Don’t tell nobody, Kimsey said to Marcus. But my girlfriend is in jail. She wouldn’t want nobody to know she was in jail.
Kimsey and the girlfriend had a stormy relationship. He was known for exploits with her and for running. Kimsey was the fastest runner in Alexander County. Nobody could catch him and many had tried. In high school they tried to get him to run track and he did for a little while but when they got to the meet and put him in the 880 he cut across the football field, jumped over the chain link fence, and kept on going. Marcus had seen it. He was practicing football. Another time the girlfriend was holding a birthday party for Kimsey in a stolen pickup truck and he was allegedly putting birthday cake all up in her pussy when the law put the lights on them. Kimsey fled and some of them stayed behind in wonderment over the cake. Others took off after him in the dark but he was gone. The girlfriend was smart. She said she didn’t know nothing about no Kimsey and they wanted to know what was that big K on the cake and she said she thought it stood for Ken.
Kimsey’s girlfriend was a screamer, they said. This was why the cops pestered him so much, because what could they desire more than a screamer?
Use on finished surfaces in basements, Zoomer continued. Closets, attics, laundry rooms, storage areas, vacation homes, boat interiors, shower stalls, and recycling bins.
Excellent! he called out. He started holding the can like a microphone. He would look at its text, memorize it, and then hold the can up and speak, or nearly sing, into it. Zoomer had a fine, clear radio voice. Excellent for controlling mold and mildew on mattresses, pillows, and shower curtains. He held up the can. Damn. Excellent.
Purkey had laid out the panties on the table and was humping them slowly, about one hump every fifteen seconds. The sleeper called out, Bring them over here. You been on them all night. He had a high voice. Lolly stayed next to Marcus and sipped his cup. He kept looking at Marcus with expectation. Marcus wondered if Lolly would back him up if he piled onto Purkey. But it seemed to be happening from a distance. Everything would have been so bad if it hadn’t been so good.
It is unlawful, said Zoomer, to use this product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling. Hold container upright six to eight inches from surface. Nine or ten inches, by God, and your ass is in jail.
He stopped and listened. They could hear the rat of Kimsey scratching in the ceiling. The rat moved quickly away and they heard his voice as if from a great distance.
Shit, said Purkey. F Block. Apparently Kimsey had shared his plan with Purkey too. Purkey tried to scamper up the wall like Kimsey had, but his hands slipped off the pipe and he fell on his back. Uh, said Purkey. He started having convulsions and while he was having them Marcus got the panties back and put them down in his clothes. Lolly stood in front of him and blocked their view as he did it. All of a sudden Marcus felt like crying.
Something had happened to the pipe. It had crumbled into pieces and what remained lurched and ejaculated a long sliver of ice, which shattered on the floor. It was followed by some air and then water. It was a good-sized pipe and the water came out fast. For a few minutes they just watched, enjoying the water because it was warmer than the air. It must have been more than a few minutes, because some of the boats had turned into boats. They had to stand on the table and there wasn’t room for everybody on the table.
The drain, said Zoomer. Somebody unstop the drain.
Purkey, on his knees, sloshed in the water feeling for the drain. He had turned wet and white, with his wild stringy hair pasted to his skull and his teeth chattering. Purkey sucked air through his chattering teeth and called out, due to the coldness of his wetness, which Marcus remembered from his baptism. Zoomer made everybody get down off the table and wait in line, though he had to push some of them and they fell with loud splashes and came up blowing spit and hollering. He stationed Sykes atop the table and Sykes leaned down and invited each man onto his shoulders and lifted him up the vent, but when it was his turn Lolly refused.
Stay here and be drownded then, said Zoomer.
