On the Yard (18 page)

“Jesus,” Juleson said softly. He settled back on his bunk, opened his book, and then closed it again.

“It'll come tomorrow,” Manning said.

“I hope so. If it doesn't come pretty soon I've got my dumb ass in a sling.”

“Is it a serious matter?”

“It could be. I don't know. If it doesn't cost me anything else, it will at least cost me some embarrassment.” He looked over at his shelf where only three packs remained of the carton. “I had to jump in and involve myself.”

“I could write Pat for money, but I'm not sure she'd even answer. Still I could try?”

“No, that's not necessary, Will. If you haven't even written for yourself, and I know there are things you'd like to have, how could I let you write for me? I got into this mess by myself and I'll find some way out of it.”

“It'll come tomorrow,” Manning said.

But it didn't. Juleson checked at the mail room at noon and there was nothing for him. By this time he was certain there wouldn't be—the situation was beginning to assume the classic outlines of the other traps he had set for himself in the past. You fool, you fool, he told himself, and he could think of nothing more damning to say. His aunt was an old lady, any number of things could have happened to her during the year. But you couldn't wait, could you?

Nothing had ever come to him as quickly as he had expected and he had always grabbed.

He returned to his desk in the ed building and tried to consider what he should do. He should immediately tell Oberholster that his money hadn't fell in, that he would need an extension, but he knew himself well enough to know he would put this disagreeable errand off as long as he could. And there it was—that was him.

He put his head in his hands and thought of the men he might have been. He became aware of someone close to him and looked up to see Lorin.

“Don't you feel well, Paul?”

“I'm all right.”

Lorin didn't look well himself. His fresh complexion had grown perceptibly duller and the strained appearance of his eyes had increased. The whites were yellowish, and Juleson was aware of a sour odor which he was now certain was coming from Lorin. He dismissed his own troubles.

“What's the matter?”

“Nothing. Nothing that hasn't been the matter. I know you don't take it seriously.”

“Hold on, now, I take it seriously, if you do. Is Sanitary Slim still bugging you?”

“Yes. He comes to my cell every night and hangs around in front of it. He must think I'm a fool. Last night he told me he had been sent up by the block sergeant to check everyone's shoes to see if their numbers were in them.”

“Did you give them to him?”

“Of course not. Do you think I believed him? I told him the sergeant would have to come up himself.”

“What'd he say to that?”

“He swore at me. Called me a smart punk.”

“Lorin, why don't you let him have the shoes if that will get him off your back. A lot of men have let Slim shine their shoes.” Juleson tried for lightness. “He does a good job.”

“I can't. I can't involve myself.”

“I see. What are you going to do then?”

“I've been considering writing a letter to the psych department. Do you think that's a good idea?”

“It's hard to see how it will help, but it can't do any harm. Probably you're going to have to wear the old bastard out. In time he'll get tired of annoying you.”

Lorin rubbed his forehead as if he were trying to erase something written there. “I don't know how much more of it I can take.”

“Can you threaten him? He's a coward. Could you threaten to take a club to him and make him believe it?”

“I told you I couldn't involve myself.”

“But you are involved.”

“Not in that way. I just can't do it, not even if I thought I could force him to take my threats seriously.”

“Lorin, I still say you're making too much of this.”

“I know that's what you think.”

“I don't like to see you upset, but I can't help being aware that most of us would just laugh at the old bastard and forget him and I get the feeling that when you make so much of this you are subtly emphasizing the degree to which you believe yourself to be different from the rest of us.”

“Thank you, Paul.”

“Now, don't take that attitude.”

Lorin smiled faintly. “Don't worry about it. I'll work it out.” He turned and walked back to his own desk, and Juleson watched, thinking that the “old breed” had betrayed Lorin once again.

T
WO WEEKS
in enemy hands found Stick's army reduced by half. The youngest General stumbled over the IQ test. His performance was moronic. When this was taken into consideration along with his extreme youth, his passivity, his plump softness, and moist red mouth, the classification committee decided that life in the general population would be impossible for him—he would be used as an engine of dumb flesh, used as the men on the prison ranch were known to use their animals. The committee ordered him transferred to an institution for the feebleminded on the first available transportation.

All Stick knew was that the youngest General was called over the loudspeakers one morning and that was the last they saw of him.

“So what?” Stick challenged the remaining General. “I was going to cut him loose anyway.” Stick tapped his forehead. “That punk wasn't keen enough.”

“I still wonder what they done with him,” the remaining General whined.

“They prob'ly stashed him in some nut house.”

“Maybe he asked to go.”

“He didn't have that much sense.”

Stick didn't have to guess what had happened to the youngest General, he had psychs trying to play with his own head, but he was too keen for them. He cooled them right on out until he had them calling him “son,” but the youngest General, that little rumpkin, they probably had him made before he got sat down.

“How you going to get us out of here?” the remaining General asked, as he did almost every day.

“When I'm ready I'll brief you. We're under cover now. This is our submerged period. Every great movement goes through a period like this.” Stick looked around contemptuously. “But don't worry. This place ain't nothing.”

The following week the remaining General was assigned to school and began to appear on the yard with a fourth grade reader, stuffed with folded exercise papers, under his arm. He came to Stick to ask the meaning of certain words, how to spell others, and Stick began to get angry, but he didn't blow until the remaining General came expecting his approval because he had scored 82 per cent on a spelling test. Stick snatched the paper and wadded it.

“What're you fucking with this shit for?”

“But you said we had to get keen.”

“I'll be keen. I'm keen enough for both of us. You get out of that school. You don't see me running around with no book.”

Stick snatched the book and sailed it across the yard. It opened in flight, dropping the exercises which were caught by the wind and scattered like propaganda leaflets. The General squeaked with dismay and started after his text.

