Forty Lashes Less One

“What could he know?” Joe Dean said. “We don’t know anything ourselves.”

“He could know we’re thinking about it.”

“He could be guessing.”

“I mean,” Shelby said, “he could know. Norma could have told him. She’s the only other person who could.”

Junior was frowning. “What would Norma want to tell him for?”

“Jesus Christ,” Shelby said, “because she’s Norma. She don’t need a reason, she does what she feels like doing. Listen, she needs money she gets herself a forty-four and pours liquor into some crazy boy and they try and rob a goddamn bank. She’s seeing Bob Fisher, and she’s the only one could have told him anything.”

“I say he’s guessing,” Joe Dean said. “The time’s coming to move all these convicts, he’s nervous at the thought of it, and starts guessing we’re up to something.”

“That could be right,” Shelby said. “But the only way I can find out for sure is to talk to Norma.” He was silent a moment. “I don’t know. With old Bob watching every move I got to stay clear of the tailor shop.”

“Why don’t we bring her over here?” Junior said. “Right after supper everybody’s in the yard. Shoot, we can get her in here, anywhere you want, no trouble.”

“Hey, boy,” Shelby grinned, “now you’re talking.”

Jesus, yes, what was he worrying about that old man turnkey for? He had to watch that and never worry out loud or raise his voice or lose his temper. He had to watch when little pissy-ant started to bother him. The Indin and the nigger had bothered him. It wasn’t even important; but goddamn-it, it had bothered him and he had done something about it. See—but because of it Bob Fisher had come down on him and this was not anytime to get Bob Fisher nervous and watchful. Never trust a nervous person unless you’ve got a gun on him. That was a rule. And when you’ve got the gun on him shoot him or hit him with it, quick, but don’t let him start crying and begging for his life and spilling the goddamn payroll all over the floor—the way it had happened in the paymaster’s office at the Cornelia Mine near Ajo. They would have been out of there before the security guards arrived if he hadn’t spilled the money. The paymaster would be alive if he hadn’t spilled the money, and they wouldn’t be in Yuma. There was such a thing as bad luck. Anything could happen during a holdup. But there had been five payroll and bank robberies before the Cornelia Mine job where no one had spilled the money or reached for a gun or walked in unexpectedly. They had been successful because they had kept calm and in control, and that was the way they had to do it again, to get out of here.

It had surely bothered him though—the way the Indin and the nigger had painted their faces.

Junior pushed through the mess-hall door behind Norma as she went out, and told her to go visit Tacha. That’s how easy it was. When Norma got to the TB yard Joe Dean, standing by the gate, nodded toward the first cell. She saw Tacha sitting over a ways with the Indian and the Negro, and noticed there was something strange about them: they looked sick, with a gray pallor to their skin, even the Negro. Norma looked at Joe Dean and again he nodded toward the first cell.

Soonzy stepped out and walked past her as she approached the doorway. Shelby was waiting inside, standing with an arm on the upper bunk. He didn’t grin or reach for her, he said, “How’re you getting along with your boyfriend?”

“He still hasn’t told me anything, if that’s what you mean.”

“I’m more interested in what you might have told him.”

Norma smiled and seemed to relax. “You know, as I walked in here I thought you were a little tense about something.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“What is it I might have told him?”

“Come on, Norma.”

“I mean what’s there to tell him? You don’t have any plan you’ve told me about.”

“I don’t know,” Shelby said, “it looks to me like you got your own plan.”

“I ask him. Every time he comes in I bring it up. ‘Honey, when are we going to get out of this awful place?’ But he won’t tell me anything.”

“You were pretty sure one time you could squeeze it out of him.”

“I don’t believe he knows any more than we do.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Shelby said. “I’ll give you three more days to find out. You don’t know anything by then, I don’t see any reason to take you with us.”

Norma took her time. She kept her eyes on Shelby, holding him and waiting a little, then stepped in close so that she was almost touching him with her body. She waited again before saying, quietly, “What’re you being so mean for?”

Shelby said, “Man.” He said, “Come on, Norma, if I want to put you on the bunk I’ll put you on the bunk. Don’t give me no sweetheart talk, all right? I want you to tell me if you’re working something with that old man. Now hold on—I want you to keep looking right at me and tell me to my face yes or no—yes, ‘I have told him,’ or no, ‘I have not told him.’ ”

Norma put on a frown now that brought her eyebrows together and gave her a nice hurt look.

“Frank, what do you want me to tell you?” She spaced the words to show how honest and truthful she was being, knowing that her upturned, frowning face was pretty nice and that her breasts were about an inch away from the upcurve of his belly.

She looked good all right, and if he put her down on the bunk she’d be something. But Frank Shelby was looking at a train and keeping calm, keeping his voice down, and he said, “Norma, if you don’t find out anything in three days you don’t leave this place.”

It was Sunday, Visiting Day, that Mr. Manly decided he would make an announcement. He called Bob Fisher into his office to tell him, then thought better of it—Fisher would only object and argue—so he began talking about Raymond and Harold instead of his announcement.

“I’ll tell you,” Mr. Manly said, “I’m not so much interested in who did it as I am in why they did it. They got paint in their eyes, in their nose. They had to wash theirselves in gasoline and then they didn’t get it all off.”

“Well, there’s no way of finding out now,” Fisher said. “You ask them, there isn’t anybody knows a thing.”

“The men who did it know.”

“Well, sure, the ones that did it.”

“I’d like to know what a man thinks like would paint another person.”

“They were painting theirselves before.”

“I believe you see the difference, Bob.”

“These are convicts,” Fisher said. “They get mean they don’t need a reason. It’s the way they are.”

“I’m thinking I better talk to them.”

“But we don’t know who done it.”

“I mean talk to all of them. I want to talk to them about something else any way.”

“About what?”

“Maybe I can make the person who did it come forward and admit it.”

“Mister, if you believe that you don’t know anything a-tall about convicts. You talked to Raymond and Harold, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And they won’t even tell you who done it, will they?”

“I can’t understand that.”

“Because they’re convicts. They know if they ever told you they’d get their heads beat against a cell wall. This is between them and the other convicts. If the convicts don’t want them to paint up like savages then I believe we should stay out of it and let them settle it theirselves.”

“But they’ve got rights—the two boys. What about them?”

“I don’t know. I’m not talking about justice,” Fisher said. “I’m talking about running a prison. If the convicts want these two to act a certain way or not act a certain way, we should keep out of it. It keeps them quiet and it