Dirty White Boys Read Free Page B

on their radar screens. They never teased or challenged, but only watched him with their savage, indifferent eyes, and he knew they were imagining hurting him out of sheer boredom.
    But none of the gangs was as bad as the white boys, who really ran the Mac, the tribe of mutants and scum, tattooed and slobby, their hair greased up like Vikings on a raid, their squirrely eyes narrow with evil cunning. They wouldfuck you or kill you in a second, as if it made not a penny’s worth of difference to them. Fat, with bulging white bellies and purple wreaths of convict tattooing proudly inscribed on their chalky skin, they were the outlaw elite. Goatees, full hillbilly beards, ponytails; hair, at any rate, in its many forms. Deviance was their religion, indifference to pain, their own or others, its highest form of expression. Some of them even had some teeth.
    In his terror, Richard yearned for Lamar’s protection, yearned even to see the idiot Odell. He knew he didn’t dare disappoint Lamar, who could be a stern disciplinarian. So somehow he kept himself on track, pushing ahead through the mob, waiting for his heart to go into vaporlock.
    The Mac without Lamar? Jesus, it terrified him. He’d be—
    “Wi-shud.”
    He looked up. It was his other savior. It was Odell.
    Working quickly, Lamar went down two cells to Freddy the Dentist’s, where Freddy was painting the engine of some twin-engined World War II fighter plane model, and sent Freddy off to find Harry Funt, the hack. Harry Funt was the absolute centerpiece of the scam he had already, with stunning speed that no IQ test could ever hope to measure, conceptualized in his mind by drawing upon the immense archival wealth of data he held in his head about the Mac.
    Lamar looked at his watch. Twenty till. The men would start filing back in shortly. Goddamned Harry better show.
    He went to his cell. He took his best shank out from under the toilet bowl, a wicked two-incher cut down from a butter knife. Cost him two cartons. Would kill a man in one swipe if you got him right. He’d done it, twice, too. That made him feel a little better. He’d go down fighting at least.
    Been fighting his whole goddamn life. Cards always against him. But it didn’t matter, he was a man, he’d do the job. He could get through anything. Once, when he was nineteen, a couple of Cherokee deputies in Anadarko had worked him over for three long days, broken his nose, his jaw, his cheekbone, four ribs, and the fingers of his left hand. They thought he’d raped this squaw girl. He had, and several others too frightened to complain, but he never gave them the goddamn satisfaction of hearing him admit it. That hadn’t been the first time he’d spit teeth and blood.
    He went to his collection of stroke books, dug through
Juggs
and
Leg Show
and
Dears and Rears
and came at last to the November 1992
Penthouse
. He took it out gingerly, opened it to the centerfold, and there he discovered the Picture.
    It was Lamar the Lion and his bitch princess. He looked at it, seeing his own features in the king of the jungle and the submissiveness across the woman’s beautiful face that was the highest form of love. Richard had finally gotten her tits right. They weren’t real big floppers. He hated floppers. He liked them kind of tight, muscley, so they’d move when she ran but wouldn’t bang. The lines around the central form were heavily etched, because he’d ran over them with a pencil himself, hoping to find out how Richard had done it. But his lines somehow made it heavier.
    Something in the picture he liked so very much. Nothing had ever pleased him quite that much. He folded it up and put it in his pocket just as Harry Funt came in. Harry, the oldest of the hacks, was in his blue uniform, with a walkie-talkie and a baton but no firearm.
    “Lamar—” Freddy said.
    “We’re getting out. Now. The three of us, Richard, Odell, and me—and you.”
    Harry just looked at him. He gulped. Some water came into