Cast the First Stone (6 page)

The pulpit was in the center of the stage. Behind it were three heavy oak chairs with black leather upholstering. The chaplain sat on the left. He wore a tailored black suit and his shoes were polished to a brilliant luster. His face was slightly narrow, but well filled-out, and his head was well-shaped. He wore his hair parted on one side. He looked smooth and slick. His name was Preston Douglas Perry.

The guest minister sat in the center. His name was Glisser. There was an anemic, fanatical air about him. Deacon Smith, the colored convict who had delivered my money order, sat at the right.

Behind them, to one side, sat the convict orchestra. They were dressed in their grays but wore white shirts and black bow ties. They looked self-conscious and recently bathed and shaved. To the other side of the stage were two rows of chairs. These were occupied by men and women visiting from Reverend Glisser’s church in the city.

Except for the convicts and the chaplain and the deputy, everyone looked very religious. Deacon Smith looked sanctimonious.

Deacon Smith opened the services with a prayer. He had a fine oratorical voice and his enunciation was scholarly. Congregational singing followed. But few of the convicts joined in. Chaplain Perry rose and introduced Reverend Glisser. The convicts knew Reverend Glisser from previous visits. He was greeted by a few scattered boos.

Reverend Glisser had a very bad pulpit manner. He seemed vindictive and slightly hysterical. It seemed as if he hated the convicts. In the course of his sermon he said it was good we were there. I think he meant it was good we were in church, not in prison. But most of the convicts accepted the latter meaning. They began booing so loudly that the deputy finally had to stand up and wave his hands for silence. They respected the deputy and quieted down. The Reverend Glisser went on denouncing sin. To relieve the tension he began telling a joke about “an old darky eating porridge with his fingers.” The colored convicts started booing then, and the deputy and nobody else could stop them. They kept booing until Reverend Glisser had to sit down. His face was fiery red. His breath came in gasps and he looked diabolically mean and malevolent.

The chaplain rose and in his confidential voice, looking like a solid con man, prayed for the convicts’ souls. He sounded for all the world like a ward heeler at a political meeting. After concluding his prayer he went into the wings and changed into a rubber suit, and came out to baptize some sixteen convicts who had been converted the Sunday before.

The pool was beneath the floor in the center aisle at the front of the stage. When the sections of flooring had been removed the converted convicts lined up and went forward, one by one, and were dipped into the water by the chaplain and an assistant. The chaplain recited in a parrot-like voice, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

Mal said one of the converts had been brought over from the hole where he was serving out a rap for sex perversion. The deputy seemed amused by the proceedings. Once or twice he laughed out loud. All of us enjoyed it very much. The convicts came out of the water, cold and shivering, their wet overalls clinging to their thin bodies. I wondered how many of them would be in the sick bay the next day.

After it was all over the orchestra began playing jazz. The deputy arose and waved us out. We left laughing and talking. It smelled better outside and I got some of the odor of those smelly convicts out of my nostrils.

For Sunday’s dinner we had roast pork, potatoes, gray cooked dried peas, and applesauce. There was a piece of soggy gingerbread at our plates which we could eat there or carry back to the cells for supper. We didn’t return to the dining room any more on Sunday. As we marched out we were given two slices of bread and a slab of cheese, from tubs sitting at each side of the doorway. A convict waiter worked at each tub, and the guards stood by and watched to see that no one got more than his share. The cheese sandwich and the gingerbread was our supper.

I sat around and talked to Mal and read the Sunday paper. We played some checkers but he won easily. Then I watched the poker game until I was tired of swallowing bets. I went over to my bunk and took a nap.

When the coffee came Mal woke me. I got my coffee bucket and fell into the line that had formed. Two dining-room waiters had brought over a couple of five-gallon coffee cans of light-colored coffee. As we passed in line they poured our coffee buckets half full. I had forgotten to rinse out my bucket and the coffee tasted like soap. Mal gave me some of his but it didn’t taste much better. He said he had put some sugar in it but I couldn’t taste it. As a rule he sweetened it with saccharin tablets he bought from the hospital but he had run out, he said. I said that was all right. I didn’t like coffee anyway.

