Dead Time

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  The others giggled. Fallon remembered that he was still deaf and dumb.

  By the time the wagon pulled away from the Natchitoches depot, the lanterns on the front had been lighted. By the time they reached Justice’s plantation, supper had already been consumed, and Fallon was taken to the bunkhouse, where men snored, sweated, farted, and stank.

  A wiry man, muscular, sweaty, and missing two fingers on his right hand, met Fallon at the door.

  “Shhhhhh,” he whispered. “Boys are sleepin’. I’m Cody. Don’t know if that’s my first name or last. See, I wasn’t supposed to get born. Ya need somethin’, you ask ol’ Cody. What’s yer name, kid?”

  Kid? Fallon had ten years on the boy.

  “Alexander. Harry Alexander.”

  “You’ll bunk below me.” Cody led the way, the boards creaking under his brogans, and Cody weighed less than a fart.

  The guards closed the door behind them.

  Fallon recalled something the warden at The Walls had read to him, something about having all bedding washed as well as all workers getting regular baths. Apparently, that looked good in black and white but wasn’t always followed to the letter 315 miles, as the trains moved, away.

  “What you want to know?” Cody asked, his voice a little less forced now that the guards had left the prisoners alone.

  “How many prisoners?” Fallon asked.

  “Thirty. Forty. Depends.”

  “Guards?”

  “Twelve. Two sergeants. Two camp guards. The rest are day guards.”

  “And the work?”

  Cody snorted. “Makes a white man wish the South hadn’t lost the war, pard. Now I know why them slaves wanted to get their jubilee.”

  He was laughing, but it stopped instantly, and Fallon saw the towering figure before him.

  “Who’s the fresh fish?” the voice asked.

  “Tom,” Cody said, pleadingly, “you best take it easy, man. Sunday morning’s comin’ ’round, and you know how the Colonel want his Sundays to be quiet.” Cody spun, probably grinned, though Fallon couldn’t see that well in the darkened confines of the bunkhouse. “The Colonel, I ain’t sure he’s that God-fearing, but he don’t like nothin’ to bother him on a day of worship. Which suits us. We gets Sunday off. Nothin’ to do but relax, maybe throw a ball around, pitch horseshoes. Gives us a day of rest of six days of nothin’ but hell.”

  “I said,” the monster called Tom repeated, “who’s the fresh fish?”

  “Harry Alexander,” Fallon answered. “If it’s any of your damned business.”

  A giant arm knocked Cody halfway across the room.

  The snores stopped. Fallon could make out the squeaking of bed slats and sheets being tossed aside as the men sat up. A match flared. A candle was lighted, casting a golden glow that didn’t brighten the room, but at least gave Fallon a chance to look into Tom’s face.

  Prisoners were required to be clean-shaven at The Walls. Apparently, the guards and Colonel Justice overlooked that rule when it came to convict labor at his Natchitoches plantation. Tom’s beard was thick, likely filled with bugs, and came down to about where his heart would’ve been located. Had he ever gotten a heart.

  “I’m makin’ it my business, fish.”

  Fallon saw the thick, brutal fingers close up as Tom tightened his fist.

  But big Tom never got a chance to bring that fist up. Fallon hit him in the jaw with a quick right, brought his left around almost instantly, and that punch sent the leviathan’s head banging against the hard cedar post that held up the bunk beds. By the time Tom realized what was happening, Fallon had brought a knee into the man’s groin, and then he reached out with both hands and pushed as hard as he could.

  Tom stumbled onto the floor, breaking one of the floorboards.

  He started cursing, but those were drowned out by the shouts of encouragement from the thirty-plus other prisoners now sitting in their beds.

  Tom was wailing, trying to push himself back to his feet, but as he rose, his left leg went through the busted floor. The building—more dismal shack than any solid structure—was propped up by mortared bricks and a cypress tree stump, maybe a foot off the rotting, stinking Louisiana land. Tom gripped his leg, groaned, cursed, spat out blood, and tried to pull it back into the building.

  Fallon glanced to his right, saw something on the floor, and he raced to it, grabbed the cold brass, turned, and emptied the spittoon’s contents into Tom’s ugly face.

