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another football player back then, a year earlier, who'd come so close that everyone agreed he would win that damn Heisman for sure the following year. It would be his year." Carrew grinned.
    Now Bolan stared in sudden recognition.
    "Lyle 'In Style' Carrew. Penn State."
    Carrew grinned brightly. "That's me. Aren't you going to ask what happened?"
    Bolan finished buttoning his shirt, not saying anything.
    Carrew continued. "Anyway, our boy Lyle ended up in Nam in '66, making end runs with grenades, getting his legs shot to hell. Spends three months in a POW camp with no doctor, no medical treatment. Only reason they didn't kill him was they liked to watch him crawl across the room for his food. And I crawled, man, crawled for every bite. I learned something about prisons there, man. Anyway, so much for Lyle 'In Style' Carrew's career in the N. F. L."
    He laughed that gruff, humorless scraping sound.
    "So every once in a while during the N.F.L. draft season I'm a little cranky. I'm in that damn VA hospital, waiting for over an hour, listening to some doctor who was still shitting in diapers in '66, calling me "Lyle" like I was his son, but getting huffy when I call him "Dave," telling me he prefers to be called "Dr. Donnelly." So I tossed him into the X-ray machine. Things got a little carried away from there."
    Bolan laughed. "Yeah. So what do you do when you're not busting up VA-hospitals?"
    "Teach kids about the tribal rites of the Aruntas when they'd much rather be groping each other in their dorm rooms. I'm a professor of anthropology at the university."
    "You're kidding?"
    "Not at all."
    "How come they don't fire you for this?"
    Carrew laughed. "Tenure. Besides, they need me for other reasons. Aside from being a brilliant instructor and a minor authority in my field, I'm good advertising. They like showing me off as their equal-opportunity employee. Here's our crippled, black, war-veteran professor. Hell, I'm an institution."
    Carrew fell silent for a moment. Suddenly he wheeled around, facing the bars, his back to Bolan.
    "Rodeo's going to kill you, Blue. Going to do it soon, just as he promised. Probably won't come at you alone."
    "For a college professor, you sure know a lot about prison survival."
    "Three months as a POW, then eight months in a VA hospital, Blue. In some ways the hospital was worse. Not because of the staff, most of whom were terrific. But over there I saw guys struggle against impossible odds and survive, only to come home to a VA hospital and kill themselves within six weeks. Loss of hope is powerful stuff, man. Now I'm a black man in a wheelchair. That's two life sentences. I know how to play rough to survive."
    Bolan believed him.
    "I also know enough not to get involved in your beef. I gave the cops a hard time when they arrested me, which is why I'm in here. But when things cool down and I roll in front of the judge in my suit and tie and diplomas and medals, promising never to do such a thing again, I'll be back on campus watching the girls get younger every year. In other words, you're on your own."
    Bolan grinned. "Always have been, Lyle."
    "Yeah." Carrew nodded. "I had a feeling."
    They heard the guards' boots clomping along the metal catwalks outside their cell. Bolan and Carrew were on the first tier, to accommodate Carrew's wheelchair. The guards on each tier were selecting the first shift for open visitation, visitors and prisoners mingling in the courtyard.
    "This happens on Sundays only," Carrew explained, "and then only for the least threatening residents. Something new."
    The guard strolled by their cell and pounded his hickory baton on the bars. "Let's go. You got visitors."
    Carrew wheeled to the bars and waited. The doors on the whole row would be opened simultaneously.
    "Enjoy," Bolan said, hopping up on his bunk.
    "You bet," Carrew said.
    "You, too, Blue. Got a visitor. Move it."
    "Me?"
    "That's what I said. And change that shirt. It's torn."
    Bolan was surprised as he jumped