Hard Rain Falling (28 page)

“Night or day it’s all one in those damn 24-hour joints,” Billy said one slow evening a few days before he was killed. “That’s the hell of it, man; they’re air-conditioned, open all night,
soft music playin
, an you don’t know what day it is after a while, or if it’s winter or summer. Time dies in a place like that, you feel pulled loose from it, like dreaming, dig, you don’t even know if you’re hungry. Like comin out of a movie, dig, and it’s bright sunlight out and you’re blinkin away and people are walkin around on business and you wonder what the hell world you fell into.

“But how do you stay away from it? It’s like so
safe
. Anyway, pool cracks me up. And it aint simple, either. You never were good at it, were you? Maybe you felt it, anyhow. Everything is
connected
. You know, it’s your turn to shoot. It starts then. You come up to the table, sightin the shot, lookin over the layout, and you can already feel how all the balls, just sittin there on the table, are
connected
, an you’re connected to
them
, an your cue is part of your arm, and you chalk up and feel the connection there, and it gets good, man, and I mean good, cause you’re buildin up all that good stuff, you know you can make any shot in the world and the shot is there—it aint somethin you can see but it’s
there
—that feels good, like, a lush might walk into a bar someplace an when he walks in he’s all pulled apart, but he sees all them rows on rows of bottles and he feels em and they feel him, an he sits down at the bar, all connected to the whole world, an orders his drink, an he throws that shot of liquor back into his throat an it’s like comin in your head. The same for me on a pool table. I can feel it. So it’s there. I sight the shot, bend down, and there’s somethin goin on between me and the cue ball and the object ball and the pocket, and I feel it build up, shoot, and that’s
it
. You waited for that all your life. The connection is
made
. The thing is complete. It’s inside you now.

“But, if you miss the shot, the ball hangs up in the pocket or you miscue or somethin, that connection is broken and some of you
dies
. I’ve felt that, too. I
know
it’s the truth. Somethin busted and gone, not a run of a hundred balls is gonna bring it back. When you lose you lose forever, an when you win it only lasts a second or two. That’s
life
. I aint lyin. I aint comin on. Why should I?

“Everythin in the whole fuckin world is connected, I think; and the connection turns you on, an the broken connections burn you out. Suppose like you see this woman, see? You send out a hot line of connecting stuff to her if she’s your action, and if you’re hers,
wham
, you connect; you don’t have to say a word, it’s there and you both know it. But you know what we really do; we think about other things, or come on or get smart or worry about ourselves, and fuck up the connection. Then do we know it’s gone? No, man, we keep tryin an it just gets worse and worse. It’s like you get this tremendous urge to bust a window with your fist, dig, and if you went ahead and did it right then,
wham
, for about a half a second there you’d feel like the king of the world; but instead, you get to worryin about cuttin your hand and all that shit, so you hesitate and then get pissed off at yourself and bust the window anyway, only you’re self-conscious about it and don’t get any pleasure out of it at all.”

Billy looked tired and gray, and Jack could not understand why he had been talking like that. Afterward, later, he knew that Billy had already decided, and he was taking this last chance to tell Jack who he was.

“Now, man,” Billy said, “I know how
silly
a lot of this sounds, dig, a
philosophy
of the
poolhall;
but shit, I looked around myself and I asked myself, what is my life, anyway, and the answer was quick and easy, my life is what I
got
, an if I don’t find anythin important in it, I’m dead. But, you know what it’s like when you get high sometimes and
everything
seems important? Well, it’s like that. If the way I feel about pool aint important, what the hell am I? So I sat down and tried to think up words for it, and the only one I could come up with was
connect
.”

He looked down at Jack’s hard, battered face. “You and me, now,” he said. “We’re connected. That’s good. And when the connection breaks, it’s over, that’s too bad, but it’s finished and a man would be a fool to try to make it go on when it’s all over. You dig? We
got
it, you don’t even have to admit it, but when we think of each other, we feel good, and that’s
it
. But when it busts, it’s busted, and that’s the end. Nothin happens twice.”

Now Jack understood him perfectly, and he lay silently on his bunk, his arms at his sides. He did not seem to be looking at anything, although his eyes were open. He felt powerless to move or to speak, but he wanted Billy to speak, he wanted Billy to say it all, and it would be said.

