Black Water

by Bobby Norman

  “My wife told me t’tell ya she’s prayin’ for ya.”

  “Yeah, well, you tell ‘er I said praise th’Lord.”

  “She told me t’tell ya.”

  “And you did.”

  “I just wanted ya t’know it came from her. I ain’t as big on that stuff as she is.”

  Hub thought Dan coulda passed on tellin’ him. The little woman never woulda known.

  Dan musta read his mind. “If I hadn’ta told ya, she’d know ‘n I’d never hear th’end of it. She’s got a way ‘bout ‘er.” He stuck his hand through the bars, chinned to the artwork, and asked, “Y’mind?”

  Yes, I do, Hub thought, but with nothin’ better to do, he set the cigarette in the lid and helt the drawing up. Dan pulled it through the bars and adjusted it to the candle so he could see. Nodding appreciatively, he glanced through the bars at the other dozen or so Hub had pasted to the walls.

  “Not bad. Damn sight better’n I could do, I’ll tell ya that much. I couldn’t draw a straight line with a ruler. I mean it, Hub, you got a real talent.”

  “Yeah,” Hub replied, without a lot of enthusiasm.

  Dan looked back at the one in his hand; a swamp scene with moss-festooned cypress and an old fallin’-down, two-room cabin. No smoke from the chimney. It clearly stated nobody lived here, hadn’t for a long time, and probly wouldn’t in the future. The other drawings on the wall were of varying locales. Some swampy. Some dry. Most were of tall Cypress trees. The only structure was the same old cabin, but from different angles.

  Dan passed the drawing back through the bars. “Is ‘at where ya live?”

  ‘No,” Hub replied. He had to pull back on somethin’ sarcastic. Where the Hell did he think he lived and would for the next forty years? Dan wasn’t a bad sort. Obviously, all you needed to be a prison bull was to have a total lack of ambition, be content with a small paycheck, and a just-above-starvation-level pension at the end o’ God only knew how many years. “I lived off aways. Quite a ways. Acshully, I holed up there a couple o’ days when they’s lookin’ for me.”

  “Looks lonely.”

  “Yeah, well,” he reached over, picked up the cigarette and took a drag, “I had a lot on m’mind.”

  “I’ll bet. Well, I gotta be goin’, make sure all you fellas’re accounted for.” Hub raised his hand in response and went back to his drawing.

  An hour or so later, he’d put it aside and was laid out on his bunk. He’d get back to the drawing later, or he wouldn’t. Whatever. God knew he had time. It only took a minute or two before he dozed off. There was no draft and no one’d walked by to stir the air, but somethin’ made the little candle dance a little jig and shortly after, Hub found hisself perched on the old Lusaw house front porch lookin’ at the back of a little black-haired girl.

  CHAPTER 27

  September, 1925, in Louisiana was a permanent sauna. Parked in the shade of a large Cypress dripping mossy tendrils, a prison road boss sat astride a state-supplied horse with a state-supplied, double-barreled twelve-gauge nestled in a scabbard on his state-supplied saddle. He kept a bored but watchful eye on his charges, also state-supplied—a troop of a dozen or so inmates clearing brush alongside the county road. Off aways, under another tree, a team of lethargic mules, harnessed to the stakeside flatbed that had delivered the black and white striped throng to this weed-clogged thoroughfare, dozed, their tails wastin’ their time swishin’ at the hordes of relentless, bothersome, butt-biting insectoids. A second twelve-gauge-totin’ Angola Penitentiary employee inhabited the wagon bed, legs danglin’ off the side, a hand-rolled pinched in his fingers, watching. He was a watcher. That was his job. Watching. Alllllways watching. And he did it well. They both did. They were a team. Masters of Ambition.

  One o’ the pick-swingin’, sickle-swishin’, hoe-hoein’, shovel-shovelin’ candy-stripers was twenty-five-year-old Hubert Marshall Lusaw. His shirt was off; he was dirty, sweat riverin’ little lines in the grime, and hard as nails. He stood out from the rest o’ the pack ‘cause of his sun-baked hide, close-shorn, stark-white hair, and deeply scarred left arm. He’d been in the big house one month shy a year, and the other prisoners still gave him a lot o’ room. Only one time, fairly early on, did someone profess possession of an over-sized sack o’ nuts to challenge him and his supposedly fearful murderous resume. Other than the newspaper stories and tall tales, no one had seen actual proof of his cold-blooded ferocity. He was big and he looked mean, but apparently that wasn’t enough for one.

