It was LeBlanc’s deal. He shuffled the cards and set them down to be cut.
“Five-card stud,” he said.
“We been playing draw,” one man said.
“I’m dealing stud. You ain’t got to play.”
The other men told him to deal draw poker.
“I ain’t playing draw,” he said. “It’s dealer’s choice, and I call stud. One card down and four up. If nobody don’t want to play I take the ante.”
“Play like we been doing.”
“We always play the same game,” another said.
“The game is stud,” LeBlanc said, dealing the cards.
Avery sat and watched. Sherry, the man next to him, rolled a cigarette from loose tobacco in a shred of newspaper. The men had given him his name because he had been able to conceal a bottle of wine in his overalls when he was brought in. He was being held for the robbery of a liquor store.
“Your podner acts like he ain’t right in the head,” he said.
“It’s because he’s locked up,” Avery answered.
“We all locked up. That don’t give him no excuse.”
“He was in the war.”
“He’s got a crazy look in his face,” Sherry said. “Setting fire to his mattress like that. We like to coughed our lungs out from the smoke. He’s lucky they give him another mattress to sleep on.”
“The jail is rough on him.”
“Wait till he gets to the pen.”
“They’re sending us to a work camp.”
“That’s worse. They treat you better at the pen.”
“You been up before?”
“Three times around,” Sherry said. “It ain’t too bad for me. I’m used to it. Only thing I miss is drinking. With some of the cons it’s women. That’s all they talk about in the pen. With me it’s liquor. I can go without pussy, but I miss my drinking.”
Avery looked at Sherry. His face was an alcoholic’s. The lips were a bluish color in the darkness, and his jaws were flecked with small blue and red lines. His eyeballs twitched nervously.
“I go on a drunk once a month,” he said. “I stay drunk about a week and then I’m okay. But I got to have that week.”
“What are you in for?” he asked.
“Running moonshine.”
“Was you and LeBlanc working together?’
“There were two others. One got away and one drowned.”
Sherry looked from side to side and lowered his voice.
“It ain’t my business, but maybe it’d be better if you found yourself another podner.”
Avery didn’t answer and Sherry continued.
“He’s trouble, and you don’t want no trouble in the pen. You got to do like they tell you. He’ll crack up in the work camp. They’ll have to put him in a crazy house,” he said. “I’m just telling you what I think. You can podner with him if you want. But he’s going to get it at the camp.”
Avery turned back to the game. LeBlanc had finished his deal, and the man next to him was shuffling the cards. Every time LeBlanc drew a bad hand he threw down his cards and cursed the man who had dealt. When it was his turn to deal again he said he was going to change the game and called stud poker. The other men complained.
“Then nobody plays at all!” he shouted, and began to tear the cards in pieces and throw them in the air.
There was a brief fight. Two men held his shoulders to the floor while another wrenched the remaining cards from his hands. LeBlanc thrashed his feet and struck a man in the groin. The man reeled against the wall with a stupid expression of pain on his face. LeBlanc fought to get up, shouting at the top of his voice. The other men were coming out of their cells into the corridor to watch. He got one hand free and hit blindly at the figures around him.
“Somebody shut him up!”
“Leander is going to keep us in the tank for a week!”
“Belt him and get it over!”
“Bust him with a shoe. That’ll keep him quiet.”
A fist struck out and snapped LeBlanc’s head back against the iron floor. His eyes rolled, and he was unconscious. The men who had been holding him stood up.
“The sonofabitch can fight.”
“Leander ought to keep him in the hole till he starts beating his head on the walls.”
“Look what he done to Shortboy.”
“Does it hurt bad, Shortboy?”
Shortboy stood against the wall with a dazed look on his face. He couldn’t answer.
“See what he done?” Sherry said to Avery as the men moved away from LeBlanc, leaving him stretched out on the floor. One man picked up the candle stub and the scattered cards.
“Help me get him on his mattress,” Avery said to Sherry.
“Let him be. He ain’t our lookout.”
“Are you going to help me or not?”
“It ain’t good to podner with a guy like that.”
Avery went over to LeBlanc and dragged him by his arms to his mattress. The men stopped talking and watched him. Sherry moved to the other end of the corridor. There was a small patch of red in the back of LeBlanc’s hair. Avery rolled him over on his stomach. The men looked at Avery and began to talk among themselves. It was accepted by the inmates that no one was to help the victim when they dealt out punishment to one of their own members. Avery had broken the rule. Sherry came back and took his mattress to the end of the corridor. None of the men spoke to Avery for the remainder of the night.
In the morning the main door clanged open and the trusties entered with the food carts. The tank was unlocked, and the men picked up their cups and spoons and tin plates and shuffled out in the bullpen for breakfast. Avery shook LeBlanc by the shoulder to wake him. He lay in the same position as last night. There was a yellow and purple bruise along his jawbone, and a matted area of red in his hair His face was the color of ash; Avery was afraid he might have had a concussion. He shook him again
“Let’s go. It’s time for breakfast,” he said.
