JC2 The Raiders (5 page)

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.

His back healed, and he learned to sleep in a long room filled with
the oppressive stench of unwashed men and unwashed clothes, blowing
wind from the meals of beans, the night loud with their snoring and
cursing, violent with constant jerks on the chain between their legs.
He learned to live without baths or clean clothes. He learned not to
vomit as he relieved himself as fast as he could in latrine shacks
over reeking holes of excrement alive with flies. He learned to walk
in leg irons. He began to believe he might survive his year.

Then Big John LeBeau came for him.

It was in the evening, the first time. The prisoners were allowed to
sit around in the dust of the yard, smoke, and talk for an hour
before they were herded into the barracks and the chains were passed
between their legs. Maurie's work was not finished. He was still in
the kitchen, scrubbing tin plates.

Big John was a trusty with no chains on his legs. He was a gargantuan
man, obese but with swelling muscles. Although men were allowed to
shave — under supervision — twice a week, he shaved once
a month. His arms were blue with tattoos of snakes and dragons. The
convicts called him Boss.

He stalked into the kitchen shack, grabbed Maurie by the collar, and
shoved him into a pantry stacked with bags of cornmeal and
five-gallon cans of lard. Inside, with the door closed, he unbuttoned
his pants and pulled out his long, thick penis.

"Okay, Ikey," he said. "What I
hear, Jew-boys are better'n anybody at sucking on". Well ...
better'n anybody but Jew
girls
. An' they ain' no Jew girls
here. So, get at it. Let's see what you can do."

He put his hands on Maurie's shoulders and pushed him down to his
knees.

Maurie whimpered. Big John shoved his wet, stinking phallus against
Maurie's face. "Get goin'," he growled.

The door opened. Maurie nearly fainted. The
penalty for doing what he had not yet begun to do — but surely
looked like
he was doing — had to be something brutal.

"Whatcha doin', John?"

Maurie looked up and through his tears saw Max Sand.

"You kin have yours after he gits finished with me," said
Big John. "I kinda figured on the kike bein' mine, but, what the
hell, I'll share with one man. In the spirit of Christian charity."

Max shook his head. "I don't figger it that way, John," he
said. "I figger we oughta leave the Jew-boy alone. You an' me,
we're tough enough t' handle th' Loo-zeeanna prison system. He ain't.
There's plenty of men be glad to do what you got in mind. Git it from
them. Let's let this poorly little fella alone."

Big John stepped around Maurie. His erect penis was still sticking
out as he confronted Max Sand.

"You gone tell
me
who gits let alone,
who don't?" he asked, squinting and bouncing a little on the
balls of his feet as if he were ready to attack.

Max didn't wait to see what Big John had in mind. With his right hand
he slapped him hard on that erect penis; and while Big John stood
startled, even a little stunned, grabbing at himself. Max drove his
left fist into his belly. Big John grunted and staggered, and before
he could recover himself Max began pounding him, left fist and right
fist, in the gut. Big John dropped to his knees, gagged and heaved,
and spit out a mess of beans and grease.

Max had been smart. If he'd bloodied the big man's face with his
fists, the fight would have become known to the guards, and both of
them would have been lashed and locked in a cage. As it was, Big John
was defeated but unmarked.

"Figger I'm right, John?" Max asked as the big man
struggled to his feet.

Big John nodded. "See you again sometime, Max." Maurie
couldn't express his gratitude. He didn't have a chance to try. Max
led Big John back into the kitchen and pumped a tin cup of water for
him. Then they left the shack.

Five months later something terrible happened. Max Sand escaped,
together with Mike the big Negro trusty and a prison hustler named
Reeves. The common story was that no one had ever escaped, but those
three did. It caused a burdensome clampdown on security for a while:
constant strip searches, more whippings, in general a tougher life
for all the convicts. Then things went back to routine.

Something terrible ... It was terrible for Maurie. Immediately, Big
John came back and began again where he had left off when Max stopped
him. For all the remaining months of his sentence, Maurie was
compelled to service Big John LeBeau.

Big John knew the prison routine and was a trusty besides. He found
times and places, sometimes twice a day. Maurie had no choice. What
he had to do made him sick every time he did it. He hated Big John
and in his fantasies killed him a thousand times, a dozen ways.

