“What?” I said, although the real question, the one I was thinking, was “Why?” He was nothing but an old man who spent his days sorting battered paperbacks.
“Nothing you can do for him, not in here. On the outside, though. Once you get out.”
Stumpy sat back in his seat and pushed his tray back with a scrape. “Old scores,” he said. “You might have noticed, but in here old scores go around and around. They don’t break up and they don’t fade. Just go round and round in a man’s head, never getting any smaller. Looking for payment. And him, he’ll never get out. He’s a lifer, like you.”
“Why doesn’t he just climb out?” I said, and smiled.
Stumpy grinned. “He’ll never leave, not that one. He likes it here. He’s fed, he’s watered. Says he’d be happy to stay here for ever, only he’s scared someone would notice eventually.”
I snorted. I guess the shine in Stumpy’s eyes didn’t seem so dangerous when he wasn’t looking straight at me. And I had been wrong to ask, wrong even to think about getting out. Some people shouldn’t think about some things, and I was one of them. I’d forgotten that, all for one stir-crazy psycho and an old man – the joke was on me, that’s all.
But Stumpy was off again. He waved a hand and the whole table turned to listen. “But anyway,” he said. “Did I ever tell you the story of how I lost my thumb?”
There were groans, splutters, and laughter. He began, some story about how he’d had the tip of his thumb removed because it was easier to grind out a man’s eye that way, because it was shorter, squatter, stronger. And I knew that this wasn’t the real story either, but I also knew something else: if anyone got to hear that story, the real story, it was going to be me.
I didn’t say anything, though. I just sat and ate and listened, because prison was like that. You learned when it was time to wait. You did a lot of waiting: I guess you got a feel for it.
I left Stumpy alone after that, but I always had cigarettes in my pocket, so I was ready the next time he put his hand out in the yard and asked me for a smoke.
“Never leave home without them,” I said, and passed one over.
“You don’t even smoke,” he said, “but I’ll help you out, don’t you worry. You don’t even have to pay me.” He scraped a match on the ground and lit the cig, shielding it against the breeze, which blew occasional spits of rain in our faces.
I was about to walk away when he gestured towards something. “He’s never short,” he said.
I turned and saw the librarian sitting on the ground nearby. His knees were drawn up under his chin, his posture that of a younger man. His eyes were a pale, piercing blue.
Then I saw him reach out with one hand and he did something with his fingers. I couldn’t quite see what it was: some kind of twist, some kind of flurry, and I lost sight of his hand for a split second. Then it was back and the librarian put a cigarette to his lips. It was lit, and battered-looking, half-smoked.
“Never lacks for anything, that one,” Stumpy said. “Just reaches out and takes it.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t see how he’d done it, and I didn’t know what to say.
“Climb right out,” said Stumpy. “That’s what he says, only I don’t quite have it yet. But one day I will. They’ll wake up and I’ll be gone.” He turned to me, eyes agleam. “I’ll show you,” he said. “You’ll be there. You can listen, anyway, and you’ll know I’ve done it. I’m moving cell.”
I raised my eyebrows and he nodded. “Guard owes me a favour. I’m moving tonight.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “About climbing out. You got a plan?”
He shook his head, narrowing his eyes against the smoke of his cigarette. “Don’t need a plan,” he said. “I’ve got a book. His book.” He nodded towards the librarian. “And I made a promise. Gotta score to settle.”
There was something about the way he looked. “Is it true?” I asked. “Are you going?”
He shook himself. “Everything I tell you is true,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you how I lost my thumb?” And he was away, waving the stub of his cigarette in the air, his eyes flat and grey and staring off into the distance, focused on nothing. He told me how he’d lost his thumb when he ground it so deep into a man’s eye it severed against the skull. The man had been screwing his wife, who was tall and brunette and had tits Stumpy paid a year’s salary for.
When Stumpy pulled his thumb out of the man’s eye he left the tip behind, protruding from the socket, all the evidence the pigs needed to put him away.
That afternoon I lay on my bunk, staring at the ceiling. I wasn’t sharing the cell but had taken the top bunk, so the ceiling was close. I listened to the quiet from below and the noise from the corridor, the banging, half-shouts, the footsteps.
I heard it when Stumpy moved into the cell next to mine. He was talking to the guards, loud and cheery and familiar. Setting things down, doors sliding and slamming. Then, after it had gone quiet for a while, I heard his voice at my door.
“Come in?” he said.
“Be my guest.”
The cells weren’t locked and he came in, his walk quiet and steady. His jauntiness had gone. I sat up on the bunk, and when I saw his face, I jumped down. “Smoke?” I offered.
He waved his hand. “Not this time. This one’s on the house.” He turned and his eyes looked pale, the shine in them absent, leaving them watery and somehow naked.
“I – I thought someone should know,” he said. “I’m going, later. Tonight. I thought you should know.” He pushed something into my hand. It was a crumpled photograph of a woman. She looked about forty, her hair mousy, clothes nondescript. She had a good smile and laughter lines around her eyes and no kind of tits at all.
“My wife,” he said. “That’s my wife.” He looked down and I saw that his eyes were full of tears.
“I got her a gardener,” he said. “I got her a house and a big garden, and she was always going on about it, so I got her a gardener. But she kept saying how she wanted this gazebo, a love seat she said…” He paused. “A love seat, and I couldn’t expect a gardener to build it, she said. I was the builder, and she wanted me to do it.
“So I did. I got this – this – gazebo. A stupid word for a stupid thing. It was just a frame that wouldn’t even keep the rain off, and a bench. Big enough for two, she said. She said…”
I didn’t say anything.
“So I started putting it together, only the damn thing wouldn’t go straight. And I was nailing one side together when the other one slipped, and it fell, right on my thumb.” He looked at his hand.
“Blood everywhere,” he said. “And I screamed. She took me to hospital, and they took the end off. But she kept looking at me, like, I dunno…”
I waited.
“She looked at me like I was a little kid who’d wet his pants, you know? All the time. Like I’d let her down. And then later, when we got home – later, after – when they took me away. She looked at me then, too. Like something the dog had shat out on the carpet. She looked.
“The last time I saw her, and she looked at me like that. She never visited me, you know. Never did, not once.” His face twisted. “She said she was leaving. I was in the fucking hospital, and she tells me this. She’d been seeing him. Her and the fucking gardener. All the time. Fucking.”
I put my hand on his arm, and he looked at it, and shook it off.
“I sorted it,” he said. “I sorted him. I had a gun, remember me telling you that? And they took me away and they put me in here. But I’m not staying. I’m going to see her again.”
He punched his fist into his palm, over and over. “I can still see her,” he said. “The way she looked at me with those eyes. Those eyes.”