Stanley Elkin - A Bad Man

He moved back under his own shower and began to soap himself. Hover still stood in the doorway, watching him. “Go on,” Feldman said. “Get away from me, you dummy.” He was made uneasy by the man; it was like being observed by a brute, Feldman turned his back, but it was no better; his neck and spine began to prickle. (Once his son had brought a cat home, and Feldman had not been able to eat while the animal was in the house.) He turned back to face Hover. “Go on,” he said, “go away from me.” He was beginning to panic. He cupped his hands and threw water at Hover. The man screamed. (At the fairgrounds, as a boy, he had gone to a cattle show. One brute, on its straw, in its own piss and dung, had bellowed meaninglessly. Thick yellow saliva hung in drooled strings from its mouth. He had wanted to smash its face with a club.) Feldman threw more water; Hover screamed again, and Feldman went for him.

“ Why are you screaming? ” he shouted. “ Why are you screaming? ” Why are you afraid of the water? I’m going to put you under it, you son of a bitch, and show you.”

Hover yelled and tried to move away, but backed into a corner. His abjectness enraged Feldman, and he wrapped his arms around the man and pulled at him violently. In his confusion and terror Hover could not distinguish between resistance and its opposite; he fell heavily against Feldman, seeming deliberately to rush him. The two fled backwards over the slippery floor, and Feldman bruised his back against the tap. In his pain he punched Hover’s face as hard as he could. The man brought his hands slowly to his head, and Feldman smashed at his belly. This defenselessness enraged Feldman even more and he struck out at will, clipping Hover’s ears and chest and neck, hitting him with great, round swinging blows.

“ Stupid ,” Feldman screamed. “ You thing! ”

Hover slipped to the floor and buried his head in his arms. Feldman, above him, desired to kick him in the groin, to smash his useless head. Oh my God, he thought suddenly, terrified, that’s the strategics!

He leaned against the dun-colored tiles, panting. I’m sorry, he thought. I’m so sorry. He looked again at Hover, collapsed on the floor, and knew he must apologize, must try to find some language outside of language that would make Hover understand. He squatted down beside the man, his long scrotum brushing the back of Hover’s outstretched hand as he grasped his shoulders gently. He had fallen beneath the shower and sat sprawled and somnolent in the warm water.

“Hover,” Feldman said quietly, “Hover.”

But Hover had already forgotten the blows, and he looked up at Feldman with a question he could never ask.

Feldman — thinking trouble was something outside, like a sudden freeze or extended drought; or something mechanical, like fouled ropes or defective brakes; or something inside and mechanical, like a broken tooth or cholesterol deposits — met the bad man Herbert Mix.

Mix winked. Feldman tried to brush past him.

“It takes one to know one,” Mix said.

“Excuse me,” Feldman said, “I’m on Warden’s Business.” It was the phrase for official errands. On Warden’s Business a convict could go anywhere, even places forbidden to trusties, and no one was to interfere with him. Feldman carried a small warden’s flag the size of a pocket handkerchief, folded and hidden inside his suit coat. Theoretically, he could approach a guard, show him the flag and ask to be conducted outside the walls. It was, however, the most serious offense in the prison, punishable by irrevocable loss of parole, for a convict on Warden’s Business to deflect that business to his own ends, and a few men, accused of using the flag to effect an escape, had actually been killed on these errands. (The death penalty in the state had not been imposed for eight years, but the men feared assassination by the guards. It had happened that men who had induced enmities in a guard had sometimes been shot and then had a warden’s flag planted on their persons. It was necessary for the guard to produce supporting testimony that the convict had used Warden’s Business to attempt an escape, but everyone knew the guards were thick as thieves. Indeed, it was not impossible to get another convict to back up the guard’s story, for just as there were prisoner mentalities among the guards, there were guard mentalities among the prisoners.)

Because there was always a threat to the life of anyone on Warden’s Business — the men speculated that at all times there was always some guard plotting against the life of some prisoner; several prisoners actually claimed to have been approached by guards and obliquely invited to join with them in vendettas against their fellow convicts — only two kinds of men were ever sent on these errands: men who were generally liked by the guards, and men whom the warden felt he could afford to lose — the bad men themselves. Complexities of timing and circumstances, and the difficulties implicit in the conspiratorial nature of an assassination, reduced the chance of death to little more than an outside possibility, as subject to thin contingency as a trip at night, say, on an unfamiliar highway in an automobile that requires some slight mechanical adjustment. Still, the possibility was there, and it troubled Feldman.

“I’ll walk with you,” Mix said. He showed Feldman a pass and winked again. It was probably a phony. (Feldman himself had been careful to obtain a pass to show to the guards in case he was stopped. Only one pass remained to him now for the new quarter, but he was proud of his caution. Most men would simply have flashed their warden’s flag in a guard’s face.) Feldman didn’t answer Mix, and quickened his pace, sorry now he had told the man he was on Warden’s Business. (Manfred Sky had said it was a good idea to let people know if they started to interfere with you.) “I don’t blame you,” Mix said. “It’s like a time bomb ticking away in there. Where you carrying it?”

“In my pocket,” Feldman said. “Please.”

“Why don’t you take it out and blow your nose in it? That’s what I’d do.”

“Please,” Feldman said, “I want to get this over with as quickly as possible.”

“You’re not very nervous, are you?” They had come into the exercise yard. “Hey, fellas,” Mix called, “Feldman here is on Warden’s Business.”

A few of the men laughed. One, off by himself, approached on hearing Feldman’s name. “I’m up for parole,” he said, “in two or three months. I’m up for parole and ain’t learned a trade.They made me a trusty as soon as I came. A trusty’s no good , I told them right then. The work’s not connected with anything real, it doesn’t prepare me for outside the walls. Then learn to be honest, they told me, instead. I begged to do printing, but one lung is weak — the dies and the filings no good for my health. I asked at the foundry, they turned me away. What the hell kind of deal is that for a man?”

“Not now,” Feldman said.

“So now I’m all honest but don’t know a trade, and up for parole in two or three—”

“Please,” Feldman said, “ not now .”

Mix shoved the man away. “Warden’s Business,” he said. They came up to a guard. “Feldman is on Warden’s Business, Officer,” Mix said. He winked at the guard. “If you want to kill him, I’m your witness.”

“Are you on Warden’s Business, Feldman?” the guard asked.

“Yes sir,” Feldman said. He decided not to show the guard his warden’s flag until he was asked. He knew he wouldn’t be shot if he didn’t show it. The guard didn’t ask to see the flag, and they passed through a door leading from the exercise yard back into the main building.