Forty Lashes Less One

8

“You know why they won’t try to escape?” Mr. Manly said.

Bob Fisher stood at the desk and didn’t say anything, because the answer was going to come from the little preacher anyway.

“Because they see the good in this. They realize this is their chance to become something.”

“Running across a pasture field.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Take a man outside enough times,” Fisher said, “he’ll run for the hills.”

“Not these two boys.”

“Any two. They been outside every day for a week and they’re smelling fresh air.”

“Two weeks, and they can run three miles without stopping,” Mr. Manly said. “Another couple of weeks I want to see them running five miles, maybe six.”

“They’ll run as long as it’s easier than working.”

Mr. Manly smiled a little. “I see you don’t know them very well.”

“I have known them all my life,” Bob Fisher said. “When running becomes harder than working, they’ll figure a way to get out of it. They’ll break each other’s legs if they have to.”

“All right, then I’ll talk to them again. You can be present, Bob, and I’ll prove to you you’re wrong.”

“I understand you write a weekly report to Mr. Rynning,” Fisher said. “Have you told him what you’re doing?”

“As a matter of fact, I have.”

“You told him you got them running outside?”

“I told him I’m trying something out on two boys considered incorrigible, a program that combines spiritual teaching and physical exercise. He’s made no mention to me what he thinks. But if you want to write to him, Bob, go right ahead.”

“If it’s all the same to you,” Fisher said, “I want it on the record I didn’t have nothing to do with this in any way at all.”

Three miles wasn’t so bad and it was easier to breathe at the end of the stretch. It didn’t feel as if their lungs were burning any more. They would walk for a few minutes and run another mile and then walk again. Maybe they could do it again, run another mile before resting. But why do it if they didn’t have to, if the guards didn’t expect it? They would run a little way and when Raymond or Harold would call out they had to rest the car and would stop and wait for them.

“I think we could do it,” Raymond said.

“Sure we could.”

“Maybe run four, five miles at the start.”

“We could do that too,” Harold said, “but why would we want to?”

“I mean to see if we could do it.”

“Man, we could run five miles right now if we wanted.”

“I don’t know.”

“If we had something to run for. All I see it doing is getting us tired.”

“It’s better than laying adobes, or working on the rock pile.”

“I believe you’re right there,” Harold said.

“Well,” Raymond said, “we can try four miles, five miles at any time we want. What’s the hurry?”

“What’s the hurry,” Harold said. “I wish that son of a bitch would give us a cigarette. Look at him sucking on it and blowing the smoke out. Man.”

They were getting along all right with the guards, because the guards were finding out this was pretty good duty, driving around the countryside in a Ford Touring Car. Ride around for a few hours. Smoke any time they wanted. Put the canvas top up if it got too hot in the sun. The guards weren’t dumb, though. They stayed away from trees and the riverbank, keeping to open range country once they had followed the railroad tracks out beyond town.

The idea of a train going by interested Harold. He pictured them running along the road where it was close to the tracks and the train coming up behind them out of the depot, not moving too fast. As the guards watched the train, Harold saw himself and Raymond break through the weeds to the gravel roadbed, run with the train and swing up on one of those iron-rung ladders they had on boxcars. Then the good part. The guards are watching the train and all of a sudden the guards see them on the boxcar—waving to them.

“Waving good-bye,” Harold said to Raymond when they were resting one time and he told him about it.

Raymond was grinning. “They see the train going away, they don’t know what to do.”

“Oh, they take a couple of shots,” Harold said. “But they so excited, man, they can’t even hit the train.”

“We’re waving bye-bye.”

“Yeah, while they shooting at us.”

“It would be something, all right.” Raymond had to wipe his eyes.

After a minute Harold said, “Where does the train go to?”

“I don’t know. I guess different places.”

“That’s the trouble,” Harold said. “You got to know where you going. You can’t stay on the train. Sooner or later you got to get off and start running again.”

“You think we could run five miles, uh?”

“If we wanted to,” Harold said.

It was about a week later that Mr. Manly woke up in the middle of the night and said out loud in the bedroom, “All right, if you’re going to keep worrying about it, why don’t you see for yourself what they’re doing?”

