Six Months Is No Long Time

by LEON WILSON

PRES remarked, to get something going, “Saturday night again-you guys know that?” There were times when Pres liked a silence. Right now he wanted to hear something and not just the shower dripping in the lower back corner of the pen, not just the slapping clicking shuffling sounds of Pop’s and Cece’s checker-playing behind him on the bench. He felt mean. He wanted to smoke but couldn’t bring himself to light his pipe. A week ago he had stepped on it and cracked it into six pieces. It was a pipe at all, now, because he had caught Mr. Jeff in a good mood and sweet-talked him for a piece of adhesive tape. Unlit, it stank like a fox’s nest.

No one had taken him up. He frowned and tossed his tobacco can over the checker game onto the long narrow steel table bolted to the floor. The can slid off the table, struck the bench behind it, and crashed on the floor.

“Hit him again, he’s still kickin’,” Cece murmured absently, intent on his game.

“I hate these Saturday nights!” Pop declared suddenly. Pop and Cece were riding the steel bench bolted to the floor between the table and the pen’s face of bars, the checkerboard in the quadrangle of their legs. “These mean-tempered drunks come in here—” Phlegm whipped up Pop’s throat and choked him off. He coughed and hawked. “Law,” he said thickly, “law—” He propped his steelrimmed glasses with a thin forefinger, pushed Pres aside, and spat violently through the bars. “In my opinion the law ought not put a man in here when he’s warlike and ain’t able to consider others. They ought to be a jail just special for whisky drunks.”

“What you doin’, Pop?” Cece demanded, “administratin’ Sheridan County or playin’ me checks? If you’re playin’ me checks, quit foamin’ and move.”

“You ain’t goin’ nowhere, Cecil. Keep your shirt on.” Pop braced his glasses and began experimenting with a bottle cap.

“And God damn it, quit pickin’ em up and tryin’ em around! I done called you on that already.”

Pop drew his hand back and rubbed his clnn. “Got to shave tomorrow,” he said. “My boy’s comin’ to see me. I wonder will he be wearin’ his uniform.” A belch ripped up his throat and he snatched at the table to keep from going over backwards. “That’s that macaroni,” he said. “Stuff lays in me like pig iron. I guess in all my days I never et the macaroni I have here.” He adjusted his glasses and peered down at the checkerboard. “Sure wish Mr. Jeff would cut on the lights,” he said. “It’s gettin’ so dark in here I can’t see to make my best moves.”

A Greyhound bus roared past the jail heading south. Tres whistled. “Another one rollin’ out a Tennessee,” he said. “Smart folks on that bus.” He heard Lon stirring, looked down the pen, and saw him standing free of the bars, yawning and stretching. “What ruint your sleep, ham-lover?” he inquired.

Jokes about ham were frequent. Lon was doing six months for having failed to satisfy Sheridan County that he had not stolen two hams and some jowl meat from a smokehouse.

Lon studied a wooden match briefly and split it on his thumbnail. “You spoke a mouthful just then, Pop,” he remarked. “Fellers that can’t quit when they ought to, I’ll be clanged if they don’t make regular outlaws of theirselves.” He returned one piece of the match to his shirt pocket; with the other he commenced picking his teeth. “ I’m speakin’,” he went on, “as a man that’s manufactured it and drinked it both, there s nothin better for you in this world, I do believe, than corn whisky, providin’ it’s made right, understand— and this goes equal for molasses and sugar whisky — and I don’t reckon there’s nothin’ worse if a man won t use it right.”

“This ol’ world,” Pop said shallowly, losing his tenth game since supper, “would be better off without likker.”

“Speakin’ a whisky,” Pres said casually, “ain’t Homer about due?”

Cece looked up, found Pres winking at him, and looked quickly back at the board. Busy clearing his throat, Pop missed this. “Now, Pres, darn it, I don’t see why you always have to be pickin’ on Homer.”

“Go on, Pop,” Cece said, “you worry that gospelgrinder worse’n any of us.”

“Ill bet you,” Pop said, “Homer hasn’t took a drink since he left out a here.

“He’s been drunk a dozen times,” Pres said, “if he’s even been sober. ”

“Darn it, Presley, you shouldn’t ought to say that! You don’t know that to be true.”

“Don’t I? Old man, you know as much about human nature as I know about—” He broke off.

“About what kind of a sentence you’re gonna draw from Judge Doolittle,” Cece suggested, “for stealin’ that Chevrolet.”

“Yeah,” Pres agreed glumly.

“Homer’s a good man I” Pop barked. “Sometimes he just ain’t able to quit, that’s all.

Cece jumped Pop’s newest king. “What you mean he’s a good man, Pop? You know he s comin in here the minute he gets hold of a bottle.

