The Other Shoe (40 page)

“You did real good in there. But I wouldn't put too much stock in anything that judge says. He talks, but he hardly says anything if he can help it.”

“Sure, he's an asshole, but he's our asshole now.” Giselle was dancing—she thought it might be the twist or the pony. “If he wants to be on my side for once, let him. Whoop-ee.” And Giselle had a long moment where she forgot she was inadequate. Mrs. Brusett walked below with her hands at the small of her back, pacing a tight circuit on the broad grounds, her head bent. “Shit,” said Giselle. “Shit, shit, shit. She wanted me to tell you that she'd been excluded from the courtroom. Which was actually my doing. I made a motion to exclude, which is standard, and I hadn't even thought about it, but it kept her out of court until after she'd testified, and since she's testifying last—she told me to explain why she wasn't there, and I forgot. She told me to be sure, and I forgot. I just got so wrapped up in everything else, doing everything else, I'm so sorry. I hope you didn't think she'd . . . I usually get so flustered, but for the most part, not so much today. Today I was pretty good, I think.”

“You were good,” he said.

“You don't have to keep saying it.”

“No, you were real good. Couldn't have asked for better. Thanks. But we better not make Tubby late for his supper; there'd be your crime against nature. Sure, you did great.”

“You've been worth it, Henry. I know you are.”

With a flourish she turned him over to his cousin waiting outside the jury room door, and Tubby hustled him down the stairs and out the door of the courthouse, where Karen saw them and began to jog across the lawn toward them.

“Whoa,” Tubby called to her, “hey, whoa there. Things are goin' good. Better not screw it up now. It's still not over, and you're still a witness. I just do not want to screw things up for you guys, so you better not try talkin' to him. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he's all yours again, I bet. Tomorrow he'll be home.”

She stood on the lawn in her slacks, and in a tailored jacket with quaking fringe, something new and sporty she'd got, and she watched Henry Brusett make his short passage to the jail; she put her right fist on her heart and lay her other hand over that, and she mouthed, “I love you,” and for once he understood her.

“You got somethin' goin' with women,” said Tubby when they were safely inside. “Boy, I'd sure like to have your secret, cuz. What is it? Is it 'cause you're such an outlaw? I've never got anywhere near that kinda loyalty out of 'em. You can just wear this same outfit tonight, Henry. How was I supposed to get around to washing your jumpsuit? You'd just have to change into it for court tomorrow, anyway. Now I'm here all night, you know that? Again. I never, never get a break anymore, I might as well commit a crime myself, much as I'm here. Tomorrow you walk, and I'll be . . . at work, man. Goddamn, win the ladies over, that's how it's done, huh? That's how you get over. Oh, no. No, no, no. You smell that? It's that make-believe meatloaf again. Man, I am tired. Tired. Oh, you better give me that pencil before we go back.”

“There's a half-dozen pencils back there, Tubby.”

“Yeah, but they're all those carpenter's pencils, those stubby little deals. Can't be used for weapons. This number two you got, you could really poke somebody with that thing. I'm not sayin' you, but once it's back there, there's no tellin'. No weapons, that's my jail. Not if I can help it. See my point? My point. Ha. Ha. Ha. Henry, you got one more day left, and then maybe you'll get out there and run into somebody with a real sense of humor. But that meatloaf, man, how could I even be funny? Knowing? How'm I supposed to?”

Henry Brusett was no more enthusiastic for the meal than anyone else, but he felt he had to have it. For strength.

At dinner, Tubby passed word of Henry's almost-certain good fortune and his imminent release, and upon hearing the news, Leonard said that he was tired, at any rate, of being limp and wasted, and he grinned in his limp and wasted way at Nat, a grin to signal the coming end of the moratorium, to say that they had months before them to share with no further interference. That special intimacy. Nat wept.

