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.
4
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 p
lay 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."
5
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."
6
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.
He shuddered. They were serious. They were going to hang him.
The second day they brought him a woman's dress. They guffawed when he put it on, but it covered more of him than the blanket did, and it was warmer.
What evil spirit governed his fate? How had he come to deserve the tribulations that — ? God had tested Job and had not found him wanting. He, Maurie, had been tested in Louisiana and had been found wanting. He should have fought off John at the cost of his life. That was what the Lord had expected, and he had failed. Now ...
The second night, he managed to sleep fitfully. Until about four in the morning, when he was wakened by the sound of a key turning in the lock. A dawn hanging. A lynch.
But no. It was Max Sand. He jerked Maurie to his feet and shoved him out into the sheriff's office, where the deputy who had tormented him lay facedown on the floor.
They rode out of town. No one bothered them. Houston was not unaccustomed to seeing women riding astride horses. The odd-looking woman riding with the bearded man was obviously a whore, being taken out to entertain. She'd earn her money. People who noticed them shrugged and shook their heads. Many of them laughed.
7
They rode hard. A posse would not be far behind, but Max seemed to know where he was going, to some place he had been before. He avoided everything that might have made traveling easier and stopping more comfortable: groves, streams, grassland. They sat down at last, under a high sun, in a dry creek bed, where two rattlers retreated as they rode in.
"How can I thank you?"
"You can't. But you don't have to. If you hadn't said hello to me and bought supper and all, they wouldn't have grabbed you."
"Where's Mike?"
"He was hurt. He ordered me to leave him behind and go on. Worst thing I ever did, but I did it. 'Cause I figured I had an obligation t' come back and he'p you."
"How'd you know they grabbed me?"
"We didn't run out of town all that fast. Wanted to get some he'p for Mike. Figured too we'd better bring you with us. I saw 'em grab you."
"Max ... They say you shoved a red-hot poker in a man's eyes."
"I did it," said Max.
"My God!"
"That man," said Max, "was the last of the gang that tortured and murdered my father and mother. One of 'em carried a tabacca pouch made from my mother's tit, cut off her whilst she was still alive. Tanned and sewed up into a tabacca pouch."
"My God!"
"None of 'em died easy," said Max. "I shot the balls off one. I shoved a red-hot poker into the eyes of the last of 'em. I wisht they was all alive so I could kill 'em all again."
"What are you gonna do now, Max?"
"'Nough of this shit," said Max. "Got some money in a ranch. Gonna change m' name, shave off m' beard, and go to livin' honest. What you gonna do, Maurie?"
4
1
MAURIE DIDN'T SEE MAX AGAIN FOR MANY YEARS, until after Max had changed his name.
They parted with a handshake, at a railroad station in Missouri: two young men, each twenty-six years old. Max gave him a hundred dollars, from the proceeds of a year-old bank robbery, and rode off on a horse. Maurie boarded a train for Kansas City and began to work his way east and north.
For a while he was a grifter. It was all he knew how to do. In Missouri and Kansas, then across the river into Illinois and Indiana. For five years he struggled as a flimf
lam man, working every game he could devise. He sold fake insurance policies again — this time smart enough to scram while the scramming was good. He played cards in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Chicago. The players there weren't as dumb as the ones in Texas, and the profits were slim.
He had catalogs and order blanks printed and sold everything from railroad watches to basketballs, asking as little as ten percent in advance as "earnest money" or an "order-handling charge." He sold wholesale to stores and retail door-to-door, and when he had collected a few hundred dollars in cash he would slip away from his boardinghouse and catch a train.
His best flimflam was with automobiles. He would buy a new Chevrolet or Ford for four hundred dollars, drive it fifty or sixty miles to another country town, let it be known that he was a factory representative who could discount automobiles as much as forty percent, and sell it to some happy buyer for two hundred fifty dollars. Then he'd say he could sell a few more. Of course, he would have to collect down payments — after all, he had to buy the cars at the factory. Having collected maybe five hundred dollars, he would return to the dealer fifty or sixty miles away and buy another car. When he delivered that one to a happy buyer, his bona fides was established, and more down payments would come in. It was of course a pyramid scheme. He could continue collecting money, buying and delivering cars, and collecting more down payments until he judged the time had come to take his profits and scram.
The scheme was ruined in 1913, when an article warning of the scheme was syndicated and appeared in scores of small-town newspapers. Maurie decided the time had come to go home to Manhattan.
It was a strange experience. He had left home at sixteen and now came home fifteen years older and fifty years wiser, with scars on his back and purple circles around his ankles, marks of the Plaquemine prison, that he would carry the rest of his life. Odd. The first time he undressed with a girl and she saw them — "Maurie! You got these? You went down sout'! You shoulda never gone down sout'! Wha'd they do to you? You don't let your mother see, no?" And then she would give him the best sex she knew how, because he was the adventuresome man who had gone down south.
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