  The man screamed in rage, tasting the foulness of tobacco juice, spit, the well-chewed remnants of tobacco, and maybe fifteen dozen soggy nubs of cigarettes. He probably swallowed some of the juice, as well. Tom gagged, coughed, twisting his head this way and that like a dog shaking himself dry. He cursed and worked those big fists against his eyes, trying to paw away the wretchedness. When he looked up and his vision cleared, Fallon slammed the spittoon into the man’s face. Cartilage broke. Blood spurted. The nose had been flattened, and down went the tough man, twisting, falling, one leg still stuck in the busted flooring.

  He landed with a cry and an oof. Tom tried to push himself back up, but Fallon still held the spittoon. He lifted it over his head, waited until Tom’s ugly head, the mane of hair now dripping with tobacco juice and blood, was above the flooring. He slammed the heavy brass onto the man’s skull. His hands slipped from under him, and Tom’s bloodied face crashed into the floor.

  “That ain’t fair!” A leathery figure leaped from a bunk to Fallon’s right. Fallon heard the sound of a knife blade being unfolded. “You son of a whore!” The figure came at Fallon, who saw the reflection of candlelight from the shiny blade.

  “I’ll skin you like a catfish,” the man said, and added a few curses in his own language.

  Fallon still held the spittoon, and he slammed it into the charging man’s face. The man fell back against a bunk, and the bed kept him upright. But not for long. Fallon slammed the brass cuspidor again into the man’s face. The blade fell to the floor. Fallon stepped closer, kicked the knife away, and brought the stinking vessel up. That caught the bottom of the attacker’s jaw, wrenched his neck up, and Fallon slammed the heavy container against his head. This time the convict fell into a heap.

  Turning, Fallon saw that the giant named Tom had managed to free himself from the flooring and shake some senses, some feeling, and a bit of consciousness back into his very being. He saw Fallon and roared like a grizzly as he charged.

  This time Fallon let go of the spittoon. He sent it sailing like he was rolling tenpins, and that brass caught the big galoot’s feet and sent him sailing onto the floor. No wood broke this time, but the man rolled over onto his back, cursed, and wound up lying between two bunks.

  As he tried to push himself up, Fallon lunged forward and leaped. He caught hold of the top bunks and saw the occupants scurry back toward the wall, like children waking from a nightmare and pulling back the covers toward them in abject fear.

  Fallon brought both legs down into Tom’s face. The force drove the giant back, and Fallon let go, dropping his feet into the big man’s gut. That cost Fallon his own footing, and he slipped, landed on the floor, rolled over, jumped up, and looked at Tom.

  Tom wasn’t moving anymore. He was bleeding. And he was breathing. That was about it. Fallon turned around, made sure the man who had opened the knife remained out of the fight. No worries there. The man had regained consciousness, but he was whimpering and had pulled himself into a ball like a newborn baby.

  Fallon sucked in the stinking air of the bunkhouse, held it, let it out. He made sure the knife remained on the floor. Fallon looked around and stared at shadowy faces.

  “Anybody else want to take a hand?”

  In answer, the front door of the shack was jerked open.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Which one of you yellow-bellies thinks he can ruin my supper party?” a voice drawled.

  Fallon saw the figure, like a white knight in the doorway. He saw the bright flash of flame and the roar
of a cannon as a pistol—the loudest he had ever heard—sent a round that knocked out a good portion of the ceiling.

  Torches flared behind the man. A guard—at least Fallon assumed it was a guard—ran up behind the man in white, and brought a lantern with him. Whoever had fired up the lantern shook it out, and by the time Fallon’s eyes had adjusted to the new light, every one of the men in the bunks had pulled the covers up, a pillow—at least those fortunate enough to have a pillow—over his head. A few pretended to snore.

  “Well?”

  The man in white stared directly at Fallon.

  Fallon figured he had no choice. He pointed at the man he had smashed to near oblivion with the empty spittoon, the man who still lay curled up in a ball and quivering on the floor.

  “Him,” Fallon said.

  * * *

  The man Fallon figured had to be none other than Josiah Jonathan Justice glanced at the man, then back at Fallon, and chuckled. “I dare say.” His accent was a mix of sugar-thickened tea and cane syrup. His suit was white. It might have been from the yellowy glow of the lantern, but he looked bronzed from the sun, with a well-groomed white mustache and goatee, white hair, white sideburns. His shirt was white, underneath a white vest. Even the tie was white. The buttons—on shirt, jacket, and vest—were mother-of-pearl. The man’s eyebrows were white and thick. Fallon figured everything about the man was white, except his heart. And his soul.