“That’s right, you’re still drinking milk,” he said.

I told him about the time I took a quart of milk to a night club. He told me about his wife and showed me her picture. She was a pretty woman. I started telling him about my great affairs. Most of it I made up but some of it was true. But I didn’t tell him about Margy or Joan. Those two did not stand telling about.

“You were a hell of a guy, Jimmy,” he said, flatteringly.

I liked it. We were down on his bunk eating a couple of roast-pork sandwiches he had gotten from somewhere. He asked me if I’d had any dreams since I’d been in and I said, sure, every night.

He laughed. “
Every
night?”

“Well, maybe I missed a night or two.”

“Do you carry on?”

“Carry on?”

“You know, moan or something?”

I laughed. “Hell, naw.”

But I felt sort of funny, wondering if I had made any noise or if anybody had noticed, when it was really happening to me.

We lay there for a long time after we had finished eating, sprawled across the bed, talking about love and life and our experiences, and watching it grow dark outside. We talked mostly about women we had had and what they had said in bed, and whether they had been good or bad, and what we got from them and what we thought they got from us. Mal always brought the conversation back to that whenever we got off of it.

After the first hard knots of food had smoothed out in our bellies and our bellies got warm, we got warm and passionate thinking about the women we’d had. We kept talking about it until every time we’d accidentally touch each other we’d feel a shock. I was startled at the femininity a man’s face could assume when you’re looking at it warmly and passionately, and off to yourselves in prison where there are all men and there is no comparison.

Mal looked very pretty and his eyes seemed very bright and after a time he said, “You don’t believe what Jeep said about me, do you?”

“Hell, naw,” I said.

“A lot of guys do that in here but I’m bitterly against it,” he said.

We were silent for a time, then he said, “I wonder how it would feel to do something like that.”

“I don’t know and I don’t care.”

He was looking at me from underneath his eyelashes. I didn’t like the turn the conversation had taken.

“To hell with that stuff!” I said. “Come on, let’s play some checkers.”

Afterward that whole day seemed like a dream. It didn’t seem like it had happened at all.

4

S
OMEONE CALLED ME
out into the aisle that night and while I was gone Mal got into a fight with the General and hit him over the head with a two-by-four. He didn’t hurt him much. It was all over when I got back. Some fellows had pulled them apart. They didn’t really want to fight, anyway.

The night guard didn’t like to take anybody to the hole. When he saw it was all over he went back to the guardstand without even questioning them.

All the other convicts were laughing about it. Some of them cracked that the fight had been over me. I didn’t like that. I asked Mal. But he said it had started about my paper. I had left it on the bunk when I went out into the aisle. The General had picked it up. Then Mal had snatched it out of his hand. One word had led to another. Then the General had jumped up and slapped him. He conked the General with the timber. I didn’t like the General anyway so I said, “Swell.”

The next day Mal was transferred. It didn’t have anything to do with the fight. He had been trying to get a job down at the furnace where the aluminum dishes were molded. When the convict who had it got a pardon he got it. He said you could make money on the job, molding tubes and bowls for cigarette holders and the bodies for cigarette lighters and such. When a con got it he married it. He had been waiting eighteen months to get it.

He was transferred to the 5-5 dormitory. That was in the far end of the wooden dormitory, back of the hole and the Catholic chapel. I helped him to pack and move. He promised to stop and see me every time he came up our way for coke for the furnace.

It was tough seeing him go. He’d been good company. It was in the evenings, when we used to talk, that I missed him most. I didn’t know I could miss anyone so much or get so lonely in a big dormitory full of men. I liked old Mal, I sure did like that boy.

Jeep tried to make friends with me, after that. He said he had been in twenty months and had never had a friend—not a real pal, anyway. I said, what the hell did I care? I was sour on him.

Big Ole gave me some credit in his poker game one night but I lost. But the next night another fellow staked me. He said he liked the way I played. I won. But I kept on playing every night and got broke a couple of nights later.

And then I got fired off my job. It had been snowing since the night before and there was so much snow outside that the men couldn’t work. We had to sweep and mop with them inside. When we were all through old B&O ordered me to go over to the planing mill and get some shavings.

