Free Tenderness by Robert Cormier

Lefty’s warning, Eric kept himself in check, curbing his impulse to rise to his feet and strike back at his attacker. Instead, he remained on his knees, reaching for the knife and fork, the spoon out of sight. At that instant he was kicked in the spine, thrown humiliatingly flat on his stomach, sharp pain like an arrow shooting up his back to his neck. He closed his eyes against the pain, sensing guys falling away, not wanting to getinvolved. On his knees again, he finally looked up at his assailant. A new guy, someone he’d never seen before, a sneer on his lips, pop eyes bulging from their sockets.
    “What’s going on here?”
    The voice belonged to Dugan, an old guard whose voice still held a hint of Irish brogue.
    Eric looked up at him. “I slipped, fell down,” he muttered.
    Doubt crossed Dugan’s face. His eyes narrowed as he looked from Eric to Pop Eyes and back again.
    “Well, watch your step,” he admonished Eric but looked at Pop Eyes. “I want no trouble here.…”
    As Eric got to his feet, his eyes met the pop eyes of his attacker. They revealed nothing. His face was a blank, no hate, no dislike, nothing. Like a hired hit man.
    Eric fixed the utensils in place on the tray, anger pulsing in his cheeks. He was not really angry at Pop Eyes but at Lieutenant Proctor, whom he knew had engineered the attack. Pop Eyes was merely a puppet. Dugan had stopped the assault, which indicated that the guards were not a part of the plot. Eric was grateful for this. He could handle other prisoners, even an animal like Pop Eyes, but he was not immune to the guards.
    As he ate his dinner, isolated as usual, the foodtasteless in his mouth, he wondered when the next attempt would happen.
    Once again, Sweet Lefty came to the rescue.
    He heard a knock on the door of his room just before Lights Out. Leaping to his feet, aware that he had been lying tensely in bed, he placed his ear against the door and heard a muffled voice:
    “It’s Sweet Lefty.”
    Turning the knob, he opened the door a crack, apprehensive, wondering if he could trust even Sweet Lefty.
    “Tomorrow, at lunchtime. A riot in the cafeteria. Keep out of it.…”
    Eric listened for details but there was only silence, followed by Sweet Lefty’s departing footsteps.
    He realized he had no choice but to trust Sweet Lefty. Apparently, he still felt he owed Eric a debt.
    Later, as he was lying in bed, in the dark, excitement sizzling in his veins, his mind caught fire. How do you keep away from a riot? His days and nights in the facility had been a long succession of routines that had made few demands on either his body or his mind. Now, a problem had arisen and his mind was actually working: probing, analyzing. Exhilarated, he pictured the cafeteria, brought up images from old prison movies. Overturnedtables, prisoners fighting each other, plates sailing through the air, rushing guards. Then: quarantine, punishment. How do you avoid all that? His thoughts were like pinpricks, keeping him awake, sweet pinpricks as if his brain had come alive after a long slumber.
    The next morning during the ten o’clock class in social studies, Eric approached the instructor’s desk.
    “Asking permission to go to the infirmary,” he said to the pipe-smoking teacher, who always wore a tweed jacket as if he taught in a fancy college.
    “Not feeling well, Poole?” he asked, his voice also deep and resonant like a professor’s.
    “Spent half the night with diarrhea and throwing up,” Eric said.
    The instructor filled out a permission slip. “Better get it taken care of. You don’t want to walk out of here Friday a sick boy.”
    The infirmary was staffed by a male nurse by the name of Dunstan, who took care of routine cases. Doctors were on call for more serious illnesses or injuries. Dunstan liked pretending that he was a doctor, a stethoscope dangling on his chest. Cheerful, humming, he took Eric’s temperature and blood pressure. “All’s normal,” he announced. He