Part 6 (1/2)

As Toy, Stardust, and Thirteen lined up and prepared to get into lock-step, Nail said to them, ”Tell 'em I need a doctor.”

Much later in the morning two Negro trusties, not the same two who had held him when Fat Gabe laid the strap on him, came and got him and dragged him upstairs to the attic. It wasn't a bare attic but had been fixed up into a kind of room. It had two windows, both of them rendered almost opaque by flyspecks. There were dirt-dobber nests on the rafters. The black men put him on one of the two cots and left him there. He was too sick to get up and reconnoiter the surroundings, but from where he lay he could see the blurred shapes of black bars through each flyspeck-frosted windowpane. The whole room smelled foul in a new kind of foulness that was almost a relief from the smell of Toy's breath and the slop bucket because it was different: a smell of sickness and decay and, yes, something that Nail realized he'd never smelled before: death. The cot that Nail lay on had gray sheets that were ripped and stained but appeared to have been washed recently, while the other cot had sheets and blankets that were thick with dried blood and other discharges. The room was terribly cold yet not absolutely frigid; Nail realized that because it was in the building's attic it received some warmth rising up from the barracks below, what little body heat the three hundred men had generated. The extreme cold of the room would not ordinarily have bothered him, but now in this sickness he was weak and began to s.h.i.+ver uncontrollably. Nail had enough strength to reach the other cot and remove its b.l.o.o.d.y blanket and wrap himself in it.

Eventually a man came in, accompanied by two more of the black trusties. He was dressed like them, dressed like Nail, in clothing printed with wide gray stripes. He wore thick spectacles and did not look like a criminal. He stared down at Nail not with curiosity or kindness but with a kind of boredom, and he asked, ”What do you need?”

”I need a doctor, I reckon,” Nail said.

”You won't get one,” the man said. ”I used to be one. I'm the closest to one you'll find. G.o.de's my name. Now what do you need?”

”Something for my stomach,” Nail said. ”Or my bowels. Or both.”

”Gaumed up or trots?”

”Trots.”

”Wee-wawed any?”

”Wee-wawed?”

Doc G.o.de did a pantomime of vomiting. ”Puked.”

Nail shook his head and pointed at his mouth. ”Not at this end.”

The man was staring at the top of his shaved head. ”You been in the death hole? Your head's peeled.”

Nail nodded. ”I cheated the old hot squat,” he said, and smiled.

Doc G.o.de didn't smile back. He reached inside his pocket and took out a key. On the wall of the flyspeck room was a wooden cabinet, its two doors latched and padlocked. The man unlocked and opened the cabinet. The two shelves inside contained a blue bottle, a brown bottle, and two bottles in shades of green, as well as a roll of gauze and a few other items. From where he lay Nail could only read the label on the brown bottle: carbolic acid. The ex-doctor took down one of the green bottles, uncorked it, and handed it to Nail. ”Take just two swallows of this,” he commanded.

The label read: paregoric. The name sounded sinister. ”What does it do?” Nail asked.

”It will ease your guts,” the man said. ”Come on. Take two swigs and hand it back.”

The stuff didn't taste too bad. After a second swallow Nail handed the green bottle back, and Doc G.o.de returned it to the cabinet. Before he could close the cabinet, Nail requested, ”Could you take a look at my behind? I reckon I may need a bandage back there.”

The man motioned for him to turn over, then pulled down the back of his pants, took a look, and said to the black trusties, ”Hold 'im, boys.” The two Negroes grabbed Nail's arms and gripped tightly, and soon Nail felt a burning on his b.u.t.t worse than the licking he'd received, and he screamed.

When he got his voice back and could see through the tears in his eyes, he saw Doc G.o.de holding the unstoppered brown bottle, carbolic acid, and he said, ”Ye G.o.ds! What was that for?”

”A little disinfectant,” Doc G.o.de said. ”It'll keep the germs out. But I can't waste any wrappings on that. Just don't sit on it for a week.”

There was a commotion on the stairs, the door flew open with a crash, and two more of the black trusties came into the room, carrying the limp form of a middle-aged white convict, naked, his entire body flayed: flaps of his flesh were dangling loose, two-inch strips of skin hung from wounds that looked as if they had been scorched with a hot iron, and he was covered with blood.

