‘Hey, Honey,’ called Agry. ‘We got a visitor. Get some clean glasses out.’
‘Is he staying for dinner?’ asked Claudine.
Klein’s head whirled slightly. But maybe Claude was right. Join Agry in his fantasy and you were safe. For a while. The rear sallyport creaked open a foot and a group of Agry’s men, huddled at the back of the block, rushed towards it. Agry brought up his gun and fired indiscriminately three times. The men scattered and two of them fell, squirming and shouting out.
‘Cocksuckers,’ muttered Agry. He turned back to Claudine and smiled. ‘That’s real nice, honey, but I don’t think we’ll have time. Come on in, Klein.’
They went in and sat down around the table and Agry put a tape on. Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys swung into the intro to ‘San Antonio Rose’. Claudine poured Maker’s Mark into empty fruit jars. Agry offered Klein a Lucky. If Klein ever was to have a last smoke, he didn’t want it to be with Agry. He shook his head.
Agry dropped the automatic on the table and swigged a gulp of liquor. He gestured towards the door.
‘Those cocksuckers don’t know what this is all about. But you do, don’t ya, Doc?’
Klein sipped his drink. It was good, but not as good as Doherty’s. The gun was a foot closer to Agry’s hand than to Klein’s. Across the table Claudine was closest but she wasn’t looking at the gun. She stared at Klein with frantic eyes and fractionally nodded her head as if to say ‘Humour the mad muthafucka.’
Klein shrugged. ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’
‘Let’s put it this way. Look at you. You went through hell and high water, just to be with that lady of yours in the infirm’ry. Didn’t even think you’d get out alive, but you had to be there. Am I right?’
Klein nodded. ‘Yeah. You’re right.’
Agry slapped the table with his hand. ‘I knew it. We’re just the goddamned same. You and me. Only guys in the whole fucken joint understand what it’s about.’
‘. . . It was there I found, beside the Alamo,
Enchantment strange as the blue up above . . .’
As Agry heard the song his eyes crinkled at the edges. His voice was getting more slurred with each gulp of whiskey. ‘Love, Klein. The real thing. All this,’ he waved his hand to indicate the destruction all around them. ‘All this for love. She never really believed me before.’ He looked at Claudine. ‘Did you, babe?’
Claudine didn’t dare answer. Agry stroked her cheek, turned back to Klein.
‘You heard of the Taj Mahal, Doc, in India? Sure you have.’
Klein nodded.
‘Well it ain’t no palace or castle like most folk think. It’s a love gift some guy built for his lady. It’s a box of fucken chocolates. Now ain’t that somethin’?’
Klein nodded again and took another sip of his drink.
‘This is my Taj Mahal, for her.’
He leaned over and kissed Claudine. Klein glanced again at the gun. No way. And he could not fight Agry hand to hand. Not in the shape he was in. He had to take a chance on Claudine. Or better, Claude.
‘The face that launched a thousand ships,’ said Klein.
Agry pulled away from Claudine. ‘Say, that’s good,’ said Agry. ‘Real good. Kind of grand.’
‘I’m glad you like it,’ said Klein. ‘When did you first meet, Claude?’
Claude glanced at him.
‘Ain’t no Claude round here,’ snarled Agry.
‘When?’ said Klein.
‘I’d been up six months,’ said Claude, in his own voice. ‘So it was just under four years since.’
Klein looked Agry in the eye. ‘Then you already knew you had the virus.’
‘What virus?’ said Claude.
‘Why didn’t you tell her?’ said Klein.
There was a long pause while Agry stared at Klein, his drunken face lurching from one emotion to another as he struggled to cope.
‘He was just another long-legged nigger with lips,’ blurted Agry. ‘What did I care?’
He turned on Claude. ‘And you were gonna run out on me, you bitch. With your fucking parole. I gave you . . .’
‘Did Hobbes tell you that?’ said Klein.
Agry barely looked at Klein as he backhanded him across the face. Klein plunged to the floor. The floor felt marvellous, the flagstones soft as goose down. Unconsciousness lured him with a sweet lullaby of buzzing in his ears. Above the buzzing he vaguely heard Agry bleating on in a whiney voice.
