The Widow Bereft Page 4

  When they were gone, he looked at the folded bill. Ten bucks. He lay staring into space as waves of dismay and chagrin washed over him, then slowly drained away, leaving him beached.

  On his way to the canteen to buy breakfast, he passed two trusties he knew casually. Approaching, they became suddenly involved in conversation, didn't look at him and seemingly didn't hear his greeting. Stung by the pointed rebuff, he found himself unable to muster a front to enter the crowded lunchroom where the trusties with money hung out. Instead he bought fig bars at the grocery window and walked slowly to work at the chapel.

  The hell with them. Moronic slobs. Christ, I got to find a way to cope. Or get used to it. ("Here, babe take this and get yourself something.") Black underwear? Rhinestone jockstrap? I got to turn on or die.

  He practiced furiously all morning on the piano and organ. When he returned from lunch, the chaplain called him in. He could see on the chaplain's face that it was Heat. A conclusion strengthened by the throbbing tremolo of reproach in the chaplain's voice.

  "Are you in any trouble, Ronald?"

  "Not that I know of, chaplain."

  "Mr. Darby is here and wants to talk to you. You'll find him in the chapel."

  "Yes, sir. Thank you." He went into the toilet and rapidly emptied his pockets into a handkerchief and stashed the bundle under the trash in the wastebasket. Checking his eyes in the mirror, he decided he couldn't risk wearing shades. Just have to keep looking down.

  Son of a bitch. Darby, the Assistant Supe. Little Caesar, they called him. Cons claimed he could photostat a rap sheet with his eyeballs alone. And said that he knew everything about everybody, and saved it all for when he needed it. His manner with cons was a wry alert politeness, a deference studded with snares. Alone among the officials he received a grudging respect. And the ultimate accolade: "Con-wise."

  Frantically running reels in his head, trying to remember where he might have slipped recently, Ronnie went nervously into the chapel. Darby was sitting in the choir loft inspecting a hymnbook. Short and dapper, crisply groomed, cropped gray hair, and disinterested eyes.

  "Hello, Bracken. How are you?" he said.

  "Pretty good, thank you, sir."

  "Chaplain tells me you're doing a good job with the music program here."

  "It's not exactly my bag, sir, but I do the best I can."

  "Good, good. Two more years to go, is that right?"

  "About that, sir."

  "Got a good record so far? No D.R.'s?"

  You're asking or telling? He looked at the bridge of Darby's nose briefly and dropped his gaze. There was just so much of the man-to-man, eye-to-eye bit you could hope to sell. With Darby it was important to try to compute it precisely.

  "No, sir, I haven't been written up since I've been here. Well, not quite, sir." He was startled to find himself suddenly spitballing. "Once I was gigged for an overdue library book." He smiled primly at the official, sharing a rueful knowledge of the inscrutable ways of minor bureaucrats. Why? I must be losing my mind.

  "Is that so? What was the name of the book?"

  "Gosh, I don't remember, sir."

  "It doesn't matter. I just thought you might have taken a special interest in it, to keep it overtime. Why did you move up on Trusty Range with Polack and his friends?"

  "I beg your pardon, sir?"

  "Don't give me a routine, Bracken, I'll bury you in Maximum and you'll be rapping to the roaches, chaplain's boy or no. I came over here instead of sending for you. To give you a break. You know my reputation around here, I only get visits from finks. Should I go back to the office and send for you?"

  "I -- I don't know what to say, Mr. Darby."

  "Oh c'mon, Bracken, you can think of something. Like overdue library books. Ever since you've been here you lived in the Rock. Did a good job, kept a good record. Suddenly you jump off the end of the dock. Why?"

  Ronnie felt himself losing ground under Darby's steady-rolling pressure. The first bloom of panic popped open inside him and began to grow.

