In Cold Blood - Truman Capote [128]
were people to talk to, a plentiful turnover of drunkards, forgers, wife-beaters, and Mexican vagrants; and Dick, with his light-hearted "con-man" patter, his sex anecdotes and gamy jokes, was popular with the inmates (though there was one who had no use for him whatever - an old man who hissed at him: "Killer! Killer!" and who once drenched him with a bucketful of dirty scrub water). Outwardly, Hickock seemed to one and all an unusually untroubled young man. When he was not socializing or sleeping, he lay on his cot smoking or chewing gum and reading sports magazines or paperback thrillers. Often he simply lay there whistling old favorites ("You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby," "Shuffle Off to Buffalo"), and staring at an un-shaded light bulb that burned day and night in the ceiling of the cell. He hated the light bulb's monotonous surveillance; it disturbed his sleep and, more explicitly, endangered the success of a private project - escape. For the prisoner was not as unconcerned as he appeared to be, or as resigned; he intended taking every step possible to avoid "a ride on the Big Swing." Convinced that such a ceremony would be the outcome of any trial - certainly any trial held in the State of Kansas - he had decided to "bust jail. Grab a car and raise dust." But first he must have a weapon; and over a period of weeks he'd been making one: a "shiv," an instrument very like an ice pick - something that would fit with lethal niceness between the shoulder-blades of Undersheriff Meier. The weapon's components, a piece of wood and a length of hard wire, were originally part of a toilet brush he'd confiscated, dismantled and hidden under his mattress. Late at night, when the only noises were snores and coughs and the mournful whistle-wailings of Santa Fe trains rumbling through the darkened town, he honed the wire against the cell's concrete floor. And while he worked he schemed. Once, the first winter after he had finished high school, Hickock had hitchhiked across Kansas and Colorado: "This was when I was looking for a job. Well, I was riding in a truck, and the driver, me and him got into a little argument, no reason exactly, but he beat up on me. Shoved me out. Just left me there. High the hell up in the Rockies. It was sleeting like, and I walked miles, my nose bleeding like fifteen pigs. Then I come to a bunch of cabins on a wooded slope. Summer cabins, all locked up and empty that time of year. And I broke into one of them. There was firewood and canned goods, even some whiskey. I laid up there over a week, and it was one of the best times I ever knew. Despite the fact my nose hurt so and my eyes were green and yellow. And when the snow stopped the sun came out. You never saw such skies. Like Mexico. If Mexico was in a cold climate. I hunted through the other cabins and found some smoked hams and a radio and a rifle. It was great. Out all day with a gun. With the sun in my face. Boy, I felt good. I felt like Tarzan. And every night I ate beans and fried ham and rolled up in a blanket by the fire and fell asleep listening to music on the radio. Nobody came near the place. I bet I could've stayed till spring." If the escape succeeded, that was the course Dick had determined upon - to head for the Colorado mountains, and find there a cabin where he could hide until spring (alone, of course; Perry's future did not concern him). The prospect of so idyllic an interim added to the inspired stealth with which he whetted his wire, filed it to a Umber stiletto fineness.
Thursday 10 March. Sheriff had a, shake-out. Searched through all the cells and found a shiv tucked under D's mattress. Wonder what he had in mind (smile). Not that Perry really considered it a smiling matter, for Dick, flourishing a dangerous weapon, could have played a decisive role in plans he himself was forming. As the weeks went by he had become familiar with life on Courthouse Square, its habitués and their habits. The cats, for example: the two thin gray toms who appeared with every twilight and prowled the Square, stopping to examine the cars parked