Chapter 2
A prison is many things to many people, depending on the perspective afforded by circumstances, If you're a warden, an administrator or a guard, it is a source of income; conversely, if you are a politician, it offers a platform for reform or more stringent treatment of society's misfits, depending on the attitudes of your constituents.
If you're an inmate, it's stir. The can. The hole.
Any way you look at it, it is sheer, unadulterated hell, because you are the subject that gets pushed and ordered and regulated like a verb or adjective phrase. One way or another, prison is not fun and games on the inside, and unless you've been there, this fact cannot begin to be appreciated.
Sue Sills debarked from a hot train on a hot day and with her escort, stared out across the flat fields where the dust and heat waves rose with relentless regularity, in ever-increasing pulsations. From the distance, they could see the guard towers; painted dull, flat black, they looked like grotesque, miniature sections of a castle.
"Your new home for the next ten years," her companion said.
"It won't be appreciated," Sue answered defiantly. Already, she felt unspeakably frustrated and inferior; the System was already beginning to pile up and close in on her.
"I figured you for a pretty nice kid," the lady cop said, "but I guess you're as snotty as the rest of 'em."
Sue remained silent, and when the bus came to pick them up, Sue saw that the driver was a punk kid wearing a straw cowboy hat and faded Levi's, with shirtsleeves rolled neatly above his elbows. He wore a shiny, pearl-handled Colt at his side, holster slung down over his hip, Wyatt Earp fashion-only the gun was a pawnshop special with a bad action instead of Earp's legendary Buntline Special. He looked at Sue with easy, almost indifferent lust, as though he were contemplating buying a horse. She looked at him venomously, and he guffawed, punctuating it with a burst of brown tobacco juice. It made an interesting pattern in the dry dust.
"Get in," the woman cop told her, and Sue marched in with her close behind, feeling the annoying tug of handcuffs that joined them.
Within a very few minutes, the towers no longer looked like toys, but became ominously huge pillars of doom. The kid drove like crazy over bumpy roads, stirring and swirling dry, choking dust everywhere. By the time they drove through the gate, Sue was parched from thirst.
"I wonder if I could have some water?" she asked the guard who took over her custody from the lady fuzz.
She must have said something funny because he laughed like hell until his fat sloppy gut shook like a quivering glob of protoplasmic mess.
"Why, sure, lady, and how would you like some mint on top? And more yuk-yuk-yukking, all the way down the corridor where he led her to a room. He left, and from that point on, she was surrounded by women. Over her head she saw a sign: State Prison, Women's Div.
"Could I have some water?" she asked the new guard. A woman, she decided, would be far more understanding and sympathetic.
"When I get good and goddamned ready, sister," the guard snapped, and told her to dump all her possessions on the table and strip the hell down to her bare bottom.
The rest happened fast.
Gray prison dress, delousing, hustled off to a cell after receiving a number and having it duly entered and inked onto her dress. Quick, quick, double-quick, Sue Sills lost the identity that had been hers for twenty-two years. Now she was a number to be counted and screamed at.
Ten years!
It was incomprehensible, she thought wildly-yet, today was Just the first day of her sentence. She still had nine years, eleven months and twenty nine days to go.
She had just missed lunch, but when she asked about water, someone pointed to the sink in the cell as she was hustled inside it. The door clanged shut, and she was alone. She knew she was to share the cell with someone else, but that someone was elsewhere-so for the time, she was by herself. Quickly, she turned on the tap in the sink and drank greedily from it. It was hot and muggy inside, and the water tasted like the inside of an unwashed test tube, or at best the bottom of an over-chlorinated swimming pool. But it quenched her thirst in spite of the cruddy after-taste.
There was nothing to do but sit.
Sit and think.
Think about that bastard Howard who'd had her busted to begin with, and the whole farcical trial, Farley Brock's impotent rage and vehement swearing to get her a new trial. But, she reflected, that was all past, not precisely dead leaves, but at best conjectural.
