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A keyring rattled outside. The door opened. The captain held up one hand to an unseen figure in the partial dark of the corridor.
Momento, he said.
He turned and stood studying them.
I will tell you a story, he said. Because I like you. I was young man like you. You see. And this time I tell you I was always with these older boys because I want to learn every thing. So on this night at the fiesta of San Pedro in the town of Linares in Nuevo León I was with these boys and they have some mescal and everything-you know what is mescal?-and there was this woman and all these boys is go out to this woman and they is have this woman. And I am the last one. And I go out to the place where is this woman and she is refuse me because she say I am too young or something like that.
What does a man do? You see. I can no go back because they will all see that I dont go with this woman. Because the truth is always plain. You see. A man ca
The captain made a fist and held it up.
Maybe they tell her to refuse to me. So they can laugh. They give her some money or something like that. But I dont let whores make trouble for me. When I come back there is no laughing. No one is laughing. You see. That has always been my way in this world. I am the one when I go someplace then there is no laughing. When I go there then they stop laughing.
They were led up four flights of stone stairs and through a steel door out onto an iron catwalk. The guard smiled back at them in the light from the bulb over the door. Beyond lay the night sky of the desert mountains. Below them the prison yard.
Se llama la periquera, he said.
They followed him down the catwalk. A sense of some brooding and malignant life slumbering in the darkened cages they passed. Here and there along the tiers of catwalks on the far side of the quadrangle a dull light shaped out the grating of the cells where votive candles burned the night long before some santo. The bell in the cathedral tower three blocks away sounded once with a deep, an oriental solemnity.
They were locked into a cell in the topmost corner of the prison. The ironbarred door clanged shut and the latch rattled home and they listened as the guard went back down the catwalk and they listened as the iron door shut and then all was silence.
They slept in iron bunks chained to the walls on thin trocheros or mattress pads that were greasy, vile, infested. In the morning they climbed down the four flights of steel ladders into the yard and stood among the prisoners for the morning lista. The lista was called by tiers yet it still took over an hour and their names were not called.
I guess we aint here, said Rawlins.
Their breakfast was a thin pozole and nothing more and afterward they were simply turned out into the yard to fend for themselves. They spent the whole of the first day fighting and when they were finally shut up in their cell at night they were bloody and exhausted and Rawlins' nose was broken and badly swollen. The prison was no more than a small walled village and within it occurred a constant seethe of barter and exchange in everything from radios and blankets down to matches and buttons and shoenails and within this bartering ran a constant struggle for status and position. Underpi
They slept and in the morning it all began again. They fought back to back and picked each other up and fought again. At noon Rawlins could not chew. They're goin to kill us, he said.
John Grady mashed beans in a tin can with water till he'd made a gruel out of it and pushed it at Rawlins.
You listen to me, he said. Dont you let em think they aint goin to have to. You hear me? I intend to make em kill me. I wont take nothin less. They either got to kill us or let us be. There aint no middle ground.
There aint a place on me that dont hurt.
I know it. I know it and I dont care.
Rawlins sucked at the gruel. He looked at John Grady from over the rim of the can. You look like a goddamn racoon, he said.
John Grady gri
Shit if I know.
You ought to wish you looked as good as a coon.
I caint laugh. I think my jaw's broke.
There aint nothin wrong with you.
Shit, said Rawlins.
John Grady gri
I see the son of a bitch.
See him lookin over here?
I see him.
What do you think I'm fixin to do?
I got no idea in this world.
I'm goin to get up from here and walk over there and bust him in the mouth.
The hell you are.
You watch me.
What for?
Just to save him the trip.
By the end of the third day it seemed to be pretty much over. There were both half naked and John Grady had been blindsided with a sock full of gravel that took out two teeth in his lower jaw and his left eye was closed completely. The fourth day was Sunday and they bought clothes with Blevins' money and they bought a bar of soap and took showers and they bought a can of tomato soup and heated it in the can over a candlestub and wrapped the sleeve of Rawlins' old shirt around it for a handle and passed it back and forth between them while the sun set over the high western wall of the prison.
You know, we might just make it, said Rawlins.
Dont start gettin comfortable. Let's just take it a day at a time.
How much money you think it would take to get out of here?
I dont know. I'd say a lot.
I would too.
We aint heard from the captain's buddies in here. I guess they're waitin to see if there's goin to be anything left to bail out.
He held out the can toward Rawlins.
Finish it, said Rawlins.
Take it. There aint but a sup.
He took the can and drained it and poured a little water in and swirled it about and drank that and sat looking into the empty can.
If thev think we're rich how come they aint looked after us no better? he said.
I dont know. I know they dont run this place. All they run is what comes in and what goes out.
If that, said Rawlins.
The floodlights came on from the upper walls. Figures that had been moving in the yard froze, then they moved again.
The horn's fixin to blow.
We got a couple of minutes.
I never knowed there was such a place as this.
I guess there's probably every kind of place you can think of.
Rawlins nodded. I wouldnt of thought of this one, he said.
It was raining somewhere out in the desert. They could smell the wet creosote on the wind. Lights came on in a makeshift cinderblock house built into one corner of the prison wall where a prisoner of means lived like an exiled satrap complete with cook and bodyguard. There was a screen door to the house and a figure crossed behind it and crossed back. On the roof a clothesline where the prisoner's clothes luffed gently in the night breeze like flags of state. Rawlins nodded toward the lights.
You ever see him?
Yeah. One time. He was standin in the door one evenin smokin him a cigar.
You picked up on any of the lingo in here?
Some.
What's a pucha?
A cigarette butt.
Then what's a tecolata?
Same thing.
How many damn names have they got for a cigarette butt?
I dont know. You know what a papazote is?
No, what?
A big shot.
That's what they call the dude that lives yonder.
Yeah.
And we're a couple of gabachos.
Bolillos.
Pendejos.
Anybody can be a pendejo, said John Grady. That just means asshole.