole load at once which was a stupid move. I hadn’t done any dope in so long I didn’t know if I could take it. Smart thing would be to chip a little at a time, let it come back up in the needle, tap it when I started coming down, but I said fuck it and did it all at once.

Waste of good dope. I went out like a light. Only thing I know is Dusty was shaking the shit out of me and the sun was out and somehow he got me dressed and over to the barber school. I was some fucked up. All the haircuts I did that day I did on automatic pilot. Probably the only thing saved my sorry ass was Mitch’d already stepped on the shit and lucky for me I figure he’d stepped on it with both feet. I didn’t know if I was happy about that or not.