Spellbinder Read online

  Peter could sense what she was thinking. She could see it in his eyes. She could feel it. She watched him decide. deliberately, to turn his attention to his newspaper. That done, he pitched his voice to a neutral note as he asked, “Does your father know we’re living together?”

  “How could he know? It’s only been two years.” Again, she heard herself speaking too sharply.

  “Still—” Eyes on the newspaper, he turned a page, patted it into position, then said, “Still, I get the feeling that your father—” He hesitated, choosing the right phrase. “I get the feeling that he has an intelligence network.” A small smile followed before he said, “Or maybe he’s rented time on God’s computer.”

  Ruefully she nodded over her own part of the paper, the This World section. “Sometimes I get the same feeling,” she said softly.

  Eating, drinking, reading, they let another silence lengthen. This was an easy, companionable silence, smoothing over the small, subtle tension. Yet Peter’s question, never asked in so many words, remained unanswered: Why, during the last few months, had she switched on The Hour with increasing frequency? Was it because she wanted to see her mother—wanted to reach out to her, however imperfectly? Or was it more complicated than that? For years, she couldn’t bear to watch The Hour. She couldn’t bear to be in the same room with the sound of her father’s voice, couldn’t bear to see him strut and posture for the cameras. She couldn’t bear to hear him evoke God as casually as an iron-hatted, ward-heeling politician at the turn of the century might have evoked his Tammany boss.

  Yet now—lately—she found herself planning how best to watch The Hour without giving offense to Peter.

  At best, it was a manifestation of maturity, an effort to put her past life into perspective, the better to get on with her present life, and therefore the future.

  At worst, it was intellectual backsliding. For eight long, hard years, since she left the Beverly Hills mansion three days before her twentieth birthday, she’d managed to live her own life—sometimes for the better, often for the worse. She’d made the ritual runaway’s mistakes, and each time she’d paid the full price. She’d confused the muzziness marijuana offered with the balm of inner peace. She’d confused the searing, kaleidoscopic visions of LSD with what she thought the artist could see, and the poet could feel. She’d confused the heedless, headlong rush of sex with the true excitement of love.

  And, finally, she’d confused her father with the devil. She’d blamed him for everything bad that happened to her, past and present. It had been, she knew, a cop-out. Because Austin Holloway wasn’t evil. He was vain, and heedless, and overbearing. He was venal, too. But he wasn’t the devil.

  Through her thoughts, she heard Peter’s voice:

  “Did you really appear on The Hour when you were a kid?”

  Slowly, gravely, she nodded, looking at him over the rim of her coffee cup. “Just as soon as I could walk, and was out of diapers. My brother and I used to sing along with the children’s choir. Except that neither of us could carry a tune. So we just mouthed the words. Once my mother caught me singing, and she pinched me.”

  He frowned, puzzled. “I thought your brother sang, though. That’s what he does, doesn’t he? Sing? With his duck’s ass hairdo, and his teeth, and his pelvis, even.”

  “He learned. He was coached for years. Under some of the best voice teachers in the country.”

  “Jesus, you must have been hot stuff in your prepubescent peer group, if you were on TV every Sunday.”

  Hearing him say it, she felt her eyes drawn inexorably away from him. It was an involuntary reaction, self-protective. She didn’t want him to see the pain the offhand remark had evoked. Because, suddenly, the terrible loneliness and desperate disassociation of those years came rushing back: the Shirley Temple syndrome, someone had called it. Like a stereotypical child movie star, she’d found herself an unwilling passenger on an emotional roller coaster ride, strapped helplessly in her seat, alternately titillated and terrified, yet unable to get off. She’d been unable to recognize herself, unable to determine for herself who she was, or how she felt. It was something for others to decide: her father, or Flournoy, or the choir director—her teachers, or her classmates, or a playmate, whenever she found one.

  Again, she heard Peter’s voice:

  “… through?”

  “Wh-what?” Still struggling against the remembered tears, she blinked as she looked at him, confused.

  “Are you through with the This World? I’m ready to trade, if you are.” He was smiling at her as he spoke.

  Silently, over the coffee and orange juice, they traded sections of the newspaper.

