Strega - Andrew H. Vachss [69]
"Yeah," I said. "P.C." is supposed to stand for "protective custody." For guys who can't be on the main yard—informers, obvious homosexuals, guys who didn't pay a gambling debt—targets. To the cons, "P.C." means Punk City. You go in, you never get to walk the yard. You carry the jacket the rest of your life.
"They kept me locked down two weeks—no cigarettes, nothing to read, no radio—nothing. Just those niggers working on me every day. They never got tired, Burke—like they fucking loved that evil shit. Screaming about cutting pregnant white women open and pulling out the baby. One day it got real quiet. I couldn't figure it out. The trustee came with the coffee. He had a note for me—folded piece of paper. I opened it up—there was a big thick glob of white stuff inside. Nigger cum. I got sick but I was afraid to throw up—afraid they'd hear me. Then one of them whispered to me—it was so quiet it sounded like it was in the next cell. 'Lick it up, white boy! Lick it all up, pussy! We got yard tomorrow, punk. The Man letting us all out, you understand me? You lick it all up, tell me how good it was!' He was saying all this to me and all I could think of was, there was no way to kill myself in that lousy little cell. All I wanted was to die. I pissed on myself—I thought they could all smell it."
Bobby was shaking hard now. I put my hand on his shoulder, but he was lost in the fear. "I got on my knees. I prayed with everything I had. I prayed for Jesus—stuff I hadn't thought of since I was a kid. If I didn't say anything, I was dead—worse than dead. I looked at that paper with that nigger's cum on it. I went into myself—I thought about how it had to be. And I found a way to die like a man—all I wanted.
"I got to my feet. I stood up. My voice was all fucked up from not saying anything for so long, but it came out good and steady. It was so quiet everybody heard me. 'Tell me your name, nigger,' I said to him. 'I don't want to kill the wrong nigger when we go on the yard, and all you monkeys look alike to me.' As soon as the words came out of my mouth I felt different—like God came into me—just like I'd been praying for.
"Then they went fucking crazy—screaming like a pack of apes. But it was like they were screaming on some upper register…and underneath it was this heavy bass line, like in music. A chant, something. It was from the white guys in the other cells—some of them right next to me. They hadn't made a sound through all this shit, just waiting to see how I'd stand up. I couldn't hear them too good at first—just this heavy, low rumbling. But then it came through all the other stuff. 'R.B.! R.B.! R.B.!' "
Bobby was chanting the way he'd heard it back in his cell, hitting the second letter for emphasis…"R.B.! R. B.!"pumping strength back into himself.
"They kept it up. I couldn't see them, but I knew they were there. There for me. They didn't say anything else. I started to say it too. First to myself. Then out loud. Real loud. Like prayer words.
"When they racked the bars for us to hit the exercise yard—one at a time—I walked out. The sunlight hit me in the face—I almost couldn't see. I heard a voice. 'Stand with us, brother,' it said."
Bobby looked at me. His eyes were wet but his hands were steady and his mouth was cold. "I've been standing with them ever since, Burke," he said in the quiet garage. "If you got a beef with them, you got one with me."
49
I GOT TO my feet. Bobby stayed where he was. "I already told you—I got no beef with your brothers. I want to ask some questions, that's all. I'll pay my own way.
Bobby pushed himself off the floor. "You think you could find the Brotherhood without me?"
"Yeah," I told him, "I could. And if I was looking for them like you think, I wouldn't come here, right?"
He was thinking it over, leaning against the car, making up his mind.