Half of Paradise

by James Lee Burke

  “I ain’t seen a woman in four years,” Billy Jo said. “I’m going to hire the two best-looking whores in Memphis and jazz them till they’re bleeding. I ain’t done any belly-rubbing in so long I forgot what it is.”

  “It ain’t but a month now,” Jeffry said.

  “Why don’t you guys write it on a piece of paper and tack it on the warden’s bulletin board,” a man working next to Billy Jo said. “Jeffry and Billy Jo is breaking out in one month.”

  “I remember in Folsom a guy stooled on a break,” Billy Jo said. “Somebody used a razor on him like you slice up a ham.”

  “That didn’t do no good to the guys that got their butts shot off,” the man said.

  Billy Jo swung his pick down hard into the wall of dirt.

  “I don’t reckon you’re aiming to make trusty by turning us in?” he said.

  “I got no truck with fellows like that.”

  “You’re a good boy.” Billy Jo swung his pick down again.

  “What are you going to do when you get out, Toussaint?” Jeffry said.

  “I don’t think that far ahead.”

  “That’s the best way to do it. You go nuts when you start counting time.”

  Two men moved the wheelbarrows up to the front of the ditch and shoveled in the loose dirt.

  “It don’t do you no good to count time,” Jeffry said. “It makes you feel like shitting in your britches when you think of what’s out there and you can’t get to none of it.”

  “There’s pussy out there,” Billy Jo said. “Christ, I’m going to bathe in it when I get out.”

  “This is the worst goddamn camp they got in the state,” Jeffry said. “Them goddamn Carolina chain gangs ain’t any worse off than we got it.”

  “This place ain’t tough,” Billy Jo said. “I was in five pens before they sent me here.”

  “You had a real successful career,” a man said. It was the same man who had baited him in the truck.

  “Someday I’ll sent you a postcard and you can play with yourself while you think about me climbing between some girl’s legs.”

  “How did you get that scar on your face?”

  “In the Tennessee pen,” Billy Jo said.

  “I heard you was cut for rutting over a nigger girl.”

  “You sonofabitch.”

  “Your scar is turning red, Billy.”

  “I’ll drive this pick through your goddamn chest.”

  “Your bleeding ass.”

  “I done warned you.”

  “Hack watching,” Brother Samuel said.

  They looked up. Evans stood in the shade by the trees.

  “He ain’t watching us. He’s thinking about what he’s going to do to his old lady when he gets home,” Billy Jo said. “Why’d you say he was watching us?”

  “I don’t reckon I see too good,” Brother Samuel said.

  “Don’t go getting in no fights,” Jeffry said. “They’ll put you in detention and we’ll be out in another month.”

  “You boys better keep quiet about it,” Brother Samuel said.

  “We’ll make it out,” Jeffry said.

  “I ain’t saying you won’t. It’s just that it don’t hurt none to keep it to yourself.”

  “You ever been in a break, Daddy?” Billy Jo said. The man whom he had almost fought had moved to the other side of the ditch and was working by himself.

  “No. I seen one, though. I was in Angola when they lined the guards up along the block and was going to set fire to them with torches.”

  “Too bad Evans wasn’t there,” Billy Jo said. “I’d give up the best piece of ass I ever had to see him get caught in a riot. And that pop-off bastard over there. I’d like to see him get his tail burned, too.” He looked towards the man working on the other side of the canal.

  “Why don’t you quit talking about women?” Jeffry said.

  “Because I love pussy, fruit man. That’s the only thing I can’t go without. The best lay I ever had was from a gal in Birmingham. I picked her up in a beer joint. She had a belly as smooth as water, and she was like wet silk inside. I give her everything I had and she still wanted more.”

  “I run after women when I was a young man,” Daddy Claxton said.

  “How long has it been, Daddy?” Billy Jo said.

  “I got too old to think about it anymore.”

  “You ain’t too old to play with them.”

