Cast the First Stone (32 page)

I looked at him. “Huh?”

“Wanna buy some brown ‘uns, hot outen de oven?”

I didn’t want any but I said, “Where are they?” without thought.

“Ah’ll get ‘em tomorrow. Uh boy over to de soap house gonna bring me some in.”

“You haven’t got them?” Insensate fury shocked me like a current. “What the hell you stop me for? What’s the matter with you, are you crazy?” He backed away from me. I wanted to hit him so bad I could feel it all up in my eyes. A swift chop to his jaw with my left, cross a right to his neck, watch his eyes pop out. I leaned forward on the balls of my feet, tensed my body. He scuttled down the aisle. I watched him for a moment and then turned in the other direction.

I knew that I was looking for trouble. Trouble-trouble. The niggers had a song for it. “Trouble-trouble, had it all my days. Trouble-trouble, gonna carry it to my grave.”

My searching gaze lit on Captain Charlie. Captain Charlie’s my friend, I thought. He used to give me candy. I ought to go up and bust him one, I thought. Sitting there, chewing his plug with unruffled indifference, while all us convicts doing more than a thousand years walk around him and obey him. My old gray-haired friend, my old friend, old Captain Charlie.

My feet carried me in his direction. I couldn’t see anyone but him. I wondered what he’d say if I just walked up and hit him in the mouth. My old friend, a lousy hack. A lousy hack for my one friend. There never was a hack a friend of mine, I thought. I’m a convict. There never was a convict who had a friend. I wondered what they would do with me if I hit him. I’d lose some time. They’d put me in the hole for thirty days. Damn the hole! I thought. Damn him! Damn everybody!

I walked faster. I wondered if I had the nerve. I stopped in front of Captain Charlie’s desk. He looked up from his paper.

“How’re you getting along, Jim?”

My paper-thin lips cracked into a smile. I licked my lips. “Fine, cap, how’re you getting along?”

“Oh, I’m doing pretty good for an old man. My wife was asking about you.”

I licked my lips again. “Tell her I’m doing fine. I hope she’s doing fine, too.”

“She’s getting along nicely, thank you.” I turned away. “Well, keep out of trouble, Jim,” he called.

I rocked down the aisle. That was it, I thought. You’re a convict and you can’t hit a guard. A guard can hit you but you’re scared to hit a guard. And then the one time you get up enough nerve to hit a guard you can’t do it because he’s your friend. Because he said his wife asked about you. But I ought to have hit him, anyway, I thought. It wouldn’t make me any more of a rotten bastard than I already was. I felt the muscles jerking in my face. Suddenly I wanted to scream.

Turning, I bumped into the corner of a bunk and everything crystallized into definite objects with shapes and names. I saw the dormitory again with all that wide-eyed horror with which I had first seen a prison dormitory four years, eight months, six days and seventeen hour ago.

The two rows of double-decked bunks, tables down the center of the concrete floor, backless benches, eternal drop-lights, white walls grayed with dust in the background, dirty windows with black bars against the sightless night, iron joists holding up the low concrete floor of the dormitory overhead.

Dirty duffel bags hanging from the bunk frames—coats, shoes, towels, mirrors, hanging from hooks on the bunk frames—pictures of loved ones in fatuous poses stuck about in prominent view—countless cutouts of half-naked women taken from calendars and magazines.

The convicts, a variety of men doing a variety of things; reading, studying, drawing, playing cards, playing musical instruments, making beaded bags, making inlaid jewel boxes, typewriting, talking, laughing, cursing, coming in and out from between the bunks with the sliding sidewise motion of crabs. A prize fighter prancing down by the latrine, showing off his muscles. A deaf convict studying a law course similar to the one I had once studied. A one-armed convict rolling a cigarette. A sleeping nigger brushing at a fly crawling over his face. A timetable sticking from a lifer’s pocket. A slim, bald-headed man called Stick, wearing purple shorts, stamping a crease in his pants stretched out on the floor.

All those years with those maimed, crippled, half-witted mentally-deficient, scum-of-the-earth convicts who had lost their sense of morality, who didn’t know right from wrong; convicts whose minds had gone and who had never had any to start with, one-armed black greasy niggers and one-legged pock-marked hunkies; convicts from the dirty gutters of cheap cities—maimed and witless and one-eyed, degenerate and crazy.