There were two barrels filled to the top with shavings. The other one was two-thirds full. He wanted me to take that one over and fill it up. I said, to hell with it. He ran up to me as if he wanted to start something. I told him if he opened his goddamned mouth I’d knock out his teeth. He went to the guard.

Captain Warren was off that morning and Roe was in charge. Roe called me into the office and asked why I didn’t want to get the shavings. I told him we didn’t need any. He said B&O was supposed to be the judge of that. I said it didn’t need any judging, we already had more than we could use in a week. He said if I couldn’t go get the shavings I could go outside with the coal men the next time they went out. I said, “Yeah,” and left it at that.

Old man Warren was there the next day. It had cleared up a little and the men went back to work. When I started into the dormitory with the porters, after breakfast, Roe yelled at me.

“Come on out here and grab a wheelbarrow, Monroe. You’ve lost your pretty home, my boy.” He’d been standing at the head of the tracks waiting for me.

I tightened up inside. “Hell with you, bud,” I muttered, but he didn’t hear me.

“Come on, come on!” he called, but I kept on inside.

He started after me. One of the porters said, “Man, you better go on out there. You’ll get into trouble. They’ll bust your head.” But I was already in trouble. I was in there with twenty years. I couldn’t think of any more trouble than that.

“If there’s any hitting done we’re both gonna do some of it,” I said.

But Roe didn’t come inside. He met Warren at the door and said something to him. Warren turned around and looked at me, then he said something to Roe. Roe went back outside to the coal pile and let me alone. It was years afterward that I learned that Warren had given the porter’s job to me in the first place because his daughter had asked him to look out for me if he got a chance. I’d gone to college with Helen Warren. I didn’t know at the time she was his daughter. But she’d read of my conviction and was looking out for me.

I stayed inside. B&O wouldn’t let me work. He said I was fired. Old man Warren didn’t say anything to me at all. So every morning while the porters swept and mopped the floors, I sat up on the night-guard’s stand and read a magazine. In the afternoons I lay on my bunk and took life easy. I wasn’t worried. The other guys did more worrying about it than I did.

One morning old man Warren came to work with his bad habits on. When we went to breakfast he closed the dormitory door and locked it. It was unexpected and I wasn’t prepared to work. I had on my brand-new shoes and some silk socks. I didn’t have any working gloves. Mal had gotten me a tailor-made cap and some tailor-made pants, with two hip pockets and a watch pocket. I’d gotten to be quite a dude. I felt too dressed up to work. And anyway, I had an injured back, I argued with myself. I was classified as totally disabled. I didn’t believe they could force me to work if I didn’t want to. When old man Warren told me to get a wheelbarrow and roll some coal I told him I wasn’t able.

He told me to stand out there to one side and watch the others roll coal. “I’ll stand,” I said. “But I won’t roll any.” I walked over to the corner of the dormitory and stood there. Then I began getting cold. At first it was just on the outside. On my hands and face and in my ears. Then it was in my skin and underneath my skin and down in my chest and around my bones. And then it was in my head. I went over and hammered on the corrugated door. Everybody stopped work to watch me. Roe stood there grinning and cracking at me.

Captain Warren opened the door. When he saw me he said, “What’s the matter, what’s the matter? Tired of standing?”

“I’m cold.” I was blue in the face. “Get a shovel, that’ll warm you up,” he said and slammed the door in my face.

I was ready to fight. I pulled my cap down over my eyes and started to the deputy’s office. Roe called to me and asked me where I was going. I didn’t answer. He ran into the dormitory to tell old man Warren. I didn’t look back.

The deputy warden wasn’t in. His clerk asked me what I wanted. I said I just wanted to see the deputy. He asked me what company I was from. I told him the coal company. He told me to go next door and wait for the deputy.

There was a long narrow hallway next door with wooden benches down the wall. It was the waiting room. Newcomers waited there to be assigned to cells. It was the first place they came. Old convicts waited there to be transferred from one company to another. Convicts who had been reported for infractions of the rules waited there to be tried. Convicts who wanted to see any of the inside officials waited there.