Hard Rain Falling (11 page)

Thinking about this made Jack cry to himself. But then, another thought came to save him from it; his mind told him that he would not care if any of them died, either. People were out there dying, and he did not care. If they all died, he would not care. It did not matter to him. So why should
they
care for
him? He
did not care for
them
. Fuck them. Each and every one of them. He laughed to himself, a rusty, creaking sound. He felt almost hopeful.

There were six punishment cells, and communication of a sort could be made by yelling, but most of the time it required too much effort, or Jack’s senses were gone and he could not hear. But sometimes he did. He could hear other boys being brought in, yelling, cursing, some of them crying, and he himself suppressed all feelings of pity for the others; they did not pity him. They probably thought he was some kind of hero. Well, fuck them, too. Maybe in the cells they would learn the truth as he had, and know that nothing existed but a single spark of energy, and that spark could die for no reason, and existed for no reason. Then they would understand that it does no good to cry out, because a spark of energy has no ears; the ears are a lie, a joke, a dream, to keep the spark going, and there is no reason to keep the spark going. And more than there is a reason for letting it go out. Maybe they would learn not to hate the guards, either, because the guards and everybody else on earth were prisoners in dark cells like themselves and just did not know it, and in fact they were in a worse prison than Jack was, because they were imprisoned by their own limits, and he was only imprisoned by them. He had found their limits—they would not, could not, just take him out and shoot him, and they could not let him run around loose, because he would not take any of their shit, and so they had to lock him up and feed him and dump his piss and shit for him, all because they had these limits that he did not have. If he had an enemy, he would kill that enemy. He would stop at nothing. He would kill that enemy quickly, get him out of the way, and then he would not have that enemy any more. But they couldn’t do that. They were goddam lucky he did not have an enemy. Because if he did he would get out of there and find his enemy and kill him. As it was, there was nobody he hated, no single human life he needed to kill, and so, instead, he would just sit here and wait for them to let him out, and then he would kill the first living human he saw. That would teach them.

But even this thought, which could build itself to manic proportions, would fizzle away, and he would be left with nothing, not even madness.

Only once more, after the episode of self-pity, did he approach breakdown. He had just eaten, and for a change there was nothing in his food, and for a few moments he was experiencing a kind of contentment, hearing the sounds out in the passageway, thinking about nothing in particular. He heard the guards bring in a boy, and the boy was sobbing. Jack could tell from the sound of the sobbing that the boy was probably very young, maybe only twelve. Jack heard the cell door being opened, and then closed, and the sobbing muffled. He heard the guards go past and out. Then the new kid started screaming. It was a shock to Jack. He had never heard a sound like it. It was a sharp scream, as if the boy were in agony. Then Jack heard him calling for his mother, and then the boy screamed again, even louder than before, and Jack got frightened. He could feel a scream of his own rising in his throat, a terror in his own heart; he yelled for the boy to shut up, and heard the other boys in the cells yelling at him; but the new kid would not stop, and Jack and the others started yelling for the guard to come in and get him out of there. Jack was feeling panic; he was afraid that if the other boy did not stop screaming he would go crazy, but the boy would not stop; the screaming went on for hours, and then finally a single guard came in. Jack knew it must be nighttime, because it was only one guard that came in. During the daytime, or any time they brought a boy in or let a boy out, the guards came in pairs. So it was night, and the one guard went past Jack’s cell and called in to the new kid, “Shut up in there, God damn it.” The kid cried out that his stomach was hurting, and the guard was silent for a moment, and then said, “He’s only fakin,” and left. Jack and the other boys started yelling and screaming in rage at the guard’s cowardice, because they knew the guard had been afraid to open the cell without a partner along, and Jack again thought he was going to go crazy; he yelled and swore and sobbed in rage, until there was nothing left in him and he lay on the floor of his cell face down, trembling with his hatred of the guard and his rediscovered terror of the dark. The only sounds that could be heard now were the low moans of agony from the new kid, and eventually they, too, stopped, and the punishment cells were silent. This silence was even more terrifying, and Jack bit his lips bloody to keep from screaming himself.