‘I gave you everyfuckenthing I had, I gave you the best, I gave you my life, I made you, you bitch, and you pay me back by running out. You didn’t even fucking ask . . .’
Klein was dropping off. He felt like he was trying to sleep in a fleabag motel with a noisy couple in the next room. Suddenly a piercing voice, all woman, a shriek of inchoate fury, penetrated his somnolence more effectively than the gunshot had.
‘You gave me Aids you cocksucking faggot muthafuckaaa!’
The last vowel was drawn out into an incredible screech of outrage. Agry’s bleating response was swamped by the sound.
‘You knew! You knew and you still pumped me with your stinking jissom. For years. You faggot. You faggot.’
Klein crawled to his knees. He grabbed the bars to haul himself up. Behind him was a scraping of chairs, a bump, then the sound of Agry blubbering with remorse. Klein turned. Agry was on his knees, his hands clasped before him. Above him stood Claudine, definitely Claudine, her eyes blazing. In her hand was the fat automatic, pointed at Agry’s tear-stained face.
‘But I love you, Claudine!’
Claudine shot him three times in the chest. In the enclosed space the sound was deafening. Burnt cordite drifted into Klein’s nostrils. And that was it. It was Claudine after all, and not Claude as he had thought, that had found the necessary rage. Claudine threw the gun onto the table and sat down, staring into space. After a moment Klein started to hear things again. And Claudine started crying. Klein went and held her head against his chest.
‘The thing of it is,’ said Claudine, between sobs, ‘he really did. Love me. No one ever did before.’
‘Yeah,’ said Klein, ‘it’s a bitch.’
She looked up at him to see if he was serious and he shrugged and smiled.
‘What the hell, Claude. Let’s go before the National Guard shoot our nuts off. You still got a pair, remember?’
Claudine sniffled and wiped her nose and in a twinkle she was gone forever. Claude ripped off his red brassiere.
‘Shit. Brothers see me like this they won’t need the National Guard. Muthafuckas’ll die laughin’.’
He started to peel off his panties and stopped, embarrassed.
‘You go on,’ he said. ‘I’m gonna get changed.’
Klein picked up the gun and ejected the clip and jacked the shell from the chamber. He put the ammo in his pocket and left. The block was empty. Agry’s men had deserted him. In the gateway stood Wilson and three of his Bloods.
‘Fuck, man, we was just about to come in and get you.’
Behind them Stokely Johnson had been wheeled up on his laundry trolley to where he could see into D. Back of Johnson the atrium was still crowded with several hundred men. Klein pulled the ammo from his pocket.
‘Agry’s dead,’ he said. ‘Your man Claude blew him away.’
He threw the ammo at Stokely’s feet. Stokely’s eyes hooded with grudging respect.
‘I guess it’s Miller Time,’ said Wilson.
Klein grinned. Then something caught the periphery of his vision from above. He looked up.
‘Not yet,’ he said.
On the balcony that encircled the base of the glass dome Warden Hobbes came out of a door at the corner where the great walls of B and C blocks came together. Without looking down Hobbes made his way around the balcony.
‘Warden!’ shouted Klein. ‘It’s over!’
His voice was drowned out by the jeers and catcalls of the convicts. Hobbes was carrying something in his left hand, Klein couldn’
t see what, a briefcase maybe. At least it wasn’t a machine gun. In the dim light it was hard to make out Hobbes’s face. He circled the balcony until he was almost above them and stopped. Wilson held up his hands for quiet but the inmates still had a lot of anger in them aching to be vented. The yelling and jeers continued. Hobbes raised his hand and rested the case on the balcony rail: it was a black plastic two gallon container. Without speaking Hobbes unscrewed the cap and started to pour the contents over his own body.
Gasoline bounced off Hobbes’s suit and showered down onto the men below. They shoved backwards out of the way, into the press of bodies. Klein felt a flutter of panic in his belly. The panic was reflected in a wave through the crowd. The catcalls changed to exclamations of fear. Hobbes was drenched in gas. Klein glanced down and noticed what some of the others had. Johnson’s stockpile of fuel oil was stacked on the floor beneath where Hobbes was standing.