2

PRESLEY,” Lon said. Pres looked down the pen and saw Lon pointing out his window with his toothpick. “Man was out there on the river now, he’d catch fish by the bushel basket. Sundown’s might near the finest time to fish. Did you know that?”

“I wouldn’t give you a nickel for every fish in that river and the pan you fixed ‘em in,” Pres said crisply. “This sticky-tape’s bitin’ the livin’ hell out a me.” He glowered at his pipe. The adhesive, loose from the heat, was threatening to let it fall apart. “Boy, I’m sure countin’ on my woman to make it down here tomorrow with a new pipe. Makes me glad I’m a married man just to stand here and think about a new pipe.” He put the pipe carefully in his mouth and puffed it. “Expect I’m about the happiest married man in this jail,” he said.

Pop hawked his throat clear. “What that little girl ought to bring you, instead of a pipe and all that candy and stuff, is a thirty-eight revolver. Put it through the panhole yonder and let you have it. And I don’t mean so’s you could blow your way out a here, Presley — I mean right between the eyes.”

Pres laughed. “Sweeten up, old man,” he said. “You’re too sour to go on livin’.”

“I’ll risk one of my biscuits tomorrow,” Lon said quietly, “you never et fish cooked fresh out of the water, Presley. You wouldn’t low-rate ‘em like that. There’s nothin’ on earth equals fish cooked on a campfire.” Lon wiped and stored his toothpick and sat on the end of the table back of Pop. “I was aimin’,” he said, drawing out tobacco and papers, “to make a few brief scatterin’ remarks on bread cooked in that grease after you got them fish browned good, but I find I got to quit this talk: my mouth’s waterin’ so I’m about to drown myself.”

“God damn,” Pres drawled quietly.

“What you got?” Cece asked.

“Would you look at that,” Pres said. He laid his pipe on the table and climbed the bars till he hung halfway between floor and ceiling. “God damn!” he drawled again. Lon slid off the table and went to the bars. Pres let go one hand and pointed. “That man and that girl,” he said, “hugged up yonder on the bridge.”

“Sweet mamma!” Cece exclaimed. He climbed the bars alongside Pres and hung there like an ape on the front of a cage.

Pop saw him reaching through the bars to drag open the window. “Better not do no more a that hollerin’,” he warned. “You’ll have Mr. Jeff in here again.”

“Aw, damn Mr. Jeff.” Cece drew in all the breath he could hold and bellowed out the window, “Staaay with her!”

“Mr. Jeff comes up,” Pop said, “I guess he’ll know it wasn’t me hollerin’.”

Cece tried again but the couple ignored him: kept on crossing the bridge, eyes front. This disappointed Pres and at the same time stirred him. “They ain’t heedin’ a damn thing they don’t absolutely have to,” he commented happily.

When the couple disappeared, Cece dropped off the bars and straddled the bench to finish his game. “Seein’ somethin’ like that,” he said, “gives me the black lonesomes.”

Pop jumped a wafer of cardboard to king row. “Time you should a considered that,” he said, “ was when you was settin’ out to steal that keg a beer.

“Old man,” Cece said harshly, “your mouth’s overloadin’ you again.”

Pop giggled and adjusted his glasses. Pretty triflin’ stuff,” he said, “a big-talkin’ boy like you, been in the penitentiary and all, getting caught on somethin’ like that.”

Pres walked around the table to the panhole, stooped, and put his mouth out of it. “Lights!” he yelled. His cry rang along the steel and concrete corridor and down the stair well at the end of it.

“You’ll have him in on you, doin’ that,” Cece said.

“Think I’m scared a him?” Pres demanded. “By God, if I’m doin’ the best I can, I won’t be run by no-damn-body. That man ever puts his hands on me, me an’ him is goin’ some-God-damn-where. He can’t kill me, and if he does, he can’t eat me.”

The light in the center of the ceiling came on. “See will he let us go back,” Lon said. “I’ve wore this day out and now I’m wantin’ to rest.”

Pres sauntered back to the panhole. “Mr. Jeff,” — he let the words roll away— “leave us go back, please, sir.” His words ran together, bounding from wall to wall of the corridor. He listened at the hole. When he heard Mr. Jeff’s keys he collected his stuff from the table and got in line at the door of the pen.

They watched the flash of Mr. Jeff passing the panhole, then listened to him unlocking the case that contained the door levers. Mr. Jeff levered open the door of their cell, then he unlocked and drew? open the door at the head of the passageway that ran past the pen and the four cells. Routine so far: before letting them out of the pen he always looked in to see how things were going. But now, instead of merely glancing in, he drew his head down and squeezed his shapeless bulk through the narrow opening into the passageway.