Killing him would have been foolish, even if Maurie could have done
it and gotten away with it. It would have meant only that other men
would have demanded the same of him. Big John called him his wife and
demanded that other men keep away from him. Maybe it was better,
Maurie had to concede, that he was Big John's "wife." Not
only did other men not dare intrude on what was Big John's; they
didn't dare in any way abuse the little Jew who was under his special
care.

For whatever reason, Maurie survived.

The familiar hard lines of the face were obscured by a thick black
beard. The clothes were very different — no black-and-white
stripes but a fringed buckskin jacket and Levi's, cowboy boots, and a
champagne-colored cowboy hat, one of those with the tall crown and
the broad brim. The man wore a pistol on his hip, too. He was tall
and hard. He walked with complete self-confidence up to the bar,
where he ordered whiskey.

It was the man who was with him that confirmed the identification. He
hadn't changed, maybe couldn't change. He was Mike, the big Negro who
had knocked Maurie unconscious with the second blow of the lash and
had whipped him while he was unconscious. He wore the same kind of
clothes and carried a gun.

If that was Mike — and it sure as hell
was
Mike — then the man with him was Max.

Sure. Max Sand. You could tell by the blue eyes.

Maurie gathered his chips, nodded farewell at his
playing friends, and walked up to the bar. Max wouldn't know
him,
either. Max's clothes were handsome, conspicuously expensive; and
Maurie's were too, in a style as different as two styles could be.
Maurie's fine gray suit, narrow-tailored with a four-button jacket
and thin lapels that ended at the level of the armpits, had set him
back a few dollars. He wore a white shirt and celluloid collar, a
pink satin necktie with a genuine diamond stickpin, high shoes and
spats — pretty much what the deputy had laughed at when he
described Maurice Cohen's clothes to the warden.

"Max."

Max Sand's head snapped around. Apparently he did not like to be
recognized.

Maurie sensed danger and spoke quickly. "Maurie Cohen." He
nodded then to the big Negro. "Mike."

Max's eyes, which had focused on him glittering hard, now softened.
He raised his chin and looked down at Maurie. "Yeah," he
said to Mike. "It's Maurie. Figured him for dead, didn't you?"

Mike shook his head. "Man lives through his ten stripes ain'
gonna die of suckin' John."

"More nearly," said Maurie bitterly. "Can I buy you
two gentlemen a drink."

"Why not?" said Max.

"Bottle of the better stuff for my friends," Maurie said to
the bartender. "And my usual."

The bartender shoved a quart of whiskey across the bar toward Max. He
poured a small glass half full of an odd yellowish fluid, and Maurie
lifted a pitcher and added some water to it. The stuff turned milky
green.

"What the hell's that?" Max asked.

"Absinthe," said Maurie. "It's made in France. I
picked up the habit in New Orleans. Well ... cheers. What's it been,
eight years?"

Max nodded. "Way I count it."

"Uh ... Figure Louisiana's still looking for you?"

Max shook his head. "Maurie ... I ain't never been in
Loo-zeeanna in my life."

Maurie stiffened. "Uh — No. Me neither."

"You look prosperous," said Max. "Han'some-lookin'
suit."

Maurie smiled and shrugged. "Pinchbeck,"
he said. "But I'm doing all right. There's money here. This is a
boomtown. They drill in new wells every day. This country's
afloat
on oil."

"You still sellin' fake insurance policies?" Max asked.

"No, sir," said Maurie. "They'd
hang a man for that here. They ain't got
no
sense of humor in
Texas. But you can make money playin' cards honest. I got my method.
Somebody says, 'You cheatin',' I says, 'Search me, friend. You'll
find no gun, no knife, and no extra cards.' And they do, and they
don't find them. Then I say, 'Call for a new deck of Bicycles, friend
— just in case you think I got 'em marked.'

Then we play some more, and I win some more. Then if I see the man's
gone bust, I say, 'Friend, I wouldn't never want a man to walk away
from a table busted from playing cards with me. I believe I won a
hundred fifty off you. Here's fifty back. Matter of principle with
me.'"

