'The Politician' in the next cell was engaged in an ill-tempered debate with the space in front of him.
The third moonberry recoiled into a corner when he heard the spy-hole being opened. He cowered there, hiding behind his hands and babbling, 'Please don't hurt me! I didn't mean to do it! Honest to God, I didn't mean it!'
'The Spook,' as the guards called him, was afraid of everything. During the morning mucking-out rounds, a guard had to go in and get his shit-bucket because he was too frightened to bring it to the door, as the other prisoners did. Tillman humanely closed the spy-hole as soon as he had verified the Spook's presence. The old man repeated, 'I didn't mean to do it!' then he slumped in relief and his eyes narrowed with cunning. He had fooled them again. He really had meant to do it. And he'd do it again if he got the chance! Those kinds of women had it coming to them!
Tillman passed by the large two-bunk cell that was currently unoccupied and went to the last door on the corridor. A wave of horripulation ran up his spine as he reached out for the spy-hole because this moonberry, a man named Lieder, was the most dangerous man in the prison. The guards always spoke of Lieder with a certain pride. He was the baddest of the bad, and they were the ones chosen to keep society safe from him. 'Which must mean we're pretty tough ourselves, right? After all, we managed to keep 187 inside.' Number 187 had been their most famous inmate, Robert LeRoy Parker, a horse-thief who did eighteen months in the Territorial Penitentiary under the alias George 'Butch' Cassidy.
'But 187 was a Sunday school teacher compared to this Lieder. Don't be fooled by that fella's smooth manner, kid. He's slick as greased shit. Keep on your toes all the time. He's busted outta two places, and chances are he'll try it again, sooner or later. You just make sure he doesn't do it on your shift, or the warden'll reach down your throat and snatch your lungs out!'
'Yeah, kid, and do you know what Lieder does all day long, lying up there in his cell? He does what your mama told you would ruin your eyesight. He reads! His cell is chock full of books and magazines and newspapers! Read? He's at it from first light to last. Mostly history and politics. But he's got one favorite book that he reads over and over.'
'What book is that?'
'Oh, you'll hear about it. You'll hear all about it.'
It was the guards who provided Lieder with books and magazines, in part because it was the easiest way to keep him calm, and in part because they were afraid of him. He had once informed a watch sergeant, with calm sincerity, that if he didn't get a newspaper every week, he would punish him and his family when he broke out. The sergeant had dismissed the threat with a sniff, saying there was no way no moonberry would ever get out of the security wing. None never had, and none never would. But the next day he came with a newspaper under his arm. Well, hell's bells, what's the point in taking chances? Look at his record, for the love of God.
When he was only fourteen years old, Lieder had inflicted a weekend of hell on his hometown just south of Laramie, shooting out windows, setting fire to the school, and holding three children hostage in a livery stable he threatened to burn down if anyone approached. He was eventually cornered and sent away to a privately run home for wayward boys dedicated to 'reforming' tough kids through a combination of spirit-crushing punishments and long sessions of prayer on their knees with their arms stretched out until their shoulders knotted with pain. At eighteen, he broke out after seriously injuring his spiritual mentor while they were praying together for his salvation. A three-month rampage characterized by gratuitous and inventive cruelty had the whole southeast corner of Wyoming peering into shadows and flinching from sounds before Lieder was recaptured and committed to the Territorial Prison because no other institution had the facilities to deal with the boy who had punished a tenaciously evangelistic preacher by shooting him four times, once through each palm and once through each foot, to provide him with the stigmata of this Christ.
