Green River Rising

  ‘Agry thinks you were moved by force on Hobbes’s orders, at Wilson’s request.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Wilson thinks you asked Hobbes to do it. Who’s right?’

  ‘I’m just another po’ muthafucka wants to get back on the street, Ray. I didn’ ask fo’ nobody treat me special.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was the warden.’

  ‘Did Wilson ask him?’ said Klein.

  Claude shook his head. ‘Hobbes as’t me. He told me if I left Nev, stopped livin’ like a woman, he’d get me parole. If I didn’ he said the board would turn me down agin and I’d have to serve out my time.’

  ‘You got six years left, right?’

  Claude nodded. Klein couldn’t find it in his heart to blame him. To avoid another six years in here Klein would’ve let the whole block line up and butt fuck him.

  ‘You must have known Agry couldn’t take the loss of face,’ said Klein.

  ‘I thought he’d have me killed. That’s what I tol’ Hobbes but he promised he’d protect me.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The lockdown.’ Claude cringed with shame. ‘He locked the brothers down so’s Nev couldn’t get to me. Shit I didn’ know this would happen.’

  ‘Hobbes did,’ said Klein.

  Claude’s eyes widened. ‘That muthafucka?’

  Klein nodded. Hobbes, with his talk of events and improvements, and his mad-pills that he wasn’t taking and his panoptic fantasies of dragging them all from darkness into light. Hobbes had known that this riot was going to happen. It was Hobbes’s riot, not Nev Agry’s. Yet there had to be more. Killing Claude should have been enough for Agry. Even with the lockdown Claude’s death could have been purchased for the right price and Agry’s pockets were deep. With Claude gone there were other boys in the River pretty enough to satisfy Agry’s sexual vanity. There was a piece missing. Several pieces. Klein just couldn’t see what Agry’s end was in all this. The riot would lose him everything, Claude included. After this they wouldn’t let Agry out of solitary confinement until he had Alzheimer’s disease and two artificial hips. Unlike the case of Hobbes, Klein just didn’t believe Agry was that insane.

  ‘Did Hobbes say anything about Agry, or vice versa?’ asked Klein.

  Claude shook his head. Before Klein could press him any further Agry’s voice cut in from behind them.

  ‘You botherin’ my woman, Doc?’

  Klein turned and peered through the near darkness. Agry stood with Tony Shockner and two other crewmen just inside the gateway to the central atrium. Agry had a shit-eating grin on his face.

  Behind his wire-rimmed spectacles Shockner looked drawn. The four of them walked towards him. Klein gathered himself. The weight of the gun in his pocket was no longer much of a reassurance. He felt like the captain of the high school chess team facing up to the local chapter of the Hell’s Angels. His sense of outrage withered. Then he pictured Horace Tolson smashing Vinnie Lopez across the skull with a crowbar.

  ‘Where’s Grauerholz?’ said Klein.

  The grin faded from Agry’s face. He cast a glance at Claude, saw her tear-stained make-up and smudged lips. ‘You go fix yourself.’ Claude pushed himself away from the wall and walked off without looking at Klein and Klein felt that bit more alone. Agry looked at him.

  ‘What’d you say, Doc?’

  ‘I said where’s Grauerholz?’

  ‘He’s gone to kill himself some faggots,’ said Agry.

  ‘Why?’ said Klein.

  Agry’s lip curled grotesquely. ‘Whaddya mean, “why?”’ His eyes shone with hatred. ‘Because they’re there. That’s why.’

  ‘You could stop it if you wanted to,’ said Klein.

  ‘If I wanted to?’ He glanced at his confederates and grinned. ‘It’s my fucken idea. Those cornhole fuckers are dead. I mean, what is this, Klein? You tryin’ to tell me something?’

  Klein found himself breathing heavily again. He felt split between wanting to smash Agry’s face in and fall to his knees begging for mercy.

  ‘It just seems unnecessary,’ he said.

  ‘You know something, Doc?’ Agry’s face was squirming with malevolence. ‘You’re right. It’s totally fucking unnecessary. What the fuck has necessary got to do with it? You think any of this is necessary?’

