All Honest Men

by Claude Stanush

  “Hell, yeah,” I said.

  ’Course, I figured I’d be the one showing Dock, not Dock showing me.

  I was wrong.

  A few days later, we was both in the same field picking cotton. The field was near two miles from the barracks so the guards was armed heavy with double-barreled shotguns. But the day was a hot ’un, and the guards was winking off. I could see one of ’em half asleep on his sorrel bay, fat horseflies a-buzzing around his head.

  When we filled up the long cotton sacks we dragged along behind us we’d lug ’em over to the squad supervisor, who weighed ’em on a scale. Then he’d write down our names and the weight of the cotton: “Skinny” Newton, 195 pounds; “Fishhook” Jones, 136 pounds; “Bigfinger” Martin, 156 pounds.

  Well, Dock’d just weighed his sack when, all of a sudden, he tucked up close to me. And in a voice so low I could hardly hear him, he said: “Stay close. When you hear me holler, come a-running.” Then he passed on. All I could do was bend over again and go back to work. But I could feel my heart pick up: ker-thumpa, ker-thumpa. I knowed Dock was up to something. And from past times, I knowed about his poor judgment.

  I kept watching him outa the far corner of my eye. He was picking, just like the rest of us, only he seemed to be inching his way over towards one of the guards. The guard had his shotgun resting across the pommel of the saddle and his head was slumped down, like he was taking a catnap.

  If Dock was planning something, he oughta have talked it over with me first. Then we coulda done it right.

  It was too late.

  Dock sprung up from his row, grabbed that snoozing old guard by the arm and flipped him off his horse. Only somebody strong as Dock coulda done that. The guard come a-flying off that horse, and when he did Dock grabbed his shotgun and throwed down on him. He stuck the gun in that old boy’s left shoulder.

  “Get me the belt!” Dock hollered at me.

  I throwed off my sack and run over. I unhooked the guard’s cartridge belt and held it in my hand.

  Dock hopped on the guard’s horse, I scrambled on behind.

  It all come down so quick and so unexpected that the other prisoners working the rows close by didn’t even know what was going on. I wasn’t even sure myself what was going on. It was like I’d been sucked up by one of them crazy old Texas cyclones—and I was getting carried along with it.

  Dock started screaming: “The woods! The woods!”

  At first the convicts just stood like fence posts, they was so used to taking orders from the guards.

  “You fools!” Dock yelled it again. “Run! Run, while you can!”

  He hollered at ’em hard this time, like he was giving ’em an order, and that got about half of ’em to moving. And once they started moving, did they blow! They tore for them woods like they was running for their lives, which they was.

  ’Course, while all this was going on, the guard that Dock’d yanked off his horse wasn’t just laying there, playing possum. He’d pulled hisself up offa the ground and started to run toward the other guards and was a-hollering: “Escape! Escape!”

  I seen two guards wheel their horses and start toward us.

  There’d be others, a whole army of ’em, I knowed it.

  Dock aimed his shotgun up, to the sun. Blam! Blam!

  The guards pulled up short.

  “Woods! The woods!” Dock kept hollering at the prisoners that was still standing around, too boogered to move. “They cain’t stop all of ya!”

  He screamed at ’em like he was on fire.

  All of a sudden, it was like he’d set the rest of ’em on fife too. They all, ever’ last one of ’em, begun flowing towards the woods. They was moving in long thin streams. Whites and stripes together. And as they went, they begun to spread out so that if you was up in the sky, looking down at ’em, it woulda looked like they was one big old fan, a big old fan alive and moving in every part …

  “Hot piss and vinegar!” Dock said. “Try to stop ’em now!”

  Sooner ’r later, I knowed, we was all gonna pay the price for what was happening. But lemme tell you what, I don’t think I ever seen such a beautiful sight in my life—all them Texans running for their freedom!

  The guards begun firing at the escaping prisoners. Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! I seen a couple of ’em go down.

  Dock spun our horse around and shot off into the woods.

  The trees was thick with clumps of underbrush. But ever’ now and then we’d catch sight of somebody in white or stripes. The prisoners, once they’d hit the woods, had scattered out. Even with hounds on their trail there was only so many tracks the dogs could follow. Some’d get caught, some wouldn’t.

