Chapter 8
For the last several days, Sue had been looking at Cindy with visibly different eyes. The condemnation was gone. Her acceptance of what Cindy had done by way of capitulation was growing stronger all the time. It was, of course, in direct relation to her own weakness. For the first time, she was willing to admit to herself that everyone, especially herself, had a breaking point. And Big Bert could find it.
Big Bert could find it in anyone. After the episode in the supply shack-the oil bath-Sue Sills was not about to come down particularly hard on anyone!
This morning, she and Martha were working together, and they had a rare chance to talk, even under the hyper-watchful eyes of Big Bert. Sue had never been too keen on Martha, but Sue felt sorry for the girl. For weeks, months, Martha had been sulking alone, never talking to anyone, and Sue had come far enough emotionally to appreciate the hellish pain of complete loneliness and self-hatred. She knew Martha was reeling under both maladies.
Toward mid-morning, Martha jammed something into Sue's hand, and whispered tight-lipped,' 'Hide it and don't open it until tomorrow morning. Hear?Not until tomorrow, not for nothin'! And don't let nobody know you got that note-hide it real good."
"What-?"
"Just do like I said," Martha pleaded, and Sue automatically thrust the wad of paper under the waistband of her pants, lifting her dress with lightning, almost imperceptible speed. The two women kept working, with the same expressionless faces as before. Only for a fleeting moment had they shared something, exchanged something, become totally human. Now they carried on like two automatons, working, moving, silent. They were painfully conscious of Big Bert, afraid that the big dyke bastard might've seen them-but evidently that wasn't the case, as that gem of a person hadn't yet come over to them. And Big Bert wasn't one to wait patiently until the right moment. Every time Sue looked up from her work, she caught Big Bert staring at her. It was much more than a merely uncomfortable sensation she derived from that knowledge: it was agonizing. When Big Bert looked at you, something was up, she thought with alarm, and that something could be absolutely anything, anything under the proverbial sun.
Big Bert smiled whenever Sue turned away. The little chick was scared out of her mind, and that was good, thought Bert, It meant she was in pain. The kind of pain that didn't necessarily show, the kind of pain she could scream about from now until hell froze over and not prove. It was pain that would slowly, certainly weaken the girl's resistance.
When that happened, she would just move in. Move in fast, hard, without mercy. Pounce like a big black bird of sin, and suck the last juices of strength out of the marrow. Big Bert knew something that Sue had yet to admit to herself: she (Sue) hadn't given in only because she hadn't been around as long as the others. It was that simple. If the girl thought she had more strength than the others, she was crazy, Big Bert decided. Hell, Cindy'd been the same way at first Big Bert would wait.
Sue thought of the wad of paper Martha had given her, and wanted more than anything to open it. It was a note, of course. But what did the note say, and why must she wait until tomorrow to open it? How would Martha know one way or the other if she opened it now, and read it? Even with the obvious answers to her self-questioning, Sue refrained from opening it. Martha had laid herself too wide open to Sue's mercy for Sue to betray her.
That night, she softened visibly toward Cindy, They had barely exchanged words since that night Cindy had returned from indulging Big Bert's passions.
"Want a cigarette?" Sue asked Cindy. Sue's voice sounded peculiar to her; she seldom heard it any more.
"Yeah." Cindy's voice was guardedly soft. "What's up?" she asked, sensing a change about to take place between them. Living with Sue had made complete alienation from her impossible-inside, her heart had been reaching out for a renewal of the friendship they had once shared, "I've been thinking," Sue began slowly, "Yeah, you'll do a lotta that around here," she said sardonically, "That day when Mr. Brock was here to see me-I hated you that day."
"Sure, you did."
"But I've been thinking lately, and hell, you're right, I'm the nut around here, torturing myself."
"You're the only straight chick left!" Cindy exploded. "Godammit, if I see you goin' down for Big Bert, I'll come down on you hard, sister, real hard!" There were tears in the girl's eyes.