  Three

  AT THE END OF the corridor Carson saw Gallagher sitting at his small metal desk. Gallagher’s metal chair was tipped back against the green-painted cement wall. His uniform cap was cocked high on his head, revealing a fringe of iron gray hair. Gallagher was a big man with a massive paunch and powerfully sloping shoulders. Beneath the uniform cap, his thick hair had been cropped close to his skull. Under the hair, the skull was dented and scarred. Gallagher’s face was squared off, with a heavy jaw, a misshapen nose and small eyes sunk deep beneath prominent brow ridges. Gallagher claimed he’d boxed professionally when he was a young man. But Carson knew the boast was probably false. Many of the men inside, both inmates and guards, claimed to have been fighters. On either side, it was a lie that came cheap. If it could save one hit, anytime, it showed a profit.

  “What’s with you, Carson?” Gallagher grunted. “This is two Sundays in a row, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Is there room?” He nodded to the closed door of the day room.

  “You’re the last one, as a matter of fact. Twelve is the limit.” Gallagher moved his hand toward the thick metal door. “Go on in. The door’s unlocked. Just remember, asshole, you come out one at a time. Anyone that doesn’t—” Gallagher tapped the butt of his walnut baton, holstered at his side. A year ago, Gallagher had used the stick to kill an inmate with a single blow to the base of the skull.

  As long as Gallagher had the stick, it didn’t matter whether he’d ever boxed or not. With the stick, Gallagher was a certified killer.

  “They’re watching those religious shows until noon, at least. You know that?” Asking the question, Gallagher lowered his chair to all four legs. He’d decided to talk. Sundays were quiet; Gallagher was bored.

  “I know.”

  “You one of those? Jesus freaks?”

  “No.”

  “Then why’re you watching?”

  He shrugged.

  “To me, you don’t look like, someone that’s got religion,” Gallagher said amiably. “To me, you look like a plain freak. Not a Jesus freak. Just a plain freak.” Suddenly Gallagher guffawed. He was enjoying himself—passing the time.

  Once more, he shrugged, moving a step closer to the door.

  “How soon you getting your time?” Gallagher asked idly.

  “Ten days.”

  “That’s why you got religion, then. You’re bucking for low time.” Contemptuously, Gallagher blew out his scar-thickened lips. “Am I right?”

  Eyes lowered, helpless, he shrugged.

  “Answer me, asshole,” Gallagher barked suddenly. “I ask you a question, you answer me.”

  “I—yeah. I guess you’re right.” He kept his eyes centered on the guard’s chest. Of all the guards in the institution, Gallagher was the most unpredictable, the most dangerous. Carson had been in the yard when Gallagher had used the stick. There’d been a fight—a quick, vicious fight between two lovers. Gallagher had cocked the stick, stepped in quickly and swung all in one motion. He’d moved on his toes, lightly and delicately. Like a ballet dancer. The inmate—Farwell—had dropped in his tracks, twitched for a moment, then lay still, staring up at the sky. Blood had begun to trickle slowly from his nose, and each ear. Three days later, Carson had heard two guards discussing the killing. The problem, they’d said, was that Gallagher carried a we
ighted baton. And you couldn’t calculate the force of the blow, using a weighted baton.

  Still he stood before the small metal desk, waiting. Gallagher wasn’t finished with him.

  “What’re you in for, anyhow?” the guard asked.

  Still with his eyes centered on the broad, beefy chest, he cleared his throat. “Sodomy.”

  Again, Gallagher blew out his thick lips. “You’re one of those, eh? Not that I had to be told. All I got to do is look at you, to tell. What’d you do, anyhow?” Now Gallagher’s lips twisted into a leering smile. “Tell me about it.”

  “Well, there—” Again, he cleared his throat. “There was this girl. She lived around the corner from me, and she kept—you know—asking for it.”

  The distorted smile widened. “I don’t think I ever heard one of you kinks come right out and admit that it was your idea. It’s always that someone talks you into it. What’d you do to her, anyhow?”

  “Well, I just—you know—we just—”

  “How old was she, anyhow? Tell me that, before you tell me how you gave it to her. Tell me a little something about, her. Describe her.”

