A Night for Screaming Page 6

  “Nothing,” I said. This was something I had to test for myself. It seemed urgent that I know what kind of a man Evans Howell really was. Anybody could smile, especially on the first day you were on the place, and especially since I knew now that Handecker and Potter were in charge of the stoop-laborers and that Howell very infrequently came in personal contact with them. Perhaps he didn’t even know what went on down here. Maybe he didn’t want to know.

  Maybe he even avoided knowing, the way he had avoided learning anything about who I was.

  “So?” Handecker was waiting, eyes narrowed.

  “So, they said I could have anything I wanted to eat.”

  “That’s right,” he nodded. “So what’s wrong with the food you got?”

  “Nothing. I just would like a steak, that’s all.”

  The server across the counter looked ill. He said, voice shaking, “I’ll have to call the cook.”

  He turned before Handecker could stop him. He called, “Ling.”

  From a rear room, a Chinaman in white clothes and white apron came through the cutting tables to the serving counter.

  “This fellow,” the server said, nodding at me. “He wants a steak.”

  “Don’t like lamb?” The cook looked at me, puzzled.

  “It’s all right I just want a steak.”

  The cook nodded. “Sure. All right. Take just little while. Hokay?”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  The cook jerked his head toward the server and they went back to the stoves. Now that I knew a man actually could order anything he wanted, I didn’t care anything about the steak. But I couldn’t back down now.

  Handecker stepped closer. “What you trying to pull, Walker?”

  “Nothing.”

  Handecker’s voice was very soft. “I hope I’m not going to have trouble with you, Walker, A man makes his own life on this here farm. He gets just what he asks for.”

  I turned. His eyes were narrowed, cold. He was staring at me as if he were trying to memorize every feature of my face, as if he expected to remember me and this moment the longest day of his life.

  6

  Precisely at six-thirty that night, Handecker and Potter pushed open the barracks doors. Handecker blew his whistle. The men stood up at the foot of their bunks in a spiritless kind of silence.

  There had been a sense of impatience inside the barracks after supper. It was nothing you could pin down, but the men were edgy, awaiting something.

  When we were all standing in two lines down the center aisle, Potter opened the barracks doors again. Evans Howell in a fresh white shirt, dark trousers and black shoes entered, followed by a small, balding man who looked as if he wanted to hold his nose when he stepped inside the long room.

  Handecker snapped an order and the two men nearest the front door pushed a small pine table and a straight kitchen chair out into the center of the doorway area. The little man, nostrils distended, sat down in the kitchen chair, placing a black tin money box and a ledger book on the table top before him. Potter and Handecker stood at each end of the table and Howell leaned against the doorjamb, watching.

  Potter gave a signal and the men stepped forward to the table. Each mumbled his name. The little man checked the ledger, handed the laborer eight one-dollar bills in a paper clip.

  The pay line moved silently and swiftly.

  The only thing that happened to disturb the smooth execution of the daily pay-off was when the door at Evans Howell’s back was pulled open. Howell straightened, and both Handecker and Potter leaped around, ready to clobber the intruder.

  It was the dark-haired kid who guarded the gate between barnyard and the farmhouse. He looked at both Handecker and Potter, smiling in a frightened way.

  “Just a message,” the boy said. “Just a message. That’s all. Message for Mr. Howell.”

  ‘All right, Chick,” Howell said. “What is it?”

  Chick tried to smile at Howell. “From the big house, Mr. Howell. From Mr. Cassel. They said tell you Mr. Cassel himself sends word. Mr. Cassel wants to see you up at the big house. Right away.”

  I saw Evans Howell’s fair face flush to the roots of his dry blonde hair. He glanced around at the paymaster, at the strawbosses, at the men in the room. There was a sickness in his face.

  Puzzled, I saw Potter grin toward Handecker on one side of his face.

  Handecker looked wise. Some of the men along the aisles glanced at each other, but none of them said anything.

  Handecker leaned against the table, waiting.