  In his throat, his voice: "I lost my cell partner, sir. And I have a Trusty card. So I moved to Trusty Range for a change of scene. Kind of break up this time a little, that's all. There was a vacancy in Polack's room. I wasn't even sure who lived there, sir."

  "Well." A sour smile moved one corner of his mouth. "Sounds reasonable." He gazed into the rafters, searching for the rest of the thought. "You got a lot of gain time accumulated, son. I'd hate to see you blow it."

  Son! There it was, nitty-gritty. Trying to quell the mounting dread, he caught a breath and plunged. "I hope you won't think I'm lipping off, Mr. Darby. But I'm the one has to build this time, sir. I have to live here. I got a clean record. All of a sudden I get a choice between Maximum Security and Protective Custody. And I haven't done anything."

  Darby smiled broadly, shaking his head. "Correction, you haven't done anything today. Let's see, you were in the same cell for two years with Northrop, till he left on parole."

  Ronnie looked down at his clasped hands, trying to keep them loose.

  Let that one go by.

  "I just don't get it, Ronald. An inmate with a good job and a perfect record -- perfect on the surface at least, we understand that, don't we? Suddenly moves in with a gang of hustlers. Worse than hustlers."

  His pulse pounding, waiting to hear the Man drop the Label, Ronnie continued to look gravely at his hands.

  Darby sighed a bored sigh and stood up. Leaning against the rail of the choir loft, he reached into the pocket of his crisp short-sleeved white shirt.

  "Smoking allowed in here?"

  "Not for me, sir."

  "I'll give you -- what do they call it? Indulgence."

  Ronnie took a cigarette from the proffered pack and Darby lighted it for him. "You got a parole hearing pretty soon, haven't you? Well -- I thought I'd try. I can't help you if you won't help me. Chaplain says you're a valuable man, Ronald. Says you're the only one he's got who can play the organ."

  "Yes, sir."

  "You're over your head, Bracken. You could get into some bad shit. So protect yourself. Oh yes. You can tell your new friends about our talk if you want to. But you know how that goes. They'll only wonder how much you're holding back."

  He took a few steps and stopped, looking out over the empty pews. Half to himself he said, "From concubine to stooge. Is that up, or down?" He strolled across the sanctuary, not looking back. Across the charged silence, Ronnie barely caught the words: "Keep a good record, Bracken. Be glad you play the organ."

  Transfixed, he watched Darby go. Even numb with foreboding, he savored Darby's walk -- the dispirited trudge of a man burdened with more than he cares to know, the tireless prowl of one implacably determined to expose and examine the last remaining secret.

  Alone in the chapel, he sat stunned, his mind so clogged it was blank. He paced the long aisle, trying to decide what to do, and inevitably he went to the captain's office to see Billy.

  "Can you take a break? I got something to tell you, but I think upstairs would be better."

  In the room, Billy put some water to boil with an immersion heater. "You look shook, Ronnie. You want to turn on? I got some Dexies."

  When they had downed the capsules and were sipping the scalding coffee, Billy reclined on the bed, propping himself on an elbow.

  "All right, love. Wail."

  "Darby came to see me at the chapel today.

  " He? Came to you? The small Caesar?" Billy sat up to put a cigarette in his long holder. Seemingly absorbed in lighting up, he said, "Let's have all of it."

  When Ronnie bad finished, Billy sat nibbling the holder. Then, "I knew it. I tried to tell the stubborn bastard. Well." He looked at Ronnie as if seeing him for the first time. "I got to fill you in, my dear. You know Miller has only been captain for a few months. Since Captain Kern collapsed with penis envy or something and had to take sick leave. They didn't figure he'd be out long, so they decided to humor Miller and let him wear the King Hat for
a while." He rose and began to pace the floor, waving the gaudy holder. "Miller has political friends, if you can believe that. He also gambles, juices and chases. You couldn't expect Polack to work around him and pass up a hustle like that. He became the understanding Big Brother, The Little Sister of the Poor. Advanced Miller some bread, friendly, like. Just enough to bring him back for more. Kept raising the ante, ever so precisely. Sometimes I think he worked it out with a slide rule."

