Chapter nine

        

 

                In an announcement printed by the New York Gazette & Weekly Mercury on Nov. 28, 1774, the owners of a new stage company advertised the opening of a route from the foot of the Great Falls in Paterson to Powle's Hook, better known later as Jersey City. Stages would go through an area called Schyuler's Swamp (later called the Meadowlands) along a road that would later emerge as Route Seven. The state would make two trips per week, leaving Paterson on Mondays and Thursdays at 8 p.m. and returning the next day at 10 a.m.

                Passengers were to pay two shillings ninepence for the 19 mile trek.

                This was 20 years before the falls were used to power the cotton spindles so the purpose of the state was to enhance the local tourist trade, bringing in people interested in witnessing the "wild and romantic" scenery of the Great Falls. The stage's Paterson terminus was a public house, then called "The Passaic Hotel," and later referred to as the Godwin House -- although by 1774, the hotel had been in operation one form or another since 1749.

                From 1800 to 1806, the only read leading to New York was the Old York Road, which traveled along part of what is today Broadway. It went from the Godwin House to the Passaic River near the old Marseilles Corner, then down the shore to the Landing, and beyond  this to Bellville and eventually Jersey City.

                ***********

                "So where did you see him last?" the cop asked, one of many cops now hidden in the shadows beyond the blinding light, like spirits Maxwell always imagined as a boy haunting old Lambert's Castle on the hill, all of them grumbling and mumbling, and he, too, stoned to know they were full of empty threats.

                "Who?" Maxwell mumbled, wiping his watering eyes with his knuckles as if crying, as if Uncle Ed or Fred or Harry were lecturing him.  Where were they anyway? Why hadn't they come to get him out of jail. Why had Grandma's voice sounded so strained on the telephone?  "You're where?" the old woman had asked.

                "Jail, grandma," Maxwell said in a voice so hushed he could hardly hear himself, or believe the place the police had brought him, all the smells and sounds, swirling around him, freaking him out, making him panic. "They've locked me up in jail."

                "What on earth for?"

                "I don't know," Maxwell said, half believing his own lie, hardly able to recall the sequence of events that had brought him to town hall. Yet he could still hear the ping of the pennies as they bounced off the proud faces of the metal mayors in the plaza, a ping for Garret, a ping for Hobart, ping, ping, ping.

                How was it that the Beatles had put it: tax the pennies on their eyes?

                Where was Charlie. Of all the people who should have come, Charlie was the one. Maxwell's misbehavior shouldn't have angered Charlie so much as to keep him from posting bail.

                "Charlie would never leave me in a place like this, no matter what I did," Maxwell thought.

                "Don't tell us you did this alone," the cop snapped, voice whipping out at Maxwell from behind the lights. "We've got a witness that saw you two robbing the store."

                "Robbing what?"

                "Don't give us that. You had the keys to the get-away care in your pocket."

                "I don't understand."

                "The GTO, fool!" another cop growled. "Don't try and say you weren't driving it. Your finger prints were all over the steering wheel."

                "I'm not denying anything. I just don't remember a robbery."          "Or the clerk shot dead?"

                "No!" Maxwell shouted and leaped to his feet.

                "Sit down. Nobody told you to stand."

                "But...."

                "Sit!"

                Maxwell sat.

                "So where is he?" the cop asked again.

                Maxwell shook his head, more to shake off the mist of the pot and booze, needing to recall what had happened.

                "You want to get high?" Puck had asked when finally clamoring to the car, still favoring the arm Maxwell had broken -- though it  had had months to heal.

                "Is that what you called me for?" Maxwell asked. "To get high?"

                Maxwell was annoyed by the fact that he had come at all, unable to resist Puck's pleading over the telephone. And could not resist Puck's pleas for him to bring Charlie's car.

                Maxwell feared Uncle Ed would notice it missing, and tell Charlie when Charlie returned.

                Maxwell feared Ed might even get it into his head to take the keys, and keep Maxwell from driving out to the Meadows of Secaucus or the highways in Wayne, where he could let the car loose.                  "Getting high is part of it," Puck said, producing a joint from  his pocket. He put it in his mouth to wet it, then blew on it to dry it again. Finally, he produced a zippo lighter, one engraved  with the emblem of the U.S. Marine Corps, flipped open the top and thumbed the wheel to spark a flame. He sucked on the joint with slow determination.