  Evans Howell straightened. He looked at Chick, shook his head. “No. Mr. Cassel is—” He stopped. “You tell him I’m sorry. I ... I can’t come up there right now ... I’m busy.”

  Chick now looked as ill as Howell had a moment ago. Here was a message he dreaded delivering. “Please sir, Mr. Howell,” he said. “They said it’s very important”

  Howell shook his head again. “No. You tell them no. You understand? Tell them I’m too busy right now.”

  Chick looked twenty years older than he had when he walked in. He no longer made any effort to smile. He nodded, not looking at Evans Howell any more, then he turned and went through the doors.

  Howell’s voice was sharp. “All right, Reeder. Get on with the paying. Get on with it.”

  When all the men were paid, Reeder closed the box, gathered up his book and stepped through the doors, hurrying.

  Howell stepped up to the table, looked along the aisle at the stoop-laborers lined at the foot of their cots.

  “Anything you men want to say? Anything on your minds?”

  None of the men moved, none said anything. I glanced at Potter and Handecker. Their gazes were fixed on the men in front of them.

  Howell shrugged. “So. Okay. We’re all one happy family. Any of you men want to leave tonight? We’ll run any of you down to the gate that want to go. He waited. A couple of the men shuffled their feet and looked around, but none stepped forward.

  Howell gestured with his lean-fingered hand. His gleaming white shirt contrasted with the sweaty clothing of the men around him.

  “All right. So we got nobody leaving tonight. Remember, you can’t leave now, with pay, until after pay time tomorrow night. You understand? Mr. Barton M. Cassel pays all of you by the day, in cash, so you can leave when you want to. This is an inconvenience and extra expense to him, so his rule is that no matter what the emergency, there’s only this one pay time a day. You all understand?”

  The men shifted from one foot to the other. This was the daily routine. They heard this every night.

  “Okay,” Howell said then. “I guess that’s all. Except one word of warning. Don’t let me catch any of you men gambling down here. That’s one thing I won’t permit. It’s not that we’re trying to tell you men what you can do. But Mr. Barton M. Cassel has found out that when as many men as there are in this room start to gamble, the next thing is fighting and brawling and knifing. We won’t permit it. We won’t allow any cards, dice, betting. If that’s clear, good night.”

  He stood there a moment. There were grumbles of assent from the men, whines of inarticulate protest, but that was all. Howell nodded in a curt way, stepped back and left the barracks. The men shuffled between the cots, sitting down, sprawling across them, the springs crying in a hundred voices at once. Potter and Handecker pushed the chair and table against the wall.

  The men slumped there, only a few of them talking in whispers together, as if they were waiting for something when they all knew there was nothing to wait for.

  It was barely dark at the barracks windows when the jeep stopped outside the front doors. The men came to life on the cots, Handecker and Potter came out of their sleeping-cubicles at the front of the barracks. The doors opened and Buster Kane came in, carrying several packs of playing cards and half a dozen pairs of dice.

  Most of the men got up from their beds, displaying the first signs of vigor since I’d seen them this afternoon. Potter stopped Kane just inside the
barracks doors. “Everything all right?”

  Kane laughed at him. “The best. Our loyal leader is being taken care of the way we want him handled.”

  Handecker laughed. “All right, you guys. Who wants a little action? Kane and me will set up a nice little stud game back there.”

  The men laughed, some of them crowded around Kane and the strawboss.

  Potter said, “Anybody else would like a little action with the ivories, see me in my office.”

  He pushed through the knot of men, laughing, shaking a pair of dice in his fist as he walked toward the rear of the barracks.

  It was only a matter of minutes before the two operations were set up, ready for action.

  I lay on my bunk, watching. Handecker set up the pine table between two bunks and dozens of men crowded around.

  In the cleared space at the rear of the barracks, Potter was clattering dice against the wall. Warming them up, he called it.

  Then Kane moved along the aisles speaking to all the men. They turned when he spoke and each of them tossed a knife or a closed straight razor into his basket. He had quite a haul by the time he stopped at the foot of my bunk.

