“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.