Books of Blood Vol 5

'Not you,' observed the unmusical voice from the bunk below, 'you just read your books and keep out of harm's way. I've watched you. It doesn't bother you, does it?'

'I can live with it,' Cleve replied. 'I got no wife to come here every week and remind me what I'm missing.'

'You been in before?'

Twice.'

The boy hesitated an instant before saying, 'I suppose you know your way around the place, do you?'

'Well, I'm not writing a guidebook, but I got the general lay-out by now.' It seemed an odd comment for the boy to make. 'Why?'

'I just wondered,' said Billy.

'You got a question?'

Tait didn't answer for several seconds, then said: 'I heard they used to ... used to hang people here.'

Whatever Cleve had been expecting the boy to come out with, that wasn't it. But then he had decided several days back that Billy Tait was a strange one. Sly, side-long glances from those milky-blue eyes; a way he had of staring at the wall or at the window like a detective at a murder-scene, desperate for clues.

Cleve said, 'There used to be a hanging shed, I think.'

Again, silence; and then another enquiry, dropped as lightly as the boy could contrive. 'Is it still standing?'

'The shed? I don't know. They don't hang people any more, Billy, or hadn't you heard?' There was no reply from below. 'What's it to you, anyhow?'

'Just curious.'

Billy was right; curious he was. So odd, with his vacant stares and his solitary manner, that most of the men kept clear of him. Only Lowell took any interest in him, and his motives for that were unequivocal.

'You want to lend me your lady for the afternoon?' he asked Cleve while they waited in line for breakfast. Tait, who stood within earshot, said nothing; neither did Cleve.

'You hear me? I asked you a question.'

'I heard. You leave him alone.'

'Share and share alike,' Lowell said. 'I can do you some favours. We can work something out.'

'He's not available.'

'Well, why don't I ask him?' Lowell said, grinning through his beard. 'What do you say, baby?'

Tait looked round at Lowell.

'I say no thank you.'

'No thank you,' Lowell said, and gave Cleve a second smile, this quite without humour. 'You've got him well trained. Does he sit up and beg, too?'

Take a walk, Lowell,' Cleve replied. 'He's not available and that's all there is to it.'

"You can't keep your eyes on him every minute of the day,' Lowell pointed out. 'Sooner or later he's going to have to stand on his own two feet. Unless he's better kneeling.'

The innuendo won a guffaw from Lowell's cell-mate, Nayler. Neither were men Cleve would have willingly faced in a free-for-all, but his skills as a bluffer were honed razor-sharp, and he used them now.

'You don't want to trouble yourself,' he told Lowell, 'you can only cover so many scars with a beard.'

Lowell looked at Cleve, all humour fled. He clearly couldn't distinguish the truth from bluff, and equally clearly wasn't willing to put his neck on the line.

'Just don't look the other way.' he said, and said no more.

The encounter at breakfast wasn't mentioned until that night, when the lights had been extinguished. It was Billy who brought it up.

'You shouldn't have done that,' he said. 'Lowell's a bad bastard. I've heard the talk.'

'You want to get raped then, do you?'

'No,' he said quickly, 'Christ no. I got to be fit.'

'You'll be fit for nothing if Lowell gets his hands on you.'

Billy slipped out from his bunk and stood in the middle of the cell, barely visible in the gloom. 'I suppose you want something in return,' he said.

Cleve turned on his pillow and looked at the uncertain silhouette standing a yard from him. 'What have you got that I'd want, Billy-Boy?' he said.

'What Lowell wanted.'

'Is that what you think that bluster was all about? Me staking my claim?'

'Yeah.'

'Like you said: no thank you.' Cleve rolled over again to face the wall.

'I didn't mean -'

'I don't care what you meant. I just don't want to hear about it, all right? You stay out of Lowell's way, and don't give me shit.'

'Hey,' Billy murmured, 'don't get like that, please. Please. You're the only friend I've got.'

'I'm nobody's friend,' Cleve said to the wall. 'I just don't want any inconvenience. Understand me?'

'No inconvenience,' the boy repeated, dull-tongued.

'Right. Now ... I need my beauty sleep.'

Tait said no more, but returned to the bottom bunk, and lay down, the springs creaking as he did so. Cleve lay in silence, turning the exchange over in his head. He had no wish to lay hands on the boy; but perhaps he had made his point too harshly. Well, it was done.

From below he could hear Billy murmuring to himself, almost inaudibly. He strained to eavesdrop on what the boy was saying. It took several seconds of ear-pricking attention before Cleve realized that Billy-Boy was saying his prayers.

Cleve dreamt that night. What of, he couldn't remember in the morning, though as he showered and shaved tantalizing grains of the dream sifted through his head. Scarcely ten minutes went by that morning without something - salt overturned on the breakfast table, or the sound of shouts in the exercise yard - promising to break his dream: but the revelation did not come. It left him uncharacteristically edgy and short-tempered. When Wesley, a small-time forger whom he knew from his previous vacation here, approached him in the library and started to talk as though they were bosom pals, Cleve told the runt to shut up. But Wesley insisted on speaking.

'You got trouble. '

'Oh. How so?'

'That boy of yours. Billy. '

'What about him?'

'He's asking questions. He's getting pushy. People don't like it. They're saying you should take him in hand.'

'I'm not his keeper.'

Wesley pulled a face. 'I'm telling you; as a friend.'

'Spare me.'

'Don't be stupid, Cleveland. You're making enemies.'

'Oh?' said Cleve. 'Name one.'

'Lowell,' Wesley said, quick as a flash. 'Nayler for another. All kinds of people. They don't like the way Tait is.'

'And how is he?' Cleve snapped back.

Wesley made a small grunt of protest. 'I'm just trying to tell you,' he said. 'He's sly. Like a fucking rat. There'll be trouble.'

'Spare me the prophecies.'

The law of averages demands the worst prophet be right some of the time: this was Wesley's moment it seemed. The day after, coming back from the Workshop where he'd exercised his intellect putting wheels on plastic cars, Cleve found Mayflower waiting for him on the landing.

'I asked you to look after William Tait, Smith,' the officer said. 'Don't you give a damn?'

'What's happened?'

'No, I suppose you don't.'

'I asked what happened. Sir.'

'Nothing much. Not this time. He's banged about, that's all. Seems Lowell has a hankering after him. Am I right?' Mayflower peered at Cleve, and when he got no response went on: 'I made an error with you, Smith. I thought there was something worth appealing to under the hard man. My mistake.'

Billy was lying on the bunk, his face bruised, his eyes closed. He didn't open them when Cleve came in. 'You OK?'

'Sure,' the boy said softly.

'No bones broken?'

'I'll survive.'

'You've got to understand -'

'Listen.' Billy opened his eyes. The pupils had darkened somehow, or that was the trick the light performed with them. 'I'm alive, OK? I'm not an idiot you know. I knew what I was letting myself in for, coming here.' He spoke as if he'd had a choice in the matter. 'I can take Lowell,' he went on, 'so don't fret.' He paused, then said: 'You were right.'

'About what?'

'About not having friends. I'm on my own, you're on your own. Right? I'm just a slow learner; but I'm getting the hang of it.' He smiled to himself.

'You've been asking questions,' Cleve said.