They blanked their faces and held themselves mot ionless. Mr. Jeff took his time. Finally secure and comfortable against the outer wall, a number thirteen shoe jammed on the bars of the pen, he raised his head and looked through the bars at them, his eyes invisible in the shadow of his green celluloid eyeshade. He stopped chewing and tongued his tobacco into his cheek. “I’m tellin’ you again, boys,” he said tonelessly, “you can holler up here all you want, but I can make you sorry of it and you know" it.” He briefly resumed chewing, letting this sink in. “God damn it, you men are criminals. You’re doin’ time in here. You got no rights whatsoever, only what I give you. Keep on hollerin’ out these windows and we’ll cut out our visitors and newspapers and buyin’ stuff. We’ll live hard.” He watched them, chewing, then turned and crowded out. of the passageway to the levers.

“By God,” Pres whispered, “he don’t let Maryetta give me my pipe tomorrow!” The rigid silence of the others made him glance at the passageway door. Mr. Jeff’s head was poking in.

“You got a letter this evenin’, Pop. I’ll bring it up to you in the mornin’.”

“Could 1 have it tonight, please, sir?” Pop scurried to the top corner of the pen. “Please, sir,” he begged through the bars. “It’s from my boy. I’d like to have it tonight if I could.”

Mr. Jeff poked his head in again. “I said,” he said heavily, “I’d give it to you in the mornin’. Ain’t that good enough?”

“But, Mr. Jeff, sir, if you please, I’d like to have it tonight. My boy’s come home on furlough, you know7, and —”

“I said, God damn it, you could have it in the mornin’!” Pop fell back from the bars, blinking. “God damn it, it ain’t from your boy. Think your boy wants to see you, you in here? Now get back in line!”

Pop hurried down to the door. “Make a preacher lay his Bible down, wouldn’t he?” Lon whispered sympathetically.

The door ran aside and crashed against its stops. Cece leading, they filed into the passageway, down the passageway, and into their cell. The door crashed shut behind them.

3

POP lay on his lower bunk at the front of the cell, took off his glasses, and wiped his eyes. “Why you reckon he told me about my letter and then wouldn’t bring it up to me?” he asked Lon. “Looks like he’d a kept quiet about it. Now" I’m goin’ to worry all night about it.”

“Meanness,” Lon said. “He’s mean for the hell of it. Who’s it from, you reckon?”

“My lawyer, I expect. He said it wasn’t from John. I expect Mr. Henshaw’s seen John and told him how come me to be in here. Hope he has. That Mr. Jeff!” he said bitterly. “Why’d he have to say that about John not wantin’ to see me? A whole lot he knows about it.” Pop pulled out a tail of his shirt and began cleaning his glasses. “And what’s he callin’ me a criminal for? Sayin’ I’m in here doin’ time! Good night, I’m waitin’ for trial so’s I can go home. If I got a home any more,” he added sadly. “That letter could be more papers from that wife a mine. She’s makin’ me all the trouble she can, sellin’ my place on me. I could block her if I was out a here, but they won’t lower my bail.”

“Hey, old man, want me to tell you who your letter’s from?” Pres and Cece were on the bunk above Lon’s playing cards.

“You keep out a this!” Pop snapped.

“It’s that little girl that got you arrested —” “Aw Presley, hush!”

“—tell in’ you you bigged her—”

“Presley Cargile, that’s plumb disgustin’!”

“— and when are you cornin’ out on bond and marry her!” Tres and Cece whooped with laughter.

“You ought to be ashamed,” Pop said, “talkin’ such filthy talk as that. Trouble with you and Cece is you got women on the brain. You can’t think about nothin’ else.”

“God ever made anythin’ better,” Cece said, “he’s keepin’ it to hisself.”

“Some people in here!” Pop muttered angrily. He shook out his newspaper.

Lon, up on one elbow rolling a cigarette, could hear Mr. Jeff’s radio downstairs. “Dog if that don’t, sound like it might be the Light-Crust Doughboys,” he said. He brushed the tobacco crumbs off his blanket and lit up. “Tell you fellows somethin’: music gives me odd feelin’s sometimes — heart music like that there.” He lay back on his bunk, pillowing his head on the mound formed by his shoes under the head of his mattress. I got one now,” he said. “I’m wonderin’ of all the thousands upon thousands across the land that’s listenin’ to that song, how many of ‘em ever gives a thought to the poor citizens like you and 1 that s locked up in such places as this.”

Fop braced his glasses and held his paper to catch the light from the ceiling. “Listen to this, Lonnie,” he said. “You’ll like this. ‘One half pound pork sausage fried and combined with a can of chopped spinach and topped with a golden cheese sauce will turn your modestly planned Saturday night supper into a fes — into a festival.’ What’s that, I wonder?” He looked eagerly across at Lon. “Don’t that about make you swaller your tongue — that about that pork sausage and cheese?”

