The Corrections

nowhere near as shameful as he’d thought.
    “I don’t understand these blankets,” Alfred said.
    “All right,” Chip told Denise as he started up the stairs. “If it makes you feel better, I won’t pay you back.”

    The question was: How to get out of this prison?
    The big black lady, the mean one, the bastard, was the onehe had to keep an eye on. She intended to make his life a hell. She stood at the far end of the prison yard throwing him significant glances to remind him that she hadn’t forgotten him, she was still in hot pursuit of her vendetta. She was a lazy black bastard and he said so at a shout. He cursed the bastards, black and white, all around him. Goddamned sneaky bastards with their pinheaded regulations. EPA bureaucrats, OSHA functionaries, insolent so-and-sos. They were keeping their distance now, sure, because they knew he was onto them, but just let him nod off for one minute, just let him let his guard down, and watch what they would do to him. They could hardly wait to tell him he was nothing. They could hardly wait to show their disrespect. That fat black bastard, that nasty black bitch over there, held his eye and nodded across the white heads of the other prisoners: I’m gonna get you . That’s what her nod said to him. And nobody else could see what she was doing to him. All the rest were timid useless strangers talking nonsense. He’d said hello to one of the fellows, asked him a simple question. The fellow didn’t even understand English. It ought to have been simple enough, ask a simple question, get a simple answer, but evidently not. He was on his own now, he was by himself in a corner; and the bastards were out to get him.
    He didn’t understand where Chip was. Chip was an intellectual and had ways of talking sense to these people. Chip had done a good job yesterday, better than he could have done himself. Asked a simple question, got a simple answer, and then explained it in a way that a man could understand. But there was no sign of Chip now. Inmates semaphoring one another, waving their arms like traffic cops. Just try giving a simple order to these people, just try it. They pretended you didn’t exist. That fat bastard black woman had them all scared witless. If she figured out that the prisoners were on his side, if she found out they’d aided him in any way, she’d make them pay. Oh, she had that look. She hadthat I’m gonna make you hurt look. And he, at this point in his life, he’d had just about enough of this insolent black type of woman, but what could you do? It was a prison. It was a public institution. They’d throw anybody in here. White-haired women semaphoring. Hairless fairies touching toes. But why him , for God’s sake? Why him? It made him weep to be thrown into a place like this. It was hell to get old even without being persecuted by that waddling black so-and-so.
    And here she came again.
    “Alfred?” Sassy. Insolent. “You gonna let me stretch your legs now?”
    “You’re a goddamned bastard!” he told her.
    “I is what I is, Alfred. But I know who my parents are. Now why don’t you put your hands down, nice and easy, and let me stretch your legs and help you feel better.”
    He lunged as she came at him, but his belt had got stuck in the chair, in the chair somehow, in the chair. Got stuck in the chair and he couldn’t move.
    “You keep that up, Alfred,” the mean one said, “and we’re gonna have to take you back to your room.”
    “Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!”
    She pulled an insolent face and went away, but he knew that she’d be back. They always came back. His only hope was to get his belt free of the chair somehow. Get himself free, make a dash, put an end to it. Bad design to build a prison yard this many stories up. A man could see clear to Illinois. Big window right there. Bad design if they meant to house prisoners here. From the look of the glass it was thermal pane, two layers. If he hit it with his head and pitched forward he could make it. But first he had to get the goddamned belt free.
    He struggled with its smooth nylon breadth in the same way over and over. There was a time when he’d encountered obstacles philosophically but that time was past. His fingers were as weak as grass when he tried to work themunder the belt so he could pull on it. They bent like soft bananas. Trying to work them under the belt was so obvi ously and utterly hopeless —the belt had such overwhelming advantages of toughness and