He follows as best he can as they make their way behind the work sheds and into the old barn where the mules were formerly kept and to the back where the old privies are. Bill and his crew have been working on a tunnel that has its entrance in the dried shit pit, and they are now finished with it. He has told Delvin that if he is still on the premises he will have a place in the string of folks going out. They have a rope ladder under the second seat — it is an eight-holer — that lets down through the old crumbled, desiccated shit. The tunnel runs horizontally forty feet to the other side of the back wire. It comes up behind the new barns and is only a few steps from the woods.
There are twelve of them and in a matter of six or seven minutes they are all out and running — through wild fennel and rabbit tobacco and bristleweed and goose grass and oxalis and copperleaf and paspalum and pigweed and poke — into the rustling cotton field.
It makes Delvin feel foolish. Just — what was it? — four nights, or weeks, maybe it was weeks, ago, he was trying to make up his mind to climb Bulky’s rope. He misses Milo. He tries to ask if anybody’s heard about Bulky, but Macky Bird, a light timer, shakes him off. He hopes Milo is out there somewhere waiting. It is another little dream. He smells of modified shit and dirt and snake musk and of sweat and animal excretions and of his own piss that spilled back on him when he peed. Webfoot Bilkins is the only one of the escapees besides Bill that he knows well. Most are boys from the machine shop and the planing mill.
They run in a straggle line to the woods and when they reach the trees they slip gradually to a scattering. They are headed to the river which is the way escapees know not to go. The only way out is through the swamp — so he thought. But maybe they have something planned, something fixed. The guards haven’t come after them, not yet anyway. Maybe Bill Francis paid in some way for a clear path and maybe the way downriver is open. Maybe a miracle has occurred. The moon shines through leafy trees spattering white on the ground. A large bird lifts from a branch and flaps ponderously away. It looks like no bird Delvin has ever seem, larger than a hawk or an owl. Maybe an eagle, he thinks. He is barefooted but nothing he steps on bothers him.
After a while he comes to the riverbank. Some of the men are just putting out in a little snub-nose boat. When he tries to get in, they push him away.