“Hush, Pop,” Cece said. “You’re givin’ me the miss-meal cramps.” The light in the ceiling went out. Cece threw down his cards. The light coming into the cell from the yard floodlights was too dim to be of any use.

“Aw, listen to that shower!” Pop broke out fretfully. “Presley, you used it last — why didn’t you squeeze it off good?”

“Why didn’t you, old man?” Pres said, vaulting down from Cece’s bunk.

“I sure won’t get no sleep tonight,” Pop said, “wonderin’ about my letter and listenin’ to that drip, drip, drip.” A few minutes later his mouth sagged open and he began breathing hoarsely.

Out in the darkness a truck rattled south across the bridge. Big moths were thudding against the floodlight outside the window and landing on the heavy screening of the window. In the bull pen the shower dripped like a beating heart.

“It’s awful when it’s like this, ain’t it?” Pres demanded, “and it’s like this now.” He sat on Lon’s bunk, held out a hand for Lon’s makings, and made himself a cigarette.

“Tain’t much at the best of times,” Lon said. “Declare I feel bad about our snorin’ friend. Here they got him accused with white-slavin’ a girl he never oven said good evenin’ to. He’s been waitin’ two months, and got another to go before court meets. That ain’t right, you know. With you criminals, it’s different. You done something.”

Cece rolled to the edge of the bunk above and drew in a lungful of the rising smoke. “Sometimes I get so disheartened in this ol’ gray-bar hotel,” he said, “if there was a way to leave out of it, I would.” He reconsidered. “No I wouldn’t neither, by God. I’m too near the end of my time for no homemade parole — have ‘em heatin’ the bushes for me. I’ll be out a here the eighth day a May.”

“When you go,” Lon said, “I’ll know for a fact I’m short. I’ll have six weeks and a butt. Way it seems now, I could do that standin’ on my head.”

“Hush, you bastards,” Pres said quietly. “You’re makin’ a long-time baby feel bad.”

“You’ll beat yours,” Lon told him. “Doolittle ain’t a bad judge, and auto thievery ain’t the worst meanness. You drove that man’s Chevrolet off because he wouldn’t pay you what he owed you. When the court assigns you a lawyer, tell him to bring that out. Doolittle might give you probation.” Pres said nothing. “I built two years twice in Atlanta for distillin’ and got over it okay,” Lon said. “You do it a day at a time, same as you do it here, and when they turn you loose, you wonder where the time’s went to. Say your wife’s coinin’ to see you tomorrow?”

“She better if she wants to go on livin’! By God she’s got to bring me a pipe.”

“How old was you when you married?”

“Me? — nineteen. She was just a kid: turned fourteen the day before we married. I only lived with her less’n a week. That’s a fact. Married her Saturday evenin’ and Thursday they throwed me in jail for beatin’ on a guy.” Pres opened his shirt, ran his hand inside, and slowly scratched himself. “Ain’t that the luck though,” he demanded, “biggin’ a girl, bein’ with her that little bit? Her daddy come paid me out a jail but I never went back with her none — couldn’t quit my ramblin’ ways.”

“Coin’ to divorce her, are you?”

“Been after her to, but she claims I ought to live with her and her daddy or else give her fifty dollars a month for the kid.”

“Coin’ back with her when you’re out of this, Presley?”

“Hell, no, I ain’t goin’ back with her! There’s one thing I won’t stand for, it don’t matter who the woman is, and another I won’t put up with. One is havin’ a woman hit me in public — it don’t look right, makes a man look silly. The other is havin’ a woman get me arrested.”

“Amen!” Cece put in from the bunk above.

They heard the sheriff’s car come quickly in from the highway and slam to a stop at the jail door. There were sounds of scuffling. Mr. Jeff’s night bell rang. The men outside were moving fast. “Some poor boy hold of too much wobblin’ waiter,” Lon said sadly. He listened critically to the noise. “Could be that’s Homer.”

They listened to the men come fighting into the jail. After a minute a scream of protest rang up the stairway and there was a crash that seemed to shake the entire building. The drunk had been shut in the hole in the basement.

“They ain’t bringin’ him up here,” Cece said. “That’s somethin’.”

“That’s Homer, boys, or I’m badly fooled, Lon said, “I hate it, declare I do.” He flipped the remainder of his cigarette through the bars and prepared to draw his blankets over his head. “We got to grit this racket and get our rest,” he said. “The weather ain’t unfavorable, Mr. Jeff may take the notion to turn us all out of here tomorrow.”

4

THEY were in the pen when Mr. Jeff brought Homer up, shortly before dinner, and turned him in. Homer was hoe-handle high and hoe-handle thin and his face was so narrow and swept-back looking that he looked as if he had spent most of his forty years facing into a hurricane. He came into the pen just far enough that Mr. Jeff wouldn’t hit him closing the door, and stood there, grinning sheepishly.