  “Dave,” Josiah Jonathan Justice said in that slow drawl. “Take this reprobate out to the whippin’ post. Lash him to it.”

  “You want to whip him, Colonel? At this time at night?”

  Justice sighed. “Did I say whip him, Dave? Heavens to Betsy, man, if we were to whip him at this time of night, we’d wake up my coonhounds, all the frogs and gators in the swamp, and half the population of Natchitoches. I said lash him to the post. We’ll whip him in the mornin’, boy. Now, get to it.”

  The man called Dave muttered something that might have been Yes, sir, and he snapped his fingers. Two men rushed inside, grabbed the whimpering man, and dragged him toward the door. When he began screaming, one of them stopped, stomped his head with a boot heel, which either knocked the pitiful man out or at least stunned him into silence. By the time he recovered or regained consciousness he would not be able to yell and wake all the animals and neighbors, for the second guard had stuffed a bandanna into his mouth and tied it around the back of his head.

  The Colonel stepped aside to let them drag the poor convict to the whipping post.

  “And what about that big monkey lyin’ over yonder?” Colonel Justice pointed at the unconscious figure of Tom.

  Fallon said, “I wouldn’t know.” He had not counted on his comment getting a poor fellow whipped, even though Fallon wasn’t going to lose any sleep over that. The thug had intended to spill out Fallon’s guts onto the floor.

  “No?”

  Fallon shook his head. “Maybe he likes to sleep on the floor. I’ve known some good old boys who did.”

  “You reckon?”

  Fallon shrugged.

  “And what about you? Why are you out of bed?”

  Fallon nodded at the door. “I heard you knocking. Came to open the door.”

  Colonel Justice’s grin widened.

  “I don’t recollect your face, son. You been hidin’?”

  “Just arrived.”

  “I see. From Rusk?”

  “Huntsville.”

  The man nodded. “The Walls, eh. You like it here?”

  “From what I’ve seen.”

  The man grinned again. “I don’t think you’ve seen a whole lot. This time of night. New moon an’ all.”

  Fallon shrugged.

  “You got a name, boy?”

  “Alexander. Harry Alexander.”

  “Oh yes. Harry Alexander. They tol’ me you was comin’. Needed a replacement. One of our ol’ boys got hisself bit by a cottonmouth. You know about cottonmouths, Harry Alexander?”

  “I do.”

  “Nasty snakes. Meaner than rattlers. Maybe not as deadly as copperheads. But mean, mean, mean old reptiles, cold-blooded as they come. Almost as cold-blooded as some Yankees I’ve known.”

  “I see.”

  “Then the poor lad, God bless ’im, fell into the swamp. A big ol’ alligator come alon’, and, well, gators got to eat, too, and maybe that gator, drownin’ the po’ lad, maybe that was a blessin’, you see. Drownin’ is a better way to die than all that p’is’n shuttin’ down yer organs an’ all. Don’t you reckon?”

  Fallon held out his palms in defeat. “I wouldn’t know. Never drowned to death. Never died from snakebite.”

  “Do you like bourbon, Harry Alexander?” the cotton magnate asked. “I mean, Kentucky bourbon. Bona fide. Not Pennsylvania bourbon. We don’t drink nothin’ from Yankee land down here. Ain’t that right, Dave?”

  Dave had returned from lashing the unconscious man to the whipping post.

  “That’s right, Colonel. Right as rain.”

  “Well.” Justice grinned. “Do you like bourbon?”

  Fallon thought about lying, but instead his head shook.

  “No? A strappin’ young fella like you. You don’t care for good Kentucky bourbon?”

  “A promise”—Fallon had made—“to my dyin’ mother.”

  The man cocked his head to one side, unsure what to make of Fallon’s answer.

  “Honest?” he said.

  “I haven’t touched an ardent spirit in more than ten years,” Fallon said. Which was true. “God bless her soul.” He hadn’t tied on a good drunk since he had married, either, but he had sipped a bourbon, or a rye, or a beer before he had been arrested. But to drink now, after years of abstaining not by choice but by prison regulations, could compromise him. Fallon was on shaky footing all the time. Getting light-headed from whiskey could get a man like Fallon killed in a hurry.

