Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [101]
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,