the Onion Field (1973) (13 page)

But the thing that always dissuaded him was the memory of Folsom. Sure, he might go for that institutional man stuff if it was some other joint you were talking about. I could do nothin but time in a place like Chino, he thought. Nothin but time. And some of these other joints too where they have what they call "counselors" and the food is good and they call them "dorms" where they lock you up, and they have TV where everyone can see it, and all the ice cream you want, and it's warm in the winter and air-conditioned in the summer, and almost unlimited visitin. But then, fuck the visitin, because nobody visits me anyway. On the other hand, it's nice to see pretty girls millin around. And they have lots of groupin where you sit around and tell lies to each other and have a ball-bustin good time. And enough money for plenty of smokes, and where once in a while you can score a little taste, maybe a few reds, even a real fix if you got enough bread. But fuck the fix, no, that's way back, way back. It's too good a memory. Too good. Makes you feel too good to remember it. That's way back there. Better to remember the first fix. When I gave two and a half bucks toward a number-five cap, shot three drops, and puked all the way to San Bernardino.

Maybe I could get a job in the visitin center of a nice slammer, he thought. Yeah, he heard of those suckass jobs in joints like that, and shit, he was sly enough to con his way into a job like that, and then he could really make lots of stings in lots of ways. Shit, I could jive visitors by tellin them how nobody cares if I live or die and they'd lay some bread on me. Yeah, they'd forget who the fuck they came to visit. Or how about tourists passin through? Oh yeah, they'd give me smokes and coin. And who knows, probably in a job like that the bulls look the other way, or maybe I could slip them a couple bucks once in a while. Once every other Sunday maybe, I talk real sweet to some little bitch who's just come from visitin her old man, and they been talkin hot and she's just oozin. Yeah. And then the bull looks the other way and I slip her into a back room there. There must be a back room there, and I fuck her right down through the floor. Oh yeah!

But that ain't the way it is. Not for Jimmy Lee Smith. Not for me. Cause now I got a Folsom jacket. It's back to Folsom for me. To the Big Gray Frog on the grassy green banks of the American River. Oh yeah.

He shivered when he pictured Folsom, squatting there, huge and gray, ghastly in the fog. Built from enormous, rounded, slimy wet and ugly moss-covered stones. He always dreamed of it that way. In the fog, when the stones were clammy and dark, ugly gray. It was like the prisons he saw in the old movies when he was a boy. He thought of his cell. The old spring cot that sagged like a hammock. The wooden table built from scavenged lumber, the chipped coffee- cup which always cut his lip, the Bugle rolling tobacco and the sardine can ashtray, the cardboard taped over the bottom of the door to keep out the draft and the dust.

There were the bulls, old hands, immovable, old like the institution. Not "counselors," not "correctional personnel," but bulls, just fuckin bulls with cop uniforms and guns. Jesus, guns. Like they say, a water cooled machine gun on one tower. Go ahead and try to make the wall and fence back toward the river. Oh yeah, go ahead. They want you to. And the other towers, rifles on those. And spotlights. And this is maximum security, baby. Like, forget it, you ain't leavin here. Not till the man says you're leavin.

Unlike at other joints, nobody was pressured into a job occupation, not at all. Like they say, in Folsom you don't gotta do nothin but time.

And as always his thoughts returned to the Flea-that filthy, prowling phantom Jimmy could not seem to escape. He'd see him in the yard, skulking around the housing unit, anywhere.

Jimmy knew it was probably imagination, but he seemed to be looking at him. Like he knew him. And smiling, or at least showing brown teeth, twisted and broken, and drooling. They let him alone because his mind was half-gone, even the bulls let him alone, and he prowled alone, this slinking bag of bones with tufts of hair hanging from each nostril. His only interest was oral copulation, and Jesus, he found guys! Jimmy felt the shivers surge through him. He found guys!

