Forty Lashes Less One

4

Harold Jackson recognized the man in the few moments the door was open and the guards were shoving him inside. As the man turned to brace himself Harold saw his face against the outside sunlight, the dark-skinned face, the one in the mess hall. The door slammed closed and they were in darkness. Harold’s eyes were used to it after half a day in here. He could see the man feeling his way along the wall until he was on the other side of the ten-by-ten-foot stone cell. It had been almost pitch dark all morning. Now, at midday, a faint light came through the air hole that was about as big around as a stovepipe and tunneled down through the domed ceiling. He could see the man’s legs good, then part of his body as he sat down on the bare dirt floor. Harold drew up his legs and stretched them out again so the leg-iron chains would clink and rattle—in case the man didn’t know he was here.

Raymond knew. Coming in, he had seen the figure sitting against the wall and had seen his eyes open and close as the sunlight hit his face, black against blackness, a striped animal in his burrow hole. Raymond knew. He had hit the man a good lick across the eyes with his tin plate, and if the man wanted to do something about it, now it was up to him. Raymond would wait, ready for him—while he pictured again Frank Shelby standing by the wall and tried to read Shelby’s face.

The guards had brought him back in the skiff, making him row with his arms dead-tired, and dragged him wet and muddy all the way up the hill to the cemetery. Frank Shelby was still there. All of them were, and a man sitting on the ground, his foot bloody. Raymond had wanted to tell Shelby there wasn’t any boat over there, and he wanted Shelby to tell him, somehow, what had gone wrong. He remembered Shelby staring at him, but not saying anything with his eyes or his expression. Just staring. Maybe he wasn’t picturing Shelby’s face clearly now, or maybe he had missed a certain look or gesture from him. He would have time to think about it. Thirty days in here. No mattress, no blanket, no slop bucket, use the corner, or piss on the nigger if he tried something. If the nigger hadn’t done something to Shelby he wouldn’t be here and you wouldn’t be here, Raymond thought. Bread and water for thirty days, but they would take the nigger out before that and he would be alone. There were men they took from here to the crazy hole after being alone in the darkness too long. It can happen if you think about being here and nothing else, Raymond said to himself. So don’t think about it. Go over and hit the nigger hard in the face and get it over with. God, if he wasn’t so tired.

Kick him in the face to start, Harold was thinking, as he picked at the dried blood crusted on the bridge of his nose. Two and a half steps and aim it for his cheekbone, either side. That would be the way, if he didn’t have on the irons and eighteen inches of chain links. He try kicking the man, he’d land flat on his back and the man would be on top of him. He try sneaking up, the man would hear the chain. ’Less the man was asleep and he worked over and got the chain around the man’s neck and crossed his legs and stretched and kicked hard. Then they come in and say what happen? And he say I don’t know, captain, the man must have choked on his bread. They say yeah, bread can kill a man all right; you stay in here with the bread the rest of your life. So the best thing would be to stand up and let the man stand up and hit him straightaway and beat him enough but not too much. Beat him just right.

He said, “Hey, boy, you ready?”

“Any time,” Raymond answered.

“Get up then.”

Raymond moved stiffly, bringing up his knees to rise.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“I’ll tell you something,” Raymond said. “If you’re any good, maybe you won’t get beat too bad. But after I sleep and rest my arms and legs I’ll break your jaw.”

“What’s the matters with your arms and legs?”

“From swimming the river.”

Harold Jackson stared at him, interested. He hadn’t thought of why the man had been put in here. Now he remembered the whistle. “You saying you tried to bust out?”

“I got across.”

“How many of you?”

Raymond hesitated. “I went alone.”

“And they over there waiting.”

“Nobody was waiting. They come in a boat.”

“Broad daylight—man, you must be one dumb Indin fella.”

Raymond’s legs cramped as he started to rise, and he had to ease down again, slowly.

“We got time,” Harold Jackson said. “Don’t be in a hurry to get yourself injured.”

“Tomorrow,” Raymond said, “when the sun’s over the hole and I can see your black nigger face in here.”

Harold saw the chain around the man’s neck and his legs straining to pull it tight. “Indin, you’re going to need plenty medicine before I’m through with you.”

