Fear Me

Romero knew that what was in the kid-and he was no longer believing he had imagined any of that- had been active again last night. But he hadn’t witnessed it because he’d spent the night racked out in the infirmary on sedatives after the doc stitched his face closed from the beating Gordo gave him. So no bad dreams or worse reality for him. But it had happened. He knew that. The kid had fallen asleep and then…

Aquintez told him that he had his ears open and he wasn’t hearing anything about Papa Joe putting money out on a certain con named Romero that wasn’t playing by the rules.

“Not yet.”

“Like I said, people got other things to worry about right now. Besides, home, you’re a living legend in this joint. Going after Tony fucking Gordo open-handed without so much as a shank. Now that takes balls, primo balls.”

“Or maybe just a lack of common sense, JoJo,” Romero said, fingering the bruises and bandages on his face.

Tony Gordo was a walking piece of shit and he got flushed, that’s all there’s to it.

He felt no pity for the man. He was a crawling worm somebody should have stepped on long ago and who does it? Palmquist. Or someth kn›. lt ning inside him. Christ, it was all so buggy, headcase stuff.

He looked around the yard again at all the disinterested cons, but the truth was, though, he wasn’t worrying so much about himself but about the fish, about goddamn Palmquist. Worried that the fear would build and some of the boys would act like the animals they were and kill the kid. That’s what worried him.

“I don’t know what this is about, man, but I think if they just leave the kid alone, they’re gonna be okay.”

“Right now, my friend,” Aquintez said, “it’s gonna take some real dumb motherfuckers to make a play for your boy.”

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 nface=lang="enGordo. 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.”