Lolly climbed on Sykes’s back and pulled himself into the vent with the smoothest strength Marcus had ever seen. Marcus went after him. He climbed into the vent, through which frigid air was moving as in a cave. The vent was big enough to crawl in, but it was slick on the bottom and every so often had sharp things and was pitch black dark. The sound of prisoners rumbling through the vent was so loud Marcus was sure they would be caught. It was almost a relief because he wished somebody would stop them. Something would, he thought. Didn’t it always? He was moving as quickly as he could into the nothing but in a second a rumble came up behind him and something grabbed his leg and came over him with a bunch of elbows and knees. Marcus knew it was Purkey from the smell of the puke. Purkey weighed enough to make the vent flex and for a second they were wedged in it with Marcus screaming, but Purkey got over him and went on. It was only a second until they came to the place where everybody was all bunched up. Marcus heard a great deal of breathing and he could smell them but he wanted to draw up closer from the cold, but Purkey’s big ass was between him and Lolly. A distance ahead Kimsey was pecking on a vent.
Hello, said Zoomer’s voice. Hello, ladies.
There was no answer from the females.
Who is that? said a female voice, but it was Sykes making a female voice.
It aint nothing but the boys of D Block, said Zoomer. We have come to fuck you.
Everybody started laughing and that led to hollering and shoving, and Kimsey was apparently beating on the vent with something because in a second it gave and then the whole contents of D Block started dumping through it, each one pushed out by the one before him though some came out in twos. Everything was open again and it was dark in F Block but it had females in it because Marcus could hear them screaming and see their shadowy forms running around wrapped in blankets. It seemed as if the males were trying to herd them into a corner but they wouldn’t go. It was terrible the fucking that was about to be unleashed. Marcus tried to help corner them but his ankle hurt. As he limped alongside Purkey Marcus saw him get kicked in the balls by one of the females. It was not a tentative, feeling kick, but rather a sweeping karate one that struck with a sound like a good deep punt, erasing all herding instinct from the room. Even before Purkey hit the concrete it had fallen quiet enough to hear his scream, which wasn’t even a scream at all but just air from his throat. It made everyone shield himself, some with both hands. Marcus tried to fix his eyes on the woman who did it. She was short and wide, with long hair that disappeared into her blanket, and he still could not believe her leg would go that high.
That is for what you done to my friend, said the woman, who seemed to be their leader the way Zoomer was D Block’s. Then she said, They are all drunker than hell.
What did you expect, honey? said Zoomer.
We wanted somebody to fix the fucking heat, said a female voice other than the leader’s. When she said it her teeth chattered.
Zoomer looked around.
Marcus is a roofer, he said. Do you know anything about heat, Marcus?
We don’t need no fucking roofer, the woman said. We need heat.
It was so good to hear the word fucking and even roofer out of a female mouth that Marcus forgot about Purkey for a second. F Block rolled around in his vision, locking down every second or two.
Where is ours at? said another female voice.
Your what? Marcus said.
Our liquor, dumbass.
Marcus tried to pick out which one it was. The females had all gathered together on the concrete table with some of them facing one way and others the other way so nobody could sneak up on them. The males were all walking around slowly trying to walk off bruises and rubbing at various areas of their legs. Sykes was trying to stop some bleeding. Everybody was soaking wet. Lolly had backed up against the wall. Marcus could tell the women had already unified. They were only about six or seven, plus the leader. Some had articles of clothing tied around their heads. In
the blue light Marcus could see their breaths fogging out.
We aint drunk, said Sykes, licking his blood.
It sounded as if he had said it before.
The women laughed.
We smell it, said the leader.
We smell it too, said Zoomer.
You, the leader told Zoomer, aint nothing but a sleazy-ass junkie.
The females all laughed at that too, obscuring Zoomer’s response. In the laughter Marcus tried to move cautiously away from where Purkey lay. Purkey’s body had started jerking back and forth, still screaming the same way without sound, such that it was traveling gradually across the floor like a dismembered grasshopper leg. Marcus held onto the panties beneath his clothing but now the panties felt like a foreign growth. Backing up, he tripped on a boat in the corner. He caught himself before he fell, but all the women on the table and even the leader were looking at him such that he felt embarrassed and flattered for a second, but he realized they were looking at the boat instead of him.
Look it! one of the women at the table said. She had her hand over her mouth.
