they were singing On Jordan’s Banks and the bums stood in line to get inside because it was night and they had to find a place to sleep I heard them singing in the camp back home and they slept on army cots and mixed lighter fluid with orange juice and I seen one trade his overcoat for a quart jar of moon they put up the cots around a big iron stove and their faces looked like corpses sticking out from under the blanket sometimes I watched the evening train run across the sun and stop by the water tower and they would crawl out of the rods and that night I heard them singing hymns in the camp like the nigger funeral marches they’re not niggers their faces are white like ash under the blanket and they take off their coats and wrap them around their feet to keep warm.
Doc Elgin said to take one when I need a push it ain’t happy stuff I seen niggers taking cocaine and it comes in a powder and it gets them high and you can tell when they’re on it by their eyes her eyes were shrunk up like pinpoints and I started to ask her if Elgin done that too but I didn’t because she said not to talk about him no more the skin on her breasts looked thin and milky like a candle flame was behind it and you could see through it I could feel it coming on inside me and I held the back of her legs and felt it swell and burst and then she started it over again
whistle blowing down the line and I watch the sun plunge out of the sun across the fields and the crimson evening fade behind the trees
TOUSSAINT BOUDREAUX
There were two trucks backed up to the loading ramp on the side of the warehouse. The side street was dark except for the glow of light that shone through the open freight doors of the building. A sign above the door said Bonham Shipping Company. A white man and a Negro were bringing out crates and loading them in the trucks. Bonham, the light tan Negro who looked like a Baptist deacon, stood on the ramp. Toussaint waited beside his truck and watched the loading. His arm was in a black sling. The driver of the other truck, a white man, sat in his cab behind the steering wheel. He wore yellow leather gloves and an army fatigue cap and smoked a cigarette without taking it out of his mouth. There were ashes on the front of his shirt.
“You been working here long?” Toussaint said.
“A while,” he answered, without looking at him, his gloved hands resting on the steering wheel.
“You got any notion where we’re going?”
“Bonham will tell you,” he said, still looking straight ahead.
“I asked you.”
“I don’t know.”
Toussaint turned away and looked up at Bonham on the ramp. He was dressed in a brown suit, with a good shoeshine, and his glass ring and rimless glasses glinted in the light from within the building. The last of the crates was loaded. One of the men closed the truck doors and locked each one with a heavy padlock. Bonham came down the ramp.
“Take highway ninety straight to Mobile,” he said. “There’s a street map of the city in your glove compartment. The place where you’re supposed to go is marked in red pencil.”
“Who’s going to pay me the other hundred dollars?” Toussaint said.
“My partner in Mobile will give it to you as soon as you get to his warehouse.”
“I’ll follow you,” Toussaint said to the other driver.
“Go on ahead,” Bonham said. “I have to talk with him about something.”
“He knows the road better than me.”
“It’s a good road all the way. You won’t have no trouble,” the other driver said.
“What about the weigh stations?”
“You’re under the load limit. The police won’t bother you,” Bonham said.
“I ain’t got any shipping papers.”
“They don’t ask for them unless you’re over the limit,” Bonham said.
“Go ahead. I’ll be right behind you,” the other driver said.
Toussaint climbed up in the cab and took the black sling off his arm so he could shift gears. He started the engine and put the truck in low and drove down the side street away from the warehouse. He turned at the intersection and headed towards the highway. He watched for the other truck in the rear-view mirror. Toussaint didn’t like the way Bonham and the other driver had sent him ahead. There was something wrong about it. Why would they send me on alone with a load of stuff that must be worth plenty, he thought. I could hide the load and drive the truck into the river and they’d never see me again.
Bonham was careful enough at first. He wouldn’t tell me where I was going until the last minute, but now he sends me on by myself. And why did he need two drivers? He could put all them crates in one truck. He didn’t need me. He hires a one-arm man out of a poolroom for no reason. It don’t fit.
