Роберт Мейсон - Chickenhawk - Back in the World - Life After Vietnam

Just before ten, the guys who’d been watching television came wandering back from the TV room to be in their cubes for the count. I put my book away and turned out my desk lamp.

After count, a lot of the inmates returned to the TV room. We had cable, and they wanted to see The Hitchhiker , a popular program on HBO.

Now the thing I dreaded the most happened. Someone whose voice had become a nightly torment got on the phone in the phone booth that was conveniently located ten feet from my bed. I covered my head with my pillow, but I could hear every word.

The guy on the phone had a problem. He’d said his wife could date while he was inside. I heard him explaining this to his buddy one day in the chow line. He said, “She gets lonely, and I trust my friends.” His friend looked at him incredulously and the guy quickly added, “Well, hell, it doesn’t wear out, you know,” and laughed to show his friend he was kidding.

Tonight, as usual, he talked loudly, as though he were home instead of in a prison bedroom where twenty-five men were trying to sleep. I heard: “Yeah, Sam’s okay. Sam’s a good guy. Where’d you go?”

“The Tin Lizzy ? What’d you do?”

Pause. I could only imagine what his wife was saying. I was hoping she’d talk long enough for me to get to sleep.

“Yeah? You never wanted to dance with me.”

Pause. I pressed my hands against my ears.

“Me? I dance. I love to dance.”

I was groaning under my pillow. I couldn’t stand it. I’d been plotting to take the phone apart and throw the little microphone in the mouthpiece into the swamps where the cats lived. A phone repair inmate told me they had a problem with that: guys were throwing them away for the same reason I wanted to—peace. The idiot talked. And talked.

“Sure. When I get home, I’ll take you dancing.”

Pause. I was so happy for him. Dancing? My, my.

“So what’d you do after Tin Lizzy ?”

He took her home?

“Took you home? I know he took you home. What did you do when you got home? That’s what I want to know.”

He kissed her?

“What?” the idiot says real loud. I heard “Shutthefuck up!” from somewhere in the section.

The idiot ignored the request. He said, “Yeah. Then what?”

More than a good night kiss?

“Yeah. Then what?” His voice was changing, higher in pitch. He listened for a long time, almost long enough for me to drop off.

“What?” the idiot yelled suddenly. I jerked back from the brink of sleep and heard, “You sucked his dick? You sucked Sam’s dick?”

A pause while idiot’s wife, Mrs. Idiot, explained.

“Sure, I said you could date my friends. When you had to. I know I said that. But I didn’t say you could suck their dicks! That’s personal!”

I heard a loud crash. Someone had thrown a work boot at the phone booth.

The idiot lowered his voice so only those of us lucky enough to be right next to the fucking phone could hear. “Did he come? In your mouth?” he said softly.

“Enough!” I groaned. I got out of bed and went to the phone booth. “Hey,” I said. “You mind? I’m trying to sleep.”

The idiot said, “Wait a minute, hon,” put his hand over the mouthpiece, and said to me, “This phone is for anybody to use.”

“Yeah, I know. But most people phone when most people are awake, you know? This is bullshit. Get off the phone.”

“You want to try to make me?” said the idiot loudly. He was stupid, but he was very large.

A voice behind me said, “I’ll fucking make you.” I turned around. It was my neighbor across the aisle. He was a former professional football player who’d got caught selling cocaine to his fellow players. He was a linebacker. Very big.

The idiot was intimidated. He nodded and said quietly into the phone, “Look, honey. I’ll call you back from another phone, okay?” He paused. “No, I don’t. I understand. You know I love you. I’ll—”

The linebacker, who looked as tall as the phone booth, stepped up close to the idiot. The guy looked up, nodded quickly, said “I’ll call you back in a minute,” and hung up the phone. We both watched him leave. The linebacker said, “Is that guy as stupid as he sounds?”

“Yes. Every bit as stupid as he sounds. Possibly he’s a vegetable.”

Luckily, I fell asleep before the next call.

One of the guys who worked the clothing room line was called Professor because he read all the time and talked about philosophy. He was a black guy and a cripple. His ankles were fused, for some reason I forget, and he hobbled when he walked. I lent him The Holographic Paradigm , a book about the mind as an illusion that I could barely follow. He loved it and we became friends.

When it was lunchtime three of us from the clothing room, Professor and John and I, usually walked to the mess hall together. Since we were with Professor, John and I had to walk slowly so he could keep up. One day Tony Abruzzo came up behind us and said, “What the hell’s the holdup here?” I turned around and saw Tony grinning and shaking his head at Professor’s pitiful gait. Suddenly Tony reached out and shoved Professor off the sidewalk. “Get out of the way!” he yelled. Professor stumbled off the sidewalk, tottering, barely able to keep his balance. Tony turned to him as he passed us and said, “Professor. You know what your trouble is?”

Professor, amazingly, was laughing. He said, “What?”

“Not only are you a nigger, you’re a fucking cripple.”

I was horrified, but Professor started giggling like a kid. I still couldn’t figure out how Tony did it.

For some reason, I often ended up in line at the mess hall standing next to an attorney from New York City. Mike usually told me how he had the government on the run with all his fancy legal maneuvers. Mike had robbed his clients of money they invested with him and took the position that they should’ve known better. Today Mike was talking about a hot new business scheme he had for when he busted out of here.

“You hear about how they can implant a fertilized egg from one woman to another?”

“I’ve read that, yes,” I said. “Like they do with cattle, right?” The line moved ahead and I took a step. Mike followed.

“Right. But with people? Wow! There’s a fortune in this,” Mike said.

“Yeah, I guess a lot of women will have that done. Infertile couples, and all that.”

“Naw. That’s not what I mean. There’s some money that way, too, but you have to be a doctor to cash in on that. What I want to do is even more brilliant. Attorney work.”

I asked how an attorney could cash in on fetal transplants.

Mike grinned. “Simple. You buy fertilized eggs from beautiful blond couples, you know? Good stock; they make just the kind of kids that are in demand. Then you take these eggs to someplace like Haiti and hire native women to carry the fetus to term. Get it?”

“Black women give birth to blond babies?”

“Right! Do you have any idea what blond babies are worth on the adoption market?”

I shook my head.

“Hundred, two hundred thousand. That’s what. You use these niggers like ovens. They hatch the kids; I arrange the adoptions. Millions.”

I stared at Mike. He was smiling like he’d discovered how to turn lead into gold. I think he was a sociopath.

“What do you think?”

“Millions,” I said, nodding.

“Right!” Mike said, laughing.

When we got into the mess hall, I made sure we were in separate serving lines.

I didn’t see Mike in the chow line for a few days. I heard from John Tillerman, who worked as a clerk in administration, that they’d sent him out for “diesel therapy.” Mike had succeeded in getting a judge in New York to review his case and the judge called him before his court. That happened now and then, and the Bureau of Prisons had busses traveling all over the country transferring prisoners from prison to prison and sometimes delivering them to court dates.