Feast for Thieves by Marcus Brotherton

Author:Marcus Brotherton [Brotherton, Marcus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8024-9128-2
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Published: 2014-11-18T16:00:00+00:00

Part 2

SEVENTEEN

When a man levels a rifle at your face, it complicates matters greatly if you’re honor-bound to that man, like I was to Crazy Ake.

See, on my first day of prison, so many months ago now, the fella behind me in the chow line shoved me to one side. Although I had not yet learned all the unspoken codes of prison life, I had the good sense to see I was among roughs—men who valued instinct and aggression—and if I didn’t shove this fella back, then I would be branded a coward. All manner of aggravations would befall me the rest of the time I was locked up, and that would never do.

The fella and I got straight into it, hammer and tongs, but what I didn’t know was that he was only a scout—the soldier walking ahead of the company to test the action and see what’s what. In two hits he was already on the floor, crawling away from me as fast as he could, which is when the rest of the gang took their cue and piled on me. A dozen fellas started beating me, all hard-fisted prison thugs, and I walloped the first five before the rest of the squad pinned me to the floor and their leader pulled a knife.

Their leader was a huge alligator of a man, the one they called Big Red. He was the toughest, most belligerent brute in prison, and he was making a preemptive strike, I learned later. See, when another big-framed fella walks into prison, a man such as myself, then it’s natural that Big Red would feel threatened. Right away the convict in charge needs to exert his supremacy. If he doesn’t, then he’s equally branded a coward. Plus, he’s forever walking around on pins and needles, waiting for an up-and-comer such as me to make my move and take control.

So there was Big Red with his knife held to my throat below my left earlobe. He was aiming to slice straight across to the right and take my head off. The guards weren’t looking. They didn’t care. And I reckoned I was as good as dead when along came Sergeant Akan Fordmire, a man about twenty-six years old, who broke a chair over the back of Big Red’s skull.

Crazy Ake, for that was the sergeant’s nickname, served as a mortar man during the war. He was a thick-necked Kansas native with bushy sideburns and tattoos on his arms who was sent to prison for stealing supplies from battalion headquarters. Later, when I asked Crazy Ake about why he saved my throat from Big Red’s knife, he put one of his green-painted arms over his face and giggled an eerie laugh. It took nearly a week to pry forth the fuller story.

His saving my life boiled down to cash. Big Red owed Crazy Ake money, or at least that’s the way Crazy Ake saw it. Around prison, if Big Red wanted a new toothbrush, a nail clipper, or a dirty magazine, he wasn’t in the habit of paying straight out for it.

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