Toussaint looked in the rear-view mirror again. There were two automobiles behind him. He slowed and let them pass. He turned into the main road that led to the highway. The river levee was on his left, and ahead he could see the looming black structure of the Huey Long Bridge. He accelerated to keep up with the traffic. Why don’t he come on, he thought. He’s had plenty of time. I can’t drive no slower without tying up traffic.
He entered the circle before the bridge and turned out on the highway. He drove on a mile to where the cars had thinned out, and pulled off on the gravel shoulder of the road. He opened the glove compartment, and under a street map of Mobile he found the red reflectors. He walked back down the highway and set them on the shoulder at intervals to warn the oncoming automobiles. He went back and stood by the running board and waited for the other truck.
A half hour later it came. Toussaint waved the driver down. The truck slowed and pulled off on the shoulder in front of the Negro. The driver opened the door and swung out of the cab as Toussaint walked up.
“Why did you pull me over?” he said. “You ain’t supposed to stop till you hit Mobile. You should be almost out of the state by now.”
“I got my markers out. Nobody is going to bother us.”
“You ain’t supposed to stop.”
“What have you and Bonham got on?”
“Mind your business,” the driver said.
“Why did you wait thirty minutes to follow me?”
“You ain’t paid to know anything.”
“You could have carried the whole load. He don’t need another driver.”
“He splits a shipment so he don’t take a chance on losing it all. The police ain’t going to get us both.”
“He ain’t the type man to trust a hot load with somebody he don’t know.”
“Ask him about it.”
“You’re the man I’m talking to.”
“Quit if you don’t like it.”
“I got another hundred dollars coming.”
“Earn it, then. I ain’t going to stand out here no longer.”
“What’s Bonham got planned?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I ain’t got to take that from you.”
“You work for a nigger,” Toussaint said.
The man tried to hit him, but Toussaint caught his arm in midair with his good hand and held it helpless before him.
“I’ll break your arm like a stick, white man.”
“God damn you.”
Toussaint pushed him away.
“Get in your truck,” he said. “I’m following you this time. I’m going to be on your bumper all the way to Mobile.”
The man climbed up in the cab and slammed the door. Toussaint picked up the reflectors from the roadside and got in his truck. He dropped the reflectors on the seat and followed the other truck off the shoulder onto the highway. He kept close behind so no cars could get between them.
As the road straightened out, the other truck began to widen the distance. Toussaint pressed on the accelerator to keep up. The speedometer neared fifty and the truck in front continued to gain. Toussaint pressed the gas pedal to the floor, but his speed didn’t increase. It’s got a governor on it, he thought. The gas feed is fixed so it can’t do more than fifty. He knows it too. He might have
even put it on. They want to make sure I don’t stay with the other truck. He must be making seventy. He’s got a clear stretch ahead of him. I can’t catch him unless he runs into traffic.
Toussaint watched the taillights grow dimmer. The lead truck went over a rise and disappeared. The glow of the headlights reflected against the night on the other side and then disappeared too. Toussaint approached the rise and shot the truck into second gear to pull the grade. The highway before him was empty when he reached the top. He looked off to the side of the highway. There was a dirt farm road that led between two fields into a wood. He must have turned out his lights and took the side road, Toussaint thought. He couldn’t have got that far ahead of me.
Toussaint pulled into the road and hit his brights, illuminating the grove of trees. A yellow haze of dust still lingered in the air over the road. There were two lines of heavy tire marks crushed into the dry ruts. He stopped the truck and turned off the engine and cut the lights. He could faintly hear the engine of the other truck toiling along the back road through the woods. In a few minutes the truck would take another road and cross the border into Mississippi.
