Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [66]
“Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed, his face contorting with sudden pain. “What I wouldn’t give to be involved!”
Then he smiled again, bitterly. “But I’m the one who dragged my imagination in here with me. What a gift!”
Later on the tall prisoner repudiated everything he had said. “I told you, I’m going out of my mind. When I get out of here I’m going to toe the old line and pay that support money to my stinking wife and never come back here as long as I live.” He got out two weeks later, and then, about six weeks after that, he came back in. This time he did not even acknowledge Jack’s hello, but went to a corner, sat down, and would not speak to anybody. A few nights later he threw his plate of stew across the tank, and was led out and taken to solitary. Jack never saw him again.
Balboa County jail was different; not much better, but certainly different. Here, the inmates of the tank ran the tank. There was a sanitary court and it was run by a man named Mac McHenry, who was judge of the court because he was strong and smart and ruthless, a natural leader. Jack came up before McHenry on Tuesday night.
It was after lights-out and the deputy was gone from the desk. Jack was lying with his hands back of his head when he saw some of the men gathering out in the bullpen, under the one light. One of them seated himself at a table, and another, a tall Negro, stood on the table, his arms folded. Four other men stood behind the seated man and the rest gathered on the sidelines. Jack was the only man still in a cell, and he pretty well knew what was going to happen. The tank was absolutely quiet. Jack lay there, wondering whether it was worth it to resist. Since he had decided to cooperate with the District Attorney, the idea of resisting seemed to have lost some of its savor. He had been resisting all his life, struggling against any encroachment on his personal self, and it had gotten him exactly nowhere, or what was even worse, it had gotten him exactly where he was; if anything, worse than nowhere. It would be so much easier to drift with events and simply let things happen. But just as he had about made up his mind to do this, two men came and tried to drag him out to the court, and he reacted automatically, his body resisting, while he thought to himself how silly it was to fight.
From his prone position he gave one of the men a short jab in the face, using his follow-through to spring up off the bunk and land the toe of his right shoe a glancing blow on the other man’s chest. On his feet, he grabbed one of the dazed men by the shirt and hit him as hard as he could on the Adam’s apple, letting him go and whirling on the other man, who was leaning against the bars, his mouth open, panting and rubbing his sore chest. Jack uppercut him on the point of the chin and the man lifted slightly and then slid to his knees before falling forward on his face. The first man had gotten through the doorway on his hands and knees and was lying doubled up on the floor of the tank, holding his throat, making hawking, wheezing noises. Blood and a thin trickle of vomit were dripping from his open mouth, and his face had turned black. Jack picked up the other man and threw him unconscious out of the cell. He stood by the doorway, waiting. All of the other men were looking at him.
The man sitting at the table was grinning. “Well, well,” he said in a soft Southern voice. “Walter, turn off the light.” The Negro who was standing on the table reached up and undid the wire mesh and quickly unscrewed the bulb. The tank went black. Jack heard rustling noises as he positioned himself directly in front of the cell door. He felt, rather than saw, the first man coming in for him, and he kicked out where he thought, hoped, the man’s groin would be, and was rewarded by a surprised scream out of the darkness as his foot sank into flesh. But that was his only moment of triumph; in a couple of seconds he felt himself pinioned, smothered by men. Nobody tried to hit him, but they kept his arms behind him and he could do nothing. They carried him out