The Choiring Of The Trees Part 5

"Thank you," he said. "I thank you kindly." And he reached out his handcuffs and shook hands with her.

"I said no con-tack, dammit!" Fat Gabe hollered, and moved closer.

They separated their hands. "I'd like to meet the trees," she said, with one last of those smiles.

"This time of year," he observed, "they're as bare as bare can be."

Off.

Fat Gabe and Short Leg beat him up. He shouldn't have talked back to them. They took him from the death room downstairs to his cell, that dark, dank, cold, tomb-like little s.p.a.ce that had been his home for months, since the day in August they'd brought him to The Walls. The cell was in a sort of bas.e.m.e.nt of the electric light and power building that held not just Old Sparky's room but the transformers and dynamos and generators and the rest of that stuff that charged up Old Sparky and all the lights in The Walls and even some of the freeworld neighborhood out beyond in southwest Little Rock, along the Hot Springs highway. Fat Gabe and Short Leg took him back down to that hole, and Fat Gabe said, "Get your stuff."

He didn't have much to get: his change of underwear, his comb (he wouldn't need it) and toothbrush, his harmonica, his 1914 calendar nearly all marked up, just twenty-nine days unmarked left to go, the Bible that Jimmie Mac had lent him and which he read for entertainment: the action stories of those old Israelites fighting the Moabites and Midianites and Ammonites and Philistines, and Old King Solomon's song, which didn't have much excitement in it but was real pretty, what the king said to that lady; that, and his copy of Dr. Hood's Plain Talks and Common Sense Medical Advisor, which somebody had left behind in the death cell, eight hundred and ninety-seven pages he'd already read three times, no stories but interesting topics like "s.e.xual Isolation," "Prost.i.tution," "Prevention of Conception," "Diseases of Women," and "Unhappy Marriages," and hundreds of pictures he knew by heart now: vital organs, anatomy of men and women, diseases of the ear, eye, and throat. He thought of leaving it, but you never could tell when he might want to use the pages for the makes of a cigarette, not that he had any tobacco left, but you never could tell.

"I like it here," Nail observed. "Why've I gotta move to the stockade?"

Fat Gabe hit him with the back of his hand swung hard across his face. "That's twice this evenin you've ast me a question, Chism."

Short Leg, who wasn't as bad as Fat Gabe, had the kindness to explain: "You aint condemned anymore, at least not for right now. You caint stay in the death hole till you get another date set up with Old Sparky."

Nail wiped the blood from his mouth and turned to call goodbye and good luck to Ramsey, the quiet murderer who'd been moved into Skip's cell when Skip was killed. Ramsey did not answer. Then the two guards marched Nail up out of the electric light and power building, across the yard, and into the main building, to the stockade, which was just one huge room, a barracks with few windows covered with wire mesh as well as thick bars, in which three hundred men were crowded together. The beds were double-tiered, and, as Nail discovered, four men slept together in each bed. He had slept in the same bed with his brothers Waymon and Luther; he knew how to sleep with other men, but those had been his own kinfolks, not strangers. The blacks and the whites were separated: the three men he would have to sleep with were all, more or less, the same color as he. Those three were sitting on the edge of their double-bunk or standing around it, waiting to see who the new man would be, and they sized him up; he was taller than any of them.

"Don't I get any supper before bedtime?" Nail asked his guards before they abandoned him there.

Fat Gabe stood on tiptoe to hit him again, in the face, then slugged him in the stomach to bend him down to his own level, and backhanded him once more across the face, to knock him down. "That's three questions you've ast me, Chism. When will you know better?"

Short Leg removed his handcuffs. Nail wanted to take out his dagger and slash up both of them, especially Fat Gabe, but it wasn't the right moment yet. He had suffered worse beatings than this. He remained sitting on the floor, holding his arms around his knees.

"New boy, what's your name?" asked one of the three men at his double-bunk. He was a young man nearly as corpulent as Fat Gabe but not as muscular. Nail Chism told them his name. He learned theirs, or, rather, their nicknames, for each man in the prison was known only by his nickname, and his sentence, or "time." The fat one was called Toy, doing two years for stealing a bicycle. There was a thin one called Stardust, who did not look at Nail when he was introduced, who did not look at anything, who seemed to be staring at something impossibly far away. He had written bad checks and was doing three. The third one, doing five for safecracking, was a glowering, ugly, scarfaced man not as tall as Nail but more powerfully built, called, for a reason Nail never learned, Thirteen.