LeBlanc opened his eyes and sat up on his hands.
“My head hurts,” he said.
“Let’s go eat.”
LeBlanc felt the back of his head.
“It’s blood. Somebody hit me in the head.”
“Forget about it. We don’t want any more fights.
“What fights? I don’t remember nothing.”
“You were playing cards and you got into a fight.’
“I remember the cards, but I didn’t get in no fight. Somebody slipped up and cracked me in the back of the head.”
“Don’t worry about it now. Let’s get in the line.’
“Which one of them done it?”
“There were a lot of them. You can’t get them all.”
“I can get the one that give it to me,” LeBlanc said.
“Here’s your plate. I’m going to eat.”
He went out into the bullpen, and a minute later LeBlanc followed him. The men were in line before the food cart. The trusties were serving grits and sausage and coffee from the aluminum containers The men sat down on the floor with their backs against the wall and ate. When Avery and LeBlanc came out of the tank and got in line the talking stopped, and there was no sound but the scraping of the spoons in the plates. Leander the jailer looked at LeBlanc from the doorway. He had been a jailer long enough to know what had taken place the night before. He didn’t mind if LeBlanc had been ganged by the other men; maybe that was better than throwing him in the hole, and he wouldn’t be bothered with him anymore. But once a man had been beaten to death in the tank, and that had brought about an investigation, which cost the old jailer his job and caused the city officials a good deal of work.
“Who worked you over?” he said.
LeBlanc looked at him in hatred.
“Answer me.”
LeBlanc spit on the floor.
“Get out of the chowline,” Leander said. “You don’t eat breakfast this morning.” He turned to the other men and pointed his finger. “I’m not going to st
and for this sort of crap in my jail. I’m a fair man until somebody crosses me, then I step on his neck. I don’t know which ones worked on LeBlanc, but that don’t matter because I’ll make every one of you pay for it. Any more fighting and I’ll lock you up in the tank until the stink gets so bad you won’t be able to breathe. Some of you ain’t been locked up for a week, but you can ask Shortboy what it’s like.”
Ben Leander told the trusties to take the food cart out. The men were usually given a second serving, but this morning they were being punished. Leander looked around the room once more and went out, clanging the iron door shut behind him.
“You fixed us good,” one man said to LeBlanc.
“He’ll cut us short on lunch, too,” another said.
“We was all right before you and your buddy come in.”
“Was you ever locked in the tank, Shortboy?” a third inmate said.
“He can’t keep nobody in there a week.”
“Shit he can’t.”
“Tell them about it, Shortboy.”
“It’s just like he says,” Shortboy said. He was a short, thick-bodied man, with a square build and a big nose and close-set eyes. “The stink seeps into your guts and they don’t send the trusties in to clean the crappers and them goddamn flies is all over the place and you think you’ll puke when they hand you the food through the slot in the door. About six months ago there was an old man in here. He used to walk around in his drawers all the time, and there was something wrong with one of his legs. It was red and swole up like rubber. One time the door was open and the old guy forgot and stepped across the deadline. Leander pushed him down on the concrete, and he got all skinned up. We wrote what happened on a piece of paper and everybody signed it. One of the guys took it to a newspaper when he got out. Soon as the paper come out Leander threw us in the tank for nine days. Nine fucking days, crowded up together like a bunch of pigs. We even set fire to them Bibles to get rid of the stink. There wasn’t none of us fit to piss on when we come out of there.”
“It ain’t right to lock everybody up for what one guy does,” a man said. “He ought to put LeBlanc in the hole and let us be.”
“You got no rights in here,” another said.
Avery and LeBlanc were over by the window. Avery had his plate and cup on the sill. He was standing. LeBlanc sat on the floor against the wall with his knees pulled up before him. His black hair hung in his face.
“We don’t have a lot of friends here,” Avery said.
“I don’t give a damn for that. Bunch of white trash.”
“Listen. If Leander locks us all in the tank, you and me aren’t going to be worth twenty-five cents.”
“I got some people to pay back. It’s them that’s got to be on the lookout.”
“There’re thirty of them. They’ll get started, and there won’t be any way to stop them.”
“I ain’t afraid of no white trash.”
“That isn’t it,” Avery said. “You’ve got to learn how to live in here if you’re going to make it.”
“I ain’t got to learn nothing.”
“Eat some breakfast.”
“I don’t want none.”
“Suit yourself.”
“You’re good people, kid, but you ain’t got to watch out for me. I seen more stuff than you could think about.”
“I was trying to keep you from getting your throat cut.”
“I didn’t know about you back in the marsh, but you’re good people. There ain’t many people worth anything.”
“Don’t start any more fights in here, and we’ll be all right.”
“I got to even everything up.”
“You’ll go back to the hole.”
“Screw it.”
“Don’t get us into more trouble.”
LeBlanc stood up and jerked his shirt out of his trousers.
