“Who’s that, goddammit?” barked Lamar.
A huge, dark shape emerged from the steam, just as buck naked as Lamar, gleaming and globular.
“Goddamn, Junior, ain't nobody supposed to be in here.
I bought this goddamn time, fair and square.”
Junior Jefferson went close to four hundred pounds, and naked, his giant body seemed like something out of a movie, especially the way he shone in the light. He had a goddamned strange look in his eyes, too. Lamar didn't like this at all. His feral instincts came alert. Junior was a known rapist and child molester, and perhaps the only man in D block who didn't fear Lamar or his monster cousin O’Dell.
“You know the goddamn rules. Junior,” said Lamar, backing up just a bit.
“It's mine, I paid for it. Paid Harry Funt. It's the goddamned rules.”
“Rules—be shit,” said Junior and reached down and grabbed his cock to show Lamar. It was stiff as a bat and strangely blue.
“Git me some white pussy,” said Junior.
“Git me some white boy asshole, yas, I am.”
“You fucking nigger, you stay away. We got a gang truce and you is over the limits.”
“Your dumb motherfucker cousin O’Dell, he done dissed Daddy Cool and so Daddy Cool sold your ass to Rodney Smalls who done give it to me. You gonna service the niggers for a month.”
Lamar knew in a second it was possible. That O’Dell! That boy was born without a brain in his head! It wasn't just the soft part of his mouth and lip that was missing but a goddamned part of his thinker, too! But if he dissed Daddy, there was no sense in disciplining him, because he was too dumb to know pain from pleasure; worse yet, he had no ability to imagine fear. So to punish O’Dell would be pointless;
Daddy must have decided to punish Lamar in his place, and Lamar saw the terrible justice in it: he was responsible for O’Dell. O’Dell was family.
“You got something wrong, nigger. I don't take it in the ass. I give it in the ass, but I don't never take it there.”
Junior said, "I asked for you special, Lamar, 'cause you so pretty.”
Lamar had seen Junior kill a bitch in D yard once, just by squashing him against a wall. A snitch, the bitch deserved it; still, Junior just rammed him against the wall, capturing the bitch's face in his huge belly and sloppy, saggy chest.
The bitch beat and chirped, but it was over in two minutes.
That's how fast it could happen in the yard.
Junior advanced on him like the earth itself, set on swallowing him up. Lamar had no weapons; his shank was in his shaving kit in the shitter. He had no boots to kick with.
He was outweighed by a good two hundred pounds of meat and, though strong, was not near strong enough. But he wasn't scared. It was funny: he never got scared. He laughed a little bit. He liked having his back to the wall and everything on the line. It was exciting.
He paused, gathering strength as the giant wobbled in, arms spread, fingers grasping. Just as Junior closed, he hit Junior a powerful blow right above the heart, his
It was merely others conspiring against him that kept him from achieving that greatness. But somehow he saw things that others didn't see and felt things that others didn't feel. It may have been that he was too damned sensitive for his own good, that he saw through so much, that made people hate him so.
But that was the burden of the artist. In a society of Philistines, he had that cross to bear. He could do it.