“By the Lord, Homer,” Lon said, shaking his hand, “you sure been mistreated about something.” Homer’s right eye was blacked, a cross of adhesive plaster covered most of his forehead, and his face and neck were smeared with dried flaking blood. “Look at you, for Pete’s sake!” Lon said. “Blood all over your shirt, your coat sleeve fixin’ to come off— where’s your hat?”

“Lost it durin’ the argument,” Homer mumbled, “or it’s downstairs somewhere.” He lowered himself gently on a bench and delicately palpated his beaten eye. “I expect I have looked purtyier,” he said gravely.

Mr. Jeff had given Pop his Sunday paper and Pop was reading it, sitting by the panhole. “Thought, you told us you was gonna keep out a here, Homer,” he said severely.

“Been out three weeks, Mr. Pyburn,” Homer said.

“Reckon how long will they keep you this time?” Lon asked.

“Overnight, Mr. Jeff told me.”

“Looks to me like you’d cut out whiskyin’,” Pop said. “How’s your family gonna make it, you keep cornin’ in here all a time? How you ever gonna make a crop?”

Homer sighed. “You’re askin’ ones I can’t answer,” he said. He rose, slipped off his coat, rolled his sleeves, and went to the shower. “You know, it’s a fact,” he said, scooping a gob of amber paste from the soap can and looking it over for roaches, “whisky’s harder on me than morphine ever was. I follered morphine eight years ‘fore I laid it down, and friends, let me tell you, you can do some awful things when you’re loaded with that stuff—you ain’t scared to go up and hit a tree.” He dabbled water over his face and neck, reeled off a streamer of toilet paper next to the shower, and came back to the table delicately blotting himself. “But now I’ll say this for morphine: I never used to get in here with it the way I do with this whisky juice. Whisky really hurts me. I get tore up all over. Weak, nervous. Takes me a week to get over one of these.”

“Drinkin’ moon or bottled in bond last night?” Lon asked.

“Bonded,” Homer said.

“Bonded’ll tear a man up a whole lot worse than somethin’ run off up some cove,” Lon said. “All that colorin’ and crap-stuff in it. But now it’s got to be made right — by preference, with a full copper outfit. It’s interestin’ to make whisky. I’ve done lots of things in my life — cut timber, carpentered, run a store some, worked in a flour mill — but I believe I’d rather make whisky as anything I ever done.”

Homer looked appealingly at Lon. “Lonnie, let’s defer this, as the feller said. Hammers is runnin’ in my head and every time you say that word they beat me twice.”

Pres caught sight of Pop’s funny papers and tried to draw them from under his arm. “Leave ‘em be, Presley,” Pop commanded. He clamped his arm down tight.

“Come on, Pop. Cece is goin’ to read ‘em to me.”

“I said leave ‘em be. You boys can look at ‘em when I’m finished.”

Pres gave up. “Honest to God,” he said, “I believe you’re the orneriest old man I ever had anything to do with. They stick me in Atlanta, I sure hope I ain’t luckless enough to draw a cell with you.”

“You wasn’t so stingy,” Pop said, “you’d buy a paper ‘stead of all the time askin’ for mine.”

“Take your ol’ paper and shove it!” Pres shouted. He sprang up from the bench and slammed the table with his hands.

“It wouldn’t do you no good,” Pop cried. “You can’t read!”

“What difference does it make can I read or can’t I? God damn it, I can look at ‘em!”

“Friends,” Homer begged, “let’s fellowship one another.”

“If you’d a been raised right.,” Pop said. He intended to continue, “you might be able to read,” but with a suddenness that startled the breath out of him a shuddering fist appeared an inch from his nose.

“Old mail, don’t you say I wasn’t raised. You say I wasn’t raised and by God I’ll take your damn nose and twist it up, see, and let it rain in it, see, and you’ll be wonderin’ why, sec? Hear me what I say?” Pres banged the tabic with his fist. “Say I wasn’t raised, old man, and I’ll take you apart, and if I’m lyin’ I’m flyin’. That’s somethin’, by God, no-damn-body don’t tell me: I wasn’t raised.” Pres swung away from the table, marched to the bottom of the pen, and turned fiercely back. “I’m tellin’ you now, old man: last Sunday after my woman come you got cookies, didn’t you? — cookies, by God, with raisins in ‘em. You count the cookies you get this evenin’.”

Pop snorted disdainfully, shook his paper out, and did his best to look absorbed in it. “Homer,” he said loudly.

“Sir?”

“My boy’s cornin’ to see me this evenin’.”

“That so? I’m proud to hear that.”