“You pick that book up, don't come back,” Stick threatened.

The General paused, looking apprehensively from Stick to where the book lay open on the asphalt, the pages riffled by the wind. “I'm charged out with it,” he pleaded.

“You're charged with it. You're charged with it,” Stick repeated, his voice growing shrill. His hands reached up level with his thin shoulders to grapple with something invisible, and his face darkened with blood until it resembled a rusty trowel.

“Fuck that book!” Stick screamed.

But the General, clearly terrified of Stick, had slipped off after his book. He picked it up, stuck it in his belt and began to gather his exercises, watching Stick over his shoulder like a cowed dog. He didn't come back. After that Stick didn't look for his General, and when he saw him he was always moving away.

Stick didn't miss the Generals. The punks had been holding him back. Neither of them had been keen enough. He had come to prison through their weakness. But sometimes at night, among the pressures of his numerous corrective fantasies, he found time to imagine circumstances where they were brought to him for sentencing as arch-traitors. He was always busy—moving armies, razing cities, settling major scores—and he glanced across the mirror-black surface of his desk to say, “Shoot them both.” They cried and ran around the desk to fall on their knees and hug his legs. He kicked their faces. This part was particularly vivid. Lying in his bunk, his leg jerked and he sensed a phantom shock running up his toes and felt the sudden yielding as their teeth broke back into their throats.

But at this time his attention was largely occupied by his cell partner and the invention he had discovered this man working on. At first the cell partner, an insignificant forger named Morris Price, had been nothing to Stick except a body to step around when he moved from one part of the cell to another. His slight stature, his pointless eyes, his thin pale hair brushed straight back from a ragged hairline all caused Stick to reject Morris as a potential Vampire. He was through with punks. Morris wouldn't look good in the uniform. His dim dry voice could never issue a convincing order. In the new reality people like Morris did not exist. Stick used his towering height to intimidate Morris into submissiveness. But this was before Stick became aware of the nature of Morris's invention.

During the first weeks they celled together Morris spent most of his cell time reading. He had a ragged stack of paperbacks, many of which he had apparently read at least once before because whenever he started a new one he'd say, “This is a real hotdog—” and give an involved description of the plot. Stick didn't pretend to listen. He wasn't yet aware of the large handicraft box beneath the lower bunk because any sweeping or cleaning done in the cell was done by Morris.

Even when Morris went back to work, convinced that whatever Stick might be he wasn't a rat, Stick still didn't make anything out of Morris's project. He watched Morris sewing together what appeared to be strips of mattress cover, and his quick way with needle and thread only confirmed Stick's impression that Morris was corrupt material.

This went on for a week. Every night after dinner Morris would get out the mattress cover and start to work. He was fussy. He waxed the thread carefully and frequently tore apart an evening's work, only to start it over again the next night. At lights out he folded the large spread of cloth as tightly as he could and hid it in the bottom of the handicraft box. Later Stick discovered Morris had another large section made into his bed, and a third section wrapped around Stick's own mattress.

Finally Stick asked, “What you making?”

“Kitten britches,” Morris said coyly.

“I asked you what you making?”

Morris smiled with satisfaction. “I'm making you ask questions, that's what.”

Morris had reached the point where the pleasure of telling a secret had begun to seem more attractive than the pleasure of keeping it. He intended to tell. If Stick had sealed his ears like the crew of Odysseus, Morris would have jumped on him and clawed the wax loose. But Stick, not understanding this, had slid off the top bunk and reached in to grab Morris by the shirt.

“You get off me. You get off me,” Morris cried.

“You going to tell me what you're making?”

“I was going to tell you.” He leaned closer to Stick and whispered, “It's a balloon.”

Stick threw Morris back against the wall. “You think I'm a fool?”

“It is. It's a balloon.” Morris smiled secretively and sailed one hand up past his face.

“You're nuts.”

“Sure, I'm nuts.” Morris's sly smile deepened. “I'm so nuts one of these days I'm going to float right over those walls out there.”

Stick's face grew quiet. “In a balloon?” he asked softly.

In the next hour he was conducted on a full tour of Morris Price's balloon fantasy, and before the trip was finished Stick was convinced. Morris had sliced the section on balloons from an illustrated encyclopedia and Stick studied a drawing of the first balloon built by the Montgolfier brothers, rising above the fire which had caused its ascent, trailing a sausage-shaped puff of smoke. A few people stood watching and in the corner of the picture a herd of sheep grazed without interest.

“That balloon ain't carrying nobody,” Stick objected.

“No, but later they sent up a duck, a rooster, and a sheep and after that they sent up a man.”

“What happened to him?”

“Didn't nothing happen to him. He went up about eighty feet and stayed there for four minutes. They had the balloon tied down with a long rope, but they cut the next one loose and it drifted about fifteen miles. You ever notice how the wind's always blowing here?”

“Yeah, but where you going to build a fire? You think they're just going to stand by and let you build a fire?”

Morris looked triumphant. “I knew you'd ask that. Well, I ain't going to build no fire. These hot-air balloons are old stuff. I'm going to use gas.”

“All right, where you going to get the gas?”

Morris turned to the sink and punched the button that released the water. “There,” he said. “Right there.”

Stick shook his head. “You're a real rumpkin, aren't you?”

“You just ain't never heard of electrolysis. All you got to do is run an electric current through water and you got all the gas you need. Hydrogen gas, and that's the best kind.”

The hydrogen was going to be liberated in the welding shop by a friend of Morris's and stored in portable tanks. When the balloon was finished the tanks would be smuggled to the gym and hidden on the gym roof. Finally Morris would smuggle the balloon to the gym, make his way to the roof, inflate it, and—