Not that the escapements have stopped. He has a list: fires set in the drying corn of fall, bullfrogs thrown into the supposedly electrified fence to short-circuit it, tunnels sworn to lead to open fields of sweet grass beyond the woods; he hid under mounds of green peppers and piles of cotton seeds, crouched in garbage, jumped off the back of trucks, lit out across fields, faked sick, attempted to bribe guards, simply turned away from the group crowded around the captain and ran for it.
But the well. That is legend. He tried to swim his way out through tunnels Bennie Combers swore were there. A great underground river Bennie said that would take him quickly to the big river. Plenty of room to draw breath. But there was no river, no room for breath. He got turned around and nearly lost his life, swimming downward in the dark. They hauled him out with a scrap of net he was barely able to crawl into.
No, well, no, not today, he thinks, the sunlight like warm cream on his bare arms. Not today a swim into the dark.
He wore himself out on those early escapades, wore out the craziness. He got a reputation, and cognomen, as a willful, uncooperative prisoner, UNC in capital letters on the yellow manila folder that goes with him as he makes his way around the state prison system. The sun is sticky on his face. He could wipe it off like sap from his arms and hands and clean it from his face but he doesn’t want to. The light and heat soak into his body. He unbuttons his shirt, pulls it away from his chest. The spray of scanty corkscrewed hair soaked in sunlight. You can take your shirt off if you want to, but nobody with any sense takes his shirt off under a sun like this. A black man burns just like a white one. He pulls the blue-and-gray-striped cloth away from his chest. He smells his body odor, sour as oakwood and comforting. Just working a button through a buttonhole gives him a sense of freedom. So does walking across the yard with nowhere the white man told him to go, returning by his own will to the barracks.
