Simon sits up slowly and makes sure that he isn’t too dizzy from his broken nose and hunger to walk steadily to where the food waits on plastic trays. The reader tips the magazine down and surveys Simon and the card players and begins reading again. Simon takes a tray with a glop of stew and another lump of what looks like creamed corn. He brings it back to the bed and begins to eat. After two spoonfuls he pauses and looks up from his food at the sleeping man. He looks across to the card players.

They are watching him.

Simon swallows and gestures with his chin at the sleeping man. “He dead, or what?”

“Naw,” says one of the card players around a mouthful of stew. “He just wished he was.”

“Why?” asks Simon, picking at the creamed corn with the dull metal spoon.

“Got drunk, beat up his wife.”

The other card player shrugs. “Won’t be long before she bail him out either.”

Simon looks back at the sleeping man. “You think?”

“Any woman stay mad at you for hittin her a few times?”

“Ain’t ever hit a woman.”

The card player with his back to Simon half-turns and pushes his chair sideways. He spoons a lump of potato into his mouth and chews. He taps the side of his nose with the greasy spoon.

“Cops do that?” he asks, looking at Simon sideways in the green light.

Simon shakes his head as he swallows the corn, wincing at the pain shooting through his nose and at the snotlike texture of the creamed corn.

The potato-chewing card player keeps looking at him.

“Whatcha here for then?”

“I killed a goose.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

The other card player shakes his head.

“Who busted you up then?”

“The goose.”

“No shit,” he says again.

They hear the jailer cough and the squeak of his metal chair against the cement down the hall.

“They lockin you down for gettin beat up by a goose?”

“I guess so.”

“That don’t sound right.”

The reader sets down his magazine and sits up on the bed.

“Them geese is mean fuckers.”

Everyone turns to look at him except for the man sleeping off his binge in the corner bunk.