                "Why else did you want me?" Maxwell asked, as the sweet smelling smoke rolled over him, filling the car with its unmistakable scent. He wanted to tell Puck to put it out. He didn't want Charlie thinking him a dope fiend. But he said nothing and when Puck passed the joint to him, he took it and sucked on it, too.

                Maxwell had smoked before, but found he disliked the sensation. It always made him feel vulnerable, the way he felt sleeping in a house with no locked doors. People seemed to stare at him on the street, and he was always imagining others -- people he could not see -- creeping up behind him for some unknown, yet certainly no positive, reason, to stab him in the back or yank him into an alley, to steal his money or demand some kind of information he could not supply.

                Yet around Puck, Maxwell found he could not resist, unable to say no when Puck called for a ride, or to refuse a joint Puck handed him, as if their unspoken friendship required his obedience and this communion of pot. But Maxwell didn't need the pot for him to fear Puck. That fear came simply from contact.

                "Well?" Maxwell asked after he had passed the joint back, and he had steered the car several blocks in the direction Puck had indicated. "Why did you need to see me so badly?"

                "I need a favor."

                "What kind of favor?"

                "I got a little -- job to do. Nothing important. I just need to  pick something up in one place and drop it off someplace else."                  "What's wrong with taking a bus?"

                "I wouldn't want to do that?"

                "Why not?"

                "It's a package, man. I need to pick up a package?"

                "And what exactly does it contain?"

                "You don't need to know."

                "Then it's illegal?"

                "Ah, shit, don't give me none of your moral crap. Everything you dislike is illegal. Everything that's even remotely fun is illegal, too. I'm not asking you to do anything that's wrong. Just for you to give me a ride."

                "I didn't know it was a crime to give somebody a lift," Maxwell  told the cop, one of the half dozen shadow shapes shifting in their seats behind the lights.

                "So you admit there was someone else?"

                "Sure."

                "Then why did you tell Wilson you got high at the Stop the World head shop?"

                "I was scared and confused."

                "Who was in the car with you?"

                "Puck Fetterland."

                Silence followed, filled by an uncomfortable cough. Maxwell did not have to see the faces to know that each of the shadows glanced nervously at each other, and finally one asked him: "Are you sure?"

                "Of course, I'm sure. He's my friend."

                "Puck Fetterland has no friends," one of the other cops said. "Even the low life down on River Street avoid him, except when they're particularly desperate."

                "Puck is the desperate one," Maxwell said.

                "What?"

                "He said he needed me."

                "What for?"

                "A ride. He called me at home and said he needed a ride to the east side."

                "He said no more than that?"

                "That's what I told you."

                "You mean you didn't know about the liquor store?"

                "Not until Puck told me to stop there."

                "You're saying you weren't in on the plan to rob the place?"           "I had no idea that's why we were there. He said he was going to pick something up. He said he had to deliver it some place else."

                "Pick what up?" one of the cops said, something like alarm sounding in his voice, as if he hadn't expected this as an answer, as if this complicated the rather straight forward idea that Puck had gone there to rob the liquor store.

                "I don't know what he picked up," Maxwell said. "I presumed it was something illegal."

                "And you drove him anyway?"

                "I figured I had to."

                "Why? Did he force you. Did he hold a gun up to your head?"       "If he had I would have taken the gun from him."

                "You?"

                "I broke his arm once. It taught him never to threaten me again."

                This created a buzz of lowered voices behind the lights, an argument between the cops, some of whom refused to believe anyone -- let alone someone like Maxwell -- could do such a thing to Puck. While one or two of the others claimed this explained why Puck had seemed damaged the one time they'd seen him recently, cradling his arm.

                "And there was that report from the emergency room some months back," one said.

                But in the end, the buzzing stopped and the first cop spoke to Maxwell again.

                "Even this is true," he said. "You still did what he wanted."              "Puck has other ways of getting at people," Maxwell said.

                "In what way did he get at you?"

                "He made me pity him."

                "Pity? For Puck Fetterland?"

                "Why not?" Maxwell snapped. "His father disowned and his mother was a whore."

                "If he was my kid I would have disowned him, too," the cop snapped back.

                "All right," one of the other cops said. "So you gave him a lift. What happened when you got to the store?"

                "Puck told me to wait outside with the engine running," Maxwell  said. "So I did."

                "You didn't find this at all suspicious?"

                "I told you. I had my doubts," Maxwell said. "But I thought he was making some kind of drug deal."

                "That was okay with you?"

