Half of Paradise

“Talk to Evans,” Rainack said.

“You got no call to keep us in the rain,” LeBlanc said.

“It’s going to be a hell of a lot worse for you when Evans gets back.”

“Billy Jo and Jeffry is dead,” Brother Samuel said.

“I got my orders.”

“Try using your mind. You’re going to kill the old man,” Avery said.

“You keep quiet.”

“Why don’t you throw him in the irrigation ditch? You’ll be sure he catches pneumonia that way,” Avery said.

“Evans is going to hear about this.”

“There’s some deep places in there. He probably can’t swim,” he said.

“Keep it up. You’ll have your name on detention list with LeBlanc,” Rainack said.

“Or you could take him into the swamp and find some quicksand,” Avery said. “It’s not much different than dying from pneumonia. His lungs would fill up with sand instead of water.”

“You’re pushing it. I ain’t taking much more.”

“You ain’t going to do nothing,” LeBlanc said.

“Keep running off at the mouth and see.”

“I knowed people like you in the army. You won’t drop your britches to take a crap till you get an order. We’re five to one against you. Lean on one of us and you’ll have to use that pistol. Then there will be an inquiry and the warden will bust you out of a job to save hisself.”

“It’s your ass when Evans gets back.”

The warden’s car came back down the line and went past the men. It was splattered with mud. The tires spun in the mire, and the warden steered around the place where he had stuck before. The sheriff sat in the front seat and the two deputies were in back. The end of a rifle barrel showed behind the glass in the back seat. An enclosed truck followed them, the back covered with canvas like an army truck. The guards sat inside, crowded towards the front because the sheet of canvas that closed the rear had been torn loose from its fastenings by the wind and flapped over the top. The captain’s pickup came through the ruts in second gear and hit the soft place where the warden had become stuck. His wheels whined in the mud and he shifted into reverse and fed it gas and shifted into

second again, rocking it, until he got traction and spun out of the soft spot to harder ground. Evans sat next to him. They stopped the truck and got out and went around to the back. Their rifles were propped against the seat by the gear-shift stick.

“Bring them over here,” Evans said.

Rainack snuffed out his cigarette and buttoned his slicker. He got down in the rain.

“You heard him. Start moving,” he said.

Avery and the others walked unsteadily across the clearing to the pickup. His legs felt loose and uncoordinated from having stood in one position too long. His feet hurt from the cold when he walked. Daddy Claxton wavered from side to side. He coughed and spit up phlegm. There was a tarpaulin laid across the bed of the pickup. Pools of water collected in it and ran down through the folds and creases. There was a dark smear on top of it. Evans had his hand on one end of the canvas to raise it up.

“I want you to know what happens to guys that think they can bust out of here,” he said. “Look at them and tell everybody back at camp what you saw.”

He lifted the tarpaulin and exposed the two bodies. They lay on their backs and their faces looked up blank and empty and the rain fell in their eyes. Billy Jo had been shot twice through the chest and a third bullet had cut through the left eye and come out at the temple. Pieces of cloth were embedded in the chest wounds. The blood had congealed and his shirt stuck stiffly to him. He was barefooted and his pants were torn at the knees and stained with mud and grass. His remaining eye was rolled back in his head. The wound where the bullet had emerged from the temple was very large and fragments of bone protruded from the matted skin and hair. Jeffry wore only one shoe. The ankle of his bare foot was broken. It swelled out in a big, discolored lump like a fist and the foot was twisted sideways. His shirt was torn in strips like rags. He had been hit with a shotgun at a close distance and the pellets covered his trunk and part of one thigh. An artery had been severed in his neck and there was a large area of red around the top of his chest like a child’s bib.

“Where were they?” Rainack said.

“They fell in a clay pit. They was just climbing out when we saw them. Billy Jo started running for the trees, and me and Jess let go. We missed Jeffry but Abshire got him with the shotgun. It blew him right through a thicket.”

“Who got Billy Jo in the head?” Rainack said.

“It’s hard to tell. We was shooting at the same time. Part of him is still sticking to a tree out there.”

“Cover them up and let’s go back,” the captain said.