Half of Paradise

Avery Broussard

The main room (called the drunk tank) of the parish jail was on the second story of the building. The walls and floor and ceiling were made from concrete. There were two barred and wire-grated windows to each wall. In the summer the room was damp and foul smelling from sweat and lack of ventilation. Once a month the trusties cleaned the room with disinfectant, but it did no good. The stench was always there. There was no way to get rid of it. They scrubbed the concrete with sand and brushes and whitewashed the walls and ceiling, and even sprayed the room with insecticide, but it was useless. The stench was on the men’s bodies, in their clothes, in the tick mattresses; everything in the room had that same thick, sour odor to it.

In the center was a low boxlike structure made entirely of iron that was called the tank. It sat squat and ugly in the middle of the floor, like a room within a room. The walls were painted gray and perforated with small square holes. The tank was divided into cells, each containing four iron bunks welded to the walls. There was a narrow corridor that ran the length of the structure, separating the cells into two opposite rows. It was here in the tank where the stench was worst. There was little air and no lighting and the walls were covered with moisture. Every afternoon at five o’clock the inmates were locked in the tank for the night. It was usually overcrowded, and some of the men slept on the floor in the corridor.

At seven in the morning the jailer opened the door to the main room and the trusties wheeled in the food carts and unlocked the tank. The area outside the tank was called the bullpen, where the men were allowed to move about during the day. The jailer always stood in the doorway and watched the men line up with their tin plates and spoons for breakfast and lunch (there was no supper). There was a white line painted on the floor, forming a six-foot square around the doorway where he stood. This was the deadline, and none of the inmates was allowed across it when the door was open. If they did come past the line, they would be knocked to the floor by either the jailer or one of the trusties. The jailer, large and heavyset, was a careful man and took no chances.

During the day the men could do as they pleased in the bullpen. The room had to be kept clean, and it was forbidden to throw anything out the windows, whether a cigarette end or a scrap of paper, or call down to the people in the street. If a rule was broken, one of two things could happen. Everyone could be thrown in the tank and left there for several days, or the person who broke the rule would be dragged off to the hole, which was in another part of the building. The hole was a cast-iron cage, like the tank, except much smaller in size with enough room for only two men. It was ordinarily used to hold men who were condemned to death and awaiting execution, but since these men were there for only a short time it was usually left free to be used as a place of solitary confinement. On one wall of the hole there was a list of names written in pencil with a date beside each one. These were the men who had been put to death upstairs.

Avery’s trial had been over for a week. He had pleaded guilty and received a sentence of one to three years to be served in a penal work camp. LeBlanc had drawn the same sentence as Avery for running moonshine, plus seven years for armed assault. Both of them were being held in the parish jail until they would be transferred to the work camp. When they came into the jail their personal belongings were taken from them and put into two brown envelopes, and they were each issued a tick mattress, a tin plate, a tin cup, and a spoon. The tank was full, and they were among the men who slept on the floor.

Avery and LeBlanc had their mattresses pulled against the wall to leave room for a walkway. There was a card game going on in the corridor. Five of the inmates sat or lay in a circle. A candle stub was melted to the floor in the center, and the thin flame flickered on their faces. Every night they played cards with the same faded incomplete deck. They used matchsticks for stakes, and the two winners were exempt from the cleaning detail in the morning.

Avery watched the game in silence. LeBlanc was playing, although none of the men wanted him. He had caused trouble since the first day he was brought into the jail. He had cursed the jailer and tried to hit a guard, for which he got a week in the hole. He refused to eat for three days when he came out. One of the inmates gave him a plate of food and told him to eat something, and LeBlanc threw it against the wall beside the doorway where the jailer stood. He was given two more days in the hole. He told everyone he would kill the jailer or a guard if given the chance. When he got out of the hole the second time he set fire to his mattress and filled the room with smoke. The men lied to the jailer and said that someone had dropped a cigarette on the mattress and the fire was an accident. They didn’t lie because they liked LeBlanc; whenever someone did something wrong, Ben Leander the jailer punished all the inmates. He didn’t look upon the men as individuals. They were a group, and when one of the group went against him the entire lot was to blame.

It was LeBlanc’s deal. He shuffled the cards and set them down to be cut.

“Five-card stud,” he said.

“We been playing draw,” one man said.

“I’m dealing stud. You ain’t got to play.”

The other men told him to deal draw poker.

“I ain’t playing draw,” he said. “It’s dealer’s choice, and I call stud. One card down and four up. If nobody don’t want to play I take the ante.”

“Play like we been doing.”

“We always play the same game,” another said.

“The game is stud,” LeBlanc said, dealing the cards.

Avery sat and watched. Sherry, the man next to him, rolled a cigarette from loose tobacco in a shred of newspaper. The men had given him his name because he had been able to conceal a bottle of wine in his overalls when he was brought in. He was being held for the robbery of a liquor store.

“Your podner acts like he ain’t right in the head,” he said.

“It’s because he’s locked up,” Avery answered.

“We all locked up. That don’t give him no excuse.”

“He was in the war.”

“He’s got a crazy look in his face,” Sherry said. “Setting fire to his mattress like that. We like to coughed our lungs out from the smoke. He’s lucky they give him another mattress to sleep on.”

“The jail is rough on him.”

“Wait till he gets to the pen.”

“They’re sending us to a work camp.”

“That’s worse. They treat you better at the pen.”

“You been up before?”

“Three times around,” Sherry said. “It ain’t too bad for me. I’m used to it. Only thing I miss is drinking. With some of the cons it’s women. That’s all they talk about in the pen. With me it’s liquor. I can go without pussy, but I miss my drinking.”

Avery looked at Sherry. His face was an alcoholic’s. The lips were a bluish color in the darkness, and his jaws were flecked with small blue and red lines. His eyeballs twitched nervously.

“I go on a drunk once a month,” he said. “I stay drunk about a week and then I’m okay. But I got to have that week.”

“What are you in for?” he asked.

“Running moonshine.”

“Was you and LeBlanc working together?’

“There were two others. One got away and one drowned.”

Sherry looked from side to side and lowered his voice.

“It ain’t my business, but maybe it’d be better if you found yourself another podner.”

Avery didn’t answer and Sherry continued.

“He’s trouble, and you don’t want no trouble in the pen. You got to do like they tell you. He’ll crack up in the work camp. They’ll have to put him in a crazy house,” he said. “I’m just telling you what I think. You can podner with him if you want. But he’s going to get it at the camp.”

Avery turned back to the game. LeBlanc had finished his deal, and the man next to him was shuffling the cards. Every time LeBlanc drew a bad hand he threw down his cards and cursed the man who had dealt. When it was his turn to deal again he said he was going to change the game and called stud poker. The other men complained.

“Then nobody plays at all!” he shouted, and began to tear the cards in pieces and throw them in the air.

There was a brief fight. Two men held his shoulders to the floor while another wrenched the remaining cards from his hands. LeBlanc thrashed his feet and struck a man in the groin. The man reeled against the wall with a stupid expression of pain on his face. LeBlanc fought to get up, shouting at the top of his voice. The other men were coming out of their cells into the corridor to watch. He got one hand free and hit blindly at the figures around him.

“Somebody shut him up!”

“Leander is going to keep us in the tank for a week!”

“Belt him and get it over!”

“Bust him with a shoe. That’ll keep him quiet.”

A fist struck out and snapped LeBlanc’s head back against the iron floor. His eyes rolled, and he was unconscious. The men who had been holding him stood up.

“The sonofabitch can fight.”

“Leander ought to keep him in the hole till he starts beating his head on the walls.”

“Look what he done to Shortboy.”

“Does it hurt bad, Shortboy?”

Shortboy stood against the wall with a dazed look on his face. He couldn’t answer.

“See what he done?” Sherry said to Avery as the men moved away from LeBlanc, leaving him stretched out on the floor. One man picked up the candle stub and the scattered cards.

“Help me get him on his mattress,” Avery said to Sherry.

“Let him be. He ain’t our lookout.”

“Are you going to help me or not?”

“It ain’t good to podner with a guy like that.”

Avery went over to LeBlanc and dragged him by his arms to his mattress. The men stopped talking and watched him. Sherry moved to the other end of the corridor. There was a small patch of red in the back of LeBlanc’s hair. Avery rolled him over on his stomach. The men looked at Avery and began to talk among themselves. It was accepted by the inmates that no one was to help the victim when they dealt out punishment to one of their own members. Avery had broken the rule. Sherry came back and took his mattress to the end of the corridor. None of the men spoke to Avery for the remainder of the night.

In the morning the main door clanged open and the trusties entered with the food carts. The tank was unlocked, and the men picked up their cups and spoons and tin plates and shuffled out in the bullpen for breakfast. Avery shook LeBlanc by the shoulder to wake him. He lay in the same position as last night. There was a yellow and purple bruise along his jawbone, and a matted area of red in his hair His face was the color of ash; Avery was afraid he might have had a concussion. He shook him again

“Let’s go. It’s time for breakfast,” he said.

LeBlanc opened his eyes and sat up on his hands.

“My head hurts,” he said.

“Let’s go eat.”

LeBlanc felt the back of his head.

“It’s blood. Somebody hit me in the head.”

“Forget about it. We don’t want any more fights.

“What fights? I don’t remember nothing.”

“You were playing cards and you got into a fight.’

“I remember the cards, but I didn’t get in no fight. Somebody slipped up and cracked me in the back of the head.”

“Don’t worry about it now. Let’s get in the line.’

“Which one of them done it?”

“There were a lot of them. You can’t get them all.”

“I can get the one that give it to me,” LeBlanc said.

“Here’s your plate. I’m going to eat.”

He went out into the bullpen, and a minute later LeBlanc followed him. The men were in line before the food cart. The trusties were serving grits and sausage and coffee from the aluminum containers The men sat down on the floor with their backs against the wall and ate. When Avery and LeBlanc came out of the tank and got in line the talking stopped, and there was no sound but the scraping of the spoons in the plates. Leander the jailer looked at LeBlanc from the doorway. He had been a jailer long enough to know what had taken place the night before. He didn’t mind if LeBlanc had been ganged by the other men; maybe that was better than throwing him in the hole, and he wouldn’t be bothered with him anymore. But once a man had been beaten to death in the tank, and that had brought about an investigation, which cost the old jailer his job and caused the city officials a good deal of work.

“Who worked you over?” he said.

LeBlanc looked at him in hatred.

“Answer me.”

LeBlanc spit on the floor.

“Get out of the chowline,” Leander said. “You don’t eat breakfast this morning.” He turned to the other men and pointed his finger. “I’m not going to stand for this sort of crap in my jail. I’m a fair man until somebody crosses me, then I step on his neck. I don’t know which ones worked on LeBlanc, but that don’t matter because I’ll make every one of you pay for it. Any more fighting and I’ll lock you up in the tank until the stink gets so bad you won’t be able to breathe. Some of you ain’t been locked up for a week, but you can ask Shortboy what it’s like.”

Ben Leander told the trusties to take the food cart out. The men were usually given a second serving, but this morning they were being punished. Leander looked around the room once more and went out, clanging the iron door shut behind him.

“You fixed us good,” one man said to LeBlanc.

“He’ll cut us short on lunch, too,” another said.

“We was all right before you and your buddy come in.”

“Was you ever locked in the tank, Shortboy?” a third inmate said.

“He can’t keep nobody in there a week.”

“Shit he can’t.”

“Tell them about it, Shortboy.”

“It’s just like he says,” Shortboy said. He was a short, thick-bodied man, with a square build and a big nose and close-set eyes. “The stink seeps into your guts and they don’t send the trusties in to clean the crappers and them goddamn flies is all over the place and you think you’ll puke when they hand you the food through the slot in the door. About six months ago there was an old man in here. He used to walk around in his drawers all the time, and there was something wrong with one of his legs. It was red and swole up like rubber. One time the door was open and the old guy forgot and stepped across the deadline. Leander pushed him down on the concrete, and he got all skinned up. We wrote what happened on a piece of paper and everybody signed it. One of the guys took it to a newspaper when he got out. Soon as the paper come out Leander threw us in the tank for nine days. Nine fucking days, crowded up together like a bunch of pigs. We even set fire to them Bibles to get rid of the stink. There wasn’t none of us fit to piss on when we come out of there.”

“It ain’t right to lock everybody up for what one guy does,” a man said. “He ought to put LeBlanc in the hole and let us be.”

“You got no rights in here,” another said.

Avery and LeBlanc were over by the window. Avery had his plate and cup on the sill. He was standing. LeBlanc sat on the floor against the wall with his knees pulled up before him. His black hair hung in his face.

“We don’t have a lot of friends here,” Avery said.

“I don’t give a damn for that. Bunch of white trash.”

“Listen. If Leander locks us all in the tank, you and me aren’t going to be worth twenty-five cents.”

“I got some people to pay back. It’s them that’s got to be on the lookout.”

“There’re thirty of them. They’ll get started, and there won’t be any way to stop them.”

“I ain’t afraid of no white trash.”

“That isn’t it,” Avery said. “You’ve got to learn how to live in here if you’re going to make it.”

“I ain’t got to learn nothing.”

“Eat some breakfast.”

“I don’t want none.”

“Suit yourself.”

“You’re good people, kid, but you ain’t got to watch out for me. I seen more stuff than you could think about.”

“I was trying to keep you from getting your throat cut.”

“I didn’t know about you back in the marsh, but you’re good people. There ain’t many people worth anything.”

“Don’t start any more fights in here, and we’ll be all right.”

“I got to even everything up.”

“You’ll go back to the hole.”

“Screw it.”

“Don’t get us into more trouble.”

LeBlanc stood up and jerked his shirt out of his trousers.

“You see this scar on my belly?” he said. “A Jap bayonet done that. Look at my back. That’s what a army M.P. done. I got a lot of paying back to do

Avery poured some of his coffee into LeBlanc’s cup.

“Drink the coffee,” he said.

LeBlanc tucked his shirt in and drank from the cup.

“You ain’t been in a war. Don’t ever go to one, even if they stand you up against a wall,” he said. “I went over in ’43. They sent us in at the Marianas. The Japs pasted us on the beach, but we done our share of killing too. That’s where I shot my first man. I forgot what the rest of them looked like, but Christ I remember that first one. He was buck naked except for a strip of rag around his loins, up in the top of a palm tree. I cut him down with my B.A.R. and he fell out and there was a rope tied around his middle and he was swinging in the air and I kept on shooting and the bullets turned him around like a stick spinning in the water.”

“I’m going to sleep for a while,” Avery said.

“You ain’t finished eating.”

“I was awake most of last night.”

He went through the open door of the tank and lay down on his mattress. He put his arm behind his head and looked up at the top of the tank. He thought of his brother Henri who had been killed at Normandy. Avery could remember the day he enlisted. Henri was seventeen at the time and would not have had to go into the service for another year, but he volunteered with the local National Guard outfit that had just been activated for training. It was his way of leaving, Avery thought. He was getting away from the house and Papa and all the rest of it.

Henri finished training and was shipped to England in February of 1944. They received one letter from him in the next three months. In late June a telegram arrived at the Broussard home. Mr. Broussard didn’t open it. He held the envelope in his hand a moment and dropped it on the table and went to the back part of the house. Henri had been attached to a rifle company as a medic. He was among the first American troops to invade the French coast. Many of the men in his company didn’t make the beach. He dragged a wounded man out of the surf and was giving him a shot of morphine when a mortar shell made a direct hit on his position. The burial detail put him in a pillowcase.

And that’s it, Avery thought. Somebody in Washington sends you a yellow square of paper with pasted words and your brother is dead. Just like that, dead. No more Martinique parish, no more Papa, no more fallen down house that somebody built a hundred years ago for a way of life that is as dead as Papa and Henri. And the last of the noble line of French and Spanish aristocracy is now lying on his back in the parish drunk tank on a mattress that smells of vomit, waiting to go to work camp where he will have prison letters stenciled on his back and they’ll give him a pick and shovel to work with at hard labor from one to three years, and he may be one of the few aristocrat convicts in the camp.

Avery remembered the things his father used to say to him when they sat on the veranda together during the long summer afternoons. Mr. Broussard spoke of the early American democracy and the agrarian dream of Thomas Jefferson, and how they had died and there was nothing left of them save a shell. The agrarian dream had been destroyed by an industrial revolution that pierced America to its heart. The republic was gone and had been replaced by another society which bore little semblance to its predecessor. Mr. Broussard had been raised to live in a society and age that no longer existed. By blood and by heritage he was bound to the past, which was as irreclaimable as those vanished summer days of heavy cane in the fields and the Negroes going to work with the hoes over their shoulders and the full cotton wagons on the way to the gin. Only an inborn memory remained, a nostalgia for something that had flowered and faded and died before he lived. Possibly in the mellow twilight of evening he could look out from the veranda and see the column of men in their worn butternut-brown uniforms, retreating from the Union army, and hear the jingle of the saber and the labor of the horses, the creak of the artillery carriages, as the column moved up the river road to make one last fight against General Banks’ advancing troops.

He should have lived back then, Avery thought. He should have died when it died, and never had sons that end up torn to bits in France or serving time on a work gang.

Avery heard a metal object strike the side of the tank and rattle across the floor. There was angry swearing from the bullpen. He got up and walked to the door. The men were looking at LeBlanc, who sat on the floor. A tin cup lay by the wall of the tank. The men moved towards LeBlanc and circled about him. He stood up to face them with his fists clenched by his sides.

A stout, bull-chested man led the group. He walked with the clumsy motions of a wrestler, flat-footed, his thick legs slightly spread, his big hands awkward. He wore a crushed felt hat, which always remained on his head except when he slept. The men called him Johnny Big, because he was thought to be the toughest man in the tank, and the others did what he told them. He also acted as spokesman for the group. When the men needed something, they talked to Johnny Big, and he talked to Leander, and sometimes they got what they wanted. Each inmate contributed two cigarettes a day to Johnny Big. He was head man and no one questioned his authority.

Avery caught a man by the arm and pulled him aside.

“What happened?” he said.

“Let go.”

“Tell me.”

“LeBlanc slammed his cup against the tank and almost bust Sherry in the head.”

Avery released him. The man crowded into the group with the rest.

“How come you to try and hit Sherry?” Johnny Big asked.

“If I wanted to hit him he wouldn’t be walking around,” LeBlanc said. “I wouldn’t use no cup to do it with, neither.”

“You’re screwing things up for us. We got to teach you.”

“I’ll get toe-to-toe with anybody in here.”

“There ain’t going to be a fight,” Johnny Big said. “Leander said he don’t want no more. This is something else.”

“Take it easy,” an older inmate said. “Leander will put us in the tank.”

“He ain’t going to know. There ain’t anybody going to tell him.” He looked into each face. “There’s a way to do it that don’t leave any marks.”

He took a newspaper out of his back pocket and rolled it into a tight cylinder. He patted it in his open palm.

“You should know about this, LeBlanc,” he said. “It just leaves a few red marks on the ribs. It does all the work on the inside. Nobody can tell you been worked on except yourself.”

“Let him be, Johnny,” the older inmate said.

“Keep shut.”

Most of the inmates pressed forward. A few shrank back from what was about to happen.

“Grab hold of him and pull his shirt off,” Johnny Big said.

LeBlanc lunged at him, but the men caught him and pinned his arms behind him. He struggled to get free, cursing, his eyes wild. Johnny Big whipped the newspaper across his ribs. He hit him on the other side with a backhand stroke and started again. He swung harder with each blow. He was a heavy man, and he threw all his weight into his arm and shoulder. LeBlanc’s body twisted with each stab in his side. The newspaper swished through the air and whapped across his ribs. The beating became faster. The newspaper was in shreds, and suddenly all the men were upon LeBlanc, striking him with whatever they could.

Avery had plunged into the men and was tearing at bodies and clothing to get to LeBlanc. He was shoved to the floor, and someone stepped on his hand. He came back and hit the man in front of him with his fist in the back of the neck. The man he had struck didn’t seem to feel the blow. He hit again and again and could hurt no one. They were intent upon hurting LeBlanc and he could do nothing to turn their attention. An inmate pushed him in the face. He felt the sweat and grit of the man’s palm in his mouth. He drove through the men, and then he was free, stumbling forward off balance. The beating was over and they had drawn back. He looked down at LeBlanc; his lips were split and his face was covered with red swellings that were already beginning to turn blue and his forehead was knotted with bumps. He lay contorted on the floor with his bloodied and ripped shirt hanging loosely from his trousers.

“You dirty bastards. Oh, you dirty bastards,” Avery said.

“Let’s get him, too,” someone said.

“He ain’t any better than LeBlanc.”

“He hit me in the back of the neck.”

“Yeah, Johnny. Teach them both.”

Johnny Big had the stub of the frayed newspaper in his hand. He let it drop to the floor by LeBlanc’s feet.

“This one don’t look tough enough for all of us,” he said.

The men knew what Johnny Big was going to do. They had already forgotten that the jailer would lock them in the tank for what they had done to LeBlanc. They had watched or helped beat one man senseless, and they didn’t want to stop. They formed a circle around Avery and Johnny Big.

“What do you say, boy? You want to find out how good you are?” Johnny said.

Avery set himself and caught him on the chin with the first punch. Johnny Big’s head jerked back and his felt hat flew in the air. Avery hit him twice more in the stomach, and then Johnny was on him, clubbing with both fists. Avery recoiled backwards under the blows. The men were shouting and enjoying it. He felt that everything in his head was shaken loose. Each blow struck him like a hammer and sent a wave of nausea and weakness through his body. He ducked and weaved and tried to get out from under him and took one full in the face. The room tilted upwards and he spun into the wall of the tank and fell to the floor. Johnny came on. Avery tried to get up, and Johnny Big knocked him back against the tank with his knee. He lay stunned, tasting the blood in his mouth and smelling the damp concrete. A pair of thick legs stood before him. He could hear voices from afar, as though someone were shouting down a well. His eyes fixed on the rough leather work boots and the pair of legs.

Someone laughed and the pair of legs moved away. Avery dove forward and tackled him below the knees. He caught him from behind and locked his wrists and jerked upward. He felt the man struggle for his balance and leap out at the air as he went down. Johnny Big hit the concrete with his full weight. Avery freed himself and got up. He didn’t know if he could stand. His limbs felt disjointed from his body. Johnny Big pushed himself up from the floor. There was a cut right at his hairline. Avery clenched both his hands together and swung his arms downward in one motion like an axe and hit him across the bridge of the nose. Johnny Big fell back to the floor with his hands to his face. He was sitting on his rump, and he took his hands away and looked at them dumbly and put them back. His nose was broken. He got to his feet and swayed across the room to where his felt hat lay. Avery watched him, believing he had quit. Johnny Big put his fingers in the hatband and pulled out a thin, single-edged razor blade. He came forward, holding the razor between his thumb and fingers, low and out to the side like a knife fighter.

Avery backed away. The men scattered about the room. He looked around for a weapon. There was nothing he could use except a broom propped against the opposite wall, and Johnny Big was between him and it. He moved along the side of the tank, watching the razor blade all the while.

“Let him go, Johnny. We don’t want a cutting,” Shortboy said.

Johnny Big backed Avery towards the wall.

“He fought you square. You got no right to cut him,” the older inmate said.

Some of the men agreed and told Johnny Big that he should let Avery go. Johnny had been beaten in a fair fight, he had had his nose broken, and he was no longer head man of the tank. He had betrayed the others by losing the fight.

“You ain’t got call to cut on him.”

“You done beat one man almost to death,” the older inmate said.

“Yeah,” Shortboy said.

“I’ll cut any man that comes near us,” Johnny said.

Shortboy stepped back, although he was already twenty feet away.

The main door swung open and Ben Leander and two of the guards came into the room.

“I told you what would happen if I caught you at it again,” the jailer said. “There isn’t one of you going to get out of it this time.” He saw LeBlanc lying on the other side of the room. Johnny Big pushed his razor blade down into the back pocket of his denims. Avery was standing against the wall, and his face and neck were beaded with drops of perspiration.

“You guys don’t know when you got it good,” Leander said. “The only time you’re going to get out of the tank is to sandpaper the concrete. I told you I don’t take crap in my jail. It hasn’t been two hours since I warned you. Now it’s your ass.” He turned to the guards. “Go see if the sonofabitch is dead.”

The guards went over and looked at LeBlanc. One of them lifted his head and put it down again.

“He’s bleeding inside.”

“Did you start this, Johnny?” Ben Leander said.

“No sir.”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know.”