It was better not to think and brood, better to just decide to make the best of things. The most difficult thing was to get into the jailbird frame of mind. Vaguely, she knew this was the key to her survival while in prison.
She was jarred from her thoughts by a sudden din. Cursing, heavy footsteps, all coming closer to her; Sue tried to see around the bars without thinking, until she saw how impossible such a thing was. Then she saw prisoners, led by two guards. They talked just as nastily and heartlessly as the men-she knew already not to look for feminine compassion in these females. The guards cursed, the prisoners walked sullenly and silently, with their heads bowed like sheep. They were ail sweating profusely.
One guard seemed especially tough.
Sue turned away involuntarily when they stopped in front of her cell.
"So this is the new chicken." Now she was a chicken, was she? Reduced to the significance of a bird-"Healthy-lookin' bitch, isn't she, girls?"
Laughter. Some of it raucous and uninhibited, much of it polite and born of fear. Sue could hear both tones plainly.
"Wonder if them boobs're real?" the female guard cackled, pointing a huge finger at Sue's breasts. It was too much.
"I can't say you've won any beauty contests lately-unless the judges were blind," Sue said. Silence.
Incredulous, disbelieving silence.
The guard walked up to her cage, put her powerful hands against the bars.
"I haven't had a smart bitch-like you in a long time; you'll be kinda fun to break." She cackled again; it was a horrible, creepy laugh. It sounded evil, Sue thought.
"You ask the girls about me," the guard said. "I don't go around blowin' my own horn. You just ask 'em." Then, "All right, chicks, back to your cages before I start swingin'!" Sue's cage was opened by the other guard, and a beautifully built Negro woman was thrown inside. The door banged shut with a metallic sound, as did the others, in chain-reaction, growing fainter and fainter as the guards moved up the corridor, shoving them inside. Then there was a buzzing sound.
"Automatic lock," the colored woman told Sue. "Everything around here's automatic except Big Bert. Ain't nothin' automatic about that bastard." She spat vehemently.
"Big Bert?' Sue asked.
"Big Bert, baby; the one you just gave that line of crap to. You like to hear about Bertie before it's too late-if it ain't already?"
"Yes," Sue answered faintly.
"Well look, I'm Cindy. Cindy Martin, and I'm straight as a fifty-dollar bill, so if you're gay don't come sniffin' around me at night or I'll crack your goddamn skull."
Sue was shocked into momentary silence.
"I'm not a Lesbian, if that's what you mean," she said, "so there won't be any trouble there. I'm Sue." She smiled, at Cindy, trying to recapture something like friendliness. She simply was not used to hostile introductions, begun on a negative basis.
"We're both straight then," Cindy smiled. "This your first time in?"
"Yes?"
"What was the wrap?"
"Embezzlement."
"You brain-people're all alike. Hell-me, I'm in for plain ol' hustlin'-in the wrong part of town at too-high prices. They don't dig that scene down here nohow." She laughed. It was a resonant, musical laugh. Sue warmed to Cindy, admired off-handedly her finely chiseled body, the way the breasts uplifted pertly, nipples thrust against the thin cotton of the dress, the well-defined buttocks and strong thighs, all wrapped by dark, honey skin. Only the hands were rough and work-scarred, but even they had a semblence of former perfection. Cindy was a beautiful woman, but the physical beauty was all but destroyed by her cynicism and veneer of toughness.
She seemed to notice Sue's apprehension. Her voice softened, losing a bit of its cracked-ice quality.
"You're goin' to meet a lotta bad people here, honey. A lotta bad people! Now Big Bert. Gotta hip you on Big Bert so you stay in one piece."
"She seems awfully mean." As soon as she said it, Sue realized the hollow stupidity of mentioning the horribly obvious.
"Mean! Goddamn right she's mean. First of all, Bert ain't no she-she's a he, dig?"
"You mean-?"
