Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

So now he had peace. He had thought he had peace as soon as he realised what he would have to do about Houston, and that Houston himself wasn’t going to let him wait until Flem got back. But he had been wrong. That wasn’t peace then; it was too full of too many uncertainties: such as if anybody would send word to Flem about his trouble at all, let alone in time. Or even if the word was sent in time, would the message find Flem in time. And even if Flem got the message in time, there might be a flood or a wreck on the railroad so he couldn’t get back in time.

But all that was finished now. He didn’t have to bother and worry at all now since all he had to do was wait, and he had already proved to himself that he could do that. Just to wait: that’s all he needed; he didn’t even need to ask the jailor to send a message since the lawyer himself had said he would come back to see him after supper.

So he ate his supper when they brought it—the same sidemeat and molasses and undercooked biscuits he would have had at home; this in fact a little better since the meat had more lean in it than he could afford to eat. Except that his at home had been free, eaten in freedom. But then he could stand that too if that was all they demanded of him now. Then he heard the feet on the stairs, the door clashed, letting the lawyer in, and clashed again on both of them—the lawyer young and eager, just out of law school they told him, whom the Judge had appointed for him—commanded rather, since even he, Mink, busy as he was at the time, could tell that the man didn’t really want any part of him and his trouble—he never did know why then because then he still thought that all the Judge or anybody else needed to do to settle the whole business was just to send out to Frenchman’s Bend and get hold of his cousin.

Too young and eager in fact, which was why he—the lawyer—had made such a hash of the thing. But that didn’t matter now either; the thing now was to get on to what came next. So he didn’t waste any time. “All right,” he said. “How long will I have to stay there?”

“It’s Parchman—the penitentiary,” the lawyer said. “Cant you understand that?”

“All right,” he said again. “How long will I have to stay?”

“He gave you life,” the lawyer said. “Didn’t you even hear him? For the rest of your life. Until you die.”

“All right,” he said for the third time, with that peaceful, that almost compassionate patience: “How long will I have to stay?”

By that time even this lawyer understood. “Oh. That depends on you and your friends—if you have any. It may be all your life, like Judge Brummage said. But in twenty or twenty-five years you will be eligible under the Law to apply for pardon or parole—if you have responsible friends to support your petition, and your record down there at Parchman dont hold anything against you.”

“Suppose a man aint got friends,” he said.

“Folks that hide in bushes and shoot other folks off their horses without saying Look out first or even whistling, don’t have,” the lawyer said. “So you wont have anybody left except you to get you out.”

“All right,” he said, with that unshakable, that infinite patience, “that’s what I’m trying to get you to stop talking long enough to tell me. What do I have to do to get out in twenty or twenty-five years?”

“Not to try to escape yourself or engage in any plot to help anybody else escape. Not to get in a fight with another prisoner or a guard. To be on time for whatever they tell you to do, and do it without shirking or complaining or talking back, until they tell you to quit. In other words, to start right now doing all the things that, if you had just been doing them all the time since that day last fall when you decided to let Mr Houston winter your cow for nothing, you wouldn’t be sitting in this cell here trying to ask somebody how to get out of it. But mainly, dont try to escape.”

“Escape?” he said.

“Break out. Try to get away.”

“Try?” he said.

“Because you cant,” the lawyer said with a kind of seething yet patient rage. “Because you cant escape. You cant make it. You never can. You cant plan it without some of the others catching on to it and they always try to escape with you and so you all get caught. And even if they dont go with you, they tell the Warden on you and you are caught just the same. And even if you manage to keep everybody else from knowing about it and go alone, one of the guards shoots you before you can climb the fence. So even if you are not in the dead house or the hospital, you are back in the penitentiary with twenty-five more years added onto your sentence. Do you understand now?”

“That’s all I got to do to get out in twenty or twenty-five years. Not try to escape. Not get in no fights with nobody. Do whatever they tell me to do, as long as they say to do it. But mainly not try to escape. That’s all I got to do to get out in twenty or twenty-five years.”

“That’s right,” the lawyer said.