Andrew Vachss: The Weight

Then him and Eddie took a little walk. Not far, but enough so I couldn’t hear what they were saying. The way they said goodbye, Eddie tapped his own chest, right over his heart, and Reno did the same.

“No ink, kid. Understand me? No ink, not ever . You don’t go along with that, you could get me killed.”

“I don’t have any-”

“Yeah,” he cut me off. “I know. That’s what I used to pull that fool’s chain.”

“But you’ve got… I mean…” I felt so bad. I knew Eddie was trying to look out for me, but I was too fucking stupid to even figure out how he was doing it. Eddie’s whole body was so covered with tattoos that it looked like he was wearing a shirt even when he wasn’t.

“Look close,” Eddie said. He touched his chest with one finger.

“I don’t see-”

“I said close , bro.”

It was like trying to read one of those walls when one gang overtags another, and then the first one comes back. After a while, it just looks like a mess. But I kept trying. And then I saw it. One of those Nazi crosses, only it was made out of lightning bolts and arrows. You couldn’t see all of it-a lot of it was buried under other tats. But it was there.

“Get it now?” Eddie asked me. “If they need to check, the AB can see they got my heart. You can see it yourself, right where it should be. Only, I had to get it covered up. Like camouflage, see?”

“So nobody could see-”

“So the fucking cops can’t see it. That’s what they do now: they read a man’s ink, and it goes in their book. But they look at me, they just see this big mess. I got every kind of ink you could think of, so I get put down as a tattoo-freak.”

“What’s so good-?”

“What’d I just tell you, kid? Okay, one more time, real slow. That fool who came over before, what I told him was that the Brotherhood needs men who can slip under the radar. We don’t go to meetings, we don’t be going all ‘Heil Hitler!’ on the yard, nothing like that. The law’s got undercovers; why shouldn’t we?”

“But you told me to never get one.”

“Ain’t that undercover, too, bro?”

“ That’s why you said never get any ink at all.”

“And that still goes. I just told that sucker I was getting you ready for this big mission. Feeding you one spoon at a time. So you can’t be seen hanging with the Double-Eights.”

“He bought that?”

Eddie grinned. “You know what he’s in for? Cooking up some crank. And guess who he sold it to?”

It was like Eddie’s smile made me smarter. I know that’s crazy, but that’s how it felt, me hitting the right answer on the nose. “An undercover cop?”

“Oh yeah!” Eddie said, holding up his palm for me to slap, laughing.

Eddie, he was welcome all over the place. So I was glad he was there that day-you couldn’t want a better guy to ask.

“You know what azúcar means, Eddie?”

He was on the last rep of the set he was doing. I thought he’d let the bar down first, but he kept the weight up and answered me between nose-breaths. “Sure.” “Means.” “Sugar.”

Soon as he said that, I turned around and looked over at the PRs, trying to find the one that had said that word. I let them see me staring. That way, whoever said that about me, he’d have to step out.

Eddie put the weight down so quick it was a good thing the spotters saw it coming. He hopped off the bench and stood next to me.

“Hey! Don’t chump yourself off, kid. You want to be like every other paranoid peckerwood in this joint? Just ’cause guys’re talking a different language don’t mean they’re talking about you .”

“Yeah, but-”

“Take a deep breath; you’re gonna feel like a blockhead in about a minute. Listen: You know there’s still Spanish guys in here for blowing up buildings and stuff, years ago? Older guys. Not gang-bangers-like political prisoners, okay? Los Macheteros , they call themselves. That comes from slaves who had to spend all day in the cane fields. What they wanted was to cut Puerto Rico loose from America, be its own country.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“I’m pretty tight with some of them,” Eddie kept going, like he never heard me. “Good men, you get to know them. Smart as hell, and stand-up, too. You with me? Okay, now, some of them were watching that day you got jumped by those Muslims. The way they told it, you went through those fools like you was working in the cane fields. Chopping ’em down like you had a machete.”

“I still don’t see-”

“That’s your last name, right? Caine?”

“Yeah…”

“I know you spell it different, but it sounds the same. Cane fields, they’re talking about sugar cane, get it?

“Nobody was downing you, kid. Azúcar , it’s all in how you say it. Like when people say a boxer’s ‘pretty,’ you heard that, right? ‘Pretty’ don’t mean he’s a punk; it means he’s slick and smooth.”

Eddie reached up high, then brought his hand down into a fist. Held it in front of his mouth, like it was a microphone.

“Ladies, gentlemen, and those who have yet to decide,” he boomed out. “Tonight we bring you fifteen rounds of boxing for the heavyweight championship of the world! In this corner, weighing in at a ready two hundred and eighty pounds, sporting a perfect record of twenty-six wins, twenty-four by knockout, two by fix… the challenger: Timmy ‘Sugar’ Caaaiinne !”

Everybody standing around the weight stack clapped, like I really was going to go against someone. One guy even yelled out that he had major money on me.

“You like it now , kid?”

I sure did. Beat the hell out of people calling me “Tiny.” You know, “Tiny Tim.” Big fucking joke.

After a while, everybody started calling me Sugar. When I gated, I took it with me.

That was a long time ago. I hadn’t taken a felony fall since I wrapped up that first bit. Seven arrests, one misdemeanor conviction. The other cases all got dropped, one way or another.

My fall partners on that first one, the two older guys, they never did anything for me while I was Inside. Well, maybe one thing: they got the word around. I was taking the weight, like you’re supposed to. If I’d “cooperated”-I don’t know why I fucking hate that word, but I do-the Legal Aid had told me, I could probably get probation.

What was I going to do with probation, go to college?

But being known as stand-up so young, that gave me a head start. I was only on the bricks for a few weeks when a guy I didn’t know asked me if I was interested in doing a job. A job with him and a few other men.

I didn’t know that guy, but I’d sure heard of him. I felt proud he asked me.

I wished Eddie could have seen me then. But I knew he’d see the money orders I got this girl to send him. Not the money orders themselves, but he’d see the jumps in his account. I had the girl write him one time, to tell him money would be coming. It was a short letter, but starting it off with “Hey, Sugar!” would be all he needed to make the connect.

It wasn’t really a girl sending the money. What I did, I picked a name. Conchita. Then I got about a hundred sheets of notepaper, and I paid this hooker a buck a page for her to sign at the bottom. All different ways, like:

Love, Conchita

Always yours, Conchita

I love you forever, Conchita

Except for those words at the bottom, the notes were all typed. I did that. The envelopes, too. After a while, I got pretty good at it.