“I haven’t saw him, you know, since he went across the water three years ago.” Pop was covertly watching Pres. “I expect he’ll bring me somethin’. You know: candy, cookies, stuff like that. Wouldn’t be like John not to bring his daddy somethin’ when his daddy’s locked up and ain’t able to get it for hisself. You and Lon will get in on whatever he brings me.”

“Hey, Pop,” Cece said, “what about me on this deal?”

Before Pop could answer, there was a rattle of pans on the stairs outside. Cece jumped for his spoon. “Poke chops and grits today!” he announced gleefully. “Grit your teeth and poke it down.”

After the pans were taken away, one of the Negro trusties who did the cooking and celled on the floor below started singing. The song came up faintly through the windows. “Six months is no sentence, six months is no long time, cause I got a woman in Nashville tryin’ to do ninety-nine.”

“Sing it., brother!” Cece murmured. He knew Nashville. He’d done two years in Nashville.

Pop heard him. “If that nigger can carry a tune,” he said, “I can carry a bale a hay.”

Cece’s answer was to grab the bars, throw his head back, and join in: “Ninety-nine and ninetynine makes a hundred ninety-eight; that’s more years, pretty woman, than this poor hoy can make.”

“Aw, that’s the nearest no song ever I heard,” Pop said. “If you have to sing, sing somethin’ with a tune to it.”

“Pop,” Cece said quietly, “what you know about music wouldn’t cover a dime. You ain’t got enough a nothin’ in you to even feel the blues.”

“Homer sings a song that sounds like somethin’,” Pop said. “Homer, you sing for us. Sing us that one, ‘I Heard the Crash on the Highway But I Didn’t Hear Nobody Pray.’ That’s a good one.”

Homer and Lon were playing checkers. “I reckon I’ll have to keep my mind on this, if that’s all right with you, Mr. Pyburn,” Homer said. “I fail to, first I know, Lonnie’ll rip me wide open.”

5

MARYETTA was an hour late. Pres and Cece had about given her up when they saw her walking along the highway from town. She saw them waving and waved back and tried to get Presley Wayne Junior to wave, but he couldn’t seem to find them back of the bars and screening on the window.

Before Mr. Jeff let Alaryetta come to the panhole he thrust his hand in and tossed Pop his letter. Thinking about his boy, Pop had almost forgotten the letter. He pushed Pres aside and put his face out the hole. “Evenin’, Mrs. Cargile,” he said in passing. “Mr. Jeff, sir, when my boy comes, please to let him come right up? You’ll know him by he’s a great big six-footer, and I expect he’ll be wearin’ his uniform.”

“Hey, old man, pull your freight!” Pres shoved him away from the hole.

Pop sat down in the upper corner of the pen and drew two sheets of paper from the already opened envelope. “It’s from Mr. Henshaw, like I expected, Lonnie,” he said, but Lon and Homer and Cece were raptly watching Presley kiss his wife through the panhole.

“God damn,” Cece murmured, “layin’ in there, ain’t he!”

Alaryetta was a pretty girl with dark eyes, hair almost as curly as Pres’s, and nicely shaped lips. After the kiss, she handed in a cardboard shoebox. “I brought you some hard-boiled eggs,” she said.

“Where’s the pipe?” Pres glared out the panhole at her. “Didn’t you bring me no pipe? For God’s sake, why not? I told you last Sunday I was needin’ one. Well, couldn’t you bring me what I ast for?”

“I reckon I forgot,” she said.

“Forgot? Godamighty, when a man’s in a tight, he’s got to depend on people.”

“I’ll bring it next time, Presley.”

“That’s a whole God damn week from now.” Pres dangled his bandaged pipe through the hole. “Think I want to smoke this another week?” He wrenched open a celophane bag of gumdrops and gobbled a handful.

Alaryetta put her face at the hole and looked down the length of the table. “Evenin’, boys,” she said.

“How do, Mrs. Cargile,” they returned, all but Pop, who was busy with his letter.

“You brought the little feller,” Lon said hopefully.

“He’s out here. Want to say howdy to the men, Presley Wayne?” She lifted the child till his solemn face was framed in the panhole. The men howdied him, trying to get him to smile or say something.

“Can’t you answer howdy, Presley Wayne?” Pres demanded sternly, his mouth full of candy.

All this time Mr. Jeff had been standing by to see that no contraband was passed in. Now he raised and locked the glass cover of the panhole and went downstairs. To go on visiting, Pres had to hold his mouth against the screened holes piercing t he wall just beneath the glass. Cece and Homer and Lon could no longer hear Alaryetta.

“Damn, but she’s a pretty thing,” Cece said quietly. “If I was Presley, I’d go back with her. Damn if I wouldn’t. I think I’d put it out of my mind she ever hit me.”

