Half of Paradise (10 page)

At seven in the morning the jailer opened the door to the main room and the trusties wheeled in the food carts and unlocked the tank. The area outside the tank was called the bullpen, where the men were allowed to move about during the day. The jailer always stood in the doorway and watched the men line up with their tin plates and spoons for breakfast and lunch (there was no supper). There was a white line painted on the floor, forming a six-foot square around the doorway where he stood. This was the deadline, and none of the inmates was allowed across it when the door was open. If they did come past the line, they would be knocked to the floor by either the jailer or one of the trusties. The jailer, large and heavyset, was a careful man and took no chances.

During the day the men could do as they pleased in the bullpen. The room had to be kept clean, and it was forbidden to throw anything out the windows, whether a cigarette end or a scrap of paper, or call down to the people in the street. If a rule was broken, one of two things could happen. Everyone could be thrown in the tank and left there for several days, or the person who broke the rule would be dragged off to the hole, which was in another part of the building. The hole was a cast-iron cage, like the tank, except much smaller in size with enough room for only two men. It was ordinarily used to hold men who were condemned to death and awaiting execution, but since these men were there for only a short time it was usually left free to be used as a place of solitary confinement. On one wall of the hole there was a list of names written in pencil with a date beside each one. These were the men who had been put to death upstairs.

Avery’s trial had been over for a week. He had pleaded guilty and received a sentence of one to three years to be served in a penal work camp. LeBlanc had drawn the same sentence as Avery for running moonshine, plus seven years for armed assault. Both of them were being held in the parish jail until they would be transferred to the work camp. When they came into the jail their personal belongings were taken from them and put into two brown envelopes, and they were each issued a tick mattress, a tin plate, a tin cup, and a spoon. The tank was full, and they were among the men who slept on the floor.

Avery and LeBlanc had their mattresses pulled against the wall to leave room for a walkway. There was a card game going on in the corridor. Five of the inmates sat or lay in a circle. A candle stub was melted to the floor in the center, and the thin flame flickered on their faces. Every night they played cards with the same faded incomplete deck. They used matchsticks for stakes, and the two winners were exempt from the cleaning detail in the morning.

Avery watched the game in silence. LeBlanc was playing, although none of the men wanted him. He had caused trouble since the first day he was brought into the jail. He had cursed the jailer and tried to hit a guard, for which he got a week in the hole. He refused to eat for three days when he came out. One of the inmates gave him a plate of food and told him to eat something, and LeBlanc threw it against the wall beside the doorway where the jailer stood. He was given two more days in the hole. He told everyone he would kill the jailer or a guard if given the chance. When he got out of the hole the second time he set fire to his mattress and filled the room with smoke. The men lied to the jailer and said that someone had dropped a cigarette on the mattress and the fire was an accident. They didn’t lie because they liked LeBlanc; whenever someone did something wrong, Ben Leander the jailer punished all the inmates. He didn’t look upon the men as individuals. They were a group, and when one of the group went against him the entire lot was to blame.

It was LeBlanc’s deal. He shuffled the cards and set them down to be cut.

“Five-card stud,” he said.

“We been playing draw,” one man said.

“I’m dealing stud. You ain’t got to play.”

The other men told him to deal draw poker.

“I ain’t playing draw,” he said. “It’s dealer’s choice, and I call stud. One card down and four up. If nobody don’t want to play I take the ante.”

“Play like we been doing.”

“We always play the same game,” another said.

“The game is stud,” LeBlanc said, dealing the cards.

Avery sat and watched. Sherry, the man next to him, rolled a cigarette from loose tobacco in a shred of newspaper. The men had given him his name because he had been able to conceal a bottle of wine in his overalls when he was brought in. He was being held for the robbery of a liquor store.

“Your podner acts like he ain’t right in the head,” he said.

“It’s because he’s locked up,” Avery answered.

“We all locked up. That don’t give him no excuse.”

“He was in the war.”

“He’s got a crazy look in his face,” Sherry said. “Setting fire to his mattress like that. We like to coughed our lungs out from the smoke. He’s lucky they give him another mattress to sleep on.”