The blacks dumped the body onto the other cot. One of them said, ”Ma.r.s.e Gabe done really laid it on 'im.” There was almost admiration in his voice, as well as awe. ”Ole Ma.r.s.e Gabe done whupped de daylights out ob dis po buckra.”

Doc G.o.de lifted the man's dangling arms and folded them over his chest. He opened one of the man's eyelids and looked closely at the unseeing eye. He felt the man's pulse. He turned his head and looked at Nail and asked disdainfully, ”Now you see why I couldn't waste any bandages on you?” Doc G.o.de took down the roll of gauze from the cabinet and the bottle of carbolic acid. He gave Nail one more look. ”You don't want to watch this.”

Nail turned his head away. He listened but heard no sounds coming from the victim, and a good while later, when he stole a glance in that direction, he saw that the victim's worse wounds had been wrapped and taped, but many areas of his body were still raw and b.l.o.o.d.y.

Mr. Burdell came into the room. ”What's goin on up here?” he demanded. ”Y'all havin a party?” He saw Nail and said, ”What're you doin here, Chism? Playin off?”

”Doc G.o.de's been treatin me for what ails me,” Nail said.

The warden looked at the ex-doctor. ”What's wrong with Chism?”

”Dysentery,” said Doc G.o.de.

”No s.h.i.+t?” the warden said.

”Too much s.h.i.+t,” Doc G.o.de said.

Nail couldn't help laughing, even though it was a serious matter if Doc G.o.de was truthful: Nail recalled reading about it in Dr. Hood's Plain Talks and Common Sense Medical Advisor. But Doc G.o.de too was chuckling a bit, and maybe he wasn't serious.

”What's so funny?” the warden demanded, but then he seemed to become smart enough to catch the joke, and he smirked and said, ”Well, if you got any s.h.i.+t left in you, Chism, we will beat it out.” The warden lost interest in Nail and began studying the other patient. ”He don't look too good, does he?” Burdell said.

”Very weak pulse,” Doc G.o.de said.

The other fellow looked done for, Nail observed. He couldn't recall ever having seen the man before; he was just one more convict among the hundreds; but Nail suddenly found himself inventing the man's life: he had a wife somewhere out in the country and a whole bunch of children; he had a mother still living, and some sisters and brothers; he had worked hard all of his life, toiling in the sun, until the day he got in trouble and was sent to the pen. Probably he was hoping he could get a Christmas pardon and be home with his family.

”Mr. Burdell, sir, could I say somethin?” Nail discovered himself requesting before he could have the sense to stop himself. The warden turned away from the dying man and looked at Nail. Burdell didn't say, Yes, go ahead, but he didn't say, No, keep your trap shut, so Nail went ahead and said what he had to say: ”Sir, I know that Fat-I know that Mr. Gabriel McChristian is jist doin his job, and I know it aint a easy job either. But I jist wonder sometimes if you know, sir, how evil he is. Evil. This world is full of cussed wickedness and cruelty, but when a feller gits a crazy pleasure out of causin awful pain to another human bein, he aint jist wicked or cruel, he's evil, he's criminal, he's sick in the head. Don't that bother ye none, sir?”

The warden just stared at him. Then the warden and Doc G.o.de exchanged looks. The black trusties exchanged looks, and one of them rolled his eyes up into his head. Finally the warden prefaced whatever response he was going to make by saying severely, ”Chism-” but then he seemed to change his mind and adopt a milder tone, although it was a strain on him. ”Nail, I know we aint perfect, none of us,” he said. ”And ole Gabe is prob'ly the least perfect amongst us, shall we say? But evil? Evil, did you say?” The warden abandoned the effort to be polite. ”Who the f.u.c.k are you to tell me about evil? You raped a kid, Chism. You grabbed a little girl and knocked her down and rammed your hot c.o.c.k into her tiny little c.u.n.t! You tell me about evil! She begged you for mercy, and did you have any? Don't you talk to me about evil, you miserable son of a b.i.t.c.h! I'll show you what evil really is before you git your a.s.s fried!” The warden whipped around and yelled at the trusties, ”Git this b.a.s.t.a.r.d out to the yard!” As the trusties dragged Nail off his cot and toward the door, Burdell spoke up close to his face, shaking a long, trembling finger at the man dying on the other cot. ”You know why he got beat? Huh? Because he was tryin to escape! I swear, Chism, when we git through with you, you're gonna try real hard to escape.”