  Me and Dock was on a stout chestnut gelding. All the horses the guards rode was good and fat, better fed than the prisoners was. But even on a horse, I knowed we was leaving scent in the air—and ever’ time we pushed through some brush, we was leaving scent on them branches. We was riding fast as we could, making good time in the open places, trying to skirt past the brush.

  We musta rode a half-hour like that when the horse tripped over a big jagged rock and begun to limp.

  Way far off, now, we could hear the hounds.

  Yaaa-ooo! Yaaa-ooo! Yaaa-ooo!

  Ever’ bellow sent a shiver up my spine.

  The horse was limping more and more. And when we come up over some big rocks, hid by some brush, he stumbled. Dock and me both had to jump off, or he woulda crumpled right down to the dirt. We yanked off the saddle and bridle and hid ’em under some bushes and give the horse a slap. He took off to the north, slow and limping, like a old man, and got swallowed up by the woods.

  Yaaa-oooo! Yaaa-oooooo!

  Them hounds was so close now that if we’d took off on foot, we wouldna had a chance in the world. But there was plenty of trees around us—post oaks, live oaks and pecans—some of ’em high as six men standing one on top of the other.

  “Best we can do,” I said, “is coon up.”

  A hard breeze was blowing away from the dogs, but our scent was fresh in the air, and even with that breeze, the dogs was likely to track us, even up in a tree. But what else could we do? We picked out a tall post oak and started to shinny up it. I went first; Dock was after me. Big and thick as Dock was, he couldn’t shinny too fast. But ever’ time I’d pull up on a limb, I’d reach down and grab his arm and give him a yank.

  Yaaaa-oooo! Yaaaa-oooo!

  Them dogs sounded like they was just a coupla hundred feet away. But we still couldn’t see ’em.

  I give Dock one last big yank. We both hugged the trunk close.

  Yaaaa-oooo! Yaaaa-oooo!

  Now here come the bodies that went with them barks—crashing outa the brush, a tangle of long red legs, their long ears a-flying, their long tongues a-dangling, their long noses a-dragging the ground, and then.…

  … they run right past our tree.

  They’d overrun us.

  Me and Dock was just two pairs of eyes, way up high, peeking down at ’em through a bunch of leafy branches.

  “Safe,” Dock whispered to me.

  “I hope.”

  But when the dogs was about thirty yards past our tree, all of a sudden, it was like somebody’d pulled the brake on ’em. They stopped in their tracks and throwed their heads up in the air. They all sniffed. They scrambled around in a circle for a second, and then they all whipped around and run back in the other direction—towards our tree!

  Damn!

  We could hear horses crashing through the brush, and men’s voices. Them horses hadn’t been able to keep up with the dogs, but they wasn’t that far behind.

  Yaap, yaap, yaap.

  The dogs’ barks was choppier than before, and louder. They’d found what they was looking for. It was probably us.

  Probably, hell. It was us!

  Before you knowed it, they was a-raring up on our trunk, a-yowling and a-baying, like they’d treed a coon. I’ll tell you what, if I’da been running with them dirty dogs instead of h
ugging the top of that old tree, I’da been pretty worked up myself. Yeah, them dogs had found something!

  The posse that was after us knowed it too. Directly they come riding up and we could hear ’em talking down below.

  “There’s one of ’em up there,” we heard somebody yell. “Naw, it’s two of ’em!…”

  Then we heard another voice that scared the shit outa me. “Come on down you sons-o’-bitches, or we’ll blow you down. Count of three. One, two.…”

  “Sorry ’bout this, Willis,” Dock said.

  I didn’t say nothing back. I just started on down the tree.

  When my foot come down on the lowest branch, I seen four men standing at the foot of the tree. I knowed three of ’em. I said, “Jones, call off the dogs.”

  That set ’em all to laughing.

  So I said, “Jones, I ain’t coming all the way ’til you call off them dogs.”

  Jones hawed like a mule. Hee-haw! Haw-haw-haw! He was one of them brute fellas with big long yellow teeth that looked like a animal’s.

  “You’re damn right you’re coming down,” he said. “I’ll count to three, how ’bout it? One, two …”

  His shotgun was aimed right at my chest.

