Klein suddenly remembered where they were and what was going on around them. He had been lost in the blank discs of Abbott’s eyes. The sepulchral silence that the eyes had thrown over him vanished like smoke. Again came the keening of the wounded man. With the smoky silence went God. Klein was once again a convict with parole in his pocket and a riot to survive.
‘You are right,’ said Abbott.
‘What?’ said Klein.
‘This isn’t the time or place to die,’ said Abbott.
‘I’m glad you agree,’ said Klein. ‘We stay here for a day, two days, we’ll be fine. We can take it in turns to sleep.’
‘We can look after each other,’ said Abbott.
‘That’s right,’ said Klein. ‘No one else is going to.’
As he finished speaking, looking into Abbott’s big open face, Klein felt a sudden self-disgust. They could look after each other. Yeah. Until that triple set of gates under Hobbes’s tower opened in front of him one by one, and then it would be fare thee well, Polly my dear, but I must be on my way, and Klein would be gone. And after that Abbott could go back to his sewer and take care of himself. The shackles round Klein’s God’s ankles cut deeper into his divine flesh. Perhaps it was shameful but Klein the man just wanted to get outside and drink that orange juice and take that shower and lie on damp sheets with Juliette Devlin. He’d had enough of pain and fear, his own and everyone else’s. Even after thirty-four months in this shitsack he wasn’t hard enough. His nerve-ends, dulled as they were, needed to be dulled further. Yet if he could get through those gates the dulling wouldn’t be necessary any more. He could even let the nerve-ends grow again.
For Abbott and the others it was different, wasn’t it? They were on a different set of tracks to him; always had been. Klein thought of the research Devlin had designed to answer her great question: is it harder to die if you are a guy with a future than if you are a poor illiterate scumbag with nothing to look forward to but six feet of stony ground in Potter’s Field? The chaos boiling up in Klein’s guts shouted ‘You bet your fucking life it’s harder.’ He searched for the hard tight ball high up in his chest where he’d packed away all his fear. It had gone: dissolved, broken apart and flooded down into his colon, his rectum, his balls, turning his muscles to lard and his blood to milk and water. His eyes flickered back and forth from the dripping water at the door to Abbott’s slab-like face, and then to the john where any minute now he knew he would have to shit out what felt like his life. His heart kicked him ten to the dozen in his chest. A monstrous wave of panic gathered within him and rose towering, hovering, above him, ready to wash him away.
A simple thought, that hadn’t occurred to him before, thumped into his mind: for the next few hours the dirty little patch of land contained within these prison walls was probably the most lawless piece of turf on the entire surface of the planet. Not only that, but it was swarming with some of the most violent men in history.
The wave above him trembled unsteadily. Maybe staying put in the cell was crazy. With the gun he could make it. It was possible. He could sneak through the block, down by General Purposes, out across the yard. Now, while there was still light to travel by. Once it got dark anything could happen. He could see the main gate in front of him. He could see Bill Cletus ordering it open, feel the cool, comforting pressure of the handcuffs as they accepted his surrender, his innocence, as they bundled him away to spend his last few hours of confinement in the safety of a small town jail in another county, miles from Green River, miles from Coley and Agry and Abbott and Grauerholz, miles from the stink and the screams and the blood. Now’s the time, man. Once night fell it would be suicide to move around out there. Now’s your chance.
Klein lurched to his feet from the stool. His legs trembled. He grabbed the bars of the cell door. The wave was still there, looming far above his head. Suddenly he knew that he had to let it come. If he tried to run in front of it the wave would catch him and take him down, would smash him apart on the rocks of panic, impale him on the shank of some drunken killer who smelled his fear. The wave began to move and Klein threw himself upon its mercy.
Deep breaths. His knuckles turned white as he clung to the bars. Take deep breaths you fucker. The panic wave swept over him, pinning him to the door. His eyes stung with sweat. A noise he couldn’t decipher escaped from his mouth. Deep breaths. His thighs and belly pressed into the steel as his knees buckled beneath him. Deep. Breaths. Burning spasms wracked his anus, his bladder, his glans. He wondered if he were shitting and pissing himself, he couldn’t tell, and even at this extremity a voice of shame in his head wished that Abbott weren’t here to smell his excrement. Deep breaths. At last he heaved in a ragged breath, held it for a second, let it go. Count it. Count and breathe. One to ten. He counted one to ten. Put that hard tight ball back together. One to ten.
