or three, in the darkness, and all that time he'd nurture his hatred for Earl, he'd think on it and polish it and lick it shiny, until there was no other thing in his mind, no other thing at all. That was the way a fellow like Moon worked.
So: Earl had to kill him.
Or: Earl had to prepare to die.
Or: Earl had to escape.
None of the possibilities were inspirational to him. Instead, he just tried to fight the despair by snatching a quiet moment in the warm, hard rain, feeling slightly cleansed for the moment. He looked around: fronds of palmetto pulsed out of the green undergrowth, and before him, down the levee slope and in the hole, though the ground had turned even muddier and more desperate, the vegetation was green and glisteny. It was like a Guadalcanal in Mississippi, where the beauty of the wild place stood in contrast to the squalor of the savagery. That was the now. That was the present. That he could enjoy.
'Hey,' he said to the man who had spoken to him, 'tell me something.
The Screaming House Junior was yelling about. What would that be?'
'You don't want to go there, white boy. Take my word on that.'
'It's the end of the line?'
'You see them bedbug-crazy boys down ' of the barracks? Look, they standing over there.'
Earl glanced quickly through the rain, to a small knot of gibbering crazies who were shunned and stood apart from the others. He recognized a few: the fellow who talked to himself, the fellow who gripped his own arms so tightly you thought he'd squeeze himself to death, the gentleman with the fused spine who looked as though an iron bolt had been sunk through the center of his spindly old body. Each had a bright red number painted on his shirt so that he could be recognized.
'Them boys should be in a hospital someplace.'
'Ain't no hospitals here. Only the Screaming House. You ain't been here long enough, but when one gits so bad he can't work, they comes git him in the night. They takes him off to the Screaming House. We calls it that. No man never seen it. It's off to the west a bit. Fish claims it's cool there, and clean. But off goes a crazy boy and you can hear him in the night, the wind is right, the weather calm. You can hear him screaming. He scream and scream and scream. These country niggers let a place like that grow on their minds, think it's some kind of torture place. Think these guards got a special torture place.'
'What happens?'
'The screaming stops. That boy don't never come back. Nobody never comes back from the Screaming House.' 'I will avoid that place if I can,' said Earl. 'What they sick from?'
'Don't know, white boy. Some say it's bad blood. Some say it's the fevers of the river. Some say it's the shots they give us when the doctor look us over every three-fo' months.'
'What kind of doctor would let men like that fry in the sun?' 'The white kind,' said the man, simply, and that seemed to end the conversation.
Earl noticed the rain had stopped just as suddenly as it had started, and now shed of his poncho, his tommy gun named Mabel Louise gleaming from frequent cleanings, Section Boss rode the levee road commanding the convicts back into the hole.
'Git ' goin', you lazy niggers. Work to be done. You too, white boy, you git on down there and don't you think you be slackin' none. I catch you leaning, I'm going to beat your hide with my stick, boy.'
Earl rose, feeling the endless pains cut at him. His respite was over.
The hole beckoned, with its sucking mud and stubborn, iron-hard Cyprus stumps and its endless tangles of bramble and thorn, its mosquitoes, its snakes.
'You do what Section Boss says, or I be on you ass, white boy, and maybe, hell hell, I be in yo' ass!'
It was Fish, who'd jingled up on his mule-drawn cart unnoticed during the rain.
'You tell him, Fish!' came the cry from the guards.
'Yassuh, boss. Talked to of' Moon afore he done left. Moon, before he guts you, he goin' fuck you! Yassuh, he be goin' do dat. Up the ass!
Make you his sweet bitch. So you die a bitch! Ha, lawdy, lawdy, don't that beat it all! Make you wear lipstick! You be a fancy lady!'
The homosexual content of the jibes annoyed the hell out of Earl.
Things like that weren't right. Shouldn't be said out loud. He'd once caught two Marines doing something sexual out near the shitters on one island rest camp and immediately transferred them out of the unit, to different regiments. His fear on this one went deep, for some reason.
'Hoo, don't think the white person like to know he goin' be Miss.
Katharine Hepburn for old Moon when he gets back! Hey, white boy, iffn' you can take out the garbage and wear nylons, maybe Moon marry yo' pale bootie!'
Earl lost himself in his work, trying not to feel humiliated and debased by this new tack of Fish, who clearly had a way of getting under the skin.
As Earl used his hoe to chop at the root of an old tree, Fish was making Lana Turner smooching sounds, full of the suggestion of tongue and spit, to raucous laughter from the guards, particularly Section Boss.
Earl tried to erase the contaminated image from his brain, but couldn't.
Himself being held down and stripped buck naked while Moon, behind him, had his way. It was a shame he couldn't live with. It would kill him, that's all. He feared it, for some reason, deep in his brain, beyond all logic and clarity.
That would kill me, he knew.
I'd rather be gut shot and die slow than live with that in my mind.
He chopped and dug and dug and chopped. The heat and the sun came back.
He was in a dream of fear, trying to see only what was before him. It had one salutary effect, and that was that the afternoon seemed to pass more quickly than ever before, and soon enough the twilight was on them, and the cry came down the line, 'Convicts, out of the hole and form up.'
As Earl came out, he saw something new. It was a car.
It was the first car he'd seen at the prison.
It was a black Hudson sedan, gleamy and creamy in the twilight. And standing next to it, like a general attended by his staff, was Earl's main antagonist, Bigboy himself, examining the world through his Macarthur sunglasses. Two minions hung by him; Section Boss, even farther down the line of hierarchy, had dismounted and assumed a submissive position.
Earl felt Bigboy's eyes on him through the dark lenses. But he didn't dwell on it. He simply clambered up the slippery slope, took his hoe to the toolshed where a trustee stacked it, and looked for his exile's place at the end of the formation.
But suddenly two men were beside him and a third behind him. In the next second, they collided upon him, his chains were drawn tight, two more added to secure his arms to his body with no clearance whatsoever, and he was dragged in his mincing, humiliating walk before the great man.
'You still alive, Jack Bogart? You know what?' said Bigboy, 'you made me some money. These section guards swore you wouldn't last a night. You've lasted twelve. You've killed a man, even if it was only a lowly Negro.
You've made friends and influenced people. I had money riding on you, and I've come out to collect.'
Whap!
Someone hit him hard upside the head.
'You look at Mr. Bigboy when he be talkin' to you, son. That's how we do it here.'
'You are a sight, I will allow, Brother Jack,' Bigboy went on. 'Cut and beaten, you still fight on. From what I hear, it only gets worse.
Everybody is saying old Moon has special plans for you. Why do I think you aren't going to enjoy what Moon intends? Seems to me a hero like you can't lose his dignity, or he's nothing. That true, Jack Bogart?'
Whap!
Another openhanded strike to the back of the skull.
'Cat got your tongue, boy? Answer the guard sergeant.' 'My name is Jack Bogash,' Earl said. 'It ain't no Jack Bogart, like that movie fellow. I am a truck driver from?'
Whap!