“The only thing I’m worried about is catching you,” Raymond said. “I hear a nigger would rather run than fight.”

“Any running I do, red brother, is going to be right at your head.”

“I got to see that.”

“Keep your eyes open, Indin. You won’t see nothing once I get to you.”

There was a silence before Raymond said, “I’ll tell you something. It don’t matter, but I want you to know it anyway. I’m no Indian. I’m Mexican born in the United States, in the territory of Arizona.”

“Yeah,” Harold Jackson said. “Well, I’m Filipina born in Fort Valley, Georgia.”

“Field nigger is what you are.”

“Digger Indin talking, eats rats and weed roots.”

“I got to listen to a goddamn field hand.”

“I’ve worked some fields,” Harold said. “I’ve plowed and picked cotton, I’ve skinned mules and dug privies and I’ve busted rock. But I ain’t never followed behind another convict and emptied his bucket for him. White or black. No body.”

Raymond’s tone was lower. “You saw me carrying a bucket this morning?”

“Man, I don’t have to see you, I know you carry one every morning. Frank Shelby says dive into it, you dive.”

“Who says I work for Frank Shelby?”

“He say scratch my ass, you scratch it. He say go pour your coffee on that nigger’s head, you jump up and do it. Man, if I’m a field nigger you ain’t no better than a house nigger.” Harold Jackson laughed out loud. “Red nigger, that’s all you are, boy. A different color but the same thing.”

The pain in Raymond’s thighs couldn’t hold him this time. He lunged for the dark figure across the cell to drive into him and slam his black skull against the wall. But he went in high. Harold got under him and dumped him and rolled to his feet. They met in the middle of the cell, in the dim shaft of light from the air hole, and beat each other with fists until they grappled and kneed and strained against each other and finally went down.

When the guard came in with their bread and water, they were fighting on the hard-packed floor. He yelled to another guard who came fast with a wheelbarrow, pushing it through the door and the short passageway into the cell. They shoveled sand at Harold and Raymond, throwing it stinging hard into their faces until they broke apart and lay gasping on the floor. A little while later another guard came in with irons and chained them to ring bolts on opposite sides of the cell. The door slammed closed and again they were in darkness.

Bob Fisher came through the main gate at eight-fifteen that evening, not letting on he was in a hurry as he crossed the lighted area toward the convicts’ mess hall.

He’d wanted to get back by eight—about the time they’d be bringing the two women out of their cellblock and over to the cook shack. But his wife had started in again about staying here and not wanting to move to Florence. She said after sixteen years in this house it was their home. She said a rolling stone gathered no moss, and that it wasn’t good to be moving all the time. He reminded her they had moved twice in twenty-seven years, counting the move from Missouri. She said then it was about time they settled; a family should stay put, once it planted roots. What family? he asked her. Me and you? His wife said she didn’t know anybody in Florence and wasn’t sure she wanted to. She didn’t even know if there was a Baptist church in Florence. What if there wasn’t? What was she supposed to do then? Bob Fisher said that maybe she would keep her fat ass home for a change and do some cooking and baking, instead of sitting with them other fatties all day making patchwork quilts and bad-mouthing everybody in town who wasn’t a paid-up member of the church. He didn’t honestly care where she spent her time, or whether she baked pies and cakes or not. It was something to throw at her when she started in nagging about staying in Yuma. She said how could anybody cook for a person who came home at all hours with whiskey stinking up his breath? Yes, he had stopped and had a drink at the railroad hotel, because he’d had to talk to the express agent about moving equipment to Florence. Florence, his wife said. She wished she had never heard the name—the same name as her cousin who was still living in Sedalia, but now she didn’t even like to think of her cousin any more and they had grown up together as little girls. Bob Fisher couldn’t picture his wife as a little girl. No, that tub of fat couldn’t have ever been a little girl. He didn’t tell her that. He told her he had to get back to the prison, and left without finishing his coffee.

