Forty Lashes Less One

by Elmore Leonard

  I understand that part all right.

  Some of them we got to show right away who's running this place.

  Mr. Manly was frowning. But this boy Harold Jackson, he seemed all right. He was polite, said yes-sir to you. Why'd you put leg-irons on him?

  Now it was Fisher's turn to look puzzled. You saw him same as I did.

  I don't know what you mean.

  I mean he's a nigger, ain't he?

  Looking up at the turnkey, Mr. Manly's gold-frame spectacles glistened in the overhead light. You're saying that's the only reason you put leg-irons on him?

  If I could tell all the bad ones, Bob Fisher said, as easy as I can tell a nigger, I believe I'd be sup'rintendent.

  Jesus Christ, the man was even dumber than he looked. He could have told him a few more things: sixteen years at Yuma, nine years as turnkey, and he hadn't seen a nigger yet who didn't need to wear irons or spend some time in the snake den. It was the way they were, either lazy or crazy; you had to beat 'em to make 'em work, or chain 'em to keep 'em in line. He would like to see just one good nigger. Or one good, hard-working Indian for that matter. Or a Mexican you could trust. Or a preacher who knew enough to keep his nose in church and out of other people's business.

  Bob Fisher had been told two weeks earlier, in a letter from Mr. Rynning, that an acting superintendent would soon be coming to Yuma.

  Mr. Rynning's letter had said: Not an experienced penal administrator, by the way, but, of all things, a preacher, an ordained minister of the Holy Word Church who has been wrestling with devils in Indian schools for several years and evidently feels qualified to match his strength against convicts. This is not my doing. Mr. Manly's name came to me through the Bureau as someone who, if not eminently qualified, is at least conveniently located and willing to take the job on a temporary basis. The poor fellow must be desperate.

  Or, perhaps misplaced and the Bureau doesn't know what else to do with him but send him to prison, out of harm's way.) He has had some administrative experience and, having worked on an Apache reservation, must know something about inventory control and logistics. The bureau insists on an active administrator at Yuma while, in the same breath, they strongly suggest I remain in Florence during the new prison's final stage of preparation. Hence, you will be meeting your new superintendent in the very near future. Knowing you will oblige him with your utmost cooperation I remain . . .

  Mr. Rynning remained in Florence while Bob Fisher remained in Yuma with a Holy Word Pentacostal preacher looking over his shoulder.

  The clock on the wall of the superintendent's office said ten after nine. Fisher, behind the big mahogany desk, folded Mr. Rynning's letter and put it in his breast pocket. After seeing Mr. Manly through the gate, he had come up here to pick up his personal file. No sense in leaving anything here if the preacher was going to occupy the office. The little four-eyed son of a bitch, maybe a few days here would scare hell out of him and run him back to Sunday school. Turning in the swivel chair, Fisher could see the reflection of the room in the darkened window glass and could see himself sitting at the desk; with a thumb and first finger he smoothed his mustache and continued to fool with it as he looked at the clock again.

  Still ten after nine. He was off duty; had been since six. Had waited two hours for the preacher.

  It was too early to go home: his old lady would still be up and he'd have to look at her and listen to her talk for an hour or more. Too early to go home, and too late to watch the two women convicts take their bath in the cook shack. They always finished and were gone by eight-thirty, quarter to nine. He had been looking forward to watching them tonight, especially Norma Davis. Jesus, she had big ones, and a nice round white fanny. The Mexican girl was smaller, like all the Mexican girls he had ever seen; she was all right, though; especially with the soapy water on her brown skin. It was a shame; he hadn't watched them in about four nights. If the train had been on time he could have met the preacher and still got over to the cook shack before eight-thirty. It was like the little son of a bitch's train to be late. There was something about him, something that told Fisher the man couldn't do anything right, and would mess up anything he took part in.

  Tomorrow he'd show him around and answer all his dumb questions.

  Tonight he could stare at the clock for an hour and go home.

  He could stare out at the empty yard and hope for something to happen. He could pull a surprise inspection of the guard posts, maybe catch somebody sleeping.

