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.Faustino looked up at him.He gestured for him to come forward.He told him to step slightly to the left.Then he told him he was standing on it.He almost looked down but he didnt.Faustino nodded.Sientate, he said.He sat.Hay un cordon.He looked down.A small piece of string lay under his boot.When he pulled it up under his hand a knife emerged out of the gravel and he palmed it and slid it inside the waistband of his trousers.Then he got up and walked away.It was better than what he'd expected.A switchblade with the handles missing, made in Mexico, the brass showing through the plating on the bolsters.He untied the piece of twine from around it and wiped it on his shirt and blew down into the blade channel and tapped it against the heel of his boot and blew again.He pushed the button and it clicked open.He wet a patch of hair on the back of his wrist and tried the edge.He was standing on one foot with his leg crossed over his knee honing the blade against the sole of his boot when he heard someone coming and he folded the knife and slid it into his pocket and turned and went out, passing two men who smirked at him on their way to the vile latrine.A half hour later the horn sounded across the yard for the evening meal.He waited until the last man had entered the hall and then walked in and got his tray and moved down the line.Because it was Sunday and many of the prisoners had eaten food brought by their wives or family the hall was half empty and he turned and stood with his tray, the beans and tortillas and the anonymous stew, and picked a table in the corner where a boy not much older than he sat alone smoking and drinking water from a cup.He stood at the end of the table and set his tray down.Con permiso, he said.The boy looked at him and blew two thin streams of smoke from his nose and nodded and reached for his cup.On the inside of his right forearm was a blue jaguar struggling in the coils of an anaconda.In the web of his left thumb the pachuco cross and the five marks.Nothing out of the ordinary.But as he sat he suddenly knew why this man was eating alone.It was too late to rise again.He picked up the spoon with his left hand and began to eat.He heard the latch click shut on the door across the hall even above the muted scrape and click of spoons on the metal trays.He looked toward the front of the hall.There was no one behind the serving line.The two guards were gone.He continued to eat.His heart was pounding and his mouth was dry and the food was ashes.He took the knife from his pocket and put it in the waist of his trousers.The boy stubbed out the cigarette and set his cup in the tray.Outside somewhere in the streets beyond the prison walls a dog barked.A tamalera cried out her wares.John Grady realized he could not have heard these things unless every sound in the hall had ceased.He opened the knife quietly against his leg and slid it open longwise under the buckle of his belt.The boy stood and stepped over the bench and took up his tray and turned and started down along the far side of the table.John Grady held the spoon in his left hand and gripped the tray.The boy came opposite him.He passed.John Grady watched him with a lowered gaze.When the boy reached the end of the table he suddenly turned and sliced the tray at his head.John Grady saw it all unfold slowly before him.The tray coming edgewise toward his eyes.The tin cup slightly tilted with the spoon in it slightly upended standing almost motionless in the air and the boy's greasy black hair flung across his wedgeshaped face.He flung his tray up and the corner of the boy's tray printed a deep dent in the bottom of it.He rolled away backward over the bench and scrabbled to his feet.He thought the tray would clatter to the table but the boy had not let go of it and he chopped at him with it again, coming along the edge of the bench.He fell back fending him away and the trays clanged and he saw the knife for the first time pass under the trays like a cold steel newt seeking out the warmth within him.He leaped away sliding in the spilled food on the concrete floor.He pulled the knife from his belt and swung the tray backhanded and caught the cuchillero in the forehead with it.The cuchillero seemed surprised [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]