That’s what he did the next day: hopped in the front seat of the Ford Touring Car and went along to watch the two boys do their road work.

It didn’t bother the guard driving too much. He had less to say was all. But the guard with the Winchester yelled at Raymond and Harold more than he ever did before to come on, pick ’em up, keep closer to the car. Mr. Manly said the dust was probably bothering them. The guard said it was bothering him too, because he had to see them before he could watch them. He said you get a con outside you watch him every second.

Raymond and Harold ran three miles and saw Mr. Manly looking at his watch. Later on, when they were resting, he came over and squatted down in the grass with them.

“Three miles in twenty-five minutes,” he said. “That’s pretty good. You reckon you could cover five miles in an hour?”

“I don’t think so,” Raymond said. “It’s not us, we want to do it. It’s our legs.”

“Well, wanting something is half of getting it,” Mr. Manly said. “I mean if you want something bad enough.”

“Sure, we want to do it.”

“Why?”

“Why? Well, I guess because we got to do it.”

“You just said you wanted to.”

“Yeah, we like to run.”

“And I’m asking you why.” Mr. Manly waited a moment. “Somebody told me all you fellas want to do is get out of work.”

“Who tole you that?”

“It doesn’t matter who it was. You know what I told him? I told him he didn’t know you boys very well. I told him you were working harder now, running, than you ever worked in your life.”

“That’s right,” Raymond said.

“Because you see a chance of doing something nobody else in the prison can do. Run twenty miles in a day.”

Raymond said, “You want us to run twenty miles?”

“You want to run twenty miles. You’re an Apache Indian, aren’t you? And Harold’s a Zulu. Well, by golly, an Apache Indian and a Zulu can run twenty miles, thirty miles a day, and there ain’t a white man in this territory can say that.”

“You want us to run twenty miles?” Raymond said again.

“I want you to start thinking of who you are, that’s what I want. I want you to start thinking like warriors for a change instead of like convicts.”

Raymond was watching him, nodding as he listened. He said, “Do these waryers think different than other people?”

“They think of who they are.” An angry little edge came into Mr. Manly’s tone. “They got pride in their tribe and their job, and everything they do is to make them better warriors—the way they live, the way they dress, the way they train to harden theirselves, the way they go without food or water to show their bodies their willpower is in charge here and, by golly, their bodies better do what they’re told. Raymond, you say you’re Apache Indian?”

“Yes, sir, that’s right.”

“Harold, you believe you’re a Zulu?”

“Yes-suh, captain, a Zulu.”

“Then prove it to me, both of you. Let me see how good you are.”

As Mr. Manly got to his feet he glanced over at the guards, feeling a little funny now in the silence and wondering if they had been listening. Well, so what if they had? He was superintendent, wasn’t he? And he answered right back, You’re darn right.

“You boys get ready for some real training,” he said now. “I’m taking you at your word.”

Raymond waited until he walked away and had reached the car. “Who do you think tole him we’re doing this to get out of work?”

“I don’t know,” Harold said. “Who do you think?”

“I think that son of a bitch Frank Shelby.”

“Yeah,” Harold said, “he’d do it, wouldn’t he?”

On Visiting Day the mess-hall tables were placed in a single line, dividing the room down the middle. The visitors remained on one side and the convicts on the other. Friends and relatives could sit down facing each other if they found a place at the tables; but they couldn’t touch, not even hands, and a visitor was not allowed to pass anything to a convict.

Frank Shelby always got a place at the tables and his visitor was always his brother, a slightly older and heavier brother, but used to taking orders from Frank.

Virgil Shelby said, “By May for sure.”

“I don’t want a month,” Frank said. “I want a day.”

“I’m telling you what I know. They’re done building the place, they’re doing something inside the walls now and they won’t let anybody in.”

“You can talk to a workman.”

“I talked to plenty of workmen. They don’t know anything.”

“What about the railroad?”

“Same thing. Old boys in the saloon talk about moving the convicts, but they don’t know when.”

“Somebody knows.”

“Maybe they don’t. Frank, what are you worried about? Whatever the day is we’re going to be ready. I’ve been over and across that rail line eight times—nine times now—and I know just where I’m going to take you off that train.”

“You’re talking too loud.”

