The day is hot and dry. A good day for curing on the porch without a care in the world. If you were the warden. But you're not the warden, you're a convict on the chain gang at Parchman Farm. For those two banks you robbed, you got 70 years of bustin' rocks. This is the rest of your life. Which wouldn't bother you so much, but the bullshit of the matter is, Bonnies and Clydes are out there shooting innocent men dead and fucking all over their corpses, and they're heroes for it. Because they're pretty young sex-havers. Nobody ever wrote you a song, nobody ever rushed to the stands to hear about your bank robbing exploits. Nobody gives a damn about an ugly ethnic. Your rock bustin' stamina becomes superhuman. Channeling your rage into every blow, for this heartless, degenerate world that doesn't want you, that wants you dead, DEAD, so they can throw parades for the likes of Bonnie and Clyde.
The prison chaplain shows up and leads the gang in prayer. When the coast is clear, a friend of yours, rangy lookin' Irishman, turns to you and asks "Do you really think there's enough rocks here to get us into Heaven?" Other convicts nearby turn to you and he, intrigued by the question. Can they really be forgiven? A mountain of a Negro, a neck taller than a kick mule's eye, rests his hammer and speaks. "I'm not goin' to Heaven. I know that much." Another convict chimes in "Aw, but Chaplain said, 'If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves...'" The Negro shakes his head. "Naw, I mean I don't wanna go. I'm goin' to Hell." The convicts want to hear more, but they have to look busy. So they return to their rocks. The big Negro doesn't. The big Negro keeps talking. "Think about it. Christian folk can't do nothin' fun. And Heaven is only for Christian folk. So it ain't no fun up there neither. Not for The Devil's men." The other convict scoffs. "You wanna run with The Devil, they got you comin' and goin'! Sure as God made green apples, Hell will be your ETERNAL torment!" Both men haven't busted a single rock in at least 2 minutes. The rest of the gang starts to get antsy about the guards noticing. "No it ain't either" protests the giant Negro. "And I could show you. We could go today." The big guy moves in closer. What's he about to do? He beckons for everyone's attention. "See, Hell is a place on Earth!"
He weaves a tale of a promised land of reckless debauchery. A place called "New Orleans." A place of catfish and crawfish, of hooch and riverboat gambling, where the veil between the here and now is sheer, where the dead walk amongst the living, and where every preacher's daughter comes to give away her cooch. Even to a man who looks like you. You have a reputation for being kind of an ugly person. "A piece of liver" you've been described as. And of the men who've testified so far, you are the only virgin. The only one a woman has never touched, ever. But the big Negro assures you, New Orleans is a place where you can just grab women off the street, grope and squeeze their huge, plump breasts, and shoot loads in them until you pass out. You can piss on them, tie them up, jack off in their food, they love it. He asserts that, as criminals, there's no place for any of you in the civilized world, that's why you're here. But there is another place, where you can be all the animal you were meant to be. And that's New Orleans. He says you all should break for it tonight, then hop the railroad and it's straight away. But he needs everyone's cooperation.
You aren't a young man anymore, and yet you are still a virgin. So to go this place overgrown with the pleasures of flesh, it's like it makes up for all the sex you should've had by now. But wait... this is depravity. And something in you hates it. Not because of any phony God's commandment. But because these filth lovers are the ones who, right now, care nothing for you. Because right now you're not a degenerate like them, or like Clyde. And to go to New Orleans and be like them feels like defeat. It feels like saying "You were right to treat me like garbage, I should've been more like you."
So how do you resolve your urge for sex with your lust for justice? Before tonight? Because tonight you have to either be in or out.
