His back healed, and he learned to sleep in a long room filled with the oppressive stench of unwashed men and unwashed clothes, blowing wind from the meals of beans, the night loud with their snoring and cursing, violent with constant jerks on the chain between their legs. He learned to live without baths or clean clothes. He learned not to vomit as he relieved himself as fast as he could in latrine shacks over reeking holes of excrement alive with flies. He learned to walk in leg irons. He began to believe he might survive his year.
Then Big John LeBeau came for him.
It was in the evening, the first time. The prisoners were allowed to sit around in the dust of the yard, smoke, and talk for an hour before they were herded into the barracks and the chains were passed between their legs. Maurie's work was not finished. He was still in the kitchen, scrubbing tin plates.
Big John was a trusty with no chains on his legs. He was a gargantuan man, obese but with swelling muscles. Although men were allowed to shave — under supervision — twice a week, he shaved once a month. His arms were blue with tattoos of snakes and dragons. The convicts called him Boss.
He stalked into the kitchen shack, grabbed Maurie by the collar, and shoved him into a pantry stacked with bags of cornmeal and five-gallon cans of lard. Inside, with the door closed, he unbuttoned his pants and pulled out his long, thick penis.
"Okay, Ikey," he said. "What I hear, Jew-boys are better'n anybody at sucking on". Well ... better'n anybody but Jew girls. An' they ain' no Jew girls here. So, get at it. Let's see what you can do."
He put his hands on Maurie's shoulders and pushed him down to his knees.
Maurie whimpered. Big John shoved his wet, stinking phallus against Maurie's face. "Get goin'," he growled.
The door opened. Maurie nearly fainted. The penalty for doing what he had not yet begun to do — but surely looked like he was doing — had to be something brutal.
"Whatcha doin', John?"
Maurie looked up and through his tears saw Max Sand.
"You kin have yours after he gits finished with me," said Big John. "I kinda figured on the kike bein' mine, but, what the hell, I'll share with one man. In the spirit of Christian charity."
Max shook his head. "I don't figger it that way, John," he said. "I figger we oughta leave the Jew-boy alone. You an' me, we're tough enough t' handle th' Loo-zeeanna prison system. He ain't. There's plenty of men be glad to do what you got in mind. Git it from them. Let's let this poorly little fella alone."
Big John stepped around Maurie. His erect penis was still sticking out as he confronted Max Sand.
"You gone tell me who gits let alone, who don't?" he asked, squinting and bouncing a little on the balls of his feet as if he were ready to attack.
Max didn't wait to see what Big John had in mind. With his right hand he slapped him hard on that erect penis; and while Big John stood startled, even a little stunned, grabbing at himself. Max drove his left fist into his belly. Big John grunted and staggered, and before he could recover himself Max began pounding him, left fist and right fist, in the gut. Big John dropped to his knees, gagged and heaved, and spit out a mess of beans and grease.
Max had been smart. If he'd bloodied the big man's face with his fists, the fight would have become known to the guards, and both of them would have been lashed and locked in a cage. As it was, Big John was defeated but unmarked.
"Figger I'm right, John?" Max asked as the big man struggled to his feet.
Big John nodded. "See you again sometime, Max." Maurie couldn't express his gratitude. He didn't have a chance to try. Max led Big John back into the kitchen and pumped a tin cup of water for him. Then they left the shack.
Five months later something terrible happened. Max Sand escaped, together with Mike the big Negro trusty and a prison hustler named Reeves. The common story was that no one had ever escaped, but those three did. It caused a burdensome clampdown on security for a while: constant strip searches, more whippings, in general a tougher life for all the convicts. Then things went back to routine.
Something terrible ... It was terrible for Maurie. Immediately, Big John came back and began again where he had left off when Max stopped him. For all the remaining months of his sentence, Maurie was compelled to service Big John LeBeau.
Big John knew the prison routine and was a trusty besides. He found times and places, sometimes twice a day. Maurie had no choice. What he had to do made him sick every time he did it. He hated Big John and in his fantasies killed him a thousand times, a dozen ways.
Killing him would have been foolish, even if Maurie could have done it and gotten away with it. It would have meant only that other men would have demanded the same of him. Big John called him his wife and demanded that other men keep away from him. Maybe it was better, Maurie had to concede, that he was Big John's "wife." Not only did other men not dare intrude on what was Big John's; they didn't dare in any way abuse the little Jew who was under his special care.
For whatever reason, Maurie survived.
4
The familiar hard lines of the face were obscured by a thick black beard. The clothes were very different — no black-and-white stripes but a fringed buckskin jacket and Levi's, cowboy boots, and a champagne-colored cowboy hat, one of those with the tall crown and the broad brim. The man wore a pistol on his hip, too. He was tall and hard. He walked with complete self-confidence up to the bar, where he ordered whiskey.
It was the man who was with him that confirmed the identification. He hadn't changed, maybe couldn't change. He was Mike, the big Negro who had knocked Maurie unconscious with the second blow of the lash and had whipped him while he was unconscious. He wore the same kind of clothes and carried a gun.
If that was Mike — and it sure as hell was Mike — then the man with him was Max.
Sure. Max Sand. You could tell by the blue eyes.
Maurie gathered his chips, nodded farewell at his playing friends, and walked up to the bar. Max wouldn't know him, either. Max's clothes were handsome, conspicuously expensive; and Maurie's were too, in a style as different as two styles could be. Maurie's fine gray suit, narrow-tailored with a four-button jacket and thin lapels that ended at the level of the armpits, had set him back a few dollars. He wore a white shirt and celluloid collar, a pink satin necktie with a genuine diamond stickpin, high shoes and spats — pretty much what the deputy had laughed at when he described Maurice Cohen's clothes to the warden.
"Max."
Max Sand's head snapped around. Apparently he did not like to be recognized.
Maurie sensed danger and spoke quickly. "Maurie Cohen." He nodded then to the big Negro. "Mike."
Max's eyes, which had focused on him glittering hard, now softened. He raised his chin and looked down at Maurie. "Yeah," he said to Mike. "It's Maurie. Figured him for dead, didn't you?"
Mike shook his head. "Man lives through his ten stripes ain' gonna die of suckin' John."
"More nearly," said Maurie bitterly. "Can I buy you two gentlemen a drink."
"Why not?" said Max.
"Bottle of the better stuff for my friends," Maurie said to the bartender. "And my usual."
The bartender shoved a quart of whiskey across the bar toward Max. He poured a small glass half full of an odd yellowish fluid, and Maurie lifted a pitcher and added some water to it. The stuff turned milky green.
"What the hell's that?" Max asked.
"Absinthe," said Maurie. "It's made in France. I picked up the habit in New Orleans. Well ... cheers. What's it been, eight years?"