  “I done eight years and I still got life to go. I don’t think about them no more.”

  Evans walked closer to the ditch and looked down at the men. They stopped talking and swung their picks into the dirt. He went back to the shade of the trees.

  Toussaint watched Avery work with his pick. He raised it over his head and swung down with his arms.

  “You’re doing it wrong,” the Negro said.

  “What?”

  “You won’t last the day like that.”

  “I know how to use a pick.”

  “You ain’t worked eight hours a day with one before.”

  “How do you do it, then?”

  “Swing with your shoulders. Let the pick do the work,” Toussaint said. “Don’t tire yourself out. You ain’t working for nothing except that ten-dollar bill they give you when you get out of here.”

  “You talk like you’re from the Delta.”

  “Barataria.”

  “I’m from Martinique parish.”

  “What are you serving?”

  “One to three for running moon.”

  “You don’t look like a whiskey runner.”

  “I wasn’t in business long enough to be a professional.”

  “You can be out in a year on good behavior.”

  “I already had trouble with the captain.”

  “How’d you get on this gang? Gang five is supposed to be for lifers and troublemakers.”

  “There was a fight when I was in the parish jail.”

  “Who was doing the fighting?”

  “I was part of the time. The man I was brought in with had to be sent to the prison hospital at Angola.”

  “Stay out of fights in the camp. It will get you time in detention, and they won’t let you try for parole when your first year is up.”

  “What’s detention like?”

  “It’s a tin box no bigger than a baggage trunk setting out in the sun.”

  “How many days do they put you in there?” Avery said.

  “As long as they want, but they got to take you out each night. The camp doctor makes them.”

  “They kept me in the hole eight days at the parish jail. After the third day I couldn’t go to sleep. It was too hot to sleep during the daytime and at night I’d start imagining things.”

  “If they put you in detention try counting the rivets on the inside of the door. When you get tired of that you can count the heat waves bouncing off the sides.”

  “What are you in for?”

  “Ten years.”

  “Jesus Christ. What did you do?”

  “They said I robbed a fur company.”

  “You didn’t do it?”

  “They give me ten years. They’re outside and I’m inside. That makes them right.”

  “How does anybody beat a place like this?”

  “They say nobody beats it. Nobody escapes and nobody comes out the same.”

  “Those two men in the truck think they’re getting out.”

  “Jeffry and Billy Jo?” Toussaint said.

  “The one with the red scar and his podner.”

  “If they bust free they’ll be the first. Two years ago somebody in gang three tried it. He was climbing over the wire fence when they caught him with the shotguns. They make everybody in camp come outside and look at him hanging in the wire.”

  The sun was high above the trees now, and it shone directly down in the ditch. Brother Samuel and Daddy Claxton tied their handkerchiefs around their foreheads to keep the sweat out of their eyes. Jeffry complained of the heat and his stomach, and he held both h
ands close to the iron head of the pick and scratched at the dirt and roots. Billy Jo continued to talk of the women he had slept with, although no one listened to him now. The wheelbarrow was brought up and the loose dirt was shoveled in. The men rested on their picks and cursed the sun and the dust, and once more swung into the hard sunbaked wall before them.

  “Bring the goddamn water barrel down,” Billy Jo aid.

  “Where the hell is the trusty? Hey Evans, send down the water barrel,” another said.

  “I can’t drink no water,” Jeffry said.

  “The rest of us can,” Billy Jo said. “Evans! Tell the goddamn trusty to bring us some water.”

  Evans stood over them on the crest of the ditch. He frowned at Billy Jo.

  “What’s your beef?” he said.

  “Some goddamn water.”

  “Go back to work.”

  “It’s hotter than a bitch down here.”

  “I’ll send the trusty. Keep swinging that pick.”

  Evans walked up the line and sent the trusty back. The aluminum water barrel was beaded with drops of moisture. A tin dipper hung from the lip of the barrel. Billy Jo pulled off the lid and filled the dipper. He swallowed twice and spit the rest in the dirt.

