“I’ll do better than that,” Mr. Manly said, “I’ll show you. First though we got to get us a pitcher of ice water.”
“I’ll even pass on that,” Fisher said. “I’m not thirsty
Mr. Manly gave him a patient, understanding grin. “The ice water isn’t for us, Bob.”
“No sir,” Fisher said. He was nodding again, very slowly, solemnly. “I should’ve known better, shouldn’t I?”
Tacha remembered them from months before wearing leg-irons and pushing the wheelbarrows. She remembered the Negro working without a shirt on and remembered thinking the other one tall for an Indian. She had never spoken to them or watched them for a definite reason. She had probably not been closer than fifty feet to either of them. But she was aware now of the striking change in their appearance and at first it gave her a strange, tense feeling. She was afraid of them.
The guard had looked as if he was afraid of them too, and maybe that was part of the strange feeling. He didn’t tell her which cell was to be hers. He stared at the Indian and the Negro, who were across the sixty-foot yard by the wall, and then hurried away, leaving her here.
As soon as he was gone the tubercular convicts began talking to her. One of them asked if she had come to live with them. When she nodded he said she could bunk with him if she wanted. They laughed and another one said no, come on in his cell, he would show her a fine old time. She didn’t like the way they stared at her. They sat in front of their cells on stools and a wooden bunk frame and looked as if they had been there a long time and seldom shaved or washed themselves.
She wasn’t sure if the Indian and the Negro were watching her. The Indian was holding something that looked like a fishing pole. The Negro was standing by an upright board that was as tall as he was and seemed to be nailed to a post. Another of the poles was sticking out of the board. Neither of them was wearing a shirt; that was the first thing she noticed about them from across the yard.
They came over when she turned to look at the cells and one of the tubercular convicts told her again to come on, put her blanket and stuff in with his. Now, when she looked around, not knowing what to do, she saw them approaching.
She saw the Indian’s hair, how long it was, covering his ears, and the striped red and black cloth he wore as a headband. She saw the Negro’s mustache that curved around his mouth into a short beard and the cuts on his face, like knife scars, that slanted down from both of his cheekbones. This was when she was afraid of them, as they walked up to her.
“The cell on the end,” Raymond said. “Why don’t you take that one?”
She made herself hold his gaze. “Who else is in there, you?”
“Nobody else.”
Harold said, “You got the TB?”
“I don’t have it yet.”
“You do something to Frank Shelby?”
“Maybe I did,” she said, “I don’t know.”
“If you don’t have the TB,” Harold said, “you did something to somebody.”
She began to feel less afraid already, talking to them, and yet she knew there was something different about their faces and the way they looked at her. “I think the turnkey, Mr. Fisher, did it,” Tacha said, “so I wouldn’t see him going in with Norma.”
“I guess there are all kinds of things going on,” Harold said. “They put you in here, it’s not so bad. It was cold at night when we first come, colder than the big cellblock, but now it’s all right.” He glanced toward the tubercular convicts. “Don’t worry about the scarecrows. They won’t hurt you.”
“They lock everybody in at night,” Raymond said. “During the day one of them tries something, you can run.”
That was a strange thing too: being afraid of them at first because of the way they looked, then hearing them say not to worry and feeling at ease with them, believing them.
Raymond said, “We fixed up that cell for you. It’s like a new one.”
She was inside unrolling her bedding when the guard returned with the superintendent and the turnkey, Mr. Fisher. She heard one of them say, “Harold, come out here,” and she looked up to see them through the open doorway: the little man in the dark suit and two in guard uniforms, one of them, R. E. Baylis, holding a dented tin pitcher. The Indian was still in the yard, not far from them, but she didn’t see the Negro. The superintendent was looking toward her cell now, squinting into the dim interior.
Mr. Manly wanted to keep an eye on Bob Fisher and watch his reactions, but seeing the woman distracted him.
“Who’s that in there, Norma Davis?”
“The other one,” Fisher said, “the Mexican.”
“I didn’t see any report on her being sick.”
“She’s working here. Your two boys run off, there’s nobody to fetch things for the lungers.”
Mr. Manly didn’t like to look at the tubercular convicts; they gave him a creepy feeling, the way they sat there all day like lizzards and never seemed to move. He gave them a glance and called again, “Harold, come on out here.”
The Negro was buttoning a prison shirt as he appeared in the doorway. “You want me, captain?”
“Come over here, will you?”
Mr. Manly was watching Fisher now. The man’s flat open-eyed expression tickled him: old Bob Fisher staring at Harold, then looking over at Raymond, then back at Harold again, trying to figure out the change that had come over them. The change was something more than just their appearance. It was something Mr. Manly felt, and he was pretty sure now Bob Fisher was feeling it too.
“What’s the matter, Bob, ain’t you ever seen an Apache or a Zulu before?”
“I seen Apaches.”
“Then what’re you staring at?”
Fisher looked over at Harold again. “What’re them cuts on his face?”
“Tell him, Harold.”
“They tribal marks, captain.”
Fisher said, “What the hell tribe’s a field nigger belong to?”
Harold touched his face, feeling the welts of scar tissue that were not yet completely healed. He said, “My tribe, captain.”
“He cut his own face like that?”
Fisher kept staring at the Negro as Mr. Manly said, “He saw it in a Africa book I got—picture of a native with these marks like tattoos on his face. I didn’t tell him to do it, you understand. He just figured it would be all right, I guess. Isn’t that so, Harold?”
“Yes-suh, captain.”
“Same with Raymond. He figured if he’s a full-blooded Apache Indian then he should let his hair grow and wear one of them bands.”
“We come over here to look at spears,” Fisher said.
Mr. Manly frowned, shaking his head. “Don’t you see the connection yet? A spear is part of a warrior’s get-up, like a tool is to a working man. Listen, I told you, didn’t I, these boys can run fifteen miles in a day now and only stop a couple of times to rest.”
“I thought it was fourteen miles,” Fisher said.
“Fourteen, fifteen—here’s the thing. They can run that far
“A man will do that in the snake den if I make him.” Bob Fisher wasn’t backing off this time.
Mr. Manly wasn’t letting go. “Inside,” he said, “is different than running out in the hot sun. Listen, they each pour theirselves a cup of water in the morning and you know what they do? They see who can go all day without taking a drink or more than a couple of sips.” He held his hand out to R. E. Baylis and said, “Let me have the pitcher.” Then he looked at Raymond and Harold again. “Which of you won today?”
“I did,” Raymond said.
“Let’s see your cups.”