Nail's bunkmates understood his name to be Nails, and thence-forward everyone called him that; it stood him in good stead, because it suggested being tough as nails, mean as nails, hungry enough to eat nails. He got a chance to earn his nickname that first night: Thirteen tried to persuade Nail to let him put his p.e.n.i.s in Nail's mouth; Nail declined rudely, and later, when they'd gone to bed and Thirteen was sleeping behind Nail, Thirteen tried to force himself into Nail's a.n.u.s; Nail whipped around and hit him, and Thirteen fought back viciously. The two men slugged and whomped and whacked each other all over the barracks before the night guards came in with wooden clubs and knocked them both senseless.

When Nail regained consciousness in the short hours of the morning, he found he was on the cement floor between bunks. The floor smelled of p.i.s.s, tobacco spit, and s.h.i.+t, and it was harder than nails, but at least he had it to himself. He rolled over and cradled his head on his arm and settled himself for sleep, but he became aware of the sounds: a general steady, grinding hum of many noses snoring in unison and counterpoint, punctuated by voices mumbling in nightmares or severe dreams; occasional grunts, snorts, creaking of bedframes; and, reminding him of bullfrogs croaking on the creek-bank, a chorus of farts. He listened to this mixture of sounds for a long time until it became almost monotonous, no longer novel and interesting. He rolled over to cradle his head on the other arm. He found himself thinking, for a while, of Miss Monday. What had she said her first name was? Something he'd never heard before. Maris or Berdice or Vernice. She was a real looker, good for the eyes, cla.s.sy and sniptious, spiffy and neat. In fact she was the spiffiest creature ever he'd seen. She was friendly too. And nice! Why, there'd been few women he'd ever known, his sister Irene for one, who were as nice. Had Berdice Monday really meant that about the trees? Or had she just been saying that to humor him? What call did she have to make him feel good? Anyway, he did feel real good, thinking of her, and it helped him fall asleep at last.

Hers was the first face he saw in deep sleep, that lovely smile, only this time it wasn't smiling but looking sad because he was sitting in Old Sparky waiting for Bobo to pull the switch. Only it wasn't really him, it couldn't be him, because there he sat beside Vernice Monday, that was sure enough him. Then who was this him sitting here in this electric chair? He looked at his strapped arms and saw they were black. He realized that this evening wasn't the evening of the day before, December 2nd, his day, but the evening of October 31st, time had gone all the way back to Halloween, more than a month before, and he was a black boy named Skipper Thomas, who had been accused of killing his white lady that he worked for, although n.o.body'd ever seen him do it or had any evidence whatever and he'd worked for her long enough to know that it was her own nephew who'd done it so he'd get the money she left, but it was too late now, there was Mr. Burdell the warden with his hand in the air, and now he drops his hand, and I feels it! I feels the current coming up my legs and down from my head and meeting in my innards and there's Mr. Bobo with his dull dumb blank look like he's just absentmindedly broken off a limb from a bush, only it's not a limb it's the switch-handle, the switch-handle is down, the current is surging, my body is rumbling like a freight train, my head is shaking awful, I am biting my tongue nearly in two and trying to say to the trees, Save me, trees! Oh trees, save me! I'm not ready to die-ie-ie-ie! and I am trying hard to keep my heart still beating, my heart is pounding to keep from ever stopping, my heart will go on and on, although my head begins to hurt like no headache I've ever known, my legs are shot through with the pain of a thousand needles, my skin is all on fire, my stomach is boiling and about to come up through my gullet and into my mouth, I am in awful pain! and Mr. Bobo unbreaks the broken twig, he raises the switch-handle back up to where it was, and I know that I have lived! The current has not killed me, my heart beats strong, I am still alive, but the pain! The good G.o.d never intended for any of His mortal creatures to feel a pain as terrible as this, to burn like this. I look at Miss Maris Monday and her face is all stricken in what she knows must be my pain, and I look at Mr. Nail Chism sitting there beside her and he too has clenched his jaw and his eyes are stricken not because he knows this is what he too is going to have to endure come December but because he knows that no human being not even a worthless black n.i.g.g.e.r like me who shouldn't have been born in the first place ought to bear such hideous agony as this death that burns and tears and strips all of my flesh and soul except my heart which still beats strong and wants to live! and Mr. Nail Chism's eyes get wet and he yells, "G.o.dd.a.m.n you, Bobo, turn up the juice and leave it on!" and sweet-faced lady Miss Berdis Monday puts her hand on his arm to calm him down. Mr. Bobo looks at Mr. Burdell the warden and Mr. Burdell nods his head once and Mr. Bobo pushes the switch-handle back down and once more I feels it! Once more I feels the divine almighty current charge like a thousand horses running through my veins and the violent fire burns away my pain for one long forever although my teeth are one by one jarred loose in my mouth and my eyeb.a.l.l.s get rolled back inside my head so that I am blind and can no longer see the sweet but stunned face of Miss Vernice Monday and the sympathetic scowl of Mr. Nail Chism and I can't see nothing only the raging of the horses that trample upon my heart but still can't make it stop. The horses give up. The current stops. My eyes are blind, my nose is stopped by the stink of my burning skin, only my ears can hear the voice, it's no angel coming for to carry me home but that warden Mr. Burdell: "Is he dead?" No, I am not dead, but I have now abandoned G.o.d before He ever had a chance to abandon me: I have done went and quit Him for eternity because no G.o.d however powerful or wrathful could create the kind of pain that wracks me now: this kind of pain could only be the work of Satan; only the Devil Himself could be evil enough to create such unspeakable torture and punishment as this burning pain.