Very softly, Billy spoke: “Not the sex. That’s not the connection. You and me, we’re the connection. You live an I live, and we love each other. Do you know that? The sex, that’s—well,
joy
. I got to admit it. How many times we wrecked it because we was afraid to admit it was
joy?
How many times we had to play like we was just jackin off? How many times we have to pretend it wasn’t
love
. Now you know it’s love and I know it’s love, and I’m tellin you I love you. And I want you to tell me. To say it. In words.”

Billy waited. Jack could not speak. He did not want to speak. He was embarrassed. He had been afraid this would happen someday, that it would become romantic. It was awful, and because he did love Billy he wanted to tell him so, but he did not mean the word the way Billy obviously meant it, and so he could not speak.

Billy said, “Jack. I want you to kiss me. Once. That’s all. You can’t talk; at least, at most, kiss me. You got to. If you love me, kiss me.”

Jack closed his eyes. “No,” he said.

“All right,” Billy said. “All right.”

Jack got the story in bits and fragments, but what happened was this: Clifford, the wolf-pack leader and hardest nut in the place, made up his mind that he disliked Jack, probably as the result of some chance remark—they had never exchanged more than half a dozen words in a year—and Clifford let it be known that he would have Jack’s ass within a week, and was betting five to one Jack would stand still for it. Billy found out about it. He was terrified of Clifford, but the morning after he and Jack had their last long talk, he went up to Clifford’s group on the big yard, looking tiny among the huge Negroes, and said to Clifford, “If you don’t lay off Levitt, I’ll see to it you’re sorry.” They all laughed, and one of them moved his arm quickly and Billy stepped back, stumbled, and almost fell down. Jack saw this and asked Billy about it later, and all Billy said was that he was getting a bet down. But his face looked strange, grayish, drawn, and that night in the cell he didn’t talk at all. Clifford had gotten a message to Billy; he would get Jack the next afternoon.

In the morning break on the big yard, Jack saw most of it. The day was bright and warm and the men loafed and talked in small knots, or strolled by themselves back and forth. Jack was watching the domino games when he saw Billy leave one group of men and head across the yard toward Clifford’s group, just in the shade of the shed roof. Jack saw Clifford detach himself from the group with a grin and a wave; saw the two men approach each other. To a guard looking down, to anyone, it looked as if the two men were merely crossing the big yard and would pass within a few feet; a coincidence. The only reason Jack was watching was that Billy looked so stiff; he almost seemed to be marching, and his face was thin and frightened, his shoulders hunched up. He looked strange; usually he was loose and happy-looking. Clifford, as he approached Billy, loomed up over him, gigantic, black, but even his face was a little drawn; and they passed each other, very close, brushing together for a tenth of a second, but passed on, and for a moment Jack thought they were passing contraband. Clifford’s face was toward Jack now, and he looked astonished, his mouth loose, his eyes large. Billy, from the back, was ambling along slowly, and he seemed to have his arms folded over his chest. Then Jack saw Clifford fall to his knees. He still looked astonished. Then he fell forward, flat on his face, his legs twisting out and jerking slightly. Everyone, including Jack, turned away. No one saw Billy fall.

Clifford was dead in three hours, a sharpened spoon handle deep into his abdomen. Billy lasted almost five hours before dying. Clifford’s knife had a seven-inch blade, and all of it had been buried into Billy. A guard brought the word to Jack, who was celled on the shelf pending an investigation. The guard was a young man. He said, “Your buddy copped it.”

“When?” Jack said.

“Oh, about an hour, hour and a half ago. The shit’s gonna hit the fan around here again.” The guard passed on.

Jack wept that night, bitterly. He could find no thought to comfort himself. He could not even be enraged, only desolated, and more lonely than he had ever been in his life. There was nothing for him to do but weep, and he wept.

Jack Levitt was 26 years old when he got out of San Quentin. He had finished high school and had even taken two courses by extension from the University of California; he had worked in both the kitchen and the bakery, and he had not gotten into one single fistfight. Custody felt he was a good risk, and Rehabilitation considered him to have taken great strides toward the goal of maturity. After the death of Billy Lancing, Jack broke down and cried only once more, when the news arrived that Claymore had escaped from Alcatraz.