"A big, bad dyke, sweet child, so butch there ain't no man in his right mind'd wanta mess with him. Bert's a dyke, and just loves nice tender meat like you an' me. And I'm the only one in this block ain't come across yet. All those others have. You'll see how Bert treats me alongside them tomorrow when we go out to work and all.
"She'll play for you too," Cindy remarked. "It's awfully tempting, so don't sit here and tell me you won't cop out."
"This is horrible," Sue cried out.
"Natural facts, honey. I've run into dykes" before, but nothin' like Bert, who can make you or break you-bitch usually winds up doin' a whole lotta breakin' before she makes. But she makes. She's gotta a special kick, too. You dig that outfit of hers?"
"llnusual," Sue answered, realizing now that she had been struck at Bert's close-cropped hair, her spit-polished, black boots and shiny, black holster. And in spite of the stifling heat of summer, she had been wearing a leather jacket, tight-fitting at the waist, broad in the shoulders, similar to a motorcycle jacket. Yet it was not precisely a motorcycle jacket. It reminded her of old war movies showing Nazi SS men, strutting around in their polished boots and torso flattering battle-jackets made of leather.
"Yeah, she's got a thing for leather; they got a special name for weirdos like her, but I can't re member it-anyway, she likes rough stuff. Likes her lovin' a real special way." She lowered her voice as she added, "she knows how to stomp an' kick without leavin' any marks. She's got some of these chicks where they actually beg for it."
"My God," Sue whispered, horrified.
"I been here two weeks. Just two weeks, baby, and it's the longest two weeks I ever spent in my whole life."
"How long have you got?" Sue asked.
"Be out in one, if I cool it. Pretty hard with Big Bert though, all the time ridin' your butt-say you know what she reminds me of?"
"What?"
"When I was hustlin' over in the ofay side of town, I used to get this John all the time; regular, dig, like twice a week. llsed to like me to cuss him up and down and hit him with a silly cotton belt-then he'd go down with me while I called him more names. Sonofabitch used'ta pay me twenty bucks for that freaky stuff. Well, Bert likes to do that kinda stuff to others."
"A frightening nightmare," Sue whispered to herself.
"Ain't no dream, sweetheart. It's real and it don't ever stop around here. You just keep your ears around tonight, and you'll hear things." Cindy smiled, lit a cigarette butt that she quickly extracted from beneath her mattress.
Sue began to sense the irony that surrounded her, the absurdity of justice. Taking advice and counsel from a convicted prostitute, who was in truth serving time because of prejudice rather than legal infraction, was absurd. And most absurd of all was the existence of a monster like Big Bert in an institution organized for reform. It was taking on the quality of a nightmare, more and more, only Cindy had already spelled the difference between dream-nightmares and nightmares of reality. She had never before conceived of such differences existing.
Cindy lay on her bunk, the bottom one, and called up to Sue, who lay quietly above her, thinking.
"Say, you get busted on account of a John?"
"A John?"
"Man. I keep forgettin' you're new."
"Yes," Sue said, "I sure did." In a few words, she told Cindy all that had happened.
"Yeah, it's a bitch, okay. First time I ever got in trouble was over a man-white man, son of a woman I worked for when I was young and didn't know nothin'. I was sixteen."
"What happened?" Sue asked, sensing Cindy wanted prompting so she could tell her story.
"You really want to hear it? People get tired of hearin' somebody else's blues all th' time."
"Yes, I really do," Sue assured her.
When Cindy Martin was sixteen years old, she could no longer afford to go to school, as her parents did not make enough money to support a family of six children. Cindy was the oldest, and therefore had to work. She went to work for a Mrs. Watson, a white woman who was widowed and left with an eighteen-year-old son, Jim.
Cindy had spent the last three years of her life combating the loss of her virginity, due to moral and practical considerations. She came from a family of Pentacostal Baptists, and had a decided aversion to pregnancy out of marriage, as she had seen its consequences all her life. Cindy came to work for the Watsons as a virgin, then.