I spit out my fallen teeth to free my tongue, and I cry, "Mo juice! In de name ob de Debbil, mo juice!"

A hand was shaking Nail's shoulder, and he raised his head from the concrete floor. The first light of dawn was coming into the barracks, and the face peering into his own was that of the mute Stardust, who was not now mute: "Is it orange juice you're asking for? We don't have any."

Nail sat up and gave his head a toss to clear it. "What?" he said.

"You were screaming for juice," Stardust said. "We haven't even water to drink. If you are very thirsty, I will pee for you."

"Leave me alone," Nail said, and turned away and tried to sleep again.

The only advantage to being in the stockade instead of the death hole, he discovered later that day, was that in the stockade you were sometimes allowed to go to the visit room, a wooden shack built up against the high brick wall of The Walls, which had one door leading through the wall to an anteroom, beyond which was the outside world. The visit room was divided down the middle by a screen of heavy wire that nothing larger than a nail could pa.s.s through. A trusty-guard with a shotgun and a pair of bolstered six-shooters guarded the room. Once a month you were allowed one visit to the visit room, for not more than fifteen minutes...if you had anyone who wanted to come and talk to you. Many of the men never had any visitors. If you were in the death hole, you were not allowed to go to the visit room; the only visitor who could come to the death hole was Jimmie Mac the preacher, or your lawyer, if you had a good one, or, the day before your death, your mother or wife or sweetheart. Nail's mother had not been able to make the long trip from Stay More.

But Nail had a visitor his first day out of the death hole. Short Leg came and got him and escorted him to the visit room. It had been so long since he'd last seen his older brother that he hardly knew him.

"Waymon!" Nail said, and he wanted to ram his manacled hands through the wire screen so he could shake hands with old Waymon. "What're you doin here?"

Waymon grinned. "Came to take yore body home," he said. "You know them two ole mules, Spiff and Greeny, that you used to hire out from Ingledew's to take yore wool to Harrison? Wal, I've got 'em right out's yonder, hitched to a wagon with a coffin in it, purtiest piece of carpentry ye ever seen. Took me ten days to git to Little Rock, cold as it's been."

Nail couldn't help laughing, and when he laughed, so did Waymon. The guard looked at them as if they'd gone crazy. "I sh.o.r.e hate to disappoint you," Nail said, "and make you go home empty-handed."

"What have they done to ye?" Waymon asked. "Brother, you look lak somethin the cat drug in. Got a knot on yore bald haid the size of a baseball. And all them bruises! What did they beat ye up fer?"

"Askin too many questions," Nail said. "Leastways, I'm alive."

"s.h.i.+t, I never liked to stand around through a funeral, nohow," Waymon said. "And it would've cost us forty dollars for yore headstone. Paw spent the last cent we had for that new lawyer, Cobb."