They took Nail out of the flyspeck room, out of the building, into the yard. It was a big yard, acres of empty ground between the building and the wall. They stood Nail up and told him to walk. But he couldn't walk. They picked him up again and kicked him and hit on him and told him to walk. He walked a bit. It began to snow. At first just feathers but then heavy flurries. His bare head and his shoulders became covered with flakes. And his back, when he fell. The rest of the day they kept picking him up and making him walk. The blacks complained to one another of the futility of it, the dumbness of it, the monotony of it, but they kept on with their job.

The man in the flyspeck room died. Before they hauled him off for burial, they placed his body on the floor at one end of the barracks. Warden Burdell made a short speech warning against attempted escape, and Fat Gabe and Short Leg moved among the men, clubbing one who protested that the dead man had never tried to escape. When Burdell's speech was finished, all three hundred of the men were lined up in slow lockstep, and each man, black and white, was required to bend down and shake hands with the corpse and say good-bye. Each man except Nail, who couldn't lift his head from his bunk.

Fat Gabe came to his bunk. ”Can't move a finger, hey?” Fat Gabe asked, but Nail couldn't even talk. Fat Gabe moved his face close so that his words spattered Nail with flecks of spittle: ”I got a mind to move a few fingers for you, boy. But not tonight. I'm gonna save you. I'm gonna save you till you're strong enough to 'preciate what I'm gonna do to you. You got to be able to move to 'preciate what I'm gonna do. Gonna let you know what evil is. Gonna make you learn what sick in the head is. Gonna do crimes on you that spell out what criminal is.” Fat Gabe cleared his throat twice, hawked, and spat at Nail a faceful of phlegm.

Nail lost track of time. He couldn't remember having had anything to eat, he couldn't recall ever being able to get up and go with the others to the mess hall, but he didn't have any memory of anybody bringing him anything to eat. Probably he didn't eat at all, for a week or so. But he didn't have any memory of having to get up and go to the slop bucket either. Or use the floor. Strange, he didn't know thirst even. His bunkmates began to try their best to pretend he wasn't there. Toy said to him once, wonderingly, ”Did you really truly rape a little girl?” All that Nail could manage was to mumble, ”She wasn't little.” And when it occurred to him to add, ”And I didn't rape her neither,” Toy had disappeared, and never spoke to him again after that. Another time, in the night, someone-he figured it was Thirteen-tried to insert a p.e.n.i.s into his mouth. Nail had just enough strength to raise a hand to stop the action. The owner of the p.e.n.i.s said, and it sounded like Thirteen, ”You did it to that little girl, didn't you?”

Nail discovered that if he tried hard enough he could shut out entirely the Arkansas State Penitentiary in bitter December and make it into a hillside of Stay More in the middle of June with his sheep all around him. He could do anything he wanted to, with those sheep. They would gambol into square dances when he played the right tunes on his mouth organ. The fescue was cropped a bronze-green by their grazing, but the orchard gra.s.s was still like emerald, and behind the green meadow rose the turquoise mountain, and beyond it the blue-green hills, and beyond those the light smoky blue of faraway Reynolds Mountain. When the sheep finished their dancing, they would crawl up leaf-dappled under the green shade of the big oaks at the edge of the meadow, and there they would kneel and nap, and Nail would nap with them, long in the summer afternoon, listening to the clear spring gurgle down the talus. When they woke up from their nap, they were whole and sound and sane and ready to play some more, and Nail would play his harmonica for them and feel almost well.