She worked all day.
She worked hard, harder than ever before, because now there wasn't even the consideration extended by flesh and blood-to Mrs. Watson, Cindy was an automaton, devoid of dignity and feelings. After six months, Cindy felt whipped and worthless.
Jim came home for Christmas vacation from the llniversity of Virginia where he was a sophomore. When he saw Cindy, he canceled his plans to visit a friend in Raleigh, and decided to stick around.
One day when Cindy was scrubbing the kitchen floor, on her hands and knees, Jim saw her. What he saw was virtually enough to obliterate the necessity for hormones in treatment of inadequate males.
He saw thighs and buttocks.
Strong, lithe, curved limbs that beckoned through gingham. Her dress was tucked between her legs, and he could see her cleavage from buttocks all the way down to her knees. He saw swollen hips, a slender waist and a strong straight back.
When Cindy got up to rest her back, he saw her breasts jutting and swelling against the sparse dress. Her lips were sensuous and red, and against honey-colored skin and thick, wavy hair, she looked like what he had heard Cleopatra herself looked like.
"Hello," he said thickly, "I'm Jim, Mrs. Watson's son. You're Cindy, right?"
His gaze made her uncomfortably self-conscious. She knew he was looking through her thin, flimsy dress, evaluating and sketching her nakedness. She blushed, feeling hot with embarrassment, but it did not show.
"I'll bet you're a real popular gal," he said leeringly. "Bet you got the bucks all excited."
Cindy sensed the typical racial contempt beneath his implications, and turned away. She bent down again and resumed her scrubbing.
"You got about the prettiest looking legs I've ever seen," he said with that same peculiar thickness. "Are they as pretty as that without clothes?"
She was silent.
Tense, expectant., 'Damn you girl, you hear me talking?" he exploded. "I asked you a question!" Cindy swallowed, tried to choke her rage down, knowing that if she didn't make the stock response, she would lose her job and go home to her father's anger, "Yessir, I hear you," she said neutrally.
"I asked about your legs. They pretty?"
"Not especially," she said.
"Hell you're lyin'," he laughed, "I know they're pretty. I bet you're a hot one! Wooee!"
Mrs. Watson came into the kitchen, and for the first time Cindy felt grateful for her presence. Jim left, and her employer eyed the floor critically.
Three days later, Jim came into the living room where she was dusting. Mrs. Watson had gone to Newport News for the day to visit her sister, and Cindy knew she was alone in the house with the son.
"Whyn't you stop workin' for awhile?" he said. "The old lady's gone for the day."
"Because I've got to have a clean house when she gets back," Cindy said flatly. Her voice was neither impolite nor especially polite; just unassailably neutral.
"Aw hell, the place looks good. C'mon, have a beer with me."
"I don't drink no liquor," she said.
"Beer isn't liquor," he countered, "besides, it's good for you. Gives you energy." Cindy had wondered why Jim had the beginnings of a gut, and now she knew. He was too healthy.
"It makes me sick," she said.
"Well then sit with me while I have one," he said, and his voice took on the sharp tone of command.
She said nothing, but followed him to the kitchen, walking behind. He opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of beer. It opened with a hiss, and he sat down in a chair at the table, motioning her to pull one up.
"Old lady's a bitch, isn't she?" he said mildly. "Works your butt off, doesn't she?"
"She's a good person," Cindy said.
"You think so? Hell, maybe-" He broke off, and looked at her frankly; his eyes shifted and wavered only slightly, which for a man like Jim Watson, was utter frankness. "You really are beautiful," he said, "You know, I could fix it so you wouldn't have to work so hard. I could swing it so's my mother'd hire another gal to do the heavy work and you wouldn't have to do anything but cook and go to the store; easy stuff. How'd you like that, huh?"
"I'd-like it fine," she said, thinking-I was all wrong about him, he's really a nice boy-but I'm happy the way things are. I ain't complaining."