Nail did not find that funny. "That right? He oughtn't've done that."

"And mortgaged the farm besides."

"Mortgaged?" Nail was indignant. "Who put the mortgage on us?"

"John Ingledew," Waymon said. "The Jasper bank wouldn't even talk about it. But Ingledew's bank needed the business, I reckon, and he give Paw three hunderd dollars for the whole place, includin Maw's old eighty."

Nail's hands spread against the chain of the handcuffs as if he were trying to break it. "I'll kill that son of a b.i.t.c.h."

"Naw, Nail," Waymon said. "Ingledew's doin us a favor. All them Jasper folks is on the side of Sull and Duster Snow and them. Wasn't for John Ingledew, we couldn't never've got ye that new lawyer."

"How is Paw?" Nail wanted to know.

"Porely," Waymon said. "But not on account of this business. You know he's had that heart dropsy for some years. Doc Plowright says he ort to go up to the hospital up to Harrison."

"Why don't he?" Nail asked, and when Waymon did not answer but just hung his head, Nail asked, "Don't he have none of that three hunderd dollars left?"

Waymon tried to explain. It was complicated. That new lawyer they'd hired, Farrell Cobb of Little Rock, wasn't charging them the whole three hundred dollars for his appeal to the Supreme Court. Part of it was a "retainer," which, Waymon attempted to explain, was to make sure that Mr. Cobb would do everything he could, for as long as it took, to get Nail out. The agreement with Cobb stipulated that in the event of Nail's electrocution, Seth Chism would get a partial refund.

"s.h.i.+t," Nail commented. "Paw'd be better off if I was fried, after all."

"Don't ye talk lak thet, Nail," Waymon pled. "Yore life is worth a whole lot more than three hunderd dollars."

"It aint worth more than our whole d.a.m.n farm!" Nail said. Then he asked, "How's my sheep?"

Again Waymon hung his head. "Nail, I hate to tell ye. You know I hate to tell ye. What few of them sheep the drought didn't git, the dogs got."

"Ever last one of 'em?" Nail asked. "Didn't they leave me a lamb or two?"

Waymon shook his head.

"Well," Nail said, and pictured his pastures empty of their flocks. Right now there would be no gra.s.s: the last of the autumn gra.s.s would be gone, and the spring gra.s.s not started yet. He asked, "How's Maw?"

"Jist fine," Waymon said. "She wanted to come with me, but Paw wouldn't let her. She'll sh.o.r.e be glad to see that I'm bringin a empty box home."

"Irene? How's she been?" Nail asked of their sister.

Waymon gave his head a tilt and dip. "Lonesome, don't ye know? But she's a big help to Maw, and they keep each other company, I reckon."

"She don't see Sull no more?"

Waymon shook his head. "She aint been back to Jasper one time since yore trial."

They talked until their fifteen minutes were up. Waymon told him that he had accosted Sull Jerram on the square in Jasper and told him that he, Waymon, intended to put him in his grave if Nail died in the chair. Waymon's parting words to his brother were "Well, you didn't die in the chair, but I'm a mind to put Sull in his grave anyhow, for what he done to ye."

Waymon was not the only visitor he had that day. Two more visitors came before dark. You were supposed to get only one visit a month, but these two didn't count, because they were the preacher and the lawyer. The preacher was Jimmie Mac, who said he just wanted to say he was real happy that Nail was still alive and he wondered if Nail had had time yet to make up his mind that the good Lord Himself had seen fit to spare him, and wasn't that enough to convince him that the good Lord really did exist and cared for him? Jimmie Mac was disappointed to learn that Nail had not followed his advice and spent his last hours in prayer, but he could understand how a feller might have other things on his mind at such a time. But now that the execution had been postponed, didn't Nail think he had some time to seek out the Lord and take it to Him in prayer and ask Him for His forgiveness and blessing and promise of salvation forevermore? Didn't Nail know that G.o.d loved him? Didn't Nail realize that G.o.d works in mysterious ways and we are not to question His wisdom but glory in His deeds? Had Nail read Hebrews the twelfth chapter and the verses three through thirteenth, especially the sixth verse: "For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth"? Didn't Nail wish to be a son of the Lord and endure the Father's chastis.e.m.e.nt? Couldn't Nail understand what a challenge it was to be chastened and punished and to survive whole and pure in the sight of G.o.d and reap the rewards of life everlasting and the fruits of righteousness?