                "Not exactly. I was peeved. But I wasn't going to leave him in that neighborhoods so he could get himself killed."

                "You must have known something was wrong when he came running out of the store? Didn't you hear the shooting?"

                "Yes, I heard something," Maxwell admitted. "I thought it was a  truck backfiring or someone setting off fireworks."

                "What about when he climbed in the car and told you to speed away?"

                "That's not exactly how it happened."

                "How did it happen?"

                "Puck didn't run from the store. He walked out, cocky as he usually was. He open the door, got in, then nodded for me to go."             "Where did you take him?"

                "River Street."

                "Anywhere in particular?"

                "He got out at the light when I stopped at the corner of Straight Street."

                "That's all? He didn't say anything?"

                "Of course, he said something."

                "What?"

                "He grinned, patted my arm and said `Thanks.'"

                "So how did you get from there to City Hall?"

                 "I drove to Broadway, parked the car, and walked."

                "Why?"

                "I was confused. I needed to think."

                "Thinking included throwing pennies at the statues?"

                "I was high and peeved."

                "Angry? At what?"

                "It's personal."

                "You're going to jail, friend," one of the cops snapped. "It gets pretty personal in there, too. If you don't cooperate with us, it'll get personal for a long, long time."

                "I was peeved a little at Puck's using me," Maxwell said. "But I was more peeved at the army for cancelling my uncle Charlie's leave. He was supposed to come Hom for the weekend. He called saying he'd get a pass, but not until Monday."

                "So why were you throwing pennies at city hall?"

                "I didn't have money for the drive down to Newark."

                "What's in Newark?"

                "The federal building."

                "So you settled on City Hall?"

                "It was the next best thing."

                ***********

                "So?" Jack asked as Maxwell closed the upstairs door.

                Even though he had seen the lights glowing in the upstairs windows, Maxwell had hoped Jack was asleep. But the man sat nearly naked in one of the crumbling whicker chairs like a worried father waiting for his daughter to return from a date, boxer shorts and black socks. He looked vaguely like a Budha, belly rolling over the waste band and the same sleepy expression of bliss, Maxwell had seen earlier.

                Maxwell paused, waves of heat rolling over him from the direction of the kitchen, the heater, obviously, set much higher than he would have allowed. The air smelled of heated lint, sandalwood incense and that unidentifiable sweet and chemical scent.

                "What do you mean?" Maxwell asked, stripping off his denim jacket with a series of jerks, nearly tearing the fabric when his hands got stuck in the sleeves. He went to hang it on the hook and missed, cursed, recovered it, tried again, and again missed.

                "How did your date go? Did your dancer friend like her presents?"

                "I don't know," Maxwell mumbled, moving deeper into the room, one weary step after another until he dropped into the seat across the table from Jack, the wicker crinkling as it adjusted to his weight.

                Jack frowned, stirring from his odd haze.

                "You mean you didn't give them to her after all your bullshit?"

                "I gave them to her. She just didn't open them when I was around. I dropped her off at her apartment and she took them up with her."

                "And you didn't go with her?"

                "She didn't ask me."

                "She didn't have to ask you. If you give a girl like that those kinds of gifts, she takes it for granted you'll spend the night."

                "I don't think Patty had that in mind," Maxwell said. "I asked if she wanted me to carry the packages up stairs for her. She laughed and told me not to push things too fast. She said she needed time to evaluate me, to make sure I wasn't some kind of pervert."

                "That bitch!" Jack said. "You're the most normal man I know."

                "She seemed to think me strange for naming my car."

                "You told her about that?" Jack said, seeming surprised.

                "Sure, why not?"

                "Because that IS strange," he said. "You didn't go into all that crap about your uncle, did you? I mean the stuff about his dying in Vietnam and you're being MEANT to have his car."

                "There wasn't time."

                "Thank God!" Jack moaned. "Did she say she wanted to see you again? Or do you have to go back to the bar as if nothing happened?"

                "I can't go back to the bar. Neither can she."

                "Why not?"

                "The owner took ill to my bringing her presents and threw me out. He thought I was trying to romance her."

                "Well, he was right, wasn't he?"

                "Not exactly."

                "What about her? Why can't she go back?"

                "She walked out in protest."

                "Fantastic."

                "What do you mean?"

                "She likes you, boy. You're in like Flint."

                "I'm not so sure," Maxwell said. "She had her own reasons for walking out."