  I looked down at them hounds. They was jumping up at me with bared teeth, yelping and snarling. I knowed what I was in for. I dropped one foot toward the ground. They jerked me the rest of the way.

  Now, you may not wanna hear what come next, but I still got the scars all over my legs to prove that it happened. Lemme tell you what happens when you get bit by a dog. First off, there’s a loud POP! That’s when the teeth is breaking through the skin. The skin is kinda tight, see, and that’s what makes the pop. Then, after ever’ POP! there’s a yank of pain that’s so sharp and so hard you feel it in the pit of your stomach. That’s when the teeth is sinking on down into the muscle. Now multiply them pops and that pain by a hundred, or more, and you got a little idea of what I was going through. Them hound teeth was all over me.

  Their jaws was a-snapping and their teeth was a-stabbing.

  They was dogs. I was meat.

  To get ’em off, I backed up agin the tree and throwed my arms out, this-a-way and that-a-way. They gnawed on my arms for a while, then they went right back to my legs. Blood was pouring outa all them teeth holes, my head was dizzy, and my gut was flipping somersaults. And oh boy! How them guards wanted me to holler, to beg for mercy! But I never peeped.

  Them dogs would’ve chewed me to death, I’m sure of it, if Captain Anderson hadn’t rid up just then. Anderson was one of the toughest men on the prison staff. They’d outlawed whipping in the Texas prisons by then, but I’d seen Anderson use a thick leather belt called “The Bat” to slap the balls of one inmate that tried to stab another. And I seen him ride his horse right over two prisoners that had started a fight. Still, he musta had a few grains of Christian mercy left in him. When he seen them dogs a-chewing on me, he got pretty mad.

  “Pull the dogs off!” he hollered at Jones. “You got him, don’t you!”

  SIX

  It took three months for my legs to heal.

  It took six months for the State of Texas to round up most of them hundred and fifty convicts that’d took to the woods.

  Hunting up all them run-off inmates, it made me think of one day way back when me and Ma was riding to Rising Star. The wagon rolled over a big rut, and it joggled, and Ma’s arm come flying up and hit the string of her town necklace. And a whole mess of beads, dozens and dozens of ’em, went flinging off in ever’ direction.

  Well, them convicts had flied off just the same way: into corners and cracks and holes all over the State of Texas. Some of ’em never got found.

  The warden give me and Dock a double shot of misery to pay for his trouble.

  First off, three fat guards marched us out into a dark little room and put us direct under two long boards hanging on ropes. “Raise yer left hand,” one of them guards said. I raised my left hand and he pulled it up through a round hole cut in that board. He took some heavy cord and he looped it over my thumb and the board and pulled that cord real tight. “Raise yer right hand,” said the guard. He done the same with that one. Then he done the same to Dock.

  “Get ready, boys,” the guard said, and he walked over to the thick rope that was holding the boards to the ceiling. “This here’s gonna put you ’bout eight inches closer to the Lord God in his Blessed Heaven.”

  He yanked that rope, and up them boards went, and up went me and Dock with ’em. Only our toes was touching the ground. One of my feet was near off completely. I could catch the floor with the other one, but just barely. A pain that was dull and hard shot down through my arms, and a pain that stabbed like fire shot on up through my legs. I don’t know which pain was the worst, the pain in my arms or the pain in my legs. Them dog bites on my legs was still red-fresh.

  And there we hung.

  Neither me or Dock said nothing for the first half hour. What was there to say? We just had our own thoughts, whatever it is people think about when they’re a-hanging up by their thumbs. Like how it’s strange you don’t think much about how your body is put together, how the muscles and the bones and ever’thing is all hooked up, until you’re rope-tied in a way that ain’t natural.

  It was Dock that broke the quiet at last. “Sorry ’bout all this, Willis.”

  I give him a look from the corner of my eye. “From here on out, Dock, you follow me.”

  We didn’t say nothing else.

  When they cut us down, my thumbs was completely numb. They stayed that way for a year.

  The rest of our punishment was even worse. The warden said we had no chance in hell for parole. Then they added five years to Dock’s sentence, and the same to mine. Dock’s sentence was now ten years, and mine was eight.

  All that for stealing $35 worth of cotton.

  Eight goddamn years to be a clump in prison!