The wave rode over him and receded into the twilight. Slowly, slowly, Klein put the ball back together and pulled himself up into it. The different parts of his body reconnected with each other. His shirt was drenched with sweat and clung to his skin. Suddenly he shivered. His legs promised to hold him up. He let go of the bars. His clenched and trembling sphincter assured him he hadn’t shat his load; yet; but if he didn’t get to the john he soon would.
With an effort Klein turned round. Abbott stared at him.
‘You look white,’ said Abbott.
Klein realised that the panic attack which had seemed like half a lifetime in fact hadn’t lasted more than a few seconds. He nodded to Abbott.
‘Watch the door for me,’ said Klein.
He walked with careful, clenched steps to the toilet and drew the blanket curtain aside. He unbuckled his belt. As he dropped his pants and sat down Klein emptied himself in a great foaming rush. Parole board, Hobbes, Nietzsche, God, riot, and several yards of shit – the whole stinking mess just poured out and Klein was filled with an astonishing sense of peace. He heard angels singing. He let out a beatific groan of gratitude. From beyond the curtain came Abbott’s voice.
‘Are you alright, Doctor?’
And Klein laughed. He laughed a great raw, belly shaking laugh and inhaled deeply of his own deflatus. God was it foul. He laughed again.
‘I’m great,’ he called back to Abbott. And it was true. If he’d ever felt better than he did now, squatting on the john behind the blanket, then he couldn’t remember when. Klein recalled that Martin Luther had conceived the Protestant Reformation in a similarly transcendent bowel motion, and now he understood why. He took a wad of toilet tissue and wiped the sweat from his brow. Marvellous. He took another and wiped his ass. He paused, listened. The guy who’d been screaming had stopped. Klein stood up and buttoned his pants and as he flushed it all away he raised his hand in a salute. He felt ready for anything.
Perhaps that was just as well for Abbott called out, ‘Someone is coming.’
Klein whipped the curtain aside and stepped back into the cell. In front of the half-closed cell door Claude Toussaint appeared in the garb of Claudine Agry.
Klein grinned. ‘It’s the Rose of San Antone.’
Claudine was wearing a tight red silk dress and high heels and she looked like she’d dressed in a hurry because her genitals made an unsightly bulge in the front of the skirt. Her face had been lavishly made up, but was now smudged with sweat and tears. She looked at Klein with wide, haunted eyes. Klein’s grin faded.
‘Klein?’
Klein stepped towards her. The elation of a moment before was already a fast fading memory. Claudine tottered into the cell and threw her arms around his neck.
‘What’s wrong?’ said Klein. He took hold of Claudine’s arms and held her back so he could see her face.
Claudine turned her head into her shoulder. She looked distraught. ‘It’s all my fault.’
‘Keep calm,’ said Klein, ‘and tell me what’s wrong.’
Claudine bit her lips, then said, ‘Nev’s sent Grauerholz to the infirmary. I think he wants them all killed.’
For a second the information didn’t register.
‘All who?’ said Klein.
‘All of them all!’ sobbed Claudine. ‘Coley, Wilson. The Aids guys.’
In a dungeon in a cavern in a mine ten thousand miles deep inside him Klein heard the clinking of cosmic shackles suddenly wrenched against divine flesh.
‘Why?’ Klein’s voice was cold.
Claudine squirmed against his grip. ‘You’re hurting me.’
Klein’s hands clenched tighter on her arms. He shook her.
‘Why, goddamn it? Look at me.’
Claudine looked at him. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.
Claudine fell against his chest sobbing. Klein let go of her arms and held her. He stared over her head at Abbott and Abbott stared back, his great empty eyes seeing all the way into him. The vertiginous feeling returned. The shoes of the madman. Klein pulled Claudine’s chin up.
‘Okay,’ Klein said. ‘Better take me to see Nev Agry.’