Leander walked over and picked up the stub of frayed newspaper from the floor. He held it towards Johnny Big.

“Is this yours?”

He shook his head.

“This is one of your tricks.”

“I didn’t start the fight. It was LeBlanc and his buddy. LeBlanc started throwing things around after you left and we tried to stop him and the kid jumped in.”

“You don’t look too good, boy,” Leander said to Avery.

“Johnny Big don’t look too good, neither,” the older inmate said.

“That’s enough from you,” Leander said.

“Everybody beat up on LeBlanc and the boy tried to help him,” the older inmate said. “Johnny thought he could have some fun knocking him around and he got his nose broke.”

“Is that straight, Shortboy?” the jailer asked.

“I didn’t see it too good,” Shortboy said.

“It don’t make any difference who started it,” Leander said, “because all of you are going into the tank until I see fit to let you out.” He spoke to the guards. “Get LeBlanc out of my sight. Put him downstairs and keep him there till I call an ambulance. I don’t want to see him again. Take Johnny with you and get his nose fixed.”

The guards put LeBlanc’s arms over their shoulders and lifted him. His head hung down and his feet dragged across the floor. Johnny Big followed them.

“Wait a minute,” Leander said.

Johnny Big stopped.

“You put something in your back pocket when I came in.”

“I ain’t got nothing.”

“Take it out.”

“Yes sir.”

“Now throw it on the floor and get out of here.”

“Yes sir.”

Leander picked up the razor blade and dropped it in his shirt pocket.

“Come with me,” he said to Avery.

Avery went out of the room and Leander pulled the door shut behind him. He shot the steel bolt in place and clamped down the handle of the safety lock. They went down a corridor and up a spiral metal stairwell to the third floor of the building. Leander opened the door to a bare white room with a single window and an iron cage in the center. Avery stood by the window and looked down into the street while Leander unlocked the hole. The courthouse was across the square, with its white pillars and classic façade, and the well-kept lawn in front, green and wet from the water sprinklers in the sunlight, and the Confederate monument in the shade of the trees.

“Get inside,” Ben Leander said.

Avery walked to the open door.

“What do you get out of it?” he said. “Is it the money?”

Leander pushed him inside and swung the door shut. He twisted the key in the iron lock.

“They’re taking you to the work camp next week. You’re goddamn lucky,” he said.

That afternoon Avery had a visitor. Batiste had ridden the bus from Martinique parish to see him. He sat in the waiting room with his hat in his hand, wondering who to ask about Avery. There was a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with cord by his side. Ben Leander came out of his office and asked him what he wanted. Batiste said he wanted to see Avery Broussard, he had some tobacco and breadcake for him. Leander said that he was not allowed to have visitors, no one could see him on that day or any day as long as he remained in the parish jail. Batiste wanted to leave the package.

“He’s in the hole. He can’t get anything from outside when he’s in the hole,” Leander said, to make him understand how things were run in the parish jail.

J.P. Winfield

He was in the recording studio of a Nashville radio station. Three mornings a week he did a half-hour show which was put on tape and broadcast in the afternoon. The show was almost over. He stood at the microphone and sang the last number. The announcer sat at the table before another microphone, reading over the typewritten pages in his hand. A very plain woman in a cotton-print dress sat on the other side of the table, nervously twisting a handkerchief around her fingers. There were two men standing beside J.P., one with a guitar and the other with a banjo. They were waiting to do the advertisement. One of the sound engineers in the control room behind the sheet of glass signaled to them when J.P. finished. They strummed and sang the Live-Again slogan:

“Yes sir, neighbor, there ain’t anything like it,” the announcer read. “Live-Again has got everything you need to make you get up and stomp around like your old self again. It’s got vitamin potency that drives through your body and makes you shout and holler like you was never sick a day in your life. It ain’t right to waste your life in a sickbed. There’s people all over the country setting around doing nothing because they don’t have the energy to get out and have a good time. Well, you don’t have to be a shut-in anymore. Go down to the drugstore or the grocery and ask for Live-Again vitamin tonic in the black and yellow box with the big bottle inside. There’s a lady with me now who used to be a shut-in. She couldn’t do her chores and her family was falling apart because of her poor health. She heard about Live-Again and she tried it, and now she’s healthy and strong and her family is back together again. Tell the people about it, Mrs. Ricker.”

Mrs. Ricker read in a steady, flat monotone: “I don’t know how to thank the good people who make Live-Again. They made my life worth living. Before I tried Live-Again I didn’t think I could go on anymore. I had to stay in bed all the time and I couldn’t take care of my children and my husband had to spend all our money on doctor bills. The deacon of our church told us about Live-Again, and in a few weeks’ time I was a new woman. This wonderful medicine has saved me and my family and we are happy once more.”

“And believe me, neighbor, it helps everybody,” the announcer said. “Well, that does it for today. You’ve been listening to the J. P. Winfield show. Remember to send us your cards and letters and to buy Live-Again. There ain’t anything like it. So long, neighbors, and may the good Lord watch after you.”

The red light over the door went off. The two singers put away their banjo and guitar. Mrs. Ricker twisted her handkerchief around her fingers and looked at the announcer.

“Did I sound all right?” she said.

“What do you think, J.P.?” the announcer said. “Have you ever heard anything like this good woman?” He was a business college graduate who was employed by the station to sell vitamin tonic, glow-in-the-dark Bibles, tablecloths painted with the Last Supper, and pamphlets on faith healing.

The singers laughed and went out. J.P. put his guitar in its case.

“I was never on the radio before,” Mrs. Ricker said. “Will I be on the air this afternoon?”

“Yes ma’am. They’ll hear you all over the South. Mrs. A. J. Ricker, voice of the Southland.”

“I declare,” she said. “Do you think they’ll want me to make any more recordings?”

“I don’t think so. You’d better run along home now. You don’t want to miss the afternoon show.”

“I’ll leave my phone number in case they want me again.”

“That’s fine. Goodbye.”

The door clicked shut after her.

The sound engineer stuck his head out of the control room.

“You want to hear the playback?” he said.

“Why not?” the announcer said. “Let’s hear Mrs. Ricker tell us of the wonderful medicine that saved her husband and brats from ruin.”

“I’m going back to the hotel,” J.P. said. “I don’t want to hear no more about vitamin tonic.”

He picked up his guitar case and left the studio. He walked out on the street and turned up his coat collar. It was November and the air was sharp with cold. The wind beat against him and almost whipped the guitar case from his hand. There were snow clouds building in the east, and the sky was lavender and pink from the hidden sun. He turned around the corner of a building to protect himself from the wind. There were no taxis on the street. An old woman sat in the doorway of the building with an army coat around her shoulders. She had a wagon made from apple crates, filled with old rags, newspaper bundles, and things she had taken from garbage cans. Her hands were raw and chafed. She dipped snuff from a can and spit on the sidewalk. J.P. started up the street and walked the six blocks to the hotel.

He went through the lobby into the coffee shop. The waiter brought him coffee and a plate of sandwiches. Nothing but a poor-white tenant farmer with one pair of shiny britches and a polka-dot bow tie, he thought. I paid my last five dollars to enter a crooked talent show and now I’m on the Nashville Barn Dance. Everybody from Raleigh to Little Rock can listen to me on Saturday night. Seven weeks on the Barn Dance and an afternoon show besides. Ain’t that too goddamn nice?

He thought about the few days he had taken off from the show to go up to the mountains. He had worked almost constantly since coming to Nashville. The director of the radio show had given him three days’ leave. J.P. went up by the Kentucky line and stayed in a hunting lodge. The mornings were cold and misty, and there was always a smell of pine smoke in the air. When he walked out on the front porch after breakfast he could see the log cabins spread across the valley, their stone chimneys stained white by the frost. The first snowflakes were just beginning to fall, and the mountains were green with fir and pine trees. There was a trout stream just below the timber line that wound across a meadow and rushed into a great rock chasm behind the lodge. It was good country, some of the best he had seen. He wanted to stay, but he went back to Nashville to sell Live-Again.

He took out an aspirin bottle and shook a Benzedrine and a Seconal into his hand. A month ago he had used up the supply Doc Elgin had given him. Several days later he bought ten rolls of yellow jackets, bennies, and redwings from a junkie on the other side of town. He had learned to mix the three in a combination that gave him a high alcohol never had. Soon he would have to buy more. He had only a half roll left in his room.

A porter came into the coffee shop and gave him a telegram. J.P. tipped him and tore the end off the envelope,

He paid his check and went out to the lobby. He told the desk clerk to page him in the bar if he received a long distance phone call. He left the guitar case with the porter to be taken up to his room. The bar was done in deeply stained mahogany with deer antlers and antique rifles along the walls. There was a stone fireplace at one end of the room, and the logs spit and cracked in the flames. A thick wine-colored carpet covered the floor. Brass lamps with candles and glass chimneys were placed along the bar. He drank a whiskey and water and wondered what Hunnicut had planned for him now.

Later the porter paged him. He went into the lobby and took the call at the desk.

“Is that you, J.P.?” Hunnicut said over the wire.

“I got your telegram.”

“How’s Nashville treating you?”

“All right.”

“A lot of things have been happening since you Left.”

“Why am I going back?”

“We got some big things planned. Jim Lathrop is with me now. I want you to get back as soon as you can.”

“What for?”

“Jim is going into politics. He’s running for senator, and we’re campaigning for him. We’re going to organize a show and tour the state.”

“I don’t know nothing about politics.”

“You’re a star on the Barn Dance. People will listen to you.”

“Who else is going on the show?”

“Everybody in the band except Troy.”

“What happened to him?”

“He’s in a hospital. He was taking heroin. I never knew anything about it until he came out on the stage so jazzed up he couldn’t remember his lines.”

“I didn’t know he was on it.”

“When can you come back?”

“I’ll take the afternoon train.”

“I can wire you some money.”

“I don’t need none.”

“Are you still hot about that run-in we had before you left?”

“No.”

“Because we have some big things ahead of us, and we don’t want anybody to mess it up.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” J.P. said.

“Is something wrong? You don’t sound very interested.”

“I’m interested. See you in the morning.”

He put down the receiver and went to his room. He called the railroad depot and made reservations on the three o’clock train. He opened his suitcase on the bed and packed. The porter came up for his bag. J.P. had an hour and a half before train time. He took out his guitar and thumbed the strings to pass the time. Oh the train left Memphis at half past nine. Well it made it back to Little Rock at eight forty-nine. It was a blues song he used to hear the Negroes sing around home. Jesus died to save me and all of my sins. Well glory to God we’re going to see him again.

He took a private compartment in a Pullman car. He had the porter make up his bed, and he slept through the afternoon. The train moved down from Nashville into southern Tennessee, rolling through the sloping fields of winter grass partly covered with snow. The land became flat as the train neared Memphis and entered the Mississippi basin. The river was high and yellow under the winter sky. The train rushed southward into Arkansas, and the land was sere and coarse. For miles he saw the board shacks of tenant farmers, all identical, with their dirt floors and mud-brick chimneys and weathered outbuildings, which were owned by the farming companies, along with the bleak fallow land and the rice mills and cotton gins and company stores.

He changed trains at Little Rock and arrived in Louisiana the next morning. He checked into the hotel, shaved, and went to Hunnicut’s room. He met Seth in the hall.

“The Live-Again man is inside with Virdo now. They’re waiting for you,” Leroy said.

“I come straight from the depot. I couldn’t get here no faster.”

“Do you know about the show?”

“Virdo told me over the phone.”

“We’re going all over the state, and Lathrop is picking up the bills. He give me a two hundred dollar advance for pussy money.”

“What’s this about Troy?” J.P. said.

“He’s in the junkie ward. They had to strap his arms down when they took him in. The doctor said he’s a mainliner. Shooting it in the arm twice a day. The last time he was on the show he come out on the stage and started cussing in the microphone. They had to cut us off the air. I think April got him started on it. Her and that quack that comes in to lay her every Sunday.”

“What do you know about it?” J.P. looked at the pockmarks on his face and the reddened skin and the coarse brown hair that was like straw.

“That’s how she pays her bills, spreading her legs for Doc Elgin. He comes up here every Sunday morning to collect.”

“The hell he does.”

“I seen him go in her room with a bulge in his fly and his tongue hanging out. He always walks down the hall with his hand in his pocket. Stay away from her, J.P. I found a new place if you want some good girls.”

“I ain’t got time to talk anymore.”

He knocked on Virdo Hunnicut’s door and went in. Hunnicut sat in a leather chair with his feet across a footstool. He wore a purple robe and house slippers. Big Jim Lathrop sat at the desk, eating breakfast from a tray that had been brought up from downstairs. He was in his early fifties, dressed in a tailored blue suit with an expensive silk necktie. His fine gray hair was combed straight back. A gold watch chain was strung across his vest. He cut the pork chop on his plate and raised the fork to his mouth with his left hand. His hard gray eyes looked at J.P. as he chewed.

“Come on in,” Hunnicut said. “Meet Mr. Lathrop.”

Lathrop turned in his chair, still chewing.

“How do, boy. Sit down,” he said.

“Are you ready to go into politicking?” Hunnicut said.

“I reckon.”

“Jim and me have been making arrangements for the show. We’re going to Alexandria tomorrow night. We’ll have everybody down at the auditorium. No admission. All you got to have is a Live-Again box label.”

“Who you running against?” J.P. said.

“Jacob Arceneaux from New Orleans,” Lathrop said. “He’s French and he’s Catholic, and he’ll take most of the parishes in the southern part of the state unless we swing them over.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“Nigger politics,” Virdo Hunnicut said. “Arceneaux has a reputation as a nigger lover. He hasn’t tried to stop the nigger kids from getting in the white schools, and it’s going to hurt him.”

“We’re running on the segregation ticket,” Lathrop said. “We’re going to show the people in south Louisiana what will happen when Arceneaux gets in office. Their children will be mixing with the colored children, and pretty soon they won’t be able to tell one from another. The future generations will be one race of high-yellow trash.”

“We’re going to get the nigger vote, too,” Hunnicut said. “We’ll put on special shows across the tracks in the shanty towns.”

“My singing ain’t going to put nobody in office.”

“People know you and they’ll listen to you,” Virdo Hunnicut said. “They know you’re one of them as soon as you open your mouth. One good country boy talking to the hicks is worth all the nickel and dime politicians in Louisiana. If a man can get the rednecks and the niggers and the white trash behind him he can do anything he’s a mind to.”

“I think J.P. understands,” Lathrop said. “He knows where the money is, whether in politics or selling Live-Again.”

“It’s in the hicks with eight bits in their pocket for a bottle of vitamin tonic that don’t do them no good.”

“All right, J.P.,” Hunnicut said.

“The boy is being honest,” Lathrop said. “The people want something and we give it to them. This time it’s a pro-segregation administration.” He chewed on the pork chop bone and dropped it into his plate.

“We already got the north part of the state,” Hunnicut said.

“Jacob Arceneaux is the man we have to break,” Lathrop said. He wiped his fingers with a napkin. “I want you to write a song about him.”

“Have something in it about him being partial to niggers,” Hunnicut said.

“I ain’t a songwriter.’

“It don’t have to be much,” he said.

“Get Seth to do it.”

“I don’t think Seth can read.”

“I can’t write no song for you.”

“You gotten high-minded since you went up to the Barn Dance,” Hunnicut said. “Remember it was Jim sent you there.”

“I ain’t high-minded about nothing.”

“Let the boy alone,” Lathrop said. “He’s just gotten off a long train ride and he’s full of piss and vinegar. He’ll be all right when he has some sleep.”

“I ain’t writing no song, Mr. Lathrop.”

“We’ll talk about it later.”

“It don’t matter. I ain’t going to do it.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Hunnicut said.

“I got rights about what I’m going to do and what I ain’t.”

“We’ve been through this before. I told you over the phone I didn’t want any more of it.”

“Let’s drop it, Virdo,” Lathrop said. “He can eat breakfast and come back later. We’ll talk over the money situation then. I think he’ll find he can do real well with me.”

“I ain’t bitching about my salary.”

“I’m not a hard man to deal with. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Lathrop said.

“He can walk out that door anytime he takes a mind to,” Hunnicut said.

“You ain’t in no rush to get me out. You made a lot of green off me.”

“I pushed you up to the top. You didn’t know how to button your pants till I taught you.”

“Let’s stop this,” Lathrop said. “Go eat breakfast, J.P. Have one of those pork chops.”

Lathrop walked to the door with him and opened it.

“We can straighten out whatever differences we have,” he said. “We talk the same language. I’m a country boy myself.”

“You talk pretty smooth to be from the country.”

“I’ve been with these city folks too long.”

Lathrop closed the door after J.P. and went back to finish his coffee.

“When did you start soft-gloving people?” Hunnicut said.

“I’m an old fellow now.”

“The best way to handle J.P. is to walk all over him,” he said, his face big and sweating.

“He’ll do as I tell him, just as you do, Virdo, and I don’t think any more needs to be said about it.”

Hunnicut’s eyes flicked away from Lathrop’s face. He wanted to say something to regain his pride, but the words wouldn’t come and he sat silent in his chair.

J.P. had breakfast in the dining room, and then asked at the desk for April’s room number. He had to get her to contact Doc Elgin. He took the elevator to the fourth floor and walked down the hallway to her room. She was in bed. She pulled the sheet up to her chin and told him to kiss her. Her mouth tasted bad.

“It’s a long time for a girl to be alone,” she said.

“I heard about Troy.”

“For God’s sake, don’t bring up Troy. That’s all anybody talks about. Everyone feels so sorry for Troy. I wish you’d seen him the last night he was here. He broke in my room and tried to climb all over me. The hotel dick had to drag him out of the room.”

“How long was he taking it?”

“What do you want to talk about him for? You haven’t seen me for seven weeks and all you’ve got on your mind is Troy.”

“I take a personal interest.”

“Troy was an ass.”

“I’m on it, too. I found out in Nashville.”

“Rot.”

“I had to hunt all over town to find a pusher.”

“Benzedrine is baby food.”

“My nerves was like piano wire. I thought I was going to come apart.”

April chewed on a hangnail and looked out the window.

“Listen to me,” he said.

“I’m listening.”

“I got a habit.”

“Fly away with the snowbirds.”

“I ain’t on cocaine.”

“The snowbirds stay high in the sky. They don’t worry about the habit.” She bit off the hangnail and took it off her tongue with her fingers.

“Call Elgin. I need some pills.”

“He comes around on Sunday.”

“I need him now. I took my last pills on the train.”

“You can have some of my stuff.”

“I don’t want no cocaine.”

“You don’t have to take it in the arm. Put a little powder under your tongue.”

“Call Elgin.”

She picked up the telephone from the bedtable and dialed a number. She chewed on another fingernail while she talked to Doc Elgin.

“He’ll be over in a little while,” she said. “He has some other people to see.”

“He wouldn’t hurry if I was going to jump through a window.”

“Doc is better than a regular pusher. He don’t cut his stuff.”

“Seth told me something about you and him.”

“I know what you’re thinking, and you can shut up right now. I pay him cash like everybody else,” she said. “He don’t come near me.”

She sat up in bed and fixed the pillow behind her. She held the sheet up to her shoulders with one hand.

“How much does your habit cost a week?” J.P. said.

“I pay for it.”

“That ain’t what I asked.”

“He gives me a special rate. I bring him customers sometime.”

“Like me and Troy?”

“I didn’t twist your arm.”

“How did Troy start on it?”

“He was burning maryjane before I met him.”

“I almost feel sorry for the poor bastard.”

“Feel sorry for yourself. You’ve got a one-way ticket to the same place he’s in.”

“There’s cures. I’ve heard about them. There’s a place in Kentucky.”

“Don’t believe it. There isn’t any cure.”

“I heard about this place. They say you can go there for a while and come out clean.”

“I took a cure once. I got out of the hospital and two weeks later I was popping it again.”

“Some people have kicked it.”

“Learn it now, J.P. You bought a one-way ticket. First you break down all the veins in one arm and you start on the other one. Then the veins in both arms are flat, and you take it in the legs. When your legs are gone you take it in the stomach, and by that time you’re finished.”

He ran his hand through his hair. “I ain’t on snow. I ain’t past them pills yet.”

“The habit grows. Soon you’ll have to use something stronger. You can’t kick it.”

She smoothed the sheet against her.

“Put your mind on something else. It’s no good to think about it,” she said. “Come sit here.”

He sat on the side of the bed.

“That’s better,” she said.

“Nothing is better.”

“Wouldn’t you like to do nice things?”

“I don’t feel like it this morning.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t give a damn for doing anything right now,” he said.

“Did you do any running around in Nashville?”

“No.”

“You like girls too much for that”

“All right. I whored the whole time.”

“Don’t be like that.”

“I got too much on my mind.”

“It don’t help to think about it.”

“I feel like hell.”

“Pull down the shade and get in bed.” She dropped the sheet from her shoulders and uncovered herself.

“People can see you through the window.”

“Pull down the shade if you don’t want them to.”

He went to the window and dropped the shade.

“Do you always sleep like that?” he said.

“Doc Elgin says bedclothes cuts off your circulation.”

“Put the sheet over you.”

“Don’t you like me?”

“You ain’t got to act like a two-dollar whore.”

“You need a benny bad,” she said. “Do nice things to April. It will keep your mind off it till Doc comes.”

J.P. wiped his face with his hand. He was beginning to perspire. He wished Elgin would get here. They made love in the half-light of the room. He could feel his heart click inside him from the strain. He was sweating heavily now, and his muscles began to stiffen.

“When is Elgin going to get here?” he said.

“He’ll be along.”

“Phone him again.”

She called Elgin; there was no answer.

“Is there any place else you can call him?” he said.

“He makes deliveries all over town.”

“Phone him one more time.”

“He’s not there.”

“Why don’t the sonofabitch hurry?”

“Let’s do it again,” she said.

“I ain’t up to it.”

“Come on.”

“Goddamn it, no.”

“Here.”

“Don’t do that.”

“You’re a little boy.”

“Where is Elgin?”

“I don’t know. Stop asking me,” she said.

“I feel raw inside.”

“I can’t do anything for you unless you want snow.”

“Give it to me.”

“You said you didn’t want it.”

“Let me have it.”

She walked naked to the dresser. She took a white packet from the bottom of a drawer and came back to the bed. She untwisted the paper at one end.

“Hold out your hand,” she said.

She shook a small amount of white powder into his palm.

“Put it under your tongue and let it soak into your mouth. Try not to swallow any of it. It won’t do as much good and it might make you sick.”

“I don’t have to stay on it. I can go back to Benze drine.”

“You have to take stronger stuff.”

“You don’t get hooked by just using it once.”

“The habit grows. Big boys use big stuff.”

“There’s cures.”

“Not for us.”

“They have treatments to let you down easy.”

“It’s getting to you already. I can see it in your eyes.”

“There’s a place in Kentucky.”

“That’s a dream. There’s not anyplace for me and you.

“I feel flat. Everything is lazy and flat.”

“Close your eyes and let it slip over you. It makes you have nice dreams.”

“Why is everything flat? You and the room are flat,” he said.

“You’re sleepy and far away, and nobody bothers you. It’s like laying out in the snow, except it’s warm and nice.”

“A hospital in Lexington. I was up by the Kentucky line. It started to snow.”

“You’re far away.”

“Yes,” he said. “It was snowing.”

The Live-Again show began its three-week tour the next day. People from all over the parish came to hear J.P. and Big Jim Lathrop. Big Jim was the common man’s friend. He promised to fight federal intervention and the integrationists. The other outfit would have the niggers with the white children. Jim was going to fight it. He didn’t know much about politics, but he knew when he was right about something. He was a country boy himself, and a man should be from the country if he was going to represent country people. City people didn’t have any business in the state government. The common man should vote for his own kind. J.P. was from the country. He sang country music. He knew that Lathrop was the only man for the job. It was time that the people of Louisiana stood up for their way of life and not let any city politician destroy it. Everybody knew that J.P. was a good man and they agreed with what he had to say. They had heard him on the radio. He used to chop cotton and tenant farm like everybody else. He was supporting Jim Lathrop, and so would every man who didn’t want to see the government in the hands of people not his own. J.P. and the common man were behind Lathrop. They were not going to be run over by city politicians and Northern integrationists. The common man had been kept down, and now his time had come as surely as there was a day of reckoning for all created things.

