Oswald sensed the guard's interest shift his way. He was ready for the question.
"Principle number one."
"Get the blade into the enemy."
"Principle number two."
"Be ruthless, vicious and fast in your attack."
The guard took half a step, switched the billy to his left hand and swun'g it hard, striking Oswald's collarbone. He was genuinely surprised. He thought they'd reached an understanding. The blow knocked him back three steps and forced him to one knee. He'd thought he was through getting hit for the day.
"There are no right answers," the guard advised, looking into the distance.
Oswald got to his feet, approached the white line, stood staring at the urinal. He requested permission to cross.
"To execute the slash, do what."
"One, assume the guard position."
"Then what."
"Two, step forward fifteen inches with the left foot, keeping the right foot in place."
The guard swung the club, hitting him in the arm. He was sweaty with the need to piss, his upper body moist and chill.
"There are no right answers in this head. It is the stupidest arrogance to give an answer that you think is right."
The guard jabbed him in the ribs with the butt end of the stick. The other man, Nineteen, was still crumpled on the deck.
The guard swung the club, smashing Oswald on the upper back. The idea seemed to be why bother with questions. Oswald made a decision to let the piss come flowing out. It was an anger and a compensation. He felt it flow down his leg, knowing deep relief, deliverance, good health everywhere, long life to all.
The guard swung the club, hitting the side of Oswald's neck.
He put his hands over the back of his head, covering up. The last blow put the guard strangely on edge. He stood looking into the distance but was different from before, mouth hanging open, a dead spot in his eye, and Oswald knew they were all one word away from a private carnage of the type you hear about from time to time, nameless and undetailed.
He watched the puddle take shape on the floor, his arms crossed at the back of his head. He needed a moment to think.
He sighed deeply, stepping up to the white line. He looked straight ahead and lowered his hands slowly to his sides. It was his sense of things that if he moved slowly and openly and did not show terror, the guard would stand off. The guard's mental condition had to be taken into account. They were all here to see to it that the guard came through. Oswald believed that the man crumpled on the deck knew this as well as he did. He sensed the man's awareness of the moment. They had to let the moment cohere, build itself back to something they all recognized as a rainy Wednesday in Japan.
He stood at the white line and waited.
Dupard whispered in the dark.
"I definitely get the idea they want to send me home in a box.
LIBRA • JOS
The first minute I put on the green service coat, I look like I'm dead. It's a coffin suit for a fool. I seen it on the spot."
"I liked the uniform," Ozzie told him. "It was great how it looked. I was surprised how great I felt. I kept it cleaned and mothproofed. I kept heavy objects out of the pockets. I looked in the mirror and said it's me."
"Nice joke. They told my mother. Get him in the service, Mrs. Dupard. The streets of America getting crazy by the day. Your boy is safe with us."
"That's what they told my mother."
"They sent me to JP to save me from West Dallas niggers. Believe this booshit? They put me behind bars so nobody slips off with my wallet and shoes."
"It's the whole huge system. We're a zero in the system."
"They give me their special attention. Better believe."
"They watch us all the time. It's like Big Brother in Nineteen Eighty-four. This isn't a book about the future. This is us, here and now."
"I used to read the Bible," Bobby said.
"I used to read the manual. I never looked at my schoolbooks but I read the Marine Corps manual."
"Make you a man."
"Then I found out what it's really all about. How to be a tool of the system. A workable part. It's the perfect capitalist handbook."
"Be a Marine."
"Orwell means the military mind. The police state is not Russia. It's wherever we have the mind that can think up manuals full of rules for killing."
"Where's this Stalin, dead?"
"Dead."
"I thought I heard that."
"But Eisenhower's not. Ike is our own Big Brother. Our commander in chief."
They lay in the dark, thinking.
Because of what they did to us. The way she had to work and quit and take care of me and get fired and work and quit and pick up and leave. Let's pick up and leave. Scraping up pennies for the next move somewhere. Daily humiliations all her life. This is known as ground down by the system. Except she never questions that. It is only the local conditions. It is Mr. Ekdahl and his puny divorce settlement. It is the whispering behind her back. It is the neighbors with their Hotpoint washers and Ford Fairlane cars, which she competes against the only way she can.
"My boy Lee loves to read."
His mother never-ending.
Three days running, for no special reason, every meal was rabbit chow-lettuce, carrots, water.
Oswald ran past the chicken wire, turned into the cell block, stopped at the white line. Dupard was in the cell wearing skivvies and sitting on Oswald's rack. Dupard's mattress was smoldering. Oswald watched the pale smoke collect in the air. His cellmate just sat there, hangdog, thoughtful, picking at his feet.
"Bobby, how come?"
"You want your rack?"
"Stay there."
"We're not supposed to talk."
"You're only making things worse."
"I'm evicting lice, that's all. They're boring into my skin. Time to rid the premise, man."
"Did you ask for a new mattress?"
"I axed. They punch my face."
He was calm, a little sullen, mainly thoughtful and resigned.
"They'll only extend your time."
"In my own mind this is nothing to excite themselves. I don't feel like there's any guilt to be handed out whereby I'm punished. I'm fumigating these lice on out of here. In other way of saying it, it's like I'm doing their job for them."
"This is your second fire."
"Regulate the voice."
"Well I don't see the point of mattress fires, frankly."
"Stop talking, Ozzie. They kill your ass."
Two guards came down the passageway, brushed past Oswald and entered the cell. The fire was so insignificant they were able to delay getting water until after they'd spent five grim minutes pounding Dupard.
Oswald stood at the white line, looking away.
They moved him out to the chicken wire. Not only guards but fellow inmates, all those bodies to avoid, those eyes and inner melodies-terror, gloom, psycho violence. The trick inside the wire was to stay within your own zone, avoid eye contact, accidental touch, gestures of certain types, anything that might hint at a personality behind the drone unit. The only safety was in facelessness.
He developed a voice that guided him through the days. Forever, endless, identical. The brig was so unthinking it eventually drove out fear. He ran in the passageways, he ran in place. He scrubbed the brightwork in the head, squared away his area, made up his rack. The point of the brig was to clean the brig. He drew his bucket from the storeroom, stood at the white line. They'd built the brig just to keep it clean. It was where they put their white lines. Everything depended on the lines. The brig was the place where all the lines that were painted in the military mind were made bright and clean forever. Once he understood that, he knew he had their number.
He sat in the TV room watching reruns of Dick Clark's American Bandstand. Reitmeyer came in to shake his hand. Haifa dozen other guys dropped by to ask about the brig. He wore his Hawaiian shirt, smirking a little, telling them he'd breezed right through. Great training for life in the U.S. Gives you that competitive edge. That's Ozzie for you, said his barracks-mates. That's the Rabbit, that's Bugs, and they drifted out one by one, leaving him to stare at the high-school boys and girls shuffling drowsily on a dance floor in Philadelphia.