He seemed to remember I was there, the new cellmate.
“But you… Eye seen you was big. And might be fast, if you had your strength.”
I thought of telling him I wasn’t particularly fast but decided not to. Let him think what he wanted.
“He ain’t scairt of you, Iota ain’t scairt of nobody—except maybe for Red Molly and her bitch ma—but he don’t want to work any harder than he has to, either. What’s your name?”
“Charlie.”
Lowering his voice even further: “And you don’t know where you are? For real and true?”
Durance vile, I thought. “Well, it’s a prison… a dungeon… and I guess it might be under the palace… but that’s about all.”
I had no intention of telling him why I’d come, or who I’d met along the way. I was returning to myself now, tired or not, and starting to think straight. Hamey could be pumping me. Getting info he could trade for privileges. Deep Maleen didn’t seem like a place where there were privileges—the end of the line, so to speak—but I didn’t want to risk it. Maybe they wouldn’t care about one escaped German Shepherd from Sentry, Illinois… but then again, they might.
“Not from the Citadel, are you?”
I shook my head.
“Don’t even know where it is, do you?”
“No.”
“Green Isles? Deesk? One of the Tayvos, maybe?”
“None of those places.”
“Where are you from, Charlie?”
I said nothing.
“Don’t tell,” Hamey whispered fiercely. “That’s good. Don’t tell none of these others, and I won’t, neither. If you berdeck me. You’d be wise to. There’s worse fates than Deep Maleen, young one. You might not believe it, but I know. The Lord High is bad, but all I know about the Flight Killer is worse.”
“Who is the Flight Killer? And the Lord High, who’s he?”
“Lord High’s what we call Kellin, chief of the night soldiers. He brought you in himself. I stayed in the corner. Those eyes of his—”
A muffled bell began to ring behind the ironbound door at our end of the dungeon room.
“Pursey!” Iota yelled. He jumped on his bars and began to shake them again. “Ain’t it just about fuckin’ time! Get in here, Pursey, my old pal, and let’s see what’s left of your face!”
There was the sound of bolts being thrown—I counted four—and the door opened. First came a cart, almost like the kind you push around a supermarket, but made of wood. Behind it was a gray man whose face seemed to have melted. Only one eye remained to him. His nose barely jutted from a burl of flesh. His mouth was sealed shut except for a teardrop-shaped opening on the left side. His fingers were so melted his hands looked like flippers. He wore baggy pants and a baggy blouse-like top. A bell was hung around his neck on a rawhide loop.
He stopped just inside the door, seized the bell, and shook it. At the same time he looked back and forth with his one eye. “Hak! Hak! Hak, oo astards!” Compared to this guy, Dora sounded like Laurence Olivier spouting Shakespeare.
Hamey grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me back. Across from us, Eye was also stepping back. All the prisoners were. Pursey kept ringing his bell until he was satisfied we were far enough from the bars to make grabbing him impossible, although I didn’t see any reason why anyone would; he was like a trustee in a prison movie, and trustees don’t carry keys.
The cell Hamey and I were in was closest to him. Pursey reached into his cart, took out two good-sized hunks of meat, and flung them through the bars. I caught mine on the fly. Hamey grabbed for his but missed and it splatted to the floor.
Now the prisoners were yelling at him. One—I later found out it was Fremmy—inquired if Pursey’s asshole was skinned over yet, and if so did he have to shit out of his mouth. They sounded like lions in the zoo at feeding time. Only that’s wrong. They sounded like hyenas. These weren’t lions, with the possible exception of Iota.
Pursey rolled his cart slowly down the corridor between the cells, sandals splashing （his toes were also sealed together）， throwing meat left and right. His aim was good, one eye or not; none of the meat hit the bars and fell into the standing water of the corridor.
I raised my chunk to my nose and smelled. I guess I was still in fairy-tale mode, because I expected something rotten and nasty, maybe even infested with maggots, but it was a piece of beefsteak that could have come from the Sentry Hy-Vee market, albeit without the sanitary plastic wrap. It had barely touched fire （I thought of my dad ordering steak in a restaurant and telling the waiter to just run it through a warm room）， but the smell was enough to squirt saliva into my mouth and set my stomach to roaring. The last real meal I’d had was in Claudia’s wooden house.