My grandmother had died of cirrhosis of the liver, so I knew about the dark brown patches on his skin. "This here is Delmar," he pointed to his friend. "And I guess you already know our peroxide beauty."
"It's not peroxide," Cisco protested. He ran his long fingernails through his hair. "It's au naturale!"
"Of course it is sweetheart." Earl reached over and wiggled his car. "Of course."
I didn't know why, but I felt embarrassed. I wanted to get up and distance myself from such obviously gay men, but I chose to stay.
"What are you in for?" Delmar asked.
I was getting tired of repeating myself, but it seemed to be the opening for most inmates. What are you in for? How long you got? How much money did you get? I answered while looking over at Cisco. He was leaning back, on his elbows. He took his sunglasses off and placed them on his head. There was pool chalk smeared on his eyelids.
"Well, that's not so bad," Delmar said. He reached into his pocket and brought out a metal flask. "At least you'll get out one day." He poured a clear liquid into his cup. "When I get out of here, it will be in a pine box."
"And hopefully not much longer," Earl said, stretching out his own metal cup.
"What are you drinking?" I asked, smelling a familiar chemical odor. It didn't look like the spud juice that was still clearing my head and oozing out from my pores.
"Turpentine," he said. He picked up the can of pop. "And Mountain Dew."
"It's not the best . . . " Earl said.
"But it'll do!" Delmar topped off both cups.
"Are you serious?"
"Ninety percent wood alcohol," he said. "And maybe a few other things."
I couldn't believe they were going to drink it! "Won't it poison you?"
Delmar lifted his cup. "If we're lucky. We've been down a long time, son, and we just don't care anymore. I've already got a bit of the rot gut."
"How long have you been down?"
"Well, let's see, I first came to the penitentiary in '35, and Earl here ..."
"You've been here that long?" I interrupted.
"Not straight through, mind you, but in bits and pieces. We've been doing what's called Life on the Installment Plan."
"Well, anyway," Delmar said, "we hope it'll be over soon." He reached over and toasted his friend. "Hour by hour, we ripe and rot."
"And rot and rot," Delmar added, clinking his cup, "and therein hangs a tale."
Tilting their heads back, they quickly downed the mixture, closing their eyes and multiplying their wrinkles. I watched as they finished squinting. There were tears in their eyes as their faces relaxed. For a moment there, I could see the pain that was in their bellies. They were drunks. And I felt like I knew them well.
"Shakespeare," Delmar winked.
I didn't know what he was talking about.
Cisco was smiling up at the clear blue sky.
"Is that from an All Star Game?" I asked, pointing to Delmar's hat.
"What?"
"The Detroit Tigers hat with the red star?"
"Oh this," he grabbed his hat and looked at it. "This isn't the Tigers," he said. "Though it does look like their D. No, this is from the colored leagues in the '20s and '30s."
"The colored leagues?"
"The Detroit Stars," he said, handing me the hat. "Part of the Negro League."
"Was it separate from the majors?" I asked.
"Oh yeah. Coloreds couldn't play with whites until the 1950s," Delmar said. "That's when Jackie Robinson came in and broke the colored barrier."
"It's not the colored barrier," Cisco said. "It's the color barrier."
Cisco was from California, where they had all kinds of weird things, like hot tubs and communes and geodesic, solar-powered homes. Dad said it was the land of fruits and nuts.
Delmar took the flask and filled his cup. "They were more fun to watch than the white teams."
"And cheaper too," Earl said.
Cisco sat up on an elbow and looked at me, shaking his head. He rolled his eyes and flopped back down on the grass.
"We're runnin' low on Dew," Delmar said, shaking the empty pop can. "Cisco, why don't you be a doll and run up to the Commissary for Your Poppas."
"No way," Cisco protested, "I've been there three times already.
Delmar winked at me. His face was starting to look more pickled than when I first sat down. After a minute or two of silence, Cisco got up in a huff.
"You mens!" He wiggled his ankles back and forth to get into his shoes. "A girl can't get no rest around here!"
Delmar gave Cisco a handful of tokens.
Cisco took them, looked at me with a smile and then walked off toward 9 Building. "I'm a woman," he muttered. "I ain't no mule they can just keep sending up and down the mountain all day." As he walked toward the small white building on the edge of the track, I could see a hint of green in his hair.
I couldn't help but wonder if this was how I might end up in twenty years. Using pool chalk as eye shadow and drinking paint thinner to hurry my death. I wasn't like these people. And I was determined not to become like them, either.
"Do you like baseball?" Delmar asked.
"I used to," I said, looking out across the yard. Slide Step was raking the baseball diamond. "I sort of lost interest these last few years."
"Tigers?" He asked.
"Yeah." My head still felt numb from the day before.
"Well, there hasn't been a whole lot to be excited about lately."
This was true. I was beginning to feel nauseous.
I remembered when I first started watching baseball and when I first fell in love with the game. It was 1968, and the Tigers had made it to the World Series. I watched them play on our old black and white TV. It was a console television that shared the cabinet with a stereo and record player
