Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [62]
On Saturday he had a visitor, and was taken with the others who had visitors down the corridor, past the elevator cage, and into the long visitor’s room. The prisoners went locked together by wrist chains, led and followed by deputies carrying billy clubs, and as they passed the elevator cage, one of the prisoners moaned. The elevator cage was full of civilians, mostly women, with a sprinkling of children and men. The man probably saw his relatives, saw a look of embarrassment on their faces, and moaned out of humiliation.
The visitor’s room wasn’t really a room, but a series of cubicles. Each prisoner selected a cubicle and stood in it. There was a thick glass, and a telephone. On the other side of the glass was exactly the same thing, and the visitor walked along, looking for the familiar face. They talked over the telephones. It was always very noisy and confusing. Long-time prisoners who were already convicted of a misdemeanor went to a different place, where they could actually sit with their families or friends, under the eyes of two deputies. This room had easy chairs and couches, and a nice view of the distant vineyards and the mountains beyond, through the meshed windows.
Jack wondered who his visitor could possibly be, knowing it was not his lawyer, because they had small private rooms for legal conferences. He was surprised, then, to see Mona on the other side of the glass, making a girlish face at the arrangement. When she saw Jack she smiled and picked up her telephone.
“Are you mad at me?” she asked him. She cupped the phone against her cheek and shoulder and held her hands out in a gesture of helplessness, as if to suggest that destiny was being unkind to both of them. She was wearing a man’s Pendleton shirt and Levis cut off above the knees. Her hair was combed out straight and there was a bright yellow bandeau holding it back rather primly. She looked about thirteen, Jack thought, without all her makeup. It made him feel better, not worse, to see her looking so young and almost innocent. Not really innocent; there was still that expression of rapacious stupidity around her eyes, makeup or not. Jack felt an uncontrollable desire to act as if he didn’t mind being in jail, and he grinned and stuck out his tongue at her. “I aint mad,” he said. “Just horny.”
“I had to,” she said. “They would have put me in reform school for just years.” She told him her version of what had happened, and he listened quietly. He wondered why she had bothered to come and tell him. She said, “I can’t understand why that man made me say you had a gun. Mister Forbes says the gun part could get you into terrible trouble. He wanted me to change my story, but Daddy says if I don’t stick to it he’ll make me go to boarding school.” She made a face. “Wouldn’t that be awful?” She put a hand over her eyes in dismay. “I mean, not as bad as this place. But still, who wants to go to boarding school with a bunch of little lesbians?” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Is it shitty in there?”
“I’ve been in worse places,” Jack admitted.
“This town’s a real drag. After the trial’s over, I’m going to take off for LA or Las Vegas or someplace. San Francisco’s a real drag, too. Nothing to do at all.”
“Why don’t you take off right now, if you’re gonna take off?” Jack wanted to know. “Then there won’t be any trial.”
“Daddy says if I take off again he’ll find me and then they’ll put me in reform school. I just can’t.” Her face looked sincerely upset for a moment. “Don’t think I don’t want to. Me and Sue both. Sue hates me. But she signed one, too. She copied hers from mine. Goddam it, I didn’t want to!”
“Forget it,” Jack said, not because he didn’t wish she would run away, but because he knew she would not, and he sensed that the guiltier she felt, the worse it would be for him; she would reach out for something outside herself to blame, and there he would be, an easy and helpless target. He wanted her to feel nice toward him, not guilty. “Listen,” he said. “It