“The jail is rough on him.”

“Wait till he gets to the pen.”

“They’re sending us to a work camp.”

“That’s worse. They treat you better at the pen.”

“You been up before?”

“Three times around,” Sherry said. “It ain’t too bad for me. I’m used to it. Only thing I miss is drinking. With some of the cons it’s women. That’s all they talk about in the pen. With me it’s liquor. I can go without pussy, but I miss my drinking.”

Avery looked at Sherry. His face was an alcoholic’s. The lips were a bluish color in the darkness, and his jaws were flecked with small blue and red lines. His eyeballs twitched nervously.

“I go on a drunk once a month,” he said. “I stay drunk about a week and then I’m okay. But I got to have that week.”

“What are you in for?” he asked.

“Running moonshine.”

“Was you and LeBlanc working together?’

“There were two others. One got away and one drowned.”

Sherry looked from side to side and lowered his voice.

“It ain’t my business, but maybe it’d be better if you found yourself another podner.”

Avery didn’t answer and Sherry continued.

“He’s trouble, and you don’t want no trouble in the pen. You got to do like they tell you. He’ll crack up in the work camp. They’ll have to put him in a crazy house,” he said. “I’m just telling you what I think. You can podner with him if you want. But he’s going to get it at the camp.”

Avery turned back to the game. LeBlanc had finished his deal, and the man next to him was shuffling the cards. Every time LeBlanc drew a bad hand he threw down his cards and cursed the man who had dealt. When it was his turn to deal again he said he was going to change the game and called stud poker. The other men complained.

“Then nobody plays at all!” he shouted, and began to tear the cards in pieces and throw them in the air.

There was a brief fight. Two men held his shoulders to the floor while another wrenched the remaining cards from his hands. LeBlanc thrashed his feet and struck a man in the groin. The man reeled against the wall with a stupid expression of pain on his face. LeBlanc fought to get up, shouting at the top of his voice. The other men were coming out of their cells into the corridor to watch. He got one hand free and hit blindly at the figures around him.

“Somebody shut him up!”

“Leander is going to keep us in the tank for a week!”

“Belt him and get it over!”

“Bust him with a shoe. That’ll keep him quiet.”

A fist struck out and snapped LeBlanc’s head back against the iron floor. His eyes rolled, and he was unconscious. The men who had been holding him stood up.

“The sonofabitch can fight.”

“Leander ought to keep him in the hole till he starts beating his head on the walls.”

“Look what he done to Shortboy.”

“Does it hurt bad, Shortboy?”

Shortboy stood against the wall with a dazed look on his face. He couldn’t answer.

“See what he done?” Sherry said to Avery as the men moved away from LeBlanc, leaving him stretched out on the floor. One man picked up the candle stub and the scattered cards.

“Help me get him on his mattress,” Avery said to Sherry.

“Let him be. He ain’t our lookout.”

“Are you going to help me or not?”

“It ain’t good to podner with a guy like that.”

Avery went over to LeBlanc and dragged him by his arms to his mattress. The men stopped talking and watched him. Sherry moved to the other end of the corridor. There was a small patch of red in the back of LeBlanc’s hair. Avery rolled him over on his stomach. The men looked at Avery and began to talk among themselves. It was accepted by the inmates that no one was to help the victim when they dealt out punishment to one of their own members. Avery had broken the rule. Sherry came back and took his mattress to the end of the corridor. None of the men spoke to Avery for the remainder of the night.

In the morning the main door clanged open and the trusties entered with the food carts. The tank was unlocked, and the men picked up their cups and spoons and tin plates and shuffled out in the bullpen for breakfast. Avery shook LeBlanc by the shoulder to wake him. He lay in the same position as last night. There was a yellow and purple bruise along his jawbone, and a matted area of red in his hair His face was the color of ash; Avery was afraid he might have had a concussion. He shook him again

“Let’s go. It’s time for breakfast,” he said.

LeBlanc opened his eyes and sat up on his hands.

“My head hurts,” he said.

“Let’s go eat.”

LeBlanc felt the back of his head.

