The Pledge (38 page)

“Well, I'm lying there in bed, reading, and next to me the Bible-study group is in full swing with a sort of argument erupting. I must mention that the Kentucky men are treated very respectfully. They are dangerous fighters, and while it takes a good deal to rile them, once they're in a fight, they fight to kill. So while the Bible discussion made noise, everyone endured it. Finally, Jackson Hill turns to me and asks me do I know any Bible? So I'm in it, and the passage they're working over is that line where Jesus says,
Suffer little children, and forbid them not to come unto me.
Jackson Hill says to me, ‘Now how about that, Professor? Here's a good man, Jesus Christ our Lord, telling little ones to suffer. Ain't there enough suffering when the poor kid grows up?'

“Now, Molly, I have to pause and mention that the warden asked whether I would undertake to teach these Kentucky men how to read and write. Like a damn fool, I agreed and I put up a notice on the bulletin board, but nobody showed up. Now come back to Jackson Hill's question; I explain to them that when the Bible was translated in the time of King James, three hundred years ago,
suffer
was used mostly to mean
accept
or
endure
or
tolerate.
So the line in the Bible, I explained, did not mean that Jesus wanted children to suffer, but that He wanted nothing to stand between Him and children. To us it appears simple and obvious, but it was a light breaking out to these mountain people; and not only did this little incident make me an authority on biblical puzzles, but that-night a dozen of the Kentucky men turned up for the literacy class.

“Now bear with me. How do you teach illiterates? I don't know, I don't have the vaguest notion, and try as I might, I could not remember when I learned to read or how I learned to read. So I had to invent a system. The first time, I dealt only with the alphabet, the sound of the letters. We went over that for a whole evening, the sound of letters and the shape of letters. Then, last night, I started with a few simple three-letter words, like
cat, rat, dog, bed
, and
pop
and
mom.
Amazing how quickly the mountain people learn. I'm as excited over this as I was going out on my first newspaper assignment. It's like opening a box of something wonderful.

“So much for the volunteer work. My regular job at the motor pool is something else. The chief mechanic at the garage is a man named Dude Baxter. He's from New Orleans, where he was a driver for one of the local mobs. He was given eight years for being involved in the murder of a prostitute, and he is serving the last twelve months here at Mill Bog. Here's one for you on your women's rights crusade. He and his buddy, both drunk, beat this prostitute to death. A so-called honest woman would have put them both away for life if not the death penalty; but since it was a whore, they got off with short time. Baxter is a pig in human form, and I work not to annoy him, but I learn very little. I'm a sort of a gofer. Get me this. Lift this. Hold this. I think it's good for me. It turns my mind away from any sort of cockeyed pride I might be building out of this experience.

“And now, my dear Molly, a word about what this place looks like before I finish. It's called Mill Bog because there are cranberry bogs all through the mountains here. The mountains rise all around us, and the fact that we're in a Federal forest preserve gives the place a feeling of the forest primeval, since the trees are thinned and cultivated. There are times at dawn or early sunset when this place is beautiful beyond belief — an odd thing to say about a prison.

“So there it is, my love, until the next time I write, an attempt to give you at least a feeling of where I am.”

He could have devoted a good deal more space to Dude Baxter, but that would have served only to worry Molly, and where she was concerned, he felt that her time was harder to build than his. That was the prison phrase, building time. That was the sane way to do it, to build time; those who went mad, as many of them did, those were people who fought time, who tried to conquer it, tough, mean people who could come to no terms with themselves. Baxter was that way, ugly and heavyset, tiny cold blue eyes that were full of hate. He watched Bruce, and Bruce felt his eyes. Bruce worked at the garage three weeks before things came to a head. Baxter's hatreds were institutional: he hated anyone who wore glasses, he hated anyone who read books or newspapers, he hated anyone who spoke intelligible English, he hated anyone who had any part of education. He said to Bruce that morning, “Bacon, I'm short a lug.”

At best, his speech was none too clear. Bruce handed him a lug wrench, and he flung it at Bruce, missing his head by inches. “You motherfucken ignorant commie bastard! I asked you for a lug, not a lug wrench, you dumb shithead! Don't you know what a lug is?”