  “This tastes like Evans washed his socks in it,” he said.

  “Drink it or go dry,” the trusty said.

  “Fuck you, ass kisser.”

  “Maybe you don’t get no water the rest of the day,” the trusty said.

  “And maybe you’ll get your fucking throat slit while you’re asleep,” Billy Jo said.

  The trusty put the lid back on the barrel. “That’s all your drinking water for today.”

  “Let me have a drink. I’m like cotton inside,” Daddy Claxton said. The trusty pulled the lid back off and let him fill the dipper. The water rolled down Claxton’s chin and over his chest. He lowered the dipper into the barrel and drank again. Jeffry watched him drink, and rubbed the back of his hand over his lips.

  “You’ll have the runs for a week,” Billy Jo said.

  “His tongue won’t be blistering by one o’clock,” the trusty said.

  “Screw you, punk.”

  The dipper was passed around the gang. The trusty replaced it and the lid when they had finished.

  “There’s a freshwater spring over in them trees,” he said. “I’m going over directly and have a drink.”

  “You mean there’s clean water over yonder?” Jeffry said.

  “It’s coming right out of some rocks.”

  “Go fill up the water barrel. We’ll pay you for it,” he said.

  “What with?”

  “I got three bucks hid in the barracks.”

  “That ain’t enough.”

  “The sonofabitch is riding you,” Billy Jo said. “Don’t pay him no mind.”

  “It’s coming out of some rocks with moss on them.’

  “I believe him,” Jeffry said. “This is hill country There’s always springs where there’s hills.”

  “You’re in barracks two, ain’t you?” Billy Jo said to the trusty. “Well, I got buddies in there, so you better forget about sleeping for the next few nights unless you want to get operated on. It takes one swipe with a knife and your whoring days are over. Now get the fuck out of here, punk.”

  “It’s a long day without no water,” the trusty said and lifted the barrel and moved down the ditch.

  “You shouldn’t ought to get him mad,” Daddy Claxton said. “Maybe he won’t bring the water back.’

  “He’s got to,” Billy Jo said. “Evans will make him We can’t do no work without water.”

  “I reckon you’re right,” Daddy Claxton said.

  “I don’t give a fuck for punks like that, anyway.’

  “I wouldn’t mind making trusty,” the old man said.

  “That’s for punks and ass kissers.”

  “You think there’s a spring around here somewhere?” Jeffry said.

  “There ain’t no water in ten miles of here that don’t have scum or mosquito eggs in it.”

  “I thought we might get some clean water.”

  “They might bring us some oranges with lunch. You can drink the juice.”

  “You think they will?”

  “Today’s Friday. Carp and fruit for lunch,” Brother Samuel said.

  “I seen some carp and garfish eating off a drowned cow once,” Daddy Claxton said.

  Evans walked over to the embankment of dirt and squatted on his haunches, looking down at the men. Small clods rolled from around his boots into the ditch.

  “The captain wants a new latrine dug,” he said.

  “We dug the last one. It’s gang six’s turn,” Billy Jo said.

  “The captain likes the way we dig latrines. We do a good job. He might even let us keep digging them from now on. Boudreaux and what’s your name, get up here.”

  Toussaint and Avery climbed out of the ditch.

  “You see that line of scrub over there? Dig a trench fifteen feet long and three deep.”

  “We ain’t got a shovel.”

  “Claxton, hand up your shovel.”

  “It’s checked out to me. I got to hand it back in.”

  “Let’s have it.”

  Evans took the shovel by its handle and gave it to Avery.

  “Give Claxton your pick.”

  Avery slid it down the embankment to the old man.

  They walked over to the line of brush. Avery marked out the edge of the trench with his shovel. Evans stood off in the shade of the trees to watch them.

  “I’ll break the ground and you dig after me,” Toussaint said.

