“You sonofabitch.”
“Your scar is turning red, Billy.”
“I’ll drive this pick through your goddamn chest.”
“Your bleeding ass.”
“I done warned you.”
“Hack watching,” Brother Samuel said.
They looked up. Evans stood in the shade by the trees.
“He ain’t watching us. He’s thinking about what he’s going to do to his old lady when he gets home,” Billy Jo said. “Why’d you say he was watching us?”
“I don’t reckon I see too good,” Brother Samuel said.
“Don’t go getting in no fights,” Jeffry said. “They’ll put you in detention and we’ll be out in another month.”
“You boys better keep quiet about it,” Brother Samuel said.
“We’ll make it out,” Jeffry said.
“I ain’t saying you won’t. It’s just that it don’t hurt none to keep it to yourself.”
“You ever been in a break, Daddy?” Billy Jo said. The man whom he had almost fought had moved to the other side of the ditch and was working by himself.
“No. I seen one, though. I was in Angola when they lined the guards up along the block and was going to set fire to them with torches.”
“Too bad Evans wasn’t there,” Billy Jo said. “I’d give up the best piece of ass I ever had to see him get caught in a riot. And that pop-off bastard over there. I’d like to see him get his tail burned, too.” He looked towards the man working on the other side of the canal.
“Why don’t you quit talking about women?” Jeffry said.
“Because I love pussy, fruit man. That’s the only thing I can’t go without. The best lay I ever had was from a gal in Birmingham. I picked her up in a beer joint. She had a belly as smooth as water, and she was like wet silk inside. I give her everything I had and she still wanted more.”
“I run after women when I was a young man,” Daddy Claxton said.
“How long has it been, Daddy?” Billy Jo said.
“I got too old to think about it anymore.”
“You ain’t too old to play with them.”
“I done eight years and I still got life to go. I don’t think about them no more.”
Evans walked closer to the ditch and looked down at the men. They stopped talking and swung their picks into the dirt. He went back to the shade of the trees.
Toussaint watched Avery work with his pick. He raised it over his head and swung down with his arms.
“You’re doing it wrong,” the Negro said.
“What?”
“You won’t last the day like that.”
“I know how to use a pick.”
“You ain’t worked eight hours a day with one before.”