It was Kimsey on the boat, and he had his forehead against the back of the woman’s neck, as if he were holding her still, the way Marcus had seen cats do. Blankets and clothes were piled over them, as if they had tried to hide, but they were definitely doing it. The whole room fell quiet and the women on the far side of the table came around to see better. Marcus felt them checking each other to see who it was and as soon as they figured it out they began to talk among themselves. Knowing her, he heard one of them say, he is probably up her ass.
No, said another, he is probably doing it that a way to keep from having to look at her face.
Have you ever looked at her nose? She thinks she is the best thing that ever pissed through hair.
They laughed again.
Hey, the leader called out. Stop it.
But Kimsey didn’t stop. He kept going. And she wasn’t screaming. Not far away, Purkey kept going too. Zoomer had walked over closer.
The thrill of victory, said Zoomer, nodding toward Kimsey. And the agony of defeat.
It was silent.
You all aint nothing but a bunch of old whores, said Sykes.
You all are drunk, hollered the female leader.
Zoomer made a motion as if tipping his imaginary hat. Kimsey had stopped and the other females were laughing a low wicked laugh, but the males were kind of ignoring it. Kimsey wrestled his way out from under the blankets and clothes, pressing down too hard on the girlfriend, but she never moved and kept her face turned to the wall. Marcus was surprised that Kimsey still had his clothes on. Kimsey jumped over Purkey and leapt onto the concrete table, scattering females, one of whom screamed. Several lost their headdresses. He grabbed the pipe and swung himself back and forth until he could fly back into the vent. It was about halfway up the wall. They heard him go thundering away in it.
Damn, said Zoomer. What an exit.
Everybody followed Kimsey, except for the agony of defeat, who still lay twitching on the floor next to the thrill of victory and her mound of clothes and blankets. A part ran down the hair on the back of her head. Marcus waited a minute before he climbed into the vent because he thought she was crying. He thought the mound of clothes and blankets was moving in the way it would with sobbing, but Sykes had him by the back of the neck and was trying to stuff him into the vent. Marcus wondered why their vent had been in the ceiling when the females had it on the wall. Once they had gone a ways in the duct and everybody was clotted up, breathing and stinking, they heard what sounded like screaming and bawling, but the sound was squeezed down smaller, as if it were very far away.
I think that would of went a lot better if we would of brought them something to drink, said Marcus.
The screaming increased and died back.
What did you ever expect from a bunch of jailbird bitches? said Zoomer.
Marcus had the urge to run. He felt as if that were the only response to what they had opened up, but it was hard to run in a vent. They reached a ninety-degree turn straight up. Marcus could tell because blue light was descending through it and somewhere way up were the sounds of voices and scratching as prisoners squirreled up it. Also, something was flowing down the vent pipe across his face and his arms and the rest of his body Marcus couldn’t figure out what it was at first. He thought maybe it was water, but it was lighter than water, though it still stayed clammed all over him. As he tried to scramble up the vent the way the others had he realized it was nothing but cold. It was cold on top of cold, because he was already numb to the elbows and ankles and his face was a mask down to his neck and where the neck attached to the chest. It was a new kind of cold that didn’t wait on anything. It was trying to stick his face to the vent pipe.
In a few seconds his feet started working and he went right up the pipe as if the world were sucking him out. The higher he got the more the cold became the opposite of itself. It was like a blanket, except the opposite of a blanket, one that wrapped you up immediately and sank down into your bones with its cold instead of warmth, but Marcus kept paddling and reached the top and Zoomer pulled him out and dropped him in some hard snow. Marcus jumped up. They were on top of the jail. The top of the jail was a large level plain of snow with various pipes emitting steam and little motors and shiny hoods jutting up around them. The cold was awful. It worked its prisoners like puppets, running them toward the edges of the snowy plain beneath the beautiful blue light, and the moon was waiting far above the trees in the very sharply starry sky: No one knew just then that it would be the coldest night of the twentieth century in East Tennessee. Marcus sure didn’t. If he had of known, things might have been different. But right now he ran, or at least moved, because he could not feel his footsteps. It seemed like they were running from jail and running from jailbird bitches, running from everything that could be run from, and some of them hollered with freedom as they went.
