Jewelweed (12 page)

Once, when leaving the plant, she stepped out of the stone building and crossed the street between two cement mixers. Blake was on his way to work. He turned around in the gravel lot, drove back, and asked if she wanted a ride. He'd never been this close to her before. Without stopping,
she glared at him through the pickup window, her eyes bright black inside a tightly stretched brown face, an angry yet slightly fearful expression. Scrubbed clean, no makeup, no jewelry, no frills. Her black hair had the color of a burned field, her lips straight across and full. She reminded him of a drawn bow.

From this distance, Blake noticed that her shorter leg made more of a difference than he'd thought originally; each time her weight shifted and her hips made the small but perceptible cocking motion to the side, her body gave a little jerk, readying for another stride. As soon as he noticed this, he felt a corresponding lurch inside him and an ache opened up in his throat. Her sexuality seemed to be exercising inside him.

He drove beside her for several blocks, but she never looked at him again. Finally he turned off at the gas station and took the back road to the foundry.

Then one night she stood on the sidewalk in front of her building. An older man, maybe fifty, prevented her from going inside. When she turned away from him, he swung her around roughly to face him. She spit on the pavement and he shouted something and grabbed both her arms. She knocked his hands away and stepped farther down the sidewalk. When he lunged at her, she ducked to avoid him and shoved him to the side, where he stumbled into the street. Her movements seemed almost practiced. He came after her again and she easily outmaneuvered him again.

By this time Blake was out of his pickup and could hear them.

“You're drunk,” she said, avoiding him now with mocking ease. “There's no use you ever coming over here. Don't do it again. Go home, idiot.”

As Blake crossed the street he wondered what part he intended to play in this. When he reached the other side the older man saw him and shrank back, muttered something, and hurried away, heading toward the nearest tavern.

“Are you all right?” asked Blake.

Her black eyes glowed fiercely and she took a step away from him. “Beat it, fool. Nobody asked you to crawl over here. Get the hell away from me before I tie your dick in a knot.”

She opened the door leading up to her apartment and slammed it closed behind her.

Blake was unprepared for such a wide splattering of words, as if some well-established history of malevolence already existed between them. He was so unprepared for it that by the time he got back into his truck and drove away, he wasn't sure exactly what had happened.

That night at the foundry he broke hot castings from molding frames and ground off the sharp ragged burrs. And as he worked he kept thinking about her.

By the time he got off in the morning, he could hardly remember anything she'd said—only the vitriolic manner in which she spoke, as if a relationship somehow existed between them.

She must like me a little, he thought. It was the only way to explain the connection he felt to her.

11:56. Down the corridor, the electronic lock on the central hold snapped and the range door banged open, followed by a quick succession of echoes. Third night check. A guard stepped into the hallway, his movements announced by the dragging shuffle of his feet and the rattle of the keys hanging from his belt. Shuffle, rattle, shuffle, shuffle, rattle, shuffle, rattle.

Blake climbed back onto his bunk, felt his stomach turn over as he recognized the slow, 250-pound amble. Bud Jenks didn't usually work the night shift. Shuffle, rattle, shuffle.

Maybe Bud Jenks hadn't always been the way he was now, thought Blake, trying to talk himself into a better frame of mind. Maybe he was just an ordinary guy living in a small town and looking for a job, when he heard the Lockbridge prison needed more corrections officers. After his initial training, he got a uniform and for the first time noticed a curious mixture of hatred and fear in prisoners' eyes when they looked at him. And he liked it.

It might not have been the first taste of power that changed him. Perhaps it took several years. Blake wanted to think so. He was desperately trying to believe in something larger than himself, something at the foundation of the world that could not be held responsible for making Bud Jenks. Bud Jenks alone should be blamed for Bud Jenks.

The shuffle stopped outside Blake's cell, followed by a long reign of silence. Then a heavy boot kicked the bottom of the steel door and the cell exploded with sound. “Hey, Bookfucker, you asleep in there?”

Blake said nothing.

“You, Bookfucker, I'm talking to you. I asked if you were asleep.”

Another kick and the room again exploded in sound.

“Hey, you insubordinate asshole, you better answer me when I ask you a question.”

“I'm awake,” said Blake.

“I thought so, because, see, I'm concerned maybe you don't have the right sleeping habits. So every hour tonight I'm going to check to make sure you're sleeping. Is that okay with you, Bookfucker?”

“Leave him alone,” said Jones across the hall.

“What was that?”

“Leave him alone.”

Following a long silence, Jenks spoke. “Did you just swear at me, Jones?”

“No.”

“I think you goddamn did, Jones. You swore at me, and that's a violation. And look here, what's this piece of crud on the floor? You threw this at me through the vents in your door.”

“No I didn't.”

“Too bad, Jones. You've been over here on Level Two for quite a while now, haven't you? Nice place. It's quiet here most of the time. A couple of you guys got televisions over here and you get to see all those nice visitors from time to time. You get to make phone calls once a week, and for some reason the food here doesn't get all mixed together and taste like someone pissed in it. Too bad, Jones.”

“What are you talking about?”

“See, there just happens to be a cell open over on Range C. You know where Range C is, Jones? I've got an uncle who delivers the food over there. You know where Range C is, Jones?”

“Yes sir.”

“Of course you do. Range C is way over on the other side of the building. And guess what cell just happens to be empty right now? I'll tell you. It's the one just across from Raymond Cawl. You know Old Ray, don't you, Jones? He's the great big guy missing most of his teeth, the gentleman who never showers and screams all night and throws his feces into the hall. I'm sure you remember him. Well, tomorrow your door is going to be right across from his, and you're going to be behind it for a long, long
time. Oh yes, I forgot to tell you, Jones—and you'll love this part—just beside that empty cell is Bernie Hortell. I'm sure you remember him. As you probably already know, Mr. Hortel sings while he beats on his walls. And the food over there, well, you remember what it's like. You were over there once, remember?”

