Stanley Elkin - A Bad Man

He heard someone humming tunelessly and looked up. It was a prisoner on his hands and knees. The man pushed a scrub brush before him and pulled a pail. He crawled along like a chipper pilgrim, scrubbing forcefully with the brush. Feldman stared at his soapy hands and at the brush, its thick, plain wooden handle like something baked in an oven.

The man paused for a moment and raised his sweat shirt to wipe his face. “Whew,” he said, “whew,” and saw Feldman. He dipped into the pail. “Son-of-a-bitching brown soap,” he said, holding it up for Feldman to see. “What the hell’s wrong with you guys in Seven Block? In Five, where I’m from, we get Tide, Glo, all the latest products. Brown soap’s for poison ivy, clap. It’s medicine. It ain’t no more effective on floors than fucking spit. It’s your maintenance screw, Jerrold. I told Dean I wouldn’t be able to get along with him.” He looked at the floor. “Who does this floor anyway? Who’s Crew in here? I hope he gets better soon, so’s I can go back to Five. Who is he?”

Feldman shook his head.

“Me neither,” the man said. “The guy wouldn’t last ten minutes in Five. He’d be thrown the hell off Crew like that . Dean doesn’t take no shit. You know Dean?”

Feldman shook his head again.

“Chief of Crew in Five. The best maintenance screw in this place, I don’t care who you work for. He works us hard as hell. When I first come with him I thought: Why, you son of a bitch, I’d like to get you on the outside sometime. But that was just to see if we could take it — he was testing. You play ball with Dean, Dean’ll play ball with you. That guy ain’t put me on report once in fourteen years.”

“You’ve got it made,” Feldman said.

“But let him catch me talking to you like this, he’d kick his boot so high up my ass I’d be three days crapping it out,” the man said, chuckling.

“He kicks you?”

“Hell yes, he kicks me. Dean’s old school. But he won’t kick a man unless that man’s disappointed him.”

“Fair enough,” Feldman said.

“A guy has to bug out once in a while, though,” the man said. “Dean knows that.”

“It’s human nature,” Feldman said.

“I don’t care how hard a worker a man is,” the man said. “There’s more to life than scrubbing floors.” He stood up. “Let me go get my rinse water.” He disappeared and Feldman lay down again on the cot.

“Our detail picks up the supplies for all the other crews.” Feldman looked around. The man was rubbing the bars of Feldman’s cell with a cloth.

“It’s treated,” he explained, showing Feldman a dark purple-stained cloth. “It’s yellow in the tube. Ferr-all . It turns that color on the cloth. It’s a chemical. I seen Dean use it on his pistol barrel once. He let me borrow it to try on the bars.”

Feldman winced at the odor.

“It stands to reason. They got the same base. It works too. Look at that. He showed Feldman the bar he had been working on. The dark iron bristled with light. “I wanted you to see that because you work in the canteen.”

“You know that?”

“Sure. You’re Feldman. I’m pleased to meet you. I’m Lurie.”

He pushed his hand and wrist through the bar, and Feldman shook it. “It’s my forearms,” Lurie said apologetically, “they’re too big. I can’t get them all the way through. It’s from scrubbing.”

Feldman released Lurie’s big, clean hand.

“Excuse the stink,” the man said. “It’s this stuff, the Ferr-all. I don’t mind it, but I guess you’ve got to get used to it.” Feldman smelled his hand. It smelled ferrous, dense, like the odor of pistol barrels. The bars had such an odor too, of pistol barrels, spears, chains, the blades of knives.

“It’s too expensive for the state to buy for the inmates. They just get it for the guards. The men use it for their armor. I was the one first found out it works on bars. I told Dean, and he took it up with Requisitions. I’m glad I ran into you. If you stocked it in the canteen the men would buy it and do their cells. You see how it shined up this bar? And it wouldn’t take that much effort. Three, four times a year tops, that’s all it takes. It makes a difference.”

“I don’t have the authority,” Feldman said.

“ I know that,” Lurie said. “But you could talk to the men. You’re in a position. If enough guys wanted it, the warden would stock it.” He put his face close to the bars and lowered his voice. “You know what would happen if a few guys started treating their bars? Pretty soon it would become mandatory. For the uniformity. That’s what happens ,” he whispered. “They’d make it a rule.” Feldman sat down on his cot. “Some of these soreheads would grouse. Sure. What the hell? Cons. But it makes a difference.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Feldman said.

“It’s all I ask,” the man said. “Here, as long as I started, let me do the rest of these. Then I’ll slip the tube through and you can do the bars over the window.”

Lurie rubbed the bars. They gleamed. They stank. It smelled like a munitions dump, a metal butcher shop. “I was telling you,” he said as he worked, “we pick up the supplies for all the crews. In ’57, during that railroad strike when the trains weren’t rolling, it was a pigpen around here. There was even a comment in the paper: ‘It isn’t a pen, it’s a pigpen.’ That was printed right in the paper. Well, there weren’t any supplies. After a while we were trying to keep this place clean just with water. There wasn’t any antiseptic, nothing. (And your cons are dirtier than your Honest Johns anyway. It’s not just the way they live, it’s the way they are.) The infirmary was filling up. Well, Dean picked me and another guy, and we drove seventy-five miles into Melbourne to pick up some emergency supplies. The warden wanted Shipman’s crew to go, but old Dean said, ‘Fuck Shipman’s crew. Does Shipman’s crew take the stuff off the cars down to the depot when the stock is rolling? Does Shipman’s crew wind the toilet paper after a riot?’ You should’ve heard him. This was one screw talking about another screw in front of the warden. But Dean stands up for his boys, and the warden went along. So we got our ride in the deuce and a half all the way into Melbourne. I asked Dean if I could drive, and he let me for fourteen miles. Well, the part I wanted to tell you about is this. We picked up the stuff in a big supermarket. I pushed one cart, and Millman the other. And Dean come along behind us with the shotgun. You should’ve seen them housewives. We scared them whores right out of their panties. ‘It’s a stickup,’ Millman would tell them, and one time he reached right into this whore’s cart who’d got the last box of Duz and took it right away from her. I’d take the ammonia bottles and hold them up with the top unscrewed and I’d turn to Millman. ‘Do you think this wine will go good with dinner, dear?’ I’d ask him. ‘Delicious,’ Millman would say. Even Dean had to laugh. It was something.” He paused, chuckling. “You ever been in one of them supermarkets?” he asked Feldman.

“Yes.”

“ They got the products, Gleam, Oxydol, Shine, Spic and Span , Jesus. I don’t see how they keep them all straight. Dean let us take one of everything just to sample. You know what we done? We give Shipman’s crew all the pansy, perfumy kind.” Lurie laughed. “You should of seen. They had a time, those bastards, trying to get this place clean with all that shit the broads use on their cruddy underwear. That must have been something. I got down on the floor where Shipman’s crew works, and it smelled like some fucking cunt-castle. Jesus! ”