"No," replied Nail.

"No which?" asked Jimmie Mac.

"No I don't have much use for that Lord," he said.

The lawyer came just before suppertime and wasn't required to use the visit room but was allowed to sit with Nail right in the mess hall. The lawyer was right at home here in The Walls and had been here many times before. "The missus is expecting me shortly or I'd break bread with you," he apologized, wedging himself in between Nail and the fat convict named Toy on the long bench. There were only two tables in the mess hall, but each of them was the length of the room; all of the white men sat at one table, all of the black men at the other. "No reflection on the quality of the food, you understand," Farrell Cobb remarked, lowering his voice conspiratorially. The food was the same Nail had for lunch and for breakfast, the same food they'd served him when he was in the death hole, the same food everybody got three times a day, seven days a week: one piece of cold cornbread, one small chunk of mostly fat probably from beef but hard to tell, one cup of something warm that Nail had never been able to determine was supposed to be taken for coffee or soup but that could be either, or neither. The butcher shops of Little Rock were swept of their sc.r.a.ps at the end of the business day, and the fatty sc.r.a.ps were served at the Arkansas State Penitentiary.

Farrell Cobb stared at Nail's plate, and his lips formed themselves into a suggestion of nausea. "In Mississippi," he whispered, "they don't get any meat whatsoever." He looked around to see if any of the other men crowded along the benches were listening, but none of them were paying any attention to him, having already noted his suit and tie, his heavy overcoat which protected him against this biting cold, and having either recognized him or stopped wondering what he was doing here; or having never cared to begin with. "Just beans or cowpeas," Cobb added, and added to that, "Well, I guess you'd not mind a serving of beans or some other vegetables too, but my experience is, the prisoners given a choice would always rather have a bit of fat meat than a bit of beans." Nail ate. "Now, here we are discussing the menu when we ought to be considering more important matters, such as those contusions and risings you've recently acquired. Can you hear me?" Farrell Cobb kept his voice low and his mouth close to Nail's ear. "If your beatings were provoked, all I can advise is to be very careful, to follow all the rules, to show proper respect for your keepers and superiors, to strive at all times to conform to the system, and to do nothing that might be construed as rebellious or aggravating. On the other hand, if you were beaten without provocation, that is indeed a sorry state of affairs, and one that I have protested time and time again, to little effect, I'm afraid, since, as you may have observed, it appears to be the routine in this inst.i.tution, as everywhere else. I suppose we ought to condone a little corporal punishment in our efforts to wipe out capital punishment. But I know it hurts. I don't approve of the strap, let me tell you." Cobb's gaze wandered up and down the table, seeking out the men who had obviously been victims of the strap and had recent cuts, welts, stripes, or scars to show for it. Nail kept chewing and let his eyes follow Cobb's. He had not received any strap yet himself, only the backs and fronts of hands, and wooden clubs, which were bad enough. They had better not try to use any strap on him. "Well now, here we are talking about the mistreatment of prisoners as if anything could be done about it, when that is not really what I'm here to talk about at all. What I came to say was to give you a little report on our little efforts to get you out of that little old hot squat." Cobb's chuckle was audible to the other men, who raised their eyes from their plates to see what humor was the cause of it. Cobb noted his audience, and appeared on the verge of repeating his clever term for Old Sparky in order to amuse them. But he did not. Instead, he asked Nail, "Well, what do you say?"

"What do I say?" Nail asked.

"Yes: what do you have to say?"

"I'm fine, I reckon. How about you?"

"No, I mean, aren't you going to say anything to me for what I did to get you a stay of execution?"

"Oh," Nail said. "Thank you. I appreciate it."

"You're welcome. Let me tell you, it wasn't easy. I was on the telephone all of Tuesday night and most of yesterday. Thank G.o.d and Alexander Graham Bell. I'll have you know I even placed through a telephone call to Fort Smith, to reach Judge Bourland, and that's what? a hundred and fifty miles of telephone wire. If that wire hadn't been there, you wouldn't be here right now. It was Judge Bourland who got the Supreme Court to agree to hear your appeal, and it was his special-delivery letter hand-delivered to Governor Hays at 4:50 P.M. yesterday, just ten minutes short of the time the governor was to quit for the day, that persuaded him to use his authority to stop the execution."