Toussaint Boudreaux

The Barracks in the work camp were oblong wooden buildings set in a clearing among the pines. The buildings were originally constructed by the W.P.A. for the army, but had later been sold to the state for use as a penal camp. There were seven barracks, each painted white, with barred windows and barred doors. A tall wire fence enclosed the clearing. At the top were three additional strands of barbed wire. No grass grew within the boundary of the fence. The clearing was dirt smooth from the ceaseless tread of feet. Pine needles often blew across the fence from the trees, but they too were soon pressed down and covered in the dust. The sweet smell of the pines came through the fence on the wind, and the cones dropped on the bare earth, but the pine seeds, like the grass, would not grow inside the clearing.

It was early morning. The night guards walked out in the sun to warm themselves while they waited for their relief. A whistle blew and there was the sound of keys twisting in iron locks and of men stirring from sleep. The sun rose above the dark green of the trees and burned down into the clearing. The moon was a thin pale shape in the western sky. The men filed out of six of the barracks and formed a line before the dining hall. The day guards came on duty and stood by the line while it moved slowly inside. All the men were dressed in the same blue denim uniforms with LA. PENAL SYSTEM stenciled across the backs of their shirts. Some were bareheaded, others wore straw hats. The inmates were deeply tanned, and their hands were callused and roughened. They shuffled through the dust, some talking, some half asleep, into the dining hall to file past the serving counter and sit at the board tables and eat breakfast before the whistle blew again for roll call.

Outside they broke up into squads of seven and waited for the work captain to come by and call their names from his list. There were seven men to a gang, and one guard to every seven men. No one had ever escaped from the work camp because it was too well organized and the guards could account for each inmate every minute of the day. The gangs formed and waited. The work captain came down the line with his clipboard in his hand. He wore the same brown khaki as the other guards, except he had on a campaign hat like that of the state police instead of the conventional cork sun helmet, and his trousers were tucked inside his high leather boots.

“Adams!”

“Yo!”

“Ardoin!”

“Yo!”

“Benoit!”

“Yo!”

“Boudreaux!”

“Yo!”

The captain looked up from his board. He had been prepared to put a mark by Toussaint’s name.

“I thought you were supposed to go back into detention today,” he said.

“Nobody come for me this morning.”

“Evans might put you in there for the rest of your stretch if you start more trouble.”

A guard standing by the fence in the shade turned around when he heard his name mentioned. He was John Wesley Evans, the guard for gang five. His face was burned pink by the sun. He was never able to get a tan. His face would burn and peel white and then burn again. He wore a cork sun helmet that was stained brown by sweat, and there was a pair of green sunglasses in his shirt pocket. He was fat about the waist and he wore a holster and sidearm to take notice away from his stomach. He put on his sunglasses and walked out into the sunlight and stood beside the work captain.

“You want me, sir?” he said.

“I thought Boudreaux was supposed to go back in detention for another day.”

“A guy in gang three started a fight. We had to turn Boudreaux out to make room.”

“Then you’re one day to the good,” the captain said to Toussaint.

“He can go back and finish it later,” Evans said, looking at the Negro.

“Broussard!” the captain continued from his roll.

No reply.

“Broussard! Answer when your name is called.”

“Here.”

“Louder.”

“Right here!”

“This is your first day on the gang. Obey the rules and you’ll get along. Don’t talk during roll call and don’t quit work till you hear the whistle blow. When you’re inside the clearing never get closer than five feet to the fence. When you’re working outside don’t get out of the guard’s sight. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“You mean yes sir.”

“I said I got it.”

The captain turned to Evans. “It looks like you have another one.”

“He’ll come around,” Evans said.

The guard faced Avery.

“Let’s hear it again,” he said.

“I understood the rules.”

“I want to hear you say yes sir.”

“I understood what the man said.”

“That’s not enough. Let’s hear it.”

Avery stood still with the sun in his eyes. Evans looked at him from behind his dark sunglasses.

“You’ll come around,” he said. “This is only your first day. We’ll have lots of days together.”

The whistle blew and the main gate opened to let the trucks in. The trusties went to the tool shed to check out the picks and shovels. The men climbed into the trucks and the back doors were locked from the outside. The trusties threw the tools into the bed of a pickup. Gang five and gang three rode out to work together. The men sat in the darkness on two wood benches that were placed along the walls. The guards rode up front in the cab with the driver.

Toussaint took a package of Virginia Extra from his shirt and rolled a cigarette. He licked the paper, rolled it down, and pinched the ends together with his thumbnail.

“How about a smoke?” the man next to him said. “I left my tobacco in the barracks.”

Toussaint gave him the package and the cigarette papers. The man was named Jeffry. He was lean and thin-featured, and his eyes were as pale as his hair. His hands were slender and white, almost like a woman’s, and they blistered easily. He suffered from repeated attacks of dysentery, and he would trade his tobacco for an orange from the kitchen so he could suck the juice and not have to drink the camp water.

Next to him sat Billy Jo. He had sandy red hair and a fine red scar that came down from one eye to his lip. He said that he had gotten the scar in a prison riot, but two inmates who had known him before said that he had been cut in a fight over a Negro woman. Billy Jo bragged that he had been in six penitentiaries.

Brother Samuel sat between Billy Jo and Avery. He was a red-bone from around Lake Charles, a mixture of white, Negro, and Indian. His clothes didn’t fit him and his straw hat came down to his ears. He had once been a preacher, but he also practiced black magic and conjuring. A disk of wood with unreadable letters on it hung from a leather cord around his neck. He said that the disk had been given to him by the Black Man, who roamed the marsh at night when the moon was down. He carried bits of string with knots tied in them, a fang of a water moccasin, a shriveled turtle’s foot, and a ball of hair taken from a cow’s stomach. The men liked him. He took care of them when they had dysentery, and he would share his tobacco with others if asked to. He was serving a life sentence for murdering a white man.

Daddy Claxton sat on the other side of Avery. He was the oldest man in the work camp. His skin was dry and loose with age, and there were faded tattoos of nude women on his arms. He had been a professional soldier once, and he claimed to have known John Dillinger while he was stationed in Hawaii. He had been dishonorably discharged from the army for operating in the black market, and after his third conviction in Louisiana he had been sent to prison for life as a habitual criminal.

“How come they call you ‘Daddy’?” Billy Jo said.

“I don’t know. That’s what they always called me,” Daddy Claxton said.

“Did you really know John Dillinger?” Billy Jo asked.

“Sure I knowed him. John was a mean one, all right.”

“You ain’t just telling us that?”

“I knowed him. You can ask anybody. They’ll tell you.”

“I don’t believe you was ever in the army, Daddy.”

“I was a soldier. They give me some papers when I got out. I could show them to you if I had them.”

“What kind of guy was Dillinger?” Billy Jo said. “He was a mean one.”

“He’d break out of this place,” one of the men from gang three said.

“No, he wouldn’t. He’s dead,” Billy Jo said.

“Your ass, Billy Jo.”

“He was killed in front of a movie somewhere,” he said. “Your bloody ass.”

“I knowed John when they put him in the stockade,” Daddy Claxton said.

“Was he really tough like they say?” Billy Jo said.

“He was plenty mean,” Daddy said.

The truck bounced over some railroad tracks and drove down a gravel road. Rocks spun up from the tires and banged under the fenders.

“What’s today?” Jeffry said.

“Friday,” Toussaint said.

Jeffry frowned and counted on his fingers.

“When are you breaking out?” a man across from him said.

Jeffry counted and moved his thin lips silently.

“When are you guys going to leave us?” the same man said.

“Shut up,” Billy Jo said.

“Everybody in camp knows about it, you dumb bastard.”

“Keep shut.”

“You guys talked it all over the place.”

“There ain’t anybody going to tell,” Billy Jo said.

“What about him?” The man pointed to Avery.

“What are we talking about?” Billy Jo said to Avery.

“I wasn’t listening.”

“Then you’re deaf.”

“I don’t care what you do, podner.”

“The hell you don’t. You was listening,” Billy Jo said.

“He wasn’t paying you no mind,” Brother Samuel said.

“Glory to the Lord, Brother,” someone said in the darkness.

“Glory be,” Brother Samuel said.

“Amen, Brother.”

“I don’t like nobody listening to what I’m saying,” Billy Jo said.

“I bet the hacks already know about it,” the man across from them said. “They’ll bring you all back on a leash.”

“I’ll be down on Gayoso Street in Memphis greasing in some whore while you’re breaking your back on the line.”

“Jam it.”

“Why don’t you guys quit bitching at each other?”

“We only got twenty-nine days left,” Jeffry said.

“Twenty-nine days and they’re on their way to glory. Right, Brother Samuel?”

“How about a sermon, Brother?”

The truck was almost out to the line, and they wanted to forget the long day that was before them.

“I ain’t got the power to save no more,” Brother Samuel said.

“That don’t matter. Save us, anyway.”

“My powers ain’t the same no more. I tried to heal Jeffry and it didn’t do no good.”

“Why didn’t you let Brother Samuel heal you, Jeffry?”

“That ain’t funny. You guys don’t have a belly full of dysentery,” Jeffry said.

“Kneel down and pray, Jeffry. Let Brother Samuel clamp his hand on your forehead and clean out your belly.”

“It ain’t funny.”

“Let’s wade on the banks of the Jordan, but don’t drink none of the water or you’ll get the runs.”

“You guys don’t have your bellies tied up in knots,” Jeffry said.

“Repent sinners before you catch the runs for all eternity.”

“It ain’t right to make fun of the Word,” Brother Samuel said.

The truck made a sharp turn, stopped, and the back doors were unlocked and opened. The men blinked their eyes in the light. Evans and another guard stood at the tailgate. Evans looked at them from the shade of his sun glasses and cork sun helmet.

“Gang five follow me,” he said.

The men dropped out of the back one by one and walked in single file behind him. The truck was parked by an irrigation canal that was being dug into a flood basin. The canal ended abruptly where yesterday’s work had stopped. Two long banks of dusty red clay were piled on each side of the ditch. The pine trees were green and sweet smelling in the morning air. The trees stretched away over the loam down to the river. The breeze from the river blew through the woods and scattered the pine needles over the ground.

The men in gang five followed Evans to the line shack where the tools were handed out. Two trusties stood at the door of the shack to check out the tools. Each man could ask for either a shovel or a pick. Those who got there first took all the shovels. It was harder work with a pick.

Billy Jo stepped forward in the line.

“Shovel.”

“Ain’t no more. Claxton got the last,” the trusty said.

“My goddamn luck.”

“Move along,” Evans said.

It was Jeffry’s turn.

“Hey Evans, can’t I get a shovel? I was sick again last night.”

“You should have got at the head of the line.”

“I’ll pull my guts loose with a pick.”

“You’re slowing up the line.”

Jeffry lifted the pick on his shoulder with both hands and walked over to the irrigation canal.

“What’s your name?” the trusty said to Avery.

“Broussard.”

“There’s supposed to be another guy here — LeBlanc.”

“Scratch him off. He’s in the hospital at Angola,” Evans said.

“I ain’t supposed to scratch nobody off till I get an order.”

“I’m giving you the order. He won’t be here for three weeks.”

“Why don’t somebody at the office get things straight and stop screwing up my list?” the trusty said. “What are you doing here, Boudreaux? I got you marked down in detention.”

“I’m out.”

“I can see that.”

“Give me a pick and I won’t take up any more of your valuable time.”

“How am I supposed to keep my list straight when half the guys in your gang is someplace they shouldn’t be?” the trusty said to Evans.

“You can bitch to the warden and maybe he’ll give you another job. We need more people on the line,” Evans said.

The trusty wrote in his book. “Boudreaux — one pick,” he said.

Evans turned to Toussaint.

“What are you staring at?”

“Nothing.” He shouldered his pick with one hand, the point sharp and shiny in the sun. His hand was tight on the smooth wood handle. Evans looked at him, his face pink and peeling from sunburn. Toussaint stared back.

“Don’t ever think you could get away with it,” Evans said. “You wouldn’t no more get the pick over your head and I would have my pistol out.”

“A man that’s been on the gang can swing pretty fast. Even with one hand and from the shoulder.”

Evans started to step back and checked himself.

“Talk like that can send you to detention,” he said.

“I been there before.”

“One of these days you ain’t coming back. You’ll go crazy in there and start mumbling and pissing on yourself like the loonies.”

Toussaint let the pick drop to his side and swing loosely by one arm. Evans’ hand jerked to his holster involuntarily and then relaxed. The Negro walked past him to the ditch.

“What was Evans on your ass about this time?” Jeffry said.

“He said I might make trusty this year.”

The men were working at the end of the canal with the picks. They thudded them into the wall of dirt and pulled the broken tree roots loose with their fingers. The sweat rolled down their bare backs, and their faces were already filmed with dust. Jeffry rested his pick and looked over at Evans.

“Somebody should kill that sonofabitch,” he said.

“He’s a mean one,” Daddy Claxton said.

“I’d like to pop his head open like you break a matchbox,” Billy Jo said.

“He’s going to make me pull my guts out,” Jeffry said.

“You ain’t the only guy in camp with the runs,” Billy Jo said.

“I got to go thirsty all the time,” Jeffry said. “I can’t never drink a sip of water without puking it right up again. When I get out I’m going down home and stick my head in a well we got and drink till there ain’t any fever left in my insides.”

“I ain’t seen a woman in four years,” Billy Jo said. “I’m going to hire the two best-looking whores in Memphis and jazz them till they’re bleeding. I ain’t done any belly-rubbing in so long I forgot what it is.”

“It ain’t but a month now,” Jeffry said.

“Why don’t you guys write it on a piece of paper and tack it on the warden’s bulletin board,” a man working next to Billy Jo said. “Jeffry and Billy Jo is breaking out in one month.”

“I remember in Folsom a guy stooled on a break,” Billy Jo said. “Somebody used a razor on him like you slice up a ham.”

“That didn’t do no good to the guys that got their butts shot off,” the man said.

Billy Jo swung his pick down hard into the wall of dirt.

“I don’t reckon you’re aiming to make trusty by turning us in?” he said.

“I got no truck with fellows like that.”

“You’re a good boy.” Billy Jo swung his pick down again.

“What are you going to do when you get out, Toussaint?” Jeffry said.

“I don’t think that far ahead.”

“That’s the best way to do it. You go nuts when you start counting time.”

Two men moved the wheelbarrows up to the front of the ditch and shoveled in the loose dirt.

“It don’t do you no good to count time,” Jeffry said. “It makes you feel like shitting in your britches when you think of what’s out there and you can’t get to none of it.”

“There’s pussy out there,” Billy Jo said. “Christ, I’m going to bathe in it when I get out.”

“This is the worst goddamn camp they got in the state,” Jeffry said. “Them goddamn Carolina chain gangs ain’t any worse off than we got it.”

“This place ain’t tough,” Billy Jo said. “I was in five pens before they sent me here.”

“You had a real successful career,” a man said. It was the same man who had baited him in the truck.

“Someday I’ll sent you a postcard and you can play with yourself while you think about me climbing between some girl’s legs.”

“How did you get that scar on your face?”

“In the Tennessee pen,” Billy Jo said.

“I heard you was cut for rutting over a nigger girl.”

“You sonofabitch.”

“Your scar is turning red, Billy.”

“I’ll drive this pick through your goddamn chest.”

“Your bleeding ass.”

“I done warned you.”

“Hack watching,” Brother Samuel said.

They looked up. Evans stood in the shade by the trees.

“He ain’t watching us. He’s thinking about what he’s going to do to his old lady when he gets home,” Billy Jo said. “Why’d you say he was watching us?”

“I don’t reckon I see too good,” Brother Samuel said.

“Don’t go getting in no fights,” Jeffry said. “They’ll put you in detention and we’ll be out in another month.”

“You boys better keep quiet about it,” Brother Samuel said.

“We’ll make it out,” Jeffry said.

“I ain’t saying you won’t. It’s just that it don’t hurt none to keep it to yourself.”

“You ever been in a break, Daddy?” Billy Jo said. The man whom he had almost fought had moved to the other side of the ditch and was working by himself.

“No. I seen one, though. I was in Angola when they lined the guards up along the block and was going to set fire to them with torches.”

“Too bad Evans wasn’t there,” Billy Jo said. “I’d give up the best piece of ass I ever had to see him get caught in a riot. And that pop-off bastard over there. I’d like to see him get his tail burned, too.” He looked towards the man working on the other side of the canal.

“Why don’t you quit talking about women?” Jeffry said.

“Because I love pussy, fruit man. That’s the only thing I can’t go without. The best lay I ever had was from a gal in Birmingham. I picked her up in a beer joint. She had a belly as smooth as water, and she was like wet silk inside. I give her everything I had and she still wanted more.”

“I run after women when I was a young man,” Daddy Claxton said.

“How long has it been, Daddy?” Billy Jo said.

“I got too old to think about it anymore.”

“You ain’t too old to play with them.”

“I done eight years and I still got life to go. I don’t think about them no more.”

Evans walked closer to the ditch and looked down at the men. They stopped talking and swung their picks into the dirt. He went back to the shade of the trees.

Toussaint watched Avery work with his pick. He raised it over his head and swung down with his arms.

“You’re doing it wrong,” the Negro said.

“What?”

“You won’t last the day like that.”

“I know how to use a pick.”

“You ain’t worked eight hours a day with one before.”

“How do you do it, then?”

“Swing with your shoulders. Let the pick do the work,” Toussaint said. “Don’t tire yourself out. You ain’t working for nothing except that ten-dollar bill they give you when you get out of here.”

“You talk like you’re from the Delta.”

“Barataria.”

“I’m from Martinique parish.”

“What are you serving?”

“One to three for running moon.”

“You don’t look like a whiskey runner.”

“I wasn’t in business long enough to be a professional.”

“You can be out in a year on good behavior.”

“I already had trouble with the captain.”

“How’d you get on this gang? Gang five is supposed to be for lifers and troublemakers.”

“There was a fight when I was in the parish jail.”

“Who was doing the fighting?”

“I was part of the time. The man I was brought in with had to be sent to the prison hospital at Angola.”

“Stay out of fights in the camp. It will get you time in detention, and they won’t let you try for parole when your first year is up.”

“What’s detention like?”

“It’s a tin box no bigger than a baggage trunk setting out in the sun.”

“How many days do they put you in there?” Avery said.

“As long as they want, but they got to take you out each night. The camp doctor makes them.”

“They kept me in the hole eight days at the parish jail. After the third day I couldn’t go to sleep. It was too hot to sleep during the daytime and at night I’d start imagining things.”

“If they put you in detention try counting the rivets on the inside of the door. When you get tired of that you can count the heat waves bouncing off the sides.”

“What are you in for?”

“Ten years.”

“Jesus Christ. What did you do?”

“They said I robbed a fur company.”

“You didn’t do it?”

“They give me ten years. They’re outside and I’m inside. That makes them right.”

“How does anybody beat a place like this?”

“They say nobody beats it. Nobody escapes and nobody comes out the same.”

“Those two men in the truck think they’re getting out.”

“Jeffry and Billy Jo?” Toussaint said.

“The one with the red scar and his podner.”

“If they bust free they’ll be the first. Two years ago somebody in gang three tried it. He was climbing over the wire fence when they caught him with the shotguns. They make everybody in camp come outside and look at him hanging in the wire.”

The sun was high above the trees now, and it shone directly down in the ditch. Brother Samuel and Daddy Claxton tied their handkerchiefs around their foreheads to keep the sweat out of their eyes. Jeffry complained of the heat and his stomach, and he held both hands close to the iron head of the pick and scratched at the dirt and roots. Billy Jo continued to talk of the women he had slept with, although no one listened to him now. The wheelbarrow was brought up and the loose dirt was shoveled in. The men rested on their picks and cursed the sun and the dust, and once more swung into the hard sunbaked wall before them.

“Bring the goddamn water barrel down,” Billy Jo aid.

“Where the hell is the trusty? Hey Evans, send down the water barrel,” another said.

“I can’t drink no water,” Jeffry said.

“The rest of us can,” Billy Jo said. “Evans! Tell the goddamn trusty to bring us some water.”

Evans stood over them on the crest of the ditch. He frowned at Billy Jo.

“What’s your beef?” he said.

“Some goddamn water.”

“Go back to work.”

“It’s hotter than a bitch down here.”

“I’ll send the trusty. Keep swinging that pick.”

Evans walked up the line and sent the trusty back. The aluminum water barrel was beaded with drops of moisture. A tin dipper hung from the lip of the barrel. Billy Jo pulled off the lid and filled the dipper. He swallowed twice and spit the rest in the dirt.

“This tastes like Evans washed his socks in it,” he said.

“Drink it or go dry,” the trusty said.

“Fuck you, ass kisser.”

“Maybe you don’t get no water the rest of the day,” the trusty said.

“And maybe you’ll get your fucking throat slit while you’re asleep,” Billy Jo said.

The trusty put the lid back on the barrel. “That’s all your drinking water for today.”

“Let me have a drink. I’m like cotton inside,” Daddy Claxton said. The trusty pulled the lid back off and let him fill the dipper. The water rolled down Claxton’s chin and over his chest. He lowered the dipper into the barrel and drank again. Jeffry watched him drink, and rubbed the back of his hand over his lips.

“You’ll have the runs for a week,” Billy Jo said.

“His tongue won’t be blistering by one o’clock,” the trusty said.

“Screw you, punk.”

The dipper was passed around the gang. The trusty replaced it and the lid when they had finished.

“There’s a freshwater spring over in them trees,” he said. “I’m going over directly and have a drink.”

“You mean there’s clean water over yonder?” Jeffry said.

“It’s coming right out of some rocks.”

“Go fill up the water barrel. We’ll pay you for it,” he said.

“What with?”

“I got three bucks hid in the barracks.”

“That ain’t enough.”

“The sonofabitch is riding you,” Billy Jo said. “Don’t pay him no mind.”

“It’s coming out of some rocks with moss on them.’

“I believe him,” Jeffry said. “This is hill country There’s always springs where there’s hills.”

“You’re in barracks two, ain’t you?” Billy Jo said to the trusty. “Well, I got buddies in there, so you better forget about sleeping for the next few nights unless you want to get operated on. It takes one swipe with a knife and your whoring days are over. Now get the fuck out of here, punk.”

“It’s a long day without no water,” the trusty said and lifted the barrel and moved down the ditch.

“You shouldn’t ought to get him mad,” Daddy Claxton said. “Maybe he won’t bring the water back.’

“He’s got to,” Billy Jo said. “Evans will make him We can’t do no work without water.”

“I reckon you’re right,” Daddy Claxton said.

“I don’t give a fuck for punks like that, anyway.’

“I wouldn’t mind making trusty,” the old man said.

“That’s for punks and ass kissers.”

“You think there’s a spring around here somewhere?” Jeffry said.

“There ain’t no water in ten miles of here that don’t have scum or mosquito eggs in it.”

“I thought we might get some clean water.”

“They might bring us some oranges with lunch. You can drink the juice.”

“You think they will?”

“Today’s Friday. Carp and fruit for lunch,” Brother Samuel said.

“I seen some carp and garfish eating off a drowned cow once,” Daddy Claxton said.

Evans walked over to the embankment of dirt and squatted on his haunches, looking down at the men. Small clods rolled from around his boots into the ditch.

“The captain wants a new latrine dug,” he said.

“We dug the last one. It’s gang six’s turn,” Billy Jo said.

“The captain likes the way we dig latrines. We do a good job. He might even let us keep digging them from now on. Boudreaux and what’s your name, get up here.”

Toussaint and Avery climbed out of the ditch.

“You see that line of scrub over there? Dig a trench fifteen feet long and three deep.”

“We ain’t got a shovel.”

“Claxton, hand up your shovel.”

“It’s checked out to me. I got to hand it back in.”

“Let’s have it.”

Evans took the shovel by its handle and gave it to Avery.

“Give Claxton your pick.”

Avery slid it down the embankment to the old man.

They walked over to the line of brush. Avery marked out the edge of the trench with his shovel. Evans stood off in the shade of the trees to watch them.

“I’ll break the ground and you dig after me,” Toussaint said.

They went to work. Toussaint drove the pick into the cracked earth and snapped the brush roots loose. Avery dug from one end of the trench and worked in a pattern towards the other side.

“What makes Billy Jo and Jeffry think they can make it?” he said.

“Billy Jo has got a brother on the outside. He’s supposed to help them.”

“You think you could make it with somebody on the outside?”

“Not when everybody in camp knows about it,” Toussaint said. “Billy Jo says his brother is going to meet them in a car. I’m surprised he ain’t give out the license number.”