"I-know you aren't. I'd just like to make things easier."
"Thank you, sir."
"You're so polite," he laughed, and got up from the chair he'd been sitting in. He walked over, around the table, and stood behind her chair.
Cindy sat very still.
She tried not to flinch when his hands cupped her breasts and his face bent over, blowing hot breath down the back of her neck. His hands toyed with her nipples with an easy, massaging movement, and in spite of her resolve, a shiver of warm excitement grew in her. She knew her nipples were swelling under his touch, that his breath was making her shiver all over and making her feel deliciously funny and good as she'd never felt before. "Don't,"
"she whispered, "please don't."
He answered by squeezing her nipples harder and rubbing her breasts a bit more vigorously, kissing her neck with his warm, moist lips. His hand slid quickly, unobtrusively inside her dress and closed around a bare, firm breast. Her nipple was sharp and full against his warm palm, and her knees felt weak; her stomach churned with excitement.
She said nothing.
He worked her breasts easily, without hurry, both hands inside the dress now, cupping, hefting, teasing, rubbing-her breath came in short, hard pants, and a whimper was beginning to tear itself loose from the recesses of her body.
It tore loose.
A high-pitched woman's sound, crying out with passion as he stroked her authoritatively, his hand way down, kneading the firm, smooth skin of her belly, a finger diving into the navel, sending thrills down to her groin "LordI" she gasped.
"Just sit still," Jim whispered, "just sit there and let Jim show you heaven." His lips touched her ear; his tongue scorched the lobe, then flicked inside it. His hand had gone beneath the waistband of her pants, and his fingers twirled familiarly in the soft, fluffy nest that marked the entrance to her virginity, the virginity she had tried so desperately to keep. But now those fingers were weakening her, breaking down her resistance, entering her moist, hungry flesh and awakening it to sensations undreamed of, unheard of, making her eyes go smoky and slitted with hot, burning lust.
She sprawled awkwardly in the chair, spreading her sumptuous thighs. The hand became more insistent, stroked one smooth, strong pillar before returning to the source of hunger, and Cindy was not aware of her hips and pelvis gyrating sensuously, beckoningly. It was an unconscious, reflexive movement, born of instinct.
When he bent forward again, his lips searched hers.
She kissed him, and her mouth took on a life of its very own, moving animatedly against his mouth while their tongues searched and found one another-with a wave of savage desire, she nipped his lower lip, and his accelerated passion transferred itself to her, and they were suddenly on the floor, lying side by side, pressing close together, her moist thighs against his swollen maleness. Her dress was gathered around her waist, and now, when his hand pulled at her panties, she shrugged her hips eagerly so they would slide off more easily.
His essence against hers made her wild.
"Ooh!" she cried, "ooh!" A beast unleashed itself inside her, and she drove against him with the force of a piston; his hands closed tightly around her firm, swelling buttocks and hugged her close.
"Touch me," he panted, "here."
He placed her hand.
She had never touched a man before. It excited her. It frightened her into her old inhibitions as well-a member that huge would hurt her, It wasn't possible, when even his fingers had made her flinch.
She pushed at him.
"No," she protested, "you'll hurt me!"
"Only a little," he conceded, "but it won't last long, honest." Jim Watson no longer talked with the rationality of a human being, but rather babbled with the lust and tormented desire of an animal. He thrust himself toward her while she pushed him away.
"Goddamn!" he exploded, "come on!" She struggled less and less as his lips ejected her nipple from them, leaving it hot and swollen with feeling. Like wet marbles, her nipples again rolled between his lips, and took the gentle nips of his teeth. His hand made her weak again, feverish and trembling. She let him lift her from the floor. For a moment, their eyes met: hot, heavy-lidded. She looked at him while he lifted her and she put her arms around his neck. Her buttocks felt the cool, smooth surface of the kitchen table, and then he stood in front of her; his hands closed around her ankles and coaxed her legs around his waist. He smiled hysterically.