  One part of Klein’s mind calculated that he was faster than Agry and in better shape. He could take out Agry’s knee for sure, probably hammer his throat to mush or put an elbow through his temple. Then threaten Shockner with the gun, get him to call off Grauerholz. Another part of his mind pointed out that his limbs were almost paralysed with the adrenaline overload of fear. The debate ended as Agry flung a pointing finger out at Klein’s chest.

  ‘You think you’re necessary, Short Time?’ said Agry.

  Klein didn’t answer. The hatred in Agry’s eyes was beyond rational appeal. Agry jabbed himself in the chest with the finger.

  ‘Even I’m not necessary.’ Agry grinned. ‘Not any more. What’s done is done. The ball’s rollin’, Doc. Ain’t nobody gonna stop it now. Nobody at all.’

  Klein glanced at Shockner. Shockner, his face more gaunt than ever, was staring at Agry as if he realised for the first time exactly where Agry had led them.

  ‘You paid your dues, Doc,’ said Agry, ‘and you been good to Claudine. That’s the only reason you gonna be able to dandle your grandkids on your knee and tell ’em you once pointed a piece at Nev Agry.’ He turned to grin at his men again, then back to Klein. ‘But I got a great idea: you feel so bad about it, you go tell Grauerholz yo’self to leave them faggots be. I give you permission, you hear that, Tony?’ He glanced at Shockner. ‘The Doc here wants to go parley with Hector, you let him. After all,’ he turned back to Klein with a sneer, ‘the faggots gave him a good deal. Swannin’ round th’infirmary like he was still in the world, whisperin’ sweet nothin’s to that lady of his. Better than makin’ belt buckles in the machine shop. Ain’t that right, Doc?’

  Klein said nothing. Most people thought he was some kind of hero for working in the infirmary. Agry understood that the deal was stacked heavily in Klein’s favour. He owed them more than they owed him.

  Agry nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘He knows.’

  He held Klein’s eyes for a long beat, then turned away with contempt. As he walked past Agry pushed him with a bulky shoulder. Klein stumbled back a step into the bars of a cell. Shockner and the others followed Agry down the walkway. Klein felt shrivelled. There was a sour taste in his throat. He wanted a cigarette.

  ‘Hey, Doc!’

  Klein turned. Agry called down the darkened walkway.

  ‘I need some ointment rubbed on my haemorrhoids, I’ll let you know, okay?’

  There was a cackle of coarse laughter from the two crewmen. Agry laughed too. Then, still laughing, he swivelled on his heel and strolled back towards his cell.

  Klein stood in the dark. A million words went through his mind without him hearing them, so many words that all he was aware of was a hum as empty as silence. Time passed. He didn’t know how much. The hum became comforting. Perhaps, if he listened to it for long enough, the riot would be over. One word he didn’t want to hear somehow intruded.

  ‘Doctor.’

  Klein ignored it. He felt a hand the size of a baseball glove on his shoulder.

  ‘Doctor?’

  Klein’s vision focused in from a vanishing-point in the darkness. Henry Abbott’s face swam into view. Klein smiled at him blankly.

  ‘Henry,’ he said.

  ‘There’s danger down here,’ said Abbott.

  ‘Yes,’ said Klein. ‘You’d better go back to your cell.’

  Klein felt his legs move him towards the main gate sally.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Abbott.

  Klein stopped. ‘I have to go to the infirmary,’ he said.

  There was a pause. Then Abbott’s voice echoed in the dark with that flat, lumpen tone which denoted a simple and irrefragable tr
uth.

  ‘Of course,’ said Henry Abbott. ‘They need you.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  THE RED IRON girder with the number ‘99’ painted on its side still poked out from the scorched and shattered windows of the central watchtower. In the dark the white figures ‘99’ were faintly luminous and if Klein hadn’t seen them he might have blundered into the girder itself. Maybe then he would have dislocated a kneecap, or ripped a ligament, and been forced to drag himself back up to the safety of his cell but it was clear to Klein by now that it wasn’t the kind of day where he’d be lucky enough to break a leg. He stepped over the girder.