His bedclothes were often damp with blood and pus, and he couldn't understand why, because his wounds seemed to have scabbed over enough not to be bleeding. Eventually he was able to determine that the blood and pus were coming from his bedmate, who was now Stardust, and he didn't know if it was because they were flogging Stardust too; he tried not to listen when they were flogging somebody and the poor devil was screaming his head off. Stardust was not one to talk, anyway. But then Stardust began noticeably to take leave of his senses, as if he had not already left them long ago: he could be observed standing beside the bunk, moving his hands in the air as if building imaginary trees, root to bough, twig to trunk. That's all he did, when he was not crooning. He would stand for hours making trees until Fat Gabe would come and cut him down and dump him in beside Nail, where he would bleed and ooze. Finally Stardust and his few belongings were gathered up and taken away to the state hospital for the insane...which, I have good reason to know, was not a better place.

As soon as Stardust's spot was empty, they filled it with a new man, or a kid, rather, a boy maybe fifteen, sixteen at the most, whose hair reminded Nail of that woman's, what was her nice lady name who came and what was it she pretty girl had hair that same reddish sort of, Friday, Sat.u.r.day, Sunday, Monday, yes her name was Monday, that lady, this boy his hair is like hers, red, he could pa.s.s for her kid brother only she was too nice a lady to have a kid brother to get hisself in trouble and thrown in the pen. This boy had stolen a horse. Nail listened, which was all he did these days and nights, when he wasn't running off to those sheep-cluttered hills in Stay More. The boy's name was Ernest something, but they were calling him Timbo Red because he came from Timbo, Arkansas, up in the hills of Stone County. Timbo Red talked more or less the same way that folks up home talked. Most of these fellers in here sounded like east Arkansas or downstate somewheres or probably outlanders from some other state, but Timbo Red sounded nearly just like Nail's kid brother Luther, and Nail took an interest in what he was doing and saying, and he took a special interest that first night when Thirteen tried to seduce the kid. Nail still couldn't talk very strong, but he had enough strength to raise himself up and say to Timbo Red, ”Boy, don't ye let this here feller show ye his jemmison, or you'll hate it.”

Thirteen turned on Nail. ”My what?” he said.

”Keep yore p.e.c.k.e.r in yore pants, Thirteen,” Nail said.

”s.h.i.+t, mine is better than yours,” Thirteen snarled. ”You want to git him to yourself? I claimed him first. He's good ripe cherry punk, and I got him, and I aint gon let no man mess with my bride.” He put his full palm over Nail's face and pushed down hard and mashed Nail's head down into the bunk. Then he resumed his seduction of Timbo Red, telling the kid that it wouldn't hurt a bit, not anywhere like the way the kid would get hurt if he didn't get his sweet a.s.s out of those pants real d.a.m.n fast.

Nail listened. He tried to tell if the kid was scared or eager or what. Some boys liked that kind of thing; there was a big old boy several bunks over who couldn't seem to get enough of it and would drop his pants for any feller who asked, and sometimes even went around asking them. Nail listened and thought he could hear Timbo Red asking to be let alone. The way Nail's mind ran away from him these days and wound up in that Stay More meadow faster than he could think, his mind was now beginning to believe that Timbo Red was Miss Friday or Miss Monday herself, asking old Thirteen to leave her be. Nail couldn't just lie here and let that nice lady be took against her wishes, or even took with her wishes by somebody foul like Thirteen. Now she seemed to be squealing. It wasn't a very happy sort of squeal. Nail's fingers were absently fooling with the collar of his jacket, and then slipping inside the jacket and fooling with the string around his neck. And then his fingers touched that steel. It was still there; he had almost forgotten about it in the what? weeks or days or months or whatever time had pa.s.sed since he had intended to use it. He still had to remember not to roll over onto his stomach at night, or, if he did, to do it carefully so the razor-sharp dagger didn't cut his chest.

He took a deep breath and somehow got his legs up and under him so he could crouch and use what energy he had left to reach over and fall against Thirteen and pin him down and hold the dagger up to his eyes so he could get a good look at it, and then Nail said to him, ”Thirteen, d'ye want to try out the edge of this and see how sharp it is? Or will you jist take my word for it?-it'll leave a gash from one of your ears to th'other'un in jist one swipe.”