TWENTY-ONE
JULIETTE DEVLIN, SITTING on the table of the sick bay office, unstrapped her watch from her wrist and made a deliberate effort not to look at the time. She had checked it so often since the Korean CO – she couldn’t remember his name – had shoved her inside the office and told her to stay put that time had slowed to a crawl. The evident seriousness of the situation – the fireball, the gunshots, the men spilling out into the yard – had clicked her mind into what she thought of as sensible-little-lost-girl mode. Stay put and keep calm until Mommy came to find you or a friendly policeman asked you where you lived. Neither the Korean nor Galindez had returned to take her home. She had concluded that both of them had to be killed or captured. The rapid gunshots from the walls had died down several hours ago. Since then she had heard only four rifle shots, randomly spaced. The telephone on the table was dead and she had given up expecting it to ring. The last time she’d looked at her watch she had finally remembered a fact so obvious that she must have been blocking her recollection of it: she’d signed the visitors’ book declaring that she had left the prison.
No one knew she was in there.
Devlin dropped the wristwatch on the floor and stamped on it twice with the heel of her boot. The glass case cracked. When she stamped on it a third time the glass shattered to dust and the hands were shaved off the face. For a moment she felt better. Time immediately speeded up a little. It may not have been a sensible thing to do but that mode was past its sell-by date. The little lost girl would soon start blubbering. Staying in this room was driving her crazy. Devlin thought of the two and a half thousand men trapped with her behind Green River’s granite walls. They hadn’t had sex with a woman for, what? Say an average of five years each. A cumulative total of over ten thousand years. That was a long time to go without a fuck, and a lot of these guys had an extra Y chromosome. Devlin reached for the crumpled pack of Winstons and rummaged inside.
There was only one cigarette left.
A sense of panic hit her, immediately replaced by one of relief. It was perfect. If there was one situation more serious than being trapped alone in a prison riot it was being trapped just about anywhere without any cigarettes. It gave her the excuse she needed to abandon sensible little lost girl and get out of this yellow room. Devlin stuck the Winston in her mouth and defiantly lit it.
There were two doors out of the office. One led into the corridor to the main exit and Crockett Ward. The other door led into a small shower room and beyond that to the dispensary. Devlin walked over to the second door, took a drag on her cigarette and went through.
The shower room was tiny and tiled in pale green, a colour which heightened the slight smell of mould. There was a wash basin in one wall below a discoloured patch where a mirror had once been fixed. Opposite the basin were two shower stalls in shallow porcelain tubs. One of the stalls still boasted a tattered plastic curtain. Klein had once told her that one of the main attractions of working in the infirmary was being able to take a shower in private. Devlin’s shirt was damp with the steady trickle of her sweat but she wasn’t tempted. She walked out of the opposite door into the dispensary.
The lights were on. The dispensary contained a long wooden lab bench with two built-in sinks. The walls were lined with shelves stacked with basic medical supplies: drip feeds, cartons of specimen bottles, syringes, needles; plastic bags of saline and dextrosaline; dressings, swabs, adhesive tape. One section of shelves was stacked with drugs: mainly antibiotics and tranquillisers. At the other end of the dispensary a pair of swing doors led onto the corridor. Standing bent over the table, his weight braced on the palms of his hands, was Earl Coley. Devlin recognised him by his bulk for his head was covered by a white towel. From beneath the towel came the sound of a deep inhalation followed by a series of shallow, stuttering grunts.
‘God-damn,’ sighed Coley from under the towel.
Coley’s body sagged and he shifted his weight from his hands to his elbows. He showed no sign of having heard her enter the room. Devlin wondered if he were sick. She walked towards him.
‘Coley? You okay?’ she said.
Coley jumped back from the table, startled, dragging the towel from his head.
‘Muthafucka!’ gasped Coley.
His eyes wobbled in his skull. He focused on Devlin, recognised her.
‘Jesus Christ.’
He relaxed and leaned back against the wall. He closed his eyes and clutched a hand to his chest and took some deep breaths. He staggered over to one of the sinks, turned the tap on full blast and ducked his head underneath it. As the cold water cascaded over his head and neck he muttered a long stream of obscenities, amongst which Devlin heard the word ‘bitch’ occur several times. Coley straightened up and rubbed his face with the towel. On the lab bench where he’d been standing was a half-gallon bottle made of dark brown glass. Coley lowered the towel and looked at her. Devlin shuffled.
