Of course. To fill in the silence otherwise there was a traditional narrator, reading a commentary on The Meanings of Christmas that had been jointly written by three staff members of the prison newspaper, the Stonevelt Ripple. The narrator was a onetime Mafia bigwig who had a beautiful operatic baritone. When he rolled out with, “And they come from out of Egypt,” you could see it. Besides seeing it in the tableau, I mean.
The show was actually pretty interesting, at least from backstage. A lot of work had been put into the costumes and the sets, and everybody took it all very seriously. I thought the fellow doing Mary was an absolute knockout, if maybe just a little too flouncy, and Joseph had just the right nebbishy feeling I’ve always thought appropriate to that exemplar of passive inactivity.
But the highlight of the show was Andy Butler, who came romping on in his Santa Claus suit and reeled off a list of gifts he said he’d be leaving in people’s stockings later on tonight. They were all local gags, referring to well- known prison personalities, both convict and administrative. The assistant warden charged with unearthing plots and conspiracies among the inmates, for instance, was given a canary, and one of the more notorious Joy Boys was given a subscription to Family Circle. A convicted murderer who’d spent the last ten or twelve years going on death row every time the death penalty was put back on the books and coming off death row every time the death penalty was abolished again was given a lifetime ballpoint pen guaranteed to skip. The audience ate it all up, howling with laughter, and only once did Andy come up with something too obscure for the crowd to appreciate. “And for Peter Corse,” he said that time, “a new set of teeth.” There couldn’t have been more than three of us in the auditorium who knew what that one was all about, and none of us would have thought it funny. In fact, I thought it was touching, Andy in this happy moment remembering his unfortunate friend. I remembered having hidden Peter’s lower plate on him, and winced in misery at the memory. How bad I’d been!
30
THE NEXT DAY WAS CHRISTMAS. I started it feeling such gloom and self-abasement that I just about had to reach up to tie my shoelaces.
And things did not get better. Christmas is a gloomy day in a prison anyway, so apart from having nothing to do and apart from feeling sorry for myself whenever I could pause in disliking myself, everywhere I turned I saw faces looking just as drawn and morose as I felt. Wonderful.
Then Bob Dombey came around in the afternoon with two Christmas presents for me. His wife Alice, the reader, whom I had not as yet met, was making Christmas dinner for the boys, which of course I wasn’t going to be able to attend, so Bob had smuggled in a piece of fruitcake for me. That made me feel both better and worse. Bob also had a present for me from Alice, and it turned out to be a copy of Mailer’s Armies of the Night. Holy Christ, the woman really was a reader I
So I spent a part of the day immersed in a writing style that combines the tortuousness of Henry James with the colloquialness of Rocky Graziano, until Max showed up with a message and a present, both from Marian. The message was that she’d be waiting for me when I got out of prison, which I suppose was a pretty funny line under the circumstances, and the present was another book; The Prison Diary of Ho Chi Minh. That was very funny, under the circumstances, and more fun to read than the other. But too short.
And the best was yet to come. As I was on my way to Christmas dinner in the mess hall-I’d already eaten Alice Dombey’s fruitcake, and was thus grimly aware of what I was missing-Phil joined me, walked along with me, and said, “You’re not getting off restriction until January fifth.”
“I know.”
“Listen, Harry, l hope you don’t mind, but we’re going ahead without you.”
All I could think about was Alice Dombey’s dinner. “Well, sure,” I said.
“We’ll still give you your piece,” he said, “just as though you were there.”
They were going to smuggle a whole dinner in? “You don’t have to do that,” I said.
“Don’t turn down a good deal, pal,” Phil said. “Nobody can afford to say no to maybe fifty, sixty grand.”
Fifty, sixty . . . The robbery! “Oh!” I said. “The bank!”
“Jesus Christ, keep your voice down!”
I ducked my head, and looked around the yard. “I thought you meant dinner,” I said.
“You what?”
“It doesn’t matter. You’ll hit the bank without me, huh?” “Next Thursday. Too bad you can’t be with us, but we don’t want to hold it off any more.”
“Gee, that’s tough,” I said. “I really wanted to be there.” “I know you did. But you’ll get your piece just the same, so don’t worry about it.”
“That’s really nice of you guys, Phil,” I said.
“Ah, what the hell. See you around, Harry.”
“See you around, Phil.”
Christmas dinner in the mess hall stunk. I smiled through every mouthful.
31
THURSDAY I WAS IN A C O M P L E T E state of nerves. This afternoon the boys were going to pull the bank job, and now that I was excused from attendance I felt guilty. Can you imagine? Feeling guilty about not robbing a bank.
But what if they were caught? I would always feel that my absence had made that tiny little bit of difference, that one more gun, one more hand, two more eyes, would have added up to success instead of failure. I had lied to those people, conned them, played practical jokes on them, and now I was letting them down when it really mattered. And they were even going to give me my share of the proceeds, just as though I’d come through.
They’re a swell bunch of fellows, I kept telling myself all day, completely forgetting the many times I’d felt I was one tiny revelation from violent death at their hands. Forgetting, in fact, that I still was only one tiny revelation from violent death at their hands. A swell bunch of fellows, I kept repeating in my head. Gee, I hope they don’t get caught.
They didn’t. Phil came around to my cell about eight o’clock that night, and he looked disgusted again, as though he’d been smelling more stink bombs. Andy was present, sitting on the other bunk, and Phil nodded meaningfully toward him, saying to me, “Hey, Harry, come for a walk.”
Being now a man without privileges, the extent of the walk I could take was up and down the corridor outside my cell, so that’s what the two of us did. From the look on Phil’s face I knew the news was going to be bad and the only question was just how bad. Had there been gunfire? Were some of the boys dead? Had they gotten away, but with no money? On the other hand, was the bad news more personal than that; which is to say, had Phil tipped to any of the things about me that I didn’t want him to know.
I felt very nervous, therefore, when I stepped out into the corridor with him, and the two of us began to stroll up and down. Phil didn’t say anything, and when I sneaked a look at his profile he was looking extremely disgusted. So finally I was the one who broke the silence, saying, “Everything go okay?”
“No.”
“Trouble in the bank?” Some sort of lump was in my throat; maybe it was my heart.
“You could call it trouble,” he said. He stopped and gave, me a flat look and said, “They were having a party.”
“A what?”
“They can’t have a Christmas party like everybody else,” he said. “Last week, like everybody else. They have to have a New Year’s party instead.”