  Dock took his ten years a little better’n I took my eight. But only a little better. Sooner or later, he said, no matter how many years they added to his sentence, he was gonna get out.

  I wasn’t so sure no more.

  Eight years! I might’ve been able to stand it for two years. Or even three years. But eight! Here I was, twenty-three years old, in the prime of my life, raring to be out in the world doing things—and instead of that they had me behind bobwire like a wild animal in a cage.

  I felt sick all over. And mad. Mad not only at Pa, but mad now at ever’body. At Dock for getting me into this mess. At the warden and guards. At the constable and district attorney and Mel Calhoun back in Eastland County. At ever’body in the whole State of Texas and in the whole world.

  Except Ma.

  I hated ever’body and ever’thing except Ma.

  The worst thing about prison is it’s the same thing over and over and over again. Same work: from dawn to dark. Same smells: of sweat, of piss, of stinky feet, of sour air. Same food: hog jowls and corn mush, hog jowls and beans, hog jowls and biscuits, hog jowls and hash, hog jowls and corn mush again. They brung them hog jowls in by the wagonload. You ate ’em cause you was hungry, you was always hungry, and because that’s all there was.

  Well, I tell you, I was gonna get outa that penitentiary, somehow. Dead or alive. By myself. No Dock.

  They was just thoughts, I kept ’em to myself. But I had to feel free in some way.

  When a man’s caged up like we was, the tight inside of him builds up and builds up ’til he either explodes, or he blows it out a hole. I used my mind, my thinking, to blow out some of that steam. A lot of convicts did it other ways, like stabbing each other, or humping each other, or cussing each other.

  Dock took to cussing.

  Dock cussed the other convicts and he cussed the guards and he cussed the chapel preacher. He could cuss like a crazy man, using ever’ mix of bad words you can think of, and some that didn’t make no sense. He’d call one convict a “goddamn wood-pussy,” and he’d turn right around and call some g
uard a “skim-milk flip-cock.” And ever’ time Dock’d cuss out somebody important, he’d get swung up by his thumbs. After a while his thumbs just went completely dead, and he never—for the rest of his life—got back the feeling.

  There was only a coupla things you could do on that work farm to keep from getting bored outa your head, and that wasn’t gonna get you into trouble.

  Ever’ so often you’d be a-picking away in the fields and outa the corner of your eye you’d see a clump of brown bouncing down them middles. And most times, that clump of brown had a little clump of white on its ass. And ain’t nothing tastes better’n cottontail rabbit when all you been eating for months is hog jowls. They’d let the prison cook fry you up one if you could catch it.

  If you could catch it …

  But any rabbit that crossed my path was good as flipping in a pan. My fingers moved like lightning.

  There was one other thing you could do to break the sameness: cotton-picking races. You’d egg on some guy in your squad to see who could pick the most pounds before quitting time. If you won, all you won was a little piece of pride. Still, that was better’n nothing.

  One day, I was racing with a tall bald-headed fella named Dirty Butter, and we was going neck and neck for a while. Dirty Butter’d got that name because he hardly ever took a bath and he smelled like rancid butter. But how rank a man smells don’t affect how fast his fingers move, and he was fast. Still, I was faster and Dirty Butter couldn’t keep up. In the middle of the afternoon I dragged in a specially heavy sack to be weighed. The supervisor, who was a trusty, could hardly believe it when he looked at the scale.

  “Got rocks in that sack, Skinny?” he asked me.

  “Hell no. All pure cotton.”

  “Says here you already picked four hundred and ten pounds and it ain’t three o’clock yet. Where’d you steal it?”

  That supervisor just had to rub it in, he knowed I’d been sent to prison for stealing cotton.

  “I’ll tell you where I stole it,” I said, and I pointed out to the field. “Right outa them burrs.”

  Dirty Butter was standing direct behind me with his sack. He knowed he wasn’t gonna come nowhere near me, and he was looking down in the mouth. He’d picked hardly three hundred pounds that day to my four hundred and ten. Later, when he passed me in the field, he give me a look that was as sour as how he smelled. “I’m tellin’ you, Skinny,” he said, “if you didn’t steal none of that, you better slow things on down. Other boys ’r pretty griped. You’re making ’em look like loafers.”