In the morning, when the doctor and three guards came, the boy was already dead. He had died of a burst appendix, and Jack could hear the furious anger of the doctor and the mumbled embarrassment and self-defense of the guards. But the boy was dead, a boy Jack had never seen, and he felt despair for himself again.

There was an investigation, and the night guard was fired. When the State Senator who was in charge of the investigation got to Jack’s cell, he asked through the door how long Jack had been in there, and Jack did not answer. The State Senator sent one of the guards for the punishment records, and Jack for the first time learned how long he had been in there, the State Senator saying in an amazed, almost hushed voice, that according to these records, this boy has been in this cell for 87 days, and with shock making his voice tremble, the State Senator demanded that the cell be opened and the boy brought out, and Jack did not know whether the State Senator was planning to free him or just wanted to see what kind of animal could live in total darkness for 87 days without dying, because when the door opened and the faint light blazed against Jack’s eyes, something dark and joyful exploded inside him and he hit the State Senator, grabbed at him, and tried to murder him, out of control, feeble, fumbling, helpless, nevertheless with his hands on the State Senator’s throat and his fingers squeezing, odd noises in his ears, almost drowned out by a roaring sound from within; and then the guards pulled him off the Senator and threw him back in his cell, and the State Senator went back to Salem and the investigation went into file thirteen, and that was the end of that.

When they came to let him out, the day before his eighteenth birthday, they opened the door and jumped back, four guards crowding the passageway, one of them holding a white canvas restraining jacket. But Jack stood up and walked out into the passageway calmly, his eyes shut. The first thing he said to the guards was, “My eyes hurt like hell.” He was blindfolded, to protect his eyes, and taken, inside the restraining jacket, to a place where there were two psychiatrists to examine him. The plan had been to transfer Jack from the reformatory to the State mental hospital, because the authorities did not feel in all conscience that they could let him go and the law said they had to give up his custody when he turned eighteen. The two psychiatrists asked Jack a lot of questions, and he answered them calmly, blindfolded, and in the restraining jacket and the pants that two guards had slipped onto him, sat in his chair and lied to the two doctors and told them he felt ashamed of himself, and that when the Senator had opened the door Jack had been having a nightmare and he was sorry; but to be on the safe side he was transferred to the State mental institution in Salem, locked in a room in a long brown corridor, and given thirty days’ observation by the staff. He actually saw a doctor only four times, for fifteen minutes each time, and after the first visit he was given mopping to do and was permitted the use of the observation ward dayroom. At the end of the thirty days he was let out, still wearing dark glasses, his skin pale and raw. He knew he was just lucky. He knew that it was an accident that they had come for him at a moment when he was perfectly rational. If he had been deep in his dream of murder, as he had been when the State Senator visited, then he might have spent the rest of his life in the insane asylum. He was just lucky they had come for him in one of the few moments of sanity. He had happened to be urinating at the moment he heard the guards in the passageway. So he had not been off-balance. He had managed in all the time of transition afterward to keep a tight control on himself, and his eyes helped. His eyes hurt so fiercely that he concentrated on the pain as a way of keeping from thinking of murder; and by the time they let him out of the insane asylum, he had himself under control. He worked in eastern Oregon, bucking logs for a wildcat outfit in the mountains between Oregon and Idaho, for half a year, letting the sun and the hard work burn strength and calm into him, and when at last he got fired for fighting, it was all right, because he was not trying to kill the man; the man had gotten drunk and started bothering Jack, and so they fought, but as men fight, not animals, and after they both got fired they went to Boise together and got good and drunk together, and Jack knew that he was going to be all right. He was afraid that he would dream about the hole, but he never did. Or if he did, he never remembered it in the morning, and that was what counted. Jack wanted to have a good time for himself, and nightmares would have spoiled the delicious pleasure of sleeping in a bed.