  The fire in B had burned itself out and inside the block Agry’s men, and those he had inherited from DuBois, were busy looting the abandoned cells. Klein circled the tower and headed down the General Purposes wing. The low-ceilinged corridor was pitch dark and he couldn’t see more than a few yards ahead. He passed shadowy figures slumped against the walls and sprawled on the floor. Some of them were silent and unmoving. Others made dull noises, whether from intoxication or injury he could not tell. He made no effort to find out. There was a spill of books and torn and charred pages from the entrance to the library, and from the chapel as he passed came sounds of splintering wood and guffaws of drunken laughter. Klein did not turn his head. Whatever was going on in there he didn’t want to know. Three white convicts drifted aimlessly towards him coming down the centre of the corridor. One of them carried a plastic bucket, the other two, lengths of wood. Klein altered course to one side to avoid walking through them. They stopped as he approached them and stared at him sullenly. The one with the bucket raised it to his mouth and slurped a mouthful of brew. Klein avoided their eyes and hoped like hell they’d ignore him. As he drew level the con with the bucket called out.

  ‘You wanna drink, Doc?’

  Klein kept walking. ‘Thanks, pal, but not now. Maybe later.’

  He kept going, he was past them. He wanted to look over his shoulder but didn’t. He strained his ears for approaching footsteps but none came. He felt his shoulders hunched tight around his ears. Relax, he told himself. If you’re tense you can’t move so quickly. He was past them, now he was passing the gym. He heard the sound of a basketball thudding into the wooden floor, a chorus of shouts. He kept walking but he couldn’t help glancing in. Fires were burning in empty drums of kitchen oil with holes punched through their sides. The home-made braziers threw a surreal, darkling light on the players as they jostled for possession of the ball. On one side of the gym a naked man, half-kneeling, his black skin shining in the flames, hung by his wrists from the wooden exercise bars, face to the wall, while a grimacing white con, pants around his ankles, fucked him with frenzied, grunting shunts. Nearby another con stood watching, flies open, jerking himself off.

  Klein turned away.

  Whatever he felt was no good to him. Or anyone else. He shut it down. He hadn’t seen anything. He walked on past. The exit into the yard loomed. Beyond its archway he could see the concrete path to the main gate, searchlight beams weaving lethargically back and forth, glittering on the tall steel mesh fences. It did not surprise Klein that Hobbes and Cletus had closed shop and decided to wait them out. He’d heard enough about riots elsewhere and the disasters that usually accompanied gung ho rescue attempts. But if he could just speak to Cletus he was sure the Captain would protect the infirmary. Cletus was corrupt and a brute, but he wouldn’t stand by while sick men were butchered. Klein saw two figures sitting by the wall just inside the gate. They were both bloody and one of them was slumped forward with his head on his chest.

  As Klein steeled himself to walk past them one said, ‘That you, Klein?’

  Klein walked past. Easier this time. He could feel the fresh air on his face from the yard.

  ‘They’ll cut you down, man. Don’t try it.’

  Klein stopped and turned. The man was Hank Crawford, a middle-class Joe from Fort Worth Klein had played chess with a time or two. He’d been an oil company accountant and was serving two years for fraud. To end up doing time for that must have required the services of the worst defence attorney in Texas legal history, but here he was. Klein crouched down beside him. Crawford’s right pants leg was saturated with blood from the knee down. Above the wound was knotted a canvas belt. The other man was shot through the groin and as the searchlight passed by Klein saw from the waxy pallor of his skin and the blue of his lips that he was in bad shape. Klein turned back to Crawford.

  ‘We tried to give ourselves up,’ said Crawford. ‘Hundred yards from the gate a megaphone told us to get back. We kept going. One warning shot, then pow, Bialmann took one in the leg. I turned to help him and they shot me from behind. I think maybe there’s two more guys still out there. You’ll never make it.’

  Klein took the information in without speaking. He looked out across the yard. From here the view to the infirmary was blocked by the tip of the long arm of B block.

  ‘I’m trying to get to the infirmary,’ said Klein.

  ‘You’ll never make it there either.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Grauerholz and a whole buncha guys gone over, reckon they’re gonna wipe out the whole damned place.’ Crawford looked away from what he saw in Klein’s face. ‘Damnedest thing I ever heard.’

  ‘Did they come this way?’ asked Klein.

  Crawford shook his head. ‘I believe they went through B, that’s nearest. But I’m tellin’ you man, there’s nothin’ you can do. Those psychos are blood crazy. It was when I saw their faces I decided to surrender. I don’t even want to be in the same State.’

  ‘How long since they went?’