“Reckon she hit him,” Lon said, “or does he just tell it on her?”

“Oh hell, she hit him all right. He wouldn’t tell somethin’ that bad.”

“What’s your letter say, Pop?” Lon asked.

“Business matters ‘tween Mr. Henshaw and I,” Pop replied stiffly.

“Mr. Pyburn,” Homer said, “I recall you sayin’ when 1 was here before that you expected to make bond and go home till your trial.” There was no answer. Homer looked around from his game and saw Pop turned away into the corner of the pen. It took him a minute to realize that Pop was weeping. “Mr. Pyburn!” he said, shocked.

“Well, for God’s sake!” Cece said, looking up the pen,

6

WHEN Maryetta and Presley Wayne went downstairs, Pres and Cece went to the bars. They waved as Maryetta and the boy walked out across the yard to the highway. Pres watched till they were out of sight, then gave everyone but Pop a gumdrop and a chocolate-dipped cookie. “What’s the matter with you, old man?” he asked Pop. “Ain’t heard a peep out a you in an hour. Sick? Looky here.” He thrust his shoebox under Pop’s face. “Right pretty, ain’t it?”

Pop raised his head and looked away through the bars. “I wish I had a asked Mr. Jeff to leave me go back to the cell,” he said bleakly, “where I could have some quiet.”

“Little bit sick, ain’t we?” Pres jeered. “We got all prettied up and then our soldier boy didn’t come see us. What’s a matter — thought soldier John was gonna bring us somethin’ to eat.” Pres turned to share his glee and saw that Homer had not eaten his cookie and gumdrop. “I don’t want you slippin’ those, Homer. I give ‘em to you, understand?”

“I’m lettin’ my stomach settle good,” Homer explained. “It ain’t entirely recovered from last night yet.”

“You cain’t use ‘em, just hand ‘em back,” Pres said. “I don’t want Pop gettin’ a hold of ‘em.” He crushed his gumdrop bag, thumped it over his shoulder, climbed onto the table, and lay down the length of it. “You can come out with a repeat on those Nashville blues any time you want,” he told Cece.

Cece laughed. He knew the mood Pres was in. “What’s a matter — that little bit a peckin’ through the panhole break you up?”

“You ain’t woofin’,” Pres said quietly, his eyes closed. “I was tastin’ freedom.”

After Lon had won all the checkers he cared to, he sat down beside Pop and asked him about his letter.

“Indirectly it was from John,” Pop said. “You recall I asked Mr. Henshaw to see would he help get me out a here so I could fight this case right. Well, he seen John like I asked and John said” — Pop faltered — “said he wouldn’t help me if someone give him a plugged nickel for the purpose.” Pop lifted off his glasses and slowly wiped his eyes. “His very words,” he said.

Lon began rolling a cigarette. “How old’s your boy?”

“Thirty.”

“His mother’s got him hugged in,” Lon suggested.

“I reckon,” Pop said bitterly. “She’s all the time agitatin’ this malice stuff they got up against me. Still it does look like he’d come hear my side of it, don’t it?”

“Looks like,” Lon agreed. He closed his cigarette and fished for a match.

“I wouldn’t look for no consideration from my wife,” Pop said, “but my own boy don’t want to help me.”

“How old did you say your boy was, Pop?” Pres asked, lying on the table.

“Aw, Presley, you keep out a this! Me and Lon are talkin’, not you.”

“Thirty, huh? — and you told us you married in nineteen and nineteen.” Pres prodded Cece with his foot, snickering. “Talked yourself into a trap, didn’t you, old man?”

“You fellows pay attention to what concerns you and leave me be,” Pop snapped.

Pres whooped and slapped his thigh. “Guess you was one a the ones, by God, that had to get married. Old man, you got too much mouth on you for your own good.”

Pop’s voice was small and tight and he looked away through the bars: “You fellows don’t know a thing about my affairs, only what I tell you. My boy may be thirty and he may be twenty-five, and you don’t knowfor a fact when I married.”

Pres laughed. “You ought to sleep good, Pop,” he said. “You sure as hell lie good.”

Pop’s lips closed in a bloodless gray line. Then he sighed. “People are turnin’ me down now,” he told Lon, “but they won’t have no chance to when I’m out of this. That’s what I tell myself anyway.” After his stout beginning he was weakening. “I just don’t know,” he said, “I just don’t know. My life’s about passed me. I’m down-gradin’ every day now. It’s different with you and Homer and the boys here. You all got somethin’ to look forward to. Presley or Cecil here could make somethin’ of theirselves, they quit stealin’ beer and automobiles that don’t belong to them and put women off their minds for five minutes.”

“If that’s what it takes,” Pres said, “I’m headin’ to be a long-time son of a bitch.”

