“Frank wants to see you,” Junior said. “Both of you.” He took time to look at Tacha while he waited for them to get up. When neither of them moved he said, “You hear me? Frank wants you.”
“What’s he want?” Harold said.
“He’s going to want me to kick your ass you don’t get moving.”
Raymond looked at Harold, and Harold looked at Raymond. Finally they got up and followed them across the yard, though they moved so goddamn slow Worley Lewis, Jr. had to keep waiting for them with his hands on his hips, telling them to come on,
Soonzy was in the passageway of the main cellblock, standing in the light that was coming from No. 14. He motioned them inside.
They went into the cell, then stopped short. Frank Shelby was sitting on his throne reading a newspaper, hunched over before his own shadow on the back wall. He didn’t look up; he made them wait several minutes before he finally rose, pulled up his pants and buckled his belt. Junior and Soonzy crowded the doorway behind them.
“Come closer to the light,” Shelby said. He waited for them to move into the space between the bunks, to where the electric overhead light, with its tin shield, was almost directly above them.
“I want to ask you two something. I want to know how come you got your faces painted up like that.”
They kept looking at him, but neither of them spoke.
“You going to tell me?”
“I don’t know,” Raymond said. “I guess it’s hard to explain.”
“Did anybody tell you to put it on?”
“No, we done it ourselves.”
“Has this Mr. Manly seen it?”
“Yeah, but he didn’t say nothing.”
“You just figured it would be a good idea, uh?”
“I don’t know,” Raymond said. “We just done it, I guess.”
“You want to look like a couple of circus clowns, is that it?”
“No, we didn’t think of that.”
“Maybe you want to look like a wild Indin,” Shelby said, “and him, he wants to look like some kind of boogey-man native. Maybe that’s it.”
Raymond shrugged. “Maybe something like that. It’s hard to explain.”
“What does Mr. Jackson say about it?”
“If you know why we put it on,” Harold said, “what are you asking us for?”
“Because it bothers me,” Shelby answered. “I can’t believe anybody would want to look like a nigger native. Even a nigger. Same as I can’t believe anybody would want to look like a Wild West Show Indin ’less he was paid to do it. Somebody paying you, Raymond?”
“Nobody’s paying us.”
“See, Raymond, what bothers me—how can we learn people like you to act like white men if you’re going to play you’re savages? You see what I mean? You want to move back in this cellblock, but who do you think would want to live with you?”
“We’re not white men,” Raymond said.
“Jesus Christ, I know that. I’m saying if you want to live with white men then you got to try to act like white men. You start playing you’re an Apache and a goddamn Zulu or something, that’s the same as saying you don’t want to be a white man, and that’s what bothers me something awful, when I see that going on.”
There was a little space of silence before Harold said, “What do you want us to do?”
“We’ll do it,” Shelby said. “We’re going to remind you how you’re supposed to act.”
Soonzy took Harold from behind with a fist in his hair and a forearm around his neck. He dragged Harold backward and as Raymond turned, Junior stepped in and hit Raymond with a belt wrapped around his fist. He had to hit Raymond again before he could get a good hold on him and pull him out of the cell. Joe Dean and a half-dozen convicts were waiting in the passageway. They got Raymond and Harold down on their backs on the cement. They sat on their legs and a convict stood on each of their outstretched hands and arms while another man got down and pulled their hair tight to keep them from moving their heads. Then Joe Dean took a brush and the can of enamel Tacha had got from the sick ward and painted both of their faces pure white.
When R. E. Baylis came through to lock up, Shelby told him to look at the goddamn mess out there, white paint all over the cement and dirty words painted on the wall. He said that nigger and his red nigger friend sneaked over and started messing up the place, but they caught the two and painted them as a lesson. Shelby said to R. E. Baylis goddamn-it, why didn’t he throw them in the snake den so they would quit bothering people. R. E. Baylis said he would tell Bob Fisher.
The next morning after breakfast, Shelby came out of the mess hall frowning in the sunlight and looking over the work details forming in the yard. He was walking toward the supply group when somebody called his name from behind. Bob Fisher was standing by the mess hall door: grim-looking tough old son of a bitch in his gray sack guard uniform. Shelby sure didn’t want to, but he walked back to where the turnkey was standing.
“They don’t know how to write even their names,” Fisher said.
“Well”—Shelby took a moment to think—“maybe they got the paint for somebody else do to it.”
“Joe Dean got the paint.”
“Joe did that?”
“Him and Soonzy and Junior are going to clean it up before they go to work.”
“Well, if they did it—”
“You’re going to help them.”
“Me? I’m on the supply detail. You know that.”
“Or you can go with the quarry gang,” Fisher said. “It don’t make any difference to me.”
“Quarry gang?” Shelby grinned to show Fisher he thought he was kidding. “I don’t believe I ever done that kind of work.”
“You’ll do it if I say so.”
“Listen, just because we painted those two boys up. We were teaching them a lesson, that’s all. Christ, they go around here thinking they’re something the way they fixed theirselves up—somebody had to teach them.”
“I do the teaching here,” Fisher said. “I’m teaching that to you right now.”
Dumb, stone-face guard son of a bitch. Shelby said, “Well,” half-turning to look off thoughtfully toward the work groups waiting in the yard. “I hope those people don’t get sore about this. You know how it is, how they listen to me and trust me. If they figure I’m getting treated unfair, they’re liable to sit right down and not move from the yard, every one of them.”
“If you believe that,” Fisher said, “you better tell them I’ll shoot the first man that sits down, and if they all sit down at once I’ll shoot you.”
Shelby waited. He didn’t look at Bob Fisher; he kept his gaze on the convicts. After a moment he said, “You’re kneeling on me for a reason, aren’t you? You’re waiting to see me make a terrible mistake.”
“I believe you’ve already made it,” Fisher said. He turned and went into the mess hall.
Scraping paint off cement was better than working in the quarry. It was hot in the passageway, but there was no sun beating down on them and they weren’t breathing chalk dust. Shelby sat in his cell and let Junior, Soonzy, and Joe Dean do the work, until Bob Fisher came by. Fisher didn’t say anything; he looked in at him and Shelby came out and picked up a trowel and started scraping. When Fisher was gone, Shelby sat back on his heels and said, “I’m going to bust me a guard, I’ll tell you, if that man’s anywhere near us when we leave.”
The scraping stopped as he spoke, as Junior and Soonzy and Joe Dean waited to hear whatever he had to say.
“There is something bothering him,” Shelby said. “He wants to nail me down. He could do it any time he feels like it, couldn’t he? He could put me in the quarry or the snake den—that man could chain me to the wall. But he’s waiting on something.”
Joe Dean said, “Waiting on what?”
“I don’t know. Unless he’s telling me he knows what’s going on. He could be saying, ‘I got my eye on you, buddy. I’m waiting for you to make the wrong move.’ ”
