Люциус Шепард - Eternity and Other Stories

Late one afternoon some four months after my arrival, myself and Causey—toward whom I had succeeded in developing a neutral attitude—and Terry Berbick, a short, thickset bank robber with a gnomish look, his curly black hair and beard shot through with gray, were sitting against the east wall in the yard, discussing the newcomer on our block, Harry Colangelo—this happened to be the baldheaded man whom I had confronted on the day I came to the prison. His furtive air and incoherent verbal outbursts had made a poor impression, and Berbick was of the opinion that Colangelo’s move onto the block had been premature.

“Something confused the boy. Caught him at a crucial moment during his period of adjustment and he’s never gotten squared away.” Berbick glanced at me. “Might be that dust-up with you did the trick.”

“It wasn’t that big a deal.”

“I don’t know. Way he stares at you, seems like you got under his skin. It might be why he moved up to eight—so he can come back at you easier.”

“I’ve seen it before,” Causey said. “Something happens early on to fuck up a man’s instincts, and next you know he goes to acting all haywire. Gets his ass transferred right out on outa here.”

I was not certain that being transferred out of Diamond Bar was the bleak prospect that Causey and Berbick thought it, but saw no need to argue the point.

“There the fucker is.” Causey pointed to the slope on our left, where Colangelo was moving crabwise down the ridge, his pink scalp agleam with the westering sun, eyes fixed upon us. “I think Terry nailed it. The man’s all messed up behind you.”

“Whatever.” I turned my attention to the four old men who purportedly ruled the world. Doddering on their height, the wind flying their sparse hair up into wild frays. Behind them, the tops of the girders burned gold, like iron candles touched with holy fire. Several younger men stood near the four. When I asked who they were, Berbick said they spoke for the board.

“What?” I said. “The masters of the universe can’t talk for themselves?”

Berbick rolled up to his feet, smartly dusted the seat of his trousers, acting pissed off. “You want to find out about the board, let’s go see them.”

I looked at him with amusement.

“You act like you know something,” he said, “but you don’t know as much as we do. And we don’t know dip.”

“Ain’t nothing,” I said. “Forget it.”

“Nothing bad’ll happen. We’ll go with you.” He glanced at Causey. “Right?”

Causey shrugged. “Sure.”

Berbick arched an eyebrow and said to me in a taunting voice, “It’s just four old guys, Tommy. Come on!”

Colangelo, who had been sitting upslope and to the left of us, scrambled up and hurried out of our path as we climbed the ridge.

“Fucking freak!” said Berbick as we drew abreast of him.

The board members were standing in a semicircle just below the highest point of the ridge, which was tufted with two roughly globular, almost identically puny shrubs, so sparsely leaved that from a distance, seen against the backdrop of the stone wall, they looked like the models of two small planets with dark gray oceans and island continents of green. The steadfastness with which the board was contemplating them gave rise to the impression that they were considering emigration to one or the other. Drawing near, I saw that the oldest among them, Czerny, appeared to be speaking, and the others, their eyes wandering, did not appear to be listening. Holmes, a shrunken black man, bald except for puffs of cottony hair above his ears and behind his neck, was shifting his feet restlessly, and the other two, Ashford and LeGary, both grandfather-gray and gaunt, were posed in vacant attitudes. One of the younger men who shadowed them, a stocky Latino in his forties, blocked our path, politely asked what we wanted, and Berbick jerked his thumb toward me and said, “Penhaligon here wants to meet the board.”

“I don’t want to meet them,” I said, annoyed. “I was just wondering about them.”

“They’re busy,” the Latino said. “But I’ll see.”

“You trying to fuck me over?” I asked Berbick as the Latino man went to consult with the board.

He looked pleased with himself. “What could happen? It’s only four old guys.”

“Nothing to worry about,” Causey said. “He’s just giving you shit.”

“I don’t need you interpreting for me, okay?” I said. “You can quit acting like my fucking big sister.”

“Damn!” said Berbick with surprise. “He’s coming over.”

With the Latino holding his elbow, Czerny was heading toward us, shuffling through the ankle-high grasses, wobbly and frail. His caved-in face was freckled with liver spots, and the tip of his tongue flicked out with lizardly insistence. He was small, no more than five feet five, but his hands were those of a much larger man, wide and thick-fingered, with prominent knuckles—they trembled now, but looked as if they had been used violently during his youth. His eyes were a watery grayish blue, the sclera laced with broken vessels, and the right one had a cloudy cast. When he reached us, he extended a hand and gave my forearm a tentative three-fingered pat, like the benediction of a senile pope who had forgotten the proper form. He mumbled something, barely a whisper. The Latino man gave ear, and when Czerny had finished, he said, “There’s important work for you here, Penhaligon. You should set about it quickly.”

It did not seem that Czerny had spoken long enough to convey this much information. I suspected that the Latino man and his associates were running a hustle, pretending to interpret the maunderings of four senile old men and in the process guaranteeing a soft life for themselves.

Czerny muttered something more, and the Latino said, “Come visit me in my house whenever you wish.”

The old man assayed a faltering smile; the Latino steadied him as he turned and, with reverent tenderness, led him back to join the others. I framed a sarcastic comment but was stopped by Causey’s astonished expression. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“Man invited you to his house,” Causey said with an air of disbelief.

“Yeah… so?”

“That doesn’t happen too often.”

“I been here almost five years, and I don’t remember it ever happening,” Berbick said.

I glanced back and forth between them. “Wasn’t him invited me—it was his fucking handler.”

Berbick made a disdainful noise, shook his head as if he couldn’t fathom my stupidity, and Causey said, “Maybe when you go see him, you’ll…”

“Why the fuck would I go see him? So I can get groped by some old wheeze?”

“I guess you got better things to do,” Berbick said. He was acting pissed off again, and I said, “What crawled up your ass, man?”

He started to step to me, but Causey moved between us, poked me in the chest with two fingers and said, “You little hump! You walk straight up to eight from the door… You don’t seem to appreciate what that means. Frank Czerny invites you to his house and you ridicule the man. I been trying to help you…”

“I don’t want your help, faggot!”

I recognized Causey’s humorless smile as the same expression he had worn many years ago prior to ramming my head into a shower wall. I moved back a pace, but the smile faded and he said calmly, “Powers that be got something in mind for you, Penhaligon. That’s plain to everyone ’cept you. Seems like you forgot everything you learned about surviving in prison. You don’t come to new walls with an attitude. You pay attention to how things are and behave accordingly. Doesn’t matter you don’t like it. You do what you hafta. Pm telling you—you don’t get with the program, they gonna transfer your sorry ass.”