'Tell you later. I get you out, I tell you.'
'I ain't promising no promises I don't know about.'
'You'll make these promises. All them other fellas done it, and one them out now, living high on the hog.'
'Just tell me where this is going.'
'It's simple. All you got to do is open this.'
The old man handed him a brass lock, an almost antique thing that weighed nearly a pound. It was tighter than hell. Earl pulled and felt no give at all in the connection between the hasp and the lock body. He tried to examine it in the darkness, and felt for buttons or screws but touched only rivets. He tried to put his finger into the keyhole underneath it, and of course made no progress at all.
'I can't do it. Nobody could do it.' 'Gimme,' said Fish.
Earl handed it over, saw it disappear in the old man's hands. There seemed to be some fiddling, maybe a massaging, and in two seconds, the lock came sprung with a barely audible metallic snap.
'Jesus,' said Earl. 'You do that barehanded?' 'You pick it,' the old man said, displaying a pin about two inches long.
'It take practice, but when you learn it, you can git her open in about two seconds.'
'Yeah, fine, except where do I get the pick?'
'See, that's it. That's why I touched your hand. You got enough callus to carry it now. You couldn't done it till now.'
Earl watched as the old man made the pin disappear into the ridge of callus that decorated his horny old palm. He turned and looked at his own hands and saw that yes, now they were ridged with a hard pad of deadened, accumulated skin, where healing skin had covered broken blisters but come out tough as leather gum. It was a dead zone, one of God's few kindnesses to those who worked hard with their hands.
'Gimme that paw, boy.'
Earl put out his left hand and felt not pain but pressure. The pin punctured his hand and rode across the palm. There it was, tightly held.
'You got to practice. I give you the lock. You practice every night.
You got to get the pin out, get it into the lock. You make a 'H.' You feel the softness of the tumblers. You get the two on the left, cross over, git the two on the right. Do it blindfolded. Do it at night.
When the time comes, you won't be able to see what's going on.'
'I'll be in a darkened cell?'
'No. You be at the bottom of the river. You be drowning. You make a mistake, white boy, and the hundred pounds of cement that lock chain to you keep you down there and you be drownded dead in thirty seconds.' earl worked the lock every night in the dark. Out with the pin, a swift movement to the keyhole, no wasted motion, the insertion, then the delicacy of it all: feeling the tension in the tired spring-driven tumblers, trying to duplicate the pressure of a key against them, finding the right progression until at last the thing would pop.
The first night he never got it open.
You goddamn worthless scum, he called himself mercilessly the next day.
The second night he finally felt it move a bit and got close to getting it open.
The third night it came open by the second hour.
The fourth night by twenty minutes.
Only got to get another nineteen minutes and fifty-eight seconds off that time.
He worked and worked until at last a poke came in the night.
He slithered to the floorboards and out.
'You do it?'
'I got it down to thirty seconds now. We best do this thing soon, else these guards are going to beat me to death. Or Moon will be back.'
'Moon be back day after tomorrow. He cut you first thing, white boy.
Firstest thing. Ain't no not her possibility ' it. He cut you bad and deep, and fuck you bleeding. He want to be fucking you as you pass.'
'Christ.'
'You up to killing him first?'
'It ain't my style a bit.'
'You pussy, boy.'
'Done my share of killing. You don't know the killing I done. You got no idea. Nobody here does. But if I fight this guy, and even if I whip him, he's going to hurt me bad, and I can't do this thing, right?'
'That's right. So it's got to be tomorrow. Now I tell you the rest of it.'
Earl braced himself.
'You tell Section Boss tomorrow first thing: You talk to Bigboy. You broken. You tell ' what they want. Yeah, they gos, gits Bigboy. He drive up in his shiny new Hudson car.'
'If I tell ' who I am, they kill me.'
'I knows. So here's what it be. When Bigboy drive up, you'll feel Tangle Eye gittin' close to you.'
'Who's Tangle Eye?'
'Big yeller convict. One eye go strange. Tangle Eye. A ax man. Best ax man in Mississippi.'
'Yeah?'
'You slip down. Tangle Eye, he give yo' wrist chain a whack right where it clip to the bracelet, right hand. Yo' hands free. But you hold that chain tight so nobody don't see it.'
'Yeah.'
'Now come the fun part. You be called up out de hole. You g'wan over to Bigboy, and when he smile at you you pop him hard. You pop him so bad you break out his teeth and his nose. You hit him bad.'
'That is the fun part. Only problem: it gets me killed.'
'No, it don't. It do git you beat. Gits you so beat you wish you dead.
But they don't kill you. They don't even make you unconscious.
They won't whack yo' haid. They bang yo' ribs, yo' gut, yo' kidneys, yo' legs. Have a good of' time with them sticks.'
'This don't sound like no fun at all.'
'You want out?'
'Ain't there no other way?'
'This be the only way you beat them dogs. No other way. The dogs run you down if you try to bust out through the bayou or the piney woods.
Dogs rip you up right good. So you listen here to the hard part.'
'Goon.'
'You got to humiliate Bigboy. Make him so mad he forget his self So he kill you just fo' his own pleasure. This is how they kill at Thebes.
They take you to what they call the Drowning House.'
'Lots of houses at Thebes.'
'It's a city of houses, you got that right. At the Drowning House, they chain you to a cement block. It's locked with that lock you done been working with. Nightfall, they take you out on de river. They likes to hear ' beg and cry and plead. Makes ' feel powerful and strong. They gots a special boat. Boat got a door in the side. Git out there, the cement block goes over. You go with it.' Earl thought about this. He remembered the long walk in on Tarawa, with the Jap tracers skating over the surface of the water and the pack on his back dragging him down. He shuddered involuntarily at the horror of the memory.
'You in the water. You got yo' thirty seconds. You get that lock off.
Oh, one thing. I forgot to ask. You can swim, can't you? White boys swim good, I hears. I can swim good, ' I raised on the Mississip.
Hey, why you think they call me Fish?'
'I can swim okay. Ain't no Johnny Weissmuller.'
'Who?'
'You know, that Tar?. Never mind. Yeah, I can swim.'
