Blood Country: The Second Byron Tibor Novel

by Sean Black

  Ignoring the racist epithet, Byron decided to gather some additional intel. The way he saw this new development, anything that kept the prison authorities preoccupied would run in his favour. If the guards had their their ass cheeks clenched over Romero stirring up trouble among the Mexicans, they were less likely to be looking at him.

  ‘What’s the story with Romero?’ he asked Red, as the trucks sat in the yard, engines rumbling.

  Red spat a wad of chewing tobacco that he had collected the previous evening onto the ground. ‘I don’t know. Think he was some kind of union guy in Mexico. You know, going into the maquiladoras and getting people to join the union.’

  ‘Maquiladoras?’ Byron asked.

  ‘The assembly plants, the factories,’ Red said, apparently surprised that Byron wasn’t familiar with the term, with them being so close to the border.

  ‘How come he ended up here?’ Byron asked.

  Red shrugged. ‘No idea. Maybe he wanted his piece of the American Dream like everyone else. Maybe he had family over here. Came for a visit. Got picked up in Kelsen. I mean, that’s enough. Walking through Kelsen must be why most of us are here.’

  Mills strode onto the yard. ‘Okay, you shitbirds, I see a lot of jawing and not much else. Get up on those trucks and let’s move.’ To emphasize his point, he jabbed the business end of his pump-action shotgun hard into an inmate’s back.

  The warden’s words still ringing in his ears, Byron put his head down and made a point of mustering the guys in his work party onto the bed of their truck. A sudden commotion to his left drew his gaze.

  Two of the Mexican inmates stood either side of Romero. Each man took his arm, ready to boost him up onto the back of the truck. Mills marched over to them. ‘Leave him.’

  They didn’t move.

  The sound of the guard’s shotgun being racked silenced the yard. ‘I said, let him get up there on his own.’

  Romero lowered his head, and whispered something to the two men standing either side of him. Reluctantly they stepped away from him. Mills lowered his shotgun.

  No one else spoke. It seemed to Byron that every inmate in the yard was watching Romero as he slowly reached out, grasped the inside of the truck’s side panel and began to haul himself up.

  Byron could feel electricity crackle around the yard. He studied the heads of the Mexican inmates. Their eyes flicked between Romero and the guards who had prevented them helping him. The middle of their foreheads blazed red with anger. Outwardly, to the guards’ eyes, their expressions were flat.

  The guards were looking at a herd of dairy cattle, while Byron could see a bunch of raging bulls. All it would take was the slightest spark and then, shotguns or not, they could be caught in the middle of a riot. Mills might have thought he was establishing his dominance over Romero. From where Byron stood, he couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Romero found some purchase. He began to pull himself up. There was a flash of his previous strength as he clambered onto the truck bed. One of the Mexican inmates, who was already sitting on the bench near the back of the truck, got to his feet to help Romero. Mills waved him off with his shotgun. The inmate sat down.

  The old man grunted with the effort as he pushed himself up from the bed. He swayed slightly as the chain linking his leg irons reached its limit, the tension threatening to send him sprawling backwards.

  The yard, guards and convicts alike, held its breath. Romero found his balance again. He shuffled backwards and sat down with a thud next to the inmate who had stood to help him. He closed his eyes. A smile spread across his face. Byron’s abilities didn’t extend as far as telepathy but he had a hunch that the two words forming in Romero’s cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that processed language, were some variation of ‘Screw you.’

  The other inmates began to move again. Within a few minutes the trucks were loaded and ready to go.

  * * *

  Their morning commute took them on the same route through Kelsen and out the other side. It was striking to Byron how quickly it all seemed so routine. What had been grotesque and otherworldly – being part of a chain gang driving through a prosperous American town – seemed suddenly normal to the point of being banal. He understood now why the good citizens of Kelsen looked straight through the prison trucks transporting the chain gangs. Familiarity didn’t breed contempt. It bred indifference.

  The truck pulled down the same dirt road it had yesterday. It came to a stop just past the barn. Another work truck pulled up alongside. Byron narrowed his eyes against the burning Texas sun and saw that it was the one that held Romero.

