Harold Jackson recognized the man in the few moments the door was open and the guards were shoving him inside. As the man turned to brace himself Harold saw his face against the outside sunlight, the dark-skinned face, the one in the mess hall. The door slammed closed and they were in darkness. Harold’s eyes were used to it after half a day in here. He could see the man feeling his way along the wall until he was on the other side of the ten-by-ten-foot stone cell. It had been almost pitch dark all morning. Now, at midday, a faint light came through the air hole that was about as big around as a stovepipe and tunneled down through the domed ceiling. He could see the man’s legs good, then part of his body as he sat down on the bare dirt floor. Harold drew up his legs and stretched them out again so the leg-iron chains would clink and rattle—in case the man didn’t know he was here.
Raymond knew. Coming in, he had seen the figure sitting against the wall and had seen his eyes open and close as the sunlight hit his face, black against blackness, a striped animal in his burrow hole. Raymond knew. He had hit the man a good lick across the eyes with his tin plate, and if the man wanted to do something about it, now it was up to him. Raymond would wait, ready for him—while he pictured again Frank Shelby standing by the wall and tried to read Shelby’s face.
The guards had brought him back in the skiff, making him row with his arms dead-tired, and dragged him wet and muddy all the way up the hill to the cemetery. Frank Shelby was still there. All of them were, and a man sitting on the ground, his foot bloody. Raymond had wanted to tell Shelby there wasn’t any boat over there, and he wanted Shelby to tell him, somehow, what had gone wrong. He remembered Shelby staring at him, but not saying anything with his eyes or his expression. Just staring. Maybe he wasn’t picturing Shelby’s face clearly now, or maybe he had missed a certain look or gesture from him. He would have time to think about it. Thirty days in here. No mattress, no blanket, no slop bucket, use the corner, or piss on the nigger if he tried something. If the nigger hadn’t done something to Shelby he wouldn’t be here and you wouldn’t be here, Raymond thought. Bread and water for thirty days, but they would take the nigger out before that and he would be alone. There were men they took from here to the crazy hole after being alone in the darkness too long. It can happen if you think about being here and nothing else, Raymond said to himself. So don’t think about it. Go over and hit the nigger hard in the face and get it over with. God, if he wasn’t so tired.
Kick him in the face to start, Harold was thinking, as he picked at the dried blood crusted on the bridge of his nose. Two and a half steps and aim it for his cheekbone, either side. That would be the way, if he didn’t have on the irons and eighteen inches of chain links. He try kicking the man, he’d land flat on his back and the man would be on top of him. He try sneaking up, the man would hear the chain. ’Less the man was asleep and he worked over and got the chain around the man’s neck and crossed his legs and stretched and kicked hard. Then they come in and say what happen? And he say I don’t know, captain, the man must have choked on his bread. They say yeah, bread can kill a man all right; you stay in here with the bread the rest of your life. So the best thing would be to stand up and let the man stand up and hit him straightaway and beat him enough but not too much. Beat him just right.
He said, “Hey, boy, you ready?”
“Any time,” Raymond answered.
“Get up then.”
Raymond moved stiffly, bringing up his knees to rise.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“I’ll tell you something,” Raymond said. “If you’re any good, maybe you won’t get beat too bad. But after I sleep and rest my arms and legs I’ll break your jaw.”
“What’s the matters with your arms and legs?”
“From swimming the river.”
Harold Jackson stared at him, interested. He hadn’t thought of why the man had been put in here. Now he remembered the whistle. “You saying you tried to bust out?”
“I got across.”
“How many of you?”
Raymond hesitated. “I went alone.”
“And they over there waiting.”
“Nobody was waiting. They come in a boat.”
“Broad daylight—man, you must be one dumb Indin fella.”
Raymond’s legs cramped as he started to rise, and he had to ease down again, slowly.
“We got time,” Harold Jackson said. “Don’t be in a hurry to get yourself injured.”
“Tomorrow,” Raymond said, “when the sun’s over the hole and I can see your black nigger face in here.”