"How you do it?" Mike asked.

"I play all the time, and I play smart. I
don't drink when I'm playing. Besides ... word's around. It's a
challenge. Beat Maurie Cohen. That proves you're smart. I've been
paid as much as two hundred to sit with a man and lose a hundred to
him. Gives
him
a reputation. What he does with it is up to
him. Anyway, what are you guys doing in town?"

"We been runnin' cattle down in Mexico," said Max. "Once
in a while we come up to Texas to put some of our money in an
American bank."

"That's smart," said Maurie. "You like to have supper?
And I know where I can find a couple of real nice young girls."

"That's friendly of you, Maurie," said Max gravely. "We've
got to talk to a couple of men, then we'll be back."

A nightmare. They didn't knock on his door. They broke it down in the
middle of the night. By the time he was awake, their heavy handcuffs
were on his wrists, and he was being hustled out of his hotel room in
his nightshirt — totally mystified as to why.

"Gentlemen!" he protested. "I don't cheat! Any man who
has played with me can attest —"

One of the deputies shut him up with a hard fist to the jaw. He was
dragged into the sheriff's office bleeding from the mouth.

They shoved him into a chair.

"All right, Cohen. Who are they? Where are they?"

"Who?"

The deputy slapped him. "You bought a bottle for two guys, one
of them a nigger. You bought 'em supper. You bought two whores for
'em. That's who!"

"Friends," said Maurie. "Friends from years back. I
hadn't seen them in eight years. What — ?"

"They didn't get into the safe, you know,"
said the sheriff. He was a fragile little old man, pallid, with an
outsized hat he did not take off. "The one they kilt was one
of
them.
Now, you tell us why, Cohen. Why'd they kilt that man?
And
that way?
What the hell was goin' on?"

"I don't know!"

"Don't? Well, let's fill you in. They tried
to rob the Merchants and Mechanics Bank. Only thing, the clerk on
duty din't have the combination to the vault. They threatened to burn
his eyes out with a hot poker they'd heated in the office stove.
Instead, the big one, the mean one, burnt out the eyes of one of
them.
I mean, he blinded his partner with a red-hot poker he
shoved in his eyes. The man ain't gonna live, I don't think. No
difference. We'd hang him anyways."

"I don't know anything about this!" Maurie cried.

"Don't? The one they blinded was called Ed. What's his last
name?"

"I don't know! I never met no Ed."

"Who's the others? Who's the men you bought drinks and supper
and whores for?"

"I  "

The deputy slapped him hard, so hard Maurie wondered if his neck
hadn't snapped.

"
Names, goddamn ya
!"

Maurie bent forward and vomited. "Max!" he spluttered. "And
Mike! The nigger is named Mike!"

"Their last names?"

"I don't know!"

"Where you get to know 'em?"

"In Louisiana."

"Where in Loo-zeeanna?"

"I had to do time on a prison farm. They were there. Mike give
me stripes. Look on my back. You'll see I'm tellin' the truth."

The deputy lifted Maurie's nightshirt. He nodded at the sheriff.
"Marks of a Loo-zeeanna prison snake if ever I seed any."
He stared at Maurie with a new eye, with a sort of grudging respect.

"Cohen, where are these two men?" the sheriff asked.

"If I knew, I'd say," said Maurie. "I don't owe them
nothin'."

The sheriff frowned at the deputy. "Well ..."
he mused, pushing his hat back on his head but not taking it off. "I
figger they'd-a got the fifty thousand out of the vault, you'd-a got
a share. On that basis, we'll hold you for bank robbery and ... if
the one they called Ed dies, for murder. Hangin' you might not be
technical
right, but it'll rid the world of one slick little
Jew. Welcome our kike-boy into a cell, Brewster."

Nightmare. They took away his nightshirt and locked him in their cell
naked, saying they'd bring his clothes from the hotel tomorrow. He
wrapped himself in the skimpy, threadbare gray blanket from his cot
and sat there shivering the rest of the night and all the next day.
They didn't bring his clothes. They brought newspaper reporters to
look at the bank robber — including a woman, before whom he
could not cover himself decently. They shot off flash powder and took
pictures of him.