Lieder was rescued from a lynch mob and sentenced to perpetual confinement as a menace to society. Once inside, he became a model of good behavior, never causing trouble, always polite, often helpful. But he escaped while working in the prison broom factory (as foreman), and was on the loose for nearly four years. After joining up with the northern, 'Union Pacific' stream of Coxey's army, that uniquely American blend of lofty intent, quixotic diversity, righteous wrath, and carnival hokum, Lieder became disillusioned and returned to cleave a trail of pain and violence across southern Wyoming and northern Colorado. At some point, he experienced a kind of political revelation; victims reported that even while he was torturing them to discover where they had hidden their money, he ranted on about how he had joined William Jennings Bryan's crusade to save the farmer and workingman from being crucified 'on a Cross of Gold,' and to protect them from the hordes of foreigners swarming across the ocean to steal Americans' jobs and contaminate their pure blood by seducing their women. His frenzies of violence culminated in an assault on a farmer who had expressed his intention to vote for McKinley over Bryan. Beginning with the farmer, Lieder had methodically punished the whole family with an axe handle, and done it so thoroughly that none of them were able to testify later. The farmer's memory never fully returned; the two children were left brain-damaged and with an abiding horror of strangers; and the wife's catatonic withdrawal from reality was so total that she ended her years in care. Despite Lieder's claim to have been 'sorely provoked' and to have acted for the good of his beloved United States of America, the judge condemned him to life internment in maximum security.
'That Lieder's crazy, all right,' the guard Tillman relieved explained, 'but he's not stupid. He's done folks all kinds of hurt, but he never kills anybody, 'cause he knows he'd hang for it. No, he's no fool. What he is is evil. Pure distilled two-hundred-proof evil. And crafty? He can talk the birds down from the trees. So you be careful, kid. And I mean careful.' All this made Tillman wish he hadn't promised his wife that he would speak to Lieder. But… a promise is a promise.
He opened the spy-hole to find Lieder pacing angrily across his field of vision, a book open in his hand. 'Yes! And this 'time of tribulation' must mean the war in Cuba! What else could it mean?' He disappeared from sight for an instant as he reached the near corner of the cell, then he turned and strode the five paces back to the opposite corner. ' 'The tribulation will pass,' ' he quoted from the page before his face, ' 'and the nation will rejoice! But in its rejoicing, it will little note the insidious rot eating out its core! This rot will spread, until a leader rises from among the People to smite the invaders!' ' Lieder softly closed the book and looked out through his barred window to the horizon, '… to smite the invaders…' he repeated in a tone of wonder. Then he threw himself onto his bunk. 'Smite them!' In a suddenly calm tone he spoke to the ceiling, 'You'd be the new guard. What do you call yourself?'
'Ah… Tillman.'
'Tillman,' he repeated. 'I like to know a man's name. I think it's important to know a man's name. Well, Mr. Tillman, welcome to the land of the moonberries. You got something for me?'
Tillman cleared his throat. 'I got this week's paper. ' There was an embarrassed silence. 'How… ah… how do I…?'
'You're wondering how you can give it to me without opening the door.'
'Well… ah…' Tillman certainly didn't intend to take any chances.
Lieder stood up. 'They roll the pages up and push 'em through the hole. And you know, I honestly believe that's the best way to do it. A man would be a downright fool to risk coming in here.'
Tillman ineptly rolled up the first sheet of the four-page paper and slowly introduced it into the spyhole. It suddenly flew through his fingers as Lieder snatched it in.
'Good news,' Tillman said as he started rolling up the second sheet. 'Looks like the fighting in Cuba's all over. They've signed a… a something… with Spain.'
Lieder stared fiercely at the paper. 'A protocol… whatever the hell that is. Those pig-ignorant bastards in Washington have been tricked! Fine young American boys fight and die to teach foreigners who's who and what's what, and the politicians sign a protocol! Spain palms off Puerto Rico and the Philippines on us! And that stupid McKinley thinks he did good! Those sly Spaniards have slipped us the poison spoon, Mr. Tillman. Slipped us the poison spoon! They've palmed off a couple of million illiterate greasers on us, and first thing you know they'll come streaming over here to steal jobs from Americans! Give me that!' He snatched the second sheet in through the spy-hole and scanned it rapidly. 'Stupid bastards!'
Tillman had been looking for the right moment to speak to Lieder about what his wife had suggested, but this sure wasn't it.
'I'm interested in your opinion about something, Mr. Tillman,' Lieder said. 'Who do you think blew up the Maine?'
'Ah… the Spanish, of course.'