  His heart sank a little. Putting a man of Romero’s age to work in conditions that Byron had struggled with was crazy. Unless they planned on finishing him off.

  Romero coming to harm, suffering a heart attack or a heat-induced stroke, would cause mayhem. Perhaps not out here, but almost certainly back in the jail when word got round. Just making the man climb up onto the back of truck had been a stretch. There was no way he would make it to lunch while doing manual labor in the fierce heat.

  Byron neither knew nor cared about the warden’s beef with Romero. But he did know that a riot, and the lockdown that would follow, would seal his chances of a quick escape. He couldn’t let that happen.

  As the inmates climbed down from the trucks and began to line up in rows, Byron made sure that he was next to Red. The guards busied themselves handing out the work tools. Byron leaned closer to Red. ‘How much did you collect last night?’ he muttered.

  Red ran through an inventory that ranged from cigarettes and candy to tinned goods and cash. He seemed excited that Byron was taking an interest in the bottom line of their newly inherited extortion racket.

  When Red had finished reeling off the bounty, Byron asked, ‘How much money do the guards take home?’

  * * *

  As the men set to work, Byron kept an eye on Romero. Common sense must have prevailed because he had been given a hoe and set to work on the ground that had been broken the previous day. It was still hard, but not at the same level as breaking new ground with a pickaxe or shovel.

  Byron hefted his pickaxe, arcing it high into the air and letting gravity do the work on the way back down. He tried to find a rhythm that he could maintain for a decent stretch at a time. Take too many breaks and the guard would be on top of him.

  From time to time, he sneaked a glance at Romero. What he lacked in strength, the old man was making up for in technique. Union organizer or not, he had clearly spent some part of his life doing this kind of work. The muscle memory was still there.

  After a half-hour, the guards called the first break. The men passed a plastic jug of water between them. One of the older guards walked down to where Byron was standing with Red.

  The guard took off his hat and swiped the sweat from his brow. Byron offered him the jug of water. He waved it away. ‘No offense, but I ain’t swapping spit.’

  ‘None taken,’ Byron said. He looked over the guard’s shoulder to Romero. ‘Guy looks like he should be playing canasta in a retirement home.’ His comment was directed at Red but made for the guard’s benefit.

  The guard took the bait, and glanced over his shoulder. Romero was doubled over, catching his breath. He had made it this far, but it was still only mid-morning. There was a long way to go and this was only his first day on work detail. ‘Don’t let him fool you,’ the guard said. ‘That old bastard is a lot tougher than he looks.’

  Byron knew better than to challenge his opinion directly. ‘Mexicans seem to look up to him.’

  ‘No surprise.’ The guard shrugged. ‘They’re dumber than dirt.’

  Byron caught Red looking at him, puzzled and more than a little concerned. Like most of the other inmates, he held to the belief that the less interaction you had with the guards, the better it was for your health.

  ‘No argument from me,’ Byron said. ‘But they all get pissy and there’s more of them than there are of us.’ He felt bad appeali
ng to the guard’s casual racism, but it was the only way of building common ground that he could think of right now.

  ‘No kidding,’ the older guard said. ‘They breed like goddamn cockroaches.’

  It was a sad insight into the way the man had come to think that he saw the Mexicans as insects.

  Byron kicked the toe of his boot into the dust. ‘The old guy, what’s his name? Romero?’

  The guard nodded.

  ‘He’s loving this. Getting to play the martyr in front of the others.’

  ‘Hadn’t thought of it like that,’ the guard said.

  No kidding, thought Byron. ‘Hey,’ he said, with a shrug, ‘I just want a quiet life.’

  ‘I hear you,’ the guard said, and strode away, back towards the Mexican prisoners who were huddled around Romero. ‘Break it up,’ he shouted. They began to scatter. Romero hobbled off, using his hoe as a walking stick. He was suffering but he had too much pride to show his weakness to a guard.

  The older guard reached over and grabbed for Romero’s hoe. Romero let it go, but he didn’t flinch. ‘Go take a rest over there,’ the guard barked at him, nodding towards the barn. ‘I don’t want anyone collapsing on my watch. Too much goddamn paperwork to fill in if that happens.’