“You might have a chance with help on the outside.”

“You thinking about leaving us?”

“It passed through my mind.”

“You can get out in a year. Serve your time. A year ain’t nothing. If you break out and get caught they add five more on your sentence.’

“Do you ever think about breaking out?”

“I wouldn’t talk about it if I did,” Toussaint said. “You’re young. Wait it out.”

The trench deepened. It was almost time for lunch.

“Why were you in detention?” Avery said.

“Talking during roll call.”

“They gave you a day for that?”

“No, two days. They let me out to put somebody else in.”

“Who put you in?”

“Evans.”

“He must have it against you.”

“He don’t like nobody.”

“He looks like he enjoys his work.”

“It takes a certain type man to be a hack,” Toussaint said.

“Does he ride you like that all the time?”

“You said you were from Martinique parish.”

“Yes.”

“Talk about Martinique parish, then.”

They worked for a half hour in silence.

“What do you figure on doing when your time is up?” Toussaint said.

“I just got here. I haven’t thought about it.”

“You’ll start thinking about it soon. You won’t think about nothing else after a while.”

“I might go to New Orleans.”

“What for?”

“I’ve never been there.”

“Ain’t you got a home?”

“There’s nothing left of it now. My daddy was a cane planter. We used to own twenty acres. The last I heard some man bought it at the sheriff’s tax sale to build a subdivision.”

“I lived in New Orleans. I worked on the docks.”

“What’s the chance of getting a job?”

“Fair. What kind of work you done?”

“Oil exploration.”

“I know a man down there might help you.”

“They say New Orleans is a good town.”

“You planning on staying out of the whiskey business?” Toussaint said.

“I’ll probably stay on the drinking end of it.”

“You can’t boil out the misery with corn.”

“You can make a good dent in it, though.”

“You’re too young to have a taste for whiskey.”

“I’m not too young to be digging a latrine with you, so let’s get off my age.”

“Whiskey can eat you up.”

“I’ve seen a lot more eaten up, and whiskey didn’t do it.”

Evans blew his whistle for the lunch break. The men climbed out of the ditch and formed a line behind a pickup truck parked in the shade. Toussaint and Avery dropped their tools in the unfinished trench and got in line with the others. The tin plates and spoons were handed out. The trusties served the food from the big aluminum containers placed on the bed of the truck. The men sat in the shade and ate.

“You told me we was having oranges,” Jeffry said.

“I ain’t the warden. I can’t know what they’re going to do,” Billy Jo said.

“You said we was getting oranges.”

“Drink the tea. It helps your stomach,” Brother Samuel said.

“It’s just like the drinking water.”

“Stop bitching,” Billy Jo said.

“I seen some carp eating off a dead cow once,” Daddy Claxton said.

“Maybe you’re swallowing the same carp,” someone said.

“It wouldn’t bother me none. I eat worse. When I was a boy my pap used to bring home garfish that was caught up on land in the flood basin.”

“This tea ain’t no different from the water,” Jeffry said.

“It’s boiled. That makes it different. Drink it and shut up,” Billy Jo said.

“I’ll puke up my dinner.”

“Let Brother Samuel work on you,” a man from gang two said.

“He didn’t do me no good.”

“You wasn’t cooperating,” the man said.

“I ain’t got my powers no more,” Brother Samuel said.

“You know that ain’t true, Brother. What’s that thing around your neck?”

Brother Samuel touched the wooden disk that hung on a leather cord.

“The Black Man give it to me. These letters is written in a language that ain’t even used no more. It means I got the power to control spirits.”

“I thought you didn’t have no powers.”

“I still got my magic powers. I ain’t got my spiritual ones.”

“What’s the difference?”

“My magic ones is from the Black Man, and the others is from the Lord. I ain’t had no truck with the Black Man since he made me sin agin Jesus.”

“Look at it this way,” the inmate from gang two said. “If you use the Black Man’s powers to do the work of Jesus, then you can get back at him for making you sin.”

“I ain’t thought of it that way.”

“Ain’t it the work of the Lord to heal people? Well, that’s just what you’re doing.”

“That’s the way I figure it, too,” Daddy Claxton said.

“Use some of them things you carry around with you,” the inmate from two said. His name was Benoit. He was dark complexioned and unshaved, with close set pig-eyes, and he smelled of sweat and earth.

“I ain’t sure it’s right. I gone back to following the Word.”

“Lay down, Jeffry, and let him heal you.”

“I don’t want to be healed. I tried it once. It don’t work.”

“Sure it works,” Benoit said.

“I’m about to puke from this fish already. I don’t want nobody fooling with me.”

“Tell him to get hisself healed, Billy Jo.”

“Get yourself healed,” Billy Jo said, his mouth filled with bread and carp.

“Let me be.”

“Go ahead, Brother.”

“I ain’t sure.”

“It ain’t Jesus’ will to let a man suffer when you can cure him.”

“You want me to try, Jeffry?”

“No.”

“Don’t listen to him. He’s sick in the head with fever,” Benoit said.

“His head’s all right. He ain’t got faith,” Brother Samuel said.

“You got no faith, Jeffry,” Benoit said.

“You guys let me alone.”

Most of the men had finished lunch and came over to watch.

“How about it, Brother?”

“I’ll try.”

The men held Jeffry’s arms and legs to the ground and pulled up his shirt to expose his stomach.

“Goddamn you bastards! Leave go! Do you hear me! I’m sick! Turn loose!”

He struggled for a moment and then became still. He twisted his head up to watch his stomach and to see what Brother Samuel was going to do.

“What’s them things you got?” Daddy Claxton said.

“Them’s what I control the spirits with.”

He knelt beside Jeffry, his face the color of mud under the straw hat that came down to his ears. His large ill-fitting clothes were damp with sweat.

“I’m going to use my moccasin fang and turtle foot first. It ain’t going to hurt none, you’ll just feel something pulling on you when the spirit leaves your body.”

“You guys got no right to let him do this,” Jeffry said.

“It’s time you got religion,” Benoit said.

“This ain’t religion. It’s conjuring. Don’t let him touch me with that stuff.”

“Lie still,” Brother Samuel said. “I’m going to make a cross on your belly.”

He drew a white impression of a horizontal line across Jeffry’s stomach with the turtle foot, then drew a vertical line through it with the snake fang. He placed the fang and the foot on the ground beside a piece of string and the ball of hair taken from a cow’s stomach. He folded his hands together and rocked slowly back and forth.

“Goddamn each of you bastards,” Jeffry said. He struggled again. The men held him firmly. The figure of the cross was pink and white on his stomach.

“Great Belial,” Brother Samuel began, “cast out of the spirits of Zion that want this man to bow before the bloody hill where you wrecked the faith of mighty Jerusalem, and let him take the snake to his cheek.” Samuel picked up the snake fang in his fingers and held the curved ivory point over Jeffry’s stomach. “With the sign of your kingdom I plunge the poison of the shade into your enemy’s heart.” He brought the snake fang down and struck the center of the cross.

“I’m bleeding,” Jeffry said. “Look at what you done. You stuck me full of poison. I heard you say so.”

There was a small drop of blood at the joint of the cross.

“I never seen nothing like that,” Daddy Claxton said.

“Jeffry don’t look good.”

“What the hell do you think I look like when somebody is sticking snake poison in me?”

“I didn’t put no poison in you,” Brother Samuel said.

“I heard you say it.”

“That’s just part of what I got to say to cast out the spirit.”

“You feel any different?” Daddy Claxton said.

“Yeah. I got a hole in my belly that I didn’t have five minutes ago.”

“I reckon it takes some extra conjuring to get you healed,” Benoit said.

“I had my fill. I don’t want no more.”

“It’s a powerful spirit got hold of you,” Brother Samuel said.

“It ain’t no spirit. It’s the runs. Everybody gets the runs,” Jeffry said.

“Try another cure, Brother Samuel.”

“Not on me. I ain’t having no more.” The men still held him to the ground.

“I ain’t got but one left.”

“Go ahead and use it. Jeffry is willing to do anything to get rid of the runs.”

“You sonsofbitches.”

“Don’t use cuss words when we’re talking about things of the spirit,” Benoit said, his pig-eyes smiling at Jeffry.

“I wouldn’t do this to none of you when you was sick,” Jeffry said.

“That’s because you got no charity. You got no faith, neither. Ain’t that right? Jeffry’s got no faith.”

“You rotten bas…”

A man clamped his hand over Jeffry’s mouth.

“Get on with the conjuring. We got to use force to get him healed.”

Jeffry’s eyes rolled wildly.

“What are you going to do with that ball of hair?” Benoit said.

“It’s for casting out the spirit.”

“How’s it work?” Daddy Claxton said.

“I send the spirit out of Jeffry into the ball of hair, and then I set fire to it and let the spirit free again.”

“What happens if he don’t get free?”

“Belial will send another spirit into my body to make me turn him loose.”

“Who’s this Belial guy?” Billy Jo said.

“He was one of the angels the Lord run out of Heaven,” Brother Samuel said.

“I never heard of no Belial,” Billy Jo said.

“That’s because you and Jeffry got no religion,” Benoit said.

“I don’t need none.”

“Mmpppppppht,” Jeffry said, beneath the clamped hand.

Brother Samuel held the ball of hair to Jeffry’s stomach and closed his eyes and began to speak in a language that none of the men could understand. He rolled the ball in a circle and his voice became a chant. Jeffry’s stomach started quivering under Brother Samuel’s hands. The pink and white impression of the cross had disappeared, and only the small smear of blood remained. Brother Samuel chanted louder and rocked on his knees, with his body bent over Jeffry.

“Is that all there is to it?” Billy Jo said.

“I got to set the spirit free.”

“You mean he’s inside that ball of hair?”

“Take it and hold it in your hand.”

“I don’t want it,” Billy Jo said.

Samuel offered it to Daddy Claxton.

“I ain’t touching it,” the old man said.

“I’ll hold it,” Benoit said.

Brother Samuel put it in his hand.

“It jumped! My God, there’s something in it!” He jerked his hand away and let it drop to the ground. The men were grinning at him. “I tell you it jumped. I ain’t lying. I felt it bump in my hand like it was alive.”

“The sun must have fried your brains.”

“One of you guys pick it up.” No one did. “Go ahead, pick it up. See if I’m lying. It tried to jump out of my hand.”

“You been drinking the kerosene from the line shack again?” Billy Jo said.

“All right, bastard. You pick it up.”

“You can play witch doctor if you want. I ain’t making an ass out of myself.”

“Turn Jeffry loose,” Brother Samuel said.

Jeffry wiped his mouth with his hand and tucked in his shirt. There was spittle and pink finger marks around his mouth.

“You see this piece of string?” Brother Samuel said. “I’m tying three knots in it. I’m going to give it to you, and I want you to put it in your pocket and not look at it till tonight. When the knots is gone your stomach won’t bother you no more.”

“You mean them knots is going away by theirself?” Daddy Claxton said.

“As long as he don’t look at the string till dark.”

“I ain’t going to look at it no time. I don’t want the goddamn thing. Hey, what are you doing?”

“I’m putting it in your pocket for you.”

“I had my fill of this stuff.”

“Shut up and do like he says,” Billy Jo said.

Brother Samuel picked up the ball of hair. He took a kitchen match from his denims and scratched it across the sole of his work boot. He held the flame to the ball and waited for it to catch. A wisp of yellow-black smoke came up, and the sweet-rotten odor of burnt hair made the men draw back. He stood up and hurled the ball of flame into the air, where it burst apart in a myriad of fire. Pieces of burnt hair floated slowly to the ground.

“It’s over. I set him free,” Brother Samuel said.

Jeffry got up and walked across the clearing, his legs held close together.

“Where are you going?” Billy Jo said.

“To the goddamn latrine.”

The whistle blew for the lunch break to end. The men filed past the back of the pickup and dropped their plates and spoons into a cardboard box. Toussaint and Avery went back to work on the trench.

“Does that go on all the time?” Avery said.

“That’s the first time I seen him do any conjuring. He’s usually talking about the Word and soul-saving.”

“He stuck the snake’s fang right in the center of the cross.”

“I seen that done down home before. I knowed a man that did the same thing to get rid of a sickness. He said when he died he could pass on his powers, but it had to be to a woman. A man can only give them to a woman, and a woman only to a man.”

“He puts on a fine show.”

“He’s a good man. He don’t do nothing unless he thinks he can help somebody,” Toussaint said.

“He didn’t do much good for Jeffry. He’s still on latrine duty.”

Evans came over to watch the work. The width and length of the trench were dug out, and Avery had spaded the depth down to a foot. Evans chewed on a matchstick. He rolled it from one side of his mouth to the other with his tongue.

“We want it finished this afternoon,” he said. “Put in a little less talk and more work.”

“We was talking about this fellow Belial.”

“What?”

“This is the place where you can get the spirit run out of you, the camp latrine.”

“What the hell are you saying, Boudreaux?”

“You’re the only hack in camp with a conjuror on your gang.”

Avery threw a load of dirt to the side of the trench and didn’t look up.

“You got no sense. You could be smart and do easy time,” Evans said.

That would put you out of a job. You wouldn’t have nobody to lock up in the box.”

“You got a lot more years to pull. You ain’t going to make it.”

“Don’t put no money on it.”

“You’ll break down,” Evans said. “I seen bigger guys than you crack. Some of them went to the bughouse at Pineville. You ever see anybody go nuts from stir? A stir nut is something to see.”

“How deep do you want the trench?” Avery said.

“I told you before, three feet.”

“It looks deep enough now.”

“You better learn something now. You do like you’re told in the camp.”

“I thought I might give a suggestion.”

“Don’t.”

“All right.”

“This man you’re with is trouble. Buddy with him and he’ll get you time in detention,” Evans said.

“I didn’t ask to dig latrines with him.”

Evans stared at Avery as though he were evaluating him. He flipped the chewed matchstick into the trench. The butt of his revolver and the cartridges in his belt shone in the sun.

“Do your stretch easy. It’s the best way. Don’t give me no trouble.”

He left them and went to the trees.

“You didn’t need to do that,” Toussaint said.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Don’t think you ever got to take pressure off me.”

“I got tired of listening to him talk.”

“I don’t want you putting your neck out for me.”

“Why did you start that stuff with him?”

“I thought it might pick up the conversation.”

“He’s right. You’ll never make your time,” Avery said.

“You believe what he said about cracking a man down?”

“I don’t know. A few years of this. Jesus.”

“You think he can crack you?”

“I don’t ask for trouble.”

“It don’t matter if you ask for it or not. You got one to three years of it when you walked through that front gate,” Toussaint said.

“Free will.”

Toussaint looked at him. “It’s a joke the brothers used to teach us,” Avery said.

The sun went behind a cloud and the clearing fell into shadow. The breeze from the river felt suddenly cool; the sky was dark. A dust devil swirled by the trench and spun into the air. Its funnel widened, whipped by the wind, and disappeared.

The afternoon wore on, and at five o’clock the men climbed into the trucks and were taken to the barracks. The trucks rolled down the gravel roads over the railroad tracks and through the fields of green and yellow grass with the sun’s dying rays slanting over the pines. The men showered and changed into fresh denims and lined up outside the dining hall for supper. They sat at the wooden tables and benches and ate the tasteless food that still seemed to smell of the carbolic and antiseptic that was used to clean the kitchen. They went back to the barracks and lay exhausted on their bunks, listening to the sounds of the frogs and night birds in the woods. Then it was nine o’clock and the lights went out and someone struck a match to the candle and the poker game began for those who were not too tired to play.

Toussaint’s bunk was two down from Avery’s. The army blanket on it was stretched and tucked so tightly across the mattress that you could bounce a quarter off it. The pillow was laid neatly at the head, and his foot locker was squared evenly with the base. He had a cardboard box fixed to the wall above his pillow, where he kept his razor, soap, toothbrush, tobacco, matches, and cigarette papers. He sat on the side of his bunk and reached up to get his package of Virginia Extra. He rolled a cigarette and popped a match on his thumbnail. He dropped the burnt match into a small tin can that he kept under his bed.

The poker game was being organized on the floor between the two rows of bunks. Jeffry’s foot locker had been pushed out into the aisle to be used as a table, and an army blanket was spread over the top. The men played with pocket change, although it was against camp regulations for any inmate to have money. A visitor would slip a prisoner a few crumpled, hand-soiled bills, and they would eventually circulate through the entire camp by way of poker and dice games and bribes to the trusties and guards for favors. Billy Jo ran the poker game in Toussaint’s barracks on a house system, by which he took a nickel out of every pot for the use of his candles and cards. He would cover any bet up to five dollars, and allow credit if the player could put up security.

“We need two more guys,” Billy Jo said.

“We got four already,” Benoit said.

“We need a couple more. You want in, Claxton?”

“Will you give me something on next tobacco ration?”

“You already owe it to me. What else you got?”

“Nothing.”

“Brother Samuel.”

“I ain’t a gambling man.”

“Who wants to play. We need two more guys.”

“Get Jeffry.”

“He’s in the latrine.”

“You ain’t doing nothing, Toussaint.”

“I only got a quarter.”

“That’s enough. Move over and let him sit down, Benoit.”

Toussaint sat down on the floor in front of the trunk and changed his quarter for five nickels.

“Start dealing,” Benoit said.

“We need another guy. You want to play?”

“I’m broke,” Avery said.

“I’ll give you two-bits on your first tobacco ration.”

They made room for Avery. Billy Jo dropped two dimes and a nickel on the blanket.

“They pass out the tobacco on Monday. Bring me yours as soon as you get it,” he said.

“Let’s start playing,” Benoit said.

“Five-card draw, no ante, jacks to open.” Billy Jo dealt the cards around. The men looked at their cards in the light of the two candles melted to each end of the trunk.

“I can’t open,” the man on Billy Jo’s left said.

“Me neither.”

“Open for a nickel,” Toussaint said.

“I’m out.”

“Out.”

Two more coins thumped on the blanket.

“Give me three,” Toussaint said.

“One,” Benoit said. His pig-eyes studied his hand thoughtfully.

“Two for the dealer,” Billy Jo said.

“Your bet.”

“Ten cents,” Toussaint said.

“Bump you a dime more,” Benoit said.

“Call,” Billy Jo said.

Toussaint had opened on a pair of queens and had drawn another one.

“Call,” he said.

“What you got?” Benoit said.

“Three queens.”

“Fuck. I had two pair, ace high.”

They threw in their cards and Billy Jo took a nickel out of the pot. Toussaint scraped in his winnings. They played four more hands; Toussaint won two of them. One man had dropped out and gone to bed, leaving five in the game. The deal went around again. Toussaint won the next hand on a straight. He had a dollar and a half in coins before him. Benoit dealt the cards.

“Open for a nickel,” Avery said.

Everyone stayed.

“How many you want?”

“I’m pat,” Avery said.

“You ain’t taking no cards?”

“No.”

“Three,” Toussaint said.

The discards were scattered across the blanket. The man across from Toussaint drew one card.

“I’ll take the same,” Billy Jo said.

Benoit snapped two cards off the deck for himself. He mixed them in his hand and fanned them out slowly.

“Your bet, opener,” he said.

“My last nickel,” Avery said.

Toussaint had drawn to a pair of kings and missed. He threw in his cards.

“I’m out,” the man across from him said.

“I’ll see you,” Billy Jo said.

“Call and raise it a quarter,” Benoit said.

“That was my last nickel. I got to go in the side pot,” Avery said.

“No side pot and no drawing light,” Benoit said. “It’s a house rule.”

“I can’t cover it, then.”

“I’ll back him,” Toussaint said. He dropped three quarters in front of Avery.

Avery picked them up and threw them in the pot.

“Call and raise you fifty cents,” he said.

“You splitting with him, Toussaint?” Benoit said.

“I got no part in this.”

“How come you giving your money away?”

“I don’t like to see nobody play freeze out.”

“Call his raise or fold,” Billy Jo said.

“Give me time.”

Benoit ruffled the cards in his hands.

“Do one thing or another,” Billy Jo said.

“He’s playing on somebody else’s money.”

“You don’t care whose it is when you put it in your pocket.”

He waited, his pig-eyes studying the backs of Avery’s cards. “All right, I fold,” he said.

Avery tossed a nickel out of the pot to Billy Jo and took the rest in.

“Here’s openers,” he said. He showed a pair of aces.

“What else you got?” Benoit said.

“You didn’t pay to see.”

“I got a right to know.”

“No, you don’t,” Toussaint said.

Benoit flipped over Avery’s other cards, a pair of eights and a seven of clubs.

“You didn’t have nothing but two pair. I was holding three tens.”

“You should have paid to see those cards.”

“Listen, kid,” Benoit began.

“I don’t like that crap, neither,” Billy Jo said. “I run a straight game, and we play like the rules says. You got to put up before you see a guy’s hand.”

Benoit glared at the discards and was quiet.

“Hey, you guys, look here.” It was Jeffry. He was coming from the latrine, barefooted, his belt unhitched and hanging loose, and his trousers half buttoned. He had the piece of string in his hand.

“You’ll wake up the guys sleeping,” Billy Jo said.

“Look at the string. Them knots is gone. It’s like Brother Samuel said. There ain’t one of them left!”

“Shut up,” a voice said from one of the bunks.

“I went into the latrine and I was waiting to get rid of my supper, like I do every night, and I waited and nothing happened. My belly was all right. I didn’t have to crap at all. I was hitching up my trousers and I took out this piece of string and them knots was gone. I don’t feel sick no more. I swear to God I don’t. Wake up, Brother Samuel! You healed my belly. It’s like you said. No more runs.”

Brother Samuel stirred in his bunk. He sat up and looked at Jeffry. His face was heavy with sleep.

“You done it,” Jeffry said.

“I ain’t sure you want to be obliged.”

“This is the first time I held my food down since I come to camp.”

“I healed you through the Black Man. Sometimes the spirits come back and make it bad for you in another way.”

“I ain’t worrying about no more spirits. They can do anything they got a mind to as long as they don’t give me no more dysentery.”

“You guys shut up,” a voice said from the darkness.

“I told you there was something in that ball of hair,” Benoit said.

“You guys been in stir too long. It’s got to you,” Billy Jo said.

“Look at the string. There ain’t a knot in it.”

“Who untied them? That Belial guy?”

“I don’t know. I’d like to shake his hand, whoever he is,” Jeffry said.

“Them spirits can come back,” Brother Samuel said.

“They ain’t coming around me no more,” Jeffry said. “I swear to God I never thought nothing like this could happen.”

“Button up your pants. You’re hanging out,” Billy Jo said.

“I knowed that ball of hair jumped in my hand,” Benoit said. “I felt it, just like a frog leg jumps.”

“Spread this around camp and you’ll all go to the nut house,” Billy Jo said.

“The spirits can put a grigri on you,” Brother Samuel said.

“What the hell is a grigri?”

“It’s a spell. It makes you have bad luck.”

“I ain’t worrying about no grigri. It couldn’t be no worse than the runs.”

“I ain’t got the power to take it off. It takes a man that’s sold his soul to get rid of a grigri.”

“I ain’t worrying.”

Somewhere in the distance a train whistle blew. They could hear the rush of the engine and the rumble of the wheels. They never saw the train except the day they rode it to prison and the day they left. There was an old story that if an inmate saw the train’s headlamp shining at him out of the darkness he would be released from the camp soon. The whistle blew again and the men sat in silence. Even Jeffry did not speak. The train was closer now and the whistle shrieked once more in the quiet of the night.

“The midnight special going to glory,” Brother Samuel said. “Shine your light on me.”

Three weeks passed and the sky became like scorched brass. The air was hot and dry, and the wind blew across the land like heat from an oven. Dark thunderclouds were spread over the horizon, but the rains didn’t come. At night the heat lightning flashed in the sky, and black strips of rain clouds floated across the moon. The earth was cracked from lack of water. The grass in the fields was burnt yellow and whispered dryly in the hot wind. The men waited for the rains to drench the parched ground, and the thunder clapped and rattled over the horizon like someone beating a sheet of corrugated tin against the sky.

Gang five was still working on the irrigation canal the day LeBlanc was brought to camp. A pickup truck ground along the right-of-way in second gear and stopped close to the ditch. LeBlanc sat in the front seat between two guards. He got out on the driver’s side, and the other guard slid out behind him. LeBlanc’s face was marked with scars and the bridge of his nose was crooked. He hadn’t had a haircut since he had been arrested, and the hair along his neck stuck down over his shirt collar. The two guards walked him to the area where gang five was working.

