Toward the end of the day McClarty goes over to Block D, to check the progress of several minor complaints. He is buzzed into the block by Santiago. “Hey, Doc, what chew think about Aikman’s straining his ankle? Your Cowboys, they gonna be hurtin’ till he come back.” Santiago labors cheerfully under the impression that McClarty is a big Dallas Cowboys fan, a notion that apparently developed after the doctor mumbled something to the effect that he really didn’t pay much attention to the Oilers. McClarty has never followed sports, doesn’t know Cowboys from Indians, but he is happy to play along, amused to find himself at this relatively late stage in life assigned to a team, especially after he heard the Cowboys referred to on television as “America’s team.” Like eating at McDonald’s, it makes him feel as if he were a fully vested member of the republic.
“Hey, Doc — that sprain? That, like, a serious thing?”
“Could be,” McClarty says, able at last to offer a genuine opinion on his team. “A sprain could put him out for weeks.”
Santiago is jovial and relaxed, though he is the only guard on duty in a cell block of twenty-four violent criminals, most of whom are on the block this moment, lounging around the television or conspiring in small knots. If they wanted to they could overpower him in a minute; it is only the crude knowledge of greater force outside the door of the block that keeps them from doing so. McClarty himself has almost learned to suppress the fear, to dial down the crackle of active malevolence which is the permanent atmospheric of the wards, as palpable as the falling pressure and static electricity before a storm. So he is not alarmed when a cluster of inmates moves toward him, Greco and Smithfield and two others whose names he forgets. They all have their ailments and their questions and they’re trotting over to him like horses crossing the field to a swinging bucket of grain.
“Hey, Doc!” they call out from all sides. And once again, he feels the rush that every doctor knows, the power of the healer, a taste of the old godlike sense of commanding the forces of life and death. This truly is the best buzz, but he could never quite believe it, or feel that he deserved it, and now he’s too chastened to allow himself to really revel in the feeling. But he can still warm himself, if only briefly, in the glow of this tribal admiration, even in this harsh and straitened place. And for a moment he forgets what he has learned at such expense in so many airless smoky church basements — that he is actually powerless, that his paltry healing skills, like his sobriety, are on loan from a higher power, just as he forgets the caution he has learned from the guards and from his own experience behind these walls, and he doesn’t see Lesko until it is too late, fat Lesko who is feeling even nastier than usual without his Valium, his hand striking out from the knot of inmates like the head of a cobra, projecting a deadly thin silvery tongue. McClarty feels the thud against his chest, the blunt impact which he does not immediately identify as sharp-instrument trauma. And when he sees the knife he reflects that it’s a damn good thing he is not Terri, or his left breast implant would be punctured. As he falls into Lesko’s arms he realizes, with a sense of recognition bordering on relief, that he is back in the dream. They’ve come for him at last.
Looking up from the inmate roster, Santiago is puzzled by this strange embrace — and by the expression on McClarty’s face as he turns toward the guard booth. “He was smiling,” Santiago would say afterwards, “like he just heard a good one and wanted to tell it to you, you know, or like he was saying, ‘Hey, check out my bro’ Lesko here.’” Santiago told the same thing to his boss, to the board of inquiry, to the grand jury and to the prosecutor, and he would always tell the story to the new guards who trained under him. It never ceased to amaze him — that smile. And after a respectful pause and a thoughtful drag on his cigarette, Santiago would always mention that the doc was a big Cowboys fan.
Walter Mosley
Black Dog
from Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned
1
“How does your client plead, Ms. Marsh?” the pencil-faced judge asked. He was wearing a dark sports jacket that was a size or two too big for his bony frame.
“Not guilty, your honor,” the young black lawyer said, gesturing with her fingers pressed tightly together and using equally her lips, tongue, and teeth.
“Fine.” The judge had been distracted by something on his desk. “Bail will be…”
“Your honor,” spoke up the prosecutor, a chubby man who was the color of a cup of coffee with too much milk mixed in. “Before you decide on bail the people would like to have it pointed out that Mr. Fortlow is a convicted felon. He was found guilty of a double homicide in Indiana in nineteen sixty and was sentenced to life in that state; he spent almost thirty years in prison.”
“Twenty-seven years, your honor,” Brenda Marsh articulated.
So much respect, so much honor, Socrates Fortlow thought. A harsh laugh escaped his lips.
“And,” Brenda Marsh continued. “He’s been leading a respectable life here in Los Angeles for the past eight years. He’s employed full-time by Bounty Supermarket and he hasn’t had any other negative involvement with the law.”
“Still, your honor,” the bulbous Negro said, “Mr. Fortlow is being tried for a violent crime—”
“But he hasn’t been convicted,” said Ms. Marsh.
“Regardless,” said the nameless prosecutor.
“Your honor…”
The Honorable Felix Fisk tore his eyes away from whatever had been distracting him. Socrates thought it was probably a picture magazine; probably about yachting, Socrates thought. He knew, from his days in prison, that many judges got rich off of the blood of felons.
“All right,” Judge Fisk said. “All right. Let’s see.”
He fumbled around with some papers and produced a pair of glasses from the top of his head. He peered closely at whatever was written and then regarded the bulky ex-con.
“My, my,” the judge muttered.
Socrates felt hair growing in his windpipe.
“The people would like to see Mr. Fortlow held without bail, your honor,” chubby said.
“Your honor.” Ms. Marsh’s pleading didn’t seem to fit with her overly precise enunciation. “Eight years and there was no serious injury.”
“Intent,” the prosecutor said, “informs the law.”
“Twenty-five thousand dollars bail,” the judge intoned.
A short brown guard next to Socrates grabbed the prisoner’s beefy biceps and said, “Come on.”
Socrates turned around and saw Dolly Straight at the back of the small courtroom. She had red hair and freckles, and a look of shock on her face. When her eyes caught Socrates’ gaze she smiled and waved.
Then she ran out of the courtroom while still holding her hand high in greeting.
2
The night before there had been no room in the West L.A. jail so they put Socrates in a secured office for lockup. But now he was at the main courthouse. They took him to a cellblock in the basement crammed with more than a dozen prisoners. Most of them were tattooed; one had scars so violent that he could have been arrested and jailed simply because of how terrible he appeared.
Mostly young men; mostly black and Latino. There were a couple of whites by themselves in a corner at the back of the cell. Socrates wondered what those white men had done to be put in jeopardy like that.