Hard News (Rune 3)

Wassup?

Mah crib. I ever tell you 'bout mah crib?

Hells yeah.

The whites were older, crueler, humorless. They looked bad--it was the longer, unclean hair, the pale skin. They too stood together.

Black, white. Just like the city.

A lot of the men were exercising. There were weights here though the hierarchy didn't allow for democratic use among all prisoners. Still, there were always push-ups and sit-ups. Muscles develop in prison. But Boggs hadn't made a fetish of exercise. Doing that'd be an acknowledgment of where he was. If he didn't stand in line for the thirty-pound dumbbells then maybe he was somewhere else.

"Amazing grace, how sweet thou art...."

An a cappella black gospel group was practicing in the yard. They were really good. Boggs, when he first heard them, wanted to cry. Now he just listened. The group wouldn't be together much longer. They'd walk in two months, four months and thirteen months respectively.

"I once was lost but now I'm found...."

The singers started a second verse and someone nearby yelled, "Yo, shut the fuck up."

He smelled fireplace wood smoke. He tried not to think of the last time he'd sat in front of a fireplace. Thought about that girl from New York. The little girl with the big camera.

He sat quietly. He smoked some though since he'd been inside he'd lost his taste for smoking. He'd lost his taste for a lot of things. He sat for five minutes thinking about the girl, about the story, about prison, about the sky before he realized that the prisoners he'd been sitting with were no longer next to him.

Boggs knew why they'd moved and he felt his skin crackle with fear.

Severn Washington was sick. Got the flu bad, was puking all night, and was in the infirmary. If Boggs knew it everybody knew it.

He looked around the yard and saw the man immediately. Juan Ascipio was back.

He wore a red headband and a fatigue jacket over his jumpsuit. Two other prisoners walked beside him. Ascipio was a newcomer, a dealer who'd been convicted of the assassination of two rivals. He wasn't a big man and he had a face that when it smiled might make children comfortable. A kind face, the sort you want to please. But the eyes, Boggs had noticed, were grinny-mean and chill.

The three of them stopped about fifteen feet from where Boggs sat, next to a tall wall of red brick. Ascipio said, "Yo, man. Here. Now."

Boggs looked at him but didn't get up.

Ascipio pointed to a small shaded area out of sight of the towers. The prisoners called it Lovers' Lane.

Ascipio stepped into the nook and unzipped his fly "Yo, man, I'm talking to you. You deaf, or what?"

His friend said, "Yo, man, on your fucking knees. Gonna turn you out, man, turn you out. You do that an' you'll live. Big nigger ain' here to save your pretty cheeks."

The other: "Come on, man. Now!"

Boggs looked back at them. He said, "Don't believe I will." He measured the distance to the nearest guard. It was a long, long way. The other inmates were all studying very important things in the opposite direction from Boggs.

This's going to be bad.

Ascipio spit out, "Don't believe you will? Motherfucker say he don't believe he will?"

Then Boggs's eyes lowered to his own right hand, which rested on his knee. He glanced down at it. Ascipio followed his gaze.

A long fingernail.

It kept growing. One inch, two, three, four, six. Boggs looked back into their eyes. One by one, his head swiveling.

Severn Washington had given it to him last night, this piece of double-strength glass, a clear stiletto honed on one side so sharp it would shave hair. The handle was taped. Metal-detector-proof. The fingernail could do the most damage glass could ever do. (Boggs had said, "Would Allah, you know, approve of this?" And Washington had reassured him, "Allah say it's okay to fuck up assholes who try to move on you. I heard Him say that personally")

Ascipio laughed. "Put that 'way man. Get you pretty white mouth over here, man."