  “I—I don’t remember how old she was. I—”

  “Bullshit, you don’t remember. You remember everything about it. You know how old she was, and what she wore and what she said and how she felt. There isn’t anything about it that you don’t remember. You think about it all the time. Every day, and every night, with your meat in your hand, you think about it. So tell me.” Suddenly the bogus smile was gone. The guard’s eyes were hard and ugly: two dark, malevolent agates beneath brows whitened and mottled by ancient scars.

  “She was—twelve.”

  “And how old were you?” Asking the question, Gallagher’s voice had roughened. Resting side by side on the table, his knob-knuckled hands began to clench into fists. The agate eyes were smouldering now, like coals snatched straight from hell.

  “I was—twenty.”

  “All right—” Slowly, deliberately, the guard unclenched one fist, gesturing. “All right. Now tell me how you did it to her. And tell me the truth, goddammit. Because all I got to do is pull your file, you know. And then, if you lied to me, so help me, I’ll …”

  Suddenly a bell jangled: the small telephone hung on the green concrete wall. Angrily motioning for him to remain, Gallagher snatched the receiver from its hook.

  “Station thirty-four. Gallagher speaking.”

  Stealing a direct look, Carson saw the guard’s eyes narrow dangerously as he listened, pressing the receiver hard against his ear. Finally he grated, “Yessir, that’s right. But …”

  From the phone, Carson could hear a sharp, staccato voice, interrupting. Suddenly Gallagher’s eyes met his directly. Angrily, Gallagher was waving at the day-room door, gesturing for him to go inside.

  First looking through the small, wire-reinforced window, he pushed open the heavy door. Eleven men sat on a mismatched collection of plastic-covered sofas and chairs. Some-of them were reading magazines taken from racks bolted to the concrete walls. Others watched a nineteen-inch color TV set, also bolted to the wall. There were only three color TV sets in the institution, one for each of the three day rooms. Only trustees and inmates with fewer than thirty days left to serve were allowed in the day rooms. The other inmates watched TV on black and white sets located in the cell block corridors, controlled by the guards.

  In this room—day room C—the TV was controlled by a group of four trustees: Massingale, Davis, Gaumer and Haskell. Of the four, only Haskell was white. Each Sunday morning, until noon, Massingale, Gaumer and Davis insisted that the TV be tuned first to the Austin Holloway Hour, then to Oral Roberts. Early in their sentences, all together, the three men had taken decisions for Christ, born again.

  Of all the men in the room, only Massingale and Gaumer were attentively watching the Austin Holloway Hour. Davis and Haskell were playing knock poker, betting a cigarette on each knock, two cigarettes if the player who knocked got beaten. The others were reading, or talking quietly. One of the inmates was frowning over a jigsaw puzzle.

  Carson took a copy of Argosy from the rack, sat on one end of a blue plastic sofa and braced his feet against a large linoleum-topped coffee table.

  “Hey, man,” Massingale said softly, “get your fucking feet off the fucking furniture, you mind?”

  Without looking at the hulking black man, he lowered his feet to the floor. If Gallagher had lied about being a boxer, Massingale had told the truth. In Massingale’s cell, Scotch-taped to the wall, a clipping from the Newark Times showed him with his gloved hands raised in victory, smiling into the camera.

  Because Massingale was a heavy timer, in for murder, and because Carson was a kink, Massingale continued to abuse him, calling him obscene names, registering his contempt. As required, Carson listened with eyes lowered, staring at the magazine. If he talked back—even if he frowned—Massingale would find him in the yard, later. A shuffle of feet, a single lightning jab, and Massingale’s huge fist would crash into his stomach. While Massingale strolled away, others would step quickly forward, supporting him until he could stand. If he vomited on one of them, the process would be repeated a few days later: a different attacker, same result.

  While Massingale cursed him, quietly and earnestly, it would be better not to turn the magazine’s pages.

  Finally finished, but still glowering, Massingale turned toward the TV, moving his head from side to side, keeping time to the rhythm of a finger-snapping, hip-swaying, bright-smiling choir, swinging a spiritual. With the Argosy open across his lap, Carson looked at the singers: eight white girls, four black, each one looking straight at the camera, selling themselves, selling the song. Selling Jesus, God and, waiting his turn in his bright blue suit, smiling at the choir like an overweight, overage whoremaster, Austin Holloway, too.

