Half of Paradise

Three weeks passed and the sky became like scorched brass. The air was hot and dry, and the wind blew across the land like heat from an oven. Dark thunderclouds were spread over the horizon, but the rains didn’t come. At night the heat lightning flashed in the sky, and black strips of rain clouds floated across the moon. The earth was cracked from lack of water. The grass in the fields was burnt yellow and whispered dryly in the hot wind. The men waited for the rains to drench the parched ground, and the thunder clapped and rattled over the horizon like someone beating a sheet of corrugated tin against the sky.

Gang five was still working on the irrigation canal the day LeBlanc was brought to camp. A pickup truck ground along the right-of-way in second gear and stopped close to the ditch. LeBlanc sat in the front seat between two guards. He got out on the driver’s side, and the other guard slid out behind him. LeBlanc’s face was marked with scars and the bridge of his nose was crooked. He hadn’t had a haircut since he had been arrested, and the hair along his neck stuck down over his shirt collar. The two guards walked him to the area where gang five was working.

“Here’s a new one, Evans. He just got in from Angola. The warden told me to bring him on down and get him started,” the

driver said.

“What’s his name?” Evans said.

“LeBlanc.”

“I been expecting him. You all can go on. I’ll get him a pick and put him to work.”

“Watch him. He spit on the cop that brought him on the train.”

“He won’t do that here.”

The guards got into the pickup, turned it around, and drove back along the right-of-way towards the gravel road.

“Come with me,” Evans said.

They went to the line shack and LeBlanc was issued a pick. They went back to the ditch.

“I ain’t eat breakfast yet,” LeBlanc said.

“You should have told them when they checked you through the office.”

“I did. Them guards was supposed to take me to the mess hall.”

“They was probably in a hurry. Get down in the ditch and go to work. You can eat at lunch time.”

“I ain’t used to working on an empty stomach.”

“You’ll get used to a lot of things around here. You come into camp with a bad record or they wouldn’t have put you on my gang. Step out of line and you’ll wish you was back in the hospital. Now start sweating some grease into that pick handle.”

“I ain’t got much use for people that wear uniforms.”

“Get down in the ditch.”

He climbed over the mound of clay and slid down the embankment.

“Hi, LeBlanc,” Avery said. “When did they bring you in?”

“I come on the train this morning.”

“How was it at the hospital?”

“They sewed up my face and put my ribs back together. I still got to wear some tape around my sides.”

“I wasn’t sure you were going to make it. You looked pretty bad when they carried you out of the jail,” Avery said.

“I’m going to even up things back there sometime.”

“You better forget about it for a while.”

“I aim to get things straight. I owe some people for messing up my face.”

“What was Evans talking to you about?”