His voice bellowed out, and all the talk in the garage came to a stop. The other convicts working there stopped movement as well as conversation. They waited. Bruce remained where he was.

“Motherfucker, I asked for a lug!”

“I heard you.”

“Get it!”

Bruce's thoughts had been elsewhere. He should have known that Baxter wanted a lug and not a wrench. If he had been paying any attention, he would have taken a step around the truck and seen that Baxter had a lug wrench in his hand, but he hadn't, and now he had precipitated the moment Baxter had looked for and waited for. What now? There were eight other men in the big repair shop, and tonight everyone in the camp would know what Baxter had called him and how he had responded.

“Not when you ask like that,” Bruce said.

“How should I ask for it, asshole?” Baxter said softly.

“Politely,” Bruce said. “Not like a damned barbarian.”

Baxter grinned and said, “Take off your fucken glasses.”

Bruce stood motionless, his heart hammering, asking himself, What do I do now? Then Baxter hit him in the stomach, and as Bruce doubled over, Baxter kneed him in the testicles, and Bruce crumpled to the ground, his whole nervous system exploding with pain. Baxter kicked him in the head, opening his forehead with the toe of his boot. The blood ran into his eyes, blinding him. He was unable to move, paralyzed with pain. As Baxter moved to kick him again, one of the Kentucky men who worked in the shop yelled, “God damn you, Baxter! That's enough. You'll kill him!”

Baxter slowly and deliberately passed the sole of his boot over Bruce's cheek, bearing down hard enough to rub off the skin. The mountain man pushed Baxter aside, and he and another convict helped Bruce to his feet and half carried him over to the hospital, where Mac Olsen helped lay him on one of the cots.

The two convicts who had helped him into the hospital had to go back to the garage. Olsen shook his head, filled a bowl with warm water, and washed the blood off Bruce's face. He had a cut lip, he was bleeding from the nose, and half of one cheek was without skin. His stomach hurt like hell, and as the pain of the blow to the testicles eased, the pain in his stomach increased.

“Can you talk?” Olsen asked. “What happened? He kicked you in the balls?”

“Yes,” Bruce mumbled.

“Baxter?”

“Yes.”

“You got some bad cuts around your face. I'm going to take the towel off and wash them out with peroxide. It's going to hurt like hell.”

“So what? I hurt like hell now.”

He bit on his lips as Olsen washed the cuts with peroxide. His nose had stopped bleeding. Olsen put a small piece of tape on his lower lip, closed his head wound with two Band-Aids, and taped a nonsticking, two-inch-square pad over his cheek.

“Do you think you could get up and walk?” Olsen asked him.

“I can try.”

“How does your crotch feel?”

“Lousy.”

“Let me have a look. Pull down your pants.”

“Are you some kind of defrocked doctor, Olsen?”

“I'm as close to a doctor as you're going to get here, so you better damned well do what I say. I was a medic doing this under fire when you were writing your fancy stories, so just keep your mouth shut and do what I say. I want to see your balls.”

He helped Bruce get his pants down, fingered his testicles gently as Bruce winced with pain. “Pull up your shirt,” he said. The flesh below the breastbone was turning blue. He pressed. “How bad does that hurt?”

“Not too bad.”

“I don't think there's anything broken inside. How old are you, Bacon?”

“I'll be thirty-five.”

“OK. I think your cheek will heal nice and clean. Pull up your pants and take a few steps.”

Rolling over, Bruce put his feet down and stood up, swaying a bit. He took a few uncertain steps.

“Good. Now lie down again. It's still almost two hours to lunch. Just lie here and rest. I'm going to give you a couple of Anacin, and that'll help keep down the pain.”

“What do I tell the guards?” Bruce wondered.

“Nobody's going to ask you. The guards don't mess with this kind of thing, and by the time we eat, everyone in camp's going to know what happened.”

As Olsen said, no one asked him what had happened. In the afternoon, he went back to the garage. It still hurt to walk, but he managed. Baxter avoided him, and nobody asked him to do anything. He hung around until the bells clanged, but none of the men working in the garage actually acknowledged his presence.