  He set the basket on the end of my cot. “You got a knife?”

  I touched the knife in my pocket, nodded. “But I am not going to get in any of the games tonight.”

  His face tightened for a moment, then he smiled again. “Oh, hell. You think you won’t. Everybody plays. And we can’t have no knives floating around here loose. You see, we try to give you guys some entertainment. But the first time we have a knifing down here, good old Johnny Handecker, me and Potter get fired and some of you guys end up in jail—and no more fun these long nights. Now, nobody wants that. So let’s have your knife.”

  I was aware that all the men in the room had paused and were watching me. The talk about my steak supper had spread fast. None of them had missed the way Handecker had looked at me in the messhall. The way these men saw it, I was asking for trouble, and begging for it every step of the way.

  Handecker pushed his way along the aisle. His voice was hard. “Let’s don’t have no trouble, Walker. No one guy spoils the fun for everybody. Toss in your knife. The games end, you get it back, just like all the rest of us.”

  There was a murmur from the men in the room, an impatient buzzing sound.

  I glanced around at them, shrugged. “Sure,” I said.

  I pulled the knife from my pocket, stared at it on my palm a moment.

  “Wow! Switchblade,” Buster Kane said.

  I heard the whisper run across the room. Here was a tough guy with a switchblade.

  I tossed the knife into the basket, hearing the men laughing and talking among themselves.

  I lay back on the straw pillow, staring at the ceiling, not thinking about Kane, Handecker, any of them, but remembering the kid I took that knife from. It was like something from some other lifetime, like something that had happened to two other people.

  My hands clenched at my sides. I’d been working with Palmer then. Plainclothes. A sixteen-year-old had been knifed in the park. Palmer was gray around the mouth. He was going to smash those stinking juve punks. There was one way to handle them. Smash their rotten mouths, break their arms, take their switchblades away from them and carve them a little bit with their own knives. It was suddenly a crusade with Palmer, twenty-four hours a day. Frisk every tough kid in that end of town, stop every one you saw on every street. Bring in every kid that had a switchblade on him. These kids were tough. Palmer was tougher.

  I was with Palmer that night. One of his personally planned raids. I found this kid hiding, sweated and trembling on a tenement roof. When I asked him what was eating at him, he could hardly talk. He was about seventeen, skinny in white bucks, Levis, the leather jacket, acne, sideburns below his ear lobes, thick-lensed, black-rimmed glasses and visored cap two sizes too small on thick, curled hair.

  It took a long time, too long, to find out what was chewing him. Palmer was pounding up the roof stairs as I took the switchblade from the kid and dropped it in my pocket.

  Palmer looked at the trembling kid. “You frisk him yet, Mitch?”

  I nodded. But as usual, nobody’s word was good enough for Fred Palmer. He told the kid to turn around, brace his hands against the vent wall. He went over him good, socking with the side of his hand as he frisked him. The kid was ready to crumple by the time Palmer was through with him.

  “Okay, kid,” Palmer said. “You’re clean. You stay clean.”

  The kid looked at me once, those eyes distended, magnified through those thick lenses. He was nodding at Palmer, trying to get past him and down those steps.

  I stood there with that switchblade in my pocket. I didn’t mention it to Palmer, then or ever, just as I didn’t say anything about why the kid was half insane with fright, and hiding up here.

  The kid had finally spilled it all to me just before Palmer joined us. Palmer had once picked the kid up on suspicion of car theft, taken him to headquarters. The kid had never known before what a man could do to your body if he tried. He had never even realized there was the kind of pain that Palmer inflicted on him. And the kid had been innocent. He had slobbered, begging me to tell him what Palmer would have done to him if he’d been guilty.

  I couldn’t tell the kid.

  But the kid did say he’d rather jump over the side of that roof than ever be arrested by Detective Palmer again. And why did I have the knife with me?

