Forty Lashes Less One

about running.”

“Running’s all right if you in a hurry and you know where you going.”

“That road don’t go anywhere.”

“What’s up ahead?”

“The desert,” Raymond said. “Maybe after a while you come to a town.”

“You know how to drive that thing?”

“A car? I never even been in one.”

Harold was chewing on a weed stem, looking at the car. “It would be nice to have a ride home, wouldn’t it?”

“It might be worth the running,” Raymond said.

The guard got them up and they ran some more. They ran and walked and ran again for almost another mile, and this time when they went down they stretched out full length: Harold on his stomach, head down and his arms propping him up; Raymond on his back with his chest rising and falling.

After ten minutes the guard said all right, they were starting back now. Neither of them moved as the car turned around and rolled past them. The guard asked if they heard him. He said goddamn-it, they better get up quick. Harold said captain, their legs hurt so bad it didn’t look like they could make it. The guard levered a cartridge into the chamber of the Winchester and said their legs would hurt one hell of a lot more with a .44 slug shot through them. They got up and fell in behind the car. Once they tried to run and had to stop within a dozen yards. It wasn’t any use, Harold said. The legs wouldn’t do what they was told. They could walk though. All right, the guard said, then walk. But goddamn, they were so slow, poking along, he had to keep yelling at them to come on. After a while, still not in sight of the railroad tracks, the guard driving said to the other guard, if they didn’t hurry they were going to miss supper call. The guard with the Winchester said well, what was he supposed to do about it? The guard driving said it looked like there was only one thing they could do.

Raymond liked it when the car stopped and the guard with the rifle, looking like he wanted to kill them, said all right, goddamn-it, get in.

Harold liked it when they drove past the cemetery work detail filing back to prison. The convicts had moved off the road and were looking back, waiting for the car. As they went by Harold raised one hand and waved. He said to Raymond, “Look at them poor boys. I believe they convicts.”

8

“You know why they won’t try to escape?” Mr. Manly said.

Bob Fisher stood at the desk and didn’t say anything, because the answer was going to come from the little preacher anyway.

“Because they see the good in this. They realize this is their chance to become something.”

“Running across a pasture field.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Take a man outside enough times,” Fisher said, “he’ll run for the hills.”

“Not these two boys.”

“Any two. They been outside every day for a week and they’re smelling fresh air.”

“Two weeks, and they can run three miles without stopping,” Mr. Manly said. “Another couple of weeks I want to see them running five miles, maybe six.”

“They’ll run as long as it’s easier than working.”

Mr. Manly smiled a little. “I see you don’t know them very well.”

“I have known them all my life,” Bob Fisher said. “When running becomes harder than working, they’ll figure a way to get out of it. They’ll break each other’s legs if they have to.”

“All right, then I’ll talk to them again. You can be present, Bob, and I’ll prove to you you’re wrong.”

“I understand you write a weekly report to Mr. Rynning,” Fisher said. “Have you told him what you’re doing?”

“As a matter of fact, I have.”

“You told him you got them running outside?”

“I told him I’m trying something out on two boys considered incorrigible, a program that combines spiritual teaching and physical exercise. He’s made no mention to me what he thinks. But if you want to write to him, Bob, go right ahead.”

“If it’s all the same to you,” Fisher said, “I want it on the record I didn’t have nothing to do with this in any way at all.”

Three miles wasn’t so bad and it was easier to breathe at the end of the stretch. It didn’t feel as if their lungs were burning any more. They would walk for a few minutes and run another mile and then walk again. Maybe they could do it again, run another mile before resting. But why do it if they didn’t have to, if the guards didn’t expect it? They would run a little way and when Raymond or Harold would call out they had to rest the car and would stop and wait for them.

“I think we could do it,” Raymond said.

“Sure we could.”

“Maybe run four, five miles at the start.”

“We could do that too,” Harold said, “but why would we want to?”

“I mean to see if we could do it.”

“Man, we could run five miles right now if we wanted.”

“I don’t know.”

“If we had something to run for. All I see it doing is getting us tired.”

“It’s better than laying adobes, or working on the rock pile.”

“I believe you’re right there,” Harold said.

“Well,” Raymond said, “we can try four miles, five miles at any time we want. What’s the hurry?”

“What’s the hurry,” Harold said. “I wish that son of a bitch would give us a cigarette. Look at him sucking on it and blowing the smoke out. Man.”

They were getting along all right with the guards, because the guards were finding out this was pretty good duty, driving around the countryside in a Ford Touring Car. Ride around for a few hours. Smoke any time they wanted. Put the canvas top up if it got too hot in the sun. The guards weren’t dumb, though. They stayed away from trees and the riverbank, keeping to open range country once they had followed the railroad tracks out beyond town.

The idea of a train going by interested Harold. He pictured them running along the road where it was close to the tracks and the train coming up behind them out of the depot, not moving too fast. As the guards watched the train, Harold saw himself and Raymond break through the weeds to the gravel roadbed, run with the train and swing up on one of those iron-rung ladders they had on boxcars. Then the good part. The guards are watching the train and all of a sudden the guards see them on the boxcar—waving to them.

“Waving good-bye,” Harold said to Raymond when they were resting one time and he told him about it.

Raymond was grinning. “They see the train going away, they don’t know what to do.”

“Oh, they take a couple of shots,” Harold said. “But they so excited, man, they can’t even hit the train.”

“We’re waving bye-bye.”

“Yeah, while they shooting at us.”

“It would be something, all right.” Raymond had to wipe his eyes.

After a minute Harold said, “Where does the train go to?”

“I don’t know. I guess different places.”

“That’s the trouble,” Harold said. “You got to know where you going. You can’t stay on the train. Sooner or later you got to get off and start running again.”

“You think we could run five miles, uh?”