32.
THE GOOD PRISONER
Same day—Friday, September 13, 1935
“Don’t say a word, not one word,” Buddy Boy drawls.
It’s only Buddy.
Buddy won’t let anything bad happen. Buddy likes us.
“Ease up.” Willy One Arm’s whiny voice.
The cold hand lessens its grip around my windpipe. I take a big breath and twist hard. The fingers burn into me like a taut rope. I can feel the tall hovering frame behind me, the whispery voice, the stale smell, and the three-fingered hand. It’s Seven Fingers in a guard uniform complete down to his shiny black shoes.
Buddy Boy has one of Piper’s hands twisted behind her back. Her other arm clutches the baby. Buddy Boy has a gun forced up into her back. Buddy? Our buddy.
He’s dressed as a guard too. In front Willy One Arm, in a guard shirt and pants but no jacket, clutches Natalie in the crook of his one wiry arm. His gun is in his hand, covered by an undershirt. Nat’s faced the other way as if she can’t bear to look at Willy. Her head jerks in small agitated twitches, which startle Molly, who sits on Willy’s shoulder.
“Quit it!” Willy whines. “Buddy! Make her stop.”
“The warden’s kid brought the baby.” Seven Fingers’s voice makes my skin crawl.
Natalie is shaking all over, trying to spin herself free of the arm around her throat, the gun jammed in her back. “Natalie doesn’t like that. I don’t I don’t like that,” Nat says.
Buddy smiles and smiles like he can’t turn off his lips, but his eyes are like points on barbed wire. “What you bring the baby out for?” he growls at Piper.
“Just snap his neck.” Seven Fingers’s whispery Bull Durham breath in my ear.
“Buddy! Buddy! Tell him not to say that,” I plead.
Willy One Arm tries to cross himself without loosening his grip on the still-twitching Natalie. “Can’t do nothin’ to that baby,” he mutters.
I see a flash of the baby’s eyes. He starts to cry.
Piper squirms like crazy, but Buddy has her tight. “Buddy, listen to me, Buddy.” Piper’s voice sounds sure and strong. “Don’t do this. You’re going to be in vaudeville, remember? You’re good, Buddy. You are.”
Buddy Boy slaps her head. “Shut it,” Buddy says, his voice low and angry.
“I can cover for you.” Piper’s voice breaks. “If you let us go now.”
Buddy whacks her again. “I said shut it!”
I lunge toward him, but Seven Fingers squeezes my neck with his arm and grinds the gun in my back.
The baby’s cries are piercing now, as if he senses Piper’s fear. “C’mon, Buddy,” Piper wheedles. “We’re friends, right?”
“Let me have that baby. I’ll shut him up,” Seven Fingers hisses.
“Can’t kill a baby, Buddy!” Willy One Arm whines. “Not on the thirteenth.”
Then I see something out of the corner of my eye. It’s Jimmy, the real Jimmy, coming up the back way. I need to get his attention. But how? I think about throwing a rock, but I can’t get near one with Seven Fingers’s arm around my neck. Besides, then Seven Fingers will see him. I have to do something quickly before he—but it’s too late. Jimmy’s already inside.
Will Annie and Theresa suspect something when we don’t come back? No, I just said I was taking Natalie home. They’ll figure Piper went down to 64 building with me.
“Take the baby, do something with him,” Buddy Boy tells Willy One Arm. Buddy’s arm snakes around Natalie, and Willy lets go. Natalie squirms like a wild thing. Buddy Boy cranks his arm tighter around her neck.
“Only got forty minutes till the next count,” Seven Fingers hisses. “Not gonna blow my chances for a baby.”
“Buddy! Buddy!” Willy One Arm whines, “I ain’t no baby killer.
“Yeah, so,” Buddy Boy hisses. “Get out of here!”
Willy One Arm takes off, the baby in his arm, his running steps almost silent, his body low to the ground.
My brain is slow, skittering all over the place, adrenaline pumps through my body, making it hard to think. This is not a game. Buddy doesn’t like us. He never did. That was his game.
He could kill Natalie. I have to think of something. And then slowly it occurs to me. Buddy did his Jimmy imitation. That lured us out here but now the real Jimmy is inside. If Buddy were to do a Jimmy imitation now, with Jimmy in the warden’s house, wouldn’t they suspect something odd is happening?
“I ain’t stayin’ here,” Seven Fingers says.
“Willy’s got the boat key. You learn to swim all of a sudden?” Buddy Boy barks.
“What makes you think he’s coming back?” Seven Fingers mutters.
“Where’s he taking the baby?” Piper whispers.
No one answers her.
“Where . . . is . . . he . . . taking . . . the—” Piper repeats.
“Shut it.” Seven Fingers tightens his grip on my neck.
“How’d you do that, Buddy?” I ask, my voice hoarse because of how tightly Seven Fingers is grasping my throat. “Make your voice sound like Jimmy?”
Buddy Boy flinches. “Shut up,” he says in his Jimmy Mattaman voice.
But this wasn’t loud enough for them to hear. “Yeah, but what did you say exactly?” I ask.
