Half of Paradise

“This is your first day on the gang. Obey the rules and you’ll get along. Don’t talk during roll call and don’t quit work till you hear the whistle blow. When you’re inside the clearing never get closer than five feet to the fence. When you’re working outside don’t get out of the guard’s sight. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“You mean yes sir.”

“I said I got it.”

The captain turned to Evans. “It looks like you have another one.”

“He’ll come around,” Evans said.

The guard faced Avery.

“Let’s hear it again,” he said.

“I understood the rules.”

“I want to hear you say yes sir.”

“I understood what the man said.”

“That’s not enough. Let’s hear it.”

Avery stood still with the sun in his eyes. Evans looked at him from behind his dark sunglasses.

“You’ll come around,” he said. “This is only your first day. We’ll have lots of days together.”

The whistle blew and the main gate opened to let the trucks in. The trusties went to the tool shed to check out the picks and shovels. The men climbed into the trucks and the back doors were locked from the outside. The trusties threw the tools into the bed of a pickup. Gang five and gang three rode out to work together. The men sat in the darkness on two wood benches that were placed along the walls. The guards rode up front in the cab with the driver.

Toussaint took a package of Virginia Extra from his shirt and rolled a cigarette. He licked the paper, rolled it down, and pinched the ends together with his thumbnail.

“How about a smoke?” the man next to him said. “I left my tobacco in the barracks.”

Toussaint gave him the package and the cigarette papers. The man was named Jeffry. He was lean and thin-featured, and his eyes were as pale as his hair. His hands were slender and white, almost like a woman’s, and they blistered easily. He suffered from repeated attacks of dysentery, and he would trade his tobacco for an orange from the kitchen so he could suck the juice and not have to drink the camp water.

Next to him sat

Billy Jo. He had sandy red hair and a fine red scar that came down from one eye to his lip. He said that he had gotten the scar in a prison riot, but two inmates who had known him before said that he had been cut in a fight over a Negro woman. Billy Jo bragged that he had been in six penitentiaries.

Brother Samuel sat between Billy Jo and Avery. He was a red-bone from around Lake Charles, a mixture of white, Negro, and Indian. His clothes didn’t fit him and his straw hat came down to his ears. He had once been a preacher, but he also practiced black magic and conjuring. A disk of wood with unreadable letters on it hung from a leather cord around his neck. He said that the disk had been given to him by the Black Man, who roamed the marsh at night when the moon was down. He carried bits of string with knots tied in them, a fang of a water moccasin, a shriveled turtle’s foot, and a ball of hair taken from a cow’s stomach. The men liked him. He took care of them when they had dysentery, and he would share his tobacco with others if asked to. He was serving a life sentence for murdering a white man.

Daddy Claxton sat on the other side of Avery. He was the oldest man in the work camp. His skin was dry and loose with age, and there were faded tattoos of nude women on his arms. He had been a professional soldier once, and he claimed to have known John Dillinger while he was stationed in Hawaii. He had been dishonorably discharged from the army for operating in the black market, and after his third conviction in Louisiana he had been sent to prison for life as a habitual criminal.

“How come they call you ‘Daddy’?” Billy Jo said.

“I don’t know. That’s what they always called me,” Daddy Claxton said.

“Did you really know John Dillinger?” Billy Jo asked.

“Sure I knowed him. John was a mean one, all right.”

“You ain’t just telling us that?”

“I knowed him. You can ask anybody. They’ll tell you.”

“I don’t believe you was ever in the army, Daddy.”

“I was a soldier. They give me some papers when I got out. I could show them to you if I had them.”