Because there was always a threat to the life of anyone on Warden’s Business — the men speculated that at all times there was always some guard plotting against the life of some prisoner; several prisoners actually claimed to have been approached by guards and obliquely invited to join with them in vendettas against their fellow convicts — only two kinds of men were ever sent on these errands: men who were generally liked by the guards, and men whom the warden felt he could afford to lose — the bad men themselves. Complexities of timing and circumstances, and the difficulties implicit in the conspiratorial nature of an assassination, reduced the chance of death to little more than an outside possibility, as subject to thin contingency as a trip at night, say, on an unfamiliar highway in an automobile that requires some slight mechanical adjustment. Still, the possibility was there, and it troubled Feldman.
“I’ll walk with you,” Mix said. He showed Feldman a pass and winked again. It was probably a phony. (Feldman himself had been careful to obtain a pass to show to the guards in case he was stopped. Only one pass remained to him now for the new quarter, but he was proud of his caution. Most men would simply have flashed their warden’s flag in a guard’s face.) Feldman didn’t answer Mix, and quickened his pace, sorry now he had told the man he was on Warden’s Business. (Manfred Sky had said it was a good idea to let people know if they started to interfere with you.) “I don’t blame you,” Mix said. “It’s like a time bomb ticking away in there. Where you carrying it?”
“In my pocket,” Feldman said. “Please.”
“Why don’t you take it out and blow your nose in it? That’s what I’d do.”
“Please,” Feldman said, “I want to get this over with as quickly as possible.”
“You’re not very nervous, are you?” They had come into the exercise yard. “Hey, fellas,” Mix called, “Feldman here is on Warden’s Business.”
A few of the men laughed. One, off by himself, approached on hearing Feldman’s name. “I’m up for parole,” he said, “in two or three months. I’m up for parole and ain’t learned a trade.They made me a trusty as soon as I came. A trusty’s no good, I told them right then. The work’s not connected with anything real, it doesn’t prepare me for outside the walls. Then learn to be honest, they told me, instead. I begged to do printing, but one lung is weak — the dies and the filings no good for my health. I asked at the foundry, they turned me away. What the hell kind of deal is that for a man?”
“Not now,” Feldman said.
“So now I’m all honest but don’t know a trade, and up for parole in two or three—”
“Please,” Feldman said, “not now.”
Mix shoved the man away. “Warden’s Business,” he said. They came up to a guard. “Feldman is on Warden’s Business, Officer,” Mix said. He winked at the guard. “If you want to kill him, I’m your witness.”
“Are you on Warden’s Business, Feldman?” the guard asked.
“Yes sir,” Feldman said. He decided not to show the guard his warden’s flag until he was asked. He knew he wouldn’t be shot if he didn’t show it. The guard didn’t ask to see the flag, and they passed through a door leading from the exercise yard back into the main building.
“You don’t like me shooting off my big mouth, do you?” Mix said. “You don’t even like me walking along with you like this, right?”
Feldman said nothing.
There was a guard at the end of the corridor by a barred gate leading to the administrative offices.
“I asked you a question,” Mix said.
“All right,” Feldman said, “I’m a little nervous.”
“Stop here a minute,” Mix said.
Feldman looked up ahead at the guard and thought he recognized him. He stopped.
“Give me something,” Mix said. “Make a deal.”
Feldman stared at him.
“Give way, give way,” Mix said in a subdued voice. He was a pale man, and as he spoke he troubled to smile. He would trouble to smile, Feldman suspected, even at Hover. “You guys who don’t give way,” he said, “who hold on tight. Boy, every son of a bitch I ever met holds on tight. What am I supposed to do, jump overboard? Fuck that noise. You know what I’m here for? You know why I’m in this maximum-security rathole with the kooks and the killers and the kid-buggers and all the rest of you big time assholes? I’m a hat, coat and umbrella man. I work restaurants and theaters. Let me tell you, intermission is my busy season, ha ha. I steal from parked cars. Shit, everybody’s got an out. The restaurants have little signs, the garages do: ‘Not Responsible,’ blah blah. Only I’m responsible. Outless as the stinking dead. Who ever saw Mix’s sign? ‘Herb Mix Isn’t Responsible for Stealing Your Lousy Umbrella, Lady. Watch Your Frigging Hat, Sir. Do Not Blame Herb Mix.’ Well, I figure it different. I’m as entitled as any man born. You own a department store; I don’t. Who’s responsible for that little oversight? Why ain’t I rich, President, King? Why ain’t there broads lined up to kiss me? Where’s mine? Where does it say I have to be unhappy? Come on, come on, I’ve even got an ulcer. Everything I eat turns to poison.”
“What do you want?” Feldman asked.
“I don’t fix prices,” Mix said. “This is a new line with me. You don’t think the crappy fence would ask me what I thought a thing was worth.”
Feldman tried to remember if he and the guard had had any dealings. In the early days he had made certain mistakes, but surely the guards took into account a man’s newness.
“From the look on your face,” Mix said, “I’d say you know that feller. He’s got a quick temper. Look at that fucking red hair under his cap. That old Irishman sure hates the Jews.”
“All right,” Feldman said, “say what you want or leave me alone.”
“I’m a bad man,” Mix said. Feldman waited for him to go on. It was true, he thought; he could not make demands. He could only sneer his griefs and object and schnorr around for reasons. “I’m a bad man,” Mix said again, “and a heavy smoker, and I like my candy and my stick of gum, and most of the guys around here have radios and I don’t. Where’s my five bucks a month from the outside that the rest of you get? Is it my fault my old man’s a prick and pretends I ain’t alive? I’ve got expenses too, you know. And because I’m a bad man and still paying for this jerk suit”—he pointed to his costume, a satire on the new blends, which, dimly phosphorescent, shone on his pale wrists like fishskin—“I’m docked a buck a month in canteen chits.”
“I’m a bad man too,” Feldman said. “They dock me.”
“Fifty cents a month,” Mix said, ignoring him. “I could have asked for a buck.”
“It’s ridiculous for me to buy you off at all. Why should that guard kill me?”
“He’s seen your record,” Mix said. “He knows all about you.”
That was true, Feldman thought. He was wondering if he should offer Mix a quarter.
“Give me a dime,” Mix pleaded. “For two months.”
“You haven’t sense, Mix,” Feldman said. He turned away from him.
“I’ll tell,” Mix said. “I swear it.”
“I know that,” Feldman said quietly. He cupped his hands over his mouth. “Guard,” he called suddenly. “Guard. Guard.”