According to the newspapers, Claymore had not escaped at all, but had been drowned in attempting escape. He must have drowned, the Federal authorities reasoned, because no one ever escaped. True, his body was never discovered, but, they reasoned, it had probably been washed out to sea. Jack did not believe this, and he didn’t think anybody else did, either. Claymore had escaped, and it made Jack cry in his cell, much to the amazement of his cellmate, an old safecracker. Billy had felt “connected” to Claymore, and this is what made Jack cry. He wished Billy were alive, to celebrate Claymore’s freedom. He wished there were a heaven, so Billy could look down and see it and rejoice.

Claymore’s escape plan had been very simple: He waited for a foggy day and for a moment when no one was looking at him, got outside, jumped into the bay, and started swimming. It is supposed to be beyond human endurance to swim from Alcatraz to shore without extensive training, thick grease on the body, etc., especially because of the strong currents; but if Claymore’s desire for freedom was strong enough, he could make it. Then, he would have to be able to wait, hidden, somewhere along the shore of San Francisco, for the early morning hours; and if he survived that, did not die of exposure or become so weak he could not move, he could begin to make his way through the police-watched streets toward the Fillmore District. If he could make it that far, he was probably safe. It would not be hard for him to find Negroes who would not turn him in. So it was not impossible, merely difficult—about as difficult as climbing Mount Everest. A few years later three more men escaped from The Rock, and after that the Federal authorities lost heart. The whole function of Alcatraz was its hopelessness, and if the convicts started leaving any time they felt like it, well.... So today it is closed, deserted, and remains a monument to man’s incredible stupidity on the one hand, and to his incredible courage and love of freedom on the other.

Jack’s escape from that other blot on the pride of the human soul, San Quentin, was much less dramatic. He was paroled at the end of eighteen months, in spite of his bad record and in spite of his even worse appearance before the Parole Board. He felt like punching them all right in the face. For so long now he had not permitted himself to think about getting out, and now, with this invitation to appear before the Board, he could not help himself; he wanted out so badly he became terrified that they, the Board, a handful of men who really knew nothing about him, would refuse to let him out. So he stood there in front of them, his face red and tense, his fists clenched, answering their questions, trying to seem contrite and mature, wanting to smash them, and when he went back to his cell he knew he had botched it completely and he would have to wait at least another year.

But he was wrong; his record at Quentin was good and they considered him a good parole risk. So he left San Quentin absolutely determined not to go back, as much for their sake as his. Because that strange, awful place had actually tried to help him. They, it, had treated him as a man whenever Custody would let them, and tried to find a way to reach him through the layers of hardness, and where they failed they at least tried, and whether it was San Quentin or Billy Lancing that had reformed Jack was a moot point: he was reformed. He came out wanting to make something of his life.

There was a job waiting for him in a bakery on Union Street, near Fillmore. The building was set back from the street, and out in front on its own sidewalk were little marble-topped tables and wire chairs beneath a striped awning. Three trimmed acacia trees completed the decor, and there was a boy in a white jacket to wait on the tables and sell baked goods from the glass counter inside. The proprietor always sat on a high stool behind the cash register; he was a small man, usually dressed in a gray suit and vest, with a plump, pallid face, receding hair, an amused mouth, and blank, colorless eyes. His name was Saul Markowitz, and he opened the bakery each morning at six promptly by wearily pulling back the grating and unrolling the awning, and at that hour his best customers were the servants of the rich of Pacific Heights, who would come in for a quick cup of
caffé Wien
and a hot
croissant;
fresh, hot
croissants
were the specialty of the shop, and the servants would pick up a foil-lined box of them to take back to their people. Also at that hour there might be a few from all-night parties, drunk, sitting at the little tables eating their
croissants
and pouring brandy into their coffee, talking the brittle patter of people who don’t have anything to do with themselves. Saul Markowitz knew most of his customers by name, including the servants; he addressed them, joked with them, and kept his eyes remote. Many of his customers thought he was contemptuous of them, but they came back anyway.