When the girls finally burst into Denny’s room Jack felt a little depressed, but at the same time there was the usual excitement new things, especially girls, brought. They were two of a kind: long-haired, thin, with sharp, wolfish faces and children’s mouths gone hard. Their thin hard bodies were dressed in new, almost identical, black cocktail dresses, shiny blue pumps, and black hose. Too much eye makeup, cheeks too pale, eyes too small, brows too sharply drawn, voices brittle and toneless with self-imposed coolness. Beneath it all Jack could see that the girls were both plain. But the attempt to be hip, to dress like four-bit New York whores, was in itself stimulating.

Denny jumped up from the bed and introduced the girls as Mona and Sue, and they nodded, neither of them meeting Jack’s eyes, poured themselves glasses of whiskey, and plopped down on the bed, each with a comic book, and began with apparently deep concentration to read.

Denny grinned at Jack. “They’re shy,” he said. “How was the movie?”

“What a drag,” one of them said.

Jack sighed, and sat back down. He had been through so many scenes like this one. Everybody knew what was what, but nobody wanted to be straight about it. They would go on like this—bored, indifferent, edgy, too hip to live—until they got drunk, and then somebody would turn on the radio and they would dance in the tiny space between the beds, and somebody would push somebody down onto the bed, and in the darkness the four of them would be sorted out into fornicating couples almost at random, with the light coming in through the window shade, and later somebody would throw up, and some time after that somebody would suggest that they switch partners, and after an hour of dull bitching they might or might not, and everybody would fall asleep from alcohol and boredom, and the radio would keep playing through their fuzzy dreams, and eventually they would all have to wake up. So much waste, he thought. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of this overwhelming sense of waste. He had come to San Francisco to think, and he was not going to do it. He was always doing the easy thing, the thing that first came to hand.

One of the girls on the bed, Mona, looked over at him and smiled cutely. “Got a bug in your ear?”

“Let’s turn on the radio and dance or something,” Jack said to her. “Let’s do something.” He wanted to get it over with, like a job of work or a fight.

“It’s not even dark out,” Mona said. Primly, he thought. As if dancing in the daytime was square.

“Let’s go get some Chinese food and go to a nightclub,” Mona said. She threw her comic book fluttering across the room. “I already read the goddam thing.”

“I’m sick of Chinese food,” Denny said. He was standing in front of the mirror over the sink, inspecting his teeth.

“You hardly ever eat Chinese food,” Sue said. She was the brighter of the two, Jack thought; something about her eyes, a glint, something. He decided she had some sense. To Jack she said, “Every time we go to a Chinese restaurant he eats a hamburger or something. Honest to Christ.”

Denny said calmly, “Listen, I’ve puked more Chinese food than you ever ate.”

Mona laughed sharply. “I bet you have. You’re a real puker. Mister Puke, that’s you.”

“Stick your nose up my ass, and I’ll blow your brains out,” Denny said without turning his head.

Mona grinned at Jack. “He’s so
salty
. Do you have a suit?”

Jack admitted that he did. His clothes were in a quarter locker at the bus depot.

“Let’s get dressed up and go someplace really expensive,” Mona said. “All we ever do is go to crappy joints.”

“That sounds good,” Jack said. “I’ll get a room here in the hotel and take a shower and change.” He got up and swallowed off his whiskey. It was not hitting, but he did not expect it to, yet.

Sue leaned forward and whispered into Mona’s ear. Mona’s calm and serious eyes were on Jack as she listened to the secret message. She whispered back to Sue and said, “I’ll go with you.”

“We’ll see you guys in about an hour,” Denny said. He and Jack looked at each other. “Hey, baby; good to see you.” It was almost embarrassing. Denny really appeared happy about the whole thing. As if they had been old and dear friends, instead of poolhall buddies who happened to run into each other in another poolhall.

Jack and Mona left the hotel and went up Market toward the bus depot. The street was heavily crowded with people just getting off work, and with soldiers, sailors, Market Street bums, and shoppers. Mona walked beside Jack with her hand on his arm. He faintly disliked this gesture of too-sudden intimacy; he did not like people touching him. He was used to it; people always seemed to want to touch a boxer as he was entering or leaving the arena, especially leaving, if he had won, and it was a little disgusting, like the old woman who had gotten into his dressing room once in Phoenix and wanted to pay him five dollars to watch him take his shower.