                "Did she give your her phone number?"

                "No," Maxwell said. "But she has another gig at another bar tonight and asked me to join her there."

                "Just as good. Where's the bar?"

                "Over on the south side."

                Jack stiffened and squinted at Maxwell. "What bar?"

                Maxwell, floating in a haze of his own weariness, glanced at Jack, struck by the sudden sober note in the other man's voice.

                "She called it The Palace."

                Jack staggered up out of his chair. "No way!" he said. "You can't go into that place."

                "Jack. Calm down. It's only a bar."

                "ONLY A BAR?" Jack growled. "So you say. But I know better. It's a whore house, drug supermarkets and a meat slaughter house. And it gobbles up people like you and hurts them bad."

                "I suspect you exaggerate," Maxwell said. "If the place was as notorious as you claim, I'm sure the cops would have closed it down."

                "Not if the cops on in on the gig," Jack said.

                "In on it?"

                "On the take, bribed, call it what you want."

                Maxwell stared. He knew of such things, of course. He'd lived and worked in Paterson so long, he could not avoid knowing how the police operated here. He also knew that many of the dance clubs and bars offered services that went beyond legal, not only drugs and prostitution, but gambling as well. But he had never felt connected to any of it, and now, resisted the idea that he had finally, stumbled into it via Patty. He just didn't see the wise-cracking, dominating, accountant involved with such characters.

                "I'm just going there to see her dance," he said. "If I don't like the place or the people. I can leave. You know me, Jack. I'm not the kind of person who deliberately asks for trouble."

                "Bullshit," Jack said. "You ask for it all the time by going to those kinds of places, and by taking up with this bitch, you're really asking for it. She means trouble."

                "I can handle it," Maxwell said.

                "Can you? I don't want to have to pull your body out of the river."

                "I'm glad to see you care about me."

                "I'm not being generous. I need you. And your dying would put a definite crimp in my future plans."

                "Oh?" Maxwell laughed.

                "Let's face it, Pal. Life is unpredictable enough and vastly unfair without increasing the odds against yourself. I've made plans, but I never believe any of them will come true. I've always had a bad feeling when it comes to what is going to happen the day after tomorrow or the tomorrow after that. But since I've met you, I've found hope. I don't need for you to suddenly wind up dead."

                "I can take care of myself."

                "Can you?"

                "Leave off of it, Jack," Maxwell warned, and rose, the crinkling wicker crackling like fire around him. The temperature had risen making Jack sweat, despite the season, and despite Maxwell's usual control over the environment. Yet the room was not nearly hot as all that. "Are you all right?"

                Jack looked up surprised, the center of his small black eyes dilated, like two pools disturbed by a stone.

                "Sure, I'm all right. Why do you ask?"

                "Because you're sweating like a pig," Maxwell said. "And your hands are shaking."

                Jack stared down at his hands, and frowned, as if he didn't think they belonged to him. He looked like a boy standing before a scolding father, attempting to make a confession.

                "She was here," he said.

                "She?"

                "Mary," Jack moaned, the word stretching out into a cry of pain.

                "That 14 year old girlfriend of yours? In this apartment?"

                "No, not inside," Jack said. "At the door. She kept ringing the bell and calling my name."

                "Why didn't you go down and chase her away?"

                "I was -- afraid."

                "Of her?"

                "Of myself."

                More beads of sweat dribbled down Jack's forehead as he rose, and swayed.

                "Why?" Maxwell asked.

                Jack wiped the sweat from under his nose with the back of his hand, beard stubbled scraping across his knuckles. He grinned guiltily, sort of ashamed, but sort of proud, too.

                "I got this thing for young girls," he said.

                Maxwell's fingers clutched the back of the chair. "Oh?"

                 "It's not like you think," Jack said.

                "What do I think?"

                "That I'm a pervert that you don't want living with you here."

                "You're getting to be a mind-reader, Jack," Maxwell said.

`"But I'm not a pervert. At least, I've never done anything to any one of them."

                "Just how many of these little girls have you known?"

                Jack ran his fingers through his thinning hair and took a stop or two away from the table, then stopped, his guilty eyes now full of pain as well, a tight pain that only years of self doubt brought, wearing at a soul the way water did a stone, thoughts pound on the inside like steady drops.

                Jack stared down at his shaking hands.

                "I don't know," he said.

                "What do you mean you don't know?" Maxwell snapped. "You must have some idea? Five, ten, fifteen?"