‘Hi,’ she said.
Coley didn’t answer. Devlin raised her cigarette to her lips.
‘Shit, man.’ Coley sprang forward and clamped his hand over the mouth of the brown bottle. He grabbed a plastic top from the table and screwed it onto the neck of the bottle.
‘This stuff’s flammable as hell. You wanna blow us all away?’
Devlin immediately understood. She walked to the sink and stuck the cigarette into the still running water. She turned the tap off and threw the damp butt into a waste bin.
‘Ether?’ she said.
Coley nodded sullenly. He picked up the brown bottle and took it to a cupboard. He put the bottle inside, shut the cupboard and slotted a small padlock through the hasp. He turned back to Devlin.
‘Time to time it helps me wind down,’ said Coley. ‘I ain’t no addict.’
‘I didn’t think you were,’ said Devlin.
‘I don’t take no valium, smack, weed, nothin’.’ He stared at her defensively. ‘Shit I don’t even smoke.’
‘Coley, it’s okay,’ said Devlin. ‘In the old days half the anaesthesiologists in the country would take a hit of ether from time to time.’
Coley relaxed. ‘Just din’t want you to think it interfered with my job.’
Coley went over to a cardboard box half-full of paper towels. He tipped the towels out onto the floor and carried the box over to the bench.
‘What the hell you doin’ here anyway?’
‘I was looking for some more cigarettes,’ said Devlin.
‘No shit,’ said Coley. ‘What’s wrong with 7–11? I thought I tol’ Klein to get rid of you.’
‘He did,’ said Devlin. ‘I came back.’
‘What the fuck fo’?’
‘I told you this morning, I’ve got something to show you and Klein.’
‘Well you surely picked the right day for it.’
Coley walked over to the drug shelf and grabbed two plastic tubs. He checked the labels and took them over to the cardboard box. He twisted the lids off and poured a stream of white tablets into the box.
r /> ‘Do you know what’s going on?’ asked Devlin.
Coley shrugged. ‘Guys stabbin’ each other, robbin’ each other, gettin’ drunk and stoned. Usual riot stuff.’
‘It’s happened before?’
‘Last race riot was ’bout four year since but that was just a bunch of Mexicans and niggers fucked each other up in the machine shop. This different. Ain’t had nothin’ near this big before. Guys in here’ll tell you ’bout Atlanta, New Mexico, though. Cons take over the whole joint, blacks kill the whites, whites kill the Mexicans, Mexicans kill each other and maybe a few Chinks and Indians too. That’s what we lookin’ at now.’
‘What will happen?’
Coley went to the shelves and took down some more plastic tubs. He spoke over his shoulder.
‘When they get tired of the killin’ and the cuttin’ the warden ’ll send in the guard and maybe they’ll kill a few mo’. We all on punishment, no privileges, maybe lockdown, fo’ a few weeks, then I guess we all get ready fo’ the next one.’
He saw something in her face and smiled gently. ‘Don’t worry, Doctah Devlin. We safe enough in here.’ He showed her the tubs of pills. ‘Specially we get rid of this shit.’
He emptied the tubs into the box.
Devlin walked over and took an empty tub from Coley’s hand. The label read: Tab Thorazine 50mg. She looked at Coley.
‘Only thing we got that they’ll want is drugs. Anything’ll make ’em high. Or low. Pref’rably stone cold unconscious. They’ll be comin’ for ’em sooner or later. But that’s okay with us, right?’
‘If you say so,’ said Devlin.
‘Better they on thorazine and benzos than coke and speed and booze.’ He smiled again. ‘You wanna give me a hand?’
Devlin smiled. ‘Sure.’
They went through the bottles and tubs on the shelves and pulled down anything that might have some psychotropic activity. Valium, quinalbarbitone, temazepam, haldol, fluphenazine, stelazine. Tablets, capsules, ampoules. The bottom of the box became a kaleidoscope of multicoloured chemicals. Devlin was no longer surprised by the quantity of major tranquillisers stocked by what was nominally a small general hospital unit, though on first arrival she had been. She saw Coley reach for a large container of Amitriptyline.