New Title 1 by Ed Gorman Page A

the animals were probably thinking. These humans didn't even kill each other for the only reason that justified killing—survival—these humans killed each other for money and sex and jealousy. They didn't make any sense, these humans, and owl and wolf and bird would be glad when the lights and the noise and the sweaty intense fascination were all taken away and the land given back to the moon and the clouds and the fast-running creeks, that sense of order and peace and oneness I had only when I was up in my biplane.
    "I'd better get back to it," she said.
    She looked like she wanted to say more, but then somebody shouted her name, tugging her away.
    Just as I was leaving, people had to stand to either side of the driveway so the ambulance could get through, bearing Nora into the night.

11

    He spends two of his prison years working in the print shop, running a big press. The prison does a lot of cut-rate printing for the state.
    It is in the print shop that the snitch is dealt with.
    Five days before it happens, two white cons trap a black con in the showers and castrate him. They also, after cutting him up that way, use the same knife to cut his throat.
    Prison, always a dangerous place, is now even more dangerous.
    At meals, the blacks huddle against one wall and glare at the whites who sit huddled along the other.
    On the yard, he witnesses the most violent fistfight he's ever seen, between this jig and this big Polack.
    In less than two minutes—the time it takes for the guards to come running and break it up—they break each other's noses, the black guy breaks two or three knuckles, the white guy breaks his arm, and both of them suffer what later prove to be brain concussions because of the ferocity of their blows. They are both bloody and unconscious by the time the guards reach them.
    He is scared.
    Can't sleep sometimes, he's so scared.
    Even finds himself on the verge of tears, he is so frightened.
    But most of the cons are. They all know how terrible this thing could get.
    Comes a particular moment, he is alone in his cell. The warden is moving everybody around again—the cons have started referring to cellblock F as the Transit Authority—and he just happens to be between cell mates.
    Another night when he can't sleep.
    This night, he puts a pillow over his head and keeps his eyes shut and tries to block out all the screaming and the taunts as black men shout you gonna pay pussy! and white men shout back I'm gonna kill you nigger!
    Not until tonight does he realize what a real prison riot must be like. All the chaos. But most especially all the rage. He can't get Attica out of his mind. So many had died so savagely. The cons had even broken pop bottles so they could use the jagged edges to rip the eyes out of cons who had snitched in the past.
    Tear out their eyes like that.
    He tries hard to sleep.
    But can't.

    Next morning, he's running his press, checking ink levels and grabbing an occasional page to scan, when Marley, a true maniac, comes up and says, "You didn't hear nothin'."
    "All right."
    "Haskins."
    "Yeah?"
    "He was the snitch," Marley says.
    "Wow. He seems like such a nice guy. You sure?"
    "What the hell's that supposed to mean? I say Haskins's the snitch, then he's the snitch. Dig?"
    "Dig."
    Two days earlier, the two whites who had castrated the black man had been identified by a snitch and put in the hole. They would soon be formally charged.
    Now Marley says they found the snitch. And now Marley says, "So if you hear somethin', you didn't hear nothin'. Right?"
    "Right."
    He goes back to his press work.
    A few minutes later he notices that a very pale, very scared-looking con named Haskins is being dragged toward the big storage closet in the room adjacent to the press room.
    Haskins looks right at him. Puppy-dog eyes. Imploring.
    Please. Please do something.
    Please help me.
    Please be human.
    Please.
    They drag Haskins into the storage closet and close the door.
    He actually doesn't hear