Fisher walked past the outside stairway and turned the corner of the mess hall. There were lights across the way in the main cellblock. He moved out into the yard enough to look up at the second floor of the mess hall and saw a light on in the superintendent’s office. The little Sunday school teacher was still there, or had come back after supper. Before going home Fisher had brought in his written report of the escape and the file on Raymond San Carlos. The Sunday school teacher had been putting his books away, taking them out of a suitcase and lining them up evenly on the shelf. He’d said just lay the report on the desk and turned back to his books. What would he be doing now? Probably reading his Bible.

Past the latrine adobe Fisher walked over to the mess hall and tried the door. Locked for the night. Now he moved down the length of the building, keeping close to the shadowed wall though moving at a leisurely pace—just out for a stroll, checking around, if anybody was curious. At the end of the building he stopped and looked both ways before crossing over into the narrow darkness between the cook-shack adobe and the tailor shop.

Now all he had to do was find the right brick to get a free show. About chin-high it was, on the right side of the cook-shack chimney that stuck out from the wall about a foot and would partly hide him as he pressed in close. Fisher worked a finger in on both sides of the brick that had been chipped loose some months before, and pulled it out as slowly as he could. He didn’t look inside right away; no, he always put the brick on the ground first and set himself, his feet wide apart and his shoulders hunched a little so the opening would be exactly at eye level. They would be just past the black iron range, this side of the work table where they always placed the washtub, with the bare electric light on right above them.

Fisher looked in. Goddamn Almighty, just in time.

Just as Norma Davis was taking off her striped shirt, already unbuttoned, slipping it off her shoulders to let loose those round white ninnies that were like nothing he had ever seen before. Beauties, and she knew it, too, the way she stuck them out, standing with her hands on her hips and her belly a round little mound curving down into her skirt. What was she waiting for? Come on, Fisher said, take the skirt off and get in the tub. He didn’t like it when they only washed from the waist up. With all the rock dust in the air and bugs from the mattresses and sweating under those heavy skirts, a lick-and-a-promise, armpits-and-neck wash wasn’t any good. They had to wash theirselves all over to be clean and healthy.

Maybe he could write it into the regulations: Women convicts must take a full bath every other day. Or maybe every day.

The Mexican girl, Tacha Reyes, appeared from the left, coming from the end of the stove with a big pan of steaming water, and poured it into the washtub. Tacha was still dressed. Fisher could tell by her hair she hadn’t bathed yet. She had to wait on Norma first, looking at Norma now as she felt the water. Tacha had a nice face; she was just a little skinny. Maybe give her more to eat—

Norma was taking off her skirt. Yes, sir, and that was all she had. No underwear on. Bare-ass naked with black stockings that come up over her knees. Norma turned, leaning against the work table to pull the stockings off, and Bob Fisher was looking at the whole show. He watched her lay her stockings on the table. He watched her pull her hair back with both hands and look down at her ninnies as she twisted the hair around so it would stay. He watched her step over to the tub, scratching under one of her arms, and say, “If it’s too hot I’ll put you in it.”

“It should be all right,” Tacha said.

Another voice, not in the room but out behind him, a voice he knew, said, “Guard, what’s the matter? Are you sick?”

Twisting around, Bob Fisher hit the peak of his hat on the chimney edge and was straightening it, his back to the wall, as Mr. Manly came into the space between the buildings.

“It’s me,” Fisher said.

“Oh, I didn’t know who it was.”

“Making the rounds. I generally check all the buildings before I go to bed.”

Mr. Manly nodded. “I thought somebody was sick, the way you were leaning against the wall.”

“No, I feel fine. Hardly ever been sick.”

“It was the way you were standing, like you were throwing up.”

“No, I was just taking a look in here. Dark places you got to check good.” He couldn’t see Mr. Manly’s eyes, but he knew the little son of a bitch was looking right at him, staring at him, or past him, where part of the brick opening might be showing and he could see light coming through. “You ready to go,” Fisher said, “I’ll walk you over to the gate.”

He came out from the wall to close in on Mr. Manly and block his view; but he was too late.

“What’s that hole?” Mr. Manly said.

“A hole?”

“Behind you, I can see something—”

Bob Fisher turned to look at the opening, then at Mr. Manly again. “Keep your voice down.”

“Why? What is it?”

“I wasn’t going to say anything. I mean it’s something I generally check on myself. But,” Fisher said, “if you want to take a look, help yourself.”