  I stared at the ceiling, shaking my head. The night when I had known Palmer was looking for me and I knew I was going to run, I had picked up this knife from my dresser. The crazy kind of thing you do when you’re too fouled up to think straight. I had brought that knife with me when I ran. It was a kind of symbol. The kid had been deathly afraid of being arrested by Fred Palmer, he’d rather leap off a building first.

  And that was exactly the way I felt.

  There was a fast turnover at the poker table. A man would sit in with Handecker, Kane and a half-dozen others, lose three or four dollars and then get up, leaving the chair for the next man.

  There were only three of us in the whole barracks who didn’t crowd immediately into either the poker game or the crapshoot. One was a Mexican kid they called Jose. Some of the men kept telling him, almost in a tone of warning, to get in the action, but he shook his head. The whites of his eyes showed, and his mouth was taut and gray, but he would not get off his cot.

  On a cot beside Jose was a man who looked to be sixty, with sunken eyes, wispy hair, so thin his bone structure showed through his skin and even through his denim shirt. Nobody asked him to play, but when they called to Jose, the old man would shake his head, grinning vacantly as if they were speaking to him.

  I got up finally, stood at the rim of the crowd around the poker table. I watched man after man lose half his day’s pay on that table. Kane was smoking cigar after cigar, eye squinting against the burn of the gray smoke, other eye fixing on nothing but the cards they dealt him. I never saw a man concentrate so intently on a hand of cards. Most of the chips were stacked before him or Handecker.

  Kane glanced up, saw me. “Wanta get some action, keed?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Craps are more my speed.”

  Handecker looked up. “That’s the old spirit. Have some fun. Everybody have fun.”

  In four rolls of the dice, I had five dollars worth of fun. At least, fun was what Potter kept telling me I was having, and five bucks is what it cost me. Most of Dot’s tips were gone in less than two minutes. I stood up, slapped the dust off my knees.

  “Man, you quitting already?” Potter grinned at me, money tucked between all his fingers.

  “I had no pay day,” I said. “I’ll take you next time.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Potter said. “Have fun.”

  “Everybody have fun,” I said, quoting Handecker.

  As I turned around, I heard Jose’s Mexican accent protesting something. Handecker was standin
g beside his cot. The kid had been writing a letter and now he sealed the envelope, looking up at Handecker, shaking his head.

  “Come on, Jose. You don’t want to send all that money home. Hell, they’ll throw it away. Don’t you want to have no fun, kid? Everybody has fun. Lose a little money, what the hell?”

  “No,” Jose said. His voice trembled. “Not tonight.”

  On the cot next to him, old man Hogan was shaking his head, too.

  Handecker stared down at them a moment, his face taut, then he forced himself to laugh. He shrugged and strode away toward the front of the barracks and Jose sank on his cot as though the sound of a man’s laughter was a terrible thing.

  I sprawled down on my cot, wondering when they would turn out the lights in this place.

  I pressed the uncased pillow over my eyes. At once I saw Howell smiling, talking about everything in the world except who I was, where I was from. Then I could see Fred Palmer watching all the buses and trains pull out of the Fort MacKeeney stations. You got to think like a criminal. Only faster. You got to know what he’s going to do before he does it, and be there waiting for him.

  Somebody came by with the basket, tossed my knife on the cot beside me. I put it in my pocket, but didn’t move the pillow from over my eyes. I didn’t like what I was seeing in the darkness, but there was nothing in this barracks I cared anything about seeing, either.

  7

  The noon sun was like a blast-swollen blister in the center of a livid yellow bowl.

  The whole free men gang of us assigned to the fields were doing stoop work in the rows of truck vegetables. When we’d started work at seven the deep trenches between the rows were still damp from the irrigation flooding, but by nine the land itself was crusted hard as rock with the sun reflected on it.

  About five minutes before Handecker called the noon break, I was on the verge of wild laughter. I had thought I could take it. The fields were whirling around me. Half the time the vegetable rows were streaked across the stark sky. Every time I bent over, I was afraid I was going to fall flat on my face.