Virgil took time to look down the table both ways, at the convicts hunched over the tables shoulder to shoulder and their visitors crowded in on this side, everyone trying to talk naturally without being overheard. When Virgil looked at his brother again, he said, “What I want to know is how many?”

“Me. Junior, Soonzy, Joe Dean. Norma.” Frank Shelby paused. “No, we don’t need to take Norma.”

“It’s up to you.”

“No, we don’t need her.”

“That’s four. I want to know you’re together, all in the same place, because once we hit that train there’s going to be striped suits running all over the countryside.”

“That might be all right.”

“It could be. Give them some people to chase after. But it could mess things up too.”

“Well, right now all I hear is you wondering what’s going to happen. You come with more than that, or I live the next forty years in Florence, Arizona.”

“I’m going to stay in Yuma a while, see what I can find out about the train. You need any money?” Virgil asked.

“If I have to buy some guards. I don’t know, get me three, four hundred.”

“I’ll send it in with the stores. Anything else?”

“A good idea, buddy.”

“Don’t worry, Frank, we’re going to get you out. I’ll swear to it.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll see you.”

“Next month,” Virgil said. He turned to swing a leg over the bench, then looked at his brother again. “Something funny I seen coming here—these two convicts running behind a Ford automobile. What do you suppose they was doing, Frank?”

Shelby had to tear his pants nearly off to see Norma again. He ripped them down the in-seam from crotch to ankle and told the warehouse guard he’d caught them on some bailing wire and, man, it had almost fixed him good. The guard said to get another pair out of stores. Shelby said all right, and he’d leave his ripped pants at the tailor’s on the way back. The guard knew what Shelby was up to; he accepted the sack of Bull Durham Shelby offered and played the game with him. It wasn’t hurting anybody.

So he got his new pants and headed for the tailor shop. As soon as he was inside, Norma Davis came off the work table, where she was sitting smoking a cigarette, and went into the stock room. Shelby threw the ripped pants at the tailor, told Tacha to watch out the window for Bob Fisher, and followed Norma into the back room, closing the door behind him.

“He’s not as sure of himself as he used to be,” Tacha said. “He’s worried.”

The tailor was studying the ripped seam closely.

Tacha was looking out the window, at the colorless tone of the yard in sunlight: adobe and granite and black shadow lines in the glare. The brick detail was at work across the yard, but she couldn’t hear them. She listened for sounds, out in the yard and in the room behind her, but there were none.

“They’re quiet in there, uh?”

The tailor said nothing.

“You expect them to make sounds like animals, those two. That old turnkey makes sounds. God, like he’s dying. Like somebody stuck a knife—” Tacha stopped.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the tailor said.

“I’m talking about Mr. Fisher, the turnkey, the sounds he makes when he’s in her cell.”

“And I don’t want to know.” The tailor kept his head low over his sewing machine.

“He sneaks in at night—”

“I said I don’t want to hear about it.”

“He hasn’t been coming very long. Just the past few weeks. Not every night either. He makes some excuse to go in there, like to fix the lantern or search the place for I don’t know what. One time she say, ‘Oh, I think there is a tarantula in here,’ and the turnkey hurries in there to kill it. I want to say to him, knowing he’s taking off his pants then, ‘Hey, mister, that’s a funny thing to kill a tarantula with.’ ”

“I’m not listening to you,” the tailor said. “Not a word.”

In the closeness of the stock room Shelby stepped back to rest his arm on one of the shelves. Watching Norma, he loosened his hat, setting it lightly on his forehead. “Goodness,” he said, “I didn’t even take off my hat, did I?”

Norma let her skirt fall. She smoothed it over her hips and began buttoning her blouse. “I feel like a mare, standing like that.”

“Honey, you don’t look like a mare. I believe you are about the trickiest thing I ever met.”

“I know a few more ways.”

“I bet you do, for a fact.”

“That old man, he breathes through his nose right in your ear. Real loud, like he’s having heart failure.”

Shelby grinned. “That would be something. He has a stroke while he’s in there with you.”

“I’ll tell you, he isn’t any fun at all.”

“You ain’t loving him for the pleasure, sweetheart. You’re supposed to be finding out things.”

“He doesn’t know yet when we’re going.”

“You asked him?”