Heat rolled up from the base of my brain. I wanted to lose my reason, my perspective, my sight and all my senses; everything that had ever held me to the semblance of a human being, a convict human being. I wanted to become a blankness, unrestrained, unemotional, so I could do a blindly dangerous act. I wanted to kill someone. I wanted to shoot some bastard in the guts, watch him bend over and hold his guts in his hand, watch him topple over and die.

Sweat trickled down into my eyes, stinging them. The warm salt taste of blood came up in my mouth. I must have bitten my tongue, I thought. I decided to go down toward the latrine, over on the other side where the colored convicts bunked. Down into Black Bottom. See what the hell they were doing, see what old Johnny Brothers and Black Boy and Coots and Cryin’ Shine and Badeye Lewis and Smokey Joe were doing.

They were skinning; a group of vari-colored faces ringed about the table, cards spinning face-upward from the box, soft intense curses rising like thick smoke. Some stood, others sat. Black shiny niggers with bluish scars, brown niggers with seal-smooth skin, spotted yellow niggers, and pimply white niggers. Black Boy was dealing. He had a shaved head and a scarred face. I stopped to watch.

“Wanna pike, Jimmy?” someone asked. I shook my head.

Black Boy looked up, looked down, wearing his white, perpetual grin. He was serving life for killing a white cop; as bad a nigger as ever grew to be a man. A card fell. A tall white nigger in a pressed shirt, shiny tan shoes and creased pants turned over the card he was playing. He had greased hair and dull eyes. Hands reached tor the stacks of chips about him. He picked out the trey of spades and said, “Throw back, all you niggahs who caught me.”

Black Boy brought him a tall stack of chips. Others carried their bets to him. He paid the bets. Black Boy spun the cards. The eight spot fell.

“Mah hatred,” someone said.

The tall white nigger called St. Louis Slick picked up a stack of chips.

Black Boy said, “Ah am’ got no hatred, lesson it be de man. Wanna bet some mo’, Slick?”

“Throw down.”

They pressed their bet. Black Boy turned a card. “Some mo’?”…“Throw down.”…He turned another card. “Some mo’?”…“Throw down.” Chips were stacked high. Black Boy drew a card half out the box, knocked it back. “Hotdammit, betcha some mo’!”…“Throw down.”

Johnny Brothers stood up and called over his shoulder, “Hey, Cue Ball Red, come look at this one. Chips stacked knee-deep.” Black Boy spun the card. The trey of clubs flashed in the spill of light and fell on its face.

“Dead men falls on their face,” someone said.

Black Boy raked in the stack of chips. Slick turned ashy. “You shot me, din yer?” he stated in a flat, accusing voice. “You shot me!”

“Who, meeee? Me shot you. Whataya mean, Slick?” Black Boy looked as innocent as a new-born babe.

Slick snatched up the card box and flung the cards through the air. “Now ast me tuh pay for ‘em, you black son of a bitch.”

Black Boy never lost his grin. “Sho, Slick, pay for ‘em,” he said. His voice was flatter but untroubled. Slick walked away. Some convicts began picking up the cards. Off to one side another colored convict strummed a uke. Feet patted time. A slurred baritone recited: “Dat’s whut Harlem means tuh me.” Another convict cut a step, shoulders swaggering. Hands clapped in rhythmic beat.

The days passed and they didn’t know it, I thought. I went up front, feeling out of place down there. On the way I passed two colored convicts sitting side-by-side on a lower bunk, with a Bible opened between them, rocking from side-to-side and singing a repetitious chant, “Oh, de li’l black train’s a’comin’…Oh, de li’l black train’s a’comin’…Oh, de li’l black train, she’s a’comin’ down de track…”

One was a shiny black man with a chunky body and kinky, cotton-white hair. The other was a lean, dull black man with jutting knotty eyebrows and a cast in one eye. Probably in for rape, both of them, I thought. Singing a black man’s song to a white man’s God. They didn’t know what the hell it was all about, I thought. They didn’t want to know. It was just an emotional outlet, a substitute for sex. Just getting off, I thought.

I walked on. My feet felt heavy and my mouth tasted sour. I took a squashed cigarette from my side pants pocket and lit it. I noticed that my hands were trembling. The cigarette tasted like hell. The dormitory began getting into my eyes again. I stopped stock-still and closed them tight. But I could still see the dormitory through my closed eyelids; I could see it from memory. I could see all those rotten years strung out, like putrid stinking corpses rising from their graves. I walked quickly over to a window and looked out into the night. Searchlights illumined the yard in a sketchy brilliance. Buildings loomed dark and ghostly. A guard turned the corner of the chapel, trudging his weary rounds, coat collar turned up against the rain.

