"Don't want no darky in number three," complains a skinny inmate kicking the muddy ground and glancing every which way but into Oil's eyes.
"Now Loy, do you really want to cut off your nose to spite your face?" asks the older man throwing the tent flap closed and standing up to his full six-foot-two height.
Following the January flood Kentucky governor Happy Chandler had moved fast to purchase land in sparsely populated Oldham County. By early March two-hundred inmates from the temporary tent city in Frankfort had been bussed down to LaGrange to be the construction crew for the new penitentiary. Once again they were housed in canvas tents, but this time they were sturdy WPA huts with wooden frames, paned windows, and triple bunks.
Prison life was finally returning to routine as the days got longer and the afternoon sun warmer with the approach of spring in the bluegrass region. State land had been set aside for grazing and gardening, and the inmates were charged with producing their own food. Visitors were soon to be allowed again, and that prospect had the prisoners plotting the resumption of pre-flood black markets.
"What's that supposed to mean?" counters the backcountry man who'd been imprisoned the previous year for making and selling whiskey, something his Magoffin County family had been doing for generations.
"John Henry in there might be short, but he's a strong worker and ought to help meet our unit's quotas," Oil reasons before delivering his pièce de résistance: "And he's an experienced smuggler to boot."
Loy Patrick kicks the dirt again, scratches his chin, and declares "Reckon he'll do."
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