  He could stop at a saloon on the way home. Or go down to Frank Shelby's cell, No. 14, and buy a pint of tequila off him.

  What Bob Fisher did, he pulled out the papers on the new prisoner, Harold Jackson, and started reading about him.

  One of the guards asked Harold Jackson if he'd ever worn leg-irons before. Sitting tired, hunch-shouldered on the floor, he said yeah. They looked down at him and he looked up at them, coming full awake but not showing it, and said yes-suh, he believed it was two times. That's all, if the captain didn't count the prison farm. He'd wore irons there because they liked everybody working outside the jail to wear irons. It wasn't on account he had done anything.

  The guard said all right, that was enough. They give him a blanket and took him shuffling across the dark yard to the main cell block, then through the iron-cage gate where bare overhead lights showed the stone passageway and the cell doors on both sides. The guards didn't say anything to him. They stopped at Cell No. 8, unlocked the door, pushed him inside, and clanged the ironwork shut behind him.

  As their steps faded in the passageway, Harold Jackson could make out two tiers of bunks and feel the closeness of the walls and was aware of a man breathing in his sleep. He wasn't sure how many were in this cell. He let his eyes get used to the darkness before he took a step, then another, the leg chains clinking in the silence. The back wall wasn't three steps away. The bunks, three decks high on both sides of him, were close enough to touch. Which would make this a six-man room, he figured, about eight feet by nine feet. Blanket-covered shapes lay close to him in the middle bunks. He couldn't make out the top ones and didn't want to feel around; but he could see the bottom racks were empty. Harold Jackson squatted on the floor and ducked into the right-side bunk.

  The three-tiered bunks and the smell of the place reminded him of the troopship, though it had been awful hot down in the hold. Ten days sweating down in that dark hold while the ship was tied up at Tampa and they wouldn't let any of the Negro troops go ashore, not even to walk the dock and stretch their legs. He never did learn the name of that ship, and he didn't care. When they landed at Siboney, Harold Jackson walked off through the jungle and up into the hills. For two weeks he stayed with a Cuban family and ate sugar cane and got a kick out of how they couldn't speak any English, though they were Negro, same as he was. When he had rested and felt good he returned to the base and they threw him in the stockade. They said he was a deserter. He said he came back, didn't he? They said he was still a deserter.

  He had never been in a cell that was this cold. Not even at Leavenworth. Up there in the Kansas winter the cold times were in the exercise yard, stamping your feet and moving to keep warm; the cell was all right, maybe a little cold sometimes. That was a funny thing, most of the jails he remembered as being hot: the prison farm wagon that was like a circus cage and the city jails and the army stockade in Cuba. He'd be sitting on a bench sweating or laying in the rack sweating, slapping mosquitoes, scratching, or watching the cockroaches fooling around and running nowhere. Cockroaches never looked like they knew where they were going. No, the heat was all right. The heat, the bugs were like part of being in jail. The cold was something he would have to get used to. Pretend it was hot. Pretend he was in Cuba. If he had to pick a jail to be in, out of all the places if somebody said, You got to go to jail for ten years, but we let you pick the place he'd pick the stockade at Siboney. Not because it was a good jail, but because it was in Cuba, and Cuba was a nice-looking place, with the ocean and the tree
s and plenty of shade. That's a long way away, Harold Jackson said to himself. You ain't going to see it again.

  There wasn't any wind. The cold just lay over him and didn't go away. His body was all right; it was his feet and his hands. Harold Jackson rolled to his side to reach down below the leg-irons that dug hard into his ankles and work his shoes off, then put his hands, palms together like he was praying, between the warmth of his legs. There was no use worrying about where he was. He would think of Cuba and go to sleep.

  In the morning, in the moments before opening his eyes, he wasn't sure where he was. He was confused because a minute ago he'd have sworn he'd been holding a piece of sugar cane, the purple peeled back in knife strips and he was sucking, chewing the pulp to draw out the sweet juice. But he wasn't holding any cane now, and he wasn't in Cuba.