  Listening, Ronnie felt like a man descending a sand dune. With every step downward, he slid six on the shifting sand beneath his feet.

  "So how much further does Polack intend to ride it?"

  "God. I wish I knew. Most of the time I can browbeat him. But now he's got this megalomania thing that he's big time at last. Utterly nutty. Darby has suspected all along that Polack had Dickless Tracy by the scrotum. He's just trying to figure a way to cut Polack's ass in half without splattering merde all over everything. And having it get to the Commissioner in Tallahassee. Every greedy mother in Administration is hustling something , and they don't want some square inspector to come in here and shut off the merry-go-round."

  Billy stopped pacing and bent to open the cupboard. "Oh, balls. I think we need a stiff belt about now, don't you?"

  Drinking the orange juice and alcohol, he eyed Ronnie carefully over his glass. "All right now, listen closely to your old mother, dahling. This could blow us right across the river into Solitary. We're just a couple of warmhearted hustlers in a world of rape artists, right? So let's sit on this for a while, thee and me. Polack's tantrums bore the shit out of me, anyway. We play it cool and pay attention. Okay little sister? We'll finish our drinks and go back to work like decent Kelly Girls."

  Ronnie gulped the rest of the drink and went to stand looking out the windows. Something in his aspect made Billy swivel his glance to follow him.

  At length Billy said, "What's the hang-up, baby? Tell your mother."

  Turning from the window, he said, "You got to help me, Billy, or I'm going to crash. I feel like I got to turn on and never turn off again."

  There was something that hadn't been there before. Billy inspected him casually, trying to name it.

  "Turn me on, Billy baby. I got a right to sing the blues."

  "Of course I will, love. I just hope you know what you're doing. What's your pleasure?"

  "Cotton, anything, anything to twist my wig. I got to cut the balloon loose and sail for a while. Otherwise I'm going to flip."

  Billy kept him supplied with inhalers and pills from the store of confiscated drugs in the captain's office, and Ronnie took off on a journey to the remote interior of himself. During the day, he discharged his routine duties at the chapel automatically, and kept to himself as much as possible. At night he slept very little. When he had performed his connubial routine with Artie, he joined other sleepless convicts around the Trusty Barber Shop. Under the sickly glow of two small naked bulbs, they sat on benches and folding chairs, each man to himself, reading paperbacks. Sometimes during the night he would return to the room to lie on the bed, his eyes open, his mind racing, waiting for the day.

  On Sunday morning he rose in darkness, having been in bed for less than an hour -- he had to play the organ for early Mass. He swallowed some amphetamine, drank hot coffee, and gulped honey from a jar.

  A guard answered his ring to unlock the iron door off the Trusties' floor.

  It was still dark outside, and the moon was up. The long cell blocks were silent black silhouettes against the sky. He walked slowly through the dappled shadows under the live oaks, tasting the night, solitude, silence. He thought of Doug again. And again, he wished the same old wish.

  If he was still here, I could tell him about this when I got back to the cell. The hole inside was getting bigger instead of smaller.

  The Catholic priest was already at the chapel, dressing in the vestments of the Mass. He was a ruddy young Irishman of the provincial gentry with a politely disdainful manner, the high color of a wine drinker, and the sleekness of a well-kept horse. Father Aidan considered, and spoke it forth, that Mother Church had abandoned him in a swamp full of cannibals. He loathed Florida and his parish in town, and flew back to Dublin whenever he had the chance. Ronnie would watch from the organ, standing, at the altar, and wonder if the disenchanted Father Aidan had been taking a closer look at the Bride of Christ.

  He stopped at his desk to put on a big pair of shades for a barricade, and knocked on the door of the priest's office. Father Aidan looked wasted, Ronnie noted with satisfaction.

