GENDRON WAS GOOD at breaking rocks with a sledgehammer. After they discovered how good he was, they kept him at it all the time. That was supposed to make him run to Ducharme and beg for mercy. Convicts who had done their time on the rock pile, the men who had been on St. Joseph for more than a week, usually were given easier jobs, more pleasant punishments, if they displayed the proper amount of contrition and spoke to the lieutenant or the sergeant in the right tone of voice.
The idea was to make room for new prisoners on the rock pile, but Gendron never asked. He was good at breaking rocks because he had a system. Other prisoners had a similar system, but they were too emotional, too obvious about it. They pretended they were cracking open the heads of the people they hated most in all the world. Up their sledges would swing, pause for a moment at the end of the back-swing, and then the heavy hammer would come crashing down, often inexpertly because the man who was wielding it was too sick with hate to see where he was driving the heavy lump of hardened steel. Often as not, the downswing would be accompanied by some wild cry. The names of the more hated guards or officers were muffled or given other names; the names of loved ones gone sour, the names of faithless friends, the names of Paris detectives unknown on St. Joseph, came out clearly. Sometimes the murderous rock-smashers would leave out the names and substitute strange cracking or smashing or splattering sounds. There was a young murderer who said “Gek!” every time his sledge descended. The more humorous prisoners pressed him for an explanation; he gave no explanation and the cry of murder remained the same.
When Gendron smashed a rock or tried to smash a rock, he smashed his own head. That was his system. He knew what he was doing was maybe crazier than what the others were doing. Maybe it was crazy, maybe it wasn’t. The way he felt about himself, it didn’t seem so crazy. All right, he thought, bringing up the sledge, so it was crazy. He was doing a crazy thing to keep from going crazy. He had allowed a broad to get him into this fucking awful mess that he had to get out of somehow. He didn’t blame the broad, and he never pretended that her head was under the hammer. When she got him sent here, the broad was only looking out for herself—something he knew he should have done the minute he got that funny feeling that things wouldn’t work out the way she said they would work out. Sure the broad had waltzed him to the chute where they sent him up for life. The thing was, he should have known what would happen. That was it: he did know and yet he let himself be waltzed just the same.
Gendron raised his hand like a schoolboy; he wanted a drink of water was what the raised hand meant. Lieutenant Lepine, hoping to do something about the spot in his left lung, had transferred from the army to the Colonial Police. Lieutenant Lepine nodded, something that Sergeant Ducharme never would have done between water breaks.
A good worker didn’t have to hurry. Gendron put down his hammer and went to the water barrel and used the dipper, barely touching the water to his lips, swallowing nothing. That, too, was part of his system of hardening himself. He broke his own head, he denied himself water, toughening himself for the day when he’d break out of there. Other tough cons tried to escape their first week in Guiana. Unless you had money on your side, meaning, say, a tramp freighter waiting offshore, running off just because you had a chance to run off was the quickest way to get caught. It was a toss-up which was worse, the jungle or the sea. The Atlantic was full of sharks, the jungle full of Indians who found it easier to bring back the head than the whole man. Either way it was possible to do it—a few men had done it—but a man had to be harder than nails. Gendron turned the dipper over, spilling the water, watching it disappear into the sandy soil. That was one of the things you had to learn, to go without water. There was food in the jungle, but you had to know where to look for it.
Gendron was stripped to the waist, wearing only dirty cotton trousers. He tore up a bunch of swamp grass and wiped the sweat from his face. Every ounce of fat had been burned away by long days swinging the sledge in the blazing sun. The sun had baked his skin to a dark brown and his muscles stretched and rippled not like the soft smooth muscles of a swimmer but like those of a coal miner or a lumberjack. He knew he was tough and hard, but he wanted to do better than that before he made the big try.
He didn’t know when that would be. Or maybe he did. And that was when he knew he was ready to take anything they threw at him, they meaning the jailkeepers, the sea or the jungle.
Coming back to take up the hammer again, he saw Captain Boudreau’s orderly talking to the Lieutenant. The Lieutenant turned his head, crooked his finger at Gendron and tried to put some military snap into his reedy voice. To Gendron the Lieutenant looked like the sort of misplaced officer who kept a secret diary with a lock on it, a man who might have been happier as a schoolteacher.
Lieutenant Lepine did his best to yell at Gendron. The veil was to impress the Captain’s sneaky orderly. “Report to the de-lousing station, convict,” Lepine ordered. “Lift up your feet, get moving.”
Lieutenant Lepine turned to ask Provencher a question. “What about the other men here?”
“Sergeant Ducharme mentioned only the American, sir. He needs de-lousing badly is what the Sergeant said.”
Provencher’s tone was slightly insolent, but Lepine didn’t react. “Very well,” he said. “Get moving, convict.”
Gendron knew about the Captain’s orderly and the Frog, and he smelled trouble even before Ducharme’s name was mentioned. With the Frog it could be any kind of trouble. Why in hell did he get tied up with the Goddamned Italian? The next time the Italian spoke to him he’d smash the dumb bastard in the mouth.
