CHAPTER 1
EASTHAM
Fog rolls off the Trinity River in East Texas in the hours before dawn, especially in winter, and lies on the land like Vaseline. Its thick and calm and quiet and peaceful in the fog, there where the piney woods that stretch on east into Louisiana give way somewhat abruptly to blackland prairies that spread west all the way to Dallas and beyond. She almost cant see her hand held out of the open car door in front of her own face. Its that thick.
And even better, surely no one can see her sitting here in this car on this dirt side road off another dirt side road, not far from the river bottoms. Sure, her leg that was burned badly a few months back still hurts and the other hip hurts even more from the rheumatism that flared up only recently. Rheumatism, at only twenty-three years old, no less. Too much sitting in cold cars. Too much sleeping in cold cars! But even with the pain, its a comfort to know she cant be seen parked here in a cloud at daybreak, like a ghost in heaven. Its chilly, this cloud on the ground, but its safe, and if death is like this fog it might not be so bad.
Only its not worth thinking about death. Thats the rule. "Lets dont be sad," she said to her mother only a few months before when the subject came up. Were here now. Were alive.
"Lets dont be sad" is what she said.
Its like thinking about air, for Gods sake. And why think about air? Death and air. Fog, though, is good. Thick and quiet, except for now and then an occasional tick ticka tick of the steel in the car that says the sun has risen, even if she cant see it rising.
When youre standing in a cold ditch in fog so thick you cant even see the car only a few yards away its amazing where your mind will want to wander. Standing there with a fat automatic rifle in your hand waiting, what has it been now, ten minutes, an hour? Could be either. But you dont let your mind wander for the same reason you dont drink much moonshine even when everyone else does. Or, rather, you dont drink it especially when everyone else does. Even when Bonnie does. She likes it sometimes, but you know it dulls the senses, slows you down, gets you caught, gets you killed. So you dont drink much moonshine and you dont let your mind wander through the fog.
Where are they? Should be any minute now.
Eastham Farm, burnin Eastham, bloody burnin Eastham Prison Farm. This breakout was your idea in the first place, you and Fults thought it up together. But that was back a few years, back when you were still a prisoner on the inside. Not out here and free. Ha! FREE! As much as being on the run from the laws is freedom. Yeah, what a wonderful freedom this is: being wanted, being wounded, being hot as hell in three states, four, five states, whatever. Feels like you and Bonnie are hot as hell everywhere. Hot right in this ditch in the chilly fog a mile from the burnin hell. Oh theyd love to find you here, for sure.
But you werent thinking how it would feel to get this close to this place again when you said lets do it. No way. And you werent thinking you would be here with this pathetic drug addict Mullins instead of Fults or Raymond or someone you dont have to watch every second, someone whos likely to turn rat just for another hit of dope.
Its amazing what a man can force himself not to remember most days and nights, except when it creeps up. And standing here in a ditch so close to it all, to where most of it all happened anyway, some of it does creep up no matter how you fight it. Burnin Eastham. Burnin hell.
Sure, you have killed a few men, more than a few, but youre not a killer at heart. Not according to your friends, anyway. This is not to say that youre afraid to pull the trigger when it has to be pulled. And not to say that you dont like the look of fear in big cops faces when a guns pointing their way. (If theyd look a little more afraid and not be reaching for their own guns all the time, you tell your friend, the trigger might not need pulling so often.) You pull the trigger, sure. Its just that theres no pleasure in it, even when it has to happen. So youre not a killer, right?
But when those memories do creep up, you start to think about those guards and their finks, their chains and their bats. And their "trusties" who will sit on your head while the manthe "captain"whips you with the strap. And even worse sometimes is what goes on when the guards arent around.
When those memories creep up....Those guys, well, they deserve whatever comes their way. At least as much as you do.
The guards at Eastham Prison Farm, some thirty miles north of the main Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville, hate that fog but are pretty well used to it. Running the boys out the two miles or so to the work site from the building in dim dawn light and fog means riding closer to the jogging squad than the guards want to ride, just so they can see the boys clearly. Closer to the convicts means the convicts are closer to the guards, closer to their reins and closer to their bridles. Closer to the loaded Smith & Wesson .38s in their holsters. Closer to the shotguns, though with those right in a guards lap all day, he is damned well likely to get a blast off if a prisoner is stupid enough to try to come near it.
Or not. Trouble comes fast in fog. On a foggy morning just like this, in fact, an Eastham guard named John Greer rides into the middle of his squad, all fired up to give the lazy bastards a piece of his mind, and maybe a piece of the bat for milling around instead of chopping weeds. Only instead of pistol-whipping some sorry two-time loser across the side of the head as planned, its suddenly Greer who is pulled off his horse and passed around a circle of convicts, like some Julius Caesar, to be stabbed one at a time with homemade dirk knives. Greer doesnt even get a single shot off and he winds up dead with no witnesses as to who exactly did it. Funny how you can have lots of killers but no witnesses at all. Not that someone at burnin Eastham wont be made to pay hell for the killing of a guard.
This foggy morning another guard, whose name is Olin Bozeman, isnt going to make that particular mistake. Hell make a different one, which hell live to regret, and one of his fellow guards, Major Crowson, will make an even dumber move that he wont live to regret because he wont live. No, as a general rule the guards dont ever want to be too close to a squad of felons armed with hoes and other tools, not to mention guns snuck in from outside. Guns that the guards know nothing about until the cold barrel is pointed straight at them by a man who may hate them enough to kill them or may not, but who is desperate to get out by whatever means necessary.
But Eastham guards still have to be able to count the boys as they jog along. So the thicker the fog, the closer they have to stay.
Seems like counting is most of a guards job most of the days. Over and over again, for fourteen or sixteen hours a day, for a few bucks pay to feed a family they only get to see every other night at best, and an occasional Sunday. A guard gets his breakfast before dawn in the guards dining room, gets his horse after breakfast from the lot boy, who has the animal all saddled up and waiting, gets his shotgun from the picket, and just about the first words he hears spoken is the trusty yelling out the number of men coming out of the tank for thei