                "More than I can count," Jack said. "A whole string of them all the way back to Kansas. I never look for them. They just seem to find me."

                "Maybe you never made a strong enough effort to avoid them," Maxwell said coldly, though his grip eased a little from the back of the chair.

                "But I did!" Jack protested. "I tried as hard as anybody can, doing everything to avoid those kind of situations. I've done everything short of becoming a goddamn priest. But there was always one of them around, one of those big-ed little..."

                "Nabrakov calls them nymphets," Maxwell said.

                Jack's head jerked up.

                "Nabrakov? He had my problem, too?"

                "One of his characters did. Nabrakov was a writer."

                "Then it's not..."

                "It's perverse, Jack," Maxwell said. "You can't go around having sex with 14 year olds."

                "But I didn't!" Jack yelped. "Never once!"

                "But you wanted to."

                "Of course I wanted to," Jack said. "I wouldn't have kept running all of my life if I didn't. You wouldn't understand unless you felt the urge, that unbearable desire to..." Jack shuddered. "I usually moved on as soon as the feeling came over me. I almost always knew when there was one of these -- nymphets -- around. But sometimes I didn't move quickly enough, or something kept me from leaving and then one of them would find me. I wanted them to go away. I would tell them to go away. But the more I yelled for them to go the more they came around, always suggesting dirty things with their eyes, always telling me it would be all right for me to..." He shuddered again and shut his eyes. "It was as if they could smell me."

                "And now?" Maxwell asked. "Does this mean you're going to run away again?"

                "I don't know," Jack said, running his fingers through his thin hair. "God knows I don't want to. I'm sick of running. I'm sick of feeling like a gypsy, wandering from place to place to place. All I've wanted all my life was to settle down and work towards something. You laugh, but I really do want to be president of the United State someday. I want to be an alderman first, then a mayor and after that a state representative, then a congressman. I want to climb up the ladder and know that with each step I'm getting somewhere and becoming somebody.

                "With all this running from place to place, I feel like a rat caught in a maze. I bump my nose on this wall and that, but I never get a sense of where I am, where I've been or where I'm going. This time, here with you, working that silly greasy spoon, all that's changed. It's been the best time of my life. You and your organizational habits drive me crazy, but they are the kind of habits I want for myself. They are the right habits needed to start my climb. I thought if I stayed around you long enough, those habits might rub off on me. Now, Mary's started this stuff and I don't know what to do."

                Maxwell sat silent for a long time, staring at the shadows and the cascade of dust that dropped like flaks of snow through the angle of light, blinking in and out of the uneven illumination, some twinkling for a moment even as they plunged back into the darkness. No where in the room was there a clear distinction between shadow and light, all the boarders tended to be both at the same time. Maxwell let out a long sigh.

                "I don't know what to tell you," he said finally. "I'd recommend  good doctor, but you seem to have that aspect under control."

                "For now, I do," Jack agreed. "But I don't know how long I can tempt myself. Except for that first time, I never let things go beyond a few days -- and this is the worst case I've felt so far. Even the first time didn't hit me this hard. I'm scared. I don't want to run any more, but I might not be able to handle this in any other way."

                "Well," Maxwell mumbled. "This is a predicament. You said she's not been up here?"

                "I wouldn't let her."

                "Good. Keep it that way. Where have you met her other times."

                "Usually she shows up around work, or catches me coming or going. She wanders around downtown a lot."

                "Then, maybe you should take a different route, the long way passed city hall. If you happen to see her on the street, don't say hello. Just run."

                "That's cruel."

                "Cruel or not, it's the  only thing I can think of to send her a clear message that you're not interested."

                "But she's a good person."

                "I'm not saying she isn't. She's just not good for you."

                "All right," Jack grumbled. "I guess I can give it a try. God knows I've tried everything else."

                *************

                Maxwell felt scared. He had spent his life looking into the county jail from the outside, but never the other way around. He sat with his back pressed against the wall as snarling faces passed him, grizzly, nasty faces full of lust and hostility, each drooling over the fact that the cops had given them "a sweet young thing" for them to play with.

                And the county cops, grinned from beyond the bars after pushing him into the cell, eyes glinting the way Wolfman's minions did, thinking they were in for some real entertainment. Each cop thought he knew what would happen next, and could imagine Maxwell's screaming later when prisoner after prisoner took their turn with him, some pushing their penises up his ass, others into his mouth, part of the initiation process that most boys like him faced when they committed a crime so bad as to get put in here.

