He sat on his bunk, lifted the mattress, and took out a piece of rough bread. He debated adding a handful of dates, told himself he should save them, and snatched them up anyway. He ate them one by one, grimacing, saving the bread for last to take that slimy, fruity taste out of his mouth.
When he was done with this miserable excuse for a meal, he walked aimlessly to the right side of his cell. He looked down and stifled a cry of revulsion. Trask was sprawled half on his cot and half off it, and his pants legs had pulled up a little. His ankles were bare above the prison slippers they gave you to wear. A large, sleek rat was lunching up on Trask's leg. Its repulsive pink tail was neatly coiled around its gray body.
Lloyd walked to the other corner of his own cell and picked up the cotleg. He went back and stood for a moment, wondering if the rat would see him and decide to go off where the company wasn't quite so lively. But the rat's back was to him, and as far as Lloyd could tell, the rat didn't even know he was there. Lloyd measured the distance with his eye and decided the cotleg would reach admirably.
"Huh!" Lloyd grunted, and swung the leg. It squashed the rat against Trask's leg, and Trask fell off his bunk with a stiff thump. The rat lay on its side, dazed, aspirating weakly. There were beads of blood in its whiskers. Its rear legs were moving, as if its ratty little brain was telling it to run somewhere but along the spinal cord the signals were getting all scrambled up. Lloyd hit it again and killed it.
"There you are, you cheap f**k," Lloyd said. He put the cotleg down and wandered back to his bunk. He was hot and scared and felt like crying. He looked back over his shoulder and cried: "How do you like rat hell, you scuzzy little cocksucker?"
"Mother!" the voice cried happily in answer. "Moootherrr! "
"Shut up! " Lloyd screamed. "I ain't your mother! Your mother's in charge of blowjobs at a whorehouse in Asshole, Indiana! "
"Mother?" the voice said, now full of weak doubt. Then it fell silent.
Lloyd began to weep. As he cried he rubbed his eyes with his fists like a small boy. He wanted a steak sandwich, he wanted to talk to his lawyer, he wanted to get out of here.
At last he lay down on his cot, put one arm over his eyes, and masturbated. It was as good a way of getting to sleep as any.
When he woke up again it was 5 P.M. and Maximum Security was dead quiet. Blearily, Lloyd got off his cot, which now leaned drunkenly toward the spot where one of its supports had been taken away. He got the cotleg, steeled himself for the cries of "Mother! " and began hammering on the bars like a farm cook calling the hired hands in for a big country supper. Supper. Now there was a word, had there ever been a finer? Ham steaks and potatoes with redeye gravy and fresh new peas and milk with Hershey's chocolate syrup to dump in it. And a great big old dish of strawberry ice cream for dessert. No, there had never been a word to match supper.
"Hey, ain't nobody there?" Lloyd cried, his voice breaking.
No answer. Not even a cry of "Mother! " At this point, he might have welcomed it. Even the company of the mad was better than the company of the dead.
Lloyd let the cotleg drop with a crash. He stumbled back to his bunk, turned up the mattress, and made inventory. Two more hunks of bread, two more handfuls of dates, a half-gnawed pork chop, one piece of bologna. He pulled the slice of bologna in two and ate the big half, but that only whetted his appetite, brought it raging up.
"No more," he whispered, then gobbled the rest of the pork off the chopbone and called himself names and wept some more. He was going to die in here, just as his rabbit had died in its cage, just as Trask had died in his.
Trask.
He looked into Trask's cell for a long, thoughtful time, watching the flies circle and land and take off. There was a regular L.A. International Airport for flies right on ole Trask's face. At long last, Lloyd got the cotleg, went to the bars, and reached through with it. By standing on tiptoe he could get just enough length to catch the rat's body and drag it toward his cell.
When it was close enough, Lloyd got on his knees and pulled the rat through to his side. He picked it up by the tail and held the dangling body before his eyes for a long time. Then he put it under his mattress where the flies could not get at it, segregating the limp body from what remained of his food-stash. He looked fixedly at the rat for a long time before letting the mattress fall back, mercifully hiding it from sight.
"Just in case," Lloyd Henreid whispered to the silence. "Just in case, is all."
Then he climbed up on the other end of the bunk, drew his knees up to his chin, and sat still.
BOOK I CAPTAIN TRIPS Chapter 33-34
Chapter 33
At twenty-two minutes of nine by the clock over the sheriff's office doorway, the lights went off.