Spellbinder by Collin Wilcox Read Free Book Online Page A

room—day room C—the TV was controlled by a group of four trustees: Massingale, Davis, Gaumer and Haskell. Of the four, only Haskell was white. Each Sunday morning, until noon, Massingale, Gaumer and Davis insisted that the TV be tuned first to the Austin Holloway Hour, then to Oral Roberts. Early in their sentences, all together, the three men had taken decisions for Christ, born again.
    Of all the men in the room, only Massingale and Gaumer were attentively watching the Austin Holloway Hour. Davis and Haskell were playing knock poker, betting a cigarette on each knock, two cigarettes if the player who knocked got beaten. The others were reading, or talking quietly. One of the inmates was frowning over a jigsaw puzzle.
    Carson took a copy of Argosy from the rack, sat on one end of a blue plastic sofa and braced his feet against a large linoleum-topped coffee table.
    “Hey, man,” Massingale said softly, “get your fucking feet off the fucking furniture, you mind?”
    Without looking at the hulking black man, he lowered his feet to the floor. If Gallagher had lied about being a boxer, Massingale had told the truth. In Massingale’s cell, Scotch-taped to the wall, a clipping from the Newark Times showed him with his gloved hands raised in victory, smiling into the camera.
    Because Massingale was a heavy timer, in for murder, and because Carson was a kink, Massingale continued to abuse him, calling him obscene names, registering his contempt. As required, Carson listened with eyes lowered, staring at the magazine. If he talked back—even if he frowned—Massingale would find him in the yard, later. A shuffle of feet, a single lightning jab, and Massingale’s huge fist would crash into his stomach. While Massingale strolled away, others would step quickly forward, supporting him until he could stand. If he vomited on one of them, the process would be repeated a few days later: a different attacker, same result.
    While Massingale cursed him, quietly and earnestly, it would be better not to turn the magazine’s pages.
    Finally finished, but still glowering, Massingale turned toward the TV, moving his head from side to side, keeping time to the rhythm of a finger-snapping, hip-swaying, bright-smiling choir, swinging a spiritual. With the Argosy open across his lap, Carson looked at the singers: eight white girls, four black, each one looking straight at the camera, selling themselves, selling the song. Selling Jesus, God and, waiting his turn in his bright blue suit, smiling at the choir like an overweight, overage whoremaster, Austin Holloway, too.
    Every Sunday, his mother watched the Austin Holloway Hour. It was the only thing in her life that she could focus on—that could claim her full attention. Everything else had fallen away from her, lost forever.
    The choir was in its last chorus, voices rising, arms linked, swaying in slow, sappy unison. Beside him, Massingale was turning to Gaumer, muttering something about the black girl on the right. Answering, smiling broadly, Gaumer was elaborately licking his blue-black lips. Tall and thin, stoop-shouldered and hollow-chested, narrow across the torso, Gaumer had started out as a finger-snapping, jive-talking New Orleans pimp—and ended controlling heroin in the city’s black ghetto. On the outside, Gaumer was still important. So, inside, he was one of the men to see. Between them, the brains and the muscle, Gaumer and Massingale ran cell block C.
    Now Holloway was beginning his sermon. Carson watched for a moment, then dropped his eyes again to the magazine. When the choir came on again, he would look. To himself, he smiled. If he wrote to Holloway, maybe the black girl on the right would send him an autographed picture of herself. He could pass it on to Gaumer, a farewell gift. When he got out, in ten more days, Gaumer might help him.
    Ten more days …
    On his two hands, he could count them. Five days from now, he’d only need one hand. And five days after that,