  Byron smiled as he lifted his pickaxe high above his head and brought it crashing down into the bone-dry earth. Red shuffled back along the line until he was next to Byron, who did his best to ignore him. Red wasn’t prepared to be ignored.

  ‘What the hell you doing giving away our shit to help out that goddamn Commie beaner?’ Red hissed.

  Byron wrenched his pickaxe from the ground. He held it chest-high. ‘You want to repeat that?’

  Red shrank back. ‘I was only saying that—’

  Byron cut him off. ‘Listen, there is no “our” shit. There’s my shit. That’s all. And when shit’s mine, I get to say what happens with it.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Red. ‘But I still don’t get why you’re helping that Commie.’

  Byron’s expression softened a notch. ‘Give me another week out here and I might just be a Commie too.’

  26

  Byron’s eyes snapped open at four fifteen on the button. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, then swung his legs over the side of his bunk and jumped down onto the bare concrete floor. He kneaded at a knot in his shoulder, then grabbed soap and a towel from his locker and headed for the washroom.

  Inmates moved out of his way as he walked in. A few of the Mexicans even smiled. In the context of standing naked in a shower, he found their new regard for him a little unsettling.

  He washed, dried off, went back to his bunk, dressed and headed to the mess hall with Red. More nods of acknowledgement from the Mexicans. Obviously news of his kindness towards Romero had spread. Byron could only hope that the guards, watching the men eat, didn’t notice. Fear or respect was one thing for an inmate to attract. Popularity, Byron imagined, might bring its own set of problems.

  Back on the work truck, the day was taking its usual rhythm until just before they were about to depart. A side gate opened and an inmate, dressed in work clothes, stepped through. The man kept his head down. It took Byron a moment to recognize him.

  It was Franco. Released from the prison hospital. There was a snicker among some of the other inmates as he lifted his head to reveal the flattened scar tissue where his nose had been before he’d tangled with Byron. As deformities went, it provoked a treble take. A man with missing teeth, one eye or a scar on his face was almost run-of-the-mill in a prison. Barely worthy of note. A man missing a good part of his nose still held a certain novelty value.

  Like a whipped dog, Franco kept his head down. In contrast to Romero, who had a retinue of Mexican inmates tending him, Franco’s two buddies kept their distance from their former leader. Weakness, it seemed, was viewed as a disease that no one wanted to catch.

  Byron got up onto the back of the truck next to Red. That morning the guards allowed Romero to be helped by two other inmates. The truck was full by the time Franco was ready to get on.

  A guard screamed at him, ‘Go get on the other truck, asshole.’ Franco’s reign was well and truly over.

  27

  The next day, Byron woke to a bunkhouse buzzing with life. Men who usually shuffled to the showers, stretching aching muscles as they went, walked past with a spring in their step. Where there was normally silence, or at most the occasional grunt, there was now a low hum of excited chatter. Byron was fairly sure he detected the smell of cologne among the usual rancid odor of stale sweat and dirty laundry.

  He leaned over the edge of his bunk. ‘What’s up?’ he asked Red.

  Red was lying back on his bunk, hands behind his head. ‘Sunday’s visiting day.’

  ‘Sunday?’ Byron asked.

  Red smiled. ‘I know. Easy to lose track of the days here. Kinda nice when it creeps up on you, though, ain’t it?’

  Byron’s heart sank. Sunday meant no work detail. No work detail meant no time outside the prison. No time outside the prison meant no chance of escape. Another day of never knowing when the CIA or State Department or the NSA would descend upon the prison to take him into custody.

  How could he have been so dumb? Botching an escape in some way was one thing. Forgetting the days of the week was a whole other magnitude of stupidity.

  Red was oblivious to Byron’s distress. ‘Well, enjoy it. Monday’ll roll round soon enough,’ he said, his voice filled with weary acceptance.

  ‘Hey, Red?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How long are you in for?’ Byron hadn’t asked this most obvious of questions before. Or, if he had, he had forgotten the answer.

