“You shoot off your mouth and you won’t finish the week.”
“Maybe you’re right, but you’ll spend the rest of your life in the work camp.”
“I only got two more years.”
“Don’t give Billy Jo your knife,” Avery said.
“I ain’t saying I will or I won’t, but it’s going to hit the fan when you mouth off to the warden.”
“Twenty years. There’s a good chance they’ll bury you here.”
“I ain’t going to say nothing about what you told me, because somebody might slip up on you one night and wrap a belt around your neck. But don’t threaten me no more, or I’ll give you that knife myself, personal.”
“It works both ways, Benoit. You give away the knife and you’ll rot in here.”
Benoit’s small eyes glared at Avery.
“You might get to ride the midnight special out of here in a wood box,” he said.
He moved off with the broom, sweeping ahead of him.
“I don’t think you got any sense,” Toussaint said.
“It scared him. He won’t give Billy Jo the knife,” Avery said.
“Like he says, he might give it to you instead.”
They looked out into the heavy stillness of the afternoon. Tufts of grass grew around the edges of the barracks, and the bare dirt grounds, trodden to dust, looked hot and dry. The men from gang three sweated in the sun. Avery watched one man pick up several cigarette butts and turn his back to the other men and conceal them in his pocket.
“Here he comes. They’re bringing him in,” Jeffry shouted from the other end of the barracks.
The men put down their brooms and mops and crowded to the windows. They pulled aside the blankets and pressed their faces against the wire mesh to see both ends of the grounds.
“Where is he? I don’t see him,” Daddy Claxton said.
“Around the other way. I seen them from the latrine. He looks like a baked apple.”
The key turned in the lock and the door opened. Evans and Rainack brought LeBlanc inside by each arm. His legs wouldn’t hold him and broke at the knees when he tried to set his weight down. His denims were smeared with black and red rust. His skin was raw, and his hands and forehead were spotted with dark red places. His heavy beard was covered with flakes of dirt and rust. They dragged him to his bunk and threw him across it. LeBlanc stared blindly at the two guards. His breath came in pants.
“Evans,” he said. “I can’t see nothing yet, but it’s you. I been thinking about it since you put me in there. I know how I’m going to do it. God damn me to hell I’ll cut your fucking stomach out.”
“You want another two days in the box?” Evans said.
“Let’s get out of here. He’s stinking up the place,” Rainack said.
“He smells like somebody pissed on a radiator, don’t he?”
“Let’s go. My relief comes on in a few minutes.”
Evans took off his sun helmet and wiped his fore head with his sleeve. There was a damp smear across the khaki. He looked down at LeBlanc and put on his helmet.
“Just like piss on a radiator,” he said.
“Come on, I want to wash this guy off my hands,” Rainack said.
They walked out of the barracks, and locked the barred door behind them.
“Look at his hands. They’re burned,” Jeffry said. “He must have tried to push the lid open.”