“Here’s a new one, Evans. He just got in from Angola. The warden told me to bring him on down and get him started,” the driver said.

“What’s his name?” Evans said.

“LeBlanc.”

“I been expecting him. You all can go on. I’ll get him a pick and put him to work.”

“Watch him. He spit on the cop that brought him on the train.”

“He won’t do that here.”

The guards got into the pickup, turned it around, and drove back along the right-of-way towards the gravel road.

“Come with me,” Evans said.

They went to the line shack and LeBlanc was issued a pick. They went back to the ditch.

“I ain’t eat breakfast yet,” LeBlanc said.

“You should have told them when they checked you through the office.”

“I did. Them guards was supposed to take me to the mess hall.”

“They was probably in a hurry. Get down in the ditch and go to work. You can eat at lunch time.”

“I ain’t used to working on an empty stomach.”

“You’ll get used to a lot of things around here. You come into camp with a bad record or they wouldn’t have put you on my gang. Step out of line and you’ll wish you was back in the hospital. Now start sweating some grease into that pick handle.”

“I ain’t got much use for people that wear uniforms.”

“Get down in the ditch.”

He climbed over the mound of clay and slid down the embankment.

“Hi, LeBlanc,” Avery said. “When did they bring you in?”

“I come on the train this morning.”

“How was it at the hospital?”

“They sewed up my face and put my ribs back together. I still got to wear some tape around my sides.”

“I wasn’t sure you were going to make it. You looked pretty bad when they carried you out of the jail,” Avery said.

“I’m going to even up things back there sometime.”

“You better forget about it for a while.”

“I aim to get things straight. I owe some people for messing up my face.”

“What was Evans talking to you about?”

“Who’s Evans?” LeBlanc said.

“The hack.”

“I give a cop some trouble.”

“What did you do?”

“I spit on him at the front gate.”

“Who’s the new guy?” Billy Jo said. “This is LeBlanc,” Avery said. “He came in from Angola.”

“What happened to your face?” Jeffry said. “I fell on the sidewalk playing hopscotch.”

“I was in Angola,” Billy Jo said. “So was Daddy Claxton.”

“I was there when they was going to set fire to the hacks,” Daddy Claxton said.

“Who done that to your face?” Jeffry said. “Them stitches ain’t been out very long.”

“He was in a fight,” Avery said.

“The other guy must have been using a ball bat.’

“My face ain’t your business,” LeBlanc said.

“I didn’t say it was.”

“Stare at something else, then,” LeBlanc said.

“This is the best gang in camp,” Billy Jo said. “Everybody here is doing life or they showed the hacks they don’t take crap.”

“You got a cigarette on you?” Daddy Claxton said.

“They took them away from me at the office.”

“What are you pulling?” Billy Jo said.

“Three and seven.”

“Daddy and Brother Samuel is pulling life,” Jeffry said.

The dust rose from the earth as the men worked. LeBlanc rested his pick and took off his shirt. There was a wide band of tape around his ribs and stomach. He swung the pick into the ground.

“You got something busted?” Billy Jo said.

“It’s healed up now.”

“Brother Samuel can heal it for you if it ain’t right,” Jeffry said.

“There ain’t anything wrong with me,” LeBlanc said.

“Who done it to you?” Jeffry said.

“Let the man be,” Brother Samuel said.

“I was only asking.”

“Listen to the thunder. Maybe we’ll get some rain tonight,” Daddy Claxton said.

“It ain’t going to rain. We’ll be breathing this goddamn dust the rest of the year,” Billy Jo said.

“Not us. We only got a week to pull,” Jeffry said.

“Shut up,” Billy Jo said.

“Why is everybody on my ass today?”

“Because you ask for it,” Billy Jo said.

“I ain’t done a thing and everybody is getting on my ass about it.”

“Then shut your mouth and we’ll leave you alone.”

“I can smell the rain in the air,” Daddy Claxton said. “Like a paper mill. They say it means somebody is going to die when it stays dry a long time and then it rains.”

“This weather ain’t natural,” Brother Samuel said. “I only seen it like this once before. The sky was yellow and the sun was like a red ball. When the rains come the fever come too, and people was dropping dead in the marsh like sick rabbits. They was still finding bodies two months later.”

“It’s a drought. Ain’t you guys ever seen a drought before?” Billy Jo said.

“This one ain’t natural,” Brother Samuel said. “It means something.”

“Where do you get a drink of water around here?” LeBlanc said.

“Call for the trusty.”

“Where is he?”

“Down the ditch someplace.”

“Don’t drink too much water if you can help it,” Avery said.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It makes you sick.”

“Trusty! Bring the water barrel,” Billy Jo said.

“Why ain’t there any decent water?” LeBlanc said.

“The state don’t want to pay for digging a new well,” Jeffry said.

The trusty brought the water can. LeBlanc drank from the dipper.

“I wouldn’t water stock with this,” he said. He threw the dipper inside the can. The water splashed over the rim.

“What the hell!” the trusty said. “You got my shirt wet.”

“Go put some clean water in the can,” LeBlanc said.

“That’s all there is. You drink the same as everybody else.”

“What’s going on down there?” Evans said from the top of the ditch.

“This guy don’t want to drink the water.”

“Let him go thirsty,” Evans said.

“This water come out of a swamp,” LeBlanc said.

The other men had stopped work to watch. LeBlanc’s eyes shone hotly at Evans. The scars and the holes where his cuts had been stitched were pink against his face.

“You’re starting off your stretch the wrong way,” Evans said.

“Was you ever in the army? You look like the kind they got in the stockade,” LeBlanc said.

“Cool down,” Avery said.

“You always got a uniform and a gun, and sometimes they let you carry a stick to bust somebody’s ribs with. I seen them like you in the stockade.”

“You want to spend your first day in detention?”

The trusty started to move off with the water barrel.

“Come back here,” LeBlanc said. He grabbed the water barrel and pulled the lid off. “Look at it. It’s swamp water.”

“That water come out of a tap,” Evans said.

“You try it.”

“You’re talking yourself right into detention.”

“Drink it,” LeBlanc said. He held the barrel up at Evans. “Drink it, you fat swine. Drink it till your fat belly is full of worms.”

“God damn you. Get up here. I’m going to make you sweat your ass off for that.”

“You filthy swine.” LeBlanc hurled the barrel at Evans’ head. The water whirled out in a shower over the men.

Evans had his pistol in his hand and was blowing his whistle. Two guards came running from further down the ditch. The inmates had scattered along the canal when Evans drew his weapon. Picks and shovels were strewn over the ground. The wheelbarrow lay overturned on a mound of dirt.

“Bring him up here,” Evans said.

The guards slid down the side of the ditch and came towards LeBlanc. He stepped back and raised his pick over his shoulder. They stopped and one of them, a lean rough-skinned man named Rainack, drew his revolver and cocked the hammer and aimed it at LeBlanc’s head.

“I won’t miss,” he said.

“For God’s sake, put it down, LeBlanc,” Avery said.

“It’s three to one, and you ain’t got but one swing with that pick,” Evans said.

“Come closer and I’ll pin you to the ground,” LeBlanc said.

“Quit while you got a chance,” the other guard said.

“I seen your kind in the stockade. They know how to use a billy club real good. They know how to jab you where it hurts and it don’t show.”

“Let go of the pick.”

“They’ve got you. Put it down,” Avery said. “You can’t beat them like this. LeBlanc, listen to me. For God’s sake. He means what he says. He’ll kill you.”

“I ain’t waiting much longer,” the guard named Rainack said. “A few more seconds and you’re a dead man.”

Avery broke towards LeBlanc in an attempt to grab the pick. Toussaint dove into his body and dragged him against the wall of the ditch and held him there. Avery fought to get loose, saying, “He’s sick, he was in the war and his mind’s not right, don’t you understand, he should be in a hospital, you can’t shoot him down, Evans, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he thinks you’re somebody in a stockade—”

“Be still,” Toussaint said.

“Make your play one way or another,” Rainack said.

LeBlanc remained motionless, the pick held in the air above his shoulder, while his eyes moved slowly over the two guards in the ditch and then looked up at Evans. He lowered the pick and dropped it by his foot.

“I ain’t going to let you kill me,” he said. “You wouldn’t have to worry about me no more. You’d like to shoot me. You want me to make it easy for you so there won’t be no kickbacks from the warden or an investigation. Well, I’m going to stay alive, because when I get out of wherever you lock me up I’m going to kill that man standing on the ditch.”

“You ain’t going to do nothing,” Rainack said, “except lay in the box and pray Jesus you was dead.”

“I’m going to kill you,” he said to Evans. “Do you hear me? I’m going to get you, or I hope I die and go to hell.”

The guard jabbed his revolver in LeBlanc’s side and shoved him towards the embankment.

“You’ll think you’re in hell when you’ve been in the box a few hours,” Rainack said. “Get up there.”

LeBlanc picked up his straw hat and his shirt and climbed up the embankment with the two guards behind him. He draped his shirt over his shoulder and put on his hat. Evans still held his pistol in his hand.

“Did you hear what I said? I’m going to kill you, you fat-bellied swine.”

Evans whipped his pistol barrel across LeBlanc’s taped ribs. He grabbed at his sides with both hands and doubled over. His teeth were clenched and his eyes glazed in pain. His black hair hung down over his face, and his knees were buckling as though he were going to fall.

“You goddamn, I’ll get, oh you goddamn, oh goddamn.…”

“Get him out of here,” Evans said.

A guard took him by each arm and led him, doubled over, to one of the trucks. The sweat on his back glistened in the sun. The tape around his ribs was moist and pulling loose from his skin. His hat fell from his head and rolled on the ground. Rainack stooped to pick it up, and threw it inside the cab of the truck and pushed LeBlanc in after it.

“Pick up the tools and go to work,” Evans said to the men.

He put his revolver in his holster and snapped the leather strap over the hammer to hold it secure. Daddy Claxton turned the wheelbarrow right side up and began to refill it with his shovel, and the rest of the men picked up their tools and went to work. Evans watched them a minute and then walked farther down the line.

“Did you see Evans’ face when he called him a fat swine?” Billy Jo said. “He would have shot him if the rest of us hadn’t been here.”

“He’s mean enough to do it,” Daddy Claxton said.

“I never seen him so pissed off. Not even at Toussaint,” Jeffry said.

“He don’t like to be called fat,” Brother Samuel said. “He always wears his pistol belt over his stomach to hide it.”

“I seen it in his face. He would have shot that guy dead if we wasn’t here,” Billy Jo said.

“That guy was talking like he was ready for the nut house,” Jeffry said. “What was all that about the stockade and the army?”

“He was in a military prison somewhere,” Avery said.

“You liked to got in the middle of it yourself,” Brother Samuel said.

“It wouldn’t make no difference to Evans who he shot. He don’t care. He likes to hurt anybody,” Jeffry said.

“The water can didn’t miss Evans’ head but about two inches,” Billy Jo said. “God, I’d like to seen him catch it full in the face.”

“You think he means it about killing Evans?” Jeffry said.

“He means it,” Avery said.

“I served with some tough cons, but that boy can stand up with any of them,” Daddy Claxton said.

“Somebody done him a lot of wrong,” Brother Samuel said. “When he gets out of the box he ain’t going to rest till he does Evans some bad.”

“I want to be there to see it,” Billy Jo said.

“It’s going to be plenty hot in the box unless we get some rain,” Daddy Claxton said.

“What’s it like in there?” Jeffry said.

“It ain’t nice,” Toussaint said.

“I heard a man suffocated in there,” Daddy Claxton said.

“I couldn’t pull no time in the box. I’d go flip closed up in a place that small,” Jeffry said.

“You’d pull it if you had to.”

“Not in this weather. The sun will be like a blowtorch on them sides.”

“Maybe the warden will ship him out to maximum security at Angola,” Claxton said.

“Evans will make sure he does his time in the box. He won’t turn in a report if he thinks the warden would ship him out,” Toussaint said.

“I want to see him get Evans. Benoit’s got a knife hid in his bunk. I’d get it from him and give it to this guy if he’d use it,” Billy Jo said.

“Benoit ain’t got a knife,” Jeffry said.

“Yeah, he does. I seen him go in the latrine late at night and work on it with a whetstone.”

“Leave LeBlanc alone,” Avery said. “If you want Evans cut up, do it yourself.”

“He can do it for me.”

“You give him a knife and he’ll end up being executed.”

“That’s his worry.”

“Don’t give him the knife.”

“I do what I take a notion to. He says he wants to kill Evans. I ain’t making him do it.”

“You talk about getting Evans, but you got to have somebody else do it for you,” Avery said.

“Get off my back, Broussard. I don’t take orders from nobody on this gang.”

“I’m telling you, let LeBlanc alone. He’s got a ten-year sentence, and he’s going to have enough trouble without you getting him into any more.”

“You better mind your business.”

“If you ain’t enough man to do your own cutting, don’t put a crazy man up to it,” Toussaint said.

“You guys break my heart,” Billy Jo said. “That nut ain’t going to last a year in here. Why don’t we let him get Evans while he can?”

“Get him yourself. You been talking about it ever since I come here,” Toussaint said.

“I been waiting for the right time.”

“You say you’re breaking out next week. Get Benoit’s knife and take a piece of Evans with you,” Toussaint said.

“I ain’t taking a chance on fucking up my break.”

“Then don’t put a knife in a crazy man’s hand if you ain’t willing to stick out your own neck.”

“What’s your part in this?” Billy Jo said. “Are you Jesus Christ or something?”

“I don’t like to see you send somebody to the electric chair for what you can’t do yourself,” Toussaint said.

Avery Broussard

It was Sunday afternoon, and LeBlanc had been left in detention overnight, even though it was against normal disciplinary procedure. The day was bright and the sun reflected off the tin roofs of the barracks in a white glare, and the air was very still and heavy with the smell of the pines and dust and heat. Gang three had been assigned to police the area outside the barracks. They moved about slowly with their cloth sacks, picking up bits of paper and cigarette butts out of the dirt. Their wash-faded denim shirts were bleached almost white, and the stenciled letters LA. PENAL SYSTEM were black across their backs.

Inside Avery’s barracks blankets were stretched across the windows to keep out the sun. The noise of running water came from the showers where the men were washing their clothes. Benoit and Jeffry were sweeping the grained floor with brooms, and three other men were scrubbing it behind them with soap and water. The bunks and footlockers were pushed back against the wall in order that the entire barracks floor could be well cleaned before five o’clock inspection. Avery and Toussaint stood at the window with the blanket pulled aside and looked out into the heat.

“It must be over a hundred degrees in the box,” Avery said.

“It’s hotter than that,” Toussaint said. “They’ll have to let him out this afternoon. A man can’t take more than two days of detention.”

“You guys move out of the way,” Benoit said, sweeping the dust in their direction.

They stepped back and let him sweep past.

“Why are you all standing around? We got inspection in a couple more hours,” he said.

“We were on cleanup this morning,” Avery said.

“I been on cleanup all day. I ain’t had time to do my laundry yet.”

“That ain’t our fault. You’re doing Billy Jo’s share because you couldn’t pay off your card game last night,” Toussaint said.

“Who says so?”

“Daddy Claxton.”

“Claxton’s ass. He don’t know nothing.”

“Wait a minute. I want to talk to you,” Avery said.

“I got work to do.”

“Do you have a knife?”

“I ain’t got no knife. Who told you that?”

“What will you take for it? I got two dollars.”

“I ain’t got no knife, and it ain’t for sale, anyway.”

“I’ll give you the two dollars. You can pay Billy Jo what you owe him and sleep the rest of the afternoon,” Avery said.

“If I had a knife I wouldn’t sell it for no two bucks.”

“All right, keep it. And if Billy Jo asks you for it don’t give it to him.”

“What’s he want it for?”

“He’s going to give it to LeBlanc to kill Evans.”

“Evans needs killing,” Benoit said.

“If LeBlanc gets Evans with your knife I’m going to let the warden know where it came from.”

“That ain’t good talk.”

“They’ll think you were in on it. That could mean ten to twenty years,” Avery said.

“You shoot off your mouth and you won’t finish the week.”

“Maybe you’re right, but you’ll spend the rest of your life in the work camp.”

“I only got two more years.”

“Don’t give Billy Jo your knife,” Avery said.

“I ain’t saying I will or I won’t, but it’s going to hit the fan when you mouth off to the warden.”

“Twenty years. There’s a good chance they’ll bury you here.”

“I ain’t going to say nothing about what you told me, because somebody might slip up on you one night and wrap a belt around your neck. But don’t threaten me no more, or I’ll give you that knife myself, personal.”

“It works both ways, Benoit. You give away the knife and you’ll rot in here.”

Benoit’s small eyes glared at Avery.

“You might get to ride the midnight special out of here in a wood box,” he said.

He moved off with the broom, sweeping ahead of him.

“I don’t think you got any sense,” Toussaint said.

“It scared him. He won’t give Billy Jo the knife,” Avery said.

“Like he says, he might give it to you instead.”

They looked out into the heavy stillness of the afternoon. Tufts of grass grew around the edges of the barracks, and the bare dirt grounds, trodden to dust, looked hot and dry. The men from gang three sweated in the sun. Avery watched one man pick up several cigarette butts and turn his back to the other men and conceal them in his pocket.

“Here he comes. They’re bringing him in,” Jeffry shouted from the other end of the barracks.

The men put down their brooms and mops and crowded to the windows. They pulled aside the blankets and pressed their faces against the wire mesh to see both ends of the grounds.

“Where is he? I don’t see him,” Daddy Claxton said.

“Around the other way. I seen them from the latrine. He looks like a baked apple.”

The key turned in the lock and the door opened. Evans and Rainack brought LeBlanc inside by each arm. His legs wouldn’t hold him and broke at the knees when he tried to set his weight down. His denims were smeared with black and red rust. His skin was raw, and his hands and forehead were spotted with dark red places. His heavy beard was covered with flakes of dirt and rust. They dragged him to his bunk and threw him across it. LeBlanc stared blindly at the two guards. His breath came in pants.

“Evans,” he said. “I can’t see nothing yet, but it’s you. I been thinking about it since you put me in there. I know how I’m going to do it. God damn me to hell I’ll cut your fucking stomach out.”

“You want another two days in the box?” Evans said.

“Let’s get out of here. He’s stinking up the place,” Rainack said.

“He smells like somebody pissed on a radiator, don’t he?”

“Let’s go. My relief comes on in a few minutes.”

Evans took off his sun helmet and wiped his fore head with his sleeve. There was a damp smear across the khaki. He looked down at LeBlanc and put on his helmet.

“Just like piss on a radiator,” he said.

“Come on, I want to wash this guy off my hands,” Rainack said.

They walked out of the barracks, and locked the barred door behind them.

“Look at his hands. They’re burned,” Jeffry said. “He must have tried to push the lid open.”

“His head’s burnt, too,” Billy Jo said.

“Who’s got some grease?” Toussaint said.

“There’s some around the pipes in the latrine.”

“Go get it.”

“I ain’t going to get all dirty,” Jeffry said.

“Get some grease, Billy Jo.”

“I just got cleaned up.”

“I’ll get it,” Brother Samuel said.

“He must have tried to bust the box open with his head,” Daddy Claxton said.

LeBlanc had his hand over his eyes. He took it away and blinked at the ceiling. The pupils were small black dots.

“He can’t see nothing,” Jeffry said.

“He ain’t seen light for two days,” Toussaint said.

“I know how I’m going to do it,” LeBlanc said. “I figured it out. I kept seeing his face like it was painted inside the lid. I thought of all the ways I could do it to him, and then I decided.”

“How you going to do it?” Jeffry said.

“I got it figured.”

“Get him undressed,” Toussaint said.

Avery took off his shirt and trousers, and threw them on the floor. LeBlanc’s underclothes were yellow and foul.

“He’ll stink up everything in here,” Benoit said.

“Shut up,” Avery said.

“Here’s the grease. There ain’t much,” Brother Samuel said.

“Put it on his hands and face.”

Brother Samuel spread it thinly over the blistered swellings.

“What are you doing?” LeBlanc said.

“It will take the heat out of them burns,” Samuel said.

“How you going to get Evans?” Jeffry said.

“You’ll find out when the time comes.”

“Let’s strip him down and cover him up,” Toussaint said.

They finished undressing him and covered him with the sheet. His hands lay on top of the sheet, taut like claws and black from the grease.

“We’ll bring you some supper from the dining hall tonight,” Brother Samuel said. “When you got some rest and something to eat we’ll get you a shower. You can go on sick call tomorrow.”

“I ain’t going on sick call.”

“They’ll give you some medicine for them burns,” Daddy Claxton said. “They might even keep you in the infirmary a couple of days. You ain’t got to go out on the line.”

“I don’t want no sick call.”

“You ain’t in no shape to work tomorrow,” Toussaint said.

“I’ll be out for morning roll call.”

The men went back to their jobs and let LeBlanc sleep. The floor was swept and wetted down and mopped. The bunks and footlockers were put back in place and squared away. The blankets were taken down from the windows and folded over the bunks. Someone in the shower was drying his laundry by slapping it against the wall. The brooms and buckets were put away, and the men sat on their bunks and smoked, waiting for five o’clock inspection. Avery cleaned out his footlocker and set things in order while Toussaint stood at the window.

“That man ain’t going to finish his time,” Toussaint said.

“Probably not,” Avery said.

“How’d you get mixed up with him?”

“He used to run whiskey down the river. We were caught together after he shot at the state police.”

Toussaint leaned on his elbows and looked out the window at the trees.

“This weather’s got to break. It’s too hot,’ he said.

“Brother Samuel says it’s a sign.”

“He’s right about it ain’t being natural. I never seen it stay hot so long without rain.”

Avery closed his footlocker and tucked in the corners of his blanket around the bunk.

“I heard thunder last night,” he said.

“I been hearing it for weeks. It’s got to rain soon.”

Monday morning the sky was black with clouds when the men lined up for roll call. The air was chill and moist, and lightning split the sky. The dark pines swayed in the wind, and a few drops of water made wet dimples in the dust. A great thunderhead was moving in from the Gulf. The wind blew clouds of dust across the grounds, and a straw hat was whipped from someone’s head and swept end over end until it hit the wire fence and could go no farther. The captain and the guards had their slickers on. Some of the men asked to go back to the barracks and get their coats. A clap of thunder sounded directly overhead.

At ten o’clock the sky became storm-black and the rains came down. The men were working in the ditch, and the water drummed on the roofs of the trucks and ran off onto the ground and flowed into the dry and cracked earth. The men couldn’t see farther away than the trees because of the steel-gray sheet of water. The ground turned to mud, and large pools formed and drained off into the irrigation ditch. The clay embankment washed away and the men worked in water up to their knees. They tripped over one another and lost their tools, groped for them, and tried to climb out of the ditch, sliding back down into the water again. They threw shovel loads of soggy clay up on the sides to rebuild the embankment, but the water washed it back in the ditch. Three pumps were brought in and set on the bottom, and the rubber hoses drained the water over the top of the embankment, but the waterline continued to rise. Only one handle of the wheelbarrow could be seen. The rain drove coldly into the men’s skin like needles. The water was red and rising higher. The pumps clogged with clay and ceased to work. Half the men had lost their tools and were trying to pull themselves out of the ditch by the roots protruding from the sides. The guards couldn’t tell which men belonged to which gang in the confusion. Evans stood on the embankment with the rain streaming off his helmet and slicker, shouting down at gang five. Farther down the ditch a wall of dirt caved in from one of the sides and the water poured through the opening.

The work captain walked up and down the line blowing his whistle for the guards to reassemble their gangs and to get them into the trucks. The men who still had their tools threw them up out of the ditch and started pushing one another up after them.

“Let’s go, let’s go. Everybody in the trucks,” Evans said.

“I can’t get up,” Benoit said through the rain.

“You ain’t in my gang. Get out of the way,” Evans said.

“Where’s gang three?”

“How do I know? Get out of the way and let my men up.”

“Quit pushing,” someone said.

“You dumb bastard. You knocked my hat in the water,” another said.

“Gang five up here,” Evans shouted.

“Help Claxton up.”

“Grab hold of a root, Daddy.”

Avery, Toussaint, and Brother Samuel pushed him up by his legs. His hands reached the top of the ditch, and then he fell backwards into the water and went under. He sat up with just his head and shoulders showing. His gray hair was matted with clay.

“Try it again.”

“Gang five over here,” Evans shouted. “Get the hell out of here, Benoit.”

“I can’t find my gang.”