“I wish you’d cut out this talk, Pop,” Cece said irritably. “It sounds like dyin’ to me.”

“That’s what it is!” Pop cried. “It’s dyin’, just exactly, and you boys better start studyin’ some about it — one a these days you’ll be doin’ a whole lot of it.”

“I reckon I might sing that song I was asked to sing a while ago,” Homer said.

Silence followed this announcement until Fop said, “We’re listenin’, Homer. Some good singin’ would suit me fine.”

“I’ll do the best I’m able,” Homer said modestly. His offering was “Life Is Like a Mountain Railroad.” “We must make the run successful from the cradle to the grave,” he sang. “ Never falter, never fail: keep your hand upon the throttle and your eye upon the rail”

“That’s good!” Pop declared in the first pause. “Homer sings more like Gene Autry than anyone in this jail.”

“ You will roll up grades of trial, you, will cross the bridge of strife; see that Christ is your conductor on this lightning train of life ”

Pres sat up on the table, reached for his shoebox, and counted his hard-boiled eggs. He gave one to Cece and one to Lon and put one on the table for Homer. Homer was now at the trestle spanning Jordan’s swelling tide where “You’ll behold the union depot into which your train will glide; there you’ll meet the Superintendent, God the Father, God the Son

Pop felt a nudge, turned, and found Pres offering him an egg. “Don’t tell me you don’t want it, you droopy-faced ol’ hypocrite,” Pres said, “for I know you do.”

“Where the angels wait to join us,” Homer concluded, “in Thy praise for evermore.”

“That was fine,” Pop said, shucking his egg. “ We enjoyed every bit a that.”

“Thank you, friends,” Homer said.

“I’d rather listen to you sing,” Pop said, “than all the rest a these so-called singers around here put together.”

“Mr. Pybum, I’m more inclined to wriggle around under that than I am to stand up under it, but I surely do thank you.” Homer sounded transported.

“ ‘Bout time for you to take off, ain’t it, Homer? ” Lon asked. “You done overnight and then some.”

Homer smiled sadly. “Mr. Jeff’s a great one to let a man stay on. You heard what he told me last time I was here: ‘You’ll get out when I get good and ready to open the door. If that don’t suit you, get out the best way you can,’”

Cece began strolling the pen. He saw Pres lying on the table, his mouth ajar. “Goin’ to sleep? It’s damn near pan time.”

“I make it better when I’m asleep,” Pres said without opening his eyes. “ I don’t worry so much.”

Lon stood at the bars watching traffic on the highway while he rolled a cigarette. “How long till they try you, Presley?”

“Forty-eight days exactly, countin’ this one as finished.”

“That ain’t long.”

“Long, by God, if you had to hang!”

“Or if you had to build it,” Cece said, “in some of cockyroach jail cause you couldn’t make bail.”

“When I bite t he thread off on this six months,” Lon said, “I’ll have spent five years four months and twenty-seven days behind one set of bars or another. That’s no record, but it’s nothin’ to snicker about.” There was an interval of silence. “You know what the judge told the man that drawed a hundred and ten and was doubtin’ he could do it all, don’t you, Presley?”

“Do what you can and leave the rest go,” Pres said tartly.

Homer chuckled. “Six months from now,” he said, “all of us may be dead or we may all be doin’ better. It’s a reasonable hope we’ll be doin’ better, but we got no way of knowin’ what the Lord’s bookin’ down for us.”

Lon thought he had a good joke. “You boys must not care for it here, talkin’ like you do, but looky here: we get three meals a day and a flop — that’s more than lots of folks have in the free world.” It didn’t go over. There was a prolonged silence.

Pop had worked the easiest part of his Sunday crossword puzzle. He thought perhaps he could finish it. To discover, four letters. He had three of them: f, blank, n, d. He scratched his head for the missing one. All of a sudden he could no longer see the paper. He lifted ofi his glasses and tried to dash the tears from his eyes but t hey wouldn’t stop.

“Here we go again! ” Pres said scornfully. “What is it this time, old man?”

Pop shut his spurting eyes and held his head in his hands. “There’s people in here,” he stammered, “that’ll have to say somethin’ about, this, but I can’t help it: this Easter’ll be the first Easter I was ever in jail.”

Forewarned, even authorized, Pres opened his mouth to say “Likely won’t be your last,” then thought better of it. He listened to Pop sniveling, the shower dripping, Cece drumming the table with his fingernails. “God damn,” he said irritably, “all we lack in here is a bunch a flies buzzin’.”

Lon snapped the stub of his cigarette through the bars and turned briskly toward the table. “Eight, ten minutes till the macaroni comes up,” he said. “Which one of you criminals thinks he can whup me a game of checkers?”