ALL CHARACTERS ARE ADULTS.
*
They raced through the forest, across the fall of dead leaves, grass, and pine needles, the aroma of pine needles filling their nostrils. The black convict ran first, his face burnished with sweat; the other convict, white, cast furtive glances over his shoulder. They wore the wet flannel stripes of convicts.
"How far to the river?" the black shouted to his companion.
"Shut up and run!" The white shouted back.
Their racket, crashing through palmetto shrubs, shattered the forest's tranquility. They sensed something pursuing them, like an avalanche sliding down an alpine mountain side. Danger stalked them: silent, close, and lethal.
Running the whole time, they reached the river in another hour. Sweat coated their bodies and glued their striped shirts to their backs; the white convict lost a shoe on the trail, serrated palmetto stalks cut and frayed the black convict's trousers, and muck from the swamp they waded across coated both of them.
Night hid the river's black water from view though the convicts heard it clearly when they came to it. Here they stopped, breathed hard, and rested. They ran the entire twelve miles from camp without pause.
"When we get cross the river, we home free!" The white convict said.
The black convict smiled, bent over at the waist, and pressed his hands against his thighs to catch his breath and rest his legs.
"Lemme cross first, to check things out; if it okay I'll whistle and you come over," the black convict proposed.
"Sure," said the white, and concealed himself off the trail to wait for the signal. The black convict stepped into the water and waded across. Halfway to the other side he stumbled over a limestone rock and an idea hatched in his head. He lifted the rock from the water and carried it to where the water was chest deep, halted, turned around, and signaled his companion, 'C'mon!"
The black listened for his companion's splashing in the water, and when the man was close enough, he lifted the rock high and crushed the man's head; the skull cracked like paper. The companion groaned, collapsed, and blood, brains, and corpse drifted away on the current.
Both convicts returned to the prison camp within a few days. The white man, fished from the river by loggers at a saw mill down stream; the black man, found buried in a gopher hole excavated into the side of a sand bank, dead from suffocation when the sand cave collapsed on him. Wild hogs found him first and had a meal.
The prison camp buried them without a funeral. Two inmates sewed them inside blankets, dumped them into wood boxes, nailed the lids down, set them into shallow graves, covered them, and left. Crude stakes located the graves, but no markers identified the bodies.
Earlier in the week the men complained about working on a Sunday, refused to go to the woods with their crews, and threatened to escape. They received no money for working on Sunday because Sunday work violated state law. The warden, Captain Fleming, argued, "You eat on Sunday, don't you!" Then told them plainly, "Leave now, if you want, I won't waste a minute chasing you or wondering where you went; go! You won't get far, and you'll be easy to find after the Crackers are done with you. Few prisoners escape here alive." Fleming spit a stream of tobacco juice at their feet, turned, signaled the guard to open the gate, and walked back to his house.
The guard smirked at them and opened the gate.
The two convicts walked out the gate and fled into the woods.
Mary Taliaferro was the only white woman traveling in the caravan going to Fleming's prison camp. The trip to the camp took three days and two nights on the crude roads and wilderness trails. Along the way she ate cold, greasy corn pone, drank creek water, slept in the caged wagon sitting up, and used the woods for a comfort station. When it rained, she got wet.
On one occasion, at night, after nine o'clock, while rolling along a level road, she became queerly intermingled with the other passengers in her wagon when their teamster fell asleep and a wagon wheel hit a stump, overturning the wagon and passengers, ass over teacup. The younger, male prisoners, chained together and walking ahead of the wagon, unhitched the mules and righted the wagon.
A day-long tramp, the next day, brought the caravan to the camp at twilight. The rustic camp was built atop the white sand of a wilderness location where convicts harvested turpentine from the pine forest. From a distance, the camp looked to Mary like crude barns and stables surrounded by a high board fence.
A fifteen-foot, rough-hewn, plank stockade surrounded the camp. At the corners of the stockade crude platforms made of pine lumber served as sentry posts. Young men with rifles sat on the crude platforms smoking cigarettes.
The camp contained several buildings. The largest building contained the dining hall and kitchen, another building was a warehouse for tools and supplies, several barns stored barrels of turpentine. One building was the men's barracks, a smaller building was the women's sleeping quarters; a stable for the mules and horses, and the camp headquarters completed the scene.
The camp well stood in the middle of the sandy yard. It collected surface water and the drainage of a swamp. Scalding sand and a few stumps took the place of grass of trees.
Mary was tall and pale, with long red hair, gray eyes, and freckles. Compared to the others, she looked intelligent, genteel, healthy, and unmarked by vices; a lady, isolated in a wilderness camp, populated by society's dregs with their rotting teeth, scars, and lice. And she brought along nothing to fortify herself for the ordeal.
The convict caravan halted in the yard, the stockade gate was shut behind it, and the boy guards chambered rounds, aiming their weapons at the new prisoners.
A low ranking camp officer appeared, yelling at the convicts to 'shut up' and 'line up'. When they were in ranks, he walked the lines looking at each prisoner and made notes on the roster with his pencil. When he got to Mary he stopped, looked at her, smirked, and said, "I can't wait to hear your story." His eyes expressed brief amusement, and then he moved on to the next convict in the line.
After inspecting the inmates, the officer read the camp rules to the group and dismissed them to join the other prisoners in the barracks and eat supper.
Supper was corn pone, and navy beans boiled with salted white bacon. Convicts ate the food with their fingers. Out in the woods the guards killed squirrels, opossums, and raccoons to add to the convict's diet of beans and bacon. Convicts with money bought sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and tobacco from the guards.
The women shared a crude barracks filled with rusted iron beds and urine stained mattresses. The floor was bare and clean, and the entire room reeked of formaldehyde and other disinfectants.
Mary walked inside, looked around at the austere scene, and found an empty bed. Six black females chattered, using a dialect alien to Mary's ears. The toothless senior matron handed Mary a striped cotton gown, two blankets, and jabbered something incomprehensible. Mary guessed the woman wanted her to change clothes and surrender the civilian frock but the woman nudged Mary to a separate room apart from the black women.
At eight o'clock the night guard came in, set a fire in the heating stove, and took his seat beside the entry; the women went to bed.
Outside the barracks a full moon rode at its zenith, swimming through high clouds, and filled the barracks with silvery light. Mary wasn't alone, and awoke during the night, sensing a presence close by.
His face was round and looked dead, like a barren moon strayed from a strange solar system. He stood at the foot of her bed, partly bathed in the moon light. His eyes radiated muted white light, and his mouth seemed frozen in a smirk. The guard ignored him or couldn't see him.
"You're new here," he said, "and different from the others." His lips did not move when he spoke.
Mary felt frightened and confused about who or what this was.
"You have no money, no friends, and no family to help you."
