Shackles

“He was. He won’t be much longer. Neither will Rix.”

“You’ve put the police on them?”

“That’s right.”

The dark smile again. “Quite the detective. Quite the fucking detective.”

I didn’t say anything.

“But you didn’t put the police on me,” Vining said. “Instead you followed me up here. I suppose you intend to kill me?”

I still didn’t say anything.

“I don’t care, you know,” he said. “I really don’t, not anymore.” A thought seemed to occur to him then; he frowned, and the timbre of his voice had changed slightly when he said, “I do care about Midge, though. She had nothing to do with any of this. She knows nothing about it.”

“I didn’t think she did.”

“Not a bloody thing.”

Are you worried about her? Of course you are. You’re afraid I’ll do something to Ms. Wade. His words, on the way up here that first night. The irony was sharp, and yet it gave me no satisfaction, no desire to remind him of it and goad him with it. Maybe because I was so tired and wired, wired and tired, and I just wanted to get this done, the rest of the questions and then the other thing, so I could rest. Or maybe because other of his words that first night had also come back to me: I could torture you with the idea. Make you think I intend to harm your woman. It’s tempting, I’ll admit… but I don’t think I’ll do it. No need for it, really. There’s such a thing as overkill, after all.

“I told her nothing about me,” he was saying, “not even… nothing. She never asked. Knew me only a week when she invited me to move in with her, share expenses-into her house, not her bed. That’s the way she is, trusting. Leave her alone, will you? She’s been hurt enough in her life.”

“I won’t go near her.”

“… No, no you won’t. I believe you.”

“This is just between you and me.”

“Yes. Well, then, one other thing before you shoot: Did you suffer? During the time you were chained here?”

“You know I did.”

“Tell me how much.”

“No, goddamn you.”

“Why not? Dying man’s last request.” Another of those dark, unreadable smiles. “The provisions for thirteen weeks-was that maddening too? Thirteen instead of twelve or sixteen?”

I stared at him. “The number doesn’t mean anything. You set that up along with the rest.”

“Of course. I knew you’d try to find meaning in it. Such a smart detective. But a good red herring will fool even the best, eh?”

“Why, Vining? Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you do it, all of it? Why do you hate me so much?”

“Don’t you know? You seem to know everything else.”

“No, I don’t know. It can’t be just because I had a hand in sending you to prison-”

“Had a hand in it? That’s a bloody laugh. You were totally responsible. If it hadn’t been for you…” The words seemed to choke him up; he coughed his throat clear. “You destroyed me, destroyed my life!”

“For Christ’s sake, you only served five years.”

“Five years! You think that’s all there is to it? If you only… all right, then. I’ll tell you. I wasn’t going to but I will.” His eyes glittered and glistened again. “Eleven days after I was admitted to Folsom, I was gang-raped by four other cons. Have you ever been homosexually assaulted? No, of course you haven’t, so you can’t even begin to understand what it was like. You have to experience it to know. And that wasn’t the only time, no. Some of the cons… well, they covet chaps like me. Young, slender, oh yes, we’re prime meat. I was raped three more times before one of them, a lovely fellow named Abbot, turned me out. Do you know what punk means in prison slang?”

I knew but I didn’t say it.

“A homosexual lover,” he said. “Private property, for the exclusive use of one man. I was Abbot’s punk for two years, until he was released. Then I became Frank Tucker’s punk-I was Tucker’s punk until he was released last year, six months before I was. Now do you understand why I despise him?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Ah, but you still don’t understand why I went to him after I got out. Why I would subject myself to more of his abuse. Aren’t you wondering that? I could have got the help I needed elsewhere, couldn’t I? Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”

His voice had risen shrilly, almost hysterically. The look in his eyes… it was the same kind of look I had seen in mine that day in the Carder A-frame. Only worse, more tormented-the most terrible look I have ever seen in the eyes of another human being. It put a chill on my back, a metallic taste in my mouth.

“Here’s something else for you to think about,” Vining said, “I thought about it, you know. After I brought you up here and chloroformed you the second time and dragged you in here. I thought about raping you as those cons raped me. I wanted to do it, I truly did, but I… couldn’t. I’m not a faggot, I never participated willingly-I couldn’t do that even to you. Besides, there was no way to be sure you’d catch it and I couldn’t wait long enough to find out, the doctors said I might have to be hospitalized within a few months, I didn’t have enough time to make you die that way.”

Chills up and down my body now, because now I understood, I knew his motive, I knew what he was going to say before he spoke the words-

“That’s right,” he said, “I have AIDS, I’m dying of AIDS, they gave me AIDS in prison but you put me there, damn you, you’re the one who destroyed me!”

He came lunging up off the cot, charged me, struck wildly at my face. But he was no fighter; he hadn’t been able to defend himself in prison against bigger, stronger men, and he had no chance with me either. I fended him off with my left arm, hit him under the right eye with the flattish surface of the.22-not half as hard as I had hit Frank Tucker with the piece of driftwood-and knocked him down.

He got up on his knees, holding his head, moaning a little. There was blood on his lower lip where he’d bitten through it. “Go ahead,” he said, “shoot me, kill me, get it over with. Do it, you bloody bastard. Do it do it do it!”

But I couldn’t.

I could not shoot him.

Something seemed to tear loose inside me. The room went out of focus for an instant, came back into focus with a sudden sharp clarity. Ninety days in this place, a week on the move, all the hate and all the rationalizations and all the shoring up of my resolve… and I couldn’t do it.

He saw that in my face and got off the floor, rushed me again, screaming, “Kill me, damn you, kill me!” I hit him another time, nothing else to do, hit him with a little more force and put him down again and this time he didn’t get up. He groaned, rolled over, lay pulled up into himself gasping for breath, sobbing. Not a diabolical lunatic, not a mad dog-just a weak and broken man, sick and tormented and dying. Just another victim.

My knees had gone shaky; I made it to the cot, sank down on it, and sat there looking at the floor. The hate was still inside me but it was dying too, now-as if it had burned too hot for too long and consumed itself. Glowing embers that in a short while would become ashes… cooling ashes, then dead ashes. Maybe that wouldn’t have happened if he had been someone else, if he had had another motive, if he were not dying from the horror of AIDS; maybe then my hate would still be as white-hot as his and I would have been able to go through with it.

And maybe not.

Either way, I would never know for sure.

Sitting there, I became aware of the smell in the room: sour stench of fear, corruption, human misery. And part