  They beat the livin’ shit out o’ each other. For three and a half minutes. Following the embarrassing pummeling, one o’ the other combatant’s pethy reproductive accouterments had to be surgically separated from its bagmate by Dr. Kamarata, having been too irreparably damaged to keep. He also had quite o’ bit o’ trouble chewin’ anything more substantial than apple sauce, or seein’ just one o’ anything for ‘bout five weeks. It cost Hub a month in a place where the sun actually didn’t shine. The enhanced reputation garnered from that one incident undoubtedly kept many other mountain oysters where they belonged.

  It wasn’t a bad job, workin’ the road. Outside in the fresh air, in the sunshine. Three squares a day and a comfy place to sleep at night, paid for by the state, guarded day and night by people who…well, you were guarded. You got free transportation with your cohorts, to and from the worksite. And, again, the ever-watchful, protective somebody constantly lookin’ out for you.

  Constantly.

  It wasn’t perfect by a long shot. No, sir, but no job was. You had to put up with the heat, the humidity, bitin’, burrowin’, suckin’ bugs, numerous reptiles of both the multi- and non-legged varieties, all which were sharply toothed, none o’ which were very friendly. The old you-don’t-bother-them, they-won’t-bother-you thing didn’t work in and around a Looziana swamp. They would come lookin’ for you, with evil and hungry intent.

  BOOK THREE

  CHAPTER 28

  Same humid Looziana, thirty years later, a different road boss, comfortably situated in the shade of another droopy, moss-bearded tree. But instead o’ sittin’ astride a horse, this one was slouched in the passenger seat in the cab of a new Ford pickemup truck, his crossed ankles on the dashboard, the prison logo emblazoned on the door. The radio was on, Hank Williams warblin’ about a woman with a cheatin’ heart. He pulled on a little green bottle o’ Coca Cola, deliberately brought up a carbonated belch, and then took a suck on a Camel. He turned his wrist to look at his watch. Four more long hours, and he could put another day closer to retirement to bed. He kept the same bored eye on his charges as his predecessors had—a troop of Angola’s black and white-striped finest, clearing brush alongside the same road. The same twelve-gauge lay nestled within arms reach in a gun rack acrost the back window. The old road was dirt; this one was paved. Some things change. Some don’t.

  Case in point: fifty-five year old Hubert Marshall Lusaw. Still one o’ the gang, but still not. His shirt was off. He was still dirty, still sweatin’ muddy rivers down his grimy back, and still swingin’ a pick. It coulda been the same one, maybe not, he hadn’t cared enough for it to scratch his name on it. But, if anything, he was harder than the nails of thirty years past. He still stood out ‘cause o’ that close-shorn, stark-white hair, and the scarred arm, and the other prisoners still gave him room. The reputation had endured. One o’ the first questions asked by new craney-necked recruits was, “Which one’s Lusaw?”

  He’d just about put Raeleen and the boys out of his mind. She came up to see him two more times after he told her not to, but he never went down to see her. He got an official paper from the court shortly after sayin’ she wanted a divorce. The paper said he could fight it if he wanted. If he didn’t, he’d lose his wife and sons. But, he reminded hisself that he’d told her not to come back. What had he expected? That she’d sit around the rest of her life and mourn like a grieving widow? He signed the papers and never heard from her again. She might be dead for all he knew. He couldn’t even re
member what Harvey and Henry looked like.

  His only other reminder of a past, now, besides the art gallery in his living quarters, was the nightmares. Same one damn near ever night. Over and over and over. After the first few times findin’ hisself perched on the Lusaw family front porch, he began to recognize it for what it was and knew it wasn’t real, but had no power to end it. He’d tried. God knows he’d tried. He’d stand on the porch and scream and punch hisself tryin’ to wake up, but to no avail. All he got out of it was Little Ret givin’ him mean looks and pressin’ her pointin’ finger on her lip to shush him up. He knew he wasn’t sittin’ on the porch in the sunshine, but layin’ on his bunk in prison in the dark. He’d pound his head on the porch post or the back wall, but all it gained him was a headache when he finally woke up, screamin’, and his arm on fire. It was like a movie, always the same fuckin’ movie—Lootie was the projectionist and she saw to it that it always ran to the end.