"Why shouldn't I?" Sue pursued. "You spend all your time in the library, Martha gets the easiest jobs, and the others-hell, I'm the only one who gets the crap." She spoke petulantly, and if she had heard herself objectively, she would have been disgusted.
"Because you won't be with Big Bert for ten years. You won't even be in this pen for th' whole time-and Sue, s'pose Brock gets you that appeal an' you bust outtahere?"
"It won't happen, but suppose it does?"
"You cop out. You go on the outside. What've you got when you get there? Want me to tell you?" Before Sue could interject, Cindy continued, "I will, baby-you'll remember you were gay in prison, because you were too damn weak to hold out, and you'll remember how you let crud treat you like crud so she could feel like somethin' big an' important. Hell, you know what that bull-dyke'd be on the outside? Why you think she's in here? So's she can wear that tough leather drag of hers and whip people and torture them and get paid, get paid, lady, for gettin' her kicks."
She listened, breathless, shaking with inward sobs.
"Then why did you?"
"'Cause I'm weak. 'Cause I ain't got nothin' to lose-you know what I was on th' outside. What difference does it make? I've always made it with my butt,"
"So did I. With that man in Virginia Beach."
Cindy sneered.
"Hell, you thought you loved 'im. You didn't lay there tickin' off minutes like a cab meter, baby."
Sue snuffed out her cigarette and threw it in the sink. She'd flush it down the john tomorrow morning after breakfast. "Want another smoke?" she asked.
"No."
"Do you think I'll make it, Cindy?"
"Do you?"
"I don't know. After the other day, I don't think so."
"What happened?"
In a few evocative words, Sue told her. When she finished, she lay back in her bunk and stared at the ceiling, which was no more than two feet from her face.
"What would you've done if she'd beaten your bare bottom first, and then thrown you in that damned black stuff?"
"She wouldn't-"
" 'How you think I went and saw her that night when she called me?" Cindy asked. Again, her question was the answer, the affirmation to Sue's most horrible suspicions. She wondered why Big Bert strove so mightily for acquiescence when she was perfectly able to torture and whip without it. The answer was obvious as soon as Sue had given it any degree of thought: Big Bert liked other, more sensual things-things that only a frightened or willing woman would do to another.
Apparently, she hadn't been the first to get Big Bert's oil bath. Funny-she remembered that once, when she was in high school, she'd read about some famous beauty salon in Paris where women paid fifty dollars American money for special oil baths.
The next morning, Sue and Cindy both bolted upright in their bunks, awakened abruptly by Big Bert's shouting.
"What in hell has the stupid bitch gone and done?" they heard her yell, Other guards came rushing toward the cell across the corridor, and one of them muttered, "God-Good God!" crossing herself and turning away.
"Get her outta here, quick!" Big Bert yelled again. "Can't let th' cons see her. Get Hannah to th' hospital so's the doc can give her somethin'. Gawd!"
Hannah tottered out on the arm of two guards, sobbing hysterically.
"What in hell's goin' on?" Cindy asked, turning to Sue, "I don't know," Sue answered with a taut voice. "Something pretty weird to turn Big Bert on-like that, you better believe it."
The line to breakfast was almost a half-hour late, As they marched sullenly toward the dining room, with the same expressionless faces, the same downturned heads, the same apparent silence, the word came down, from prisoner to prisoner, until Sue and Cindy both knew quite well what had gone on: "Martha croaked herself, man."
Later, the report became more detailed-Martha had somehow got hold of a razor blade, A rusty, chipped razor blade not worth a damn to anyone. But it was worth a great deal to her.
She had slashed her wrists with it, Then she had let herself bleed very neatly to death over the sink, while she'd held her wrists in it, letting the blood rush out into the drain. When the guards and Hannah had found her in the morning, she'd been quite drained. The mortician wouldn't have half his normal work to do in preparing the corpse for burial; all he had to do was fill the empty veins with embalming fluid.
