J.P. went inside. It smelled of flat beer and the sawdust that was spread on the floor. The mirror behind the bar was yellowed, and the rough-grained floor was stained with tobacco spittle. Some of the chairs were turned over on the tables, and two railroad workers were drinking at the other end of the bar. A middle-aged man in a dirty apron was drying glasses behind the bar. His hair was combed over the bald spot in the middle of his head.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Winfield,” he said.
“Give me a whiskey and water, Jerry,” J.P. said.
“Yes, sir.”
He mopped the area in front of J.P. with a rag and set down the drink.
“We ain’t seen you in a while. You must be busy in politics.”
“When are you going to stop cutting your whiskey?” J.P. said.
“We don’t do that here, Mr. Winfield. I can give you another shot if it’s too weak.” He filled the jigger and poured it in J.P.’s glass.
“I want a room upstairs for the afternoon.”
“It’s a little early. I don’t know if any of the girls are in.”
J.P. took out his billfold and put five ten-dollar bills on the bar.
“Let me ask my wife,” the bartender said. “Emma, come over here a minute.”
The woman who had been sweeping propped her broom against a table and came behind the bar. She was stout and had big arms like a man. There was a large wart on her chin. She didn’t look at J.P.
“Mr. Winfield wants to go upstairs. I told him it was a little early for the girls,” the bartender said.
She took the money off the bar and rang the cash register and put it in the drawer.
“Come with me,” she said.
J.P. followed her off into a narrow hallway at the back. She opened the door to a stairway and climbed the steps with J.P. behind her. The upstairs was divided by a hallway with a series of doors on each side. The floor was covered with a tattered maroon carpet. The hall ended in a single large room that served as the kitchen. There was a curtain pulled across the doorway. The woman left J.P. standing at the top of the staircase and went down the hall opening doors and looking into rooms. She came back and went past him to the kitchen, not looking at him.
“They keep their rooms worse than niggers,” she said.
He watched her pull aside the curtain and look into the kitchen. Four women were sitting around the table eating. She held the curtain and stepped back for him to look in.
“You want one in particular?” she said.
“Is Margaret still here?”
“She got sick.”
“It don’t matter, then.”
“There’s a customer, Honey,” the woman said.
“Yes, ma’am,” a girl at the table said, and wiped her mouth with a napkin and got up from her chair. She came out into the hall. Her hair was long and honey-colored. She wore a pink flowered house robe. She was a little overweight and the pink polish on her fingernails was chipped away.
“Honey is one of our best girls. We never had complaints about her,” the woman said.
The girl smiled at J.P. He put a bill in the woman’s hand.
“Tell Jerry to send up a bottle and some glasses,’ he said.
“This has always been a good place. We never had trouble with townspeople or police,” the woman said.
“I ain’t going to tear up your place. Tell Jerry to bring the bottle.”
The woman put the bill in her dress pocket and went back down the stairs. J.P. followed Honey into her room.
“Say, aren’t you that singer? The one on the Louisiana Jubilee?” she said.
“No.”
“You look like him. What’s his name?”
“I don’t know. I’m a vitamin tonic salesman. You want to buy some vitamin tonic to keep strong in your work?”
“You even sound like him. You sure you’re not him?”
“I sell vitamin tonic to working girls that keep late hours,” he said.
“Salesmen don’t have money for an all-afternoon date.”
“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.”
“Try the docks. You can make good money handling freight.”
“Nobody is hiring ex-cons,” Avery said.
“You ain’t got to tell them where you come from.”
The breakfast whistle blew. They lined up outside the dining hall.
“Stay out of trouble. Don’t let them send you back to this place,” Toussaint said at the table.
“They never will.”
“Them parole boards can send you back for the rest of your stretch.”
“They won’t get me in here again,” Avery said.
“Don’t give them no excuse.”
They finished eating and lined up outside for roll call. The captain told Avery to return to the barracks after his name was called and wait for the guard to come get him.
“So long, whiskey runner,” Toussaint said.
They shook hands.
“Take care,” Avery said.
“Worry about yourself. They can’t do no more to me.”
“I’ll write you a letter.”
“You ain’t got to do that.”
“Maybe I’ll see you in New Orleans,” Avery said, and then felt stupid for saying it.
That’ll be a long while.”
They shook hands again.
“So long,” Avery said.
“So long.”
Avery went to the barracks and waited for the guard. Rainack came in with a brown paper bundle under his arm. He dropped it on the bunk.
“Here’s the stuff you come in with. See if it’s all there,” he said.
Avery broke the string and unwrapped the paper. The package contained the clothes he had worn when he was arrested. They had been washed, pressed, and wrapped in a bundle nearly a year ago. He looked at the scuffed brown shoes, the print sports shirt faded almost white, and the gray work trousers. There was a brown envelope on top with his name and prison number printed across the front. He opened it and shook out a pocketknife, three quarters, a billfold, and a leather-band wristwatch with the crystal broken.
“What happened to my watch?”
“Talk to the trusties at the office. Is everything else there?”
“Yes.”
“Change into your own clothes. You got to go by the warden’s office before you leave.”
Avery got dressed. He sat on the bunk and put on his shoes.
“You can take your boots with you. We never issue out boots twice,” Rainack said.
“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.
“North of here.”
“You sure picked
a bad place to catch a ride. Most people is afraid they’ll get one of them convicts in their car.”
“Aren’t you afraid?”
“I pick up boys along here all the time. Sometimes they’re just getting out of prison. I ain’t afraid of them.”
They drove down the highway for fifteen miles. The heat waves looked like pools of water on the road. The grass was tall and green in the fields. The clouds moved across the sun and made places of shadow over the countryside. The river was off to the left, curving through the slow-rolling hills of cotton and corn.
“You look like you been working outdoors a lot,” the farmer said.
“I have.”
“What doing?”
“I worked for the state. You can put me down at the crossroads.”
“Look, it don’t matter to me where you come from.”
“It doesn’t? You seem to want to know pretty bad.”
“I was talking to pass the time. I don’t grudge a man his past,” the farmer said.
“This is where I get off, anyway.”
The coup stopped where the road intersected with the federal highway. Avery got out and watched the car pull away. There was a country store on the corner under two big shade trees. Some old men sat on a bench under a Hadacol sign chewing tobacco and spitting in the dust. They watched him walk up the sandy drive past the broken gasoline pump into the store. It was cool inside. A clerk came from the back and stood behind the counter. Avery bought some lunch meat, a loaf of bread, and a can of sardines. He looked up at the package shelf behind the clerk.
“How much for a pint?” he said.
“Two dollars.”
“You don’t have any that comes in glass jars, do you?”
“We only sell bonded whiskey here,” the clerk said.
“Give me the pint.”
The clerk put the bottle in a paper bag. Avery stuck it in his back pocket and picked up his groceries and went out to the highway.
He sat under a pine tree and ate lunch. There were brown pine needles spread over the grass. He opened the sardines and picked them out with his pocketknife and ate them with bread. He was still hungry and he wanted to eat the lunch meat, but he would have to save that for supper. The sun was very hot now. He threw the empty can to the side of the road and wiped his knife clean on the grass. He took the pint bottle out of his pocket and cut the seal off. He unscrewed the cap and drank; he felt the whiskey hot in his stomach. It tasted good after so long. He took another swallow and put the cap back on and replaced the bottle in his pocket. He wrapped the rest of his groceries in the paper sack and got up and stood by the shoulder of the highway to hitch another ride. Three cars passed him by, and then he caught a lift with a salesman who was going all the way to New Orleans.