                "That'll teach him to not want to come back" one cop mumbled, as another asked if he had brought any Preparation H. "You're going to need it tomorrow morning."

                And the prisoners filed passed at first, just taking stock of what they had, no need to move too quickly when they had all night, and could approach him any time they wanted and take whatever they wanted from him. What could he do to stop them when the cops wouldn't?

                "What's your name, boy?" one of them asked.

                "Maxwell," he said.

                "He looks awfully fresh," another said, making a move to poke at Maxwell's stomach with the tip of his finger, as if poking a loaf of bread to see if it was done. "I would sure like to..."

                That man's sentence ended with a scream.

                As Maxwell grabbed his wrist and pinned it back, Charlie's whispered voice saying: "Go easy, boy, just cause him pain."

                "Let go! Let go!" the man howled, as others clamored at the bars, calling for action from the guards.

                "I'll let you go when you leave me alone," Maxwell said in a low voice only the man could hear.

                "Nobody's bothering you! Let go!"

                Maxwell released the man's wrist and the figure staggered away, cradling his wounded limb, the way Puck had after Maxwell had mistakenly broken his arm in the grave yard -- only this time, nothing was broken. But the humorous mood vanished and the others backed away from him, eyeing him warily. On the other side of the bars, three uniformed men appeared.

                "What's the matter?" one of them asked.

                "Him!" the wounded man said. "He tried to break my arm."

                "The boy?" the guard asked, staring at the man, then at Maxwell, shaking his head as he laughed. "You'll have to come up with something better than that, Jenks."

                "But it's true!"

                "Stuff it. Any more antics from you or anyone tonight and you'll wind up in solitary. Go to sleep. You boys can play with your mouse in the morning."

                The guards vanished, eyeing Maxwell with the same vicious humor as they had earlier, leaving the mouse in this den of lions. But no lion made an immediate move to take advantage of Maxwell now, all aware that this mouse had claws and teeth, and was possibly a rat disguised as a mouse instead.

                They would wait. They had the whole night and Maxwell had to sleep sometime. Then they would make their move.

                Maxwell, however, did not go to sleep. Young enough and scared enough, he sat up all night.

                Charlie would come or one of his under uncles. He would only have to wait a few hours before they rescued him. He only had to keep his eyes open and keep the cut-throats away until the guards called for him to leave.

                Only the guards never called. And the cut-throats eased closer again, impatient with their own plan, each licking his lips as if hungry to get close.

                One leaped at Maxwell all of a sudden, and Maxwell, leaped aside, grabbing the man by the hand and elbow so that the forward momentum carried the prisoner head first into the wall.

                Another jumped at Maxwell from behind, but as the huge arms closed around him, Maxwell slipped under them, elbowing the man's balls as he ducked to one side. Both men fell moaning. A third swung at Maxwell's face as he rose from his crouch, a fist bearing down on Maxwell's face that did not reach its target, diverted by Maxwell's forearm as Maxwell struck the man's throat with a kick. gurgling sounded around this man's moan, and he followed his two predecessors in their retreat.

                It did not end there.

                The prisoners came again and again, this time in multiples, believing they could overcome this odd fish with pure numbers. They came two at a time, and two wounded men made their retreat together. They came three at a time, and they retreated, too. And then they came four at a time,  and those, too, Maxwell drove back with a series of kicks or diverted blows.

                But their attacks tested Maxwell. Each time they came, they retreated more seriously injured than those who had previously attacked -- Maxwell's control waning as he grew weary. He hit hard, and cared little about the injuries he inflicted, a sin Charlie would have scolded him for. Prisoners with make-shift knives found their wrists broken and their knives clattering on the floor. In the morning, the line of injured men outside the nurse's office ran the whole length of the hall, none of them with an adequate explanation as to how they had gotten hurt.

                In the morning, when the guards routed the rest, many of them piled out of the bunks as if victims to war, holding hands and eyes and arms with the sincerity of wounded soldiers. The guards scratched their heads at the carnage, and stared open-mouthed when Maxwell walked through the assemblage of the moaning and groaning, unscathed.

                But daylight only brought the additional realization that his Uncle Charlie had not come to bail him out.

                "Is he mad at me about using the car?" Maxwell had thought. "Will he leave me here among these people?"

                The scoundrels and rats, pigs and foxes, edging near him again, waiting for him to weaken, despite a long night of fighting him.

