“Is that all of them?”
“In the main cell block. About ninety.”
“I thought there’d be more.” Mr. Manly studied the double file closely but wasn’t able to single out Harold Jackson. All the convicts looked alike. No, that was wrong; they didn’t all look alike.
“Since we’re shutting down we haven’t been getting as many.”
“They’re all different, aren’t they?”
“How’s that?” Bob Fisher said.
Mr. Manly didn’t answer, or didn’t hear him. He stood at the window of the superintendent’s office—the largest of a row of offices over the mess hall—and watched the convicts as they came across the yard, passed beyond the end of a low adobe, and came into view again almost directly below the window. The line reached the door of the mess hall and came to a stop.
Their uniforms looked the same, all of them wearing prison stripes, all faded gray and white. It was the hats that were different, light-colored felt hats and a few straw hats, almost identical hats, but all worn at a different angle: straight, low over the eyes, to the side, cocked like a dandy would wear his hat, the brim funneled, the brim up in front, the brim down all around. The hats were as different as the men must be different. He should make a note of that. See if anything had been written on the subject: determining a man’s character by the way he wore his hat. But there wasn’t a note pad or any paper on the desk and he didn’t want to ask Fisher for it right at the moment.
He was looking down at all the hats. He couldn’t see any of their faces clearly, and wouldn’t unless a man looked up. Nobody was looking up.
They were all looking back toward the yard. Most of them turning now so they wouldn’t have to strain their necks. All those men suddenly interested in something and turning to look.
“The women convicts,” Bob Fisher said.
Mr. Manly saw them then. My God—two women.
Fisher pressed closer to him at the window. Mr. Manly could smell tobacco on the man’s breath. “They just 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 women. The little dark-haired one wore a striped dress—smaller stripes than the men’s outfits—that could be a dress she’d bought anywhere. The brown-haired one, taller and a little older, though she couldn’t be thirty yet, wore a striped blouse with the top buttons undone, a white canvas belt and a gray skirt that clung to the movement of her hips as she walked and flared out as it reached to her ankles.
“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.”