Leonard napped again after supper; he'd been napping twenty hours a day, stupefied for the remaining four, and even when Tubby had finally understood what was going on, he'd never thought to challenge it. Life had for these few weeks been so much easier with the big man well drugged. The barracks cell was no more volatile than a hospital room while Leonard was napping, and Tubby had agreed with himself to take whatever help, whatever peace came his way. He was so shorthanded. Tubby cleared the supper dishes and took them into the kitchen and washed them, and then he threw a spare mattress on the floor of the laundry room and went to sleep on it. If he dreamed, he would not later remember those dreams.

There were just the three prisoners in the barracks cell that night.

Leonard napped on a top bunk. Nat watched television, a game show, and the cheat devised a routine where he spoke the answer even
as the host was speaking it, so that he could pretend he'd thought of it just in time. Nat briefly forgot his troubles. He said he'd be winning tens, maybe hundreds of thousands if he ever got on that show, and the first thing he'd do was try and get his mother's car out of the impound lot. He'd buy some insurance and some savings bonds, and he'd start being a lot more cautious about the company he kept. He had some ideas about turning things around. The excitement of the game show seemed to put these ideas within reach. The South American country named for an Italian? “Ur-uhhh . . . Co-lombia.” Nat could almost feel the host placing the key to the next door in the palm of his slightly sweaty hand.
This
would be a good night for him, a pleasant little night tonight. Tomorrow . . . He'd think about tomorrow tomorrow, if then.

Henry Brusett had accumulated so much correspondence from his wife that at some point it was no longer convenient to keep the bundle under his mattress. A grocery sack stood half full at the head of his bunk, and this too was defeating all practicality. She'd put her best and bravest thoughts on many kinds of paper for him—and the letters had piled up. But how deep would be the pile of her misgivings, the thoughts she hadn't sent? He had never supposed he deserved her. There were particular letters that he kept apart in a separate packet, and these he continued to read every night, long after they'd laid claim to his memory.

Dear Henry
,

There is a little clearing not far up the hill from our place. I have been in it before a few times but not at night. At night and I don't know why this would be so you can see the stars a lot better from there
.

and

Dear Henry
,

Remember when you told me that Triumph would always be trouble. It has been a great car and it still is a great car. This is a great car even if it won't go very fast. It has always got me everywhere I wanted to go
.

and

Dear Henry
,

You were the nicest man when I met you. You were always such a nice surprise to me through the years
.

Henry read these and returned them to the sack with the others. He rolled the sack closed at the top, and he propped it at the foot of his bunk. With his blankets he closed himself off for a time and listened to Nat listening to the television and to Leonard's mumbling progress through his long, troubled, artificial sleep. Henry Brusett tried to make his way in his mind up a mountainside, to the side of a bursting creek; he tried to think of himself with any kind of tool in hand, tried to recall the scent of dawn, but he could not for all his wanting it, needing it, bring any of that back. Once he'd had a purpose, and he'd fit that purpose, and that had been his luck. His memory worked best, though, when he was remembering where he'd been wrong. Henry opened the sack with the letters again, but withdrew from it only his glasses. He rolled the sack very tightly then and set it again at the head of his bunk. He popped the lenses out of the glasses. It was a long while since he'd asked much of his thumbs, and it pleased him to see they were still strong. Having decided the lenses were not worth trying to sharpen, he slipped them in his pocket.

There was a camera aimed at the picnic table, and a camera for every corner of the barracks cell, and one for every other cell in the jail, but prisoners here came to know very quickly that these were blind,
that no one was watching. There had been a budget shortfall many years earlier, and since then no one had been watching, and though the eternally-lit jail had originally come about because of the cameras, when the cameras blinked out, the lights stayed on. A policy had been established. Prisoners here would live under forty-watt bulbs, and if they wanted the comfort of darkness, they could get it behind their blankets, or they could close their eyes.

Henry Brusett placed his glasses on the floor and crushed the heavy wire frame beneath his heel. He rolled the resulting tangle ninety degrees on the floor, and he crushed it again. He twisted the earpieces away from the mangled frame, and then twisted them back onto it, reinforcing the weak center, the nose piece. There was a badly welded gusset plate in the picnic table, and a gap forming a small V, and using this as a vice, Henry twisted tight his crudely braided wire and brought the whole assembly to a sharp, barbed point. He'd made himself a dirk, but a short one.

