The bedlam of guards knocking bullet glass above, of whites cheering their champions and amending the betting odds below, and the low hum of the negroes on the yard beyond the bullet glass, never did cease. Old Blue Hauler did his best hollering, but merely managed to strip his old chords whilst remaining unheard. The old boxing hand, arms spread in staying motions between the two vicious characters that stood ready to do battle, looked beseechingly up at the Warden sitting his swivel chair.

To Old Blue’s left stalked the swarthy ‘Mister Texas’ wearing his mammy rag, a pair of ragged shorts and naught else but a tattoo over his heart; a wiry, hairless, sun-darkened, bullet-scarred hobo who Whiff knew—from his meeting with the man on the inauspicious occasion of his own lynching—to be a ‘Forester’. This was the reason for the mammy rag on his head Whiff reasoned.

The men of the CSA Marine Corps were drawn from orphans, mixed-race bastards, rape-births, and juvenile delinquents who pass the rigorous physical and mental testing. Once tattooed on the forehead with the crossed pistols symbol of ‘Old Most’, the general who founded the CSA Marine Corp to colonize Cuba and Mexico, such a man was forbidden to ever set foot in the Confederacy. Colonial Marine Troopers were consigned to a life in the colonies in order to avoid the folly of Haiti and other failed European plantation colonies. The staff of course knew of the man’s status, but had only let him on the slab under condition he covered the grossly branded evidence of his military association. The marines were supposedly holding off the Yankee-backed drug cartels in Mexico with much valor—or so the radio and newspaper reports said. However, the sight of a fugitive Forester in the Confederacy might put the lie to that which was, as Whiff had just been assured by Notary Council of the NBA that the Marines had their back to the Rio Grande and were contemplating turning on the Confederate States of America itself!

Facing off against ‘Mister Texas’ was Cat Claw Able, a tall lean man of about six-four to the Forester’s six even—a light-footed heavyweight versus a devilish middleweight—quite a fight in the brew it seemed. For all its promise it proved worse than all that, for Cat Claw was aptly named. His unnaturally long fingernails were filed to a needle point and polished with black shoe cream to match his slicked back black hair. Cat Claw had the look of a New York Yankee of the criminal class spawned from the lesser reaches of Europe.

Just as Old Blue seemed ready to faint from the effort of holding his open hands out to the side—looking pleadingly to the Warden all the while—he got the nod from the Colonel in the swivel chair and brought his hands together and stepped back as the two most agile men among the perspective combatants leaped at one another with probing groin kicks, shin stomps and jabs—only Cat Claw’s jabbing hand might as well have been a knife.

The taller man’s spear-hand jab ripped a furrow over 'Mister Texas'’ right eye and tore off the T-shirt worn as a mammy rag, which went flying off to the side, to reveal the storied tattoo of a CSA Colonial Marine.

Cat Claw recoiled and leaped back like Herod suddenly finding himself drinking wine with a leper—his eyes bugging out, as if they were binoculars sighting along his long straight nose. The recognition of the symbol spread, and silence spread liking a seeping stain from a can of spilled water sealant on a revue stage. Within thirty seconds the place was silent, Cat Claw shuffling on toes all along the perimeter as 'Mister Texas' stood and smiled gloweringly. Soon even Cat Claw stopped his shuffling.

'Mister Texas' put up his hands and shrugged his shoulders and addressed the assembled in his deep hollow voice, “A ‘welcome home’ would be nice?”

Cat Claw was now not even prepared to fight, just standing as far off as he could without sinking into the press of bodies circling the space reserved for combat. This bothered ‘Mister Texas’ who, outrageously appealed to the Warden above. “Excuse me Colonel, until the MPs come for me it is proper to behave as an inmate and fight for my eats, is it not?”

The Warden, who by the reaction of the assembled had never left his seat or raised his voice in such a situation, did both. He was a tall suntanned fellow with white hat, white mustache, and neatly trimmed white beard of the jaw line kind, and his voice carried fairly, “Have at it boys.”

As the Warden resumed his seat and leaned forward somewhat, peering with intense interest down over the top bar of his silver-gilt T-cane the assembled oafs; gray-suited guards above, half-naked whites below, and the T-shirted negroes out on the yard, resumed their bedlam and the fighters reengaged.

‘Mister Texas’ was stalking forward as Cat Claw bounced on his toes like the tall classic boxer should, only firing off face-slicing and eye-maiming spear-hands instead of jabs. His wiry opponent stood with his hands down for the grapple and let the eye-ripping black nails come for his face, which he moved on his shoulders as if he were an Egyptian dancing girl, simply inviting the lethal fingertips—no, taunting them, for he moved his neck with the hideous grace of a viper; a water moccasin to be precise. Nevertheless the hands of Cat Claw found their mark—or nearly so; slashing open first one cheek then the other, then the chin, then drawing blood from an ear.

The apparently AWOL colonial trooper was now giving ground, swiveling his waist and moving his head on his lean corded neck to avoid the deadly thrust of the fingers that had once removed an eye from the most dreaded ‘Yard Ape’ ever to be brought onto the White Side for punishment, One-eyed Haystack, who even now pressed his broad face to the glass as his lesser yard mates peered in behind. The giant negro no longer held the pack of Virginia Slims he had given over in his wager against Gil Saint, no doubt backing ‘Mister Texas’ here over the man that had taken half of his sight.

Whiff found himself watching One-eyed Haystack as much as the fight. The giant negro flexed his hands and clenched his jaw following the fight with a burning intensity. The marine was now backed nearly to the ring of shirtless cheering inmates, back on his heels, swiveling on his hips, darting his head like that hunted Egyptian jackal-in-the-box at the best carnival booth Whiff had ever designed. Cat Claw had his measure with a slicing finger jab that ripped open the smaller man’s brow and then came with the right behind it, a killing shot that would plant his fingertips into the brain if he hit the eye straight on—and the tattooed forehead of the marine tilted on its wiry neck and the brown skull came thrusting forward like a billy goat’s butt.

The sound of Cat Claws fingers snapping and crunching like so much kindling as blood sprayed from the top of the brown head brought a thunderous slap on the bullet glass by Haystack. Then, as Cat Claw took a fade step and tucked his broken hand behind his back and made to jab off with his left, the wiry leg of the other man whipped upward into the groin of the taller man, felling him like a small shaken-leafed tree.

Then came the feral cruelty of the beastly man again. As Cat Claw fell backward, the eyes rolling white in his head, ‘Mister Texas’ began a cavorting leap that took his hips as high as Whiff’s head and his dirty calloused feet even higher. Just as Cat Claw’s shoulder hit the concrete, and his head of greased-back black hair smacked sickeningly against the concrete slab that was the floor, his nemesis was already hurdling downward from a leaping squat. This happened with enough time lag for every man around, above and without to suck in his breath in morbid anticipation. And that breathe was exhaled as if from the lungs of a thousand-mouthed beast when the head of Cat Claw Able—not a good man to be sure but not deserving of this either—bent, cracked, and burst like a melon fallen from a harvesting truck beneath the cruel feet of a man that had obviously tread a crueler earth than this flat slab of one.

Wait fool, you said that?

No, I prayed it to God Above.

Then a fool you are!

Look out Whiff, a body is flying your way.

The impact of the bloody brain-spilling mess that had been the much feared Cat Claw Able took his ankles out from under him even as the terrific roar of a bestial man cut through the silence and into Whiff’s head like a knife as he hit the concrete. He flopped to on his big belly next to the big dead man that had been tossed his way as bedlam reigned once again, the services of Old Blue not being required for some reason.

Get up and look see boy!