  The bunk jiggled, strained, and moved back in place as somebody got down from above him. There were sounds of movement in the small cell, at least two men.

  You don't believe it, take a look.

  Jesus Christ, another voice said, a younger voice. What's he doing in here?

  Both of them white voices. Harold Jackson could feel them standing between the bunks. He opened his eyes a little bit at a time until he was looking at prison-striped legs. It wasn't much lighter in the cell than before, when he'd gone to sleep, but he could see the stripes all right and he knew that outside it was morning.

  A pair of legs swung down from the opposite bunk and hung there, wool socks and yellow toenails poking out of holes. What're you looking at? this one said, his voice low and heavy with sleep.

  We got a coon in here with us, the younger voice said.

  The legs came down and the space was filled with faded, dirty convict stripes. Harold Jackson turned his head a little and raised his eyes. His gaze met theirs as they hunched over to look at him, studying him as if he was something they had never seen before. There was a heavy-boned, beard-stubbled face; a blond baby-boy face; and a skinny, slick-haired face with a big cavalry mustache that drooped over the corners of the man's mouth.

  Somebody made a mistake, the big man said. In the dark.

  Joe Dean seen him right away.

  I smelled him, the one with the cavalry mustache said.

  Jesus, the younger one said now, wait till Shelby finds out.

  Harold Jackson came out of the bunk, rising slowly, uncoiling and bringing up his shoulders to stand eye to eye with the biggest of the three. He stared at the man's dead-looking deep-set eyes and at the hairs sticking out of a nose that was scarred and one time had been broken. You gentlemen excuse me, Harold Jackson said, moving past the young boy and the one who was called Joe Dean. He stood with his back to them and aimed at the slop bucket against the wall.

  They didn't say anything at first; just stared at him. But as Harold Jackson started to go the younger one murmured, Jesus Christ as if awed, or saying a prayer. He stared at Harold as long as he could, then broke for the door and began yelling through the ironwork, Guard! Guard! Goddamn it, there's a nigger in here pissing in our toilet!

  Chapter 2

  Raymond San Carlos heard the sound of Junior's voice before he made out the words: somebody yelling for a guard. Somebody gone crazy, or afraid of something. Something happening in one of the cells close by. He heard quick footsteps now, going past, and turned his head enough to look from his bunk to the door.

  It was morning. The electric lights were off in the cell block and it was dark now, the way a barn with its doors open is dark. He could hear other voices now and footsteps and, getting louder, the metal-ringing sound of the guards banging crowbars on the cell doors good morning, get up and go to the toilet and put your shoes on and fold your blankets the iron clanging coming closer, until it was almost to them and the convict above Raymond San Carlos yelled, All right, we hear you! God Almighty The other convict in the cell, across from him in an upper bunk, said, I'd like to wake them sons of bitches up some time. The man above Raymond said, Break their goddamn eardrums. The other man said, No, I'd empty slop pails on 'em. And the crowbar clanged against the door and was past them, banging, clanging down the passageway.

  Another guard came along in a few minutes and unlocked each cell. Raymond was ready by the time he got to them, standing by the door to be first out. One of the convicts in the cell poked Raymond in the back and, when he turned around, pointed to the bucket.

  It ain't my turn, Raymond said.

  If I want you to empty it, the convict said, his partner close behind him, looking over his shoulder, then it's your turn.

  Raymond shrugged and they stood aside to let him edge past them. He could argue with them and they could pound his head against the stone wall and say he fell out of his bunk. He could pick up the slop bucket and say, Hey, and when they turned around he could throw it at them. Thinking about it afterward would be good, but the getting beat up and pounded against the wall wouldn't be good. Or they might stick his face in a bucket. God, he'd get sick, and every time he thought of it after he'd get sick.

  He had learned to hold onto himself and think ahead, looking at the good results and the bad results, and decide quickly if doing something was worth it. One time he hadn't held onto himself the time he worked for the Sedona cattle people up on Oak Creek and it was the reason he was here.