  Red folded his hands over his chest. ‘How long’s a piece of string? You go down in Kelsen for six months, you can end up spending a year. They catch you on some minor bullshit inside and tack on a few extra weeks. Or, they let you out on parole, but as soon as you’re outside, the Sheriff’s Department picks you up again on another vagrancy charge, which is a straight-up PV.’

  PV was shorthand for ‘parole violation’. Usually PVs covered things like failing a drugs test, being caught with a gun, or plain old committing another crime. Rarely did they involve walking down a public highway. Then again, not many people ended up in jail for doing that in the first place. Byron knew of men who had gone inside for something minor, killed someone in jail, sometimes in self-defense, and ended up catching a life-without sentence.

  ‘Come on,’ Red said, getting up from his bunk. ‘Don’t want to miss breakfast. It’s usually pretty good on a Sunday.’

  * * *

  The carnival atmosphere continued all the way into the mess hall. The workday tension seemed to have gone. The seating arrangements still ran along racial lines but there was none of the constant vigilance between groups that Byron had noticed before.

  He dug a plastic spork into a greasy hash brown, took a bite and had a sip of coffee. Something was gnawing away at him. It formed into a thought. He glanced at Red.

  ‘Something I don’t understand,’ he said, with a nod to one of the tables of Mexicans.

  ‘What’s that, boss?’ Red asked, egg yolk dribbling down his unshaven chin.

  ‘All these guys are illegals. They were picked up crossing the border.’

  ‘Yup,’ said Red.

  ‘So how come they’re having visits from family? I know border control isn’t what it might be but people from the other side can’t just waltz over any time they like, can they?’

  Red looked blank. He didn’t seem to understand the question. Finally, he said, ‘They don’t have to waltz. They’re in the women’s prison across from here.’

  28

  Byron had caught fragments of conversation between prisoners about wives and children. He had never connected them to another facility just next door. There had been no reason to. The other prison was down the road a ways, Red explained. It was in the opposite direction from the road they took to go to work. It held almost three t
imes the number of people that the men’s facility did, though many of them were children.

  The women inmates, many, though not all, of whom had relatives inside the men’s facility, worked in a factory that had been built next to their prison. It manufactured electrical goods for a Chinese company.

  More questions buzzed around Byron’s head than Red could possibly have answers for. Just as soon as he felt like he had a handle on Kelsen County and the people who ran it, the place threw up a fresh surprise.

  ‘So they pick up illegals, or vagrants, and the men go to work here and the women go to work making TVs,’ Byron said.

  ‘Yup,’ said Red. ‘That’s pretty much the size of it.’

  ‘And everybody gets paid just enough to buy a pack of cigarettes or some candy at the end of the week, no more?’ Byron said, thinking, And even the candy and smokes are taken back by the bunkhouse shot callers in return for keeping a lid on any trouble.

  ‘Kind of genius, if you ask me,’ said Red.

  That wouldn’t have been the word Byron would have chosen to describe what was happening. ‘But people do get out, right?’ Byron asked.

  ‘Oh, sure,’ Red said. ‘It’s not like they can keep people here for ever. We’re still in America.’

  Byron saw an opportunity to take the conversation in a direction that would normally raise suspicions. He trusted Red, but only so far. He didn’t doubt that his bunk mate, lieutenant and new best friend would happily rat him out to Castro if he thought the reward would be worth it. ‘What about escapes? Anyone get tired of waiting to get out and jump the fence? Or just take off?’

  ‘What?’ said Red. ‘And leave their family behind?’

  * * *

  Visiting with family seemed to be a phenomenon restricted to the Mexicans. Apart from a few individuals, the other prisoners didn’t have visitors. To reduce the sting of not being able to spend time with loved ones, the authorities laid on some extras for them. Two old TVs were rolled into the mess hall and placed at either end. One showed sports and the other showed movies. Those inmates who didn’t want to watch TV were free either to get some rest in their bunkhouse or hang out on one of the yards. The guards handed out a couple of basketballs and footballs. Red had also told Byron that lunch, while bagged like the rest of the week, was usually better on Sunday.