The suicide made good conversation, "She was hung up for weeks, you know? All quiet. Hell, she wasn't even talkin' to Hannah,"
"Yeah, it finally got to her,"
"Probably her way of gettin' back at Big Bert-put the bastard on good, y' know? Investigations and all."
And so it went, conjecture after conjecture, until Big Bert had to threaten physical violence to shut them up.
"She won't be doing any talkin', so the old bull doesn't have to sweat it," one of the cons said. All agreed with this, No one else was going to talk; and the one who had nothing more to lose could not talk. So what was the use of bitching? They were right back where they started. Big Bert still rode the legendary range, It wasn't until after supper, when the rush of events had subsided to a point where Sue could think half-coherently, that she remembered the note Martha had left her, with strict instructions not to read until "tomorrow," It went without saying that the note concerned her death, and that the poor chick had been planning the whole thing all along-that it was anything but an impulsive act, Lying on the top bunk, Sue hesitantly took the paper out of its hiding place and unrumpled it. She began to read.
She read it quickly, jammed it under the mattress again, and thought I've got lo get lids note to Mr. Brock. To her, it was useless, possibly harmful, Brock would be able to do something with it.
It was a short note, not particularly well expressed, but there was one thing in it that, provided it were true, would act as pretty strong evidence against Plane and Big Bert.
She had to get it to Brock!
But how?
It wasn't quite as simple as jamming it into an envelope and sending it off. It would never get past the censor. For that matter, it wouldn't get past Big Bert herself, There was only one thing to do: wait for Brock to come, and hope she'd have the opportunity to give it to him without being discovered. Now Sue felt as though she were holding a bomb and that it could explode in her face. She shuddered at the thought of Big Bert's discovering the note in Martha's handwriting. It would be destroyed, and out would go the proof, If she merely reiterated the contents of that note, it would be inadmissible evidence. Why did they make it so damned difficult for someone to get a new trial? Probably for the same reason she'd been sent up on a frame in the first place, she decided, Big Bert knew dead people didn't talk. She also knew that scared live people didn't talk. She was safe on both counts, she concluded-there was nothing to get upset about. Martha'd croaked herself, and in a couple of days nobody would even think about it, Hell, she'd made such a botch of it anyway, slashing herself with a blade like that-how'd she ever get hold of the thing in the first place? Bert made a mental note to tighten up on security. If she were called down for anything at all, it would be that. The brass would raise hell over "security", even when it meant one less con to feed. Hypocrites! pretending they gave a damn about "welfare" on a con's account! You treated them like the crud they were. You punished them, Punish them any way you could, make them straighten out your way, the only way.
Make them listen to authority.
Scare 'era.
That was the way! You didn't go reasoning with them, because crud doesn't think, You don't tell a garbage can why you're putting it out in the alley, do you? she asked herself. No. Of course you don't.
Martha was crud, garbage-the fact that she'd done herself in didn't make her any different; you could slobber over her all you wanted, but she was still crud.
Beautiful, desirable, delicious crud!
With something like nostalgia, Bert remembered the joys of Martha's body, the thrills of crashing the leather belt down on her bared buttocks and breasts. She'd been good, Martha. Yessirree, she knew how to make somebody happy, and she knew she was crud. She enjoyed her punishment after awhile. Thai's what I mean. Bert thought, you hare to show 'cm.
Cindy was starting to come around, Slowly, but beginning, She fell right into the lovey-dovey part better, more voluptuous than Martha had ever been. But she still balked at, still resented being lashed and chastised, But she'd come around. She knew she was a bad girl, and Bert knew she knew who her superior was! It'd just take a bit of time, was all, Sills was the tough nut, Damn it, when would that broad come around, anyhow? She got more and more stubborn instead of weaker-Hell, she's gotta quit, Bert thought contentedly. Got to. Nobody can go on the way I push 'cm, and I just got to think of more ways to ride herd on her pretty little butt, that's all.
