"Insurance," said the warden gently. "Seems like a man that gets ten the first day behaves better and doesn't think about tryin' to escape. Some way, they remember the feel of it, an' it makes better men of 'em."
Mike was a huge Negro. He was a trusty. As he led Maurie out across the porch and toward the whipping post in the middle of the yard, he spoke quietly. "Don' you worry none, boy," he said. "I'm very good at what I do. It ain' gonna hurt like what you think."
The big black man ordered him to strip off his uniform. He couldn't of course get his pants all the way off; he could only drop them down to his leg irons. When Mike lashed him to the post, Maurie was naked. He had an hour to stand there, bound to the post, before the work gangs came in and assembled in the yard to watch the whipping.
The convicts found him a curious figure. He was a little man, short and slight, and his skin was almost white. Many of them had never seen a circumcised man before, and they walked around him, staring and commenting —
— "Jeez Chrass! Somebody's cut th' end off him!"
— "God, it must hurt like hell t' have that done!"
— "It's what the Jews do. Talks about it in the Babble. Y' ever read the Babble, y'd find out where it tells the Jews to cut their boy babies like that."
— "Makes m' flesh crawl!"
Hanging in his bonds, Maurie saw a man as bad off as he was: naked as he was and locked inside a small cage in the middle of the yard, a short distance from the whipping post. The cage was so small the man could not stand up and could not stretch out. He was curled in a fetal position in a corner of the cage, confined with his own excrement, which lay about him on the ground. He seemed oblivious to the flies that crawled over his sweating body.
When the work crews were all in, fifty or sixty men formed a circle around the whipping post to witness the lashing about to be given to Maurie Cohen. His knees kept buckling, and he hung on the rope that bound his wrists to the post. He glistened with sweat, and when the wind blew he shivered. He knew he was earning the contempt of the men he was going to be locked up with for a year. He dreaded that, but he couldn't do anything about it. When he saw the warden step out on the porch, his bladder let go. They all laughed.
Then Mike, the big Negro, stepped up behind him. Maurie twisted his neck and looked. Mike was carrying the snake, a fearsome, threatening instrument of torture.
Maurie looked at the warden. The warden nodded, and instantly Maurie felt the snake crack across his shoulders. It hurt like being seared with a hot iron must hurt — worse because he felt its cut. He opened his mouth to scream —
Cold water crashed against his face. A lithe, muscular man with black hair stood staring curiously at him, empty bucket in hand. Oh, God, he'd passed out, and they'd revived him so he'd feel the remaining nine stripes! The man with the bucket wore a small quizzical smile. Maurie glanced around. The warden was gone from the porch. The convicts were in a moving line, going in the mess shack to pick up their food. All wore stripes the same as his. All wore leg irons. Except for the man with the bucket, no one was paying attention to him anymore. Maurie was still tied to the post. His back was ... What was it? It felt like it was on fire, and yet it ached, too, a deep, agonizing ache in swelling flesh.
"Felt that fust one, din't ya?" asked the man. "But none of the rest. Like Mike tol' ya, he knows how to do what he does. That first shot went across your shoulders all right. But when he give ya the second one he made the tip hit ya sharp and hard on the back of the head an' knock ya out. Ya got th' other nine while ya wasn't feelin' nothin'. Ya didn't even have to feel the sting of the liniment Mike poured on to keep th' stripes from festerin'. You lucky. You git stripes ag'in, y'll git 'em the reg'lar way. Think on't."
Maurie moaned.
"It was nothin' special, got nothin' to do with you bein' a Jew-boy. They done it to me my first day here. My name's Max Sand. The Man ordered me to take care of you fer a while."
Max untied him, and Maurie dropped to his knees.
"That's th' way, boy. Pull them pants up and come on."
Maurie followed him. He couldn't imagine trying to pull the shirt on over his back. Max led him to a shack, where there was a cot and a bucket. A chain ran from a ring set in a heavy block of concrete. Max padlocked that to the chain between Maurie's leg irons, and he went away and left him.
Maurie sat on the cot. He couldn't lie down. He sat and wept.
A little later Max returned. He brought a tin cup full of coffee and a tin plate heaped with food. Without a word, he put the cup and plate down and left, latching the door outside.
Beans. Beans cooked in some kind of congealing grease that was almost certainly lard. The few little flakes of meat among the beans were undoubtedly pork. Forbidden food. But Maurie had learned from his days in jail that even mildly suggesting they should not serve him pork would win him laughter at best, a backhand slap across the mouth more likely. He picked up the spoon that was the only utensil they provided and ate a couple of mouthfuls of the unappetizing mess. He'd starve if he didn't eat whatever they gave him; he knew that. God forgive, he prayed as he shoved some more into his mouth.
And then he wept some more.
3
The horror of his year's imprisonment had only begun.
They left him in the shack for five days: time for his back to heal, or begin to heal. He was let out only when he carried his slops bucket to the latrine and poured the contents in. Max came to take him out. Max brought his food. Max was no trusty, as Mike was. He wore stripes and leg irons as most of the other men did, but Maurie noticed that Max didn't stumble. He'd learned how to walk in chains.
Max sat down in the doorway of the shack and talked to him. He asked him what fool thing he'd done to get himself a year in this place.
"They say ya done somethin' stupid. How stupid? What stupid?"
Maurie sighed heavily. "I was selling insurance," he said.
Max grinned. "Oh, yeah. And there wasn't no insurance company, right? I guess you just had a printer print up some fake policies for you, and —"
"Right," said Maurie.
"That's dumb all right. That is dumb. To risk being sent to a place like this ... That's dumb."
"What are you here for, Max?"
"Two years. Illegal use of a firearm."
"What'd you do with it that was illegal?"
"I killed a man."
"You don't go out with a work crew."
"I will, next week. A cottonmouth got me on the leg. I'm on half duty right now."
At the end of the five days they took Maurie out of the shack. He was assigned to a cot in a barrack. At night they ran a long chain the length of the barrack, passing it through the ring in the middle of the chain that linked each man's leg irons. That confined them. The guards didn't even close the doors and windows, which were left open so air — and mosquitoes — could come in.
The warden really was a man of kindly disposition. Realizing Maurice Cohen did not have the physique to work all day in the fields, he had him assigned to the kitchen.
Routed out of bed and off the long chain before dawn, he shuffled around the kitchen shack, helping the trusty cook to bake cornbread and boil coffee. The convicts began their day with platters of cornbread soaked in molasses, a sticky-sweet melange that filled out their stomachs but rotted their teeth. Maurie managed to put aside some cornbread without molasses for himself. The cook noticed but said nothing. Similarly, Maurie kept the cook's secret: that he kept pots of molasses and water fermenting in various hidey-holes and in midafternoon ran a still that produced a fiery, heady kind of rum.