“I can’t raise my voice. Come closer.”
I moved a chair to his bedside and sat down. His sour breath and the odor from under his sheet made me swallow.
“It’s a whack,” he said.
“On who?”
“Who the fuck you think?”
“Maybe it was an accident. It happens. The people who prepare jailhouse food haven’t worked in a lot of five-star restaurants.”
“I jailed too long, man. I know when the whack’s out. You feel it. It’s in people’s eyes.”
“You’re a superstar, Joey. They’re not going to lose you.”
“You listen to me. Yesterday afternoon a trusty, this punk, a kid with mushmelons for buns, is sweeping out the corridor. Then he looks around real careful and walks over to my cell and says, ‘Hey, Joey, I can get you something.’
“I go, ‘You can get me something? What, a case of AIDS?’
“He says, ‘Stuff you might could use.’
“I go, ‘The only stuff I see around here is you, sweetcakes.’
“He says, ‘I can get you a shank.’
“I go, ‘What I need a shank for from a punk like you?’
“He says, ‘Sometimes there’s some badasses in the shower, man.’
“I go, ‘You clean the shit out of your mouth when you talk to me.’
“He says, ‘It’s just a city jail, but there’s a couple of bad guys here. You don’t want the shank, you don’t want a friend, that’s your business. I was only trying to help out.’
“I go, ‘What guys?’ But he’s already walking off. I go, ‘Come back, you little bitch,’ but he clanks on the door for the screw to open up and shoots me the bone.”
“Like you say, Joey, he’s probably just a punk who wants a job when he gets out. What’s the big deal?”
“You don’t get it. A guy like that don’t shoot the bone at a guy like me. Something’s happening. There’s been some kind of change. . . .” His hand motioned vaguely at the air, at the sunlight through the window. “Out there somewhere. It’s a whack. Look, I want a hot plate and canned food brought in.”
Then I saw something in his eye that I hadn’t seen before, in the corner, a tremolo, a moist, threadlike yellow light, like a worm feeding.
He and his kind spent a lifetime trying to disguise their self-centered fear. It accounted for their grandiosity, their insatiable sexual appetites, their unpredictable violence and cruelty. But almost always, if you were around them long enough, you saw it leak out of them like a sticky substance from a dead tree.
“I owe you a confession, Joey,” I said.
“You owe me a—” He turned his head on the pillow to look at me.
“Yeah, I haven’t been honest with you.”
His brow became netted with lines.
“I cooked the books on you a little bit,” I said. “You wanted me to tell Weldon you weren’t going down by yourself. I did as you asked, but I told the same thing to Bobby Earl.”
His head lifted an inch off the pillow.
“You told Earl—” His breath was rasping. “You told Earl what?”
“That you’re going to take other people down with you.”