“He’s going to see what he can do,” Raymond answered. He didn’t feel like talking any more, and was busy loading bricks when Harold Jackson came across the yard with his wheelbarrow. Harold wore his hat pointed low over his eyes. He didn’t have a shirt on and, holding the wheelbarrow handles, his shoulders and arm muscles were bunched and hard-looking. One of the convicts saw him first and said to Raymond, “Here comes your buddy.” The other convicts working the adobe mud looked up and stood leaning on their shovels and hoes as Harold Jackson approached.
Raymond didn’t look at him. He stacked another brick in the wheelbarrow and got set to pick up the handles. He heard one of the convicts say, “This here Indian says you won’t fight him. Says you’re scared. Is that right?”
“I fight him any time he wants.”
Raymond had to look up then. Harold was staring at him.
“Well, I don’t know,” the convict said. “You and him talk about fighting, but nobody’s raised a hand yet.”
“It must be they’re both scared,” Joe Dean said. “Or it’s because they’re buddies. All alone in that snake den they got to liking each other. Guard comes in thinks they’re rassling on the floor—man, they’re not fighting, they’re buggering each other.”
The other convicts grinned and laughed, and one of them said, “Jesus Christ, what they are, they’re sweethearts.”
Raymond saw Harold Jackson take one step and hit the man in the face as hard as he could. Raymond wanted to say no, don’t do it. It was a strange thing and happened quickly as the man spun toward him and Raymond put up his hands. One moment he was going to catch the man, keep him from falling against him. The next moment he balled up a fist and drove it into the man’s face, right out in the open yard, the dumbest thing he had ever done, but doing it now and not stopping or thinking, going for Joe Dean now and busting him hard in the mouth as he tried to bring up his shovel. God, it felt good, a wild hot feeling, letting go and stepping into them and swinging hard at all the faces he had been wanting to smash and pound against a wall.
Harold Jackson held back a moment, staring at the crazy Indian, until somebody was coming at him with a shovel and he had to grab the handle and twist and chop it across the man’s head. If he could get room and swing the shovel—but there were too many of them too close, seven men in the brick detail and a couple more, Junior and Soonzy, who came running over from the supply detail and grabbed hunks of lumber and started clubbing at the two wild men.
By the time the guard on the south wall fired his Winchester in the air and a guard came running over from the mess hall, Harold lay stunned in the adobe muck; Raymond was sprawled next to him and neither of them moved.
“Lord,” Junior said, “we had to take sticks this time to get them apart.”
Soonzy shook his head. “I busted mine on that nigger, he went right on fighting.”
“They’re a scrappy pair,” Junior said, “but they sure are dumb, ain’t they?”
Bob Fisher told the guard to hose them off and throw them in the snake den. He told Soonzy and Junior and the men on the brick detail to get back to work. Chained? the guard wanted to know. Chained, Fisher said, and walked off toward the stairs at the end of the mess hall, noticing the convicts who had come out of the adobe huts and equipment sheds, brought out by the guard’s rifle fire, all of them looking toward the two men lying in the mud. He noticed Frank Shelby and some convicts by the freight wagon. He noticed the cooks in their white aprons, and the two women, Norma and Tacha, over by the tailor shop.
Fisher went up the stairs and down the hall to the superintendent’s office. As he walked in, Mr. Manly turned from the window.
“The same two,” Fisher said.
“It looked like they were all fighting.” Mr. Manly glanced at the window again.
“You want a written report?”
“I’d like to know what happened.”
“Those two start fighting. The other boys try to pull them apart and the two start swinging at everybody. Got to hit ’em with shovels to put ’em down.”
“I didn’t see them fighting each other.”
“Then you must have missed that part.” Past Mr. Manly’s thoughtful expression—through the window and down in the yard—he saw a convict walking toward the tailor shop with a bundle under his arm. Frank Shelby. This far away he knew it was Shelby. Norma Davis stood in the door waiting for him.
“Soon as I heard the shots,” Mr. Manly said, “I looked out. They were separated, like two groups fighting. They didn’t look close enough to have been fighting each other.”
Bob Fisher waited. “You want a written report?”
“What’re you going to do to them?”
“I told them before, they start fighting they go back in the snake den. Twenty days. They know it, so it won’t be any surprise.”
“Twenty days in there seems like a long time.”
“I hope to tell you it is,” Fisher said.
“I was going to talk to them when they got out the other day. I meant to—I don’t know, I put it off and then I guess some other things came up.”
Fisher could see Shelby at the tailor shop now, close to the woman, talking to her. She turned and they both went inside.
“I’m not saying I could have prevented their fighting, but you never know, do you? Maybe if I had spoken to them, got them to shake hands—you understand what I mean, Bob?”
Fisher pulled his gaze away from the tailor shop to the little man by the window. “Well, I don’t know about that.”
“It could have made a difference.”
“I never seen talking work much on anybody.”
“But twenty days in there,” Mr. Manly said, “and it could be my fault, because I didn’t talk to them.” He paused. “Don’t you think, Bob, in this case, you ought to give them no more than ten days? You said yourself ten days was a long time. Then soon as they come out I’ll talk to them.”
“That Indian was supposed to be in thirty days,” Fisher said, “and you changed it to ten. Now I’ve already told them twenty and you want to cut it down again. I tell a convict one thing and you say something else and we begin to have problems.”
“I’m only asking,” Mr. Manly said, “because if I could have done something, if I’m the one to blame, then it wouldn’t be fair to those two boys.”
“Mister, they’re convicts. They do what we tell them. Anything.”
Mr. Manly agreed, nodding. “That’s true, we give the orders and they have to obey. But we still have to be fair, no matter who we’re dealing with.”
Bob Fisher wondered what the hell he was doing here arguing with this little four-eyed squirt. He said, “They don’t know anything about this. They don’t know you meant to talk to them.”
“But I know it,” Mr. Manly said, “and the more I think about it the more I know I got to talk to them.” He paused. “Soon.”
Fisher saw it coming, happening right before his eyes, the little squirt’s mind working behind his gold-frame glasses.
“Yes, maybe you ought to bring them in tomorrow.”
“Just a minute ago you said ten days—”
“Do you have any children, Bob?”
The question stopped Fisher. He shook his head slowly, watching Mr. Manly.
“Well, I’m sure you know anyway you got to have patience with children. Sure, you got to punish them sometimes, but first you got to teach them right from wrong and be certain they understand it.”
“I guess my wife’s got something wrong with her. She never had any kids.”
“That’s God’s will, Bob. What I’m getting at, these two boys here, Harold and Raymond, they’re just like children.” Mr. Manly held up his hand. “I know what you’re going to say, these boys wasn’t caught stealing candy, they took a life. And I say that’s true. But still they’re like little children. They’re grown in body but not in mind. They got the appetites and temptations of grown men. They fight and carry on and, Lord knows, they have committed murder, for which they are now paying the price. But we don’t want no more murders around here, do we, Bob? No, sir. Nor do we want to punish anybody for something that isn’t their fault. We got two murderers wanting to kill each other. Two mean-looking boys we chain up in a dungeon. But Bob, tell me something. Has anybody ever spoke kindly to them? I mean has anybody ever helped them overcome the hold the devil’s got on them? Has anybody ever showed them the path of righteousness, or explained to them Almighty God’s justice and the meaning of everlasting salvation?”