“You’re a smart girl.”
“We get all kinds of people here. I can tell what a fellow is when he walks in. I know you’re the one on the Jubilee,” she said.
Three days later J.P. and April picked up their marriage license at the courthouse. He had a fresh supply of powder from Doc Elgin, and he stayed high all evening. That night they drove to a justice of the peace’s house on the edge of town. The official considered his marriage office a very important one. He smiled and spoke of the many young people he had married. There was a scent of whiskey on his breath. The house had the smell of old wallpaper, dead flowers, and old ladies. His wife served as a witness. J.P. was very high and he kept wanting to laugh during the ceremony. He looked at the homely slogans on the wall in the gilt and scrolled frames. He thought he heard himself laughing. The marriage was over and they were sitting in the back seat of the taxi on the way to the hotel and he could still smell the old wallpaper and the withered flowers.
AVERY BROUSSARD
After he had served a year Avery was up for parole. The board met once every two months, and he had to wait five weeks after his minimum sentence was completed before his case was reviewed. He had never spent time in detention, and no bad reports concerning him had ever been filed with the warden’s office, chiefly because Evans never took time to file reports on anybody in his gang. The board met at the warden’s house at the edge of the camp on a hot Friday afternoon. Avery was taken off work at noon and driven back from the line to the barracks by a guard. He showered and changed into clear denims while the guard sat on a bunk by the doorway and waited. He was then taken over to the warden’s house to be interviewed by the board.
He walked up the veranda with the guard beside him. In the dining room six men sat around the table in their shirtsleeves. The ceiling fan ruffled the papers on the table. The guard brought Avery into the room and motioned for him to sit down in a chair against the wall. The chairman of the board looked at Avery across the table. His face wore no expression save the confidence of his position in dealing with prisoners. He was the kind of man who could speak of correction, punishment, and rehabilitation without ever seeing the gangs working in the ditch or smelling the stench of sweat and urine when someone was brought back from detention.
“We’ve considered your case,” he said, “and although we’ve decided in your favor, I have to tell you that a parole is not a guarantee of complete personal freedom. Your crime was a first offense, and because you were relatively young when you committed it, you’re being given another chance on the street after doing only a third of your sentence. However, there are restrictions attached to parole that you are going to have to follow the next two years. You can’t associate with criminal or antisocial company, and you can’t leave the state without permission of your local board. You can’t overindulge in alcoholic beverages, nor own a firearm, and you must check in with your board every month. Would you like to say anything before you’re taken back?”
“When can I get out?” Avery said.
“Our recommendation has to be sent to Baton Rouge for approval. Then a letter will be sent to the warden ordering your release.”
The other men at the table were hot and bored.
“Is there anything else you’d like to know? One aim of the board is to help you make the adjustment back to normal life.”
The chairman waited for Avery to speak. He expected some expression of gratitude from men to whom he granted parole.
“If you have nothing to say, the guard will take you back.”
Avery went outside with the guard. They walked to the truck parked at the barracks. He asked if he could change into his soiled clothes before going back on the line. The guard said there wasn’t time. Avery sat beside him in the truck as they drove through camp out the wire gates and down the dirt road towards the line.
“It looks like you’re going to be the only one from gang five to make it out,” the guard said. “Bi
lly Jo and Jeffry is dead and LeBlanc is locked up in the nut house, and the rest is serving life except Boudreaux.”
“How long does it take for them to get that letter here?” Avery said.
“Four or five days. It’s good for you Evans didn’t aim in no report. You wouldn’t be making parole.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Yeah. He don’t like you.”
“I thought we were close friends.”
“He ain’t got no use for anybody that would buddy with LeBlanc. He had them blue marks on his neck for a week. I heard LeBlanc was slobbering like a sick dog. Is that true about them beating him over the head a half dozen times before he let go of Evans?”
“Ask Rainack.”
“Didn’t you see it?”
“No. I was in the truck,” he said.
Avery’s letter of release came later that week. A guard told him in the dining hall to have his things ready before breakfast the next morning. He got up at six o’clock with the rest of the men and cleaned out his footlocker and folded his army blanket and bed linen. He rolled his mattress up on the foot of his bunk and laid out his clothes issue on top of his locker. From the window, he could see the sun through the pines. Toussaint sat on the next bunk and rolled a cigarette.
“How’s it feel?” he said.
“Good.”
“You’ll be walking down Bourbon Street tonight.”
“Not with less than ten dollars in my pocket.”