“Where’s Rainack?” another inmate said.

“Down at the other end,” Evans said.

“Stop shoving, for Christ’s sake.”

“Let me get on your shoulders.”

“Cut it out.”

They pushed Daddy Claxton up the side until he could get his stomach over and make the rest of it with his elbows and knees.

“Who’s next?” Toussaint said.

“I’ll go,” Benoit said.

“Where’s Jeffry and Billy Jo?”

“They went fishing,” LeBlanc said.

“Benoit, I told you to find your own gang,” Evans said, the rain beating against his cork sun helmet.

“I don’t know where it is.”

“Let Brother Samuel go,” Toussaint said.

Toussaint made a foot-step with his hands and they boosted Samuel up the embankment. He crawled over the top.

“How about me?” Benoit said.

“Wait your turn,” LeBlanc said.

“I can’t find nobody. I’ll go to detention if I ain’t back with my gang.”

“That’ll break my heart.”

“Come on, Avery.”

LeBlanc and Toussaint shoved him to the top. LeBlanc followed, and Avery and Brother Samuel lay on their stomachs over the side to help Toussaint up. He dug one foot in the clay and leaped upward, grabbing some roots. He hung there and kicked his feet into the embankment. They caught him by the wrists and pulled him up. Benoit was left in the ditch

“How about me?” he said.

“Go take a bath,” Evans said.

“Be a good guy. I’ll get time in detention.”

Evans looked around him. His eyes snapped. He forgot about Benoit.

“Where’s Billy Jo and Jeffry?” he said.

“They gone fishing,” LeBlanc said.

“Shut your mouth. Who’s seen Billy Jo and Jeffry?”

No one answered.

“God damn you, where are they?”

“I ain’t seen them since it started raining,” Daddy Claxton said.

“They was down in the ditch. You ain’t blind. What happened to them?” Evans said.

“They could have got mixed up in another gang,” Daddy Claxton said.

“Somebody here saw them. I want to know where they are.”

“Go talk to a wall,” LeBlanc said.

“I’m going to send you back to the box for that.”

“You fat swine.”

Evans struck him across the mouth with the heel of his hand.

“I’ll use my pistol barrel the next time you say it,” he said.

“It don’t matter what you do. You ain’t got long.”

There was a smear of red across LeBlanc’s lips. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and spit.

“You got dirty hands,” he said.

Evans hit him again, this time across the nose.

“Get in the truck, you sonofabitch. Get moving, every one of you.”

“I know how I’m going to do it. It’s going to hurt,” LeBlanc said.

“Move! I’ll get straight with you later.”

They walked across the clearing through the mud and the rain and climbed in the back of the truck. LeBlanc got in and looked at Evans.

“You seen a hog cut before?” he said.

“You’ll pay through the ass for this,” Evans said, and slammed the doors shut and snapped the padlock.

There was no light inside the truck. The men sat on the benches in their wet clothes and listened to the rain beat on the roof. They could hear Evans speaking to the captain outside.

“I’m missing two,” Evans said.

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they got in with another gang.”

“How long have they been gone?”

“I didn’t miss them till I ordered the others out of the ditch.”

“Can’t you keep watch over seven men without losing somebody?”

“There was a dozen guys down there that didn’t belong to my gang. I couldn’t tell which ones was mine.”

“We’ll check the other gangs. You’d better hope we find them,” the captain said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell Rainack to phone in to the warden.”

“We ain’t sure they broke out yet.”

“The warden wants a report when anybody’s missing.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Check this end of the line and I’ll start on the other.”

Daddy Claxton had his ear pressed to the back door of the truck. His mouth was open in a half grin. The water dripped off his clothes onto the floor.

“By God, they done it. They broke out,” he said.

“Did anybody see them?” Avery said.

“They was working next to me,” Brother Samuel said. “When the sides started caving in they dropped their tools and took off down the ditch.”

“Did you hear the captain chewing out Evans?” Daddy Claxton said. “He’ll get busted if they don’t catch them.”

“We ain’t sure they got away yet,” LeBlanc said.

“They wasn’t running down the ditch for no exercise,” Toussaint said.

“They could have climbed up the other side when all that dirt fell in,” Daddy Claxton said. “The hacks was worrying about the ditch flooding and them pumps going out.”

“The dogs won’t be able to follow them in the rain. They have a good chance,” Avery said.

“Billy Jo said they had a car hid out somewhere,” Daddy Claxton said.

“They’ll be lucky if the police ain’t sitting in it waiting for them,” Toussaint said.

“They talked it around plenty,” Brother Samuel said.

“Them boys is long gone. I wish I was with them,” Daddy Claxton said.

“Why didn’t you go?” LeBlanc said.

“I asked them. They told me I was too old.”

“They couldn’t have stopped you from going.”

“I reckon they’re right. I been in prison too many years to have any business on the outside.”

“I ain’t sure I want to be with them,” Brother Samuel said.

“How come?” Claxton said.

“Jeffry’s carrying a spirit. I seen the sign this morning. There was a big wart on his finger.”

“You get warts from picking up frogs,” Claxton said.

“Not this kind,” Brother Samuel said.

“Them boys is gone. There ain’t no wart going to hold them back.”

“I told him the spirit might come back after I healed him.”

“They’ll be out of the state by tomorrow morning,” Daddy Claxton said.

“It was a devil wart. It takes a special kind of conjuring to get rid of it.”

“How long they going to keep us here?” LeBlanc said.

“We ain’t got to work as long as the hacks is out on search,” Claxton said.

Evans unlocked the back doors and threw them open. The wind blew the rain inside the truck. He and the captain climbed inside and left the doors open. Their boots and the bottoms of their trousers were covered with mud. A thin stream of water ran off the brim of the captain’s campaign hat. Their slickers were shiny from the rain.

“Somebody in here saw them get away,” the captain said. “I want you to tell me where they went.”

The rain blew in the truck and formed small pools on the floor.

“Speak up. You ain’t deaf and dumb,” Evans said.

“What about you?” the captain said to Daddy Claxton.

“I was working all the time. I didn’t see nothing.”

The captain asked each one of them.

“I didn’t know they were gone until we came out of the ditch,” Avery said.

“There was too many people around,” Toussaint said.

“I heard they went fishing,” LeBlanc said.

“I didn’t see nothing,” Brother Samuel said.

“Everybody outside,” Evans said.

“Where we going?” Daddy Claxton said.

“You’re going to stand in the rain till we find them or somebody tells us where they are.”

“The rest of the trucks is going to the barracks,” Claxton said.

“This one ain’t,” Evans said.

They climbed out and stood looking at Evans and the captain. The rain ran off their straw hats down inside their clothing. The other trucks drove past them through the mud. Several guards were moving into the trees on the other side of the clearing. They carried rifles and shotguns. One of them was examining the area where the ditch wall caved in, an eroded pile of clay that sloped down to the bottom of the canal. He bent over and looked at the ground, the rain breaking across the back of his slicker.

“Here’s where they come out,” he yelled.

The other guards came back and looked at the deep boot marks in the clay.

“This is it, captain. They headed into the woods.”

“Call the warden and tell him to get the state police moving in from the other side,” he answered.

“What about us?” Claxton said.

“You’ll stay here till we catch them,” Evans said.

“It’s getting cold. Let us get in the truck,” Daddy Claxton said.

“I’m going to send Rainack over here to watch you. Don’t move till we get back.”

“We didn’t help them. How come we can’t go to the barracks with the rest,” the old man said.

“Because you all think you’re so goddamn smart playing closemouth,” Evans said.

“Go get Rainack,” the captain said.

Evans walked down the line and came back.

“He’s coming. I told him to get a couple of rifles out of the pickup,” he said.

“I’m an old man. I can’t stay out in the wet like this,” Daddy Claxton said.

Rainack came through the rain with two rifles that were slung upside down over his shoulder to keep the barrels dry. They were ’03 Springfields that had been bought from the government. He swung them off his shoulder by the slings and handed them to the captain. He reached under his slicker and took a handful of shells out of his pocket.

“This is all there is,” he said, giving the cartridges to the captain. “The rest is corroded.”

The captain handed one rifle to Evans, and they opened the bolts and loaded. The heavily grained military stocks were rubbed with linseed oil. There was a thin spray of rust on the butt plate of Evans’ rifle.

They went around the farther end of the ditch to the far side of the clearing and moved into the trees with the other guards. The captain spread his men out through the woods. Rainack got in the back of the truck and sat on one of the benches. He took out his tobacco and rolled a cigarette. He struck a match on the wall of the truck, covered the flame with his hands, and exhaled the smoke into the damp air.

“They’re gone now,” Claxton said. “Let us get out of the rain.”

Rainack smoked in silence.

“Come on, nobody will know the difference. We ain’t going to say nothing. I’m soaked plumb through.”

“You heard the orders. You got to stay there till they get back.”

“They ain’t going to know,” Claxton said.

“I got my orders. If it was just me I wouldn’t mind,” Rainack said.

Claxton stepped towards the truck.

“Stay where you are.”

“I had pneumonia once. I ain’t strong enough to pull through it again.”

“I can’t do nothing for you.”

“Don’t expect a bastard to act like a decent man,” LeBlanc said.

“What did you say?”

“I said you’re a bastard.”

“The box didn’t seem to teach you nothing,” Rainack said.

“Let the old man out of the rain,” LeBlanc said.

“I’m going to tell Evans about this when you get back.”

“Come out here and do something yourself.”

“You should be in a crazy house,” Rainack said.

“Why didn’t you go with the others? You’re going to miss the shooting.”

“I don’t want to hear no more from you.”

“You can hit a man through the eye at two hundred yards with a Springfield,” LeBlanc said.

“Shut up.”

Daddy Claxton began to cough.

“Let him get in the truck,” Toussaint said.

“I got my orders.”

“Don’t ask him nothing. He’d let the old man spit blood before he’d do anything,” LeBlanc said.

“Take my hat,” Avery said.

“I’m obliged to you,” Claxton said.

He put it low on his head. The wet locks of gray hair stuck to his forehead. He began coughing again. The rain poured out of the sky in steady swirling sheets. The irrigation ditch was almost filled. The embankment was washed smooth with the level of the ground. Roots and pieces of broken tree branches floated on the water. A moccasin slithered across the surface. The red water rippled back in a V behind his black head. He tried to work himself up on the bank and the current sucked him out again. He reared his head up as though climbing into the air and struck at the bank and tried to coil his body on the clay. He slipped out and was caught by a floating branch and pulled under.

The rain stung Avery’s eyes. His fingers were pinched and white from the water. He felt the cold beginning to numb his feet. Brother Samuel looked straight ahead at the trees. His oversized clothes hung wetly from his body. Toussaint, Claxton, and LeBlanc stood with their heads slightly bowed, the rain sluicing off their hats. They looked blankly at the rivulets running through the mud. Brother Samuel stared at the place in the woods where the guards had entered.

“They ain’t coming back,” he said.

“They’ll be in Mississippi come morning,” Claxton said.

“He was carrying a spirit. I seen the sign. I shouldn’t have used my powers to heal him.”

“Don’t worry about them boys. They’re young. They can take care of theirself,” Daddy Claxton said. “It’s us old ones got to stand out in the rain and die from pneumonia.”

“I thought I was doing right and I done wrong,” Brother Samuel said.

“You didn’t do nothing wrong,” Toussaint said. “If they get shot it’s their bad luck. You didn’t have nothing to do with it.”

“I went back on my promise to the Lord and had dealings with the Black Man. I should have knowed better. Billy Jo and Jeffry is going to pay for what I done.”

He took the wood disk and its leather cord from around his neck and held it in his hand. The letters on it were cut deeply in the wood. He wound the cord tightly around the disk.

“What are you doing?” LeBlanc said.

“I’m giving up my powers.” He threw the disk across the clearing into the canal. It splashed into the water and floated along in the current. He took the snake fang and turtle foot from his pocket. He jabbed the fang into the shriveled foot and threw it against the opposite bank. It hit and rolled into the ditch.

“You mean you ain’t got no more powers now?” Daddy Claxton said.

“I done renounced,” Brother Samuel said.

“Just throwing them things away and you can’t heal no more?”

“I done it too late. Jeffry and Billy Jo is going to stand before judgment today.”

“They can take care of theirself. They ain’t old and wore down,” Claxton said.

“They’ll go before the Lord with the evil spirit clinging to their souls, and the Lord will look down at them and turn His face away. He’ll point His finger at them and lightning will strike from His hand and the spirit will drag them down to the shade.”

An hour passed. The rain lessened and then began again in a fresh downpour. The trees shook in the wind. Bits of dead leaves lay in the pools. The clearing was rutted with deep tire tracks where the trucks had passed. The warden, the parish sheriff and two deputies had driven out to the line and had become stuck. The car sunk down to its hubs and the tires spun and whined deeper. The smell of burnt rubber filled the air. The deputies got out and pushed and the mud splattered their uniforms, but the car didn’t move. Gang five was ordered to push them out. Toussaint got the jack from the trunk and jacked up the rear end. They put leaves and brush under the wheels and let the jack down. They lifted up the rear bumper, and while the warden accelerated they bounced the car out of the ruts. Then Rainack took them back over to the truck, and he got inside and they remained in the rain.

It was two o’clock and Avery’s legs felt weak under him. He had his eyes closed and his face tingled from the steady beating of the rain. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He thought of when he used to work on the exploration crew on the Gulf. It seemed long ago. He remembered the hot, clear days on the drill barge and the easy roll of the swell, the few whitecaps in the distance, the long flat blue-green of the water and the way the trout jumped in the morning, their sides silver and speckled with red in the sun, and at night when they laid the trotline out. The next day it would be heavy with catfish, and there was the good feel of rope in his hands when he moored the jug boat to the rusty bulkhead of the barge, and the pitch of the deck when the weather got rough and they had to put on life jackets because someone was always getting washed overboard when they went out to pick up the recording cable, and the cans of explosives that were screwed end to end and were run down through the drill pipe below the floor of the Gulf, and the battery and detonator that the shooter used to set off the charge and the way the iron barge would slam and jar when the explosion went off, and the acrid yellow smoke that floated back off the water and would give you a headache if you breathed it, and going back inland on the launch after the hitch was over with everybody getting drunk and talking about going to whorehouses and staying there until the next hitch began, and the island off the coast with the pavilion among the cypress where they served chilled wine and the beer came in beaded mugs.

He remembered his last year in high school when his father was alive and he had gone out with a girl named Suzanne, and they were always together and they talked about getting married. Her skin was very white and her hair hung to her shoulders like black silk, and at eighteen she looked like a mature woman. There was that Saturday they went fishing together in his boat and he rowed down the bayou with the oaks and cypress and willows on each side, and she sat forward in the bow and her eyes were dark and happy and she lifted the hair from her neck to let the breeze blow on her, and he put into the bank and got out and dragged the boat through the shallows, and he didn’t have to ask or even say anything because she already understood. And for the rest of the spring it was the same. On Saturday morning he would meet her at the levee and they would row to the same place on the green bank among the azaleas and jasmine, and later they would drink wine and fish and he would row her back in the afternoon.

They graduated from high school and he began to drink more, and there was the weekend they drove to Biloxi in the sports car her father had given her for graduation, and Avery left her in the hotel room to get a package of cigarettes and came back three hours later blind drunk, and she lay in bed with her eyes wet and her hair spread out on the pillow and she turned away from him when he tried to touch her; he left the room and bought a bottle at the bar and went down on the beach and passed out. He woke in the morning with a bad hangover and his clothes and hair were full of sand, and the sun was hot and the white façade of the hotel gleamed in the light. He went to the room, but there was nothing to say or do because when he told her he was sorry it sounded meaningless. She was very hurt and she tried not to show it, and that made him all the more angry and ashamed. So they drove back home not talking, and things were never the same after that. The summer became fall, and she went to school at the state university and he took a job on a shooting crew. She wrote him a few letters during the time she was at L.S.U., and then she went to Spain to study painting and he never heard from her again. It had ended undramatic and unpoetic and unanything, and he wondered why he should think of her now. He had been in prison only for a short time, but everything that had existed before seemed to belong to another world and she with it. The Saturdays that they had together and the things they did were no longer real, nothing was real except the wet clothes and the rain and the mud and the cold in his feet and Daddy Claxton’s coughing and Rainack sitting in the back of the truck in his uniform and slicker with the holster strapped around his waist and the.45 revolver that meant he could crack the barrel across your head if you tried to get out of the rain, and two men somewhere off in the woods running for freedom with an armed search party behind them.

“I got to take a leak,” Claxton said.

“Go ahead,” Rainack said.

“Can’t I go off in the brush?”

“I got to keep watch on all of you.”

Claxton looked embarrassed.

“I ain’t going to run off nowheres,” he said.

“Act your age. We ain’t going to look at you,” Rainack said.

“It’ll just take a minute. I’ll be right back.”

Finally he turned to the side and urinated on the ground. He buttoned his trousers and stared at the irrigation ditch, not wanting to look at anyone.

“How’s it feel to be a bastard?” LeBlanc said.

“You ain’t getting a rise out of me,” Rainack said. “Your time is coming when Evans gets back.”

“If Evans owes you any money you better get it from him while you can,” LeBlanc said.

“You’re talk, LeBlanc. Guys like you shoot off their mouth. They never do nothing.”

“Wait around a while.”

“Evans will be alive to piss on your grave,” Rainack said.

“Maybe you ought to pay up your debts too.”

“I should have killed you out in the ditch and saved everybody a lot of trouble.”

The sound of rifle shots came from the woods. They were distant and faintly audible through the rain. There was a single report followed by two more, and then someone was firing in rapid succession. A minute passed and it was quiet except for the even patter of the rain. Rainack got out of the truck with his hand on his revolver and looked at the trees. The front of his khaki clothes, where his slicker was open, was drenched through. Gang five waited and listened. There was a final whaaap of a rifle and almost immediately after a burst from a shotgun and then silence again. A few minutes went by and the woods remained quiet.

“That’s the end of your pals,” Rainack said. He got back in the truck and shut one door to keep out the rain. He wiped the water off his face with his handkerchief.

“Them shots was too close,” Daddy Claxton said.

“They’ve been gone three or four hours,” Avery said. “They should have been in the next parish.”

“Maybe Evans was having rifle practice on a friend,” LeBlanc said.

“I know it ain’t them. They’re young. They could make ten or twelve miles in the time they been gone,” Claxton said. “Billy Jo said they had a car waiting for them. They might be over the state line by now.”

“They’re standing before the Lord,” Brother Samuel said. “They crossed the big river, and the Lord’s sitting in judgment. Tonight their souls will be flying through the dark with the evil spirit dragging them by a chain.”

“I ain’t going to believe it. They’re young. An old man couldn’t make it, but the young ones got a chance.”

“I seen the sign this morning. I knowed it wouldn’t do no good to warn them.”

Daddy Claxton coughed violently. His breath rasped in his throat. He gagged on his shirt sleeve.

“There ain’t no reason to keep us out here now. Let the old guy get inside,” LeBlanc said.

“Talk to Evans,” Rainack said.

“You got no call to keep us in the rain,” LeBlanc said.

“It’s going to be a hell of a lot worse for you when Evans gets back.”

“Billy Jo and Jeffry is dead,” Brother Samuel said.

“I got my orders.”

“Try using your mind. You’re going to kill the old man,” Avery said.

“You keep quiet.”

“Why don’t you throw him in the irrigation ditch? You’ll be sure he catches pneumonia that way,” Avery said.

“Evans is going to hear about this.”

“There’s some deep places in there. He probably can’t swim,” he said.

“Keep it up. You’ll have your name on detention list with LeBlanc,” Rainack said.

“Or you could take him into the swamp and find some quicksand,” Avery said. “It’s not much different than dying from pneumonia. His lungs would fill up with sand instead of water.”

“You’re pushing it. I ain’t taking much more.”

“You ain’t going to do nothing,” LeBlanc said.

“Keep running off at the mouth and see.”

“I knowed people like you in the army. You won’t drop your britches to take a crap till you get an order. We’re five to one against you. Lean on one of us and you’ll have to use that pistol. Then there will be an inquiry and the warden will bust you out of a job to save hisself.”

“It’s your ass when Evans gets back.”

The warden’s car came back down the line and went past the men. It was splattered with mud. The tires spun in the mire, and the warden steered around the place where he had stuck before. The sheriff sat in the front seat and the two deputies were in back. The end of a rifle barrel showed behind the glass in the back seat. An enclosed truck followed them, the back covered with canvas like an army truck. The guards sat inside, crowded towards the front because the sheet of canvas that closed the rear had been torn loose from its fastenings by the wind and flapped over the top. The captain’s pickup came through the ruts in second gear and hit the soft place where the warden had become stuck. His wheels whined in the mud and he shifted into reverse and fed it gas and shifted into second again, rocking it, until he got traction and spun out of the soft spot to harder ground. Evans sat next to him. They stopped the truck and got out and went around to the back. Their rifles were propped against the seat by the gear-shift stick.

“Bring them over here,” Evans said.

Rainack snuffed out his cigarette and buttoned his slicker. He got down in the rain.

“You heard him. Start moving,” he said.

Avery and the others walked unsteadily across the clearing to the pickup. His legs felt loose and uncoordinated from having stood in one position too long. His feet hurt from the cold when he walked. Daddy Claxton wavered from side to side. He coughed and spit up phlegm. There was a tarpaulin laid across the bed of the pickup. Pools of water collected in it and ran down through the folds and creases. There was a dark smear on top of it. Evans had his hand on one end of the canvas to raise it up.

“I want you to know what happens to guys that think they can bust out of here,” he said. “Look at them and tell everybody back at camp what you saw.”

He lifted the tarpaulin and exposed the two bodies. They lay on their backs and their faces looked up blank and empty and the rain fell in their eyes. Billy Jo had been shot twice through the chest and a third bullet had cut through the left eye and come out at the temple. Pieces of cloth were embedded in the chest wounds. The blood had congealed and his shirt stuck stiffly to him. He was barefooted and his pants were torn at the knees and stained with mud and grass. His remaining eye was rolled back in his head. The wound where the bullet had emerged from the temple was very large and fragments of bone protruded from the matted skin and hair. Jeffry wore only one shoe. The ankle of his bare foot was broken. It swelled out in a big, discolored lump like a fist and the foot was twisted sideways. His shirt was torn in strips like rags. He had been hit with a shotgun at a close distance and the pellets covered his trunk and part of one thigh. An artery had been severed in his neck and there was a large area of red around the top of his chest like a child’s bib.

“Where were they?” Rainack said.

“They fell in a clay pit. They was just climbing out when we saw them. Billy Jo started running for the trees, and me and Jess let go. We missed Jeffry but Abshire got him with the shotgun. It blew him right through a thicket.”

“Who got Billy Jo in the head?” Rainack said.

“It’s hard to tell. We was shooting at the same time. Part of him is still sticking to a tree out there.”

“Cover them up and let’s go back,” the captain said.

Evans replaced the tarpaulin. The water ran down from the creases in the canvas onto his boots.

“You goddamn swine,” LeBlanc said. His skin was white and the burn on his forehead turned dark as blood.

“Shut that man up,” the captain said.

“I been having trouble with him ever since you left,” Rainack said. “I started to bust him a couple of times.”

“Can’t you keep control of your men, Evans?” the captain said.

“I’d like to take him off in the woods and not come back with him,” Evans said.

“Sonsofbitches.”

“Do you want to keep shut, or you want something across the mouth?” Evans said.

Spittle drooled over LeBlanc’s chin. He sprang on Evans and grabbed him by the throat. The guard fell backwards in the mud with LeBlanc on top of him. Evans’ mouth opened in a dry gasp and his eyes protruded from his head. LeBlanc’s hands tightened into the soft pink skin. Evans fumbled weakly at his holster for his pistol.

Rainack and the captain hit at LeBlanc’s head with their revolvers, and amid the hard bone-splitting knocks he shouted into Evans’ face, the saliva running from his mouth: “You wouldn’t let me wait I had it planned and you wouldn’t give me time goddamn you to hell if you’d only waited I could have done it right—” and then Rainack whipped his pistol barrel across LeBlanc’s temple, and he fell sideways into a pool of water.

