Fear Me

15

But prison life was prison life and it didn’t take long before the shit started stirring up again, smelling just as bad as any other day. Three days after Gordo died, Palmquist was put to work in the kitchen with Romero and some of the others. He did his bit all right, doing what the cook told him, stirring a cauldron of brown, greasy meat gravy with a wooden spoon that looked like a broomhandle. Cook said to stir and keep stirring it or it would lump up and the cons wouldn’t be able to keep it down.

So Palmquist was stirring and two black guys, cellies named Heslip and Burgon, were whipping instant potatoes in a big mixer, laughing about something and Romero could tell by the way they were laughing and the way they were casting sidelong glances at Palmquist, that it wasn’t good.

Palmquist was hearing them, just ignoring what they were saying.

Romero dumped an industrial-size can of green beans into a boiler, tuned in on the conversation.

“Shit, bro, ya’ll got me wrong here,” Heslip was saying, looking foolish in his white smock and hairnet. “All I say, all I say here is how I see this bitch first, ought to be me gets to grease his backside.”

Burgon just shook his head. “You pull that sweet shit on me last time, fool, I never got a taste. No sir, that boy is mine. I’m taking my crack and you gonna step aside. You can watch you want to, but he be mine.”

Christ, they were talking about Palmquist.

Romero felt himself steel at the idea of it. Wasn’t none of his business, he supposed, but yet after the Gordo thing, he was making it his business. His old man always said he wasn’t the smartest one of the lot, but he was smart enough to know two things: Weems had fooled with the kid and Weems was dead. Same for Gordo. Aquintez had said it was going to take some real dumb motherfuckers to make a play for the fish now and here they were in the flesh. Two more stupid cons looking for an open grave. Maybe it was a wild leap of logic to think that something would happen to them if they persisted, but from where Romero was sitting, he didn’t think so.

“All right, shit, you run a hard bargain,” Heslip said, pouring more powdered potatoes into the vat. “I give you two cartons Marlboro reds you gimme first dibs on that fine white shit.”

“Fuck you say, fool? Two, motherfucker? I don’t bite on that. I get you an ounce of good smoke, you forget his ass.”

“Shit, know a whiteboy got serious connections, get you a bottle of Jack Daniels and a couple rocks primo shit. Now what your black ass got to say on that?”

“Shit. You throw in them two cartons, you pop that motherfucker three ways to Sunday.”

“Ain’t gonna pop him, smoke,” Heslip said, like the idea was unthinkable to an upstanding guy like him. “Gonna sell his ass.”

Jesus, Romero was thinking, they were bidding on the kid like this was Ebay or some shit. And wasn’t that the final, dehumanizing statement of life at Shaddock? Right in front of the kid yet. He wasn’t nothing but merchandise to them. But that’s the way Heslip and Burgon were. They were both doing life and both had absolutely nothing to lose. They made a habit of jumping on fresh meat when it waltzed its sweet ass through the gates. They would jump it and pump it, school it, then sell it to the highest bidder out in the yard. Romero had seen it done before. Had seen them do it to a young black guy named Lester Heroon, degrading him until he slit his wrists in the showers not two months back.

Romero had to wonder, though, whether this was their idea or maybe Papa Joe had sweetened the pot for them.

They kept at it, now abandoning the potatoes and standing on either side of Palmquist.

“Look at this shit,” Burgon was saying. “He young and firm, got that blond hair, looking sweet and solid to me. You saying my boy here, he ain’t worth those two cartons, fool?”

“Fuck, I say that? Just, shit, I’m squeezed. How about we run my ass some credit, then we both get what we want.”

“What kind of credit line you talking, nigger?”

“Same old, same old, tit for the tat and suck shit, you up on that?”

Palmquist stepped away from them. “Fucking homos,” he said. “Fucking nigger homos!”

That shut them up, they came on together, were thinking how sometimes you had to break a horse before you could ride it proper.

“Fuck you say, whitebread?” Heslip wanted to know.

Romero went over there, not sure if he was trying to save the kid’s bacon or that of the two black degenerates. He got in-between them and Palmquist. “Fuck you boys doing, man?” he said, letting that acid fill his voice. “Who say you got a claim on his ass? He’s my cellie, bitch, you want to talk business, maybe you better come through me.”

“Maybe we ain’t going to,” Burgon said, big and black and bristling.

Romero pulled a razor out of his belt. “Maybe I’ll cut your balls off, make your punk here gargle with ’em. What you got to say to that, home?”

They were watching that razor and not saying a thing. They both knew Romero. Both knew he’d cut lots of guys, did it quick and without warning if you got on his wrong side.

Heslip just smiled, showed lots of bad teeth. “It’s cool, Romero, it’s cool. What’s this shit? This meat belong to you? You got dibs on this shit here?”

Romero shrugged. “Maybe I do. And maybe you ought to think about something real hard and real careful before you lay a hand on him.”

“Yeah? What’s that, smoke?” Burgon said.

“A con name of Weems fucked with this boy. You know Weems, don’t you? Big ass-ugly nigger looked like his mama passed him out her ass? Yeah, he played the game and you know what happened to him. Same went for a white trash meat-eater name of Tony Gordo… or you dumb spades forget that already? They say he was opened like a can of fucking beans. And in solitary. You wanna run that risk?”

They both looked at him like he was crazy and maybe he was, but they both backed off, looked a little tense and gray around the mouth. They didn’t have much to say after that.

Palmquist didn’t say anything either. But something just behind his eyes was watching them real close.