It was the subject of pretty little butts that got Big Bert all shook up. There was so much you could do with a pretty little butt! You could torture it, lacerate the smooth bare flesh until it contorted and twisted and squirmed with unbearable pain!
Damn!
Her fantasies enraged her, She became completely fogged in and blinded by desire. To Big Bert, there was only one solution to the problem of desire: satisfaction of same. She went looking.
Brock was beginning to think of Lil Reardon as something more than a lonely, accommodating, willing woman; and he was beginning to think of himself as something more than a machine built for work, worry, work, worry. New vistas had opened before him since he'd met Lil. He was beginning to eat decent dinners, going out once In a while, and above all, was talking to someone who-yes, cared. Someone who gave a damn. Gave a damn about him. So we can conclude that Lil was rapidly evolving from a mere service-stop to a full-blown human being, in Farley's mind. Somehow, facing the prospect of his problems alone was too much. There was Sue Sills: not just her, but the things that put her there to begin with. She represented, was, the human element of the whole, stinking mess.
He could back down.
He could settle into the comfort of a no-strain existence with Lil and live happily ever after; he could even go into a more lucrative branch of law, like tax law, corporate law; something solid. All the young boys were doing that now, he thought. Most of his classmates had gone that route.
He could.
But then again, he couldn't. There was that corny, but Inescapable mirror to be gazed at; and he didn't like the idea of not liking what he would see.
Tomorrow morning, then, he would hop in his car and drive down to the prison and see Sue. Maybe, just maybe, something would come up-but in all events, he had to see the girl. He knew she had nobody else: no family, no friends, no relatives. Even the token gift of cigarettes and books would show her that somebody gave a good damn, and Farley knew now how important that was.
The next morning, he did hop in his car and he did drive down to the prison to see Sue. All the way down, he thought about the last visit-how hopeless everything had seemed in the girl's mind, how depressed she had been. How could a person get so screwed up because of a silly mistake that thousands of people make? A mistake that is nothing more than the idealism of youth shaking off its fetters? She was paying, paying through the figurative nose. An innocent girl, picked up coincidentally as fodder by Harris and Hardin and the Boys. That simple. That tough.
He didn't want to see Phineas Plane this morning (or any other), but he knew if he didn't, Plane would take it as an affront to his puffed-up authority, and would find a way to retaliate.
So he saw Plane.
"Mr. Brock," Plane uttered, not moving from his mountainous desk. How could such a little pipsqueak have such a huge sea of wood in front of him? Brock wondered.
"Mr. Plane."
"Come to see your client again?" he asked.
"Yes. You've had your hands full, I guess." Brock drew it out of the other man with seemingly off-hand indifference.
"That unfortunate suicide. Yes, yes indeed. Always a mess-poor girl."
"Yeah. Poor girl." You sonofabitch, Brock thought bitterly, you should spend one damned day behind bars instead of behind that stinking desk the State pays for. That Harris put you into.
"Any hope of an appeal for Sills?' Plane asked conversationally.
"Hard to say," Brock answered with equally conversational tone. "Hard to say. But you never know; you just keep plugging."
"That's what I've always said," Plane chortled.
"Well, nice visiting with you, Warden, but I have to see my client and get back to Norfolk this evening."
"We all have work to do," he answered. Brock was aware of the defensive tone; he thought You never have to work, Warden. You don't know the meaning of the word.
Phineas picked up the phone and asked for Big Bert frantically as soon as Brock slammed the office door behind him.
"For God's sake, get me Starr I" he yelled into the mouthpiece. After what seemed forever, Big Bert answered. "Bert-Brock, that nosy mouthpiece's on his-way to see Sills. Better duck out and get into something-regulation." Phineas never made the mistake of referring to Big Bert's clothes as abnormal or different or weird. Always referred to regulation; otherwise, she blew up indignantly.
