“They’ll give you some medicine for them burns,” Daddy Claxton said. “They might even keep you in the infirmary a couple of days. You ain’t got to go out on the line.”
“I don’t want no sick call.”
“You ain’t in no shape to work tomorrow,” Toussaint said.
“I’ll be out for morning roll call.”
The men went back to their jobs and let LeBlanc sleep. The floor was swept and wetted down and mopped. The bunks and footlockers were put back in place and squared away. The blankets were taken down from the windows and folded over the bunks. Someone in the shower was drying his laundry by slapping it against the wall. The brooms and buckets were put away, and the men sat on their bunks and smoked, waiting for five o’clock inspection. Avery cleaned out his footlocker and set things in order while Toussaint stood at the window.
“That man ain’t going to finish his time,” Toussaint said.
“Probably not,” Avery said.
“How’d you get mixed up with him?”
“He used to run whiskey down the river. We were caught together after he shot at the state police.”
Toussaint leaned on his elbows and looked out the window at the trees.
“This weather’s got to break. It’s too hot,’ he said.
“Brother Samuel says it’s a sign.”
“He’s right about it ain’t being natural. I never seen it stay hot so long without
rain.”
Avery closed his footlocker and tucked in the corners of his blanket around the bunk.
“I heard thunder last night,” he said.
“I been hearing it for weeks. It’s got to rain soon.”
Monday morning the sky was black with clouds when the men lined up for roll call. The air was chill and moist, and lightning split the sky. The dark pines swayed in the wind, and a few drops of water made wet dimples in the dust. A great thunderhead was moving in from the Gulf. The wind blew clouds of dust across the grounds, and a straw hat was whipped from someone’s head and swept end over end until it hit the wire fence and could go no farther. The captain and the guards had their slickers on. Some of the men asked to go back to the barracks and get their coats. A clap of thunder sounded directly overhead.
At ten o’clock the sky became storm-black and the rains came down. The men were working in the ditch, and the water drummed on the roofs of the trucks and ran off onto the ground and flowed into the dry and cracked earth. The men couldn’t see farther away than the trees because of the steel-gray sheet of water. The ground turned to mud, and large pools formed and drained off into the irrigation ditch. The clay embankment washed away and the men worked in water up to their knees. They tripped over one another and lost their tools, groped for them, and tried to climb out of the ditch, sliding back down into the water again. They threw shovel loads of soggy clay up on the sides to rebuild the embankment, but the water washed it back in the ditch. Three pumps were brought in and set on the bottom, and the rubber hoses drained the water over the top of the embankment, but the waterline continued to rise. Only one handle of the wheelbarrow could be seen. The rain drove coldly into the men’s skin like needles. The water was red and rising higher. The pumps clogged with clay and ceased to work. Half the men had lost their tools and were trying to pull themselves out of the ditch by the roots protruding from the sides. The guards couldn’t tell which men belonged to which gang in the confusion. Evans stood on the embankment with the rain streaming off his helmet and slicker, shouting down at gang five. Farther down the ditch a wall of dirt caved in from one of the sides and the water poured through the opening.
The work captain walked up and down the line blowing his whistle for the guards to reassemble their gangs and to get them into the trucks. The men who still had their tools threw them up out of the ditch and started pushing one another up after them.
“Let’s go, let’s go. Everybody in the trucks,” Evans said.
“I can’t get up,” Benoit said through the rain.
“You ain’t in my gang. Get out of the way,” Evans said.
“Where’s gang three?”
“How do I know? Get out of the way and let my men up.”
“Quit pushing,” someone said.
“You dumb bastard. You knocked my hat in the water,” another said.
“Gang five up here,” Evans shouted.
“Help Claxton up.”
“Grab hold of a root, Daddy.”