Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [148]
Then the formation was moving down the corridor, men in front of him and behind him, and as Brendan walked along to keep up he pushed the shank into the waistband of his prison-issue pants and began stuffing pages of the newspaper up under his shirt over his chest and abdomen, then around the back to cover his kidneys. The formation started down the stairs and he pulled the shank away from his skin and pushed it between the newspaper and his pants, and he wanted to thank the inmate who was helping him, but he already knew that you can’t show that kind of softness, and he prayed he didn’t owe him anything for this.
In the mess hall he sat at a long crowded table, a bowl of watery oatmeal in front of him he couldn’t eat. His mouth was dry and he kept scanning the tables for the big loud one who would make him his punk.
He looked for him for weeks.
“What happened?”
“The C.O.’s heard what he said. They moved him.”
“Anyone else come after you?” I felt nosy, like hearing someone young has died and asking the bereaved how it happened.
“No, people knew I was shivved up now. There were other fish in the sea.”
“Did you ever have to fight?”
“No. I’ve never been in a fight in my life.” Brendan was looking straight at me. “How old are you, Andre?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Me too. You go to college?”
“Yeah.”
“What years?”
I told him.
“The same years I was in the joint. Good for you for staying out of trouble.” He dropped a folded towel on his mattress beside the small neat pile of what he wore and used, and I wanted to tell him about trouble, that I hadn’t stayed out of it. Not at all.
ALAN D. called the inmates many things: animals, nut jobs, whackos, bad people. He was tall and broad-shouldered and wore brightly colored sweaters over his shirts, the collar tucked in close to his throat. He worked the day shift and always had a big smile for me when I came in to relieve him at 4:45 p.m. He’d shake my hand, then shut both office doors to brief me on anyone I should keep an eye on. Unlike the case managers whose job it was to counsel inmates, our job was to keep them in line. At least that’s how Alan saw it. When he spoke of the inmates, it was with a tone I remembered hearing as a kid from some of the cops back in Haverhill, that we were lowlifes, punks, and scum. Alan used that tone even when he talked to them, even the very dangerous like Dozer and Harlan G., both of whom would give him a look he didn’t seem to see, that they were very much looking forward to the day or night they’d find him outside of this place, outside of his job, outside of their parole. A day they were counting on coming.
“THE INMATES like you too much.” Duane was the director of this halfway house and the even bigger one in Denver. He weighed over 350 pounds and wore ties under v-necked sweaters that strained at his chest, shoulders, and gut. He had a whiskey-raw voice, and there was a haunted and intelligent light in his eyes above cheeks of broken purple capillaries. It was Monday, my off day, and he’d called me to come see him for a quick chat. We were in his office on the second floor. He sat behind his desk leaning back in an upholstered chair, and from where I sat in front of him I could see outside his window the bare branches of an oak tree, the pitched roof of a frat house on the other side of the street.
“Is that not good?”
Duane laughed. “No, that is not good. These are cons, kid. Once they get close, they’ll con you. You want them to respect you, not like you.”
But I found myself liking them, these people who’d done terrible things. “So what do I do?”
“You need to stop acting like you’re one of them.”
Heat crawled up my face and forehead; it was as if I were standing naked on a city street. “All right.”
“That’s all. It’s your day off. Go have some fun.”
I thanked