  Every Sunday, his mother watched the Austin Holloway Hour. It was the only thing in her life that she could focus on—that could claim her full attention. Everything else had fallen away from her, lost forever.

  The choir was in its last chorus, voices rising, arms linked, swaying in slow, sappy unison. Beside him, Massingale was turning to Gaumer, muttering something about the black girl on the right. Answering, smiling broadly, Gaumer was elaborately licking his blue-black lips. Tall and thin, stoop-shouldered and hollow-chested, narrow across the torso, Gaumer had started out as a finger-snapping, jive-talking New Orleans pimp—and ended controlling heroin in the city’s black ghetto. On the outside, Gaumer was still important. So, inside, he was one of the men to see. Between them, the brains and the muscle, Gaumer and Massingale ran cell block C.

  Now Holloway was beginning his sermon. Carson watched for a moment, then dropped his eyes again to the magazine. When the choir came on again, he would look. To himself, he smiled. If he wrote to Holloway, maybe the black girl on the right would send him an autographed picture of herself. He could pass it on to Gaumer, a farewell gift. When he got out, in ten more days, Gaumer might help him.

  Ten more days …

  On his two hands, he could count them. Five days from now, he’d only need one hand. And five days after that, he’d go into the administration building and pick up his clothing: the checked sports coat and the gray trousers and the white shirt that he’d worn during his trial. He’d put on the clothes, and take the twenty-five dollars in cash, and wait for them to drive him to the bus station, where they’d buy him a ticket. Three hours later, he’d be in Darlington. Home.

  Home …

  What did it mean, that word? For him, what would it mean? Did it mean his mother’s dark, dank little house with mice in the walls and rats underneath and roaches mashed on the kitchen floor? Did it mean a rooming house on Prince Street, behind the bus station? In Darlington, everyone knew him. They all knew, and they wouldn’t forget. Everywhere, eyes would follow him. Just as eyes followed his mother, wherever she went.

  Now, at that moment, muttering and gesturing, she was watching Austin Hollow
ay. For her, Austin Holloway was God come down to earth, talking just to her, privately, every Sunday. When Holloway told her to do it, she dropped to her knees, placed her hand on the TV set and prayed. When she prayed, she cried. And when she cried her face became a wet, paint-streaked mask: a madwoman’s mask, from Halloween. Because every Sunday morning before she turned on the Austin Holloway Hour, she went into the bathroom, and locked the door, and painted her face with lipstick and mascara and bright red rouge. So when she cried for God, on Holloway’s command, all the paint dissolved. After The Hour was finished, she staggered into her bedroom, sobbing, and locked the door. Her sheets and pillow cases were always filthy, stained black and red from the makeup.

  His eyes wandered back to Holloway, speaking directly into the camera now. In Darlington, on her knees beside the TV, his mother raised her grotesque face up to heaven.

  Maybe.

  Or maybe not.

  He hadn’t heard from her for more than six months. Why? And why were they paroling him to his Uncle Julian, not to his mother? Uncle Julian had arranged for the job that all parolees must have. Why? During the last six months, only Uncle Julian had written him. Not his mother. Why? For him, beyond the prison’s walls, it was as if only one person existed.

  Why?

  On the TV, Holloway was finishing his spiel. Massingale was getting to his feet, changing channels. Oral Roberts was next. Turning the magazine’s pages faster now, Carson had come to the back section of Argosy, filled with small ads arranged in catalogue style. Some of the ads promised more money, others more muscle. Courses in TV repair and burglar-alarm installation were offered, along with pamphlets on raising earthworms, and mushrooms, and chinchillas for profit.

  When he’d been a boy, twelve years old, he’d wanted to send away for a book that promised to make him stronger. The book had cost five dollars. When he asked his mother for the money, she refused. Her check hadn’t come, she’d said. The check was late. But he’d known she was lying. Always, by the fifth of every month, the check came. When he was still very small, five or six years old, he’d learned to recognize the envelope: plain white, with an Arizona postmark and no return address. For him, the envelope was magic. Because when it came, it made his mother a different person. Sometimes, when the check came, his mother would smile—actually smile. Her eyes would clear, and seem to really see him. And that was magic.