J.P. Winfield

The show had returned to town two months after it began its tour of the southern portion of the state. It was night, and a large flatbed truck, painted firecracker-red, followed a black sedan over a railroad crossing down a dirt road into the Negro section of town. At first there were board shacks with dirt yards and outbuildings on each side of the road, then farther on, the road became a blacktop lined with taverns, pool halls, shoeshine parlors, and open-air markets which stank of refuse and dead fish and rotted vegetables. The doors to the taverns and pool halls were opened, and the night was filled with the noise of loud jukeboxes and drunken laughter. Negroes loitered along the sidewalk under the neon bar signs and called back and forth to each other across the street. A hillbilly band stood on the open bed of the truck with their instruments. A boxlike piano was bolted to the bed with its back against the cab. Several wood casks were stacked along the side of the piano. The firecracker-red truck was painted with political slogans in big white letters:

The sedan and the truck stopped by the taverns. The Negroes on the sidewalk looked at them cautiously. More Negroes appeared in the doorways, and small children ran down the road from the shacks to follow the truck.

“What you want down here?” a Negro said from the sidewalk.

Jim Lathrop got out of the sedan. He was dressed in a light tan suit with a blue sports shirt buttoned at the throat without a tie. He looked at the Negro.

“This is campaign night. Don’t you know this is election time?” he said.

“You ain’t going to get no votes down here,” a woman said.

“How do you know that, sister?” Lathrop said. “How you know you don’t want to vote for me if you haven’t heard what I got to say? How do you know I’m not the only man running for office that can do something for you? Tell me that, sister, and I’ll go on home. Of course you can’t tell me, because you haven’t listened to what I got to say. And that’s why I’m here tonight. You folks don’t have one friend in Baton Rouge and you don’t have many friends in Washington, and I’m down here to tell you how you can get one; I’m here to tell you that there’s one man in this state who is a slave to nobody and a servant to all, and I mean all, no matter if he’s colored or white.”

“You ain’t going to do nothing for us,” a Negro man said.

“You’re wrong, brother. If I get in office you’ll get an even shake. I promise you that. Anyone who ever knew Jim Lathrop will tell you that he takes care of his friends. We got a band tonight and we got plenty to drink. I want you folks to enjoy yourselves while you listen to what I tell you. There’s J.P. Winfield on the truck, star of the Louisiana Jubilee and the Nashville Barn Dance. He’s going to sing you some songs. There’s enough to drink for everybody, so line up at the back of the truck and we’ll get things started.”

No one moved off the sidewalk. Lathrop watched them a minute and went to the truck and took a carton of paper cups from behind the piano and pulled one from the box.

“Bring a cask over here, J.P.,” he said.

J.P. rolled a cask on its bottom to the edge of the truck bed. Lathrop turned on the wood spigot and filled the cup with wine. He drank it empty and crushed the cup in his hand and threw it on the concrete. He filled another and walked to the sidewalk with it.

“I never knew good colored folks to turn down a cup of wine,” he said. “I wouldn’t have bought all them kegs if I’d thought I was going to have to drink it by myself. What about you, brother? You drinking tonight?”

“I drinks any time, morning, noon, or night,” the Negro said.

“See what you can do with this.” Lathrop handed him the cup.

The Negro drank it off, the wine running down his chin and throat into his shirt. He wiped his mouth and laughed loudly.

“I’m one up on you,” he said.

“How’s that?”

“I never registered. I can’t vote.”

Everyone laughed.

“He’s got you there, boss,” someone said. “Ain’t none of us registered. Can’t pass the reading test.”

“Better go on the other side of town and drink your wine. I told you there ain’t no votes down here.”

They were all laughing now.

“I didn’t come down here to make you vote for me,” Lathrop said. “I just want you to listen to me for a little while. If you want to vote and you ain’t registered, by God I’ll take you down to the polls and register you myself. Now go on and line up for some wine. It don’t matter if you vote for me or not; I came here to have some drinking and some singing, and by God we’re going to have it. Sing us a song, J.P., while these people get something to drink.”

The band started playing and J.P. sang the song he had written for Lathrop’s campaign. The Negroes gathered around the back of the truck, and Lathrop left the spigot of the cask open while they passed their cups under it. The cask was soon empty and another was brought up. J.P. sang three more songs, and April and Seth sang one each. The crowd around the truck became larger. Several Negroes were dancing in the street. Their faces were shiny and purple under the neon. The air was heavy with the smell of sweat and cheap wine. The empty casks were thrown into the gutter, and small children tried to stand on their sides and roll them down the street. The people at the back of the truck began to push each other to get their cups under the spigot. Lathrop smashed in the top of the keg and set it in the street. The Negroes dipped their cups through the top into the wine. The keg was drained in a few minutes. A man tried to pick it up and drink the residue from the bottom. He lifted it with both hands and put his mouth to the rim and tilted it upward. The wine poured out over his face and clothes. He laughed and threw the empty keg into the air. It crashed and splintered apart in the middle of the street.

“Police going to be down here.”

“Hush up, woman. Police don’t bother me.”

“You’re going to spend the night in the jailhouse, nigger.”

“Hush yo’ mouth.”

“How’s everybody feeling?” Lathrop said.

“Bring out some more of them barrels.”

“Right here,” Seth said.

He put the keg on the edge of the truck and broke the spigot off with his foot. The wine ran in a stream into the street. The Negroes crowded around with their cups. The wine splashed over their clothes and bodies.

“God, what a smell,” April said. “How long do we have to stay here?”

“Till Lathrop makes his speech and gets tired of playing Abraham Lincoln,” J.P. said.

“The smell is enough to make you sick,” she said.

“Drink some wine with your brothers,” Seth said.

“You’re cute,” she said.

“April don’t like the smell. Tell them to go home and take a bath,” Seth said.

“You’re very cute tonight,” she said.

Lathrop called up to the truck from the street, where he was handing out election leaflets that instructed the reader how to use the voting machine and what lever to push for Lathrop as senator.

“Let’s have some music up there,” he said.

J.P. sang an old Jimmie Rodgers song.

Seth rolled another keg to the edge of the truck bed. Someone grabbed it by the top and pulled it over into the street. A stave broke loose and the wine poured into the gutter. A fight broke out between the man who had tipped over the cask and another man who had been waiting to fill his cup.

Lathrop got up on the truck and motioned for the band to stop playing.

“Here it comes,” April whispered. “God, I hope he makes it quick. I’m getting sick.”

“Now that I met most of you folks I’d like to tell you what I got planned when I get in office,” he began. His tan suit was spotted with wine stains. “You see that dirt road we came up on? When I’m elected we’re not going to have roads like that. No sir, we’re going to have the best streets and highways anywhere. You’re not going to have to sit on your front porch and eat all that dust everytime a car comes down your street. We’re going to get electric lights in the houses and plumbing and running water, and there’s going to be good schools you can send your children to.”

“Lawd-God,” Seth whispered.

“They ought to bring a fire hose out here and wash them down,” April said. “None of them must have bathed since the Civil War.”

“Don’t you like nigger politics?” Seth said.

“And we’re going to have unemployment insurance and social security and charity hospitals for the poor,” Lathrop said. “We’re going to run that bunch of politicians out of the capitol and put the common man back in his rightful place. We’re going to get rid of the fat boys that are draining the state dry and giving nothing to the people; we’re going to raise the wages and the living standard, and the only way to do it is to get this big city trash out of office and let a man of the people serve and represent the people.”

“This is the last time I’m going around kissing niggers for Lathrop,” April said.

“You thinking about quitting?” Seth said. “Doc Elgin ought to give you a job. They say there’s good money in pushing happy powder in the grade schools.”

April turned to him and formed two words with her lips.

“And there’s a lot more benefits coming to the state,” Lathrop said. “For years you been paying taxes to the rich, and the only thing you got for it is hard work and poverty. I’ve seen colored people working in the fields twelve hours a day and not getting enough money to buy bread and greens with; I’ve seen them sweating on highway gangs and railroad and construction jobs and getting nothing but sunstroke for their pay. Well, that’s going to change. Every man in this state is going to have an even chance, and there’s not going to be any rich men walking over the poor—”

His speech went on for another half hour. A police car came down the blacktop and cruised slowly by the crowd. An officer in the front seat waved to Lathrop. Lathrop nodded in return, and the car disappeared down the road. The last cask of wine was emptied, the band put away their instruments, and Lathrop said good night to the crowd. He went among the Negroes and shook a few hands before he got in his sedan and drove back to the other side of town, where he was to make a late speech at a segregationist rally held in a vacant lot under a big tent. The truck followed the sedan past the board shacks and across the railroad crossing.

At the hotel J.P. stopped off in the bar and had a whiskey and water. He had another. He got some change from the bartender and went to use the telephone in the booth. He phoned Doc Elgin at his home.

“You didn’t come around today,” J.P. said.

“I’ve been busy. I asked you not to phone me except at my office,” Elgin said.

“I need some candy.”

“Everybody needs candy.”

“I’m almost out. I’ll need some by tomorrow.”

“I have a lot of people to see,” Elgin said.

“Listen, I need it in the morning.”

“Where will you be?”

“At the hotel.”

“You owe me for the last two deliveries.”

“I’ll make it good tomorrow.”

“I advise you to,” Elgin said, and hung up.

J.P. had a glass of beer and a ham sandwich at the bar and went up to April’s room. Through the door he could hear the shower water running. He went in without knocking and sat in a chair by the window and waited for her. He lifted the shade and looked down into the street. The lamp on the corner burned in the dark. A Negro fruit vender pushed a wood cart along the worn brick paving in the street. The night was quiet except for the creak of the wooden wheels over the brick and the slow shuffle of the Negro.

April came out of the bath in her robe. She was drying the back of her neck with a towel. Her hair was damp from the shower. She looked at him without speaking and took a cigarette from a nickel-plated case on the table and lighted it.

“What did you want to tell me?” he said. She had told him earlier on the truck to come to her room after they came back from the Negro section of town.

She threw the towel on the bed and sat in the stuffed chair across from him. She smoked the cigarette and looked at him.

“It can wait. Did you call Elgin?” she said.

“He said he’d come around tomorrow. He wants some money.”

“Give it to him.”

“The bastard is worse than cancer.”

“He’s better than some,” she said.

“Why ain’t they taken his license away?”

“They did a long time ago. How many bags do you have till tomorrow?”

He took a small folded square of paper from his coat and held it between two fingers.

“This is it, and I’m fixing to take it right now,” he said. He unfolded one end and lifted it to his mouth and let the white powder slide off under his tongue. He walked to the desk and put the paper in the ashtray. He lighted a match to one corner and watched it burn.

April went to the dresser and took a shoe box out of the bottom drawer. She went into the bathroom and remained there a few minutes, and then came back out with the shoe box and replaced it in the drawer. The sleeve of her robe was rolled up over her elbow. She pulled it down to her wrist.

She turned off the light at the wall switch. She took off her robe and lay on the bed. J.P. got up from the chair and walked to the window. He had swallowed some of the cocaine before it dissolved in his mouth, and there was a feeling of nausea in his stomach. She turned her head on the pillow and looked at him. The pupils of her eyes had contracted to small points. The light from the street lamp cast J.P.’s shadow on the ceiling. April laughed.

“You’re upside down,” she said. “You are. Look at yourself. The white candy horse is galloping and you ride him upside down.”

He sat on the bed. He was high, but he felt that he might get sick and then the shaking would start and he would sweat and have chills at the same time.

“When are you going to mainline?” she said. “Little boys can’t eat candy all their life.” She laughed steadily now. “Little boys get sick when they eat too much candy. Does J.P. feel sick? Poor J.P. always feels sick. Poor poor poor poor J.P. Nice little boy with too much sweet in his mouth.”

She reached around him and touched him.

“Let April be your nurse. We’ll have some nice medicine.”

He got up to undress. He stood in his shorts, and then the room shifted under him and something went yellow in his head and crimson and then black, and he felt his mind slip out of time and something rush away inside him to darkness. He fell on the edge of the bed and rolled off on the floor in the woman smell of her robe satin soft against my face the reek of yesterday’s love and she laughing get up J.P. too much sugar in little boy’s mouth come let April make it right she leans over the side of the bed and looks at me smiling her hair wet and sticks to her neck her hand comes down and touches me not even the whores behind the railroad depot come on J.P. not on the floor we can’t have fun on the floor she laughing louder if I could move and slip again in time and her hand touching me warm like the woman smell in her robe like the sweat and sour milk and soap smell of her breasts that time in Lafayette when she put them in my hand and I no I was high I wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t high can’t stop now her hand like warm water and I rushing to meet her in the final burst of white corn cast upon the ground.

He woke in the morning with a pain in the back of his head. He was stiff from sleeping on the floor. He walked across the room in his shorts and became dizzy and had to sit down. April was still asleep. Her head was turned towards him on the pillow. Her mouth was open, and the wrinkles around her face and neck showed clearly in the morning light. J.P. didn’t remember what had happened the night before, and then it came back to him. He looked down at himself and felt disgusted. He picked up his clothes from the chair and went into the bath to shower. He wrapped the soiled underwear in a towel and put it in the clothes bag hanging on the door. He dressed and went into the room. April was awake.

“Give me my robe,” she said.

He picked it up off the floor and threw it to her.

“That’s a nice way to hand it to me,” she said.

“You look like hell.”

“What’s that for?”

“Goddamn it, what do you think?”

“You mean that! Oh God, you were funny. You should have seen yourself. I laughed until somebody next door started hitting on the wall. You lying on the rug with that expression on your face. I’d give anything for a picture of it.”

“Stop laughing.”

“I can’t help it. You were so funny. Your face looked like a child’s when he’s sucking on his first piece of candy.”

“You ain’t got no more decency than a whore.”

“You shouldn’t say things about the girl you’re going to marry,” she said.

“You’re still hopped.”

“I’m pregnant.”

“What?”

“I waited to make sure before I told you.”

“Why didn’t you take care of yourself?”

“I did. It happened anyway.”

“Can’t you do something to get rid of it?”

“You want me to drink gasoline or have my stomach cut open?”

“Why the hell did you let it happen?”

“It’s here and you’re stuck with it, so think about getting a marriage license,” she said.

“How do I know it’s mine?”

“It would take you to say something like that.”

“Seth says you and Doc Elgin got something going on.”

“You and me are going to stand up before a justice of the peace. You don’t have any way out of it.”

“There ain’t no shotgun laws in this state. You can’t force me into it. All I got to do is support the child.”

“But wait till your Baptist-Methodist audience finds out about it.”

“Are you going to put signboards on the highway?”

“I’ll have a blood test made and take it into court. Then all the hicks can read about it in the paper. Lathrop and Hunnicut will give you bus fare back to your tenant farm.”

“I got half a mind to take that bus ride.”

“How are you going to pay for your habit?”

“I can still kick it. It ain’t too late,” he said.

“You’re a fool.”

“I ain’t stuck it in my arm.”

“You will.”

“Everyone don’t have to end in the junkie ward.”

“I don’t feel like hearing about your cures this morning.”

“You and that bastard Elgin got me on it,” he said.

“Go cry to somebody else about it.”

“Don’t it bother you none fixing up Elgin with customers?”

“A girl looks out for herself.”

“You let yourself get knocked up on purpose.”

“I don’t want a child. I never liked children,” she said.

“Why in the hell weren’t you careful?”

“The courthouse closes at five o’clock. We’ll apply for the license this afternoon and three days from now we’ll be married. Isn’t that nice?”

“I got to think it over.”

“I’ll meet you in the lobby at one.”

“I can’t do it today. Elgin is coming by with a delivery.”

“There’s some in the drawer. Get it and take it with you.”

“I got to pay Elgin anyway.”

“He’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Look, we can put it off a while. It don’t hurt to wait.”

“Stop being an ass.”

“We wouldn’t be no good married together.”

“I’m not getting caught with your brat and no husband.”

Two hours later he was downstairs in the lobby waiting for her. He had coffee in the café and went outside to the cigar stand for a shoeshine. The stand was under the brick colonnade of the hotel. A large oak tree grew through an opening in the sidewalk. The day was not hot yet, and there was a slight breeze that carried the watermelon smell of summer from the country and the odor of old brick. J.P. gave the porter a half dollar and went inside to the bar for a drink. He left word at the desk for April.

He sat on one of the tall bar stools and drank a draught beer. April came in and sat next to him. She wore a dark blue skirt and a white blouse and black high heels.

“You want a beer?” he said.

“No. Let’s go to the courthouse.”

“Bring me another draught,” he said to the bartender.

“We have to go,” she said.

“I feel like drinking some beer.”

“You can drink later.”

The bartender drew the beer from the tap and put the filled mug on the bar. J.P. paid him and drank half of it without putting the mug down. He wiped the foam off the corners of his mouth.

“You ought to have a drink,” he said.

“I don’t feel like it.”

“Are you still shaky from last night?”

“Finish your beer and let’s go,” she said.

“I ain’t in no hurry.”

He swallowed down the rest of the beer and motioned to the bartender for another.

“Can’t you do anything without getting high first?” she said.

“I feel like getting blind.”

“After we come back you can pass out in the lobby if you want to.”

“You’ll be a sweet wife.”

The beer came. He watched her over the top of the mug as he drank.

“Pay for it and let’s go,” she said.

“Did you ever have a boilermaker? This seems like a good day to have one.” He called the bartender over and had him put a double shot of whiskey in the glass. He drank it down in two long swallows and put a dollar on the bar.

They took a taxi to the courthouse. They went into the clerk of court’s office to fill out the applications. He paid the license fee to the clerk and left April in the office. He walked down the marble corridor towards the front entrance. He heard her high heels clacking on the floor behind him.

“Where are you going?” she said.

“There ain’t nothing else, is there?”

“Why did you walk off and leave me alone in there?”

“I’m going somewhere, and I don’t reckon you want to come along,” he said.

He walked out the front door and down the wide concrete walk to the street. The sun was very hot now, and the glare from the cement hurt his eyes. He heard the high heels clacking behind him again. He didn’t look back. He signaled a taxi and got in and slammed the door before she reached the street. He saw her face go by the window as the taxi pulled away from the curb.

“What are you laughing at, mister?” the driver said, looking at him in the rear-view mirror.

“It’s so goddamn funny you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’d tell you about it, but you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Where did you say you wanted to go?”

“Jerry’s Bar, back of the depot.”

The driver looked at him once more in the mirror and drove down a side street through the old part of town and across the railroad tracks. They slowed down behind the station and stopped in front of a bar across from the freight yards. The bar was a two-story board building with dirty front windows and a shorted-out neon sign that buzzed loudly and lighted up only half of its letters.

J.P. went inside. It smelled of flat beer and the sawdust that was spread on the floor. The mirror behind the bar was yellowed, and the rough-grained floor was stained with tobacco spittle. Some of the chairs were turned over on the tables, and two railroad workers were drinking at the other end of the bar. A middle-aged man in a dirty apron was drying glasses behind the bar. His hair was combed over the bald spot in the middle of his head.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Winfield,” he said.

“Give me a whiskey and water, Jerry,” J.P. said.

“Yes, sir.”

He mopped the area in front of J.P. with a rag and set down the drink.

“We ain’t seen you in a while. You must be busy in politics.”

“When are you going to stop cutting your whiskey?” J.P. said.

“We don’t do that here, Mr. Winfield. I can give you another shot if it’s too weak.” He filled the jigger and poured it in J.P.’s glass.

“I want a room upstairs for the afternoon.”

“It’s a little early. I don’t know if any of the girls are in.”

J.P. took out his billfold and put five ten-dollar bills on the bar.

“Let me ask my wife,” the bartender said. “Emma, come over here a minute.”

The woman who had been sweeping propped her broom against a table and came behind the bar. She was stout and had big arms like a man. There was a large wart on her chin. She didn’t look at J.P.

“Mr. Winfield wants to go upstairs. I told him it was a little early for the girls,” the bartender said.

She took the money off the bar and rang the cash register and put it in the drawer.

“Come with me,” she said.

J.P. followed her off into a narrow hallway at the back. She opened the door to a stairway and climbed the steps with J.P. behind her. The upstairs was divided by a hallway with a series of doors on each side. The floor was covered with a tattered maroon carpet. The hall ended in a single large room that served as the kitchen. There was a curtain pulled across the doorway. The woman left J.P. standing at the top of the staircase and went down the hall opening doors and looking into rooms. She came back and went past him to the kitchen, not looking at him.

“They keep their rooms worse than niggers,” she said.

He watched her pull aside the curtain and look into the kitchen. Four women were sitting around the table eating. She held the curtain and stepped back for him to look in.

“You want one in particular?” she said.

“Is Margaret still here?”

“She got sick.”

“It don’t matter, then.”

“There’s a customer, Honey,” the woman said.

“Yes, ma’am,” a girl at the table said, and wiped her mouth with a napkin and got up from her chair. She came out into the hall. Her hair was long and honey-colored. She wore a pink flowered house robe. She was a little overweight and the pink polish on her fingernails was chipped away.

“Honey is one of our best girls. We never had complaints about her,” the woman said.

The girl smiled at J.P. He put a bill in the woman’s hand.

“Tell Jerry to send up a bottle and some glasses,’ he said.

“This has always been a good place. We never had trouble with townspeople or police,” the woman said.

“I ain’t going to tear up your place. Tell Jerry to bring the bottle.”

The woman put the bill in her dress pocket and went back down the stairs. J.P. followed Honey into her room.

“Say, aren’t you that singer? The one on the Louisiana Jubilee?” she said.

“No.”

“You look like him. What’s his name?”

“I don’t know. I’m a vitamin tonic salesman. You want to buy some vitamin tonic to keep strong in your work?”

“You even sound like him. You sure you’re not him?”

“I sell vitamin tonic to working girls that keep late hours,” he said.

“Salesmen don’t have money for an all-afternoon date.”

“You’re a smart girl.”

“We get all kinds of people here. I can tell what a fellow is when he walks in. I know you’re the one on the Jubilee,” she said.

Three days later J.P. and April picked up their marriage license at the courthouse. He had a fresh supply of powder from Doc Elgin, and he stayed high all evening. That night they drove to a justice of the peace’s house on the edge of town. The official considered his marriage office a very important one. He smiled and spoke of the many young people he had married. There was a scent of whiskey on his breath. The house had the smell of old wallpaper, dead flowers, and old ladies. His wife served as a witness. J.P. was very high and he kept wanting to laugh during the ceremony. He looked at the homely slogans on the wall in the gilt and scrolled frames. He thought he heard himself laughing. The marriage was over and they were sitting in the back seat of the taxi on the way to the hotel and he could still smell the old wallpaper and the withered flowers.

Avery Broussard

After he had served a year Avery was up for parole. The board met once every two months, and he had to wait five weeks after his minimum sentence was completed before his case was reviewed. He had never spent time in detention, and no bad reports concerning him had ever been filed with the warden’s office, chiefly because Evans never took time to file reports on anybody in his gang. The board met at the warden’s house at the edge of the camp on a hot Friday afternoon. Avery was taken off work at noon and driven back from the line to the barracks by a guard. He showered and changed into clear denims while the guard sat on a bunk by the doorway and waited. He was then taken over to the warden’s house to be interviewed by the board.

He walked up the veranda with the guard beside him. In the dining room six men sat around the table in their shirtsleeves. The ceiling fan ruffled the papers on the table. The guard brought Avery into the room and motioned for him to sit down in a chair against the wall. The chairman of the board looked at Avery across the table. His face wore no expression save the confidence of his position in dealing with prisoners. He was the kind of man who could speak of correction, punishment, and rehabilitation without ever seeing the gangs working in the ditch or smelling the stench of sweat and urine when someone was brought back from detention.

“We’ve considered your case,” he said, “and although we’ve decided in your favor, I have to tell you that a parole is not a guarantee of complete personal freedom. Your crime was a first offense, and because you were relatively young when you committed it, you’re being given another chance on the street after doing only a third of your sentence. However, there are restrictions attached to parole that you are going to have to follow the next two years. You can’t associate with criminal or antisocial company, and you can’t leave the state without permission of your local board. You can’t overindulge in alcoholic beverages, nor own a firearm, and you must check in with your board every month. Would you like to say anything before you’re taken back?”

“When can I get out?” Avery said.

“Our recommendation has to be sent to Baton Rouge for approval. Then a letter will be sent to the warden ordering your release.”

The other men at the table were hot and bored.

“Is there anything else you’d like to know? One aim of the board is to help you make the adjustment back to normal life.”

The chairman waited for Avery to speak. He expected some expression of gratitude from men to whom he granted parole.

“If you have nothing to say, the guard will take you back.”

Avery went outside with the guard. They walked to the truck parked at the barracks. He asked if he could change into his soiled clothes before going back on the line. The guard said there wasn’t time. Avery sat beside him in the truck as they drove through camp out the wire gates and down the dirt road towards the line.

