shot out ’n he says ‘Don’t shoot me.’ I would of let him have it for real then, only the dirty chamber was empty.
“Naw, girls are poison. Once when I was twelve I was in love with a girl, she was ’leven, we was like a couple grownup goofs.
“My old man? His one big trouble is he’s always a pallbearer ’n never a corpse. How he’d look best is wit’ his head off five inches below the shoulders. You know what I told my old ma the time she called the cops on me for sellin’ the ice-box when she was downtown? I told her, ‘Mom, you been workin’ for me for nineteen years. Now go out ’n get a job for yourself.’ ”
Bonarue Katz looked at Frankie Machine and Frankie looked at Bonarue. “Let’s get the detail done, dealer,” Bonarue suggested, and another week passed before Frankie saw Little Lester the Money-Waster and Woman-Chaser again.
For two hours, on the following Saturday afternoon, Frankie sat at the same table as Lester, where an assigned group was permitted to write letters or play cards. Thus it was that Lester sat across from Frankie with a soiled deck in his hand, trying to do the tricks that Frankie had sometimes lived by.
“It took me five years to learn this one,” Frankie explained, “pick a card.”
“Show me one that don’t take that long,” Lester asked politely, declining to pick one.
He was forty-nine days from the chair, Frankie kept thinking—yet he sat here playing casino, would eat the same food this night as himself. Saw the same corridors and the same yellowish light wadded about the night-lights, all night long; slept and wakened to the same muffled sounds: down the tier evening was beginning.
“How does it feel to play cards with a man waiting for the chair?” Lester asked, as if reading Frankie’s thoughts.
“I hope you don’t make it, kid,” Frankie assured him.
“I’m gettin’ a little practice at it Monday,” Lester told him wryly: “I’m settin’ in the dentist’s chair. They’re fixin’ a loosechopper so’s I won’t have to set in the chair downstairs with a toothache.”
Frankie’s eyes shifted to the floor, and he noticed that Lester was wearing tennis sneakers, with both bows neatly tied.
Frankie never forgot the neatly tied bows of the asphalt-colored tennis sneakers.
He saw them again on an afternoon when Lester was being taken into the yard for a twenty-minute workout. He was to be exercised, like a piece of stock out there, and the rumor of it had gone through the prison grapevine with hard laughter: “We’re all stock, in or out of County,” that laugh meant.
The yard was laid out like a rock garden, with a duckless duck pond, a chicken house, and a pale blue bird house. Above and behind the bird-house ran a two-story high legend: PULASKI COAL MAKES WARM FRIENDS . And across from it was a counter-appeal to the inmates: BUY DELTA COAL .
Along the rows where, in summer, vegetables would grow, four cons stood under the eyes of four guards. Without uniformity they touched their toes with their fingertips, bending awkwardly from the waist. Three of them had to stand spread-legged to do so. Lester, Frankie saw with an odd, defiant pride, could do so without bending his knees at all. He touched the tips of the tennis sneakers’ neat bow-knots with the condemned fingers of his condemned wrists.
“A guy got somethin’ like
that
on his mind ’n still he ties his laces like he was entered in a track meet,” Frankie complained to Bonarue Katz.
Bonarue missed the point. “He just does caliskonectics is all,” he told Frankie. “Let’s go. They ain’t gonna let him climb no bars. He might get too good at it.”
“If it was me I’d tell ’em to let me skip the rope,” Frankie offered; but Bonarue didn’t think the offering was funny at all.
“What good would that do? You’d still have to beat the chair.”
“Just tryin’ to make a joke,” Frankie apologized.
“Quit listenin’ to the radio, you won’t
“Naw, girls are poison. Once when I was twelve I was in love with a girl, she was ’leven, we was like a couple grownup goofs.
“My old man? His one big trouble is he’s always a pallbearer ’n never a corpse. How he’d look best is wit’ his head off five inches below the shoulders. You know what I told my old ma the time she called the cops on me for sellin’ the ice-box when she was downtown? I told her, ‘Mom, you been workin’ for me for nineteen years. Now go out ’n get a job for yourself.’ ”
Bonarue Katz looked at Frankie Machine and Frankie looked at Bonarue. “Let’s get the detail done, dealer,” Bonarue suggested, and another week passed before Frankie saw Little Lester the Money-Waster and Woman-Chaser again.
For two hours, on the following Saturday afternoon, Frankie sat at the same table as Lester, where an assigned group was permitted to write letters or play cards. Thus it was that Lester sat across from Frankie with a soiled deck in his hand, trying to do the tricks that Frankie had sometimes lived by.
“It took me five years to learn this one,” Frankie explained, “pick a card.”
“Show me one that don’t take that long,” Lester asked politely, declining to pick one.
He was forty-nine days from the chair, Frankie kept thinking—yet he sat here playing casino, would eat the same food this night as himself. Saw the same corridors and the same yellowish light wadded about the night-lights, all night long; slept and wakened to the same muffled sounds: down the tier evening was beginning.
“How does it feel to play cards with a man waiting for the chair?” Lester asked, as if reading Frankie’s thoughts.
“I hope you don’t make it, kid,” Frankie assured him.
“I’m gettin’ a little practice at it Monday,” Lester told him wryly: “I’m settin’ in the dentist’s chair. They’re fixin’ a loosechopper so’s I won’t have to set in the chair downstairs with a toothache.”
Frankie’s eyes shifted to the floor, and he noticed that Lester was wearing tennis sneakers, with both bows neatly tied.
Frankie never forgot the neatly tied bows of the asphalt-colored tennis sneakers.
He saw them again on an afternoon when Lester was being taken into the yard for a twenty-minute workout. He was to be exercised, like a piece of stock out there, and the rumor of it had gone through the prison grapevine with hard laughter: “We’re all stock, in or out of County,” that laugh meant.
The yard was laid out like a rock garden, with a duckless duck pond, a chicken house, and a pale blue bird house. Above and behind the bird-house ran a two-story high legend: PULASKI COAL MAKES WARM FRIENDS . And across from it was a counter-appeal to the inmates: BUY DELTA COAL .
Along the rows where, in summer, vegetables would grow, four cons stood under the eyes of four guards. Without uniformity they touched their toes with their fingertips, bending awkwardly from the waist. Three of them had to stand spread-legged to do so. Lester, Frankie saw with an odd, defiant pride, could do so without bending his knees at all. He touched the tips of the tennis sneakers’ neat bow-knots with the condemned fingers of his condemned wrists.
“A guy got somethin’ like
that
on his mind ’n still he ties his laces like he was entered in a track meet,” Frankie complained to Bonarue Katz.
Bonarue missed the point. “He just does caliskonectics is all,” he told Frankie. “Let’s go. They ain’t gonna let him climb no bars. He might get too good at it.”
“If it was me I’d tell ’em to let me skip the rope,” Frankie offered; but Bonarue didn’t think the offering was funny at all.
“What good would that do? You’d still have to beat the chair.”
“Just tryin’ to make a joke,” Frankie apologized.
“Quit listenin’ to the radio, you won’t
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