  ‘Shit I can’t tell day from night at the moment.’ He weakly lifted his arm and looked at his watch. ‘Maybe a half-hour? Less.’

  Klein started to stand up. Crawford pawed at his arm. ‘Anything you can do for me, Doc?’

  Klein blinked. He wanted to leave Crawford where he lay. He didn’t have time. He had to get to the infirmary. Or at least find out what was going on. He didn’t have time, goddamnit.

  With a grunt Klein stuck his fingers in the hole in Crawford’s pants and ripped it open. Crawford inhaled sharply through gritted teeth. Blood leaked in retarded dribbles from a bullet wound in the rear of the knee. Klein could see that the politeal artery had been severed and the distal femur shattered. The guards used M16s. The tourniquet was badly applied. If anything it was making the bleeding worse.

  ‘I ain’t a bad guy, Doc,’ panted Crawford, ‘you know that. I only been up three months. I’m just tryin’ to serve my time.’

  His face was almost as waxy as Bialmann’s and was covered by a thin sheen of sweat. Klein put a thumb to his femoral pulse. A hundred and thirty. Klein wondered how much blood he’d lost. However much it was he couldn’t afford to lose much more.

  ‘Yeah.’ Klein sighed. ‘Me too.’

  He untied the belt round Crawford’s leg. Crawford stiffened and clenched his teeth. The bleeding didn’t get any worse, but what clotting there was was fragile. The leg needed immobilising or a movement could dislodge the clot and exsanguinate him. Klein leaned over to Bialmann, felt his carotid pulse. After ten seconds he started to rip the man’s shirt off.

  ‘How’s Bialmann?’ said Crawford.

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Klein.

  Crawford started crying quietly.

  Klein wadded the shirt into a pressure dressing and belted it in place over Crawford’s wound. He stood up. This was everything he hadn’t meant to do. It was fucking stupid. He was fucking stupid. And Crawford too. Stupid. Klein knew that if Crawford lay here all night without even water to replenish his plasma volume, maybe crawling around with the raging thirst he would develop from the blood loss, he’d either be dead by morning or well into acute renal failure. It was knowing that was the problem. If Klein had been just anyone, if he hadn’t known, he could’ve tied the belt, shaken Crawford’s hand and inadvertently left him to die with a clear conscience. But Klein did know. The o
bligation stood before him, immovable and absolute.

  ‘Give me your hands,’ said Klein.

  Crawford did so and Klein grabbed them.

  ‘Now get your good leg under you. You’re gonna stand up and it’s gonna hurt like all fuck.’

  Crawford bent his good knee and placed his foot square on the floor. He sobbed with terror. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ said Klein. ‘Get up.’

  Klein stepped back and hauled on Crawford’s arms. Crawford had no choice but to thrust himself upright on his good leg. He shrieked with pain. As he reached his full height his eyes rolled upwards and he started to pass out. Klein dropped to one knee and came up under him, folding him over his right shoulder in a fireman’s lift. He stood up and staggered with the weight. He leaned one hand against the wall. As he got his balance and turned back into the dark maw of the General Wing he saw Henry Abbott standing there watching him. Klein took a deep breath.

  ‘Henry,’ he said heavily. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  ‘I thought that you might need help,’ said Abbott.

  Klein squeezed his eyes shut and took some more deep breaths. Crawford was bleeding to death and was twenty pounds overweight. Abbott was insane and had the intellect of a Brahma bull. He, Klein, was fucked in the head. It was simple really. He opened his eyes.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Klein.

  Before Abbott could say anything else Klein started back down the wing at a crouching, shuffling run. This was the sort of shit that Robert Mitchum pulled off on Omaha beach whilst lighting his cigar with a Zippo and taking out a Nazi machine gun nest with a grenade. After ten paces Klein was wheezing for air and wondering exactly which of his lumbar discs was going to pop out first. You’re in good shape, he told himself. William James has prepared you for this. Yeah. And Crawford is a fatassed cunt. He staggered past the gym. Basketball and gang rape by firelight. He hurdled a body on the floor. Infuckingsane. He knew if he stopped he’d never get moving again. He kept going. Then from the chapel up ahead his old buddy Myron Pinkley emerged with blood caked on his clothes and hands. He held his arms in the air and yelled in a reedy voice.