Mr. Manly frowned. He felt funny now standing here in the darkness. He said in a hushed tone, “Who’s in there?”

“Go ahead, take a look.”

Through the slit of the opening something moved, somebody in the room. Mr. Manly stepped close to the wall and peered in.

The light glinted momentarily on his glasses as his head came around, his eyes wide open.

“She doesn’t have any clothes on!”

“Shhhh.” Fisher pressed a finger to his heavy mustache. “Look and see what they’re doing.”

“She’s bare-naked, washing herself.”

“We want to be sure that’s all,” Fisher said.

“What?”

“Go on, see what she’s doing.”

Mr. Manly leaned against the wall, showing he was calm and not in any hurry. He peered in again, as though looking around a corner. Gradually his head turned until his full face was pressed against the opening.

What Norma was doing, she was sliding a bar of yellow soap over her belly and down her thighs, moving her legs apart, and coming back up with the soap almost to her breasts before she slid it down again in a slow circular motion. Mr. Manly couldn’t take his eyes off her. He watched the Mexican girl bring a kettle and pour water over Norma’s shoulders, and watched the suds run down between her breasts, Lord Jesus, through the valley and over the fertile plain and to the dark forest. He could feel his heart beating and feel Bob Fisher close behind him. He had to quit looking now; Lord, it was long enough. It was too long. He wanted to clear his throat. She was turning around and he got a glimpse of her behind as he pulled his face from the opening and stepped away.

“Washing herself,” Mr. Manly said. “That’s all I could see she was doing.”

Bob Fisher nodded. “I hoped that was all.” He stooped to pick up the brick and paused with it at the opening. “You want to look at Tacha?”

“I think I’ve seen enough to know what they’re doing,” Mr. Manly answered. He walked out to the open yard and waited there for Fisher to replace the brick and follow him out.

“What I want to know is what you’re doing spying on them.”

“Spying? I was checking, like I told you, to see they’re not doing anything wrong.”

“What do you mean, wrong?”

“Anything that ain’t natural, then. You know what I mean. Two women together without any clothes on—I want to know there ain’t any funny business going on.”

“She was washing herself.”

“Yes, sir,” Fisher said, “that’s all I saw too. The thing is, you never know when they might start.”

Mr. Manly could still see her, the bar of yellow soap moving over her body. “I’ve never heard of anything like that. They’re both women.”

“I’ll agree with you there,” Fisher said, “but in a prison you never know. We got men with no women, and women with no men, and I’ll tell you we got to keep our eyes open if we don’t want any funny business.”

“I’ve heard tell of men,” Mr. Manly said—the sudsy water running down between her breasts—“but women. What do you suppose they do?”

“I hope I never find out,” Fisher said. He meant it, too.

He got Mr. Manly out of there before the women came out and saw them standing in the yard; he walked Mr. Manly over to the main gate and asked him if he had read the report on the escape attempt.

Mr. Manly said yes, and that he thought it showed the guards to be very alert. He wondered, though, wasn’t this Raymond San Carlos the same one the Negro has assaulted in the mess hall? The very same, Fisher said. Then wasn’t it dangerous to put them both in the same cell? Dangerous to who? Fisher asked. To them, they were liable to start fighting again and try and kill each other. They already tried, Fisher said. They were chained to the floor now out of each other’s reach. Mr. Manly asked how long they would leave them like that, and Fisher said until they made up their minds to be good and kind to each other. Mr. Manly said that could be never if there was a grudge between them. Fisher said it didn’t matter to him, it was up to the two boys.

Fisher waited in the lighted area as Mr. Manly passed through the double gates of the sally port and walked off toward the superintendent’s cottage. He was pretty sure Mr. Manly had believed his story, that he was checking on the women to see they didn’t do queer things. He’d also bet a dollar the little Sunday school teacher wouldn’t make him chink the hole up either.

