Дональд Уэстлейк - Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner

What else does a prisoner do? Once a week he gets permission to go to the library and get three books. If he has full privileges he works at a job somewhere in the prison, but if he only has partial privileges he at least gets to wander around much of the prison area during the day and he gets to see a movie once a week and he gets to sit down in the library and read a magazine. But if he has no privileges he sits in his cell and tries to read his three books a week very, very slowly. No movies, no wandering around, no job, no nothing.

It is all extremely boring. Boredom is a horrible punishment, just about the grimmest long-term thing you can do to somebody. Boredom is very boring. It’s very bad. I don’t know how to establish this point without becoming boring, and God knows I don’t want to do that.

The only respites I had from boredom were the occasional attacks made on my person by good God-fearing friends of Father Flynn. They were potentially dangerous, since they usually came after me in bunches of ten or twelve, but I quickly learned that whenever a tightly massed group of mesomorphs moved toward me I should move toward a guard, so they never managed to do much damage. However, it was the one time that my belonging to the gymnasium tough guy group didn’t protect me from the violence endemic to a prison situation, and it helped to make me feel even more remote from my former existence.

I had little opportunity for practical joking, and in any event no desire. I was too depressed. I lived for the occasional verbal message from Marian passed on to me by Max — a written note would have been too dangerous to carry around — and every morning I woke up hoping that today another note would be found: today, today, today.

But it never was. The bastard had stopped again. Day after day went by, and no messages, and every day without a message was another day for the warden to become more convinced that I was the guilty party after all.

Until, on Friday, the twenty-seventh of May, Guard Stoon came to my cell to escort me once more to the warden’s office. Feeling suddenly alive again, I said, “Did something happen? Another message? Is that why he wants me?”

“No,” Stoon said. “Nothing’s happened, no more messages, and it’s been a month today. That’s why he wants you.” And there was a grim satisfaction in the way he said it.

We were crossing the yard, me in the lead and Stoon behind me, when we met some new fish coming the other way, still in their free-world clothing. I was passing them, head down, brooding about my own troubles, when I suddenly noticed that one of them was Peter Corse! “Peter!” I cried, and stopped so suddenly that Stoon walked into me.

Peter gave a great toothless smile and boomed out, “Harry, how are you! I told you I’d be back!”

“Move along,” Stoon told me, and gave me a small shove.

I moved, but shouted back over my shoulder to Peter, “How did you do it?”

He too was being forced to move along. He cupped his hands and yelled, “I crapped in a graveyard!”

There’s hope, I thought, there’s hope for us all. If Peter Corse can get back in here, I too can surmount my difficulties. After all, I have all my teeth.

Yes, and half of his.

The warden was behind his desk, and Father Flynn was once again standing to one side. Stoon remained back by the door in his usual position, where he could comment on the proceedings by shifting his weight from foot to foot.

Warden Gadmore said, “Künt, I’m sorry to have to say that absolutely nothing has happened since I took you off privileges.”

“I know that, Warden,” I said.

“This business with the communion hosts,” he said, “goes beyond a prank or a practical joke, you know. To a Roman Catholic, it’s a very serious thing.”

“I know that, sir,” I said. “Some of Father Flynn’s boys have been trying to impress that on me.”

“I hope you listened to them,” Father Flynn said.

“It’s hard to listen to fists,” I said.

The warden raised a hand. “Let’s not get off the subject,” he said. “The point is, this business of mocking religion is very serious, and Father Flynn wanted more action than a simple loss of privileges.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Father Flynn,” the warden said, “wrote to his Monsignor, who telephoned the Governor, who telephoned me.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. For the first time I was getting hints that maybe Warden Gadmore didn’t like Father Flynn all that much, but his personal feelings toward the priest weren’t going to do me any good at all. It had gone beyond that, I could see it already.

“I wanted you to know,” the warden said, “that indictments are being drawn up against you. You’ll be appearing before the Monequois County grand jury sometime in the next month. The Governor’s feeling is that a trial will produce a definitive truth and end all this uncertainty.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Unfortunately,” the warden said, “that means the whole truth will have to come out, Künt.”

“Sir?”

“Your former activities against your fellow inmates,” he said.

My practical jokes. “They’ll find out?”

“There’s no way to avoid it.”

Father Flynn, eyes flashing, said, “Find out what?”

“All in good time, Father,” the warden said, and to me he said, “I wanted you to be forewarned. If you can possibly mend your fences, I think you should get to it.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. In despair, I looked past him, out at the garden, now a flashing panorama of spring colors. If only Andy could see that, I thought, trying to distract myself from contemplation of the mess I was in. All those flowers out there, sheets and trails and—

“Hee hee,” I said.

They both looked at me. Father Flynn frowned very heavily. Warden Gadmore said, “What was that Künt?”

“Hee hee,” I said again. “Ho ho. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha—”

“What’s the matter with you, man?” The warden was rising out of his chair, Father Flynn was staring at me in astonished disapproval, and Stoon was moving up from the rear. “Have you gone—”

“Look!” I shouted. “Look out there!” And I pointed at the garden. “Butler did it!” I yelled. “Butler did it!”

Oh, that garden! Oh, my, oh, my , that garden!

HELP spelled out in lavender-blue Sweet William amid banks of white pansies.

I in a line of white English daisies, and AM in pink azaleas, both surrounded by a swath of golden alyssum.

BEING in yellow tulips set off by white rock-cress.

HELD in orange cowslip on a sheet of mountain pinks.

PRISONER in a riot of blue pansies, Virginia bluebells, blue iris and blue forget-me-nots on a mat of white dusty-miller.

“He knew !” I yelled. “When you threw Peter Corse out he knew he was next, he told me so himself!”

They were all over by the window, staring out — even Stoon. I shouted at their uncomprehending backs, too relieved to do anything but go on yelling. “It was the style of the man!” I yelled. “The irony, the reversal! He wanted help because he wasn’t being held prisoner, and he knew there wasn’t any help, and this is what he did!”

They turned slowly to face me. The warden looked stunned. “It wasn’t you, Künt,” he said. “It wasn’t you all along.”

Much had changed in the month I’d been away. Eddie Troyn had received an abrupt and unexpected parole, and had become a paying boarder in the Dombey house. He’d gotten a job as a tollbooth attendant at the big bridge just north of town, and I must say he looked well in his uniform; but he missed the prison, and would occasionally sneak in on his day off from the toll-booth to spend an afternoon in his old haunts.