There was no class for the illiterates that night. His belly hurt, his testicles hurt, and his cheek burned like fire. He lay on his cot morosely, and finally Lemuel Ward, sitting cross-legged on his bed and working his cellophane craft, said to him, “You know, Professor, you got to take care of Baxter. You don't take care of that motherfucker, that motherfucker's going to push you into a hole in the ground. Or get the warden to take you out of that motherfucken garage.”

“What do you mean, take care of him?”

“I mean break the motherfucker's back. Kill him. Beat him to an inch of his lousy motherfucken life.”

Bruce smiled ruefully and winced with the pain. “Lem, I never had a fistfight in my life. I never hit anyone. I don't think I could.”

“Hell, you were with the motherfucken army right through the war.”

“I never carried a gun. I was a correspondent. I never fired a gun in my life.”

Ward put aside his artwork, swung around to face Bruce, and dropped his voice. “Professor, you don't go up against a motherfucker like Baxter with your hands.” Ward had one adjective, which doubled as a noun. “That's motherfucken bullshit. You take a heavy wrench and let the motherfucker have it when his back is turned. Just make goddamned sure that the motherfucker can't walk for the next six months.”

Bruce shook his head hopelessly. The pain woke him several times, but he got through the night, and after breakfast he turned up for work at the garage. Baxter acknowledged him. “Take a broom and sweep this place. It stinks of dirt.”

One of the men came over and held out Bruce's glasses. “I found them,” he said. “They're not broken.”

“Did I tell you to give them to him, you shithead?” Baxter reached out for the glasses, but Bruce got them first. There was a moment of tension, and Bruce waited for anything to happen. He tried to keep his hands from shaking as he put on the glasses. Baxter grinned. “Next time, motherfucker.”

Bruce swept the big shed. It was agony, yet he got the job done. One of the men passed by and said softly, “Work easy, Bacon. Fuck that lunatic.”

He piled into a can the oily waste and debris that he swept up. “Put it in the hole in back!” Baxter yelled at him.

There was a shallow hole behind the garage where waste and waste oil were thrown and where the men urinated, since there were no toilet facilities in the garage shed. Bruce picked up the can and carried it around the building to the back — aware that Baxter was following him, and as he was emptying it into the pit, Baxter kicked him from behind, propelling him forward into the filthy, oily pit. Bruce hardly felt the blow. He was conscious of only one thing, that he had to stay on his feet and keep his cut face out of the filthy, sticky mess in the pit. He dropped the can and somehow kept his balance, staggering knee deep, but not falling. He stood in the muck, swaying back and forth.

Grinning, Baxter said, “Pick up the can.”

Bruce picked up the can. It was half full of muck. He climbed out of the pit, and now Baxter walked toward him and shouted, “Empty it, you dumb bastard!”

With a single motion, Bruce swung the big metal can around and flung its contents into Baxter's face. It was the last thing Baxter expected, and trying to dodge the sticky mess, he slipped into the pool of waste. Screaming curses at Bruce, trying to clear his sight, he scrambled out of the muck, but at this point everything rational had left Bruce. He was overcome by a kind of maniacal rage he had never experienced before, and as Baxter got out of the pit, Bruce slammed the metal can down on his head. Baxter fell, sprawling outside the garbage pit, and Bruce, reason gone and all control gone, began to beat him with the heavy metal can. Again and again, he brought the can down on Baxter's head, bending the can out of shape — and then the rage disappeared and it was over, and trembling, sobbing, he stared at the man lying in the oily mud, his head in a pool of blood.

He staggered into the garage, sobbing, trying to mouth the words that would say he had killed Baxter. Someone ran for Mac Olsen, and another ran to the back, lifted Baxter, still unconscious but not dead, and carried him into the garage, where there was a single old cot used as a bench. Covered with blood and filth, Baxter was a sorry sight. Bruce, crouched on a stool, his face in his hands, tried to summon his thoughts to explain what had brought him to this. His life was over. He had killed a man, and he would never leave prison or see Molly again. He would wear the black mark on his soul and conscience until the day of his death, the bar sinister of a life made worthless and useless. For the first time in his life, he had struck and slain another human being; and now, not only did every muscle ache with pain, but a worse pain was constricting his soul.