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By Root 2121 0

here in The Walls and had been here many times before. “The missus is expecting me shortly or I’d break bread with you,” he apologized, wedging himself in between Nail and the fat convict named Toy on the long bench. There were only two tables in the mess hall, but each of them was the length of the room; all of the white men sat at one table, all of the black men at the other. “No reflection on the quality of the food, you understand,” Farrell Cobb remarked, lowering his voice conspiratorially. The food was the same Nail had for lunch and for breakfast, the same food they’d served him when he was in the death hole, the same food everybody got three times a day, seven days a week: one piece of cold cornbread, one small chunk of mostly fat probably from beef but hard to tell, one cup of something warm that Nail had never been able to determine was supposed to be taken for coffee or soup but that could be either, or neither. The butcher shops of Little Rock were swept of their scraps at the end of the business day, and the fatty scraps were served at the Arkansas State Penitentiary.

Farrell Cobb stared at Nail’s plate, and his lips formed themselves into a suggestion of nausea. “In Mississippi,” he whispered, “they don’t get any meat whatsoever.” He looked around to see if any of the other men crowded along the benches were listening, but none of them were paying any attention to him, having already noted his suit and tie, his heavy overcoat which protected him against this biting cold, and having either recognized him or stopped wondering what he was doing here; or having never cared to begin with. “Just beans or cowpeas,” Cobb added, and added to that, “Well, I guess you’d not mind a serving of beans or some other vegetables too, but my experience is, the prisoners given a choice would always rather have a bit of fat meat than a bit of beans.” Nail ate. “Now, here we are discussing the menu when we ought to be considering more important matters, such as those contusions and risings you’ve recently acquired. Can you hear me?” Farrell Cobb kept his voice low and his mouth close to Nail’s ear. “If your beatings were provoked, all I can advise is to be very careful, to follow all the rules, to show proper respect for your keepers and superiors, to strive at all times to conform to the system, and to do nothing that might be construed as rebellious or aggravating. On the other hand, if you were beaten without provocation, that is indeed a sorry state of affairs, and one that I have protested time and time again, to little effect, I’m afraid, since, as you may have observed, it appears to be the routine in this institution, as everywhere else. I suppose we ought to condone a little corporal punishment in our efforts to wipe out capital punishment. But I know it hurts. I don’t approve of the strap, let me tell you.” Cobb’s gaze wandered up and down the table, seeking out the men who had obviously been victims of the strap and had recent cuts, welts, stripes, or scars to show for it. Nail kept chewing and let his eyes follow Cobb’s. He had not received any strap yet himself, only the backs and fronts of hands, and wooden clubs, which were bad enough. They had better not try to use any strap on him. “Well now, here we are talking about the mistreatment of prisoners as if anything could be done about it, when that is not really what I’m here to talk about at all. What I came to say was to give you a little report on our little efforts to get you out of that little old hot squat.” Cobb’s chuckle was audible to the other men, who raised their eyes from their plates to see what humor was the cause of it. Cobb noted his audience, and appeared on the verge of repeating his clever term for Old Sparky in order to amuse them. But he did not. Instead, he asked Nail, “Well, what do you say?”

“What do I say?” Nail asked.

“Yes: what do you have to say?”

“I’m fine, I reckon. How about you?”

“No, I mean, aren’t you going to say anything to me for what I did to get you a stay of execution?”

“Oh,” Nail said. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”