“No call for you to do this, sir. I never swore at you or threw anything.”

“Rules are rules. I don't make 'em, you know. I just enforce 'em. It's my job and you wouldn't want me to not do my job, would you, Jones?”

Silence.

“Of course, you got the right to file a complaint. That's also the rule, Jones. You can do that. Once you're over on Range C you can file a grievance report. You can tell them how you came to the aid of this punk here, who beat up a police officer and later assaulted a guard. You can tell them. First thing tomorrow morning you'll be moved.”

Shuffle, shuffle. Silence. Then another boot against the door of Blake's cell.

“Sleep tight, Bookfucker. I'll be back.”

Shuffle, shuffle, rattle.

Blake lay on his bed staring at the dim light above him, his anger mounting. He knotted his hands into fists, closed his eyes, and fought with himself. It was Jones's own fault. He'd brought it on himself, broke the cardinal rule: don't get involved in any injustices other than your own. Mind your own business.

It didn't work. The anger was still there. Shaking with impotent rage, Blake rolled out of the bunk and onto his knees again, praying for help, for strength, for mercy, for anything. How could so much wrong be allowed to continue? God save me. I can't do this any longer.

Without getting up, he crawled over to the door and whispered through the grate. “Jones, hey, Jones. Are you all right? Jones?”

Silence.

“Jones? Hey, man, I'll make the complaint tomorrow to the review committee. We'll tell them the truth . . . Jones? . . . I know this time they'll listen. They will . . . Jones?”

Silence.

Suddenly Blake felt something inside him split open and spill out, a rupture deeper than he could reach. He lay flat on the concrete floor,
looked at the ceiling, and did something he'd done only two other times in his life—once, at four, when he understood his mother was never coming back, and once when he'd first entered prison. He found the part of him that was not.

It was very small, hard to find, impossible to understand. It did not think, feel, imagine, or remember. It did not know Jones or anything about prison, had never heard of Spinoza, did not know Bud Jenks or Winifred Helm, or his father or Danielle Workhouse. It was the part of him neither attracted to nor repelled by anything else, the space-within-space and time-within-time that did not recognize the survival of Blake Bookchester as a valid concept. It was the part of him that was not. It contained only a cold flickering awareness of nothing in particular. And to that dark flickering he wholly committed himself.

H
eading into Chicago on Interstate 94, transparent waves of heat rose from the pavement and curled off the long hood of the Kenworth. The air trembled and glowed, luminous with baked humidity. Nate turned to merge onto I-294 and the taillights in front of him lit up in a stream of angry red. The traffic stopped, started, slowed, and then came to a standstill. Nate thought he could remember when—if you avoided certain times of the day—you could stay out of this. But Chicago traffic could snarl at any time now.

The station wagon directly in front of him moved ahead eight feet and he took up the slack. Over the next forty-five minutes he repeated this stop-gap movement three times, but he was still on the merging ramp.

He brought his logbook up to date, filled in several additional columns, and thought about nothing in particular. The temperature outside continued to climb, and he noticed with some concern that the heat gauge on the dashboard had inched up as well. He successfully assured himself this was only natural, given the situation. When it rose higher he turned off the air conditioner to take a little stress off the diesel and rolled down the window.

Then the engine began to idle unevenly and the color of the exhaust turned a shade darker. Again, he refused to worry. The injectors needed cleaning—he already knew that. The engine had over six hundred thousand miles on it. Still, there was maybe a cushion of fifty thousand or so before things really started going south.

The air seeping through the opened window felt like breath from a large mouth.

Taking a drink of water, he drew his spiral-bound notebook from the
dash compartment and read over a letter he'd started to his son. Unable to think of anything to add, he put the notebook back.

The heat gauge climbed higher, accompanied by a barely audible whine. Then the whine grew more persistent, and the fan belt broke, snapping against the inside hood with a crack. Warning lights lit up on the dash, matching the color of the brake lights outside.

Nate pulled onto the shoulder, crowded close to the embankment wall, turned off the engine, and phoned the dispatch operator in Wisconsin.

“Water pump seized up—I'm broke down.”

“Where are you?”

“Outside Chicago, just off I-94, on the entrance ramp to 294.”

“Full or empty?”

“Full.”

“There's a Mack shop not far from you. I'll give you the number.”

Nate called and the service person said they could bring the tractor in and fix it tomorrow, but they couldn't tow a loaded trailer. “You've got to lose the trailer. Call me back. I can have someone there in forty-five minutes.”

“Not in this traffic,” said Nate, and called dispatch again.

“Okay, Nate. Hold on, let me check.” Click. Silence. Click. “Here's one. Bob Miller is about an hour from you and he's got a load he can put up for a while.”

Nate turned on his warning lights and climbed out. Blistering heat and blinding light gave him the impression of stepping onto the surface of the sun. He placed warning markers along the shoulder and thought about calling highway patrol. The metal was hot. He lowered the jacks on the front of the trailer and broke open the hitch. Then he moved the tractor forward enough for someone else to hook up.

In the hot shade of the embankment wall, Nate watched the traffic slowly lurch forward again, gaining speed. Most of the other truck drivers waved as they went by, or at least smiled. The others glanced at him with a mixture of anxiety and disapproval—a premonition of their own breakdown.