It would not listen to reason.
It would not be practical.
It refused apathy at every turn.
“There’s your boy,” Aquintez said, scoping out Palmquist over by the fence, trying to fade away and blend in like a stain on a wall. “There’s your fish.”
“He ain’t mine,” Romero told him.
Aquintez exhaled smoke through his nostrils, then he smiled. “Ah, but you’re feeling bad for him and the ugly fate awaiting him, eh? Something in you—probably that part I love and respect—wants to protect this kid, beat down any of these vermin who come after him. But you gotta be practical, my friend. Papa Joe says you’re going over, you’re going over. You stand in the way… bad, very bad. It don’t have to be Black Dog’s people or the ABs or Papa Joe’s social club, he throws the casheesh out there and every con with a shank’ll be coming after you. You can’t fight that.”
“No.”
“But you’re considering it…”
Romero did not deny that because he couldn’t. Part of him very badly wanted to stand up for Palmquist before those animals got their dirty hands all over him… but another part wanted to distance himself from the fish as much as possible. Because there was no getting around one thing much as he himself tried—Weems had fucked with the kid and now Weems was dead. Something had happened last night. Something had happened when Palmquist was sleeping and Romero could tell himself again and again that he had dreamed it, but he just didn’t believe that.
He kept thinking about what Palmquist had said about this brother of his. Crazy shit. It made no sense, yet Romero could not stop thinking about it.
My brother… Damon… he’s not like us, he’s different.
Ah, it was nonsense. Goddamn fish probably wasn’t right in the head. He’d been victimized at Brickhaven and he wasn’t in touch with reality, threading the needle in fantasy la-la land. That had to be it.
“But something got Weems,” he said under his breath, but loud enough for Aquintez to hear.
“That’s true enough, home.”
“Bodies keep turning up around Palmquist. Cons are slaughtered in locked cells. Cons that seem to be hooked up with the kid in some way.” Romero shook his head. “I’m thinking out loud like some kind of headcase.”
“You ain’t thinking nothing I’m not, bro,” Aquintez said, standing up and butting his cigarette. “Maybe the fish got something going on, eh? Maybe he got a guardian angel. Maybe Tony Gordo ought to think about that.”
Romero watched him walk away, thinking pretty much the same things. The problem was that guys like Tony Gordo did not think. They acted, they reacted. Like dumb animals. They were hungry, they ate. They were tired, they slept. You cornered them, they clawed out your eyes. And when their hormones got the best of them, they—
“Hey, Romero,” one of the hacks said, motioning with his stick. “You got cigarette butts on the ground. Clean it up. Don’t be messing up my fucking yard.”
“Yes sir, boss,” Romero said.
12
That evening, in C-block rec room, a child molester named Neil Givens was hiding out in a darkened corner reading his Bible, trying to figure out a way to make God forgive him for violating one of his lambs.
“The way I understand it,” he said in a low voice, “is that we are brought unto this earth imperfect and therefore, we sin.”
A skinny black kid named Skiv, nodded his head without looking up from his magazine. “If you say so.”
Every day at Shaddock Valley was the same for Givens. Hour after hour, hoping, praying he would not be noticed by the other cons that came and went. Today, he had been successful. None of the usual toughs baited him, noticed him, or even insulted him. Nothing.
Like he was invisible.
Did not exist.
And that was oh-too fine with Givens. He did not deny what he had done. He lay awake most nights thinking about it in detail and if that was from guilt or simply the fact that he enjoyed gloating over his crimes in the darkness, nobody knew and Givens was not talking. He just wanted to do his time, make no trouble, and get out on the streets again… even though by the state clock that would not be for many, many years, if at all.
“Would you like to pray with me?” Givens said.
“No, I’d rather not,” Skiv told him.
Skiv was doing time for molesting several native American boys during his tenure as a reservation student teacher. Givens felt superior to him in that his victims had been female; Skiv, on the hand, thought he was worlds above Givens because at least his victims were still alive, he had not kidnapped a little girl, brutally molested her, and left her corpse in a shallow grave.
Maybe he’d scarred some little boys for life, but, hey, he hadn’t killed anybody.
They were both keeping an eye on the only other person in the room: Palmquist. Funny one. He didn’t try to fit in with the other cons nor did he try and hook up with the other losers and rapos. He stayed to himself. When you spoke to him, he barely acknowledged your presence.
Givens had tried to get him to read scripture, but Palmquist wasn’t interested in that either.
When a con named Poppy came into the room, both Givens and Skiv visibly tensed. Poppy was just a little guy with bad skin, worse teeth, and graveyard eyes that were constantly searching the yard for new fish to pop. He was the sort of con that went scampering away when guys like Romero, Black Dog, or Riggs came bearing down on him. He did not want to know pain; he only wanted to give it.
Palmquist stared off into space, unconcerned.
Givens and Skiv looked at Poppy quickly, then went back to their respective literature.
Poppy liked that, thought that was funny. As if maybe they ignored him he would just go away. But he figured they knew better. “Must be rapo center in here,” he said. “We got nothing but short-eyed chi-mos as far as the eye can see. I feel like a kid in a candy store.” He smiled, revealed his yellowed teeth, giggling with a high repetitive squeaking laugh that was known to go right up spines. “Eeny-meanie-miny-mo, catch a nigger by the toe.” He got up close to Skiv, put his hand’s on the arms of Skiv’s chair, leaned in so close Skiv could smell the rank decay of his teeth. “If he hollers, let him go. My mama said to fuck the very best one and you ain’t it!”
He rasped that last bit right into Skiv’s face. Skiv dropped his magazine, badly trembling.
“I said, you ain’t it,” Poppy told him. “Go over to that candy machine. Get a couple Milky Ways, you hear?”
Skiv did but he was trembling so badly he kept dropping the money. He knew what was going on here. This is exactly what had happened to him when he first got to Shaddock Valley. It had happened to Givens more than once. Maybe it was Palmquist’s turn.
Thank God it’s not me this time, oh thank God—
Then Tony Gordo came into the room, filling the doorway, picking his teeth with a needle. Gordo was so big he had to stoop over to get in the door and turn himself sideways to fit through it. His head was like a cinder block, a steel gray buzzcut on top and a square jaw below, everything in-between a no-man’s land of old knife cuts, cratered scar tissue, and pockmarks sunk so deep you could fit the tip of your thumb into them. He had no neck. That block of a head sat right atop his shoulders which were nearly as wide as two men standing abreast.
He stood there in his oversized orange jumpsuit, eyes like crouching death taking in his little harem because that was exactly the way he saw things. These were his bitches and he would have them and nobody had better think of stopping him.