  They went to work. Toussaint drove the pick into the cracked earth and snapped the brush roots loose. Avery dug from one end of the trench and worked in a pattern towards the other side.

  “What makes Billy Jo and Jeffry think they can make it?” he said.

  “Billy Jo has got a brother on the outside. He’s supposed to help them.”

  “You think you could make it with somebody on the outside?”

  “Not when everybody in camp knows about it,” Toussaint said. “Billy Jo says his brother is going to meet them in a car. I’m surprised he ain’t give out the license number.”

  “You might have a chance with help on the outside.”

  “You thinking about leaving us?”

  “It passed through my mind.”

  “You can get out in a year. Serve your time. A year ain’t nothing. If you break out and get caught they add five more on your sentence.’

  “Do you ever think about breaking out?”

  “I wouldn’t talk about it if I did,” Toussaint said. “You’re young. Wait it out.”

  The trench deepened. It was almost time for lunch.

  “Why were you in detention?” Avery said.

  “Talking during roll call.”

  “They gave you a day for that?”

  “No, two days. They let me out to put somebody else in.”

  “Who put you in?”

  “Evans.”

  “He must have it against you.”

  “He don’t like nobody.”

  “He looks like he enjoys his work.”

  “It takes a certain type man to be a hack,” Toussaint said.

  “Does he ride you like that all the time?”

  “You said you were from Martinique parish.”

  “Yes.”

  “Talk about Martinique parish, then.”

  They worked for a half hour in silence.

  “What do you figure on doing when your time is up?” Toussaint said.

  “I just got here. I haven’t thought about it.”

  “You’ll start thinking about it soon. You won’t think about nothing else after a while.”

  “I might go to New Orleans.”

  “What for?”

  “I’ve never been there.”

  “Ain’t you got a home?”

  “There’s nothing left of it now. My daddy was a cane p
lanter. We used to own twenty acres. The last I heard some man bought it at the sheriff’s tax sale to build a subdivision.”

  “I lived in New Orleans. I worked on the docks.”

  “What’s the chance of getting a job?”

  “Fair. What kind of work you done?”

  “Oil exploration.”

  “I know a man down there might help you.”

  “They say New Orleans is a good town.”

  “You planning on staying out of the whiskey business?” Toussaint said.

  “I’ll probably stay on the drinking end of it.”

  “You can’t boil out the misery with corn.”

  “You can make a good dent in it, though.”

  “You’re too young to have a taste for whiskey.”

  “I’m not too young to be digging a latrine with you, so let’s get off my age.”

  “Whiskey can eat you up.”

  “I’ve seen a lot more eaten up, and whiskey didn’t do it.”

  Evans blew his whistle for the lunch break. The men climbed out of the ditch and formed a line behind a pickup truck parked in the shade. Toussaint and Avery dropped their tools in the unfinished trench and got in line with the others. The tin plates and spoons were handed out. The trusties served the food from the big aluminum containers placed on the bed of the truck. The men sat in the shade and ate.

  “You told me we was having oranges,” Jeffry said.

  “I ain’t the warden. I can’t know what they’re going to do,” Billy Jo said.

  “You said we was getting oranges.”

  “Drink the tea. It helps your stomach,” Brother Samuel said.

  “It’s just like the drinking water.”

  “Stop bitching,” Billy Jo said.

  “I seen some carp eating off a dead cow once,” Daddy Claxton said.

  “Maybe you’re swallowing the same carp,” someone said.

  “It wouldn’t bother me none. I eat worse. When I was a boy my pap used to bring home garfish that was caught up on land in the flood basin.”

  “This tea ain’t no different from the water,” Jeffry said.

  “It’s boiled. That makes it different. Drink it and shut up,” Billy Jo said.

  “I’ll puke up my dinner.”

  “Let Brother Samuel work on you,” a man from gang two said.

  “He didn’t do me no good.”

  “You wasn’t cooperating,” the man said.

  “I ain’t got my powers no more,” Brother Samuel said.