After breakfast some of the prisoners gathered in the common room.
Red’s calm began to disappear. As soon as Addison left the floor Red
pulled a list from his side pocket. He and Tim went over it one last
time. Six quarts of corn, parched and ground, were waiting in the Navy
kitchen. Extra woolen underclothes and socks, a paper of salt for each
of them, a piece of soap, some lucifer matches and tin cups; these
things were packed into the haversacks concealed behind the boiler in
the kitchen.
“Toothbrushes, family photographs and such can go in our pockets,” Tim
said. “That just leaves blankets.”
Red gave the paper one last look, then tore it up and threw the scraps
on the ashes from the night before, turning them under with the toe of
his boot.
Mills asked, “When will you set the dummies up?”
Red said, “It can’t be now, or two of us will be in our stocking feet
all day.”
A man named Allen leaned against the wall by the door. “I have an
extra pair of boots,” he said. “They’re no good for wearing but you’re
welcome to them if they’ll be of use.”
Mill’s good blanket, his boots and an extra blouse would be used to
make the dummy on Tim’s bunk. There was one spare blanket, ragged and
full of holes. They would tear it in two. Mills would cover himself
with half and they would use the other half for Red’s bunk, with
Allen’s boots and an extra pair of pants stuffed with dirty clothes.
Mills leaned against the chimney, his thin wrists and long hands
sticking out from his tattered blouse. His face was pale but not so
thin as it had been when Tim had first seen him slump to the floor in
this same room. His spirit had mended somehow.
Mills looked at Tim with a faint familiar humor in his face. “I could
never make a trip like that, you know.” He measured the thickness of
his thigh with his bony hands. “I have nothing in reserve.”
“You can make it in the spring,” Tim said.
Mills gave no sign of having heard. “I’ll miss you boys.” Dawson’s
figure appeared in the doorway and he managed a thin, one-sided smile.
He looked toward Mills. “You promised to teach me chess. Remember,
Mills?”
Mills perked up a little. “Why sure I will.”
Red had a gold-plated watch. Until a week or so ago he had lost the
habit of winding it. Keeping track of time had only made the hours
drag. Now he kept it wound and fussed if it was slow or fast. He set it
by a watch that Devil carried.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the watch and twiddled
with the chain. “I wish we had something to do. Curse all our early
preparations.”
Frazer snickered. “Never dreamed I’d see Kelly in a state like this.”
Red looked at his watch and put it back again. “I just remembered I’m
to be on slop duty today. I never thought I’d look forward to washing
out those pails.”
Tim said, “Don’t get into trouble out there.”
At ten o’clock Addison came up with three other guards. He asked for a
couple of extra men to go down to the yard for wood. Tim almost leaped
to his feet but he restrained himself. “I’ll go, Corporal,” he said
in what he hoped would pass for a casual tone. “Do you want to come,
Allen? Do you feel like toting some wood?”
At the midday meal Addison stood by the messroom door. Tim tried to
see the room through the eyes of a guard. Two men might not be missed
tonight. He took a sip of water from his tin cup and bent low over his
corncakes and sorghum molasses.
Mills was just behind Dawson as the column moved upstairs. When they
reached the landing Dawson leaned toward Addison and said a few words.
Addison mumbled a reply.
When Addison started back downstairs Tim averted his eyes until he
heard the clang of the lower door.
When he looked up again Mills had grasped the front of Dawson’s blouse.
He swung the man around and knocked him against the wall with a
sickening sound. Mills had always been a gentle man. This action took
everyone by surprise. The other men gaped while Mills slapped a hand
over Dawson’s mouth. “Why did you ask to see Senn?”
Dawson’s eyes bugged out as they fixed on Mills.
Mills signaled with his head for Tim and Red to move in close, and
dragged the man through the common-room door. Dawson let out a little
scream as Mill’s hand slipped away from his mouth for a second. Mills
shoved him into a corner.
Tim and Frazer moved with Red and Allen to the center of the room. The
others stood outside the door.
Frazer brought out a knife that no one had ever known he had--a wicked
thing with a gleaming, pointed blade. Dawson twitched like a headless
chicken on a chopping block.
Mills held one hand behind Dawson’s neck and the other firmly over his
mouth. Red looked quietly down at Dawson and shook his head sadly.
Tim kneeled. Dawson’s breath came in violent gasps. “Dawson,” Tim
said, “Peter will take his hand away now and you won’t cry out. Do you
understand?”