“Remember her?” Nat said, talking equally to Henry Brusett and to the television. “Remember that girl? She always plays the ditz.”

“Why don't you go lay down?” Henry told him.

“Lie down?”

“Yeah, if you don't mind.”

“I'm . . . what is . . . what's that?”

“These things can cost up to twelve bucks apiece,” Henry said, “even a half-decent pair. I had 'em laying around all over my house. But, yeah, you better lay down. Just for a little bit.”

“I . . . well, whatever you say, Henry. You're the man tonight. But I thought maybe we'd stay up and, I don't know, ‘reminisce' wouldn't be the right word, but . . . shoot the shit. I know you're not too social, but tonight of all nights, I'd like to share. How you must feel. You must feel like a million dollars. Like you've won everything back. Your
good name, your freedom. Wow. Don't blame me if I envy you, man, especially under the, under the circumstances. I promise—no more crying, either. Not until you leave. Why bum you out?”

“Why don't you lay down? Get back in your bunk and lay down.”

Nat could not recall him previously asking anyone for anything. “Sure, Henry, I guess I can . . . oh sure, if I turn like . . . I can watch about as well from right here. Quite comfortable. Chat with you, too. This is not too bad at . . . Henry,” he said, “Henry,” he said. “No.”

Just over two inches of tangled wire came out of Henry Brusett's fist, all the blade he could make of it, and there were only just the few places where his tool might suffice. He struck at Leonard's neck, hoping for the big artery, but Leonard, sensitive above all things to the coming blow, turned from it as it fell, and the dirk lodged in a crease between two heavy sheaves of muscle, and then an adrenal gland like a rotten, bursting melon brought Leonard up off his bed and out of his long funk, and a single thrust of his heel broke three of Henry's ribs and drove him to the far wall where Leonard caught him, pinned him, pinned his arms to his sides and lifted him off his feet. “Hey wait a minute,” said Nat from where he still lay. “Come on. Come on, you guys.”

Leonard squeezed, and as he squeezed he rammed Henry's nose with his forehead, and Henry's nose became granular and soft and wet. He swallowed very fast so that he wouldn't drown in his own blood and snot. Leonard rammed him again, and Henry tasted his chalky teeth. He saw blood beginning to well around the mangled metal still jammed in Leonard's neck and, just when Henry Brusett's legs were at long last numb, he saw that Leonard was gathering himself for another effort, and so he seized the hideous dirk in his broken teeth, and he twisted and he pushed at it until a thrilling new pain shot through his teeth and a wet warmth surged onto him. Leonard shuddered.

They were on the floor. Leonard had dropped him.

Henry Brusett heard the rattling gasps and could not distinguish his own from Leonard's. He could not be very happy about it, but he no longer felt any pain at all.

Later, Nat would tell them that he had screamed and screamed and no one had come. Later, Nat would ask them to consider that if the county couldn't do a little more to ensure inmate safety, should the county be holding prisoners at all? He was sure he'd been yelling almost the whole time it was happening. It seemed like it had taken hours for them to go down, and he was pretty certain he must have yelled at hearing bone break, really loud, but no one came to help. Nat said that when they fell, they fell on their backs and lay parallel on the floor. He'd gotten off his bunk then and gone to them to see if anything might be done, and as he stood over them he felt Leonard's blood lap his naked toe, and he screamed, he knew for sure he'd screamed then, and still no one came, and that's when he understood he'd be watching them die, and that's when he felt he must owe each of them a little something for their dying. Any obligation was strange to the cheat, but they were leaving now, and it had fallen to him to watch them go. They lay face to face, not two feet apart, and he could see that they wished to speak to each other, their eyes were full of that intention, but their mouths could shape only gurgling blood and pink bubbles. Nat, for once in his life, was not dying, and he felt he owed these men something for it, and he wished he might translate for them so that at least they could tell each other whatever needed to be said. But what could that possibly be?