The trusty started to move off with the water barrel.
“Come back here,” LeBlanc said. He grabbed the water barrel and pulled the lid off. “Look at it. It’s swamp water.”
“That water come out of a tap,” Evans said.
“You try it.”
“You’re talking yourself right into detention.”
“Drink it,” LeBlanc said. He held the barrel up at Evans. “Drink it, you fat swine. Drink it till your fat belly is full of worms.”
“God damn you. Get up here. I’m going to make you sweat your ass off for that.”
“You filthy swine.” LeBlanc hurled the barrel at Evans’ head. The water whirled out in a shower over the men.
Evans had his pistol in his hand and was blowing his whistle. Two guards came running from further down the ditch. The inmates had scattered along the canal when Evans drew his weapon. Picks and shovels were strewn over the ground. The wheelbarrow lay overturned on a mound of dirt.
“Bring him up here,” Evans said.
The guards slid down the side of the ditch and came towards LeBlanc. He stepped back and raised his pick over his shoulder. They stopped and one of them, a lean rough-skinned man named Rainack, drew his revolver and cocked the hammer and aimed it at LeBlanc’s head.
“I won’t miss,” he said.
“For God’s sake, put it down, LeBlanc,” Avery said.
“It’s three to one, and you ain’t got but one swing with that pick,” Evans said.
“Come closer and I’ll pin you to the ground,” LeBlanc said.
“Quit while you got a chance,” the other guard said.
“I seen your kind in the stockade. They know how to use a billy club real good. They know how to jab you where it hurts and it don’t show.”
“Let go of the pick.”
“They’ve got you. Put it down,” Avery said. “You can’t beat them like this. LeBlanc, listen to me. For God’s sake. He means what he says. He’ll kill you.”
“I ain’t waiting much longer,” the guard named Rainack said. “A few more seconds and you’re a dead man.”
Avery broke towards LeBlanc in an attempt to grab the pick. Toussaint dove into his body and dragged him against the wall of the ditch and held him there. Avery fought to get loose, saying, “He’s sick, he was in the war and his mind’s not right, don’t you understand, he should be in a hospital, you can’t shoot him down, Evans, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he thinks you’re somebody in a stockade—”
“Be still,” Toussaint said.
“Make your play one way or another,” Rainack said.
LeBlanc remained motionless, the pick held in the air above his shoulder, while his eyes moved slowly over the two guards in the ditch and then looked up at Evans. He lowered the pick and dropped it by his foot.
“I ain’t going to let you kill me,” he said. “You wouldn’t have to worry about me no more. You’d like to shoot me. You want me to make it easy for you so there won’t be no kickbacks from the warden or an investigation. Well, I’m going to stay alive, because when I get out of wherever you lock me up I’m going to kill that man standing on the ditch.”
“You ain’t going to do nothing,” Rainack said, “except lay in the box and pray Jesus you was dead.”
“I’m going to kill you,” he said to Evans. “Do you hear me? I’m going to get you, or I hope I die and go to hell.”
The guard jabbed his revolver in LeBlanc’s side and shoved him towards the embankment.
“You’ll think you’re in hell when you’ve been in the box a few hours,” Rainack said. “Get up there.”
LeBlanc picked up his straw hat and his shirt and climbed up the embankment with the two guards behind him. He draped his shirt over his shoulder and put on his hat. Evans still held his pistol in his hand.
“Did you hear what I said? I’m going to kill you, you fat-bellied swine.”
Evans whipped his pistol barrel across LeBlanc’s taped ribs. He grabbed at his sides with both hands and doubled over. His teeth were clenched and his eyes glazed in pain. His black hair hung down over his face, and his knees were buckling as though he were going to fall.
“You goddamn, I’ll get, oh you goddamn, oh goddamn.…”
“Get him out of here,” Evans said.
A guard took him by each arm and led him, doubled over, to one of the trucks. The sweat on his back glistened in the sun. The tape around his ribs was moist and pulling loose from his skin. His hat fell from his head and rolled on the ground. Rainack stooped to pick it up, and threw it inside the cab of the truck and pushed LeBlanc in after it.
“Pick up the tools and go to work,” Evans said to the men.
He put his revolver in his holster and snapped the leather strap over the hammer to hold it secure. Daddy Claxton turned the wheelbarrow right side up and began to refill it with his shovel, and the rest of the men picked up their tools and went to work. Evans watched them a minute and then walked farther down the line.
“Did you see Evans’ face when he called him a fat swine?” Billy Jo said. “He would have shot him if the rest of us hadn’t been here.”
“He’s mean enough to do it,” Daddy Claxton said.
“I never seen him so pissed off. Not even at Toussaint,” Jeffry said.
“He don’t like to be called fat,” Brother Samuel said. “He always wears his pistol belt over his stomach to hide it.”
“I seen it in his face. He would have shot that guy dead if we wasn’t here,” Billy Jo said.
“That guy was talking like he was ready for the nut house,” Jeffry said. “What was all that about the stockade and the army?”
“He was in a military prison somewhere,” Avery said.
“You liked to got in the middle of it yourself,” Brother Samuel said.
“It wouldn’t make no difference to Evans who he shot. He don’t care. He likes to hurt anybody,” Jeffry said.
“The water can didn’t miss Evans’ head but about two inches,” Billy Jo said. “God, I’d like to seen him catch it full in the face.”
“You think he means it about killing Evans?” Jeffry said.
“He means it,” Avery said.
“I served with some tough cons, but that boy can stand up with any of them,” Daddy Claxton said.
“Somebody done him a lot of wrong,” Brother Samuel said. “When he gets out of the box he ain’t going to rest till he does Evans some bad.”
“I want to be there to see it,” Billy Jo said.
“It’s going to be plenty hot in the box unless we get some rain,” Daddy Claxton said.
“What’s it like in there?” Jeffry said.
“It ain’t nice,” Toussaint said.
“I heard a man suffocated in there,” Daddy Claxton said.
“I couldn’t pull no time in the box. I’d go flip closed up in a place that small,” Jeffry said.
“You’d pull it if you had to.”
“Not in this weather. The sun will be like a blowtorch on them sides.”
“Maybe the warden will ship him out to maximum security at Angola,” Claxton said.
“Evans will make sure he does his time in the box. He won’t turn in a report if he thinks the warden would ship him out,” Toussaint said.
“I want to see him get Evans. Benoit’s got a knife hid in his bunk. I’d get it from him and give it to this guy if he’d use it,” Billy Jo said.
“Benoit ain’t got a knife,” Jeffry said.
“Yeah, he does. I seen him go in the latrine late at night and work on it with a whetstone.”
“Leave LeBlanc alone,” Avery said. “If you want Evans cut up, do it yourself.”
“He can do it for me.”
“You give him a knife and he’ll end up being executed.”
“That’s his worry.”
“Don’t give him the knife.”