‘Better get ’em out of here,’ said Klein
Wilson raised his voice, ‘We movin’, muthafuckas! Every which way! Come on now!’
There was a blind surge towards the General Purposes wing.
‘I said every which way! Use the block gates!’
No one seemed to hear him. At the edges a few men peeled away into the mess hall, C block, B, but most of them were caught up in the press towards the General Wing and the main gates. Wilson was sending men down D. Stokely Johnson’s laundry trolley was pushed over in the crush. Stokely jumped from his chair and crashed into Klein.
‘Use A,’ said Klein.
As Stokely fought his way towards the gate of A block, directing men to follow him, Klein looked up at Hobbes. Hobbes had set the gas can down and was making a speech to the inmates. Amidst the tumult Klein couldn’t hear a word he was saying. Hobbes all of a sudden appeared incredibly frail and old, withered inside his own skin. With his sodden, dripping clothes and his speech that nobody could hear he was a pitiful sight. Hobbes wiped his hands on a white handkerchief and dabbed his brow. Then from his inner pocket he pulled out a book of matches.
‘Let’s go, man,’ said Wilson. ‘Back down D.’
If Hobbes immolated himself now and ignited the fuel oil there were still a lot of men going to get killed or badly burned.
‘Warden!’ bellowed Klein. ‘Hobbes!’
Hobbes glanced towards him. For a moment Klein caught a glimpse of the implacable despair carved into the warden’s features, then Hobbes turned away. He ripped a match from the book.
As Klein turned to make a run for the rear gate of D he froze.
A second figure was moving along the balcony towards Hobbes.
The figure was so huge he had to stoop under the panes of the great glass dome. He dripped blood from a dozen wounds and was caked from head to toe in slime and filth. On his head was crammed a baseball cap crested with a white X.
Henry Abbott had risen from the prison’s deep to join Warden Hobbes at its height.
Klein’s heart stuck in his throat.
Hobbes scraped the match along the scratch paper. The match did not light. Again, again he scraped. Nothing. He ripped off another match, tried again. He turned as Henry Abbott’s shadow fell across him. As the match flared Abbott reached out, as delicate as a bird, and snuffed the flame between his thumb and forefinger. Hobbes leaned backwards over the balcony in terror. Abbott took Hobbes’s arm and pulled him back. Then he bent his head forward and whispered something in Hobbes’s ear. Hobbes froze, staring into Abbott’s face. As if hypnotised Hobbes slowly raised his hand and pulled something from the breast pocket of his jacket. A piece of paper. He opened it and glanced at it in his palm. Henry Abbott opened his arms and enfolded Hobbes into his breast and squeezed. There was no struggle. As Klein watched Hobbes’s final embrace Abbott stared down at him with his bright new eyes and Klein shivered but did not look away.
When Hobbes was no longer breathing Abbott bent down and hoisted him over his shoulder, like a sack of cement. Hobbes hung there, his eyes staring. Abbott looked down at Klein and raised his hand. Klein swallowed and raised his own hand in return. Abbott turned and walked away. From Hobbes’s limp fingers the piece of paper fluttered down into the emptying atrium. Then Abbott and his burden dipped into the dark rectangle of the balcony doorway and disappeared into silence.
The evacuation was almost over. Klein walked across the atrium and picked up the folded scrap of paper that Hobbes had dropped. It was soggy with gasoline. He opened it. The gas had dissolved the ink of the writing inside into a muddy green blur. The only words Klein could make out, and only then with uncertainty, were:
‘. . . sweet delight.
‘. . . endless night’
Klein put the paper in his pocket and joined Wilson at the back of the queue.
The yard was crowded with convicts and the air was thick with the baying of loudhailers, one minute Captain Cletus, the next some fool Colonel in the National Guard, each giving different instructions. The main gates were barred by a line of soldiers with fixed bayonets.
‘This gonna take hours,’ said Wilson.
Klein nodded. The idea of a few hours’ sleep on the concrete seemed like all he could ever wish for. Through the milling crowd he saw Devlin approaching. With her came Galindez, his arm in a sling, and a fresh-faced guardsman nervously clutching a nightstick. Relief came over Devlin’s face as she spotted them.
‘You’re okay,’ said Devlin.
