The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [46]
“Don’t I get any supper before bedtime?” Nail asked his guards before they abandoned him there.
Fat Gabe stood on tiptoe to hit him again, in the face, then slugged him in the stomach to bend him down to his own level, and backhanded him once more across the face, to knock him down. “That’s three questions you’ve ast me, Chism. When will you know better?”
Short Leg removed his handcuffs. Nail wanted to take out his dagger and slash up both of them, especially Fat Gabe, but it wasn’t the right moment yet. He had suffered worse beatings than this. He remained sitting on the floor, holding his arms around his knees.
“New boy, what’s your name?” asked one of the three men at his double-bunk. He was a young man nearly as corpulent as Fat Gabe but not as muscular. Nail Chism told them his name. He learned theirs, or, rather, their nicknames, for each man in the prison was known only by his nickname, and his sentence, or “time.” The fat one was called Toy, doing two years for stealing a bicycle. There was a thin one called Stardust, who did not look at Nail when he was introduced, who did not look at anything, who seemed to be staring at something impossibly far away. He had written bad checks and was doing three. The third one, doing five for safecracking, was a glowering, ugly, scarfaced man not as tall as Nail but more powerfully built, called, for a reason Nail never learned, Thirteen.
Nail’s bunkmates understood his name to be Nails, and thence-forward everyone called him that; it stood him in good stead, because it suggested being tough as nails, mean as nails, hungry enough to eat nails. He got a chance to earn his nickname that first night: Thirteen tried to persuade Nail to let him put his penis in Nail’s mouth; Nail declined rudely, and later, when they’d gone to bed and Thirteen was sleeping behind Nail, Thirteen tried to force himself into Nail’s anus; Nail whipped around and hit him, and Thirteen fought back viciously. The two men slugged and whomped and whacked each other all over the barracks before the night guards came in with wooden clubs and knocked them both senseless.
When Nail regained consciousness in the short hours of the morning, he found he was on the cement floor between bunks. The floor smelled of piss, tobacco spit, and shit, and it was harder than nails, but at least he had it to himself. He rolled over and cradled his head on his arm and settled himself for sleep, but he became aware of the sounds: a general steady, grinding hum of many noses snoring in unison and counterpoint, punctuated by voices mumbling in nightmares or severe dreams; occasional grunts, snorts, creaking of bedframes; and, reminding him of bullfrogs croaking on the creek-bank, a chorus of farts. He listened to this mixture of sounds for a long time until it became almost monotonous, no longer novel and interesting. He rolled over to cradle his head on the other arm. He found himself thinking, for a while, of Miss Monday. What had she said her first name was? Something he’d never heard before. Maris or Berdice or Vernice. She was a real looker, good for the eyes, classy and sniptious, spiffy and neat. In fact she was the spiffiest creature ever he’d seen. She was friendly too. And nice! Why, there’d been few women he’d ever known, his sister Irene for one, who were as nice. Had Berdice Monday really meant that about the trees? Or had she just been saying that to humor him? What call did she have to make him feel good? Anyway, he did feel real good, thinking of her, and it helped him fall asleep at last.
Hers was the first face he saw in deep