“It looks like you’re going to be the only one from gang five to make it out,” the guard said. “Billy Jo and Jeffry is dead and LeBlanc is locked up in the nut house, and the rest is serving life except Boudreaux.”

“How long does it take for them to get that letter here?” Avery said.

“Four or five days. It’s good for you Evans didn’t aim in no report. You wouldn’t be making parole.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Yeah. He don’t like you.”

“I thought we were close friends.”

“He ain’t got no use for anybody that would buddy with LeBlanc. He had them blue marks on his neck for a week. I heard LeBlanc was slobbering like a sick dog. Is that true about them beating him over the head a half dozen times before he let go of Evans?”

“Ask Rainack.”

“Didn’t you see it?”

“No. I was in the truck,” he said.

Avery’s letter of release came later that week. A guard told him in the dining hall to have his things ready before breakfast the next morning. He got up at six o’clock with the rest of the men and cleaned out his footlocker and folded his army blanket and bed linen. He rolled his mattress up on the foot of his bunk and laid out his clothes issue on top of his locker. From the window, he could see the sun through the pines. Toussaint sat on the next bunk and rolled a cigarette.

“How’s it feel?” he said.

“Good.”

“You’ll be walking down Bourbon Street tonight.”

“Not with less than ten dollars in my pocket.”

“Try the docks. You can make good money handling freight.”

“Nobody is hiring ex-cons,” Avery said.

“You ain’t got to tell them where you come from.”

The breakfast whistle blew. They lined up outside the dining hall.

“Stay out of trouble. Don’t let them send you back to this place,” Toussaint said at the table.

“They never will.”

“Them parole boards can send you back for the rest of your stretch.”

“They won’t get me in here again,” Avery said.

“Don’t give them no excuse.”

They finished eating and lined up outside for roll call. The captain told Avery to return to the barracks after his name was called and wait for the guard to come get him.

“So long, whiskey runner,” Toussaint said.

They shook hands.

“Take care,” Avery said.

“Worry about yourself. They can’t do no more to me.”

“I’ll write you a letter.”

“You ain’t got to do that.”

“Maybe I’ll see you in New Orleans,” Avery said, and then felt stupid for saying it.

That’ll be a long while.”

They shook hands again.

“So long,” Avery said.

“So long.”

Avery went to the barracks and waited for the guard. Rainack came in with a brown paper bundle under his arm. He dropped it on the bunk.

“Here’s the stuff you come in with. See if it’s all there,” he said.

Avery broke the string and unwrapped the paper. The package contained the clothes he had worn when he was arrested. They had been washed, pressed, and wrapped in a bundle nearly a year ago. He looked at the scuffed brown shoes, the print sports shirt faded almost white, and the gray work trousers. There was a brown envelope on top with his name and prison number printed across the front. He opened it and shook out a pocketknife, three quarters, a billfold, and a leather-band wristwatch with the crystal broken.

“What happened to my watch?”

“Talk to the trusties at the office. Is everything else there?”

“Yes.”

“Change into your own clothes. You got to go by the warden’s office before you leave.”

Avery got dressed. He sat on the bunk and put on his shoes.

“You can take your boots with you. We never issue out boots twice,” Rainack said.

“You can keep them.”

They went over to the warden’s office. The trusty who served as a secretary sat behind a small desk inside the hall.

“Take him in to see the warden. I got to go back to the line,” Rainack said to the trusty. He went out and let the screen slam behind him.

The trusty knocked on the warden’s door.

“Broussard’s here, sir,” he said.

“I’m busy. Wait a minute.”

Avery waited a quarter of an hour, then he was told to go in. He sat down in the straight-backed chair before the warden’s desk.

“You see this ten-dollar bill?” the warden said. “It will buy a bus ticket to any part of the state you want to go to. We don’t care where you go, we just don’t want you back here. It cost the state a lot of money to keep you in camp, and we figure that after you’ve spent some time here you don’t want to cost us no more money. You’ll be outside in a few minutes and the choice will be up to you. You can obey the law and keep clear of us, or you can come back. But I’m going to warn you that we don’t like to see nobody here twice.”

“Is that all?” Avery said.

“That’s all.”

Avery took the bill off the desk and put it in his billfold.

“Do you know how to get out to the highway?” the warden said.

“I’ll find it.”

He got up and went back out through the hall.

“Hold on,” the trusty said. “I got to take you to the gate.”

They walked across the dirt yard of the camp. He looked at the white barracks in the sun and the corrugated tin roofs and the wire fence with the three barbed strands at the top. The guard at the gate sat in the shade of a tarpaulin that was stretched out from the fence and attached to two wood poles stuck in the ground. He had a double-barrel shotgun across his knees.

“Broussard’s coming out,” the trusty said.

The guard propped the shotgun against the fence and unlocked the gate.

“Come calling again,” he said.

Avery walked out and heard the gate lock behind him. The camp road led through some pines and divided into a fork ahead. There were tire marks in the dirt where the trucks turned right at the fork to take the men out to the line. The gravel lane to the left became a farm road that led to the highway. He walked in the shade of the trees. The trunks looked dark and cool, and off in the distance he could see the cotton fields and the red clay land and the Negroes chopping in the long green rows. He followed the farm road for a mile with the sun hot on his shoulders and the back of his neck. The dew on the grass was dry and the grasshoppers flicked across the road in the sun. He thought how long it had been since he used to catch the big black and yellow grasshoppers on the bank of the bayou and nigger-fish with a cane pole. A mile further on the farm road ran into the highway. He stood on the shoulder of the highway and tried to hitch a ride. He waited two hours and no one stopped. It was mid-morning and the day was beginning to get hot. He unbuttoned his shirt and let the wind blow inside. The cars came down the highway with the sun reflecting on their windshields and their tires whining on the pavement; they sped past him and disappeared down the road. An old coupe with a smoking radiator slowed down and pulled off onto the shoulder. Avery got in the front seat and shut the door.

The driver was a farmer. He wore overalls and a checkered shirt and an old Stetson hat that was wilted with sweat. His face was lean and burned by the sun. He shifted the floor stick and pulled back on the highway.

“Bad place to be hitchhiking,” he said.

“Why’s that?”

“Didn’t you see them signs they got along the road?”

“No,” Avery said.

“They say hitchhikers might be escaped convicts. There’s a prison camp over yonder.”

“How far are you going?”

“About twenty miles up the road. Ain’t you traveling light?”

“My suitcase was stolen.”

“Where you coming from?” the farmer asked.

“North of here.”

“You sure picked a bad place to catch a ride. Most people is afraid they’ll get one of them convicts in their car.”

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“I pick up boys along here all the time. Sometimes they’re just getting out of prison. I ain’t afraid of them.”

They drove down the highway for fifteen miles. The heat waves looked like pools of water on the road. The grass was tall and green in the fields. The clouds moved across the sun and made places of shadow over the countryside. The river was off to the left, curving through the slow-rolling hills of cotton and corn.

“You look like you been working outdoors a lot,” the farmer said.

“I have.”

“What doing?”

“I worked for the state. You can put me down at the crossroads.”

“Look, it don’t matter to me where you come from.”

“It doesn’t? You seem to want to know pretty bad.”

“I was talking to pass the time. I don’t grudge a man his past,” the farmer said.

“This is where I get off, anyway.”

The coup stopped where the road intersected with the federal highway. Avery got out and watched the car pull away. There was a country store on the corner under two big shade trees. Some old men sat on a bench under a Hadacol sign chewing tobacco and spitting in the dust. They watched him walk up the sandy drive past the broken gasoline pump into the store. It was cool inside. A clerk came from the back and stood behind the counter. Avery bought some lunch meat, a loaf of bread, and a can of sardines. He looked up at the package shelf behind the clerk.

“How much for a pint?” he said.

“Two dollars.”

“You don’t have any that comes in glass jars, do you?”

“We only sell bonded whiskey here,” the clerk said.

“Give me the pint.”

The clerk put the bottle in a paper bag. Avery stuck it in his back pocket and picked up his groceries and went out to the highway.

He sat under a pine tree and ate lunch. There were brown pine needles spread over the grass. He opened the sardines and picked them out with his pocketknife and ate them with bread. He was still hungry and he wanted to eat the lunch meat, but he would have to save that for supper. The sun was very hot now. He threw the empty can to the side of the road and wiped his knife clean on the grass. He took the pint bottle out of his pocket and cut the seal off. He unscrewed the cap and drank; he felt the whiskey hot in his stomach. It tasted good after so long. He took another swallow and put the cap back on and replaced the bottle in his pocket. He wrapped the rest of his groceries in the paper sack and got up and stood by the shoulder of the highway to hitch another ride. Three cars passed him by, and then he caught a lift with a salesman who was going all the way to New Orleans.

He got into the city late that night. The salesman gave him directions to an inexpensive rooming house and dropped him off on the lower end of Magazine. Avery walked through the dark streets of a Negro area until he found St. Charles. He caught the streetcar and rode downtown to Canal. He stood on the corner and looked at the white sweep of the boulevard with its grass esplanade and palm trees and streetcar tracks, and the glitter like hard candy of the lighted storefronts. The sidewalks were still crowded, and he could hear the tinny music from the bars and strip places. He walked down to Liberty Street and found the rooming house the salesman had told him of. It was an old wood building that had a big front porch with a swing. It was one block off Canal and three blocks from Bourbon, and the Frenchwoman who owned it kept it very clean and she served coffee and rolls to her tenants every morning.

He took a room for the night, and in the morning the woman brought in his coffee on a tray. She poured the coffee and hot milk into his cup from two copper pots with long tapered spouts. She wore a housecoat, and her hair was loose and uncombed.

“Will you keep the room for another night?” she said.

“I’m looking for a job. I’ll stay if I find one,” Avery said.

“Your name is French. Tu parles français?”

“I understand it.”

“D’où tu viens?”

“Martinique parish.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

“Anything. I’m going down to the docks today,” he said.

“My husband is a welder on the pipeline. He can get you work.”

“I’ve never worked on a pipeline.”

“You can learn. He will teach you.”

“Where is he?” Avery said.

“He is eating breakfast. Finish the coffee and you can talk with him.”

Avery met her husband and drove to work with him. He got a job as a welder’s helper on a twelve-inch natural gas line that had just kicked off and was to run from an oil refinery to the other end of the parish. He worked with the tack crew, cleaning wells, driving the truck, and regulating the welding machine. He liked the job. Each morning they went out on the right-of-way that was cut through the woods and marsh, and the joints of pipe would be laid along the wooden skids by the ditch; he followed behind the truck with the electric ground that he clamped on the pipe to give the welder a circuit and with the wire brushes and the icepick in his back pocket that he used to clean the joints; the welder would bend over the pipe with his dark goggles on and his bill-hat turned around backwards and his khaki shirt buttoned at the collar and sleeves, and the electric arc would move in an orange flame around the pipe, and there was the acrid smell of tar and hot metal and the exhaust from the heavy machinery.

He stayed on at the rooming house, and sometimes in the evening he went down into the Quarter and ate dinner in an Italian place off Bourbon Street, then he would walk through the narrow cobble lanes and look at the old red and pink stucco buildings and the iron grillwork along the balconies and those fine flagstone courtyards with the willow trees and palms that hung over the walls. At night he could see the back of Saint Louis Cathedral with the ivy growing up its walls under the moon, and there was the park in the square across from the French Market where the bums and the drunks slept under the statue of Andrew Jackson.

One night he found a small bar on Rampart where the band was good and there were no tourists. He had been drinking since he had gotten off work. He sat at the bar and drank whiskey sours and listened to the band knock out the end of “Yellow Dog Blues.” The drummer twirled the sticks in his hands and played on the nickel-plated rim of his snare. The man on the next stool to Avery was having an argument with the bartender. He was dressed in sports clothes, and was quite handsome and quite drunk. He had thin red hair and blue eyes and a pale classic face like Lord Byron’s. He didn’t have enough money to pay for his drink. He turned to Avery.

“I say, have you a dime?” he said.

Avery pushed a coin towards him.

He gave the dime to the bartender with some other change.

“The fellow was going to take my drink away,” he said.

“You’re spilling it,” Avery said.

“Spilling?”

“On your coat. You’re spilling your drink.”

“Don’t want to do that.” He wiped his sleeve with his hand. “My name is Wally.”

“I’m Avery Broussard.”

“You look like a good chap. Do you want to go to a party?”

“Where?”

“On Royal. A friend of mine is giving a debauch.”

“I wouldn’t know anyone.”

“Of no importance. The literary and artistic group. We’ll tell them you’re an agrarian romanticist. Do you have a bottle?”

“No.”

“We’ll have to get one. The artistic group asks that you bring your own booze.”

They left the bar and went to a package store down the street.

“Do you mind making it Scotch?” Wally said.

Avery went in and bought a half pint.

“Good man,” Wally said.

“Are you English?” Avery took a drink and passed the bottle.

“Who would want to be English when they can belong to the American middle class?”

“You sound English.”

“Went to school in England. Drank my way through four years of Tulane, then tried graduate work at Cambridge and was sent down. Acquired nothing but a taste for Scotch and a bad accent. Now make my home in the Quarter writing.”

“Pass the bottle,” Avery said.

“What do you do?”

“Pipeline.”

“I say, we’re emptying the bottle rather fast.”

“Have to buy more.”

“I’m stony broke. Hate to use your money like this.”

Avery took a long drink.

“Mind if I have a bit?” Wally said.

Avery gave him the bottle. He leaned against the side of a building and drank.

“I think I’m tight,” he said.

“Where is the party?”

“Royal Street.”

“We’re going the wrong way,” Avery said.

They turned the corner towards Royal. The half pint was almost finished.

“You have the last drink,” Wally said.

“Go ahead.”

“Your bottle.”

Avery drank it off and dropped the bottle in an alley.

“Puts us in an embarrassing way. Can’t go to party without liquor,” Wally said.

“Dago red.”

“Never drink it.”

“It’s cheap.”

“Unconventional to go to party with dago red,” Wally said.

“There’s an Italian place with good wine.”

“A little restaurant off Bourbon?”

“Yes.”

“Have to wait outside. Can’t go in,” Wally said.

“Why not?”

“Broke some glasses they say. Don’t remember it. Was inebriated at the time.”

“They have good wine,” Avery said.

“I’ll wait for you. It’s always awkward to have scenes with Italian restaurant owners.”

Avery walked down two blocks and bought a large two-liter bottle of red wine in a straw basket. He met Wally at the corner.

“I forgot to get a corkscrew,” he said.

He cut out the top part of the cork with his pocketknife and pushed the rest through the neck into the wine.

“Good man,” Wally said.

They each had a drink. They could taste the cork when it floated up inside the neck. They walked along, Avery holding the bottle by the straw loops of the basket. They came to an apartment building with a Spanish-type courtyard that had an iron gate and an arched brick entrance. The courtyard was strung with paper lanterns, and there was a stone well with a banana tree beside it in the center. The walls were grown with ivy, and there were potted ferns in earthenware jars on the flagging. People moved up and down the staircase, and laughing girls called down from the balcony to young men in the court.

“Hello!” Wally said.

“It’s Wally,” someone said.

“I say, is there a party here?”

“Come in. You look shaky on your feet,” another said.

“Does anyone know if there’s a party here?” he said.

“Someone help Wally in,” a girl said.

“We’re agrarian romanticists. This is Freneau Crèvecoeur Broussard.”

“Avery.”

“That’s not agrarian enough. You’ll have to change your name,” Wally said.

Everyone turned and looked at Wally.

“Do you remember my party last Saturday?” a girl said.

“I was helping out at the mission last Saturday. We’re starting a campaign to make New Orleans dry.”

“He said he was somebody out of War and Peace,” she told the others. “He stood backwards on the edge of my balcony and tried to drink a fifth of Scotch without falling.”

“Couldn’t have been me. I’ve never read Chekhov.”

“You would have broken your neck if you hadn’t fallen in the flower bed,” she said.

“Don’t like those Russian chaps, anyway. A bunch of bloody moralists,” Wally said.

“Sit down, fellow. You’re listing,” someone said.

“Won’t be able to get up.”

“Tell Freneau Crèvecoeur to sit down. He doesn’t look well,” the girl said.

“Avery.”

“Beg your pardon?” she said.

“My name is Avery.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Avery.”

“We’re agrarian romanticists,” Wally said.

“Avery is my first name.”

“Who wants to read a bunch of bloody Russians when they can have the agrarian romanticists?”

“What does your friend have in his bottle?” the girl said.

“The best Italian import that a pair of unwashed feet could mash down in a bathtub. I say, let’s have a drink.”

He took the bottle from Avery and turned it up.

“Your turn, old pal.”

Avery sat down on the well and drank.

“Damn good man. Wonderful capacity,” Wally said. “Everyone take a swallow. Pass it around. I insist. Each of you must take a swallow. I never drink alone. It’s a sign of alcoholism.”

“You’re impossible, Wally,” the girl said.

“I cannot stand people who do not drink.”

A man took the bottle and held it for his girl to drink. She laughed and a few drops went down her chin. The bottle was passed from one couple to another.

“I refuse to go to parties where everyone is not smashed,” Wally said.

“Do you live in the Quarter, Mr. Crèvecoeur?” another girl said.

“No writer would live in the Quarter,” Wally said.

“Are you a writer?”

“Work on the pipeline,” Avery said.

“What did he say?”

“He’s a disillusioned agrarian,” Wally said.

“Have you really written anything?”

“We’ve made an agreement with a publisher to write dialogue for comic books,” Wally said.

“Be serious.”

“He did his thesis on Wordsworth’s sonnets to the dark lady.”

“I’m interested in writing myself,” she said to Avery.

“She’s a copy reader for the Picayune.”

“Where is the wine?” Avery said.

“All gone.”

“Have to get more.”

“I’ve written a few poems and sent them off,” the girl said.

“We had a full bottle when we came in,” Avery said.

“It’s a lovely trick. You let everyone have a sip of yours, and then you drink out of theirs for the rest of the night.”

“Do you publish often?” she said.

“I’m a welder’s helper.”

“You said you were a writer.”

“He is.”

“I almost failed high school English,” Avery said.

“Why did you say you were a writer?”

“I tell you he is,” Wally said.

“We need another bottle.”

“Let’s go upstairs.”

“I wouldn’t have told you about my poems,” the girl said.

“Crèvecoeur will be happy to read your poetry and give you a criticism.”

“You take things too far,” the girl said.

“Oh I say.”

“It’s true.”

“Apologize to her, Crèvecoeur.”

“I’m going down to the package store.”

“These other chaps owe us a round. Let’s toggle upstairs.”

They went up the staircase and entered the living room of an apartment. It was crowded and they had to push their way through to the kitchen where the liquor was kept. Wally took a bottle of Scotch off the sideboard and two glasses from the cabinet. There was a sack of crushed ice in the sink. He fixed the drinks and handed one to Avery. They went back into the living room. There was a combo playing in one corner. The guitar player was a Negro. It was very loud in the room. Someone dropped a glass on the coffee table. Someone was saying that a girl had passed out in the bathroom. Avery tripped across a man and a girl sitting on the floor. The glass doors to the outside balcony were open to let in the night air. He started to go out on the balcony but he heard a girl whisper and laugh in the darkness. The piano player in the combo was singing an obscene song in Spanish. Avery couldn’t find Wally in the crowd. Two men who looked like homosexuals were talking in the corner by the bookcase. One of them waved girlishly at someone across the room. The girl who had passed out in the bath was brought out to the balcony for some air.

Avery moved through the groups of people. He finished his drink and put his glass on a table. He could feel the blood in his face. The noise in the room seemed louder. He wanted to get outside. He remembered that he had to be out on the job at seven in the morning. He looked up and saw a girl watching him from the other side of the room. She smiled at him and excused herself from the people she was with. It was Suzanne. She wore a wine-colored dress, and there was a gold cross and chain around her throat. She looked even better than when he had seen her last.

“I couldn’t tell if it was you or not,” she said.

“Hello, Suzanne.”

“You kept walking through the crowd. I wanted to call out, but I was afraid it wasn’t you.”

“I thought you were in Spain or someplace.”

“I was. What are you doing here?”

“I’m not sure. I was leaving when I saw you,” he said.

“Don’t leave.”

“I’m not.”

“Let’s go outside. It’s too loud in here.”

“I’ve tried. Couldn’t make the door.”

“We can go out through the kitchen,” she said.

They went out through a back door that opened onto the balcony over the courtyard. The air was cool, and the moonlight fell on the tile roofing of the buildings.

“I didn’t believe it was you. You look changed,” she said.

“You look good,” he said. She really did. She had never looked so good.

“It’s been awfully long since we’ve seen each other.”

“Did you like Spain?”

“I loved it.”

“Are you living here now?”

“Over on Dauphine. Another girl and I rented a studio. You have to see it. It’s like something out of nineteenth-century Paris.”

They sat on the stone steps leading down to the court.

“I’m one of those sidewalk artists you see in Pirates Alley,” she said. “Daddy was furious when he found out. He said he would stop my allowance.”

“He won’t.”

“I know. He always threatens to do it, and then he sends another check to apologize.”

He looked at her profile in the darkness. She kept her face turned slightly away from him when she talked. The light from the paper lanterns caught in her hair. He wished he had not drunk as much as he had. He was trying very hard to act sober.

“I came with some fellow named Wally. He put a drink in my hand and I never saw him again.”

“How in the world did you meet Wally?”

“He was broke. I lent him a dime.”

“One night he went down Bourbon asking donations for the Salvation Army.”

“What happened?”

“He used the money to buy two winos a drink in The Famous Door.”

A couple brushed past them down the steps. Others followed them. Part of the party was moving outside. Wally came out on the balcony and called down.

“Who in the hell would read a bunch of Russian moralists?”

“Let’s go to the Café du Monde,” Suzanne said. “They have wonderful pastry and coffee, and we can sit outside at the tables.”

“What about the people you’re with?”

“I’ve been trying to get away from them all evening. They come down from L.S.U. to see the bohemians.”

They left the party and walked towards the French Market through the brick and cobbled streets. They passed the rows of stucco buildings that had once been the homes of the French and Spanish aristocracy, and which were now gutted and remodeled into bars, whorehouses, tattoo parlors, burlesque theaters, upper-class restaurants, and nightclubs that catered to homosexuals. They could hear the loud music from Bourbon and the noise of the people on the sidewalk and the spielers in front of the bars calling in the tourists, who did not know or care who had built the Quarter.

“I didn’t find out what happened to you until I came back from Spain,” she said. “I’m very sorry.”

“It’s over now.”

“I couldn’t believe it when Daddy told me. It seems so unfair.”

“I did a year. They might have kept me for three.’

“Was it very bad?” she said.

“Yes.”

“I wish I had known. I was enjoying myself, and you were in one of those camps.”

“I’m finished with it now.”

“It makes me feel awful to think of you in there.”

“You’re a good girl.”

“It must have been terrible.”

“It was worse for some of the others,” he said.

“I couldn’t bear thinking about you in a prison.”

They walked across Jackson Square through the park and crossed the street to the Café du Monde. They sat outside at one of the tables. There was a breeze from the river. The waiter in a white jacket brought them coffee and a dish of pastry.

“We never wrote to each other after my first year in college,” she said. “I wanted to write but anything I could say seemed inadequate.”

“I wasn’t sure you wanted to hear from me.”

“You know I did. It all went to nothing over such small things.”

“I passed out on the beach in Biloxi.”

“I wasn’t angry. It just hurt me to see you do it to yourself.”

“I felt like hell when I saw the way you looked the next morning,” he said.

“I didn’t sleep all night. I was so worried over you.”

“You were always a good girl.”

“Stop it.”

“You were always damn good-looking too.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake, Avery.”

“Did you see those men turn and look at you in the park?”

“You’re being unfair.”

“Why are you so damn good-looking?” he said.

“I want to show you my apartment. Can you come over tomorrow evening for supper?”

“You’re changing the subject.”

“Can you come?”

“All right.”

“I cook beautifully. My roommate refuses to eat with me.”

“Good. Tell her to leave.”

“What were you drinking tonight?” she said.

“I thought I fooled you.”

“Your face was white. I was afraid to light a cigarette near you.”

“Tell your roommate to leave, anyway.”

“You’re still tight.”

“Dago red leaves me like this for a couple of days.”

“It’s good to be with you again, Avery.”

“Let’s walk home,” he said.