For supper they had fried mush and syrup, all they wanted. After, they were marched over to the main cellblock. Raymond looked for Frank Shelby in the groups standing around outside, but didn’t see him. He saw Junior and nodded. Junior gave him a deadpan look. The guard, R. E. Baylis, told them to get their blankets and any gear they wanted to bring along.
“You putting us in another cell?” Raymond asked him. “How about make it different cells? Ten days, I’ll smell him the rest of my life.”
“Come on,” Baylis said. He marched them down the passageway and through the rear gate of the cellblock.
“Wait a minute,” Raymond said. “Where we going?”
The guard looked around at him. “Didn’t nobody tell you? You two boys are going to live in the TB yard.”
5
A work detail was making adobe bricks over by the south wall, inside the yard. They mixed mud and water and straw, stirred it into a heavy wet paste and poured it into wooden forms. There were bricks drying all along the base of the wall and scrap lumber from the forms and stacks of finished bricks, ready to be used here or sold in town.
Harold Jackson and Raymond San Carlos had to come across the yard with their wheelbarrows to pick up bricks and haul them back to the TB cellblock that was like a prison within a prison: a walled-off area with its own exercise yard. There were eight cells here, in a row facing the yard, half of them empty. The four tubercular convicts stayed in their cells most of the time or sat in the shade and watched Harold and Raymond work, giving them advice and telling them when a line of bricks wasn’t straight. They were working on the face wall of the empty cells, tearing out the weathered, crumbling adobe and putting in new bricks; repairing cells that would probably never again be occupied. This was their main job. They worked at it side by side without saying a word to each other. They also had to bring the tubercular convicts their meals, and sometimes get cough medicine from the sick ward. A guard gave them white cotton doctor masks they could put on over their nose and mouth for whenever they went into the TB cells; but the masks were hot and hard to breathe through, so they didn’t wear them after the first day. They used the masks, and a few rags they found, to pad the leg-irons where the metal dug into their ankles.
The third day out of the snake den Raymond began talking to the convicts on the brick detail. He recognized Joe Dean in the group, but didn’t speak to him directly. He said, man alive, it was good to breathe fresh air again and feel the sun. He took off his hat and looked up at the sky. All the convicts except Joe Dean went on working. Raymond said, even being over with the lungers was better than the snake den. He said somebody must have made a mistake, he was supposed to be in thirty days for trying to escape, but they let him out after ten. Raymond smiled; he said he wasn’t going to mention it to them, though.
Joe Dean was watching him, leaning on his shovel. “You take care of him yet?”
“Take care of who?” Raymond asked him.
“The nigger boy. I hear he stomped you.”
“Nobody stomped me. Where’d you hear that?”
“Had to chain him up.”
“They chained us both.”
“Looks like you’re partners now,” Joe Dean said.
“I’m not partners with him. They make us work together, that’s all.”
“You going to fight him?”
“Sure, when I get a chance.”
“He don’t look too anxious,” another convict said. “That nigger’s a big old boy.”
“I got to wait for the right time,” Raymond said. “That’s all.”
He came back later for another wheelbarrow load of bricks and stood watching them as they worked the mud and mixed in straw. Finally he asked if anybody had seen Frank around.
“Frank who you talking about?” Joe Dean asked.
“Frank Shelby.”
“Listen to him,” Joe Dean said. “He wants to know has anybody seen Frank.”
“I got to talk to him,” Raymond said. “See if he can get me out of there.”
“Scared of TB, huh?”
“I mean being with the black boy. I got enough of him.”
“I thought you wanted to fight him.”
“I don’t know,” Joe Dean said. “It sounds to me like you’re scared to start it.”
“I don’t want no more of the snake den. That’s the only thing stopping me.”
“You want to see Frank Shelby,” one of the other convicts said, “there he is.” The man nodded and Raymond looked around.
Shelby must have just come out of the mess hall. He stood by the end-gate of a freight wagon that Junior and Soonzy and a couple of other convicts were unloading. There was no guard with them, unless he was inside. Raymond looked up at the guard on the south wall.
“I’ll tell you something,” Joe Dean said. “You can forget about Frank helping you.”
Raymond was watching the guard. “You know, uh? You know him so good he’s got you working in this adobe slop.”
“Sometimes we take bricks to town,” Joe Dean said. “You think on it if you don’t understand what I mean.”
“I got other things to think on.”
As the guard on the south wall turned and started for the tower at the far end of the yard, Raymond picked up his wheelbarrow and headed for the mess hall.
Shelby didn’t look up right away. He was studying a bill of lading attached to a clipboard, checking things off. He said to Junior, “The case right by your foot, that should be one of ours.”
“Says twenty-four jars of Louisiana cane syrup.”
“It’s corn whiskey.” Shelby still didn’t look up, but he said then, “What do you want?”
“They let me out of the snake den,” Raymond said. “I was suppose to be in thirty days, they let me out.”
Shelby looked at him now. “Yeah?”
“I wondered if you fixed it.”
“Not me.”
“I thought sure.” He waited as Shelby looked in the wagon and at the clipboard again. “Say, what happened at the river? I thought you were going to come right behind me.”
“It didn’t work out that way.”
“Man, I thought I had made it. But I couldn’t find no boat over there.”
“I guess you didn’t look in the right place,” Shelby said.
“I looked where you told me. Man, it was work. I don’t like swimming so much.” He watched Shelby studying the clipboard. “I was wondering—you know I’m over in a TB cell now.”
Shelby didn’t say anything.
“I was wondering if you could fix it, get me out of there.”
“Why?”
“I got to be with that nigger all the time.”
“He’s got to be with you,” Shelby said, “so you’re even.”
Raymond grinned. “I never thought of it that way.” He waited again. “What do you think?”
“About what?”
“About getting me back with everybody.”
Shelby started fooling with his mustache, smoothing it with his fingers. “Why do you think anybody wants you back?”
Raymond didn’t grin this time. “I did what you told me,” he said seriously. “Listen, I’ll work for you any time you want.”
“I’m not hiring today.”
“Well, what about getting me out of the TB yard?”
Shelby looked at him. He said, “Boy, why would I do that? I’m the one had you put there. Now you say one more word Soonzy is going to come down off the wagon and break both your arms.”
Shelby watched Raymond pick up his wheelbarrow and walk away. “Goddamn Indin is no better than a nigger,” he said to Junior. “You treat them nice one time and you got them hanging around the rest of your life.”
When Raymond got back to the brick detail Joe Dean said, “Well, what did he say?”