Buddy grunts like he’s not going to do it. But I know Buddy. He can’t resist showing off. “Moose! Piper!” Buddy imitates Jimmy a little more forcefully this time as Willy One Arm’s dark, silent form comes slipping back to us. I want to look at the window in Piper’s room to see if maybe I can spot Annie, Jimmy, or Theresa, but I don’t dare.
“Let’s go.” Willy’s out-of-breath whisper as he takes Natalie from Buddy and shoves her forward.
“Jimmy,” Nat mutters. “Jimmy Mattaman.”
“Get a move on.” Seven Fingers’s hot tobacco breath fills my ear. He kicks my calf.
“Three men, five arms. Five, five arms,” Natalie mutters as the wind begins to howl.
“That’s right, Nat.” I make my voice as reassuring as possible. She pitches a fit, they’ll shoot her.
“Three men, five arms, no guns. No,” Nat says.
Seven Fingers yanks my neck. “Shut . . . her . . . up!”
“Shhh, shhh, like in the library at home, Nat,” I say in a panicky whisper.
“Zero,” Nat mutters.
Seven Fingers crushes my windpipe. “Shut her up, I said.”
“Shhhh,” Buddy Boy hisses, and Seven Fingers eases his hold just slightly as we tramp down the silent path by the parade grounds and around 64 building.
We’re walking where guards are supposed to be. No hiding, no skulking, we’re out in the open. Hiding in plain sight.
I try to think clearly about what is happening, but the gun in my back makes my mind slip and slide all around.
Buddy Boy impersonated Jimmy, hoping one of us would come out. They needed hostages. They weren’t counting on Natalie and the baby. Their biggest problem now is time. At 4:30 they’re due back at the cell house. What time is it now?
I have no idea. How can I slow them down?
I don’t know that either.
It’s so foggy we can hardly see. People can’t see us either. Part of the reason they chose today to make a break. The other reason was the party. Nobody is thinking about the cons right now and they know it.
The cons have guns wrapped in shirts pointed in our backs. But they’re walking close and holding them low. It doesn’t look suspicious. Seven Fingers is whistling the same stupid tune Trixle always whistles. Buddy has toothpicks in his mouth and my father’s jiggy step. To all of Alcatraz it looks like a couple of families out for a stroll.
How close do you have to be to see this isn’t my dad? In this fog, extremely close.
My heart beats so loud in my ears I can hardly think. We need to run into someone smart, but everyone smart is at the party.
There must be a way out of this. The buck sergeant will know. He has to pull each card before we get on the boat. He’ll see.
“Zero,” Nat says again.
“Shut . . . her . . . up,” Seven Fingers says with breathy, hate-filled pauses between his words.
“A little conversation”—my voice is so high and tight it doesn’t even sound like mine—“is natural.”
“Shut it,” Buddy Boy says, but quieter this time, like he’s agreeing with me.
I won one. For a second this calms me. Maybe I can win another. But what do I do? All I can think about is Nat’s counting. She doesn’t count nothing. She only counts something.
Zero. Zero what? What has she been saying?
Guns.
There are three guns. They each have one. I can feel Seven Fingers’s gun in my back. Even Willy One Arm has an elbow around Nat’s neck and a gun in his one hand. I try to get a better look at one of them in the dark, foggy afternoon. Buddy Boy has his gun pointed in Piper’s back, but it’s hidden. Why’s he hiding the gun? In case someone walks by, he doesn’t want them to see the gun, right?
If I can’t see, how could Natalie see? How could she know there aren’t any guns?
She doesn’t know.
I can’t take Natalie’s word for this. What am I, crazy?
I try to get a better look at the gun in Nat’s back, but she’s behind me.
“Head forward.” Seven Fingers grinds my heel.
This hurts but I can hardly feel it.
How could they get three guns?
What if they aren’t guns? Wood could be shaped like a gun in the carpentry shop when a guard wasn’t looking. Wood would get through the metal detector without setting it off.
But they have a key. A key is metal too. How’d they get that through the snitch box?
No guns. Zero.
The guard tower is above me. When we pass down by the dock, they have the best view of us. They’ve eased up on our throats now. If Mr. Mattaman thinks they’re guards, he’ll wave us on board. But he’ll know. Of course he will. When I look up at the tower, I can barely see it. The fog is so thick, it has almost completely obscured the glass cage.
We’re coming up to the boat. Buddy Boy does the wave. A perfect imitation of my father: the bent arm, the toothpicks in his mouth.
Where is the buck sergeant? The buck sergeant is always here. Mr. Mattaman, please stop us.
Mr. Mattaman doesn’t stop us. How could he? He can’t see.
We start across the gangplank. Once we’re on the boat, Willy One Arm has the key. That is what Buddy was talking about. He won’t have to wait for the buck sergeant to pull our cards. He won’t have to wait for anything.
The gangplank sways. It’s so foggy we can barely see the water right below us. I’m walking carefully, quietly, just as Seven Fingers and Buddy Boy want me to do. I’m a good prisoner. I’m doing everything exactly right.
It’s safer just to go along, easier to do what they want me to do. Two steps on. Three. Four. Five. If I’m wrong, we could die.
But Natalie’s never wrong. Not about counting. Not ever.
Why am I doing what they want?
“No!” I cry. My hand shoots up. I open my mouth and a voice booms out from the deepest part of my chest. “HELP!”