  He had held on at first, for about a year while the other riders some of them kidded him about having a fancy name like Raymond San Carlos when he was Apache Indian down to the soles of his feet. Chiricahua Apache, they said. Maybe a little taller than most, but look at them black beady eyes and the flat nose. Pure Indin.

  The Sedona hands got tired of it after a while; all except two boys who wouldn't leave him alone: a boy named Buzz Moore and another one they called Eljay. They kept at him every day. One of them would say, What's that in his hair? and pretend to pick something out, holding it between two fingers and studying it closely. Why, it's some fuzz off a turkey feather, must have got stuck there from his headdress. Sometimes when it was hot and dry one of these two would look up at the sky and say, Hey, chief, commence dancing and see if you can get us some rain down here. They asked him if he ever thought about white women, which he would never in his life ever get to have. They'd drink whiskey in front of him and not give him any, saying it was against the law to give an Indian firewater. Things like that.

  At first it hadn't been too hard to hold on and go along with the kidding. Riding for Sedona was a good job, and worth it. Raymond would usually grin and say nothing. A couple of times he tried to tell them he was American and only his name was Mexican. He had made up what he thought was a pretty good story.

  See, my father's name was Armando de San Carlos y Zamora. He was born in Mexico, I don't know where, but I know he come up here to find work and that's when he met my mother who's an American, Maria Ramirez, and they got married. So when I'm born here, I'm American too.

  He remembered Buzz Moore saying, Maria Ramirez? What kind of American name is that?

  The other one, Eljay, who never let him alone, said, So are Apache Indins American if you want to call everybody who's born in this country American. But anybody knows Indins ain't citizens. And if you ain't a citizen, you ain't American. He said to Raymond, You ever vote?

  I ain't never been where there was anything to vote about, Raymond answered.

  You go to school?

  A couple of years.

  Then you don't know anything about what is a U. S. citizen. Can you read and write?

  Raymond shook his head.

  There you are, Eljay said.

  Buzz Moore said then, His daddy could have been Indin. They got Indins in Mexico like anywhere else. Why old Geronimo himself lived down there and could have sired a whole tribe of little Indins.

  And Eljay said, You want to know the simple truth? He's Chiricahua Apache, born and reared on the San Carlos Indin reservation, and that's how he got his fancy name. Made it up so people wouldn't think he was In-din.

  Well, Bu
zz Moore said, he could be some part Mexican.

  If that's so, Eljay said, what we got here is a red greaser.

  They got a kick out of that and called him the red greaser through the winter and into April until the day up in the high meadows they were gathering spring calves and their mammas and chasing them down to the valley graze. They were using revolvers and shotguns part of the time to scare the stock out of the brush stands and box canyons and keep them moving. Raymond remembered the feel of the 12-gauge Remington, holding it pointed up with the stock tight against his thigh. He would fire it this way when he was chasing stock aiming straight up and would feel the Remington kick against his leg. He kept off by himself most of the day, enjoying the good feeling of being alone in high country. He remembered the day vividly: the clean line of the peaks towering against the sky, the shadowed canyons and the slopes spotted yellow with arrowroot blossoms. He liked the silence; he liked being here alone and not having to think about anything or talk to anybody.

  It wasn't until the end of the day he realized how sore his leg was from the shotgun butt punching it. Raymond swung down off the sorrel he'd been riding and limped noticeably as he walked toward the cook fire. Eljay was standing there. Eljay took one look and said, Hey, greaser, is that some kind of one-legged Indin dance you're doing? Raymond stopped. He raised the Remington and shot Eljay square in the chest with both loads.

  On this morning in February, 1909, as he picked up the slop bucket and followed his two cellmates out into the passageway. Raymond had served almost four years of a life sentence for second-degree murder.

  The guard, R. E. Baylis, didn't lay his crowbar against No. 14, the last door at the east end of the cellblock. He opened the door and stepped inside and waited for Frank Shelby to look up from his bunk.

  You need to be on the supply detail today? R. E. Baylis asked.

  What's today?

  Tuesday.

  Tomorrow, Shelby said. What's it like out? Bright and fair, going to be warm.