could see that. I wondered how he’d ever made it that far from the highway. He was pretty well banged up all over, but the worst was the cut on his right arm.”
“And the suitcase was near him?”
“His head and shoulders was lying on it, and he still had his hand through the handle. Like he was trying to get up with it.”
I had a momentary flash of what it was probably like, bleeding to death at night in the rain, and wondered as to the nature of Haig’s particular coconut farm, but gave it up. There was never much profit in that type of speculation, and the ivory tower boys could handle it without help.
“Well, it’s too bad,” I said. “And it’s hard to understand why you did it. As far as we’ve been able to determine, you’ve never been in trouble before.”
“No, sir. I worked all my life. Section hand for the S.P.”
“You’ve never been in prison at all, have you?”
“No, sir.”
Plodding on ahead of me through the timber in that big hat, he reminded me of some rotund and ineffably earnest gnome who’d just been handed an important assignment by the Fairy Princess.
“Don’t let it get you down,” I said. “You’ll make out all right.”
“Is it very bad?” he asked.
“We-ell,” I said thoughtfully, keeping one pace behind him, “naturally, it’s not any fun. It’s not supposed to be. But plenty of people come through it in fine shape.”
He said nothing.
“There’s been too much written and said about it by people who don’t know what they’re talking about,” I went on. “They distort the picture. They over-emphasize things that really aren’t too bad, and play down others that are worse. It’s not so much the bad food and the monotony and the overcrowding they talk about all the time, as it is other things they minimize and try to hush up. The homosexuals, for instance. They make it bad for everybody.”
”They . . . they do?”
“Yes. In this way. You have to watch out for them continually. They’re after you all the time, and the only effective way to discourage them is to fight. But fighting is against the rules, so you lose your privileges. The warden’s staff is too badly overworked and short-handed to hold a two-day hearing to determine who was at fault in a brawl. They merely penalize both parties and let it go. And if you get a reputation for being a trouble-maker you get the guards down on you, too. But don’t let it throw you. You’ll come through it all right.”
He made no reply. We changed direction a little to circle the end of a slough that still had water in it.
“How do you find your way around down here?” I asked. “I’d be lost in five minutes.”
“Oh, there ain’t nothin’ to it,” he replied. “You just remember which way you’re goin’ all the time.”
“It sounds easy,” I said. “But I’d probably be two days trying to find my way back to the cabin.”
“We’re nearly there,” he said. “You see the roots of that down tree, up ahead?”
I saw it. It was less than a hundred yards ahead in a heavy stand of oaks. One of them had fallen, apparently several years ago, carrying down a smaller one with it and creating a tangle of broken limbs and brush at the top. We hurried up. It would be sunset in about an hour, I thought, appraising the flat angle of the shafts of sunlight slanting down through the foliage overhead.
“It’s under this big one,” Cliffords said. He walked up alongside the bole of it to the first limb. I watched him, trying not to show my excitement. The trunk was about six inches off the ground here, supported by the welter of broken limbs beyond, and the ground was covered with a heavy carpet of old leaves.
He raked the leaves back, under the overhang of the round trunk, and I could see the depression where the earth had settled. He dropped to his knees and began scraping the dirt away with the edge of the shovel. I heard it strike metal. I leaned over his shoulder, staring down intently.
“I dug it up about five months ago and put it in new buckets,” he said. “They rust out pretty fast.”
He threw the shovel aside and started scooping the earth out with his hands. I could see them now, all three of them. They were buried in a row, vertically, with the bottoms up.