Harold saw the chain around the man’s neck and his legs straining to pull it tight. “Indin, you’re going to need plenty medicine before I’m through with you.”
“The only thing I’m worried about is catching you,” Raymond said. “I hear a nigger would rather run than fight.”
“Any running I do, red brother, is going to be right at your head.”
“I got to see that.”
“Keep your eyes open, Indin. You won’t see nothing once I get to you.”
There was a silence before Raymond said, “I’ll tell you something. It don’t matter, but I want you to know it anyway. I’m no Indian. I’m Mexican born in the United States, in the territory of Arizona.”
“Yeah,” Harold Jackson said. “Well, I’m Filipina born in Fort Valley, Georgia.”
“Field nigger is what you are.”
“Digger Indin talking, eats rats and weed roots.”
“I got to listen to a goddamn field hand.”
“I’ve worked some fields,” Harold said. “I’ve plowed and picked cotton, I’ve skinned mules and dug privies and I’ve busted rock. But I ain’t never followed behind another convict and emptied his bucket for him. White or black. No body.”
Raymond’s tone was lower. “You saw me carrying a bucket this morning?”
“Man, I don’t have to see you, I know you carry one every morning. Frank Shelby says dive into it, you dive.”
“Who says I work for Frank Shelby?”
“He say scratch my ass, you scratch it. He say go pour your coffee on that nigger’s head, you jump up and do it. Man, if I’m a field nigger you ain’t no better than a house nigger.” Harold Jackson laughed out loud. “Red nigger, that’s all you are, boy. A different color but the same thing.”
The pain in Raymond’s thighs couldn’t hold him this time. He lunged for the dark figure across the cell to drive into him and slam his black skull against the wall. But he went in high. Harold got under him and dumped him and rolled to his feet. They met in the middle of the cell, in the dim shaft of light from the air hole, and beat each other with fists until they grappled and kneed and strained against each other and finally went down.
When the guard came in with their bread and water, they were fighting on the hard-packed floor. He yelled to another guard who came fast with a wheelbarrow, pushing it through the door and the short passageway into the cell. They shoveled sand at Harold and Raymond, throwing it stinging hard into their faces until they broke apart and lay gasping on the floor. A little while later another guard came in with irons and chained them to ring bolts on opposite sides of the cell. The door slammed closed and again they were in darkness.
Bob Fisher came through the main gate at eight-fifteen that evening, not letting on he was in a hurry as he crossed the lighted area toward the convicts’ mess hall.
He’d wanted to get back by eight—about the time they’d be bringing the two women out of their cellblock and over to the cook shack. But his wife had started in again about staying here and not wanting to move to Florence. She said after sixteen years in this house it was their home. She said a rolling stone gathered no moss, and that it wasn’t good to be moving all the time. He reminded her they had moved twice in twenty-seven years, counting the move from Missouri. She said then it was about time they settled; a family should stay put, once it planted roots. What family? he asked her. Me and you? His wife said she didn’t know anybody in Florence and wasn’t sure she wanted to. She didn’t even know if there was a Baptist church in Florence. What if there wasn’t? What was she supposed to do then? Bob Fisher said that maybe she would keep her fat ass home for a change and do some cooking and baking, instead of sitting with them other fatties all day making patchwork quilts and bad-mouthing everybody in town who wasn’t a paid-up member of the church. He didn’t honestly care where she spent her time, or whether she baked pies and cakes or not. It was something to throw at her when she started in nagging about staying in Yuma. She said how could anybody cook for a person who came home at all hours with whiskey stinking up his breath? Yes, he had stopped and had a drink at the railroad hotel, because he’d had to talk to the express agent about moving equipment to Florence. Florence, his wife said. She wished she had never heard the name—the same name as her cousin who was still living in Sedalia, but now she didn’t even like to think of her cousin any more and they had grown up together as little girls. Bob Fisher couldn’t picture his wife as a little girl. No, that tub of fat couldn’t have ever been a little girl. He didn’t tell her that. He told her he had to get back to the prison, and left without finishing his coffee.