                "The boy has to sleep sometime," one of them whispered. "And we'll get to him then."

                Even during the day, with his hand closed around the bars and the sunlight warming his face through the windows, he dared not close his eyes. The guards eyed him. The prisoners eyed him. The molted pigeons who landed on the window ledge eyed him, too.

                "Don't you think of sleeping now, you fool," all seemed to say. "Don't you close your eyes for a moment."

                Where was Charlie? Why wouldn't he come? Was Maxwell supposed to stay here forever?

                "I have to make a phone call," Maxwell told one of the guards.

                "No," the guard said.

                "But I'm entitled to a call."

                "One call. And you already made it."

                "Please."

                "You want trouble, you just keep nagging me, boy."

                So the first day slipped away into the second night, and once more the wolves and vultures tested him, coming at him in twos and threes, to test his strength, to wear him down, and again each went away holding injured parts of their anatomy, bones broken, noses  bleeding, eyes made purple, and again, the guards stared at these victims in utter disbelief as the veterans of this night's campaign filed into the infirmary in the morning, seeking aid and comfort Maxwell could not seek.

                But this night had worn him badly. He could not maintain the pace, and many of the injuries he'd inflicted came because he'd lost his edge of control. He nodded over the breakfast table, men around him snorting their approval, he snored over lunch, and by supper, he could barely keep his head from falling into the soup.

                Where was Charlie? Why hadn't he come? Why was there no word from Grandpa or Uncle Ed, or Fred or Harry? Surely they knew how terrorized he felt, especially after his bout years ago with camp, when he'd tried to run away and the camp directors had   punished him by sealing him up in a box, heat nearly driving him insane. Did his family think time in jail would teach him the folly of crime?  Some lesson, he thought. How would he carry such a message out into the world later if someone stabbed him in the back tonight, or did worse to him while he nodded out into sleep?

                "You look exhausted, boy," the man across the supper table said, a man whose face may have served as a twisted and gnarled portrait of his life, so full of scars and winkles of anguish, Maxwell cringed when he looked up. The bald black man had one particular thick, pale scar down the right side of his face, running from the corner of his right eye to the corner of his mouth. When he grinned, the noosed tightened around the eye, making him look as if in utter agony.

                "I'm all right," Maxwell grunted, his head nearly falling from his hands as he pulled himself back from leaning on his elbows.

                "You were were fine," the black man said. "But you won't be after tonight."

                "Look" Maxwell said, in an enraged tone that rose above the general clamor, drawing stares from the other diners, and glanced from the guard at the end of the row of tables. "If you haven't noticed, I can take care of myself."

                "Can you?" the black man laughed, those deep black eyes of his showed no humor as the man studied Maxwell.

                "You want me to prove my point?"

                "Don't threaten me, boy," the black man said. "You aren't good enough to threaten me. You're young. You're quick. But your style is raw and you make mistakes."

                Maxwell stared at the man, something in the tone and words of the black man scared him.

                "You know kwai den do?"

                It's not my school, but I'm proficient in it," the man said. "I only have one degree black belt in that style."

                Maxwell found it suddenly difficult to swallow.

                "What do you want from me?" Maxwell asked.

                "You," the black man said. "I want you to be my wife tonight."

                "No."

                "I can make you."

                "You'd have to."

                "Friend," the black man said, leaning over the table slightly, though not enough to draw a word of warning from the guards. "Even if you weren't tired, you couldn't beat me. You don't have years  enough of practice to even come close. Maybe someday, not now. And now is all you've got. If you don't come to my bunk tonight, you'll be dead in the morning. I won't have to fight you. The rats'll tear you limb from limb, and the vultures will have their way with you -- doing a lot worse than I'd ever do."

                "NO!" Maxwell said again, more forcefully. "Leave me alone."

                 Now, everyone stared and the guard, stirred from his post where he leaned against the wall, eyed Maxwell as he advanced up the aisle.

                "Do you have a problem, buddy?" the guard asked, pressing the tip of his small black night stick into the space between Maxwell's shoulder blades.

                "No," Maxwell said.

                "Then let's not have any shouting, okay?" the guard said, and then walked away.

                The shaven-headed black mean leaned across the table again.

                "Well, friend?" he asked with one of his agonizing smiled. "You come with me now and I'll protect you. No one messes with me in this place."

                "Go away," Maxwell hissed. "I don't need you and I certainly don't want to be your wife."

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