“When Pa can’t hear you, tell Ma I’m fine. Give her this.” I handed Dock a ten-dollar bill.
He grabbed the money and run.
“Who was that crazy-looking bull?” Sid asked when I went back to the table. They was all having their dessert, apple pie and hot coffee, and Iris was eating like it was the last piece of pie in the world.
“Jus’ somebody I knowed here from way on back. Nobody important.”
“This pie sure is good,” Iris said. “I think I’m gonna have me another piece.”
I didn’t see how she could eat another piece of pie, I was so raring to get up to that room and get going. Most of the whores we come across on our gambling rounds was ugly or smelly or sickly; but Iris was diff’rent, and my hopes was high. I’d done it with farm gals by then, in hay lofts or out in a cotton patch far off or one time behind a outhouse. Only I figured it was one thing to do it with a simple country girl, and a completely other thing to do it with a San Angelo whore.
Whores was what you called “professionals.”
Only it wasn’t nothing like I thought it’d be. No sooner’n we was up there in that room, and no sooner Iris’d unbuttoned all them buttons and pulled off all them petticoats, and no sooner I got going, it was over. Just like that! For the first time in my life I wished I didn’t do ever’thing so goddamn fast! And no sooner it was over Iris took my ten-dollar bill and tucked it into a little pocket inside her brassiere and started buttoning all them buttons again.
“I gotta get me a good night’s sleep,” she said. “Got a long trip tomorrow.”
She was in as much a hurry to get outa the room as she was to get in. I was so mad I coulda throwed her out. “That ain’t fair, and you know it,” I said. “Gimme another toss.”
“Aw, you got your money’s worth, and then some.”
Sid was waiting for me in the other room. His shirt was buttoned all wrong and there was big black clouds rolling over them pale blue eyes of his. He was even madder’n I was. “Lazy trollops!” he said. “We shoulda held back the money, kicked ’em outa the rooms and dared ’em to complain to the management.”
I decided right then and there my whoring days was over. Even though I’d only had one of ’em.
The next morning, me and Sid was having breakfast in the hotel, and the table was heaped high. There was stacks of griddle cakes, sausages, bacon, hominy grits, fried eggs, scrambled eggs, strawberry preserves, you name it, and I was going at one thing after the other, and enjoying it all in spite of what’d happened the night before, when there come a tap on my shoulder. I looked back to see who was there.
Then I took a second look. It was Dock, and he was covered all over with fuzzy white cotton lint, from the top of his head to the tips of his boots.
“What the—”
“Gotta talk private,” Dock whispered fast.
When I got up from the table Sid got up too and followed us. He knowed something was wrong.
“What’s the hell’s going on?” I asked.
Dock was a-shaking all over, and that cotton lint was a-shaking all over with him. “It’s trouble, Willis! The laws is coming! With Mel Calhoun! I reckon I didn’t load it too good! And now the laws is coming!”
“The laws?” Sid begun pulling on the point of his mustache.
“Yeah! They’re coming! Right now!”
I didn’t ask Dock how come, or nothing else. “Go hit over to the alley behind the schoolhouse, hide in that old outhouse,” I told him. “I’ll figure out what’s going on. Wait ’til I give you the signal. Then hit the brush.”
I didn’t have to tell Dock what “the signal” was. We used it all the time when we was kids, out prowling—snatching figs or pigs or whatever. You’d cup your hand around your nose ’n mouth and make a lonesome bird cry: whip-poor-weel! whip-poor-weel! whip-poor-weel!
Dock got the point, faster’n he got most things.
No sooner he was gone, in come Constable Jim O’Toole with a tall skinny guy right on his heel, and a whole bunch of stirred-up kids behind. One of them kids was my little brother Joe. He was three years older’n when I last seen him, but I knowed him by his Newton jaw. He looked jittery and jumpy, like he wanted to say something to me.
Only he didn’t have no chance.