"Sure," Big Bert replied gruffly. Sonofabitch, she thought, what's wrong with the clothes I wear? She hung up the phone and told one of the other guards to keep her eyes open while Bert ran out on a quick errand.
On her way out, she bumped into Brock, That is, they literally collided, he being so preoccupied that he didn't see her, she being in such a tremendous rush that she could avoid him when he suddenly appeared in her path.
"Excuse me," he said. She was silent, and didn't stick around long enough to acknowledge his apology, He watched her running out of the prison area, toward what he knew were the cottages where some of the guards without families lived.
My God, he thought. What in hell is that?
He knew what that was.
It struck like lightning.
That was Big Bert, the one Sue had talked about, the one who her cellmate, what's-her-name-Cindy had pooh-poohed. But you couldn't pooh-pooh a butch-looking animal who looked like a chapter out of infamous history. (How many times, as a child, had he watched a Hollywood war movie and felt a secret, grudging admiration for the splendor and the arrogance of the villainous, vainglorious SS-guards who had strutted proudly in their black uniforms? Black. Leather. Black leather. Yes. How many times had he secretly pretended and hoped that someday he too would wear a uniform that would excite that much fear and blind obedience?)
He saw her disappear, and then he resumed his steps toward the metal shop, where Sue would be working. When he got there, one of the guards stopped him at the door.
"Farley Brock. I'm to visit my client Sue Sills. Back in the cell," he said pointedly. He wasn't about to talk amidst the roar of machinery and the yelling of guards.
Then he and Sue and the guard were walking toward the cellblock, but he couldn't rid his mind of what he'd seen running frantically toward the cottages-that abberation of depraved humanity.
Sue was visibly agitated.
He gave her the carton of cigarettes, a few mysteries, some candy-but she put them all aside indifferently, and looked at him, then covertly at the guard nearby.
"Could you leave us alone for awhile?" Farley asked.
"If I Jock you inside the cell with the prisoner. Regulations."
"Fine."
The guard locked them in, and stepped out of sight. If they whispered, they would have privacy.
"Now; what's wrong?" he asked her. She looked like pure hell, he thought.sadly; much worse than last time he'd seen her.
She jammed something into his hand.
"Don't say anything about it," she whispered quickly, "just get it out of here and read it when nobody's around." Farley nodded, stuffing it in his pocket.
"Sue, I know this sounds empty-that it sounds like lip-service, coming from somebody who has it nice and easy; but I have an idea of what you're going through. I'm busting a gut to get you out of here. I want you to hang on."
That was a laugh, she thought. But inside, she knew he meant it, could see the signs of strain and fatigue in his eyes, his slightly down-turned mouth. He was handsome-young. Maybe if things had been different, they would have met in another way, and Hell, why think about it?
She'd never have sex again, least of all with a man. Ten stinking years. Thirty-four years old, an old hag; that part of her life was over. She'd never have a husband, a family, a house. None of that. It was more than ten years in jail. It was her whole life that was ruined.
"Sure." Her voice wasn't very convincing.
"I mean it," he said.
"Okay, I believe you. But I don't know how long I can hang on. I mean, you don't know what it is. Maybe you think you do, but you really don't." Her voice heightened, rose with intensity.
"All right," he said quietly, laying his hand on her shoulder. It trembled. He removed the hand quickly. "Okay."
When he left, he felt very depressed. The visit had been a bust-he'd never seen her so down-and-out, so totally devoid of anything like hope or faith or strength. Just beaten down. It wasn't until he stopped on the road for gas that he remembered the wad of paper she'd given him. He watched the gas-jockey wash his windshield, check under the hood and do all the things he wished he wouldn't do right now, because as he read the note, he became increasingly agitated, and felt that he had to move, not just stand there idle.
This was what he'd been waiting for!
This was half of that girl's ticket for a brand new, possibly fair trial.