“I mean being with the black boy. I got enough of him.”
“I thought you wanted to fight him.”
“I don’t know,” Joe Dean said. “It sounds to me like you’re scared to start it.”
“I don’t want no more of the snake den. That’s the only thing stopping me.”
“You want to see Frank Shelby,” one of the other convicts said, “there he is.” The man nodded and Raymond looked around.
Shelby must have just come out of the mess hall. He stood by the end-gate of a freight wagon that Junior and Soonzy and a couple of other convicts were unloading. There was no guard with them, unless he was inside. Raymond looked up at the guard on the south wall.
“I’ll tell you something,” Joe Dean said. “You can forget about Frank helping you.”
Raymond was watching the guard. “You know, uh? You know him so good he’s got you working in this adobe slop.”
“Sometimes we take bricks to town,” Joe Dean said. “You think on it if you don’t understand what I mean.”
“I got other things to think on.”
As the guard on the south wall turned and started for the tower at the far end of the yard, Raymond picked up his wheelbarrow and headed for the mess hall.
Shelby didn’t look up right away. He was studying a bill of lading attached to a clipboard, checking things off. He said to Junior, “The case right by your foot, that should be one of ours.”
“Says twenty-four jars of Louisiana cane syrup.”
“It’s corn whiskey.” Shelby still didn’t look up, but he said then, “What do you want?”
“They let me out of the snake den,” Raymond said. “I was suppose to be in thirty days, they let me out.”
Shelby looked at him now. “Yeah?”
“I wondered if you fixed it.”
“Not me.”
“I thought sure.” He waited as Shelby looked in the wagon and at the clipboard again. “Say, what happened at the river? I thought you were going to come right behind me.”
“It didn’t work out that way.”
“Man, I thought I had made it. But I couldn’t find no boat over there.”
“I guess you didn’t look in the right place,” Shelby said.
“I looked where you told me. Man, it was work. I don’t like swimming so much.” He watched Shelby studying the clipboard. “I was wondering—you know I’m over in a TB cell now.”
Shelby didn’t say anything.
“I was wondering if you could fix it, get me out of there.”
“Why?”
“I got to be with that nigger all the time.”
“He’s got to be with you,” Shelby said, “so you’re even.”
Raymond grinned. “I never thought of it that way.” He waited again. “What do you think?”
“About what?”
“About getting me back with everybody.”
Shelby started fooling with his mustache, smoothing it with his fingers. “Why do you think anybody wants you back?”
Raymond didn’t grin this time. “I did what you told me,” he said seriously. “Listen, I’ll work for you any time you want.”
“I’m not hiring today.”
“Well, what about getting me out of the TB yard?”
Shelby looked at him. He said, “Boy, why would I do that? I’m the one had you put there. Now you say one more word Soonzy is going to come down off the wagon and break both your arms.”
Shelby watched Raymond pick up his wheelbarrow and walk away. “Goddamn Indin is no better than a nigger,” he said to Junior. “You treat them nice one time and you got them hanging around the rest of your life.”
When Raymond got back to the brick detail Joe Dean said, “Well, what did he say?”
“He’s going to see what he can do,” Raymond answered. He didn’t feel like talking any more, and was busy loading bricks when Harold Jackson came across the yard with his wheelbarrow. Harold wore his hat pointed low over his eyes. He didn’t have a shirt on and, holding the wheelbarrow handles, his shoulders and arm muscles were bunched and hard-looking. One of the convicts saw him first and said to Raymond, “Here comes your buddy.” The other convicts working the adobe mud looked up and stood leaning on their shovels and hoes as Harold Jackson approached.
Raymond didn’t look at him. He stacked another brick in the wheelbarrow and got set to pick up the handles. He heard one of the convicts say, “This here Indian says you won’t fight him. Says you’re scared. Is that right?”
“I fight him any time he wants.”
Raymond had to look up then. Harold was staring at him.
“Well, I don’t know,” the convict said. “You and him talk about fighting, but nobody’s raised a hand yet.”
“It must be they’re both scared,” Joe Dean said. “Or it’s because they’re buddies. All alone in that snake den they got to liking each other. Guard comes in thinks they’re rassling on the floor—man, they’re not fighting, they’re buggering each other.”
The other convicts grinned and laughed, and one of them said, “Jesus Christ, what they are, they’re sweethearts.”
Raymond saw Harold Jackson take one step and hit the man in the face as hard as he could. Raymond wanted to say no, don’t do it. It was a strange thing and happened quickly as the man spun toward him and Raymond put up his hands. One moment he was going to catch the man, keep him from falling against him. The next moment he balled up a fist and drove it into the man’s face, right out in the open yard, the dumbest thing he had ever done, but doing it now and not stopping or thinking, going for Joe Dean now and busting him hard in the mouth as he tried to bring up his shovel. God, it felt good, a wild hot feeling, letting go and stepping into them and swinging hard at all the faces he had been wanting to smash and pound against a wall.
Harold Jackson held back a moment, staring at the crazy Indian, until somebody was coming at him with a shovel and he had to grab the handle and twist and chop it across the man’s head. If he could get room and swing the shovel—but there were too many of them too close, seven men in the brick detail and a couple more, Junior and Soonzy, who came running over from the supply detail and grabbed hunks of lumber and started clubbing at the two wild men.
By the time the guard on the south wall fired his Winchester in the air and a guard came running over from the mess hall, Harold lay stunned in the adobe muck; Raymond was sprawled next to him and neither of them moved.
“Lord,” Junior said, “we had to take sticks this time to get them apart.”
Soonzy shook his head. “I busted mine on that nigger, he went right on fighting.”
“They’re a scrappy pair,” Junior said, “but they sure are dumb, ain’t they?”
Bob Fisher told the guard to hose them off and throw them in the snake den. He told Soonzy and Junior and the men on the brick detail to get back to work. Chained? the guard wanted to know. Chained, Fisher said, and walked off toward the stairs at the end of the mess hall, noticing the convicts who had come out of the adobe huts and equipment sheds, brought out by the guard’s rifle fire, all of them looking toward the two men lying in the mud. He noticed Frank Shelby and some convicts by the freight wagon. He noticed the cooks in their white aprons, and the two women, Norma and Tacha, over by the tailor shop.
Fisher went up the stairs and down the hall to the superintendent’s office. As he walked in, Mr. Manly turned from the window.
“The same two,” Fisher said.
“It looked like they were all fighting.” Mr. Manly glanced at the window again.
“You want a written report?”