“You’re under arrest, Willis Newton!” You’d a-thought that ham-hocked old constable was arresting Jesse James or Billy the Kid, he looked so tickled with hisself.
“For what?”
“For stealing my cotton, that’s what for!” Mel Calhoun hollered. Mel was a tall, skinny cotton farmer with teeth that stuck out in front like a beaver, and he was so mad he was hopping from one foot to other.
“What the devil you talking about?” I said.
“You know good and well what I’m talking about!” He spun his head around that hotel eating room, and then raised his voice so ever’body else’d know what he was talking about, too. “You and Dock was bringing in a half-load, and you was passing my barn and you seen my cotton on the floor, and y’all just helped yourself. To make you a full bale.”
“Hell, I been at this hotel all night. Ask my business partner here.”
I turned around to get Sid to back me up. He wasn’t there no more.
Constable O’Toole screwed up one eye. “The horse was yours, wasn’t it?”
“I loaned it out.”
“Aw, he’s guilty as hell!” yelled Mel. He was still hopping around from one foot to the other. “Him and Dock both. Lock ’em both up! I got a witness! And next time you’re stealing cotton, you might oughta load it better. Left a trail from my door plumb to the gin!”
That was more’n my little brother Joe could take. “Liar!” Joe shouted at Mel. “Willis didn’t steal no cotton!”
“Nooooo—and I reckon he didn’t steal no melons outa the Hayden’s patch! And he didn’t steal that cow from Old Man Withers! And he didn’t snatch that old sow and ever’ one of her six little piglets outa my uncle’s …”
He never finished, cause Joe lit in. Punching and kicking.
Mel shoved him off. So hard Joe went a-sprawling.
That was it. I hauled off and let Mel Calhoun have it. Socked him square in the jaw. While he was falling, he knocked over a table and I can still see all them dishes and sausages and grits and griddle cakes and fried eggs and strawberry jam a-flying.
After he hit the ground, I booted him a time or two.
FIVE
Back in them days, in the law courts of Texas, there was a helluva diff’rence between a $49 thief and a $51 thief.
If a judge said you stole something, and that something was worth less’n $50, that was a misdemeanor and off you went to jail. Most likely for a few weeks. But if the judge said you stole something, and that something was worth more’n $50, that was a felony. And off you went to prison. Most likely for years.
I figured Dock had stole about $35 of Mel’s cotton. That’s all, just about $35 worth. That shoulda been jail time. For Dock. But after I hauled off at Mel and caused all that ruckus, and after Dock and the gambler vamoosed like they did, somebody had to pay. That somebody was me. And when Mel’s jaw swole up big as a pumpkin, he said he wouldn’t never be happy unless I was sent to the pen.
It took six months for the trial to even start. Most of that time I spent in the county jail, pacing around a cell that wasn’t much bigger’n a two-seater outhouse. And then Mel swore in court, his clammy old hand laying flat on that Bible, that me and Dock stole $53 worth of his cotton.
Fifty-three dollars!
That sorry, lowdown bastard! I’d saved enough money from the gambling business to get me a lawyer, and we battled them charges from the county court right up to a higher court. All they had agin me was some crazy old boy that said he seen me at Mel’s barn and some boot tracks at the gin that a shoemaker claimed was mine. But that witness changed his story later on, and how could that shoemaker say them tracks was mine, when it was all dry, loose sand around there?
Lies!
All lies!
I was in the Eastland jail for twenty-two months and twenty-six days while the case was tried, and retried and appealed.
After all that time, I got three years in the pen.
For nothing!
My first year in the state penitentiary, I spent it in the town of Rusk in east Texas. I done what I was told, and I mostly stayed outa trouble. Then, wouldn’t you know it, off I got shipped to one of them “earn your keep” prison farms, Imperial, that was further south, tucked out in the country under the city of Houston, just west of the Gulf Coast. And all you could see in ever’ direction you looked wasn’t nothing but cotton.
Cotton, cotton, cotton, cotton.
