Junior said, “What do they want a wall for? Them boys don’t have to be kept in.”
“They want a wall,” Shelby said, “because it’s a good place for a wall and there ain’t nothing else for us to do.”
Raymond agreed four year’s worth to that. The work was to keep them busy. Everybody knew they would be moving out of here soon, but every day they pounded rocks into gravel for the roads and made adobe bricks and built and repaired walls and levees and cleared brush along the riverbank. It was a wide river with a current—down the slope and across the flat stretch of mud beach to the water—maybe a hundred yards across. There was nothing on the other side—no houses, only a low bank and what looked to be heavy brush. The land over there could be a swamp or a desert; nobody had ever said what it was like, only that it was California.
All morning they laid the big adobe bricks in place, gradually raising the level string higher as they worked on a section of wall at a time. It was dirty, muddy work, and hot out in the open. Raymond couldn’t figure out why Shelby was on this detail, unless he felt he needed sunshine and exercise. He laid about half as many bricks as anybody else, and didn’t talk to anybody except his three friends. It surprised Raymond when Shelby began working on the other side of the wall from him and told him he had done all right in the mess hall this morning. Raymond nodded; he didn’t know what to say. A few minutes went by before Shelby spoke again.
“You want to join us?”
Raymond looked at him. “You mean work for you?”
“I mean go with us,” Shelby said. He tapped a brick in place with the handle of his trowel and sliced off the mortar oozing out from under the brick. “Don’t look around. Say yes or no.”
“I don’t know where you’re going.”
“I know you don’t. You say yes or no before I tell you.”
“All right,” Raymond said. “Yes.”
“Can you swim?”
“You mean the river?”
“It’s the only thing I see around here to swim,” Shelby said. “I’m not going to explain it all now.”
“I don’t know—”
“Yes, you do, Raymond. You’re going to run for the river when I tell you. You’re going to swim straight across and find a boat hidden in the brush, put there for us, and you’re going to row back fast as you can and meet us swimming over.”
“If we’re all swimming what do you want the boat for?”
“In case anybody can’t make it all the way.”
“I’m not sure I can, even.”
“You’re going to find out,” Shelby said.
“How wide is it here?”
“Three hundred fifty feet. That’s not so far.”
The river had looked cool and inviting before; not to swim across, but to sit in and splash around and get clean after sweating all morning in the adobe mud.
“There’s a current—”
“Don’t think about it. Just swim.”
“But the guard—what about him?”
“We’ll take care of the guard.”
“I don’t understand how we going to do it.” He was frowning in the sunlight trying to figure it out.
“Raymond, I say run, you run. All right?”
“You don’t give me any time to think about it.”
“That’s right,” Shelby said. “When I leave here you come over the wall and start working on this side.” He got up and moved down the wall about ten or twelve feet to where Soonzy and Junior were working.
Raymond stepped over the three-foot section of wall with his mortar bucket and continued working, facing the guard now who was about thirty feet away, sitting on a rise of ground with the Winchester across his lap and smoking a cigarette. Beyond him, a hundred yards or so up the slope, the prison wall and the guard tower at the northwest corner stood against the sky. The guard up there could be looking this way or he could be looking inside, into the yard of the TB cellblock. Make a run for the river with two guns within range. Maybe three, counting the main tower. There was some brush, though, a little cover before he got to the mud flat. But once they saw him, the whistle would blow and they’d be out here like they came up out of the ground, some of them shooting and some of them getting the boat, wherever the boat was kept. He didn’t have to stay with Shelby, he could go up to the high country this spring and live by himself. Maybe through the summer. Then go some place nobody knew him and get work. Maybe Mexico.
Joe Dean came along with a wheelbarrow and scooped mortar into Raymond’s bucket. “If we’re not worried,” Joe Dean said, leaning on the wall, “what’re you nervous about?”
Raymond didn’t look up at him. He didn’t like to look at the man’s mouth and tobacco-stained teeth showing in his beard. He didn’t like having anything to do with the man. He didn’t like having anything to do with Junior or Soonzy either. Or with Frank Shelby when he thought about it honestly and didn’t get it mixed up with cigarettes and tequila. But he would work with them and swim the river with them to get out of this place. He said to Joe Dean, “I’m ready any time you are.”
Joe Dean squinted up at the sun, then let his gaze come down to the guard. “It won’t be long,” he said, and moved off with his wheelbarrow.
The way they worked it, Shelby kept his eye on the guard. He waited until the man started looking for the chow wagon that would be coming around the corner from the main gate any time now. He waited until the guard was finally half-turned, looking up the slope, then gave a nod to Junior.
Junior jabbed his trowel into the foot of the man working next to him.
The man let out a scream and the guard was on his feet at once, coming down from the rise.
Shelby waited until the guard was hunched over the man, trying to get a look at the foot. The other convicts were crowding in for a look too and the man was holding his ankle, rocking back and forth and moaning. The guard told him goddamn-it, sit still and let him see it.
Shelby looked over at Raymond San Carlos, who was standing now, the wall in front of him as high as his hips. Shelby nodded and turned to the group around the injured man. As he pushed Joe Dean aside he glanced around again to see the wall empty where Raymond had been standing. “What time is it?” he said.
Joe Dean took out his pocket watch. “Eleven-fifty about.”
“Exactly.”
“Eleven-fifty-two.”
Shelby took the watch from Joe Dean as he leaned in to see the clean tear in the toe of the man’s shoe and the blood starting to come out. He waited a moment before moving over next to the wall. The guard was asking what happened and Junior was trying to explain how he’d tripped over the goddamn mortar bucket and, throwing his hand out as he fell, his trowel had hit the man’s shoe. His foot, the guard said—you stabbed him. Well, he hadn’t meant to, Junior told the guard. Jesus, if he’d meant to, he wouldn’t have stabbed him in the foot, would he?
From the wall Shelby watched Raymond moving quickly through the brush clumps and not looking back—very good—not hesitating until he was at the edge of the mud flats, a tiny figure way down there, something striped, hunched over in the bushes and looking around now. Go on, Shelby said, looking at the watch. What’re you waiting for? It was eleven fifty-three.
The guard was telling the man to take his shoes off, he wasn’t going to do it for him; and goddamn-it, get back and give him some air.
When Shelby looked down the slope again Raymond was in the water knee-deep, sliding into it; in a moment only his head was showing. Like he knew what he was doing, Shelby thought.
Between moans the injured man said Oh God, he believed his toes were cut off. Junior said maybe one or two; no trowel was going to take off all a man’s toes, ’less you come down hard with the edge; maybe that would do it.
Twenty yards out. Raymond wasn’t too good a swimmer, about average. Well, that was all right. If he was average then the watch would show an average time. He sure seemed to be moving slow though. Swimming was slow work.
When the chow wagon comes, the guard said, we’ll take him up in it. Two of you men go with him.