And then a queer, rushing kaleidoscope of faces and places and things came out of the past as to a drowning man…The girl and I were sitting on the stairs of the darkened apartment, making love. I was kissing her. I wondered why she wouldn’t, when I knew she wanted to so badly. A dim light on the landing above made her face a white blur beneath black hair…I was saying, “Stick ‘em up!” and the man’s face was turning suddenly, desperately white…I caught the high skyey punt running back, turned in a wide sweep, whirled away from the first tackier, stiff-armed the second; the stands were yelling frenziedly for a touchdown, the din was a tangible quality about me, inspiring me with a wild desire to push on…The girl across the bed from me hesitated before stripping off her panties and I slowly turned my gaze from her…

I came out of it feeling stifled. A wet towel steamed on the radiator beside me. The vapor caught in my nostrils. I couldn’t breathe. I opened the window. The cold, wet air blew against my hot face. I breathed deeply. I stared into the night. My mind sped up as if a foot had been jammed on the accelerator of my thought-impulses, began whirling like a runaway disk. My thoughts began to fuse together like white-hot melting glass…

Is there no pity 7 ? I thought. Is there no pity in this goddamned world? f didn’t want to beg for it to whoever I was begging. But I couldn’t help it. I wanted pity. Goddammit, somebody please pity me. I begged inside.

A convict on a near-by bunk called to another convict, “Aw, go to hell, you convict bastard!” That’s me, I thought.

I squeezed back to the center aisle and went back down to the latrine. I felt brimming full, another drop of anything would overflow me. I leaned against the washtroughs, took out my last squashed cigarette and tossed away the package. A crowd was collected near by in a noisy discussion. “That ain’t the last you’ll hear of that guy, you mark my words…” I looked at the speaker. He was a very young boy, as young as I had been five years ago.

Another convict took the subject away from him. “Hell, he’ll get caught in a week and that’ll be the last you’ll ever hear of him.” His voice got on my nerves.

Then a colored convict took it up, “Ah’ll bet mah life ‘gainst a copper cent that wen they ketch that guy—”

“Make it even money,” I said.

All of them stopped talking to look at me. I knew most of them by name. I looked at them and spat on the floor. Then I moved over to the other side of the trough so my back was to them. I lit the cigarette and took three rapid drags without exhaling. I could feel the smoke down to the bottom of my lungs. My skin felt tight on my face. But I felt a vague, sour satisfaction. I had killed the conversation. I had killed something, anyway.

For a time it was comparatively quiet. I heard the convicts walking away, as the crowd broke up. Then sounds crept into my mind. A broken commode leaked with a monotonous gurgle. It was the monotony I heard. I felt suddenly that something was wrong with me. It was as if I wasn’t working right any more, as if something had come loose inside of me.

I started back to my bunk. I felt if I could just get back to my bunk and lie down I’d be all right. It was as if I had hurt myself in some kind of way and was trying to get home. If I could just get home I’d be all right. But it seemed like miles back to my bunk. I seemed to be walking all right but I didn’t feel as if I was moving. I began getting scared I wouldn’t be able to make it to my bunk. Off to my right a wail arose: “AllllllLLLLLLLL night loooooo-OOOOOOONNNNNGGG Ah set in ma cellllllLLLLL an’ moooooaaaaaaaAAAAAAAANNNNNNN…”

I could feel the muscles tightening all over my body. I could feel my right eye jumping in my head. I tried to steady my vision, but everything was flashing in a mad, weird dance. Vision lost all sense of perspective. Steel bars closed in upon me from all ungodly angles. I got to get home, I thought, or I’m going to vomit on the floor. I tried to move but I didn’t seem to be able to move. It was as if I was standing still, through the relentless march of time. I’m being left behind, I thought. Don’t leave me behind, please don’t leave me behind, I was begging in my mind. I bent forward and tensed myself for a running start. But when I tried to run I felt as if I couldn’t move. I gave up. I’ll never make it now, I thought. If I could run I might make it. But I can’t make it, dragging along as I am now. It’s too goddamned far.

It was then I came upon the idea of killing myself. It was more as if I had come up on it than thought it out. It was as if I had known for a long time that I would meet it somewhere on the road and had tried to keep from taking that road, but even then I had known that it would be on any road I took and that sooner or later I was going to meet it. It was more as if I had just recognized it when I came up on it finally.