The gong clanged to signal the end of suppertime. The men stood as one, executed a right face-except Farrell Cobb, who turned the wrong way-and marched out in lockstep. Mr. Cobb got himself in line and attempted the lockstep in following after Nail, continuing to talk into his ear from behind but having to crane his neck to do so: "Judge Bourland said, and I quote him, that your defense was 'butchered.' Without naming names, he as much as called your James Thomas Duckworth a dolt and a bungling idiot who ought to be disbarred. I know that if we get the case to the full court when it meets again in January, we can convince them that Duckworth didn't take the proper steps for appeal, not to mention that he made a perfect shambles of the trial itself." At the door to the barracks, which Farrell Cobb could not enter, he quickly asked, "Is there anything I can do for you? Anything you need?"

"You said you'd get me home for Christmas," Nail reminded him.

"Well, I am always an optimist," Cobb said. "In this profession you must be constantly hopeful and confident. What say let's shoot for Valentine's Day, at the latest?"

Later Fat Gabe came to his bunk, with Short Leg and two of the Negro trusties, whose job, he discovered, was restraint more than anything else. "Uh-oh," said Toy, and Stardust looked off into the next century, and Thirteen pretended he didn't exist.

Fat Gabe said to Nail, "Who told you to talk to that man?"

"He did most of the talkin," Nail replied.

"You think you're some kind of privileged person? You think just because you beat the chair you can have special treatment? You think you can have company at supper?"

"I didn't invite him," Nail pointed out. "He's a lawyer."

"You talkin back to me?" Fat Gabe yelled.

"Nope, I'm jist tellin ye who's who and who's what."

"That lawyer was Farrell Cobb, the biggest a.s.s-licker in Pulaski County," Fat Gabe said.

"You may be right," Nail said.

"You sayin I'm not right?" Fat Gabe said.

"Naw, I said you may be right."

"That's what I thought you said, Chism. You think you're somebody important, don't you, just because you beat the chair? The chair couldn't kill you, but I've got a notion to do it. Take down your pants."

"Huh?" Nail said. "It's too cold."

"TAKE DOWN YOUR PANTS!" Fat Gabe yelled into his face. Nail did nothing. Fat Gabe looked at the two Negro trusties, each in turn. "What are you c.o.o.ns just standin there for? Take off his pants."

While one of the Negroes and Short Leg held him, the other Negro pulled off his pants and then ripped off his underwear. "Turn 'im around," Fat Gabe said, and they turned him to face the bunk and held his arms along the upper bunk. Nail could not see the instrument of punishment, but as soon as the first blow had fallen, he could picture it exactly: a strap of harness leather two and a half feet long by two and a half inches wide, attached to a wooden handle sixteen inches long, held in Fat Gabe's hand, and swung back as far as he could reach. The other convicts made way to give Fat Gabe swinging room. Nail's father Seth had tanned his hide, the last time, with a length of plow harness, when Nail was eleven years old and had refused to get up in the middle of the night to stoke the boiler in the still. Nail could still remember it, and he remembered counting the blows: ten in all, which had been enough to persuade him to obey his father the next time Seth asked him to do anything. I haven't disobeyed anybody, Nail thought now, except I wouldn't take down my pants like he asked me to, and I had a good reason for that: it's freezing in here. But he felt already the heat of his smarting b.u.t.tocks warming his whole body. He wasn't cold anymore, just incredibly sore, and he counted the number of licks beyond ten: eleven and twelve and thirteen. You'd think Fat Gabe's arm would tire out, but it didn't. Something wet was trickling down the back of his legs, and he hoped it was s.h.i.+t but knew it was blood. Fourteen and fifteen and sixteen. As long as the blows had been falling on his skin it had been possible to bear them, but now each lash cut into wounded flesh and seared the raw underskin. Seventeen was an awful one unto itself. Eighteen was unbearable. Nineteen made him feel faint. Twenty...

He heard a voice say, "Turn him around," and the two blacks who were keeping him from reaching his dagger and murdering Fat Gabe turned him toward his a.s.sailant, who was wearing a look as if he were not tired but enjoying himself, and who swung back the strap aiming to lash Nail on his genitals.