“Easy, boy,” he said in English.
It took him about five minutes to get from the rock pile to the de-lousing station: three deep tanks made of zinc, a rickety tin-roofed shack where the guard on duty hid from the sun. Because of the sand dunes he could see the roof of the shack but not the rest of it. Beyond the shack was the beach. Whatever was waiting on the other side of the dunes, there was nothing he could do about it.
“Easy, boy,” he said again. Hatred for himself flared up. “Easy, you dumb fucking clown. You should have listened to the pretty lady when you had the chance.” Yeah, and maybe he should have killed her when he had the chance.
He remembered how soft her voice could be when she wanted something, how harsh it could be when she didn’t get it. It was like cold iron the night he told her he wanted no part of murder. “I’ll make you sorry,” she said that night. Yeah, he was sorry.
Gendron felt a sudden tightening of his gut. First he saw Sergeant Ducharme, and that was bad enough but nothing special. Then he saw Radisson the Belgian, the big ham-fisted queer from Brussels who had been run out of Brussels by the police and had set up shop in Calais where he had continued to run a whorehouse for male homosexuals, mostly English—Radisson who got greedy and beat a rich English writer to death because the English faggot was carrying too much money to pass up.
Suddenly, still walking toward the beach, Gendron wished he hadn’t been so Goddamned careful about making a knife—any kind of pointed weapon—and carrying it. They hadn’t seen him yet, but they would see him soon, and if he turned back and went the other way they would come after him. It was a setup. He knew now that it was a setup. He thought back to his talk with the Captain. He knew the Captain, the smooth son of a bitch, was right. The other prisoners didn’t like him. That was one way of saying it, and he knew it was true. He knew trouble would come—from the Paris hoods most likely; he didn’t think it would be from the queers. Jesus Christ! Gendron made a sour face. He wasn’t the type.
They were laughing. Gendron thought it might as well be now. They were laughing so hard that they didn’t see him, didn’t hear him. There had been queers in the Marine Corps, a lot more queers in the Legion because even the poxy Arab and Indo-Chink women looked down on the Legion, but once you let them know how it was, sometimes by a swift kick in the balls, they got the idea and let you be. Only the real nut-cases kept after you, and sometimes when the boot failed to convince them that you preferred more or less old-timey fucking, you had to use the bayonet.
They were laughing because Radisson the Belgian, the big queer pimp, had one of his own faggot gang by the balls and was threatening to drag him through the three zinc tanks by the balls. The convict Radisson was holding by the balls was a small screaming fairy that Gendron had seen and hadn’t thought about. The little convict was a screaming fairy—what they called a screaming fairy—even when he was quiet, but now he was screaming in real terror. Maybe there was pain, too; mostly from the way it looked it was terror.
Sergeant Ducharme sat on a stool in the shade of the guard house, the Lebel rifle across his fat legs. Ducharme’s mottled yellow hands held the rifle idly, more to keep it from falling to the ground than anything else. Ducharme was laughing harder than Radisson the Belgian, and it was obvious that the entertainment was being staged for the Sergeant’s delight. Five other convicts, all members of Radisson’s wolf pack, were bent over laughing.
Radisson was facing in Gendron’s direction, but it was Ducharme who looked up first. Ducharme looked up and grinned like a small boy with a present he always wanted, on Christmas morning. The grin spread across his wide frog’s face, and at first he didn’t say anything to the gang of homosexual convicts who were gathered around the tank tormenting the little queer. Ducharme didn’t even move; all he did was grin—and the grin grew wider as Gendron got closer.
More than ever, Gendron wished that he had a knife.
Radisson, sensing something, looked up without releasing the little queer’s testicles. When he looked up, he stood up as well, dragging the little man out of the tank by the balls. Dripping with the diluted sheep-dip they used, the little queer screamed in real agony. Without looking at him, Radisson let him go. The little man feel back into the thick chemical solution and the screaming stopped.
Radisson’s smile was tight and small until he looked at Ducharme. Then his smile widened like the Sergeant’s, and he licked his lips. The Belgian was big enough, tough enough to be the leader of any gang, and not just a queer gang. Gendron remembered a sergeant-major in the Marines who looked a lot like the Belgian. Radisson looked at Gendron, smiled wider than ever, but didn’t say anything. The Sergeant was queer and that gave him something in common with the queers, but he was still the man in charge, and Radisson, tough gang leader or not, was still a convict. It was up to Ducharme to get the party moving.
Gendron knew it was going to be a party. Ducharme started it. “You’re late, convict. The rest of the boys from the barracks are finished and you’re late. Why is that, convict?”
Gendron didn’t think it would help, but he said it. “Captain Boudreau wanted to see me, sir.”
He couldn’t hear what Ducharme said to Radisson. It must have been funny because they laughed. The other members of the wolf pack laughed, too.
“That was greedy of the Captain,” Ducharme said. “Because we want you, too.”
