“Almost two weeks,” Norma said. “Is there somebody else?”
“Two times I was on my way here,” Shelby said, “Fisher stopped me and sent me on a work detail.”
“I thought you got along with him.”
“It’s the first time he’s pulled anything like that.”
“You think he knows about us?”
“I imagine he does.”
“He watches me and Tacha take a bath.”
“He comes in?”
“No, there’s a loose brick in the wall he pulls out. One time, after I was through, I peeked out the door and saw him sneaking off.”
Shelby grinned. “Dirty old bastard.”
“Maybe he doesn’t feel so old.”
“I bet he’d like to have some at that.” Shelby nodded slowly. “I just bet he would.”
Norma was watching him. “Now what are you thinking?”
“But he wouldn’t want anybody to know about it. That’s why he don’t come in when you’re taking a bath. Tacha’s there.”
Norma smiled. “I can see your evil mind working. If Tacha wasn’t there—”
“Yes, sir, then he’d come in.”
“Ask if I wanted him to soap my back.”
“Front and back. I can see him,” Shelby said. “One thing leads to another. After the first time, he don’t soap you. No, sir, he gets right to it.”
“Then one night you come in”—Norma giggled—“and catch the head guard molesting a woman convict.”
Shelby shook his head, grinning.
“He’s trying to pull his pants on in a hurry and you say, Good evening, Mr. Fisher. How are tricks?”
“God
“He’s trying to button his pants and stick his shirt in and thinking as hard as he can for something to say.” Norma kept giggling and trying not to. “He says, uh—”
“What does he say?”
“He says, ‘I just come in for some coffee. Can I get you a cup, Mr. Shelby?’ And you say, ‘No, thank you. I was just on my way to see the superintendent.’ He says, ‘About what, Mr. Shelby?’ And you say, ‘About how some of the guards have been messing with the women convicts.’ ”
“It’s an idea,” Shelby said, “but I don’t know of anything he can do for me except open the gate and he ain’t going to do that, no matter what I get on him. No, I was wondering—if you and him got to be good friends—what he might tell you if you were to ask him.”
Norma raised her arm and used the sleeve to wipe the wetness from her eyes. “What might he tell me?”
“Like what day we’re supposed to move out of here. If we’re going by train. If we’re all going at once, or in groups.” Shelby spoke quietly and watched her begin to nod her head as she thought about it. “Once we know when we’re moving we can begin to make plans. I can talk to my brother Virgil, when he comes to visit, get him working on the outside. But we got to know
Norma was picturing herself in the cook shack with Fisher. “It would have to be the way I asked him. So he wouldn’t suspect anything.”
“Honey, you’d know better than I could tell you.”
“I suppose once I got him comfortable with me.”
“You won’t have any trouble at all.”
“It’ll probably be a few times before he relaxes.”
“Get him to think you like him. A man will believe anything when he’s got his pants off.”
“We might be having a cup of coffee after and I’ll make a little face and look around the kitchen and say, ‘Gee, honey, I wish there was some place else we could go.’ ”
“Ask him about the new prison.”
“That’s what I’m leading to,” Norma said. “I’ll tell him I hope we’ll have a better place than this. Then I’ll say, like I just thought of it, ‘By the way, honey, when are we going to this new prison?’ ”
“Ask him if he’s ever done it on a train?”
“I’ll think of a way. I bet he’s a horny old bastard.”
“So much the better. He’s probably never got it off a good-looking woman before in his life.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“The only thing is what to do about Tacha.”
“I’ll have to think on that,” Shelby said.
“Maybe he’d like both of us.”
“Honey, he don’t even have dreams like that anymore.”
Tacha Reyes looked up from her sewing machine as they came into the shop and Shelby dropped the bundle on the work table. The old man, who had been a tailor here for twenty-six years since murdering his wife, continued working. He sat hunched over with his legs crossed, sewing a button to a striped convict coat.
Norma didn’t say anything to them. She followed Shelby into the back room where the supplies and bolts of material were kept. The first few times they went back there together she said they were going to inventory the material or look over the thread supply or count buttons. Now she didn’t bother. They went into the room and closed the door.
Tacha sat quietly, not moving. She told herself she shouldn’t listen, but she always did. Sometimes she heard Norma, the faint sound of her laughing in there; she never heard Frank Shelby. He was always quiet.
Like the man who owned the cafe in St. David. He would come up behind her when she was working in the kitchen and almost before she heard him he would be touching her, putting his hands on her hips and bringing them up under her arms, pretending to be counting her ribs and asking how come she was so skinny, how come, huh, didn’t she like the cooking here? And when she twisted away from him—what was the matter, didn’t she like working here?
“How can he come in,” Tacha said, “do whatever he wants?”
The tailor glanced over at the stock-room door. He didn’t look at Tacha. “Norma isn’t complaining.”
“She’s as bad as he is.”
“I wouldn’t know about that.”
“She does whatever he wants. But he’s a convict, like any of them.”
“I’ll agree he’s a convict,” the tailor said.
“You’re afraid to even talk about him.”
“I’ll agree to that too,” the tailor said.
“Some people can do whatever they want. Other people have to let them.” Tacha was silent again. What good was talking about it?
The owner of the cafe in St. David thought he could do whatever he wanted because he paid her seven dollars a week and said she didn’t have to stay if she didn’t want to. He would kiss her and she would have to close her eyes hard and hold her breath and feel his hand coming up over her breast. Her sister had said so what, he touches you a little. Where else are you going to make seven dollars a week? But I don’t want him to, Tacha had said. I don’t love him. And her sister had told her she was crazy. You don’t have to love a man even to marry him. This man was providing for her and she should look at it that way. He gave her something, she should give him something.
She gave him the blade of a butcher knife late one afternoon when no one was in the cafe and the cook had gone to the outhouse. She jabbed the knife into him because he was hurting her, forcing her back over the kitchen table, smothering her with his weight and not giving her a chance to speak, to tell him she wanted to quit. Her fingers touched the knife on the table and, in that little moment of panic, as his hand went under her skirt and up between her legs, she pushed the knife into his stomach. She would remember his funny, surprised expression and remember him pushing away from her again with his weight, and looking down at the knife handle, touching it gently with both hands then, standing still, as if afraid to move, and looking down at the knife. She remembered