She saw him move closer to her while she sat with her long, strong legs around him in tight embrace. She felt him. There was a sudden wave of pain, nauseating pain rising In her throat, panicked, clutching and resisting-she made a futile attempt to pull away from his grip-then there was only pain that made the room a momentary blank.
She screamed.
A hot branding iron scalded her, pierced her tender flesh, and penetrated relentlessly through the opening until it burned and blazed Hell-like inside her.
She gasped.
The iron cooled, became pleasantly warm 'and searching, made her moist and receptive; she gorged on the new sensation with child-like hunger as his face bent close toners, a blurred image of lust that matched her own mounting, insurmountable lust.
She cried.
Pure, gem-like flames of pleasure burned inside her now,, not like hell or even a warm bathtub-just irreplaceable thrills.
She whimpered.
Her thighs tightened around him and drew him close, and together, their bodies worked toward mutual release, operated as a team, thrustina and retreating while their limbs made unmistakable sounds of pleasure, and their cries mingled striking chords and discords that heightened the sense of urgency inside both of them, and then everything just mushroomed and shattered, and the room became fragments of Nothing.
She gasped with disbelief, Disbelief at how pleasurable sin could be, and maybe having babies and being damned to hell was worth it. Certainly nothing was better-she put her arms around Jim and kissed him, sitting on the kitchen table naked, when the door opened, and even as she thought-Mrs. Walson walked in.
"And sonofabitch, did she have things to say!" Cindy cackled, shaking her head, as Sue listened. "After that, I got canned by the old lady, and I wasn't about to go flunkyin' again. So I stopped givin' it away, and here I am."
The two women talked for another hour or so, and then the lights went out.
"Now you'll be hearin' Big Bert," Cindy whispered. "Be cool and don't make no noise."
Sue tried to sleep, but Cindy's story, her words about Big Bert and the dangers of night made it impossible. The mattress was unyieldingly hard. She was imprisoned: over and over again, she told herself I'm a convict, a prisoner, but it didn't quite register in her whole being, She could reason, but she could not accept. She had been in jail for one day; one day out of ten years, and it had been endless. Tomorrow, she hoped, the day would go faster, and the day after a little faster still, until time itself became a meaningless, measureless blur, Farley Brock was not a law book lawyer, Oh, he knew his law, knew his cases and precedents and courtroom psychology. He knew all that better than most men his age, as well as some of the old pros, but in the final analysis, Farley Brock was a blood-and-guts man, of the Darrow and Liebowitz school. Law school had not quashed that In him, and even when he had seen his friends and colleagues, one by one, drift into the more lucrative fields of tax, corporation and anti-trust law, he had remained stubbornly to his childhood dream of defending the innocent.
Now, as he rubbed his burning eyes and leaned back in the old swivel chair, he thought he was perhaps a bit too old, a bit too tired for childish dreams. How could you exact justice in a circus? How could you appeal to money-greased minds and corrupt officials? How could you even pretend legal tranquility in a farce such as the Sills case?
You couldn't.
And even when you pored over all the old cases and reviewed the laws regarding valid evidence, it did no good. It did no good because the trial had been no good, the jury had turned in a verdict before the trial had begun. Somebody, probably Howard Hardin (who the hell else?) had been a real busy boy, spreading the embezzled money in nice thick coats over the right paws. No wonder they couldn't find the money. It was all spent. Farley Brock knew he was no detective, nor did he want to be. But he found himself thrown into a prepostrous situation where he had damned well better do some Sam Spade work if he wanted his client's trial appealed to a higher court. It was sickeningly obvious that she wasn't guilty. A state like New York or Connecticut would have laughed the case off the dockets. But this wasn't New York or Connecticut, and they hadn't done any laughing at all. They had instead convicted an innocent girl who'd made a woefully common mistake of shacking up for two" weeks with a married man who happened to be her boss. And happened to be a crud. But Hardin had to be played like a fish, at least for awhile.