James Burke - Half of Paradise

It was LeBlanc’s deal. He shuffled the cards and set them down to be cut.

“Five-card stud,” he said.

“We been playing draw,” one man said.

“I’m dealing stud. You ain’t got to play.”

The other men told him to deal draw poker.

“I ain’t playing draw,” he said. “It’s dealer’s choice, and I call stud. One card down and four up. If nobody don’t want to play I take the ante.”

“Play like we been doing.”

“We always play the same game,” another said.

“The game is stud,” LeBlanc said, dealing the cards.

Avery sat and watched. Sherry, the man next to him, rolled a cigarette from loose tobacco in a shred of newspaper. The men had given him his name because he had been able to conceal a bottle of wine in his overalls when he was brought in. He was being held for the robbery of a liquor store.

“Your podner acts like he ain’t right in the head,” he said.

“It’s because he’s locked up,” Avery answered.

“We all locked up. That don’t give him no excuse.”

“He was in the war.”

“He’s got a crazy look in his face,” Sherry said. “Setting fire to his mattress like that. We like to coughed our lungs out from the smoke. He’s lucky they give him another mattress to sleep on.”

“The jail is rough on him.”

“Wait till he gets to the pen.”

“They’re sending us to a work camp.”

“That’s worse. They treat you better at the pen.”

“You been up before?”

“Three times around,” Sherry said. “It ain’t too bad for me. I’m used to it. Only thing I miss is drinking. With some of the cons it’s women. That’s all they talk about in the pen. With me it’s liquor. I can go without pussy, but I miss my drinking.”

Avery looked at Sherry. His face was an alcoholic’s. The lips were a bluish color in the darkness, and his jaws were flecked with small blue and red lines. His eyeballs twitched nervously.

“I go on a drunk once a month,” he said. “I stay drunk about a week and then I’m okay. But I got to have that week.”

“What are you in for?” he asked.

“Running moonshine.”

“Was you and LeBlanc working together?’

“There were two others. One got away and one drowned.”

Sherry looked from side to side and lowered his voice.

“It ain’t my business, but maybe it’d be better if you found yourself another podner.”

Avery didn’t answer and Sherry continued.

“He’s trouble, and you don’t want no trouble in the pen. You got to do like they tell you. He’ll crack up in the work camp. They’ll have to put him in a crazy house,” he said. “I’m just telling you what I think. You can podner with him if you want. But he’s going to get it at the camp.”

Avery turned back to the game. LeBlanc had finished his deal, and the man next to him was shuffling the cards. Every time LeBlanc drew a bad hand he threw down his cards and cursed the man who had dealt. When it was his turn to deal again he said he was going to change the game and called stud poker. The other men complained.

“Then nobody plays at all!” he shouted, and began to tear the cards in pieces and throw them in the air.

There was a brief fight. Two men held his shoulders to the floor while another wrenched the remaining cards from his hands. LeBlanc thrashed his feet and struck a man in the groin. The man reeled against the wall with a stupid expression of pain on his face. LeBlanc fought to get up, shouting at the top of his voice. The other men were coming out of their cells into the corridor to watch. He got one hand free and hit blindly at the figures around him.

“Somebody shut him up!”

“Leander is going to keep us in the tank for a week!”

“Belt him and get it over!”

“Bust him with a shoe. That’ll keep him quiet.”

A fist struck out and snapped LeBlanc’s head back against the iron floor. His eyes rolled, and he was unconscious. The men who had been holding him stood up.

“The sonofabitch can fight.”

“Leander ought to keep him in the hole till he starts beating his head on the walls.”

“Look what he done to Shortboy.”

“Does it hurt bad, Shortboy?”

Shortboy stood against the wall with a dazed look on his face. He couldn’t answer.

“See what he done?” Sherry said to Avery as the men moved away from LeBlanc, leaving him stretched out on the floor. One man picked up the candle stub and the scattered cards.

“Help me get him on his mattress,” Avery said to Sherry.

“Let him be. He ain’t our lookout.”

“Are you going to help me or not?”

“It ain’t good to podner with a guy like that.”

Avery went over to LeBlanc and dragged him by his arms to his mattress. The men stopped talking and watched him. Sherry moved to the other end of the corridor. There was a small patch of red in the back of LeBlanc’s hair. Avery rolled him over on his stomach. The men looked at Avery and began to talk among themselves. It was accepted by the inmates that no one was to help the victim when they dealt out punishment to one of their own members. Avery had broken the rule. Sherry came back and took his mattress to the end of the corridor. None of the men spoke to Avery for the remainder of the night.

In the morning the main door clanged open and the trusties entered with the food carts. The tank was unlocked, and the men picked up their cups and spoons and tin plates and shuffled out in the bullpen for breakfast. Avery shook LeBlanc by the shoulder to wake him. He lay in the same position as last night. There was a yellow and purple bruise along his jawbone, and a matted area of red in his hair His face was the color of ash; Avery was afraid he might have had a concussion. He shook him again

“Let’s go. It’s time for breakfast,” he said.

LeBlanc opened his eyes and sat up on his hands.

“My head hurts,” he said.

“Let’s go eat.”

LeBlanc felt the back of his head.

“It’s blood. Somebody hit me in the head.”

“Forget about it. We don’t want any more fights.

“What fights? I don’t remember nothing.”

“You were playing cards and you got into a fight.’

“I remember the cards, but I didn’t get in no fight. Somebody slipped up and cracked me in the back of the head.”

“Don’t worry about it now. Let’s get in the line.’

“Which one of them done it?”

“There were a lot of them. You can’t get them all.”

“I can get the one that give it to me,” LeBlanc said.

“Here’s your plate. I’m going to eat.”

He went out into the bullpen, and a minute later LeBlanc followed him. The men were in line before the food cart. The trusties were serving grits and sausage and coffee from the aluminum containers The men sat down on the floor with their backs against the wall and ate. When Avery and LeBlanc came out of the tank and got in line the talking stopped, and there was no sound but the scraping of the spoons in the plates. Leander the jailer looked at LeBlanc from the doorway. He had been a jailer long enough to know what had taken place the night before. He didn’t mind if LeBlanc had been ganged by the other men; maybe that was better than throwing him in the hole, and he wouldn’t be bothered with him anymore. But once a man had been beaten to death in the tank, and that had brought about an investigation, which cost the old jailer his job and caused the city officials a good deal of work.

“Who worked you over?” he said.

LeBlanc looked at him in hatred.

“Answer me.”

LeBlanc spit on the floor.

“Get out of the chowline,” Leander said. “You don’t eat breakfast this morning.” He turned to the other men and pointed his finger. “I’m not going to stand for this sort of crap in my jail. I’m a fair man until somebody crosses me, then I step on his neck. I don’t know which ones worked on LeBlanc, but that don’t matter because I’ll make every one of you pay for it. Any more fighting and I’ll lock you up in the tank until the stink gets so bad you won’t be able to breathe. Some of you ain’t been locked up for a week, but you can ask Shortboy what it’s like.”