  In his Irish tenor voice and precise English accent, the priest said, "Au, here is my cherished organist. I have a couple of suggestions for you." And indicated places in the Mass where he wanted special music.

  Beautiful. He's stagestruck again. Probably do Paul Scofield or Brian Aherne this morning. We'll wail.

  At the door leading to the sanctuary, he paused to collect himself: Deliberate. Coordinate. Operate. Meticulously he navigated his way across a sea of polished floor under the gaze of those devout convicts who came early to kneel and mutter.

  Once he was seated on the organ bench, it was better. The keys of the organ regarded him expectantly and made him eager to play.

  Father Aidan made his entrance with the altar boy, and Ronnie gave him austere flourishes and fanfares, then softly improvised behind him as he moved through the Mass, always building toward the climactic Sanctus. When Father Aidan was up in the part, the music had to sustain him and even push his performance a little higher.

  Sometimes they got carried away and overblew the gig. One Mass had ended completely off the rails when Father Aidan, after giving Benedictus and Dismissal, had come to the lectern and by some circuitous ploy, launched into a bellowing rendition of "Galway Bay," ending in a florid wild Irish coda. The conservative cons had been stunned and offended.

  Now Father Aidan was leading up to the high moment of the Mass, the Sanctus. He raised the chalice high, and the long rays of the morning sun through the tall windows caught the brass cup and struck flame. Ronnie brought up the music crescendo under it, sustained, and stopped.

  From here on, it was downhill. He wondered if he had come on too strong with the movie-score music, induced by a sudden vision of Loretta Young as a nun. But no, it was all right -- at the end of the Mass, the priest was smiling, nodding his head, bowing slightly toward the organ.

  And then, to Ronnie's dismay, Father Aidan blew it again. Advancing to the lectern, he called out, with the false heartiness of an Irish tummler, "And now let us all rise and join in singing 'God Bless America."'

  Ronnie played the introduction too loudly, to express his distaste. The convicts had the words in their songbooks, but there was an unspoken law about patriotic songs, no con in his right mind would sing them. They slouched, they sagged and shuffled, and droned a low grumbling monotone of injury and complaint.

  Father Aidan bawled all the louder, making up his own words, and finished with a braying flourish that bounced off the walls. He beamed fatuously down at the organ. Ronnie, walled up behind his big shades, told the lower half of his face to smile: And there he goes, folks, the Singing Priest. From Vatican to Vegas, overnight.

  The short winter of northern Florida was coming to an end. Wandering in the isolation of an amphetamine dream, Ronnie was suddenly surprised and gratified one morning to notice the redbud trees in clouds of blossom. With the longer days, he was able to delay returning to the room until dark. He spent the time between the end of his workday and the twilight reading on a small porch at the rear of the chapel. Or wandered the prison grounds, mourning for Doug, unable to heal the pain of his loss.

  The warmer weather also brought the return of Yard Night, when the huge banks of lights on the prison recreation field were turned on for a weekly sporting event. On the first of these nights, there was a program of bouts by the boxing squad.

  Virtually the entire prison population came out for the show. Some to visit with friends they co
uld not otherwise see, most of them to enjoy the darkness and the night air as a change from the grinding bleakness of daylight existence.

  Polack and Billy, Artie and Ronnie, dressed in immaculate, freshly starched whites, went into the Rock to see the fights. Ronnie cringed at the entrance Polack insisted upon making, a promenade before the stands packed with cons, before taking seats on the top-most level, where nobody would be behind Polack. There were cracks, and some random booing, as they climbed up. The prelims were already in progress. The windup was a bout between Bud Larrabee and a highly touted newcomer to the joint.

  Ronnie saw Bud by the ring, jogging back and forth and shadow-boxing. Bud took off his robe and in his trunks came up into the stand where they were sitting. In his tentative diffident way he nodded to all of them. "Hey, whatcba say? Got some visiting wheels here tonight, huh?"