Walter Tevis - Mockingbird

Immediately I saw, out of the edge of my vision, the robot by me move. He unfolded his arms. I ignored him and placed the stack of already cut pieces so that their straight new edges were exactly flush with the thin line on the anvil. Then I took the wire hook I had made, hooked it through the bracelet on my left hand, made a fist, and then looked up. The blade was poised above me, unmoving. Its edge, from directly beneath it, was like a perfect hairline under the thickness and heaviness of its heft.

I forced myself not to shudder and not to think. As fast as I could, I put my knuckles down on the belt about an inch from the thin line, pulled the bracelet with the hook with my right hand, steadying my right hand on the stack of material. There was a space of a half inch there, as I pulled the arm against the force of the hook, between the back of my wrist and the metal of the bracelet. I was holding my head back, away from the blade. My body felt like stone.

And then the robot shouted in my ear, “ Violation! Violation !” But I did not move.

And the blade came down, fanning my face, came down like a destroying angel, like a bullet. And I screamed out in pain.

I had closed my eyes. I forced them open. There was no blood! And a piece of the bracelet lay, severed, on the belt in front of me. Already the computer-controlled hands were pushing it into the bin. The robot was still shouting. I looked at him and said, “Bug off, robot.”

He stared, unmoving, his hands now at his sides.

I looked at my left wrist. The metal of the bracelet, with a gap in it now, was twisted into the flesh. With my right hand I loosened it, ignoring the now-staring robot, and flexed my wrist. It hurt, but nothing was broken. Then I slipped one cut edge of the bracelet under the near edge of the anvil away from the blade and, using the hook, pulled up on the other side, and the bracelet, slowly, opened up until I could remove my hand. As I did so the blade came down again, missing me by about a foot.

I took a breath and then transferred the hook to the bracelet on my right hand.

I waited until another stack of material appeared and was cut and then took another handful as I had before. As I reached out to place my right fist on the belt I felt a hand clamp on my arm with a powerful grip. It was the robot.

Immediately, without thinking, I lowered my head and butted him in the chest as hard as I could, loosening his grip and pushing him back up against the belt. He doubled over forward. I pulled back and kicked him in the stomach. I was wearing my heavy prison boots and I kicked as hard as I could, with all of the strength a season’s work in the Protein 4 fields had given my legs. He made no sound, but fell heavily to the floor. But immediately he was struggling to get up.

I turned my back on him and I looked up. The blade was just returning to its top, waiting position. Behind me I heard men’s voices, and then the robot shouting again, “Violation! Violation!”

Not looking away, I held my right wrist under the blade, keeping my head well back, trying not to think of what would happen if the robot got to me and grabbed my arm just as the blade was coming down.

The wait seemed to last forever.

And then it happened. There was the glitter of adamant steel and the sudden fanning. And the pain. And just before I screamed again I heard a sound like the sound of a dry stick breaking.

I opened my eyes and looked down. The bracelet was cut, but my hand was bent strangely and I knew instantly what had happened. I had broken my wrist.

Yet, realizing that, I felt no further pain. There was a ringing in my ears, and I could remember the pain of the impact; but now there was no more pain. And my mind was clear—as clear as it has ever been.

And then I thought of the robot and looked over to where I had knocked him.

He was still on the floor. Larsen and the old man with white hair were sitting on him. And Belasco was standing over him holding a heavy wrench in one hand and my cat, Biff, in his other.

I stared.

“Here,” Belasco said, grinning, “you forgot your cat.”

Using the hook, I got the other bracelet off and put it in my pocket. Then I walked over to Belasco, and took Biff in my good hand.

“Do you know what a sling is?” Belasco said. After I took Biff, he began taking off his shirt, transferring the wrench from hand to hand, and keeping his eye on the now still robot.

“A sling?” I said.

“Just wait.” He got the shirt off and then tore it in two. He tied a knot between sleeve and tail and put it around my neck, just above the backpack harness, and then showed me how to put my right arm in the broader part of the shirt. “After you get a little distance,” he said, “soak your wrist in ocean water. Do it every now and then.” He gripped my shoulder. “You’re a brave son of a bitch,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Haul ass, Bentley,” Belasco said.

And I did.

After I had run and walked for several miles north of the prison, keeping the ocean on my right, the pain began in earnest in my wrist. I stopped and put down Biff, who had clawed at me a few times and scratched, and meowed loudly, and finally gotten quiet. Then I lay down at the edge of the water, on my back, with my chest heaving painfully from the running, and from everything else, and I let my damaged wrist lie in the shallow and cold winter surf. Some of the water came up and lapped against my side. Biff began to meow plaintively. I said and did nothing and lay there as the tide came closer in and washed icily across me, making me finally get up and away from it. I had not lost the pain, although, the cold water muted it. And I had not lost my fear of the journey ahead of me. But despite that there was jubilation in my heart. I was a free man.

For the first time in my entire life, I was a free man.

I went to the water’s edge and, using my left hand, raised a handful of water to my mouth and drank it. And my throat constricted on it, gagged, and I spit the rest out. I did not know sea water was undrinkable. No one had ever told me.

Something in me suddenly gave way and I let myself fall to the beach and lie there, in pain and in thirst, crying. It was too much. It was all too much.

I lay there on the cold wet sand with a bitter wind blowing across me, with my whole right arm throbbing in pain and with my throat burning from the sea salt, not knowing where to find water. I did not know even where to begin looking for water, or how, really, to find clams, or any food, once the supply I had in my small backpack was eaten.

But then I sat up suddenly. There was something to drink. Belasco had given me three cans of liquid protein.

I took the backpack off, opened it where Larsen had sewn buttons on its top, and found a can and opened it carefully. And I drank only a few swallows of it, gave some to Biff, and then plugged the hole in the top of the can with my handkerchief. Some of my good feeling came back. I had enough to drink for a few days; I would find water somehow. I got up and began walking northward, with Biff keeping more or less at my side, or ahead of me or behind. The sand near the water’s edge was easy to walk on and I kept up a brisk pace, swinging my good arm at my side.

After a while the sun came out from behind clouds. And sandpipers appeared on the beach, and gulls began flying overhead, and there was the good, clean smell of the ocean in the air. My arm was not uncomfortable in the sling and, although it still hurt greatly when I allowed myself to think about it, I knew I could stand it. I had felt worse my first few days in prison, and I had survived that—had, in fact, become stronger for it. I would survive this.

That night I slept on the sand beside an old log that lay half buried at the place where the beach began to have grass growing on it. I built myself a fire with a few sticks of driftwood, lighting it with my prison lighter the way I had seen Belasco do it that time that seemed so long before. I sat by the fire, leaning against the log for a while, and held Biff in my lap, until the sky became dark and the stars came out, very brightly, above us. Then I lay down in the sand in my blue prison sweater, covering myself with my jacket, and fell soundly asleep.