On the edge of the jail one body had already sailed off and was rolling two times in the soft snow below. It was Zoomer. On the way down his coat winged open and fluttered. Right now he was cussing and had snow all over his face and he was clutching at it as if it really stung, and the figure of Kimsey was fifty, a hundred yards away, running with huge, floating strides. Sykes was dropping too but he got too far forward and belly flopped in the snow louder than if it had been water. Marcus tried to get Lolly to go with him at the same time, but Lolly shook his head and gestured and wouldn’t go.
Come on, Lolly, Marcus hollered out, and it was interesting how clear his voice was.
Lolly shook his head. Marcus always remembered Lolly’s face. The look on it was like the day he was baptized, as if it were asking a big question, except this time he realized the question only had one possible answer. But he realized it on the way down, and on the way down Marcus was amazed at how quickly the air moved around him, and despite his numbness he felt freer that he ever had before, with the big dark block of the jail stuck in the earth, bobbing in the cold, and him flying off it.
Stephen Marion’s stories have appeared in four editions of New Stories from the South. He is a native of East Tennessee, where he lives and works as a journalist. Marion’s fiction has appeared in Tin House, The Oxford American, and Epoch. His novel, Hollow Ground, was published in 2002.
In January 1985, the temperature where I live in East Tennessee dropped to twenty-seven degrees below zero. As luck would have it, several guys escaped from the county jail that night, and a wild series of events occurred. I had gone to school with one of the guys who escaped. He was one of the ones who ran back and knocked on the front door of the jail wanting to be let in. Another of the guys I had only met briefly. He had come by my house intending to rob it (he and his brother were on an armed robbery spree at that moment) but for some reason decided not to after asking me if I knew anybody who wanted to sell a bird dog. I had always wanted to tell his story, as I imagined it at least, out of gratitude for sparing me. He did
n’t actually have a Lysol party, however. That occurred later in the same jail, and it involved different people, but it still caught my eye.
Padgett Powell
CRY FOR HELP FROM FRANCE
(from Subtropics)
Robert Crumb has retired to south France. My toilet is from Paris. A coward is full of bluster about living well. A coward is terrified of even being alive. He may be also afraid—and this is congruent with the more popular visions of cowardice—of the opposite, both in its extreme, final expression (death), and in its less acute expressions (injury). But fear of injury or death, running from battles or fistfights etc., is just shallow cowardice; in fact it may not be cowardice at all. It may be mere anxiety, and usually rather rational at that. Who is to be faulted for preferring not to have his nose broken or not to die on the ground in the dirt without any painkillers or a girl to wipe one’s brow? No, that is cosmetic cowardice. True cowardice would embrace a broken nose or the spectacle of one’s guts flying while being afraid of buying a new car or getting married or having a child or changing jobs or selecting this coat over that coat or eating at a restaurant that is too expensive or one that is not expensive enough. A true coward knows the phrase Go for it and he deigns not go for it. Going for it scares him to death. He is so far from going for it that he does not even conceive what is to be gone for. This is why he does not perceive, usually, that he is a coward. Excuse me, I’ve been writing this, just now, and I’ll admit to bearing down a bit to try to get my meaning correct, and clear if it is correct, and I fancy at this point it is clear but not yet correct—when a fat boy skipped by on the street, trying to skip, so uncoordinated that it lent the impression that his bones were soft, or even possibly bending. A goofy, happy, or let us say perhaps an unhappy boy trying to be happy, badly skipping down a sunny street in France. It is likely, in my imagination, at first, that this boy is not a coward. Then I immediately correct: he is likely not yet a coward. He does not know. He is still at the level of trying to see if his overfed and underused soft body will respond to a command he gives it, which command should be fun to obey. He has gone around the corner, gone with his early unconscious exploration into cowardice, and I now sit here with my later investigations. I am at a good oak table. I have coffee. It is quiet in this nice house in France. Send me some money, you people. I am just like Robert Crumb, except he can draw.