More’n a thousand acres of it.
All tall, bright, green cotton.
Them rows was straight as arrows, no weeds, because they had plenty of field hands: bank robbers and petty thieves and rapists and murderers, you name it, all working side by side. And working them fields was even worse’n working for Pa. We’d hit the fields at daybreak, and we’d work ’til long after dusk, ’til we couldn’t even see our hands no more.
There was a hundred and fifty of us convicts, and when we wasn’t out picking, we was living in dirty clapboard barracks, and them barracks was filled with the sourest air you ever smelled. There was a tall bobwire fence circling them barracks, a fence high as three men standing one on top of the other. And in two places on that fence, there was wood-box guard posts. And in them posts was guards packing 12-gauge shotguns, long black guns loaded with buckshot.
’Course, if you tried to escape, and you wasn’t spotted in time to get shot, most likely you’d just traded a mess of bullet holes for a mess of dog-tooth holes. There was a pack of redbone hounds penned inside a little wood building next to the prison gate, and them dogs had noses that could smell human scent ten hours old. And they was crazy for a chase; they even run down butterflies and field larks. And they had teeth as sharp as that bobwire.
At night, you could hear ’em a-yowling.
Sometimes, to spook us, the guards’d catch a cottontail in the fields and they’d hold it upside down, and then they’d hit on over to the doghouses and open the doors and let go them rabbit paws. And the dogs’d race and scramble and fall all over each other for that cottontail, and, like as not, all that’d be left when they was done with that thing was a few red, wet clumps of fur. The guards’d point to them clumps, and throw their heads back and laugh like crazy men. “Won’t be that much of you left, you sorry bastards, if you get rabbit in you.”
I decided to break out.
But how was I gonna do it?
Most of the prison breaks I knowed about, or seen with my own eyes, was in the day, when we was all out picking in the fields, away from them bobwire fences and them hound pens and them guard posts. Could I make it by myself? Or should I find a partner? I knowed that, lots of times, convicts worked in twos when they was planning something like that. The right kinda partner could be a big help—with bribing guards, or smuggling in guns, or whatever.
The big problem was: Who can you trust among a bunch of convicts?
When I first come to Imperial, I didn’t know no better and I’d talk to just about anybody. When one of ’em would ask what I was in for, I’d tell em: “For stealing $35 worth of cotton … only I didn’t do it, I was innocent.” Then they’d tell me they was innocent too. They hadn’t killed nobody, or robbed nobody, or raped nobody, they’d all been framed. Every man in that whole prison had been nailed to the cross, just like Jesus Christ.
I soon come to hate the whole bunch of ’em. Biggest liars and snitches I ever knowed. If one of ’em told you his name was “Vernon,” it mighta been “Vernon,” or it mighta been “Ennis” or “Samuel” or “Jeb.” You’d never know. ’Course, some of ’em had been living under made-up names so long they’d forgot what their real names was. A lot of ’em went by what was called “monikers”—names like “Hard Rock,” “Banjo Ass,” “Bronco Jack.” And most of ’em would rat on you, sure as hell, if there was something in it for ’em. And you had to be careful who you sassed, if you was mad at somebody. You was likely to end up with a knife in your back.
Out of all them convicts, I was tight with only two of ’em.
One of ’em’s name was Frank Holloway, and he didn’t claim to be innocent, and I guess that’s how come I took a liking to him. “I was a bank robber, and I got caught, that’s all,” he said. Frank come from a rich family in Mississippi, and he didn’t look rough like most of the other inmates, that was nearly all poor country boys. He had a thick head of black hair, black as coal, and he always combed it neat. And his teeth was straight and real white. He was older’n me, about thirty, but we was both about the same height, and he was skinny, like me. (Frank always called me “Skinny.” For some reason, he didn’t have no moniker. He was just “Frank.”)