Toussaint felt among the tools beneath the seat until he found a heavy tire iron. He went around to the back of the truck and inserted the flat end of the iron behind the padlocked hinge on the two doors. He pried the screws loose and twisted the tire iron sideways until the hinge snapped. He pulled the doors open and climbed in. The crates were stacked against one wall. He fitted the iron under one of the crate tops and wedged it ajar, and then pulled it loose with his hand. He took out the packing and looked at the fur pelts inside. He turned the crate over on the floor and struck a match. They were nutria and rabbit pelts. He splintered another crate open with the iron. It was the same thing. He smashed in the sides of three more and scattered the furs over the floor. They were all rabbit and nutria pelts. The whole thing is almost worthless, he thought. They hired me to carry a load that ain’t worth two hundred dollars. The other truck is carrying the good stuff, and they was going to let me be picked up. They robbed a fur company, and the stuff is so hot they can’t get it out of the state. Bonham loaded me with cheap pelts and was going to feed me to the police while his other boy slipped out on the back roads. The police don’t know the difference between nutria and beaver. They’d think they had the real stuff. By the time they found out, the other truck would be gone. Bonham set me up for a stretch in the penitentiary, and I stepped right into it.
He climbed down from the back and shut the doors. He was going to leave the truck and hitchhike to the city. It would be better to leave it here than in town. An automobile came down the highway and slowed as it passed the farm road. It pulled off on the shoulder to make a U-turn and came back towards Toussaint. He threw the tire iron under the truck as the car turned into the road and caught him in its headlights. He walked to the cab and opened the door to get in. The car drew abreast of him and stopped. On the door was the white emblem of the state police. Two officers sat in the front seat. The driver turned a flashlight on Toussaint.
“What are you doing back here?” he said.
“Pulled off the road to get some sleep.”
“Most companies tell their drivers to stay on the highway.”
“Mine’s different.”
“Who do you work for?”
“Bonham Shipping Company in New Orleans.”
“Let me see your papers.”
“I ain’t got any. Take the light out of my eyes.”
“See what he’s carrying,” he said to the other officer. The far door opened and the second officer got out and went to the back of the truck.
Toussaint looked around him. It was too far to the woods, and the fields afforded no cover. There was nothing to do except stand there and listen to the whirr of the cars on the highway and look into the hot circle of light held in his face.
“The lock’s broken,” the second officer said from behind the truck, and then, “This is the one. There’re furs all over the place. He’s been breaking open the crates.”
The driver got out of the car and took the handcuffs from the leather case on his belt. He snipped them open.
“You don’t need them,” Toussaint said.
“Put out your wrists.”
Toussaint held them out.
“What’s wrong with your hand?”
“I broke it.”
“All right. Get in the back.”
The second officer returned and got in beside the Negro. He handed a small notebook to the man in the front seat.
“Here’s the license number,” he said. “It’s the truck that was stolen out in Gretna yesterday.”
Toussaint looked out the window at the fields and listened to the whirr of the cars on the highway.
“They add on three years for auto theft,” the driver said.
“I didn’t steal it,” Toussaint said.
“Where did you get the furs?”
“Bonham paid me to drive them out of the state.”
“How did you think you were going to get past us?” the second officer said.
“I didn’t have nothing to do with no robbery. The stuff you want is already in Mississippi. Them pelts is worthless.”
They didn’t understand Toussaint and ignored him. He looked at the fields and said nothing while the officer in front used the radio to put in a call for another car to come pick up the stolen truck. Both of the policemen felt they had done a good job in capturing Toussaint and the load of furs. While they waited for the other car to arrive, the driver asked Toussaint how he had hurt his hand. When the Negro told him the driver said he should have stuck to prizefighting.
BOOK TWO
BIG MIDNIGHT SPECIAL
for Robert Lee Sauls
executed in the Calcasieu parish jail
Lake Charles, 1955
AVERY BROUSSARD
The main room (called the drunk tank) of the parish jail was on the second story of the building. The walls and floor and ceiling were made from concrete. There were two barred and wire-grated windows to each wall. In the summer the room was damp and foul smelling from sweat and lack of ventilation. Once a month the trusties cleaned the room with disinfectant, but it did no good. The stench was always there. There was no way to get rid of it. They scrubbed the concrete with sand and brushes and whitewashed the walls and ceiling, and even sprayed the room with insecticide, but it was useless. The stench was on the men’s bodies, in their clothes, in the tick mattresses; everything in the room had that same thick, sour odor to it.
