come out of the latrine, that adobe there,” Fisher said. “Now watch them boys eyeing them.”
The two women walked down the line of convicts, keeping about ten feet away, seeming at ease and not in any hurry, but not looking at the men either.
“Taking their time and giving the boys sweet hell, aren’t they? Don’t hear a sound, they’re so busy licking their lips.”
Mr. Manly glanced quickly at the convicts. The way they were looking, it was more likely their mouths were hanging open. It gave him a funny feeling, the men dead serious and no one making a sound.
“My,” Fisher said, “how they’d like to reach out and grab a handful of what them girls have got.”
“Women—” Mr. Manly said almost as a question. Nobody had told him there were women at Yuma.
A light-brown-haired one and a dark-haired one that looked to be Mexican. Lord God, two good-looking women walking past those men like they were strolling in the park. Mr. Manly couldn’t believe they were convicts. They were
“Tacha Reyes,” Fisher said
“Pardon me?”
“The little chilipicker. She’s been here six months of a ten-year sentence. I doubt she’ll serve it all though. She behaves herself pretty good.”
“What did she do? I mean to be here.”
“Killed a man with a knife, she claimed was trying to make her do dirty things.”
“Did the other one—kill somebody?”
“Norma Davis? Hell, no. Norma likes to do dirty things. She was a whore till she took up armed robbery and got caught holding up the Citizens’ Bank of Prescott, Arizona. Man with her, her partner, was shot dead.”
“A woman,” Mr. Manly said. “I can’t believe a woman would do that.”
“With a Colt forty-four,” Fisher said. “She shot a policeman during the hold-up but didn’t kill him. Listen, you want to keep a pretty picture of women in your head don’t get close to Norma. She’s serving ten years for armed robbery and attempted murder.”
The women were inside the mess hall now. Mr. Manly wanted to ask more questions about them, but he was afraid of sounding too interested and Fisher might get the wrong idea. “I notice some of the men are carrying buckets,” he said.
“The latrine detail.” Fisher pointed to the low adobe. “They’ll go in there and empty them. That’s the toilet and wash house, everything sewered clear out to the river. There—now the men are going into mess. They got fifteen minutes to eat, then ten minutes to go to the toilet before the work details form out in the exercise yard.”
“Do you give them exercises to do?”
“We give them enough work they don’t need any exercise,” Fisher answered.
Mr. Manly raised his eyes to look out at the empty yard and was surprised to see a lone convict coming across from the cellblock.
“Why isn’t that one with the others?”
Bob Fisher didn’t answer right way. Finally he said, “That’s Frank Shelby.”
“Is he a trusty?”
“Not exactly. He’s got some special jobs he does around here.”
Mr. Manly let it go. There were too many other things he wanted to know about. Like all the adobe buildings scattered around, a whole row of them over to the left, at the far end of the mess hall. He wondered where the women lived, but didn’t ask that.
Well, there was the cook shack over there and the tailor shop, where they made the uniforms. Bob Fisher pointed out the small one-story adobes. Some equipment sheds, a storehouse, the reception hut they were in last night. The mattress factory and the wagon works had been shut down six months ago. Over the main cellblock was the hospital, but the doctor had gone to Florence to set up a sick ward at the new prison. Anybody broke a leg now or crushed his hand working the rocks, they sent for a town doctor.
And the chaplain, Mr. Manly asked casually. Was he still here?
No, there wasn’t any chaplain. The last one retired and they decided to wait till after the move to get another. There wasn’t many of the convicts prayed anyway.
How would you know that? Mr. Manly wanted to ask him. But he said, “What are those doors way down there?”
At the far end of the yard he could make out several iron-grill doors, black oval shapes, doorways carved into the solid rock. The doors didn’t lead outside, he could tell that, because the top of the east wall and two of the guard towers were still a good piece beyond.
“Starting over back of the main cellblock, you can’t see it from here,” Bob Fisher said, “a gate leads into the TB cellblock and exercise yard.”
“You’ve got consumptives here?”
“Like any place else. I believe four right now.” Fisher hurried on before Mr. Manly could interrupt again. “The doors you can see—one’s the crazy hole. Anybody gets mean loco they go in there till they calm down. The next one they call the snake den’s a punishment cell.”
“Why is it called—”
“I don’t know, I guess a snake come in through the air shaft one time. The last door there on the right goes into the women’s cellblock. You seen them. We just got the two right now.”
There, he could ask about them again and it would sound natural. “The one you said, Norma something, has she been here long?”
“Norma Davis. I believe about a year and a half.”
“Do the men ever—I mean I guess you have to sort of watch over the women.”
“Mister, we have to watch over everybody.”
“But being women—don’t they have to have their own, you know, facilities and bath?”
Fisher looked right at Mr. Manly now. “They take a bath in the cook shack three, four times a week.”
“In the cook shack.” Mr. Manly nodded, surprised. “After the cooks are gone, of course.”
“At night,” Fisher said. He studied Mr. Manly’s profile—the soft pinkish face and gold-frame glasses pressed close to the windowpane—little Bible teacher looking out over his prison and still thinking about Norma Davis, asking harmless sounding questions about the women.
Fisher said quietly, “You want to see them?”
Mr. Manly straightened, looking at Fisher now with a startled expression. “What do you mean?”
“I wondered if you wanted to go downstairs and have another look at Norma and Tacha.”
“I want to see everything,” Mr. Manly said. “Everything you have here to show me.”
3
When Frank Shelby entered the mess hall he stepped in line ahead of Junior. In front of him, Soonzy and Joe Dean looked around.
“You take care of it?” Junior asked him.
“He needs some time in the snake den,” Shelby said.
Soonzy was looking back down the line. “Where’s he at?”
“Last one coming in.”
“I’ll handle him,” Junior said.
Shelby shook his head. “I want somebody else to start it. You and Soonzy break it up and get in some licks.”
“No problem,” Junior said. “The spook’s already got leg-irons on.”
