to.
âNow watch this,â Dean said, remembering how Brutal had fed it some of his corned-beef sandwich. âI donât know if heâll do it again, butââ
He broke off a piece of Ritz cracker and dropped it in front of the mouse. It just looked with its sharp black eyes at the orangey fragment for a second or two, its filament-fine whiskers twitching as it sniffed. Then it reached out, took the cracker in its paws, sat up, and began to eat.
âWell, Iâll be shucked and boiled!â Bill exclaimed. âEats as neat as a parson on parish house Saturday night!â
âLooks more like a nigger eating watermelon to me,â Percy remarked, but neither guard paid him any mind. Neither did The Chief or The Pres, for that matter. The mouse finished the cracker but continued to sit, seemingly balanced on the talented coil of its tail, looking up at the giants in blue.
âLemme try,â Bill said. He broke off another piece of cracker, leaned over the front of the desk, and dropped it carefully. The mouse sniffed but did not touch.
âHuh,â Bill said. âMust be full.â
âNah,â Dean said, âhe knows youâre a floater, thatâs all.â
âFloater, am I? I like that! Iâm here almost as much as Harry Terwilliger! Maybe more!â
âSimmer down, old-timer, simmer down,â Dean said, grinning. âBut watch and see if Iâm not right.â He bombed another piece of cracker over the side. Sure enough, the mouse picked that one up and began to eat again, still ignoring Bill Dodgeâs contribution completely. But before it had done more than take a preliminary nibble or two, Percy threw his baton at it, launching it like a spear.
The mouse was a small target, and give the devil his dueâit was a wickedly good shot, and might have taken âWillyâsâ head clean off, if its reflexes hadnât been as sharp as shards of broken glass. It duckedâyes,just as a human being would haveâand dropped the chunk of cracker. The heavy hickory baton passed over its head and spine close enough so its fur ruffled (thatâs what Dean said, anyway, and so I pass it on, although Iâm not sure I really believe it), then hit the green linoleum and bounced against the bars of an empty cell. The mouse didnât wait to see if it was a mistake; apparently remembering a pressing engagement elsewhere, it turned and was off down the corridor toward the restraint room in a flash.
Percy roared with frustrationâhe knew how close he had comeâand chased after it again. Bill Dodge grabbed at his arm, probably out of simple instinct, but Percy pulled away from him. Still, Dean said, it was probably that grab which saved Steamboat Willyâs life, and it was still a near thing. Percy wanted not just to kill the mouse but to squash it, so he ran in big, comical leaps, like a deer, stamping down with his heavy black workshoes. The mouse barely avoided Percyâs last two jumps, first zigging and then zagging. It went under the door with a final flick of its long pink tail, and so long, strangerâit was gone.
âFuck!â Percy said, and slammed the flat of his hand against the door. Then he began to sort through his keys, meaning to go into the restraint room and continue the chase.
Dean came down the corridor after him, deliberately walking slow in order to get his emotions under control. Part of him wanted to laugh at Percy, he told me, but part of him wanted to grab the man, whirl him around, pin him against the restraint-room door, and whale the living daylights out of him. Most of it, of course, was just being startled; our job on E Block was to keep rumpus to a minimum, and rumpus was practically Percy Wetmoreâs middle name. Working with him was sort of like trying to defuse a bomb with somebody standing behind you and every now and then clashing a pair of cymbals together. In a word, upsetting.
Margaret Maron
Richard S. Tuttle
London Casey, Ana W. Fawkes
Walter Dean Myers
Mario Giordano
Talia Vance
Geraldine Brooks
Jack Skillingstead
Anne Kane
Kinsley Gibb