Free Handsome Harry by James Carlos Blake Page B

of us and wag her big behind like a happy dog.
    A couple like Russ and Opal is one more example of how funny life can be. Russell’s a good-looking guy who could have his pick of gorgeous girls, and yet he’s been with Opal ever since I’ve knownhim. As far as I know, he’s never cheated on her and I’m not saying that to cover for a pal. Now he’s doing life and isn’t likely to get paroled anytime soon, if ever, and I hear she still comes to visit him every week. No doubt she’ll wait for him as long as it takes.
    Which by the way Mary did not. Wait, I mean. While I was in M City she got married. I hadn’t had a letter from her in more than a month and hadn’t seen her for almost two, and I was getting worried. Then one Sunday she showed up to tell me she’d married some guy named Dale Kinder.
    All I could think to say at that moment was Dale? —what the hell kind of name for a guy is Dale?
    To make it even more unreal, the Dale guy’s father was an Indianapolis police sergeant. The wedding had taken place two weeks earlier and she’d already given the news to Earl in a letter, but she’d asked him not to say anything about it to me because she wanted to tell me herself.
    I won’t deny the news hit me hard. She was wearing a blue dress and her hair was shorter and lighter than the last time I’d seen it. She looked so gorgeous I could hardly breathe. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how much she meant to me.
    She wanted me to know she’d married Kinder because he’d asked her to and she didn’t want to wither on the vine, as she put it, and which, at the rate I was going, was what would happen to her before I ever got paroled.
    I didn’t say it, but I had to wonder how much her decision had been influenced by the fact that her little sister had already been married four years—never mind that her hubby hadn’t been around for the past three-and-a-half. At sixteen Margo had got hitched to some strong-arm who a few months later went to prison on a ten-year jolt. Jesus, those Northern girls could pick them.
    Mary said I’d never given her cause to think she should wait for me. Oh sure, I’d said I loved her, but that’s not the same as asking somebody to wait.
    I said yeah, when she was right she was right.
    What did I expect her to do, she said, a girl has to watch out for herself.
    I told her I understood and no hard feelings, and I wished her the best of luck. I really thought I’d never see her again. When I got back to the cell house I threw up.
     
    T he next break I tried was with a skeleton key I’d made on the sly in the welding shop. It was month after month of trial and error on my cell door lock, of constantly reshaping the key and trying it on the lock again. Then one night I put my arm through the bars and tried the key for the millionth time and… clunk …the lock opened.
    Oh baby, I heard Russell whisper from his adjoining cell.
    I relocked the door and hid the key in a corner crevice of the cell, and the next day Russ and I talked things over with Red and Fat Charley and some of the other guys in our bunch.
    There were a few hardcases at M City who rarely got in fights or caused any trouble but who everybody knew you didn’t chivvy with, and Red and Charley were prime examples. Charley was from Ohio. He was in his early forties and looked like everybody’s favorite uncle—short and round and with the sociability of a born salesman. He was missing the tip of his left index finger and had a habit of keeping that hand half-closed to hide the mutilation. We’d been friends for months before I ever noticed it. When I asked what happened he was reluctant to say, so I took off my shoes and socks and showed him my toes. Born that way, I said. He smiled and said all right and told me he lost the fingertip because of the first girl he ever fell in love with. He was sixteen and she was beautiful but cold of heart and he knew it but he couldn’t help himself. She was constantly