Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter; George Pelecanos

Author:Don Carpenter; George Pelecanos
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Portland (Or.), Noir Fiction, Social Science, Penology, Problem Youth, General, Literary, Swindlers and Swindling, Crime, Fiction
ISBN: 9781590173909
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Published: 1968-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Eleven

The heavy leather belt tight around his waist buckled in the back. The chain of his handcuffs passed through two steel-reinforced holes in the front of the belt, and he could not move either hand more than a few inches. When he wanted to smoke a cigarette he had to bend his head down to his hands to take a puff, and of course one of the guards had to give him the cigarette and light it. Passed through the handcuff chains was another chain leading down to his leg-irons, which were clamped onto his ankles in such a way that he could move his feet only enough to shuffle; and the connecting chain was too short to allow him to stand erect. He and the other two hard cases had to be helped onto the bus, along with the others who were making the trip from the center at Chino to their final destination at San Quentin.

The three hard cases sat right in front, under the eyes of two riot guns. The window next to the driver was open, and the hot wind blew into Jack’s face; but it was better than no air at all. He sucked it into his lungs as if it was to be the last air he would breathe; he had never forgotten the feeling of suffocation that would overcome him sometimes in the hole, and he could see nothing in the future but an endless repetition of the hole. He had the answer to all his questions now. He knew what he loved. He loved freedom, and this long bus ride was going to be his last chance to sense it, to use his eyes and ears and lungs on the world, the real world, before he was locked again in endless darkness. He did not feel sorry for himself. He was too busy trying to draw the world into himself, trying to be there.

The hard case sitting next to Jack muttered and cursed throughout the hot valley morning, his chin on his chest, his eyes shut. He was completely crazy. He was about forty years old and had been a Certified Public Accountant and a Notary Public. One night about three months before, he had come home from his office and gone into the kitchen and gotten a butcher knife, gone in to where his invalid wife was sleeping, and stabbed her more than three hundred times. Then he dragged the body out the side door and stuffed it into the trunk of the car and drove off. Several neighbors saw him and had called the police even before he left the neighborhood. He drove around with the body for hours before they finally got him. He had appeared rational at the trial, and did not break down until later. Everyone at the Chino center was afraid of him, even though he behaved rationally in front of the authorities until time to leave for San Quentin, and then he broke down again. The other hard case sat behind Jack in a seat by himself.

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