He wasn’t sure if Tacha was smiling then or not—like telling him she knew all about him. Little Mexican bitch, she had better not try to get smart with him.
It was then he thought of what Norma had said. About Tacha not looking so good. Coughing at night.
Hell, yes, Bob Fisher said to himself and wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before. There was only one place around here to put anybody who was coughing sick. Over in the TB cellblock.
9
The guard, R. E. Baylis, was instructed to move the Mexican girl to the TB area after work, right before supper. It sounded easy enough.
But when he told Tacha she held back and didn’t want to go. What for? Look at her. Did she look like she had TB? She wasn’t even sick. R. E. Baylis told her to get her things, she was going over there and that’s all there was to it. She asked him if Mr. Fisher had given the order, and when he said sure, Tacha said she thought so; she should have known he would do something like this. Goddamn-it, R. E. Baylis thought, he didn’t have to explain anything to her. He did though. He said it must be they were sending her over there to help out—bring the lungers their food, get them their medicine. He said there were two boys in there supposed to be looking after the lungers, but nobody had seen much of them the past couple of months or so, what with all the running they were doing. They would go out early in the morning, just about the time it was getting light, and generally not get back until the afternoon. He said some of the guards were talking about them, how they had changed; but he hadn’t seen them in a while. Tacha only half listened to him. She wasn’t interested in the two convicts, she was thinking about the TB cellblock and wondering what it would be like to live there. She remembered the two he was talking about; she knew them by sight. Though when she walked into the TB yard and saw them again, she did not recognize them immediately as the same two men.
R. E. Baylis got a close look at them and went to find Bob Fisher.
“She give you any trouble?” Fisher asked.
He sat at a table in the empty mess hall with a cup of coffee in front of him. The cooks were bringing in the serving pans and setting up for supper.
“No trouble once I got her there,” R. E. Baylis said. “What I want to know is what the Indin and the nigger are doing?”
“I don’t know anything about them and don’t want to know. They’re Mr. Manly’s private convicts.” Fisher held his cup close to his face and would lean in to sip at it.
“Haven’t you seen them lately?”
“I see them go by once in a while, going out the gate.”
“But you haven’t been over there? You haven’t seen them close?”
“Whatever he’s got them doing isn’t any of my business. I told him I don’t want no part of it.”
“You don’t care what they’re doing?”
“I got an inventory of equipment and stores have to be tallied before we ship out of here and that ain’t very long away.”
“You don’t care if they made spears,” R. E. Baylis said, “and they’re throwing them at a board stuck in the ground?”
Bob Fisher started coughing and spilled some of his coffee down the front of his uniform.
Mr. Manly said, “Yes, I know they got spears. Made of bamboo fishing poles and brick-laying trowels stuck into one end for the point. If a man can use a trowel to work with all day, why can’t he use one for exercise?”
“Because a spear is a weapon,” Fisher said. “You can kill a man with it.”
“Bob, you got some kind of stain there on your uniform.”
“What I mean is you don’t let convicts make spears.”
“Why not, if they’re for a good purpose?”
No, Bob Fisher said to himself—with R. E. Baylis standing next to him, listening to it all—this time, goddamn-it, don’t let him mix you up. He said, “Mr. Manly, for some reason I seem to have trouble understanding you.”
“What is it you don’t understand, Bob?”
“Every time I come up here, it’s like you and me are talking about two different things. I come in, I know what the rules are here and I know what I want to say. Then you begin talking and it’s like we get onto something else.”
“We look at a question from different points of view,” Mr. Manly said. “That’s all it is.”
“All right, R. E. Baylis here says they got spears. I haven’t been over to see for myself. We was downstairs—I don’t know, something told me I should see you about it first.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“How long have they had ’em?”
“About two weeks. Bob, they run fourteen miles yesterday. Only stopped three times to rest.”
“I don’t see what that’s got to do with the spears.”
“Well, you said you wanted it to show in the record you’re not having anything to do with this business. Isn’t that right?”
“I want it to show I’m against their being taken outside.”
“I haven’t told you anything what’s going on, have I?”
“I haven’t asked neither.”
“That’s right. This is the first time you’ve mentioned those boys in over two months. You don’t know what I’m teaching them, but you come in here and tell me they can’t have spears.”
“It’s in the rules.”
“It says in the rules they can’t have spears for any purpose whatsoever?”
“It say a man found with a weapon is to be put under maximum security for no less than ten days.”
“You mean put in the snake den.”
“I sure do.”
“You believe those two boys have been found with weapons?”
“When you make a spear out of a trowel, it becomes a weapon.”
“But what if I was the one told them to make the spears?”
“I was afraid you might say that.”
“As a matter of fact, I got them the fishing poles myself. Bought them in town.”
“Bought them in town,” Bob Fisher said. His head seemed to nod a little as he stared at Mr. Manly. “This here is what I meant before about not understanding some things. I would sure like to know why you want them to have spears?”
“Bob,” Mr. Manly said, “that’s the only way to learn, isn’t it? Ask questions.” He looked up past Fisher then, at the wall clock. “Say, it’s about supper time already.”
“Mr. Manly, I’ll wait on supper if you’ll explain them spears to me.”
“I’ll do better than that,” Mr. Manly said, “I’ll show you. First though we got to get us a pitcher of ice water.”
“I’ll even pass on that,” Fisher said. “I’m not thirsty or hungry.”
Mr. Manly gave him a patient, understanding grin. “The ice water isn’t for us, Bob.”
“No sir,” Fisher said. He was nodding again, very slowly, solemnly. “I should’ve known better, shouldn’t I?”
Tacha remembered them from months before wearing leg-irons and pushing the wheelbarrows. She remembered the Negro working without a shirt on and remembered thinking the other one tall for an Indian. She had never spoken to them or watched them for a definite reason. She had probably not been closer than fifty feet to either of them. But she was aware now of the striking change in their appearance and at first it gave her a strange, tense feeling. She was afraid of them.
The guard had looked as if he was afraid of them too, and maybe that was part of the strange feeling. He didn’t tell her which cell was to be hers. He stared at the Indian and the Negro, who were across the sixty-foot yard by the wall, and then hurried away, leaving her here.
As soon as he was gone the tubercular convicts began talking to her. One of them asked if she had come to live with them. When she nodded he said she could bunk with him if she wanted. They laughed and another one said no, come on in his cell, he would show her a fine old time. She didn’t like the way they stared at her. They sat in front of their cells on stools and a wooden bunk frame and looked as if they had been there a long time and seldom shaved or washed themselves.