And Jimmy had nightmares about the Flea. In one dream, Jimmy couldn't seem to move through the yard, but it wasn't like he was walking with heavy feet, he just couldn't walk because he was old. He was an old man and had been inside most of his life like the Flea. Suddenly he was so old he could hardly walk through the yard. He was terrified because his life had gotten away. He couldn't remember how, but he could see by his hands, by his veiny brittle hands, that he was old! Then with a mighty effort he shuffled across the yard and through a door because a monstrous ugly con was eyeing him with lust and he didn't want them to do what he saw them do to the Flea. He ran to his cell and screamed for the bull to lock the door, and he fell across the cot, overturning the little wooden homemade table. The mirror crashed to the floor and he lay there, gaping in horror into the shattered pieces. He could see plainly in the slivers of glass. Clearly. He was the Flea!

Sunday afternoon, March 3, the house phone rang.

"Hi, Jimmy," said the cheerful voice which Jimmy recognized immediately.

"Hello."

"What're you doing?"

"Shavin. Come on up."

"Come on down. Billy and me'd like to take you to my house. We'd like to show you something."

"Be right down," said Jimmy, and for the rest of his life Jimmy Smith would also mark this moment.

Why the fuck am I wastin my time with these two fools? he thought.

But what else do I got right now? I can at least go with them this afternoon. They ain't gonna stick up somebody this afternoon. And maybe I can get next to the paddy and scam a few dollars off him. And then just cut them loose. Maybe I can scam a whole mess of dollars.

For the rest of his life he would wonder if he could've made another play, played his own hand, or drawn different cards. Or was the hand played* around him? Does somebody stack that fuckin deck, he often wondered, and ain't nothin you can do about it? It was something he never decided.

Jimmy saw that Billy Small was half in the bag even that early in the afternoon, and they drove aimlessly in Greg's six year old Ford station wagon making small talk about mutual acquaintances they'd known in prison. Small at last insisted on stopping at a liquor store for a half pint of Schenley's.

When they got around to going to Greg's three-room duplex apartment, Jimmy was surprised to see it was near Sixty-fifth and Figueroa, in an all black neighborhood. Jimmy was later to recall, "We went in the pad and he introduced me to this dumpy little pregnant broad named Maxine who he called his wife. She wasn't black like I expected, she was white. Fishy white, paler than him even. But she was pleasant enough in a plain sort of way and she had a quick smile which made her not quite so bad lookin."

"Max, step in the bedroom a minute," Greg said as Jimmy and Small sat down on the couch. Jimmy tapped his cigarette on the top of a cheap glass coffee table and tried to ignore Small's drunken babbling. He watched Greg gesturing angrily to Maxine and whispering, and then Greg bent over a dresser and turned sideways. Jimmy saw the revolver in his hand.

Greg flipped the cylinder open, checked it and flipped it shut with one hand as they do in movies. Then he came in the living room smiling cheerfully at Jimmy. Small sipped his third whiskey oblivious of them all.

"Why did you take that roll of dollar bills that was in the bedroom, Billy?" asked Greg.

Small looked at Greg, down to the gun in his belt, and back up. "You gotta be kiddin," he said finally. "I don't know what you're talkin about."

"Yes you do. You took a roll of one-dollar bills that belongs to me. Max said it was laying on the dresser yesterday morning when you and Max were here alone. She said she's looked everywhere for it and can't find it."

Now Greg's tone was changing, but only a little. The gun was in his belt but Jimmy was watching the blue eyes carefully.

"Also, Billy, I'm reminded of the fact that yesterday downtown you were flashing an awful lot of one-dollar bills. And I know for a fact that when we split up the last take, I only gave you about twenty one-dollar bills and kept the bulk of them to make up that roll."

"I swear I didn't, Greg," said Billy, getting more sober by the minute.

"Furthermore, Max says that yesterday while I was gone you were fooling around the bedroom and even patted her on the fanny. Now, I don't care about the pat. We're sort of a little family, the three of us. I'm sure it was done in a friendly way and doesn't mean anything, but don't make it a habit."

"No, Greg, I swear . . ."

"What I do care about is the dough, and it's missing. I want it."

Small picked up the Schenley's, took a long gulp of courage, pulled his wallet from his back pocket and slammed it on the coffee table.