That was dumb, taking all his books over to the office. Mr. Manly sat in the living room of the superintendent’s cottage, in his robe and slippers, and didn’t have a thing to read. His Bible was on the night table in the bedroom. Yes, and he’d made a note to look up what St. Paul said about being in prison, something about all he’d gone through and how one had to have perseverance. He saw Norma Davis rubbing the bar of soap over her body, sliding it up and down. No—what he wished he’d brought were the file records of the two boys in the snake den. He would have to talk to them when they got out. Say to them, look, boys, fighting never solved anything. Now forget your differences and shake hands.

They were different all right, a Negro and an Indian. But they were alike too.

Both here for murder. Both born the same year. Both had served time. Both had sketchy backgrounds and no living relatives anybody knew of. The deserter and the deserted.

A man raised on a share-crop farm in Georgia; joined the army and, four months later, was listed as a deserter. Court-martialed, sentenced to hard labor.

A man raised on the San Carlos Indian reservation; deserted by his Apache renegade father before he was born. Father believed killed in Mexico; mother’s whereabouts unknown.

Both of them in the snake den now, a little room carved out of stone, with no light and hardly any air. Waiting to get at each other.

Maybe the sooner he talked to them the better. Bring them both out in ten days—no matter what Bob Fisher thought about it. Ten days was long enough. They needed spiritual guidance as much as they needed corporal punishment. He’d tell Fisher in the morning.

As soon as Mr. Manly got into bed he started thinking of Norma Davis again, seeing her clearly with the bare light right over her and her body gleaming with soap and water. He saw her in the room then, her body still slippery-looking in the moonlight that was coming through the window. Before she could reach the bed, Mr. Manly switched on the night-table lamp, grabbed hold of his Bible and leafed as fast as he could to St. Paul’s letters to the Corinthians.

For nine days neither of them spoke. They sat facing each other, their leg-irons chained to ring bolts that were cemented in the floor. Harold would stand and stretch and lean against the wall and Raymond would watch him. Later on Raymond would get up for a while and Harold would watch. They never stood up at the same time or looked at each other directly. There was silence except for the sound of the chains when they moved. Each pretended to be alone in the darkness of the cell, though each was intently aware of the other’s presence. Every day about noon a guard brought them hardtack and water. The guard was not allowed to speak to them, and neither of them spoke to him. It was funny their not talking, he told the other guards. It was spooky. He had never known a man in the snake den not to talk a storm when he was brought his bread and water. But these two sat there as if they had been hypnotized.

The morning of the tenth day Raymond said, “They going to let you out today.” The sound of his voice was strange, like someone else’s voice. He wanted to clear his throat, but wouldn’t let himself do it with the other man watching him. He said, “Don’t go anywhere, because when I get out of here I’m going to come looking for you.”

“I be waiting,” was all Harold Jackson said.

At midday the sun appeared in the air shaft and gradually faded. Nobody brought their bread and water. They had been hungry for the first few days but were not hungry now. They waited and it was early evening when the guard came in with a hammer and pounded the ring bolts open, both of them, Raymond watching him curiously but not saying anything. Another guard came in with shovels and a bucket of sand and told them to clean up their mess.

Bob Fisher was waiting outside. He watched them come out blinking and squinting in the daylight, both of them filthy stinking dirty, the Negro with a growth of beard and the Indian’s bony face hollowed and sick-looking. He watched their gaze creep over the yard toward the main cellblock where the convicts were standing around and sitting by the wall, most of them looking this way.

“You can be good children,” Fisher said, “or you can go back in there, I don’t care which. I catch you fighting, twenty days. I catch you looking mean, twenty days.” He looked directly at Raymond. “I catch you swimming again, thirty days and leg-irons a year. You understand me?”

For supper they had fried mush and syrup, all they wanted. After, they were marched over to the main cellblock. Raymond looked for Frank Shelby in the groups standing around outside, but didn’t see him. He saw Junior and nodded. Junior gave him a deadpan look. The guard, R. E. Baylis, told them to get their blankets and any gear they wanted to bring along.

“You putting us in another cell?” Raymond asked him. “How about make it different cells? Ten days, I’ll smell him the rest of my life.”

“Come on,” Baylis said. He marched them down the passageway and through the rear gate of the cellblock.

“Wait a minute,” Raymond said. “Where we going?”

The guard looked around at him. “Didn’t nobody tell you? You two boys are going to live in the TB yard.”