  “Well.” The man bowed his head, shook it, and raised it. This time he pushed up the straw hat he wore. It was flat crowned, with a flat brim, and what looked to be a red satin band around the top. “That’s admirable. I dare say, Mr. Alexander, that I don’t meet too many workers from Rusk or Huntsville that I could say have admirable qualities.”

  “I’ve got some unadmirable qualities, too.”

  “I’m not sure unadmirable is a word, Mr. Alexander. But even if it’s not, name one of them, if you don’t mind.”

  Fallon shrugged. “I don’t drink.”

  Now Colonel Justice laughed heartily, slapped his thigh, and nodded with pleasure. “You must join my dinner party, Mr. Alexander. Dave. Clean him up some. Give him a jacket to wear. Bring him over to the parlor in ten minutes.”

  Justice turned around, moved to the door, stopped, and looked back. “And the rest of you low-down asses-dogs, stay asleep, and stay quiet, or you all might find yourselves bitten by water moccasins and et up by hungry gators.”

  The door closed behind him.

  * * *

  “Do you drink coffee, Mr. Alexander? Chicory. From New Orleans. Finest you’ll find. Or did you promise your late ma that you’d abstain from that, as well?”

  The Colonel sat in a rocking chair on the porch. The porch was screened in. On a night like this, hot, humid, still with mosquitoes and flies as thick as grasshoppers in a plague, a man needed a screened-in porch.

  “Coffee’s fine,” Alexander said, and a moment later, a black man in a white jacket and crisp black pants came out of the main house with a china cup of steaming black coffee. Fallon thanked the old man and sipped the coffee.

  “Benjamin,” Colonel Justice called out, “have Grandma Tatum warm up a beignet for Mr. Alexander. You haven’t had supper, have you, Mr. Alexander?” He did not wait for an answer. “But tell Grandma Tatum not to put on too much powdered sugar, for I dare say that Mr. Alexander promised his late mother that he wouldn’t rot his teeth out with all them sweets. If y’all got some cracklin’s left, warm some of those up, too. And maybe a bowl of gumbo. You like gu
mbo, Mr. Alexander?”

  “We never got that in Arkansas,” Fallon told him.

  “It’s real tasty, suh. Tasty, indeed. Spicy, too. But I got to think a little hot action won’t bother you too much. Am I right, Mr. Alexander?”

  Fallon fanned himself. “It’s a little hot in here.”

  “Bourbon would cool you off, suh.”

  “Like you said, Colonel, a little hot action won’t bother me too much.”

  The man leaned in his wicker rocker and lighted a cigar. Fallon sipped the strong Louisiana coffee.

  “Nice turnout for your dinner party,” Fallon said.

  “I think so,” Justice said. “The sergeant brought me a copy of your record. Lucky, isn’t it, that a life sentence got reduced to ten years? You wouldn’t be here if that were not the case. Would you?”

  “That’s the way the warden explained it to me,” Fallon said. The black man returned with a tray of food. He set it at a table to Fallon’s right, and left.

  “Sit, Mr. Alexander. Sit.” The Colonel waved his cigar. “Eat. We’ll have a nice little chat while you eat.”

  Once he was seated, Fallon spooned in a mouthful of the gumbo. He had never tasted anything like it. Spicy. Warm. Absolutely wonderful. Flavors assaulted his senses. Hell, he thought, maybe he should have taken up the Colonel’s offer of Kentucky bourbon.

  “From the record the warden sent along, Mr. Alexander, you have been a rather naughty, naughty man.” He clucked his tongue and shuffled some papers before laying them on his lap.

  Fallon shrugged. “Courts have one way of looking at things. I have another.”

  “You don’t seem to like the Yankee government.”

  Fallon swallowed more gumbo and sipped coffee. “I probably wouldn’t have cared for the Confederate government, either,” he said. “On some things.” He lifted the coffee. “Or the Creoles. Or the French.”

  The Colonel made himself smile.

  “You got in some trouble in Arkansas.”

  Fallon pretended to ignore the statement. He tasted the sugary beignet.

  “And a most dreadful act of violence in some place way up in the Panhandle of Texas.”