"All I got in that fuckin wallet is tens and twenties. She's a liar!"

So that's the way to talk to this weird guy, thought Jimmy, this oddball with his long neck and his funny talk-with his alsos, fur- thermores, moreovers, and all his other bullshit. He talked like some hick from Nebraska just come to town and begging to be flim- flammed.

"Max never lies to me," Greg said, and turned, taking a step toward the bedroom. Jimmy thought that even a drunken black shoeshine man could handle the likes of this paddy. Then Greg wheeled.

He crouched slightly, taking shuffling steps toward Small, the gun in his hand, pointed at Small's face, finger tight on the trigger, hand trembling.

Jimmy saw all of it, but mostly he saw the eyes: blue, cold, without life, so that the voice full of rage only exaggerated the promise of death in those eyes.

"I ain't never gonna forget those eyes," Jimmy was to say. "With a gun in his hands, something happened to them. Give him the gun and he could scare the shit outta anybody with his weird looks and those eyes."

"After all I done for you," Greg whispered, knuckles white, gun muzzle weaving a tiny circle. "I split with you fifty-fifty. All I done for you and you dare to steal from me?"

Then Greg put the muzzle six inches from Small's forehead and cocked the hammer.

Small was frozen. He looked like the stunted rat Jimmy had seen in the hotel as a child. It was paralyzed when the gray cat cornered it, impotent before the great yellow eye.

Jimmy realized he was panicking and tried to think of something to say, something . . .

But Greg spoke: "I oughtta blow your goddamn brains out."

Now Jimmy could smell the sweat, his and Small's. His breath was coming hard but he sensed that Small was not breathing at all.

Greg stared for another ten seconds and slowly let the hammer down, the muzzle still pointed in the face of Billy Small.

"I love you like a brother, Greg," Small was finally able to croak. "Greg, we are brothers. I wouldn't steal your money."

"If I was one hundred percent positive you did, I'd kill you now, you son of a bitch," said Greg, putting the gun back in his belt.

"I didn't, Greg. I didn't, brother."

"We're going out tonight, Billy," said Greg, "only this time you're gonna pull your own weight. You 're going in alone, not me. Jimmy's gonna drive. I'm just gonna wait outside. And if you come out without the money, without doing your work, I'm gonna kill >>

you.

"Sure, Greg, sure, I'll go in. Sure."

"And maybe it's possible you didn't steal my roll, but we're going out and make it all up tonight anyhow, and you're gonna do all the making."

"Sure, Greg," said Small, sagging back on the couch. "Can you drive, Jim?" Greg asked.

"Sure, drivin's my game, Greg," said Jimmy, beginning to calm down, shakily lighting a Chesterfield. "Like, I'm a pretty good wheel man, you know what I mean?"

"Come into the kitchen, Jim," Greg said. "Let's have a drink. Billy, I don't think you should have any more."

"Anything you say, Greg," said Small. "Anything you say." Maxine mixed them both generous portions of Schenley's, and Jimmy was grateful to get it.

"I can understand how you feel," said Jimmy after a few sips. "But honest, Greg, I been knowin that guy for a long time, and maybe he didn't take it. And if he did, maybe he was drunk. I'm glad you gave ol Billy a break. Shoot, it's just the whiskey."

"I thought of that, Jim," said Greg, with a friendly smile again, his front teeth protruding slightly, a partially filled silver tooth just right of center, much like Jimmy's own. "I thought the whiskey probably made him do it and I made allowances. Otherwise, I'd have busted a cap in his goddamn head."

"That's right, Greg," said Jimmy, spilling a little of the drink. "Stealin from a partner is jiveass bullshit, is all it is."

"Well, it's getting dark now," said Greg. "I gotta get ready for our night's work."

Greg went to get ready and when he came back he was wearing dark clothes, a pair of half-boots and a stingy brim hat.

"How do I look, Jim?"

"Uh, fine, Greg, you look jist fine."

"I mean the difference. Don't I look different?"

"Oh, sure, Greg," Jimmy said, getting nervous again, because he didn't want to make Greg angry.

"Do you know why I look so different?"