There was more laughing. Ducharme asked, “What did the Captain want? We know what he really wanted”—the queers thought that was funny—“but what did he say he wanted?”
There was nothing to lose, not now, not much anyway. “He wanted to know if you were queer,” Gendron said.
They didn’t laugh at that, not at first, not until Ducharme thought about it and decided he was safe no matter what happened. Ducharme grinned in disbelief at first and then he laughed, a little nervously at first. His laughter grew loud, too loud. Ducharme, because of other things in the past, knew Gendron was telling the truth.
“You told him I wasn’t. That’s right, isn’t it, convict?”
“That’s right, sir,” Gendron answered.
“You said you didn’t think I was like that?”
“That’s right, sir.”
All the queers were laughing hard, so hard that Gendron had to strain to hear what Ducharme said next.
“You think the Captain’s queer, convict?”
“Of course not, sir.”
“Are you?”
“No, sir.”
Shaking with laughter, Ducharme reached out with his rifle and poked Radisson in the crotch. The only one who wasn’t laughing was the little queer with the bruised balls. He laughed, though, when Radisson, winking to show it was a joke, made an O of his thumb and forefinger and made masturbating motions.
“Good God. Radisson, you’re not queer, are you?” Ducharme asked, looking at Gendron.
“Good God, no, sir.” the Belgian said, laughing.
“Where’s Mirandola?” Ducharme asked Gendron. “All the other prisoners from the lighthouse were here but not the Italian.”
That was another joke, an old, old joke on St. Joseph. For thirty years the prisoners had been building a lighthouse and it was far from finished because the island had much sand and few rocks. When the old prisoners, the ones who had been sent to St. Joseph as “permanents,” scratched up a rock from the shifting sands, they behaved as if they had found a diamond.
All the queers laughed at Ducharme’s lighthouse joke. Even the little screaming fairy tried to laugh.
“Where’s Mirandola?” Ducharme asked again. “Maybe he didn’t get my message?”
“I don’t know, sir. I was with the Captain,” Gendron said, wondering how soon they’d start on him. He looked at the rifle Ducharme wasn’t holding so idly now. There was the Lebel, a good gun Gendron had used in the Legion, and there was the automatic pistol in the Sergeant’s holster. The flapped-over holster was unbuttoned now. During all the laughter the Sergeant had unbuttoned it. He had done it with great deliberation, which meant to Gendron that Ducharme would go for the pistol—try to use it instead of the rifle—if he jumped him.
Holding the rifle, Ducharme heaved himself off the stool without using his hands. That was hard for him to do. Having the wall of the guardhouse behind him helped. The laughing was suspended while the Sergeant got up. Radisson was the leader, but the Sergeant was the source of power.
Ducharme, grunting from his exertions, was up on his feet. He worked the bolt of the Lebel and even the queers, his friends, all but Radisson, stiffened slightly at the sound on the bolt. Radisson, as if he didn’t know the sound, continued to grin at the American.
Ducharme held the rifle ready and slid his bulk along the wall of the guardhouse, away from Gendron. “You mention the Captain so often, convict. Why do you do that? You’re here to be de-loused. What’s the Captain got to do with it?”
“He might want to see for himself, sir,” Gendron said.
“You, Zorilla,” Ducharme told the little faggot, jerking the rifle as he said it. “You, queenie, you run down the beach and I’ll follow you.”
The little fag called on Jesus, Mary and Joseph to protect him. No answer came in response to his prayer, so he turned to Ducharme. “Oh, no, not me,” he sobbed. “Why me?”
The laughing started again.
“Run, you little poof,” Ducharme said. “I’m not going to kill you, you little poof. The worst I’ll do—don’t run too hard or you will get killed—is jab my muzzle up your ...”
Ducharme looked at Gendron. “You’re about to get a bath, convict. You’re not my type but maybe you’ll have better luck with these fellows.”
“Fuck you, Frog,” Gendron said.
Ducharme swelled up like a frog, then smiled and let himself go down. Radisson held his face ready to be winked at. Sergeant Ducharme winked.
“Do a good job on him,” he said. “Gendron’s an American and he thinks he’s clean—all Americans do—but for a fact he’s dirty and they’re all dirty. They just think they’re clean because they take so many baths.”
Radisson was eager. “Yes, sir, Sergeant.”
“He thinks he’s better than you are,” Ducharme explained. “The American doesn’t like queers. He thinks they’re dirty. Make him understand how mistaken he is.”
The little queer was still there.
“Run, you little cocksucker,” Ducharme said in a soft almost loving voice. “You’re my excuse for the Captain, if the Captain gets here. Run, you little darling, you little fluffy pigeon.”
Raising the rifle, Ducharme swung the muzzle toward the frightened little fag. The little man looked from Ducharme to Radisson the Belgian, to the other members of the wolf pack. Gendron, looking at him and waiting, didn’t want to look at him.
“Run, you thing,” Sergeant Ducharme said.