‘Go home,’ replied Klein ‘It’s still dangerous in here.’
‘You don’t know where my home is,’ said Devlin.
‘I’ll find it,’ said Klein.
She nodded and smiled. ‘You’d better.’
She turned to Wilson. ‘I wanted to say goodbye to the Whirlwind.’
Devlin held out her hand, a little awkwardly, and Wilson shook it. Whatever it was she palmed to him, she didn’t make the best of jobs of it. Klein glanced at Galindez. He was staring conspicuously in the opposite direction, at a soldier of no interest at all on the other side of the yard. The young guardsman was too busy controlling his bladder to notice anything. Wilson pulled Devlin towards him and kissed her on the cheek. She stepped back. Wilson held his hand out to Galindez. His palm was miraculously empty. Galindez shook.
‘Good luck,’ said Galindez. He offered his hand to Klein. ‘You too.’
There was an awkward pause. Klein wanted to bed down on the concrete with Devlin, but there were more perfect settings for a love scene. Instead he kissed her on the cheek. To his astonishment, she blushed.
‘I’d better go,’ she said.
Klein nodded.
To Wilson she said, ‘If I were you I’d consider a change of career. Being a hero’s bad for your health.’
Wilson smiled. ‘Maybe I’ll give it some thought.’ He jerked his head at Klein. ‘You take care of this joker. For a white man he’s a pretty cool guy.’
Goddamn. Klein felt blessed. He was a pretty cool guy after all. He pulled his shoulders back and inflated his chest, then wheezed with pain as his ribs crackled.
‘Christ,’ he said.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Wilson, ‘I’ll give him a few more tips.’
Then Devlin squeezed Klein’s hand and turned away and walked back towards the gate with Galindez and the soldier on either side of her.
Wilson and Klein watched her until they could no longer see the sweet rolling movement of her ass and until the back of her head disappeared into the crowd.
‘Damn,’ said Wilson. ‘My health I ain’t too worried about, but my balls, man I’d forgot exactly how much pain those mothers could give me.’
‘You’re absolutely right,’ said Klein.
Wilson pulled a pack of Camels from his pocket and shoved one in his mouth.
‘You got one to spare?’ said Klein.
Wilson felt inside the pack. There was one left. He gave it to Klein and they lit up. Klein inhaled.
‘No matter what they say, these bastards still taste good.’
Wils
on nodded in agreement. They smoked.
‘Listen,’ said Klein, ‘there’s something I been wondering about and I kind of feel better asking you about it than I would asking Devlin.’
‘Oh yeah?’ said Wilson, guardedly. ‘What’s that?’
‘Well,’ said Klein. ‘How big, I mean, you know, in general terms, is your pecker? That is, your dick.’
Wilson looked at him. ‘You really want to know?’
There was a pause.
Then Wilson smiled and Klein started laughing.
And Wilson started laughing too.
And the two of them stood in the shadow of the cellblocks, with the light of a red dawn finally cresting the high granite wall, and they laughed their fucking guts out.
And amongst all that teeming and penitent crew in the concrete prison yard, they were the only individuals who laughed.
EPILOGUE
ALL TOLD, THIRTY-TWO men perished in the great rising at Green River State Penitentiary which, for want of a single extra fatality, and to the disappointment of all who survived, made it only the second worst such riot in the annals of US penal history.
On the afternoon following the riot, the National Guard surprised no one by accidentally igniting the fuel dump in the central atrium, thus causing more serious structural damage than had the inmates themselves. After the fire was extinguished the authorities searched the prison high and low for two weeks, with tracker dogs and infra-red heat detectors. They discovered a phenomenal quantity of drugs, distilling apparatus and illegal pornography, and five decomposing corpses in a far-flung sewer conduit, but no trace of the body of Warden John Campbell Hobbes was ever found. With the eager complicity of the State Bureau of Corrections, which sought to absolve the system itself of all culpability, the press turned in a vulgar caricature of Hobbes as a corrupt and racist despot whose aberrant practices were the sole cause of the riot, and such he remains in the popular imagination.
Three hundred and forty-eight men were wounded badly enough to require hospitalisation and it remains a tribute to the paramedical and trauma services of East Texas that more men did not die.