Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [77]
Jack’s placement in the kitchen instead of one of the factories came about in this way: When he first came in he was placed in isolation, “on the shelf,” until he was brought before a counselor. The counselor had not been wary with him, and did not pretend that he knew more about Jack than Jack did, which was an unusual experience right there, and made Jack begin to feel uneasy. And yet, the counselor was not a con-lover. Jack knew these: men and women—an enormous number of women—who were simply fascinated by institutional types. They were always showing up at the orphanage or the reform school, ostensibly to observe or even to help out, but actually, as far as Jack was concerned, to satisfy their urges, to look through the bars at the wild animals. They had a certain glassy look to their eyes which Jack recognized, and the trick was to spot these people and make them give you money or candy, or, at the reform school, get the men among them aside somehow and ask them if they had a bottle in the car and would they sneak it in. On visitor’s day at the reform school some of the boys would be given the job of handling the parking lot, and these would rifle the glove get the bottle, it would probably already be stolen. Jack imagined compartments, and when the sucker sneaked out to his car to these con-lovers liked the idea of being stolen from.
But the counselor wasn’t one of these. He was a short round man with a pink face and delicate fingers, who looked as if he had a hangover. He looked through Jack’s institutional records, blinking wearily, and then smiled at Jack.
“Well, how about it? What do you want to do here?”
The question stunned Jack. Nobody had ever asked him before. He sat there and didn’t say anything. He felt very uneasy. The counselor talked on, about other matters of adjustment, and then came back. “Well, you’re here, and you’ll be here a while. Why waste the time? What do you want to accomplish?”
Again, the question frightened Jack and he did not answer. They took him back to the shelf, which was merely a section of single cells away from the main population. He knew now that San Quentin no longer had a hole. This frightened him, too. He was prepared for the hole; he was not prepared for anything else. He was afraid if he opened his mouth he would begin yelling for help. It was absurd, but that was the way he felt.
When they brought him back a couple of weeks later, the counselor smiled affably. He did not seem to have the hangover this morning, and he was quite brisk. “Well. Back again. Sorry about the long wait; the case load around here’s terrible. Now, let’s get this done, shall we? I’m going to assign you to the furniture factory for the time being. I don’t have to tell you it helps to be sort of busy around here; and there’s plenty to do. None of it’s make-work. I hope. And I’ve noticed on these records that you’re just a few semesters short of high school graduation. Would you like to finish up here? We have some pretty good instructors. You can get a certificate from the GED and the Great State of California making you a bona fide high school graduate, if you want. Then you can go to college and become a brain surgeon. Work in the plant mornings, and go to school in the afternoons. Study in the evening.