He begged for the first time in his life. "No!"

But Fat Gabe hit him there, and it was much worse than being hit on his b.u.t.tocks. Even the torturer seemed to retain a shred of fellow-feeling to realize how hideous the scourging must have felt, and he was not putting the full force of his swing into the blows but checking them so that they slapped against Nail's genitals without cutting, only stinging and bruising. Nail lost consciousness.

How much later he came to he couldn't tell, except that it was dark and there was a face close to his own, speaking to him. The voice was Toy's, and Toy had very bad teeth, which gave his breath a rancid stench, especially so close: they were lying side by side in the lower bunk. "They done that to me last week," said Toy. "It helps if you kind of draw your knees up towards your chest. Here, you can have my s.p.a.ce to draw up your knees. Like that. It keeps your b.a.l.l.s from killing you. Don't it? Do you feel some better that way?"

"Hush," Nail said. "Let me sleep. Thanks."

"You know what they strapped me for?" Toy went on. "At dinner once Stardust wouldn't eat his bread, sometimes he don't eat at all, and once when he left his bread like that I was real hungry so I took it and ate it. You know we aint supposed to touch n.o.body else's food 'ceptin our own?"

"Yeah, that's the rule," Nail said. "Let's be quiet now and go to sleep."

"One of them n.i.g.g.e.r waiters saw me grab it, and he reported me, and I got twenty lashes behind and ten in front." Toy sighed, and his sigh carried a full blast of fetor.

"Fat Gabe is the meanest feller on this earth," Nail remarked. "Now hush. Shh. Let me sleep."

"It wasn't Fat Gabe that put the strap to me. It was the warden," Toy said. "Mr. Burdell." And Toy went on talking. He seemed on the verge of telling Nail his whole life's story, and Nail began to crave some ventilation. Toy was born in Lonoke, Arkansas, and had been all the way to Memphis, a big town. He once went to a wh.o.r.ehouse in Memphis. He'd saved up his money from picking strawberries and wanted to find out what having two women simultaneously would be like. He picked out a light-haired one and a dark-haired one. Nail told himself that Toy must have had better teeth in those days, or no woman would have come near him. Toy began to tell what each of the women had done to him, or let him do to them.

"'scuse me," Nail interrupted suddenly. "I need to go out real bad." He climbed out of the bunk and painfully stood up, clutching his groin. He was not going out, of course, but he needed to find the pot, not just to get away from Toy; he was suddenly very sick in his bowels. If he didn't get to the pot soon, he'd mess his pants. The barracks had a couple of those enameled tin slop buckets: a white enamel one for white men, a black enamel one for black men. In the dark it was hard to tell them apart, but Nail didn't care. At least he had the decency to use the pot; most of the men thought that using the slop buckets was dandified, pretentious, effeminate: they preferred using the floor, and you had to be careful where you walked, especially if you were barefoot, as many of them were who couldn't afford shoes. Nail never took off his brogans, but still he could feel an occasional squish beneath his feet as he stumbled through the rows of bunks, feeling his way with his hands, and touching an arm or a foot here and there, and unwittingly waking a man or two, who cursed. He reached one of the pots, black or white, just in the nick of time. The pot smelled far worse than Toy's breath, and Nail poured into it a searing torrent of distress from his guts. He continued to squat there until long after the stabs and quakes had stopped tearing within him. He hoped that if he waited long enough, Toy would be asleep when he returned to the bunk.

But Toy suffered from insomnia and welcomed him back and resumed his long story of the Memphis brothel. Then he thought of an even better story: the time he found that nymphomaniac in the strawberry patch. He had to interrupt this story twice to allow Nail to stumble off into the darkness to the commode. Toy was still breathing his vile story when Nail managed at last to doze off.

The five o'clock gong woke him. Toy was still talking but had rolled onto his back and was telling his story to the ceiling, a tale of some De Valls Bluff girls who gang-raped a twelve-year-old Lonoke boy, not Toy but his cousin Virgil. At the fifth clang of the gong a guard yelled, "Rise and s.h.i.+ne 'em, squad up and jump." When Nail tried to get out of bed, he knew he was not going to be able to rise or to s.h.i.+ne, to squad up or even to eat, let alone to jump. He was sicker than a dog, and it wasn't any food he'd eaten that had done it either.