Half of Paradise

“You can keep them.”

They went over to the warden’s office. The trusty who served as a secretary sat behind a small desk inside the hall.

“Take him in to see the warden. I got to go back to the line,” Rainack said to the trusty. He went out and let the screen slam behind him.

The trusty knocked on the warden’s door.

“Broussard’s here, sir,” he said.

“I’m busy. Wait a minute.”

Avery waited a quarter of an hour, then he was told to go in. He sat down in the straight-backed chair before the warden’s desk.

“You see this ten-dollar bill?” the warden said. “It will buy a bus ticket to any part of the state you want to go to. We don’t care where you go, we just don’t want you back here. It cost the state a lot of money to keep you in camp, and we figure that after you’ve spent some time here you don’t want to cost us no more money. You’ll be outside in a few minutes and the choice will be up to you. You can obey the law and keep clear of us, or you can come back. But I’m going to warn you that we don’t like to see nobody here twice.”

“Is that all?” Avery said.

“That’s all.”

Avery took the bill off the desk and put it in his billfold.

“Do you know how to get out to the highway?” the warden said.

“I’ll find it.”

He got up and went back out through the hall.

“Hold on,” the trusty said. “I got to take you to the gate.”

They walked across the dirt yard of the camp. He looked at the white barracks in the sun and the corrugated tin roofs and the wire fence with the three barbed strands at the top. The guard at the gate sat in the shade of a tarpaulin that was stretched out from the fence and attached to two wood poles stuck in the ground. He had a double-barrel shotgun across his knees.

“Broussard’s coming out,” the trusty said.

The guard propped the shotgun against the fence and unlocked the gate.

“Come calling again,” he said.

Avery walked out and heard the gate lock behind him. The camp road led through some pines and divided into a fork ahead. There were tire marks in the dirt where the trucks turned right at the fork to take the men out to the line. The gravel lane to the left became a farm road that led to the highway. He walked in the shade of the trees. The trunks looked dark and cool, and off in the distance he could see the cotton fields and the red clay land and the Negroes chopping in the long green rows. He followed the farm road for a mile with the sun hot on his shoulders and the back of his neck. The dew on the grass was dry and the grasshoppers flicked across the road in the sun. He thought how long it had been since he used to catch the big black and yellow grasshoppers on the bank of the bayou and nigger-fish with a cane pole. A mile further on the farm road ran into the highway. He stood on the shoulder of the highway and tried to hitch a ride. He waited two hours and no one stopped. It was mid-morning and the day was beginning to get hot. He unbuttoned his shirt and let the wind blow inside. The cars came down the highway with the sun reflecting on their windshields and their tires whining on the pavement; they sped past him and disappeared down the road. An old coupe with a smoking radiator slowed down and pulled off onto the shoulder. Avery got in the front seat and shut the door.

The driver was a farmer. He wore overalls and a checkered shirt and an old Stetson hat that was wilted with sweat. His face was lean and burned by the sun. He shifted the floor stick and pulled back on the highway.

“Bad place to be hitchhiking,” he said.

“Why’s that?”

“Didn’t you see them signs they got along the road?”

“No,” Avery said.

“They say hitchhikers might be escaped convicts. There’s a prison camp over yonder.”

“How far are you going?”

“About twenty miles up the road. Ain’t you traveling light?”

“My suitcase was stolen.”

“Where you coming from?” the farmer asked.