Chickenhawk: Back in the World - Life After Vietnam

I took the books and put them on Walton’s desk. He’d be here for a few more months. I sat down on my bunk. Four-thirty: that’s what time they were coming for me. My watch said four. I walked over to the water fountain and drank. I went to the glass doors and leaned against the frame. The mess hall was lit up, the inmate kitchen crew was making breakfast. I went back to my cube and lay down on my stripped mattress.

I waited.

Maybe they forgot. I stood up and checked the section. No hack in sight. I lay down. Maybe they did forget. They forgot lots of things.

I waited. I remembered my ice-cream party. I had it the previous Sunday. It was a sign of my status in the prisoner hierarchy that I could have an ice-cream party on a Sunday. The commissary was closed during the weekends, so you had to have a party during the week or you couldn’t get the ice cream. I used my connections in the kitchen and stored about forty pints of Haagen-Dazs in the kitchen freezer. Further proof of my power was that the ice cream was still there when I went to pick it up. It was a good party, I thought.

I got the ice cream on Friday. Elliott Ness was working the register when I went behind the line and started loading up a shopping bag with pints of Haagen-Dazs from the ice-cream freezer. He said, “Getting ready to leave, Bob?”

“Yeah, Mr. Holbrook. I’m going to zero my account.”

He nodded and pulled my account sheet. “You have twenty-four dollars left, enough for ten pints and some change.”

“Keep the change.”

“Can’t. We’ll send you a check.”

I nodded and continued packing the ice cream into the bag. Leone, who was working the line with Frank, came over and asked if I needed any help. I said no, put the twentieth pint in the bag, set it aside, and popped open another bag. “How much you taking, Bob?” Leone asked.

“I have enough money for ten,” I said. Leone blinked and stared at the bag I had just filled. He glanced over his shoulder at Elliott Ness and grinned. I filled up the second bag and picked them both up, freezing against my body. I walked toward Elliott Ness, toward the door. “You got your ten?” he asked.

“Yessir,” I said. At least ten. I didn’t know why I was doing this. I was risking a lot, stealing in a prison camp in full view of a guard—after never having stolen anything for nearly two years—a few days before my release. It just happened. Maybe I’m incorrigible. Elliott Ness, who knew me as the squarest and most trustworthy of the commissary crew, didn’t even look up. He put my account sheet in the machine and charged my account. I walked outside, grinning. As my last official act in Eglin, I had committed larceny in front of the FBI.

That afternoon at the mess hall, Leone came over and sat at my table. Leone never sat with me; I wasn’t in his clique of friends, they being mostly Mafia and other serious crooks. My being a writer and small-time pot smuggler was okay, but it certainly wasn’t something you’d want to brag about. My impression was that Leone thought I was the straightest wimp he’d run into. He once accused me of running the commissary like I owned stock in it. Leone sat down, grinning. He leaned over his tray and said, “Bob. That was really something. Now, now I respect you.”

It had been a long twenty months. It was actually ending? Knox had written me earlier, comparing my incarceration with his collection of tropical fish. He said, “I got some guppies just for movement, and now they’ve given birth, so the population rises—and none of these guys get out on weekend passes. Ever. The only way they leave is fins first.” I was leaving, and I was still alive.

I was grinning to myself when Tarzan walked by with his flashlight. I stood up and watched him checking each cube on my aisle. He walked back to me. “Ready?” Tarzan said.

“Yeah. I’m ready.”

He shined his light around inside my cube. “All cleaned up?”

“All cleaned up.”

“Okay, grab your sheets and stuff.”

I picked up the two pillowcases and followed Tarzan out the door.

Dawn was a faint glow in the east. I followed Tarzan over to the clothing room and dumped the pillowcases into the piles of clothes in the bins. Then we walked together up the long sidewalk to the administration building. Tree frogs croaked, crickets chirped. Our footsteps crackled sand on the sidewalk. Tomorrow, and for all tomorrows, an inmate would be sweeping it clean. I looked around as I walked, trying to memorize the scene: the shadow of a huge oak barely perceptible against the early glow of dawn; dim lights in dorms filled with seven hundred and fifty sleeping men; Tarzan strolling ahead of me, still unapproachable after almost two years; men moving as shadows against dim lights inside the guard shack. I didn’t want to forget any of this.

Tarzan didn’t talk. Of all the hacks I’d known, Tarzan had the least to do with the inmates. “I’m sure going to miss this place,” I said.

“Sure,” Tarzan said.

CHAPTER 34