Chickenhawk: Back in the World

“Hey, Loopy,” I said. Loopy, who’d accepted this name without complaint, looked over at me, grinning. He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb at two guys holding a long tube they’d made from rolled-up newspapers. They’d carved a two-pronged fork out of a bar of soap and fitted that on the end of their four-foot paper pole. They were now slipping it out through the bars toward the television. “Yeah?” Loopy said.

“Can I borrow a smoke?”

Loopy bent his neck side to side, a limpy, goofy gesture that didn’t mean yes or no. It meant maybe. “I dunno, I only got a couple left, Bob.”

“I’ll be getting some money, Loopy. I’ll buy you a whole pack if you give me a cigarette.”

Loopy nodded and I walked over beside him while he fished a pack of Winstons out of his shirt pocket. The guy with the paper stick fitted the soap bar over the tuner knob and twisted it. It had taken them a couple of hours to make this thing, and it was a pretty clever rig. The channel changed and everybody cheered. They flipped through the channels until they got to Love Boat, a show they all wanted to see. As the guy started pulling the stick back inside, it was suddenly yanked out of his hands.

“Got it!” Porter yelled. He swaggered into view, holding the stick. He’d been hiding up against the wall in the hallway, out of sight. “I told you, I pick what you see around here.” Porter nodded sternly and broke the paper stick over his knee and stomped the soap bar to crumbs. He turned around and switched the channel back to channel four. I never figured out why Porter cared what channel we watched or why he preferred channel four. Life is filled with mysteries like Porter.

I followed Porter along the bars as he walked down the hallway to the door. “Porter,” I said. “I’d like to make that call now.”

“You got to ask the man,” Porter said.

“The man?”

“Yeah, you got to ask them,” he said, waving at the hallway in general.

“You mean I have to yell at some people I can’t see when I can just ask you?”

“Yeah. That’s the rules.”

I stood there, hanging on to the bars, watching Porter walk through the door. This guy was serious. I yelled, “Hey! Hey, somebody. Mason wants to make a phone call!”

No answer. They never answered until you yelled for a long while. If they answered right away, then everybody’d be asking them for God knows what. I yelled two more times, louder each time.

“You just made a phone call.”

“I didn’t get who I wanted to get,” I shouted.

“That’s not my fault,” said the voice.

“Look,” I said. “Nobody in my family even knows I’m in jail. When I called before, it was my son. I want to talk to my wife.”

“What?”

I could see this nitwit, sitting in some room somewhere with a microphone in front of him, bored out of his skull, snickering at what was probably the most interesting thing that would happen to him tonight, maybe this whole week.

“Look,” I shouted, “I’m allowed to make a phone call, and I want to make it now. It’s my right.”

No answer. I was about ready to yell again when the voice said, “Okay. Wait.” I guess he got tired of the game.

I went back to the table and sat next to John. “This is fucked, John. When do we see a damn lawyer?”

“The team’s on it, Bob,” John said. “I’m sure of it. They won’t let us down.”

Right. The team. How could I have forgotten? I turned to Loopy. “Loopy. Give me a cigarette.”

Loopy shook his head. “You guys got no money,” Loopy said. “And I’ve got almost no cigarettes left.”

I stared at Loopy. “We’re going to get money, Loopy. Tonight. Didn’t you see our boat on TV? Two million dollars’ worth of pot? We’re big-time smugglers. We’re fucking rich, Loopy. Give me a fucking cigarette.”

Loopy did his side-to-side, twisting, nodding thing with his head that made you wonder if he had normal connections between his shoulders and his skull and said “I guess” and handed me his pack.

I lit up a cigarette and watched the stick-maker rolling up more newspaper. His buddy was carving another bar of soap with a plastic knife.

We heard the door open and I got up figuring it was Porter coming to take me to the phone, but it was Porter bringing in a new prisoner. Porter opened the door and this scrawny short blond guy with thick glasses stepped in and stared at us. Everybody was quiet because they all recognized him. This was the Piggly Wiggly murderer, for chrissakes. The guy shifted his eyes back and forth, magnified behind thick optics, giving him a nervous, owly look. He frowned and marched directly to a table at the back of the dayroom. Everybody at the table got up and left. The Piggly Wiggly murderer sat down with his back to the wall and stared at us. Everybody in the room stared back. Even the guy making the channel-changing stick stopped working to stare at this guy. Here he was, a guy who just a few hours ago blew away his boss and his friend to get their paychecks. The big question on most people’s minds was, how did he plan to cash the checks? This guy was so stupid it took your breath away.