Dawson’s eyes lost their deathlike stare. He slumped. Mills supported
him almost gently now. Dawson nodded and Mills took his hand away.
Tim spoke softly. “Why did you want to speak to Senn?”
Dawson gave a quick little sigh and stared down at the splintering
floor. The room was silent. Tim heard footsteps in the hall downstairs.
Dawson raised his head as if to speak, but Tim signaled for quiet, and
Dawson looked down like a feverish child.
Addison’s voice came up the stairs. “What’s all that knocking about up
there?”
Red called, “Indian wrestling. Want to come up and try your hand?”
Addison grunted and moved away.
“Well, Dawson,” said Tim.
Dawson’s voice came high and thin. “Mills heard me wrong.”
Mills took a fresh grip on Dawson’s blouse. “I heard you clear,” he
said. “You’ll get the knife if you don’t tell us straight what was in
your mind.”
Dawson collapsed, his body shaken by shuddering, racking sobs. Mills
eased him to the floor, and Frazer struck out with his hand and tore
off one of Dawson’s shoulder straps with its Captain’s bars outlined in
threadbare, greenish gold. “You’re not fit to carry a private’s slop,”
he said.
Dawson grasped at his shoulder as if he’d been stabbed.
Tim said, “All right now, Frazer. Let me talk to him.”
Tim looked into Dawson’s eyes. “If you give me your word you won’t tell
anyone about our plan, now or any other time, I promise not to leave
this jail till every prisoner has sworn that you’ll come to no harm.”
Dawson said thinly, “Why should I strike a bargain with you?”
“I’m not bargaining,” Tim said evenly. “I’m giving you a chance to save
your skin.”
Dawson lowered his eyes. His lower lip quivered and he looked up at
Tim, then down again. “You have my word.”
Mills and Tim got to their feet and left the room. The others followed,
leaving Dawson alone on the floor. Halfway down the corridor Mills
turned to Tim. “I better watch Dawson from now until tomorrow morning.”
The other men crowded around, and Frazer said, “I’ll watch him too.”
“One man is enough,” Mills said. “I’ll go back and talk to him.”
Tim’s hands trembled as he hacked the old blanket in half with Frazer’s
knife. That business with Dawson had shaken him up.
Senn had said that an extra hand could go to the kitchen to do the wash
and help with the chores. It seemed that all they’d had to do was ask.
Now it should be easy to smuggle the blankets into the yard.
Tim fetched the wooden laundry buckets. He and Red stripped their bunks
and folded their blankets, squashing them into the bottoms of the
buckets and covering them with a scattering of dirty underclothes they
had rounded up from the men along the corridor.
At four o’clock Addison and another guard trudged up the stairs.
Red took one bucket and Allen the other. Tim looked over the room
for the last time. A few deft motions of Mills’s skillful hands and
the blankets and boots and scraps of clothing would convince the
unsuspecting Addison.
For the hundredth time Tim slapped the pocket where he kept Kate’s map,
and heard the reassuring crinkle. At the end of the corridor Peter
Mills stood close to Dawson.
When Addison saw the buckets he ordered the men to halt. “You can’t do
your washing now,” he said.
Red said, “The stuff’s dirty. We want it to soak.”
“Soak it up here.”
Tim broke in. “Captain Senn gave us permission to take it to the yard.”
“Well, bring it along,” Addison mumbled.
Devil lounged in the Navy kitchen door, picking his teeth with a
splinter of wood. Allen and Red set the buckets by the door.
As they started their walk Tim studied the guards. Except for the tall
young private, they certainly were a sorry lot.
Mills and Dawson stood with a knot of men watching a game of dice the
prisoners had started near the cookhouse wall.
It seemed to Tim that familiar things weren’t familiar any more. The
barred windows in the jailhouse wall, the lamp, the sentries with their
guns and glistening bayonets, the color of the earth, the skeletal
branches of the spindly trees that rose above the cookhouse roof,
seemed like things in a distant dream.
At last Devil stopped them with a wave of the hand. “Stop your walking
now,” he said, “and watch the game.”
One of the players took out his watch, looked at it and put it away
again. He spat on the dice and threw them once more, then gathered
them up. “Well, that’s it,” he said in mock disgust.
Red lowered himself to the doorsill and swung into the Navy kitchen.
Allen handed the buckets to Devil, who handed them to Bell with a bow
and flourish.