  He tried foolin’ her and climbed on the bed with the twelve-year-old, bypassin’ the sixteen-year-old, and they romped like a couple o’ sex-starved weasels. Ret, her smell, her feel, her response, so real he’d lose hisself in the act and end up under the bed covers, his face buried ‘tween hers, and then Lootie’s, festered legs. It was the same with the six-year-old and the ten-year-old with the kitten. Each time, Lootie ended up grindin’ his face in her crotch and rakin’ her rancid fingernails over his arm. Ever time he woke up with a bleeding arm. It bled...even after thirty years, it bled. No scab, no laceration, but it still bled.

  His own Hellish stigmata.

  After the days work was completed and he was chaperoned to his cell, Hub relaxed, starin’ at the walls and pullin’ on a hand-rolled. He had the wherewithal to barter for machine-made, but any fool knew it wasn’t the same. Machine-made tasted like shit, probly tainted by the grease on the machines’ wheels and cogs, and anybody who succumbed to ‘em was either lazy, stupid, or both. He’d suck on his first machine-made right after he sucked his first dick.

  After thirty years, almost ever inch of his walls was plastered with the chalk-and-paper memories. Rend’rin’s o’ the swamp. Some were so old and desiccated they’d cracked, the torn edges and corners patched up with multiple layers o’ Scotch tape. Most were Cypress behemoths and that same run-down old cabin. Interspersed willynilly was the occasional image o’ what looked to be the same young girl, but at different ages. Six, ten, twelve, maybe sixteen. He was better with trees and cabins than the human form. The girl’s body parts varied depending on the image. Legs a little longer in some, arms a little shorter, the neck, sometimes long, other times almost nonexistent. In a couple, she helt a little kitten. In all, there was a head, but no face. A dozen images o’ the same girl, sittin’ on a porch, standin’ barefoot in a little creek, some layin’ on a bed, but all faceless. Faceless ‘cause the memory o’ broken limbs didn’t haunt him as much as the distorted, busted face.

  He was immersed in memory when he became aware of somebody or something comin’ down the catwalk. A step, then a drag. Step-drag, step-drag. He’d heard it before. When it was almost to his cell, he wondered, whose face would it wear this time?

  Lifting his head from the bunk, he turned to see the guard, Mr. Pickering—large on intimidation, short on personality—as he approached the cell door, flippin’ his nightstick like a one-handed juggler. Hub watched him work the stick—the hiss as it left his hand that sounded like the drag, and the catchin’ it, the plop to his palm, which sounded like the step. God, but that old bitch was sneaky. These days, it was usually Pickering, manipulated, unknowingly shackled with the threat. She’d chosen others in the past. Occasionally, one o’ the other prisoners, but more often, a guard.

  “What’sa matter?” Pickering asked off Hub’s look.

  “Nothin’.”

  “You ain’t goin’ out tomorrow. The Doc wants t’see ya.”

  “What for?”

  Pickering pulled a pack o’ Luckies out of his uniform breast pocket, shook one out to his lips, and pressed the pack back into his pocket. He stuck his hand down his pants pocket, pulled out a Zippo, flipped the lid open, slid his thumb over the striker, bringin’ up the little flame, and brought it to the end o’ the weed. He sucked it to life, flipped the lid shut, and shoved the lighter back in his pants. Asshole! Pulled that crap all the time. Ask ‘im a question ‘n then he made ya wait f’an answer. Filter-smokin’ asshole.

  He tilted his head back and blew out a plume o’ smoke toward the ceiling. “They’re takin’ six at a time, checkin f’TB.”

  “TB?” Hub snorted, derisively. “I ain’t got TB.”

  “I DK, Hub. DK, DC. Don’t know, don’t care. Tomorrow mornin’, ‘fore chow. They wantcha fasting. Be ready.” He grimaced, looked at the end of his cigarette, nodded to Hub’s and asked, “You got another o’ them awready rolled?”

  “Sure,” Hub said and rolled off the side of his bunk. It was always a good idea to stay on a guard’s good side. ‘Specially this dipshit. The Boss Hog. He reached up over to the shelf above his bunk and picked one of a half dozen already rolled. As Hub reached through the bars to give him the weed, Pickering pulled the Luckies out of his pocket.

  “Here. I’ll trade ya. Mine f’yours.”

  Hub looked like he’d been slapped, but then he started laughin’ like he’d heard a good one. Pickering looked at him like he was nuts.