“It’s blood. Somebody hit me in the head.”

“Forget about it. We don’t want any more fights.

“What fights? I don’t remember nothing.”

“You were playing cards and you got into a fight.’

“I remember the cards, but I didn’t get in no fight. Somebody slipped up and cracked me in the back of the head.”

“Don’t worry about it now. Let’s get in the line.’

“Which one of them done it?”

“There were a lot of them. You can’t get them all.”

“I can get the one that give it to me,” LeBlanc said.

“Here’s your plate. I’m going to eat.”

He went out into the bullpen, and a minute later LeBlanc followed him. The men were in line before the food cart. The trusties were serving grits and sausage and coffee from the aluminum containers The men sat down on the floor with their backs against the wall and ate. When Avery and LeBlanc came out of the tank and got in line the talking stopped, and there was no sound but the scraping of the spoons in the plates. Leander the jailer looked at LeBlanc from the doorway. He had been a jailer long enough to know what had taken place the night before. He didn’t mind if LeBlanc had been ganged by the other men; maybe that was better than throwing him in the hole, and he wouldn’t be bothered with him anymore. But once a man had been beaten to death in the tank, and that had brought about an investigation, which cost the old jailer his job and caused the city officials a good deal of work.

“Who worked you over?” he said.

LeBlanc looked at him in hatred.

“Answer me.”

LeBlanc spit on the floor.

“Get out of the chowline,” Leander said. “You don’t eat breakfast this morning.” He turned to the other men and pointed his finger. “I’m not going to stand for this sort of crap in my jail. I’m a fair man until somebody crosses me, then I step on his neck. I don’t know which ones worked on LeBlanc, but that don’t matter because I’ll make every one of you pay for it. Any more fighting and I’ll lock you up in the tank until the stink gets so bad you won’t be able to breathe. Some of you ain’t been locked up for a week, but you can ask Shortboy what it’s like.”

Ben Leander told the trusties to take the food cart out. The men were usually given a second serving, but this morning they were being punished. Leander looked around the room once more and went out, clanging the iron door shut behind him.

“You fixed us good,” one man said to LeBlanc.

“He’ll cut us short on lunch, too,” another said.

“We was all right before you and your buddy come in.”

“Was you ever locked in the tank, Shortboy?” a third inmate said.

“He can’t keep nobody in there a week.”

“Shit he can’t.”

“Tell them about it, Shortboy.”

“It’s just like he says,” Shortboy said. He was a short, thick-bodied man, with a square build and a big nose and close-set eyes. “The stink seeps into your guts and they don’t send the trusties in to clean the crappers and them goddamn flies is all over the place and you think you’ll puke when they hand you the food through the slot in the door. About six months ago there was an old man in here. He used to walk around in his drawers all the time, and there was something wrong with one of his legs. It was red and swole up like rubber. One time the door was open and the old guy forgot and stepped across the deadline. Leander pushed him down on the concrete, and he got all skinned up. We wrote what happened on a piece of paper and everybody signed it. One of the guys took it to a newspaper when he got out. Soon as the paper come out Leander threw us in the tank for nine days. Nine fucking days, crowded up together like a bunch of pigs. We even set fire to them Bibles to get rid of the stink. There wasn’t none of us fit to piss on when we come out of there.”

“It ain’t right to lock everybody up for what one guy does,” a man said. “He ought to put LeBlanc in the hole and let us be.”

“You got no rights in here,” another said.

Avery and LeBlanc were over by the window. Avery had his plate and cup on the sill. He was standing. LeBlanc sat on the floor against the wall with his knees pulled up before him. His black hair hung in his face.

“We don’t have a lot of friends here,” Avery said.

“I don’t give a damn for that. Bunch of white trash.”

“Listen. If Leander locks us all in the tank, you and me aren’t going to be worth twenty-five cents.”

“I got some people to pay back. It’s them that’s got to be on the lookout.”

“There’re thirty of them. They’ll get started, and there won’t be any way to stop them.”

“I ain’t afraid of no white trash.”

“That isn’t it,” Avery said. “You’ve got to learn how to live in here if you’re going to make it.”