“I said to him, ‘I will sure be glad to get out of this place.’ He said it wouldn’t be much longer and I said, ‘Oh, when are we leaving here?’ He said he didn’t know for sure, probably in a couple of months.”

“We got to know the day,” Shelby said.

“Well, if he don’t know it he can’t hardly tell me, can he?”

“Maybe he can find it out.”

“From who?”

“I don’t know. The superintendent, somebody.”

“That little fella, he walks around, he looks like he’s lost, can’t find his mama.”

“Well, mama, maybe you should talk to him.”

“Get him to come to my cell.”

“Jesus, you’d eat him up.”

Norma giggled. “You say terrible things.”

“I mean by the time you’re through there wouldn’t be nothing left of him.”

“If you’re through, you better get out of here.”

“I talked to Virgil. He doesn’t know anything either.”

“Don’t worry,” Norma said. “One of us’ll find out. I just want to be sure you take me along when the time comes.”

Shelby gave her a nice little sad smile and shook his head slowly. “Sweetheart,” he said, “how could I go anywhere without you?”

Good timing, Norma Davis believed, was one of the most important things in life. You had to think of the other person. You had to know his moods and reactions and know the right moment to spring little surprises. You didn’t want the person getting too excited and ruining everything before it was time.

That’s why she brought Bob Fisher along for almost two months before she told him her secret.

It was strange; like instinct. One night, as she heard the key turning in the iron door of the cellblock, she knew it was Bob and, for some reason, she also knew she was going to tell him tonight. Though not right away.

First he had to go through his act. He had to look in at Tacha and ask her what was she doing, reading? Then he had to come over and see Norma in the bunk and look around the cell for a minute and ask if everything was all right. Norma was ready. She told him she had a terrible sore ankle and would he look at it and see if it was sprained or anything. She got him in there and then had to slow down and be patient while he actually, honest to God, looked at her ankle and said in a loud voice it looked all right to him. He whispered after that, getting out of his coat and into the bunk with her, but raising up every once in a while to look at the cell door.

Norma said, “What’s the matter?”

“Tacha, she can hear everything.”

“If she bothers you, why don’t you put her some place else?”

“This is the women’s block. There isn’t any place else.”

Norma got her hand inside his shirt and started fooling with the hair on his chest. “How does Tacha look to you?”

“Cut it out, it tickles,” Fisher said. “What do you mean, how does she look?”

“I don’t know, I don’ think she looks so good. I hear her coughing at night.”

“Listen, I only got a few minutes.”

Norma handled the next part of it, making him believe he was driving her wild, and as he lay on the edge of the bunk breathing out of his nose, she told him her secret.

She said, “Guess what? I know somebody who’s planning to escape.”

That got him up and leaning over her again.

“Who?”

“I heard once,” Norma said, “if you help the authorities here they’ll help you.”

“Who is it?”

“I heard of convicts who helped stop men trying to escape and got pardoned. Is that right?”

“It’s happened.”

“They were freed?”

“That’s right.”

“You think it might happen again?”

“It could. Who’s going out?”

“Not out of here. From the train. You think if I found out all about it and told you I’d get a pardon?”

“I think you might,” Fisher said. “I can’t promise, but you’d have a good chance.”

“It’s Frank Shelby.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“His brother Virgil’s going to help him.”

“Where do they jump the train?”

“Frank doesn’t know yet, but soon as I find out I’ll tell you.”

“You promise?”

“Cross my heart.”

“You’re a sweet girl, Norma. You know that?”

She smiled at him in the dim glow of the lantern and said, “I try to be.”

Another week passed before Bob Fisher thought of something else Norma had said.

He was in the tailor shop that day, just checking, not for any special reason. Tacha looked up at him and said, “Norma’s not here.”

“I can see that.”

“She’s at the toilet—if you’re looking for her.”

“I’m not looking for her,” Fisher said.

He wasn’t sure if Tacha was smiling then or not—like telling him she knew all about him. Little Mexican bitch, she had better not try to get smart with him.

It was then he thought of what Norma had said. About Tacha not looking so good. Coughing at night.

Hell, yes, Bob Fisher said to himself and wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before. There was only one place around here to put anybody who was coughing sick. Over in the TB cellblock.