A guard shouted, “Break up that game.”
Allen started a good-natured scuffle with Frazer, who was stupidly
facing the kitchen door.
Tim dropped behind the screen of men and scrambled into the kitchen,
cracking his shin against the sill.
Red was already out of sight. Tim lost no time in rounding the boiler
and kneeling with Red behind a stack of wood which was topped by towels
and rags that hung from the line. Devil had built up the woodpile high
and solid so that the men would have a place to hide.
Tim tried to look out between the towels but Bell had hung them so that
they overlapped.
Bell’s hand came around the boiler, and one blanket and then another
tumbled over Tim’s head. He drew them away, smiling in spite of
himself, and shoved one toward Red.
Bell whispered, “Bull Head’s in the courtyard now.”
Tim thought about the dummies. He hoped that Addison’s eyes were as
dull as they looked.
Now Devil’s voice came deep and quiet. “Don’t worry. Bull Head’s gone
inside again. You have nothing to fear from that thickheaded lout.”
Bell said, “The wagon came at half past three. Aunty left some things
for you. We put them in the packs.”
At four thirty Addison sounded off again. “Time to go back inside.”
Tim could hear the shuffling of the prisoners’ feet and their mumbled
talk. He heard the slam of the jailhouse door. Then he heard a most
unwelcome sound. Senn’s voice came loud and clear from somewhere in
the yard. The guard was changing, and Senn was giving his sentries
instructions. Tim glanced at Red’s face, dimly lit behind the towels
and rags. Red whispered disgustedly, “The man has no business here.”
“No talk,” rumbled Devil. “Senn will leave soon. There. He’s starting
for the jailhouse now.”
Tim heard Senn’s footsteps passing close. His boots scraped the earth
by the jailhouse. The door creaked open, then clanged shut.
Devil went about his work. He clanked the pots and dropped firewood and
sang Navy ditties, as he always did.
Bell was watching at the door, and after what seemed an eternity he
turned back into the room. “Nothing to worry about in the yard. The
guards are as usual. It’s getting dark.”
Tim wondered what was happening in the jail.
When Devil and Bell had finished their work they hailed a guard to take
them to the Navy mess. The guard came into the shack and offered to
help.
“Well, sure you can help,” said Devil hastily. “Here, Bell, grab one
handle of the tub of mush and let the guard help on the other side.”
Tim heard a scraping of feet as the men left the kitchen and he heard
Devil whisper, “You boys hold tight!”
Tim and Red sat quiet. They had no way of knowing whether a guard was
near. Tim could hear someone working in the Army kitchen. He couldn’t
remember who was cooking tonight.
Devil and Bell came back to the kitchen, Devil talking all the way so
that the hidden men would know who they were.
Tim began to feel cramped. His legs ached and he wished he could shift
his position a little, but he was afraid he might bring down the pile
of wood.
Devil said, “It’s dark enough for you to go right now, but Senn is
still in there, prowling about.”
A few minutes later Bell said, “We’ll have to go back inside right
soon, I’m afraid, and there’ll be no noise to cover your passage
through the window and the shed. Let us know when you want to take the
risk.”
Devil finished his work and he and Bell sat around, talking as
naturally as they could.
Tim heard someone open the door to the yard, and Senn’s voice came
again.
“Looks as if the game is up,” whispered Bell.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” said Senn. “How is it you’re still here?”
Devil said, “We were talking about old times and such.”
Addison’s voice sounded just outside. “Shall I take them up?”
Senn stepped inside. “Not just yet.”
The rickety floor creaked and bent. Senn kicked lightly at the pile of
wood. “Why in the name of common sense do you keep that much wood in
here?”
Devil gave a hollow laugh. “I like to have a lot on hand. Saves us
going to the shed over and over again and bothering the guards and
that. Say, Captain Senn,” he said getting to his feet, making the floor
rock still more, “did my money ever come from home?”
“No.” Senn cleared his throat. “That wood should be taken back first
thing tomorrow. You’ll set this place on fire.”
Through a chink in the pile of logs Tim saw something move. It was one
of Senn’s boots. Tim stared at the polished toe as if it were the head
of a rattlesnake. Then he saw it move again. Senn was going toward the
door. “Corporal, now you can take them up. Boys, don’t forget that
wood.”
As he stepped on the sill the floor boards groaned and a piece of wood
tumbled off the top of the stack.
“See what I mean?” said Senn. “That’s too much wood.”