• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1186 0

wife would be out under the late sun, gardening. He would speak to her. She would straighten up, turn, smile. The glare would make it hard for him to see her smile, but he would know, and a little of it would slip away. It would take part of him with it, but it was worth it. Then he would remember that on the next day he had the run to San Quentin again. For a few seconds he would think about trading off. Or telephoning in sick. He would take another sip of beer, and then another. He would pull his hand away from the arm of the chair and light a cigarette. He would sigh, as if to clear his chest, but it wouldn’t work. His wife would sense that something was wrong, and she would suggest that they go to the drive-in movie that night with some friends. He would nod and notice that his teeth were pressed together, and he would put his hands on the muscles below his ears, rubbing them gently, trying to soften them. He would know that he ground his teeth in his sleep. His wife would have told him, and often when he took naps he would wake up with the sweet deathly taste of blood in his mouth. His face was puffy because he ate too much. Eating made him feel good. It was practically the only thing that did.

Jack daydreamed all this; the guard merely sat, his fingers on the riot gun, and sweated. Every once in a while he looked out the window at the hazy valley, as if to catch a glimpse of the view. The guard probably loathed his job, Jack thought, but didn’t have the guts or the ambition to do anything about it. But then, maybe he had no choice. He didn’t look like the kind of man who would find work easily.

“How long you been a guard?” Jack said.

The guard’s eyes wavered on Jack for a moment. “No talking,” he said.

Jack’s sympathy closed up. “But I have to take a piss,” he said.

“Me too, man,” the hard case behind Jack said. “How about we taken a piss?”

“Let’s all PISS!” Jack shouted. The words were hardly out of his mouth when he saw the gaping eye of the riot gun almost touching his nose. He giggled. “Shoot, fuckface.”

The guard across the aisle swung his gun onto Jack. “Don’t pay him no mind,” he told the first guard. “If he smarts off, crack him one.”

“Your mother sucks off niggers,” Jack informed the second guard.

“Hey, man,” came a faint protest from behind.

“Present company excepted,” Jack added.

“Well, I don’t know if I like that,” the Negro said.

“You guys shut up,” said the first guard.

“Never mind,” said the second guard. “I pity these poor guys.”

But the first guard still looked hurt. “You guys know the rules. No talking.”

“And,” added the man behind Jack, “no pissin.”

Jack got tired of the game. He lapsed into silence, and after a while the riot gun moved away from his face. He saw a smirk appear on the face of the second guard. He almost spoke. But it would have been useless; the second guard would think he had shut up out of fear, and nothing Jack said or did would change his mind, and anyway he was probably right. Jack decided the second guard was probably very happy in his work. That’s my revenge, he thought, to make him out a bastard. What about the driver? Bet he’s a bastard, too. The good guys are all chained up, and the bad guys have all the guns and salary. Hee hee.

“What’er you grinnin about?” the second guard asked him.

“Nothing. I was just plotting my escape.”

“Take us with you,” the man behind him said, and there was an odd urgency in his voice. Then he giggled. “Oh, please, man, take us with you.”

The second guard smiled. “Okay,” he said with a paternal gentleness.

Throughout the whole day, the man next to Jack had been muttering and cursing.

“Will you shut the fuck up?” Jack said to him finally. The man turned his eyes to Jack, and for a moment Jack was frightened by what he saw, an empty coldness in the eyes that seemed to go nowhere. Not dead eyes, but terribly alive and so out of place in that meek clerkly face. Jack turned away and watched the valley darken in the twilight. They were on the freeway now, among the afternoon traffic. He watched the cars surge around the old bus,