Read Online On the Yard by Malcolm Braly - Free Book Online

Juleson shifted to turn a page the entire bunk swayed. The subtle feeling that he wasn’t well began to come on Manning again, and, even as he thought about it, his lips seemed to be swelling, growing thick and hypersensitive. A stitch ran down his side.
    â€œWhat would happen if you took sick while you were locked up like this?” he asked.
    â€œWe’d rattle the bars until someone came to see what was wrong.” Juleson’s face appeared, upside down, over the edge of his bunk. “What’s the matter? Don’t you feel well?”
    â€œI feel all right—I just wondered.”
    â€œThe medical attention isn’t bad. Sometimes you might get a fast shuffle on the sick line, but you have to remember that every shuck in the prison’s in that line trying to play on the doctors for a cell pass, or a few days in the hospital. But if they see you’re really sick, you probably get better attention here than you would on the streets. A lot of high-class specialists donate their time over here.”
    Manning wanted to continue the conversation, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. He nodded to signify his thanks and Juleson went back to his book. Manning rolled over on his side, and his breath came with the tension of the awareness that he was breathing at all. His throat was thickening again.
    â€œShine em up!” someone said sharply outside the cell. Manning rose up to find himself staring into a pair of violently bitter eyes—green as he would imagine the deepest shades in the heart of an iceberg.
    â€œTake off, Slim,” Juleson said from the upper bunk.
    â€œAin’t talking to you. I’m asking this new fellow if he’d like to get his shoes shined.”
    â€œI’m telling you to get out of here,” Juleson said with greater force. “Now move on, you unclassifiable degenerate.”
    â€œTalk smart, don’t you.”
    â€œGet!”
    The man slipped away, his eyes lingering over Manning’s feet as he left.
    â€œWho was that?” Manning asked.
    â€œSanitary Slim. He’s some kind of machinery. He always comes around and hits on the fish to shine their shoes. It’s an obsession with him—he’s got it like cancer.”
    Bells began to ring and minutes later the men from the yard were beginning to file in. More bells, and they stood up at the bars to be counted. Still another bell, and they were released, tier by tier, for dinner. Manning followed after Juleson and they entered what appeared to be an enormous cafeteria. They waited near the end of a long line that was passing in front of the steam table. Somehow Manning had expected silence, but the air was heavy with the shuffling blur of private conversation multiplied many times over and punctuated with the sharp clicking of metal on metal, speeded by repetition until it seemed like the whirring of a cloud of aluminum crickets, and added to this was the deeper racket caused by the beating of dippers against the trays as they were passed along the steam table. Manning closed his eyes.
    â€œHey,” Juleson said quietly.
    â€œI’ll be all right.”
    â€œBelieve me, you get used to all this—and maybe that’s the worst thing that happens to you.”
    The food was better than the food he had been eating in the county jail, but he had no appetite for it. He picked at the edge of his fish, and drank half a cup of black coffee.
    â€œAren’t you going to eat?” Juleson asked tentatively.
    â€œNo, I’m not hungry.”
    â€œMay I have your fish? And the pie if you don’t want it?”
    â€œCertainly, help yourself.”
    Juleson hesitated, then drew Manning’s tray next to his own. “I’m always hungry,” he said in an apologetic tone.
    Another bell sounded to send them filing from the mess hall, back to the cells. Again Juleson settled down with his book and Manning lay beneath him listening to