“You see this scar on my belly?” he said. “A Jap bayonet done that. Look at my back. That’s what a army M.P. done. I got a lot of paying back to do
Avery poured some of his coffee into LeBlanc’s cup.
“Drink the coffee,” he said.
LeBlanc tucked his shirt in and drank from the cup.
“You ain’t been in a war. Don’t ever go to one, even if they stand you up against a wall,” he said. “I went over in ’43. They sent us in at the Marianas. The Japs pasted us on the beach, but we done our share of killing too. That’s where I shot my first man. I forgot what the rest of them looked like, but Christ I remember that first one. He was buck naked except for a strip of rag around his loins, up in the top of a palm tree. I cut him down with my B.A.R. and he fell out and there was a rope tied around his middle and he was swinging in the air and I kept on shooting and the bullets turned him around like a stick spinning in the water.”
“I’m going to sleep for a while,” Avery said.
“You ain’t finished eating.”
“I was awake most of last night.”
He went through the open door of the tank and lay down on his mattress. He put his arm behind his head and looked up at the top of the tank. He thought of his brother Henri who had been killed at Normandy. Avery could remember the day he enlisted. Henri was seventeen at the time and would not have had to go into the service for another year, but he volunteered with the local National Guard outfit that had just been activated for training. It was his way of leaving, Avery thought. He was getting away from the house and Papa and all the rest of it.
Henri finished training and was shipped to England in February of 1944. They received one letter from him in the next three months. In late June a telegram arrived at the Broussard home. Mr. Broussard didn’t open it. He held the envelope in his hand a moment and dropped it on the table and went to the back part of the house. Henri had been attached to a rifle company as a medic. He was among the first American troops to invade the French coast. Many of the men in his company didn’t make the beach. He dragged a wounded man out of the surf and was giving him a shot of morphine when a mortar shell made a direct hit on his position. The burial detail put him in a pillowcase.
And that’s it, Avery thought. Somebody in Washington sends you a yellow square of paper with pasted words and your brother is dead. Just like that, dead. No more Martinique parish, no more Papa, no more fallen down house that somebody built a hundred years ago for a way of life that is as dead as Papa and Henri. And the last of the noble line of French and Spanish aristocracy is now lying on his back in the parish drunk tank on a mattress that smells of vomit, waiting to go to work camp where he will have prison letters stenciled on his back and they’ll give him a pick and shovel to work with at hard labor from one to three years, and he may be one of the few aristocrat convicts in the camp.
Avery remembered the things his father used to say to him when they sat on the veranda together during the long summer afternoons. Mr. Broussard spoke of the early American democracy and the agrarian dream of Thomas Jefferson, and how they had died and there was nothing left of them save a shell. The agrarian dream had been destroyed by an industrial revolution that pierced America to its heart. The republic was gone and had been replaced by another society which bore little semblance to its predecessor. Mr. Broussard had been raised to live in a society and age that no longer existed. By blood and by heritage he was bound to the past, which was as irreclaimable as those vanished summer days of heavy cane in the fields and the Negroes going to work with the hoes over their shoulders and the full cotton wagons on the way to the gin. Only an inborn memory remained, a nostalgia for something that had flowered and faded and died before he lived. Possibly in the mellow twilight of evening he could look out from the veranda and see the column of men in their worn butternut-brown uniforms, retreating from the Union army, and hear the jingle of the saber and the labor of the horses, the creak of the artillery carriages, as the column moved up the river road to make one last fight against General Banks’ advancing troops.
He should have lived back then, Avery thought. He should
have died when it died, and never had sons that end up torn to bits in France or serving time on a work gang.
Avery heard a metal object strike the side of the tank and rattle across the floor. There was angry swearing from the bullpen. He got up and walked to the door. The men were looking at LeBlanc, who sat on the floor. A tin cup lay by the wall of the tank. The men moved towards LeBlanc and circled about him. He stood up to face them with his fists clenched by his sides.
A stout, bull-chested man led the group. He walked with the clumsy motions of a wrestler, flat-footed, his thick legs slightly spread, his big hands awkward. He wore a crushed felt hat, which always remained on his head except when he slept. The men called him Johnny Big, because he was thought to be the toughest man in the tank, and the others did what he told them. He also acted as spokesman for the group. When the men needed something, they talked to Johnny Big, and he talked to Leander, and sometimes they got what they wanted. Each inmate contributed two cigarettes a day to Johnny Big. He was head man and no one questioned his authority.
Avery caught a man by the arm and pulled him aside.
“What happened?” he said.
“Let go.”
“Tell me.”
“LeBlanc slammed his cup against the tank and almost bust Sherry in the head.”
Avery released him. The man crowded into the group with the rest.
“How come you to try and hit Sherry?” Johnny Big asked.
“If I wanted to hit him he wouldn’t be walking around,” LeBlanc said. “I wouldn’t use no cup to do it with, neither.”