In the center was a low boxlike structure made entirely of iron that was called the tank. It sat squat and ugly in the middle of the floor, like a room within a room. The walls were painted gray and perforated with small square holes. The tank was divided into cells, each containing four iron bunks welded to the walls. There was a narrow corridor that ran the length of the structure, separating the cells into two opposite rows. It was here in the tank where the stench was worst. There was little air and no lighting and the walls were covered with moisture. Every afternoon at five o’clock the inmates were locked in the tank for the night. It was usually overcrowded, and some of the men slept on the floor in the corridor.
At seven in the morning the jailer opened the door to the main room and the trusties wheeled in the food carts and unlocked the tank. The area outside the tank was called the bullpen, where the men were allowed to move about during the day. The jailer always stood in the doorway and watched the men line up with their tin plates and spoons for breakfast and lunch (there was no supper). There was a white line painted on the floor, forming a six-foot square around the doorway where he stood. This was the deadline, and none of the inmates was allowed across it when the door was open. If they did come past the line, they would be knocked to the floor by either the jailer or one of the trusties. The jailer, large and heavyset, was a careful man and took no chances.
During the day the men could do as they pleased in the bullpen. T
he room had to be kept clean, and it was forbidden to throw anything out the windows, whether a cigarette end or a scrap of paper, or call down to the people in the street. If a rule was broken, one of two things could happen. Everyone could be thrown in the tank and left there for several days, or the person who broke the rule would be dragged off to the hole, which was in another part of the building. The hole was a cast-iron cage, like the tank, except much smaller in size with enough room for only two men. It was ordinarily used to hold men who were condemned to death and awaiting execution, but since these men were there for only a short time it was usually left free to be used as a place of solitary confinement. On one wall of the hole there was a list of names written in pencil with a date beside each one. These were the men who had been put to death upstairs.
Avery’s trial had been over for a week. He had pleaded guilty and received a sentence of one to three years to be served in a penal work camp. LeBlanc had drawn the same sentence as Avery for running moonshine, plus seven years for armed assault. Both of them were being held in the parish jail until they would be transferred to the work camp. When they came into the jail their personal belongings were taken from them and put into two brown envelopes, and they were each issued a tick mattress, a tin plate, a tin cup, and a spoon. The tank was full, and they were among the men who slept on the floor.
Avery and LeBlanc had their mattresses pulled against the wall to leave room for a walkway. There was a card game going on in the corridor. Five of the inmates sat or lay in a circle. A candle stub was melted to the floor in the center, and the thin flame flickered on their faces. Every night they played cards with the same faded incomplete deck. They used matchsticks for stakes, and the two winners were exempt from the cleaning detail in the morning.
Avery watched the game in silence. LeBlanc was playing, although none of the men wanted him. He had caused trouble since the first day he was brought into the jail. He had cursed the jailer and tried to hit a guard, for which he got a week in the hole. He refused to eat for three days when he came out. One of the inmates gave him a plate of food and told him to eat something, and LeBlanc threw it against the wall beside the doorway where the jailer stood. He was given two more days in the hole. He told everyone he would kill the jailer or a guard if given the chance. When he got out of the hole the second time he set fire to his mattress and filled the room with smoke. The men lied to the jailer and said that someone had dropped a cigarette on the mattress and the fire was an accident. They didn’t lie because they liked LeBlanc; whenever someone did something wrong, Ben Leander the jailer punished all the inmates. He didn’t look upon the men as individuals. They were a group, and when one of the group went against him the entire lot was to blame.