The Carpetbaggers

10

THE EAST, WEST AND SOUTH OF THE PRISON WAS bounded by a swamp, along which the cypresses rose high and spilled their leaves onto the murky surface of the water. The only way out was to the north, across the rice paddies tended by Cajun tenant farmers. There was a small village eighteen miles north of the prison and it was here that most prisoners trying to escape were caught and brought back to the prison by the Cajuns for the ten-dollar bounty offered by the state. Those who were not caught were presumed dead in the swamp. There had been only two such cases reported in the prison's twenty years of operation.

One morning in May, after Max had been there a few months, the guard checking out his hut reported to one of the trusties the absence of a prisoner named Jim Reeves.

The trusty looked around. "He ain't here?"

"He ain't out in the latrines, neither," the guard said. "I looked."

"He's gone, then," the trusty said. "I reckon he went over the wall in the night."

"That Jim Reeves sure is a fool," the guard said softly. He turned on his heel. "I better go tell the warden."

They were lined up in front of the kitchen, getting their coffee and grits, when Max saw one of the guards ride out of the prison and start up the road toward the village.

He sat down against the wall of one of the huts and watched the guard disappear up the road while he ate. Mike, the giant Negro trusty who had given him ten lashes the day he arrived, came over and sat down beside him.

Max looked over at the trusty. "That all the fuss they make over a man gettin' out?"

Mike nodded, his mouth filled with grits. "What you expec' them to do?" he asked. "They'll git him back. You wait and see."

He was right. The next morning, while they were at breakfast again, Jim Reeves came back. He was sitting in a wagon between two Cajuns, who carried their long rifles in the crooks of their arms. The prisoners looked up at him silently as he rode by.

When they came back from their work in the evening, Jim Reeves was tied naked to the whipping post. Silently the trusties led the prisoners to the compound, so that they could view the punishment before they had their meal.

The warden stood there until all the prisoners were in line. "You men know the penalty for attempted escape – ten lashes and fifteen days in the cage for each day out." He turned to Mike, standing next to him. "I don't want him knocked out. He must be conscious so he can rue the folly of his action."

Mike nodded stolidly and stepped forward. The muscles along his back rippled and the long snake wrapped itself lightly around the prisoner. It seemed to caress him almost gently, but when Mike lifted it from the victim's back, a long red welt of blood bubbled and rose to the surface.

A moment later, the prisoner screamed. The snake rippled around him again. This time, his scream was pure agony. The prisoner fainted three times before the lashing was completed. Each time, the warden stepped forward and had a pail of water thrown into his face to revive him, then ordered the lashing continued.

At the end, Jim Reeves hung there from the post, unconscious. Blood dripped down his back from his shoulders, across his buttocks and the top of his thighs.

"Cut him down and put him in the cage," the warden said.

Silently the men broke ranks and formed a food line. Max looked at the cage as he got on the line. The cage was exactly that – steel bars forming a four-foot cubicle. There was room to neither walk, stand or even stretch out full length. There was only space enough to sit or crouch on all fours like an animal. There was no shelter from the sun or the elements.

For the next thirty days, Jim Reeves would live there like an animal – without clothing, without medical attention, with only bread and water for his food. He would live there in the midst of his pain and his excrement and there was no one who would speak to him or dare give him aid, under penalty of the same punishment.

Max took his plate of meat and beans around to the side of the hut, where he would not have to look at the cage. He sank to the ground and began to eat slowly.

Mike sat down next to him. The big Negro's face was sweating. He began to eat silently. Max looked at him and couldn't eat any more. He pushed his plate away from him, rolled a cigarette and lit it.

"You ain't hungry, man?" Mike asked. "I'll eat that there food."

Max stared at him for a moment, then silently turned the plate over, spilling the contents on the ground.

Mike stared at him in surprise. "What for you do that, man?" he asked.

"Now I know why you stay here as a trusty instead of leavin' like you should," Max said. "You're evenin' up with the whole world when you swing that snake."

A look of understanding came into the trusty's eyes. "So that's what you' thinkin'," he said softly.

"That's what I'm thinkin'," Max said coldly.

The Negro looked into Max's eyes. "You don' know nothin'," he said slowly. "Years ago, when I first got here, I seen a man git a beatin' like that. When they cut him down, he was all tore up, front an' back. He died less'n two days after. Ain't a man died since I took the rope. Tha's more'n twelve years now. An' if you looked close, you would have seen they ain't a mark on the front of him, nor one lash laid over the other. I know they's lots of things wrong about my job, but somebody's gotta do it. An' it mought as well be me, because I don' like hurtin' folks. Not even pricks like Jim Reeves."

Max stared down at the ground, thinking about what he had just heard. A glimmer of understanding began to lighten the sourness in his stomach. Silently he pushed his sack of makings toward the trusty. Without speaking, Mike took it and rolled himself a cigarette. Quietly the two men leaned their heads back against the hut, smoking.

Jim Reeves came into the hut. It was a month since he had been carried out of the cage, encrusted in his own filth, bent over, his eyes wild like an animal's. Now his eyes searched the dark, then he came over to the bunk where Max lay stretched out and tapped him on the shoulder. Max sat up.

"I got to get outa here," he said.

Max stared at him in the dark. "Don't we all?"

"Don't joke with me, Injun," Reeves said harshly. "I mean it."

"I mean it, too," Max said. "But ain't nobody made it yet."

"I got a way figured out," Reeves said. "But it takes two men to do it. That's why I come to you."

"Why me?" Max asked. "Why not one of the men on a long stretch?"

"Because most of them are city men," Reeves said, "and we wouldn' last two days in the swamp."

Max swung into a sitting position. "Now I know you're crazy," he said. "Nobody can get th'ough that swamp. It's forty miles of quicksand, alligators, moccasins an' razorbacks. The only way is north, past the village."

A bitter smile crossed Reeves's face. "That's what I thought," he said. "It was easy, over the fence and up the road. Easy, I thought. They didn' even call out the dogs. They didn' have to. Every damn Cajun in the neighborhood was out lookin' for me."

He knelt by the side of Max's bunk. "The swamp," he said. "That's the only way. I got it figured out. We get a boat an'- "

"A boat!" Max said. "Where in hell we goin' to get a boat?"

"It'll take time," Reeves said cautiously. "But ricin' time is comin' up. Warden leases us out to the big planters then. Prison labor is cheap an' the warden pockets the money. Them rice paddies is half filled with water. There's always boats around."

"I don't know," Max said doubtfully.

Reeves's eyes were glowing like an animal's. "You want to lose two whole years of your life in this prison, boy? You got that much time just to throw away?"

"Let me think about it," Max said hesitantly. "I’ll let you know."

Reeves slipped away in the dark as Mike came into the hut. The trusty made his way directly to Max's bunk. "He been at you to go th'ough the swamp with him?" he asked.

The surprise showed in Max's voice. "How'd you know?"

"He's been at ev'ybody in the place an' they all turned him down. I figgered he'd be gettin' to you soon."

"Oh," Max said.

"Don' do it, boy," the giant trusty said softly. "No matter how good it looks, don' do it. Reeves is so full of hate, he don' care who gets hurt so long as he gets out."

Max stretched out on the bunk. His eyes stared up into the dark. The only thing that made sense in what Reeves had said was the two years. Max didn't have two years to throw away. Why, in two years, he'd be twenty-one.