Part 16 (2/2)
The guards seated themselves on the green-painted catwalk in opposite directions, each one on a metal folding chair about fifteen feet away from the foot of the bed. They were beyond earshot, but I was in both their lines of vision.
I sat at the foot of Darryl's bed. My pigskin briefcase, which the guards had searched, lay on the khaki blanket. In my lap I had a Sony tape recorder and a yellow legal pad.
I said to Darryl, ”I can help you.”
”Why you come back?” he asked, his eyes unblinking.
”I like your company.”
”Sound like c.r.a.p to me. You a free man.”
”I made a choice. Coming back is part of it.”
”Last choice I made, I say to the hack, 'Gimme channel seven.' ”
”You made one when you tried to strangle me,” I reminded him.
”You a smart dude. I keep forgetting.”
”So why did you agree to see me? You said it was some kind of flimflam, you weren't interested.”
”Man, you don't know s.h.i.+t from wild honey.”
”Then maybe you can enlighten me.”
”Something to do, man. Pa.s.s the time.”
”Why do they call you Wizard?”
”I had a deck of cards or some rubber bands, motherf.u.c.ker, I'd show you.”
I wiped some oily sweat from my forehead. If this was winter, what was it like here in August?
”Where did you learn magic and sleight of hand?”
”Here on the row, man. Taught myself.”
He told me then about his dead friend Isaac and his time at Branville. ”And from books. One called The Secrets of Alkazar. No dude ever named Alkazar. This magician dude named Kronzek make that up. But what he show you, that is definitely real.”
”What can you do?”
For the first time, Darryl chuckled. His sleeves were rolled up; I saw his tattoos clearly. ”Sweet deception,” he said, ”is the name of the game. I can cut rope, put it back together. Can do things with cards, make you think I's a real magician. You don't gonna believe what I can do.”
”Why did they take away all your magic stuff?”
”This is Q block. They take all you got. What you want from me?”
”I want you to tell me what happened that night.”
”What night?”
”The night you went to rob the Zides' house at Jacksonville Beach.”
”You not gonna believe it. You never did believe it.”
”Try me. Enlighten me.”
”Okay,” he said, smiling at last. ”I enlighten you.”
He didn't like the job at the Zides' because the chief gardener, James, got on his case all the time. Cutting the gra.s.s too short, boy.
See that bit of brown turf? No good. Now you're cutting it too long, boy. Have to do it all over again in a day or two.
He was given the job of hunting all over the estate for dogs.h.i.+t. The lady had three dogs already: Paco, the eight-year-old Doberman and guard dog; two amiable and witless c.o.c.ker spaniels named Myra and Mickey; and now she'd just bought a pair of three-month-old puppies, some kind of Chinese name Darryl couldn't p.r.o.nounce, and turned them loose on the lawns. They c.r.a.pped six or seven times a day each.
”You look for their doodoo,” James said. ”You find it, first you dump a lot of earth on it. Pick all that up in a shovel, get it into this barrow. Put it in one of those plastic sacks.”
”Make good fertilizer,” Darryl said.
”You don't know nothing, boy.”
”You don't teach me. How'm I gonna learn?”
Old James turned away, said nothing.
But Darryl, no matter how hard he tracked, never could find all the soft smelly heaps. The lawns and flower beds were huge, and the Chinese puppies ran everywhere.
James confronted him. ”The lady says she nearly step in doggy poo yesterday. Right by the front door. And she says they getting flies in the house. You too far away from the ground to look real good at it? You want binoculars? You need to crawl round on your knees to find all that stinky-poo?”
”My daddy say you teach me about gardening.”
”When you're ready.”
”How many tons of dogs.h.i.+t I have to pick up 'fore you think I'm ready?”
James ignored him.
Darryl rapped now and then with Terence, the chief security guard, and Terence smoked a cigarette with him one evening and told him that James never taught anything to his a.s.sistants. He was sixty-three years old and fearful that one of these years he would be put out to pasture in favor of someone who knew more than he did.
”That sure won't be me,” Darryl said. He had a better view now of his own abilities and future. But he liked working outdoors. He could be a gardener, if he could ever get past mowing lawns and shoveling dogs.h.i.+t.
Paco, the guard dog, had to be taken for a two-mile run every afternoon. That became one of Darryl's ch.o.r.es. He and Paco bounded up the beach until Darryl's soles were swollen and his lungs felt on fire. But he liked it when they stopped to rest, liked the tangy salt air and the cold bite of surf on his big bare feet. Day by day the run became easier. He breathed rhythmically.
I could be a sailor on the ocean. Except no one never taught me to swim. s.h.i.+p go down, be one dead n.i.g.g.e.r go with it.
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