  “Let’s go! Let’s go!” Pickering hollered, impatiently bangin’ the nightstick on the horizontal bars outside Hub’s cell, glaring down the catwalk and motioning to the guard monitoring the opening and closing of the cell doors. “Morgan! Come on, God Dammit, let’s go.” He looked at Hub. “I hate fuckin’ rookies. Can’t even open th’God Damned door! We get a prison break, ‘at son of a bitch’ll huddle up in a corner cryin’ ’n peein’ ‘is pants.” He pounded on the cell again. “MORGAN! It’s a handle f’Christ’s sake. Just wrap yr’fuckin’ fingers around like it was yer cock ‘n pull!” The cell door finally opened, jerkily, and Mr. Pickering stepped back. Hub was barely through when it slammed with a clang. Mr. Pickering shook his head. “Fuckin’ rookies.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Hub and five other shirtless inmates were lined up agin the wall in the doctor’s office. Dr. Wade, in his early fifties, and an orderly, like they were on an assembly line, checked the inmates’ eyes and listened to their hearts and lungs with a stethoscope, while Pickering and another fuckin’ rookie stood at the door.

  Wade pressed the stethoscope to Hub’s back. “Big breath.” He moved on down the line repeating the order. When he got to the end, he took six little bottles off the counter and handed one to each man. “Fill ’em,” he said with less warmth than he’d give a ham sandwich. The inmates turned their backs to one another, holding their reluctant appendages over the bottles. Hub stepped to a corner and milked a few drops.

  “I cain’t git it started,” one o’ the inmates griped.

  “You’ll be there til ya do,” Wade threatened. Finally, all six turned in their yellowish/orangeish offerings. Wade placed ’em on the counter and nodded to his assistant. “This gentleman’ll be taking a blood sample, then you fellas can go back to your cells.”

  The assistant picked up a syringe and a rubber tourniquet used to tie off their arms. The inmate who couldn’t get his thing workin’ got real nervous. “With a needle?”

  Wade looked at him over his glasses. “You know another way?”

  “I don’t like needles.”

  “There’s nothin’ t’be afraid of. We ain’t puttin’ in, we’re takin’ out.”

  “In ‘r out, yer still stickin’ somethin’ in me.”

  “You took three slugs in a bank job and you’re afraid of a little needle?”

  “I didn’t hafta watch th’slugs comin’.”

  “Well then,” Wade replied, sarcastically, “don’t watch it come this time either.”

  The assistant approached and Mr. Chicken started to back away. “I don’t wanna do it, I tell
ya!”

  Pickering handed his rifle to the fuckin’ rookie and motioned the rest o’ the inmates to a wall. He approached Mr. Chicken. “Don’t gimme any trouble.”

  The inmate helt his hands out defensively. “Aw, Mr. Pick’ring, can’t I skip th’needle? I ain’t got TB.”

  Pickering took him by the arms as the assistant approached with the needle. His arms pinned behind him, the inmate’s eyes got bigger and bigger as the needle got closer and closer. Just as the needle hit his skin, he whimpered, his bladder emptied of everthing he’d failed to put in the little bottle, his eyes rolled up, and he passed out. Pickering let him slide to the floor and patted the top of his head. “‘Atta boy.”

  “Get it before he wakes up,” Wade said. The assistant slapped the tourniquet around his arm, jabbed him, and Wade looked over his half-glasses at the next man. “You gonna sissy-up, too?”

  Hub was in the prison garage layin’ on a greasy creeper under an old jacked-up Dodge Brothers double-clutcher, pullin’ the transmission and listenin’ to Tennessee Ernie Ford on the radio singin’ about how he’d worked his ass off but still owed ‘is soul t’the comp’ny store. Hub understood his frustration. After thirty years, he’d become somethin’ of a trustee, and although didn’t hold the keys to the gate, he pretty much had his run o’ the place and his choice o’ work. His back on a creeper under a truck listenin’ to a radio was better than breakin’ his back, swingin’ a pick in the hot sun.

  He jumped when somebody tapped the bottom of his shoe. He looked down past his feet and noticed a pair o’ highly shined shoes. He rolled out from under the truck and Pickering chinned in the direction of the main building. “Doc wants t’see ya again.”

  “Again? What for now?”

  “Same don’t know, same don’t care,” Pickering said and motioned him up. “Let’s go.” Hub got up, pulled a rag from his back pocket, and wiped his hands as they headed for the door.