There was another reason I hanged with Frank. I’d never got much school ’cause my old man always had something else for us kids to do. I only gone nine weeks when I was twelve and Pa had hit off to New Mexico, hunting for God’s Country. But Frank had gone all the way through high school, and his people was educated; his daddy was a gov’ment lawyer. Some of the other cons didn’t like Frank ’cause they thought he acted like a know-it-all, but I never did mind all his spouting off about this or that. Like, being that his daddy was a gov’ment lawyer, I learned things about how the courts worked, and the laws.
Still, even if I liked Frank, I didn’t know if he’d be any good for a break. He wasn’t too tough, coming from that rich family like he did. One time while he was a-working in the fields, he just up and fainted. The sun was too much for him. The guards put him under a tree for awhile, and throwed buckets of water on him ’til he come to. ’Course then they put him right back to work again. It didn’t matter to the guards if a prisoner died or not. They cared more about the mules. Inmates was for free. Mules cost money.
Anyhow, I couldn’t risk it that Frank might pass out.
Des Moines Benny was the other prisoner I was tight with. I learned a lot from him, too. He’d been sent up for forgery and mail fraud. But he was a friendly guy and I played cards with him on Sundays. He had a long thin face and long thin fingers that could do things in a fine way like a woman. I liked the way he shuffled and dealt. He did it like a professional gambler, though he swore he wasn’t. And I never caught him cheating. If he did cheat, he did it way better’n me or Sid Jenkins.
I liked Benny too ’cause he knowed how to softsoap the guards. Like I said before, some of them guards was more brutes than men. They’d spit in your face, or kick you in the balls, or run over you with their horses if they didn’t like you. But Benny got along real good with most of ’em, I guess because he was just a natural con man. ’Course, he also knowed how to con people a helluva lot smarter than them guards.
“Outside, I’m the best in the business,” he was always telling me. “You string somebody a story, see, and you give all the little details you can think of. But it’s a mix, see. Ninety percent truth, ten percent lies. The truth gets ’em to take the bait. The other ten percent, that’s where you fish-hook ’em.”
Only I wasn’t sure if Benny’d be good for a break. I needed to know him better.
It wasn’t long, though, before I had me a new friend.
One morning, while we was trotting out to the fields, we passed the pull-do squad. The pull-do squad was a kind of fifth-rate work team that did jobs ever’body hated, like cleaning the crappers. That morning they was loading garbage barrels into a wagon. Our squad was all pinching our noses, the stink was so damn bad, when I seen somebody I knowed standing in the road by hisself, looking hard at us. He was the only one of that pull-do squad that was dressed in stripes. That meant he was in some kind of trouble.
I couldn’t miss him.
“Dock!”
He looked direct at me.
“Willis!”
That was all we had time to say. The guards was keepin
g us at a trot.
I didn’t get to see old Dock again until recreation time on Sunday afternoon. We was so happy to see each other, we hugged. I had a kind of special feeling for Dock, life had dealt him a bad hand. I’d never seen him with such a long face. He said he’d been working for a farmer near Cross Plains, that’s where he took off to after all that cotton trouble with Mel Calhoun. And Cross Plains was where the sheriff nabbed him. The judge give him five years.
“And what’d you do to get that?” I pointed at his stripes.
“Coupla things,” he said. “Last one, socked a guard. He give me a kick for working too slow, an’ I give him something back.”
I knowed they didn’t put you in stripes unless you was “dangerous,” in their minds, so God knows what else Dock did, or how many bones he’d cracked in that old guard. Dock never did have no idea how strong he was; he had a punch like a mule’s kick. He told me he’d been to four other prison farms before they sent him to Imperial.
“The wardens was so glad to get shed o’ me, in ever’ one of them joints, they shook my hand when I left,” Dock went on. “Only I tell you, Willis, this one’s the rankest. What I’m thinking right now is I’m gonna leave, ya’know. How ’bout you come along?”
It was like Dock’d read my mind.
“We gonna walk out the front gate?” I give him a smile.
“I’ll show you. You game ’n all?”
All Honest Men Page 5