The Pledge (41 page)

“A lot has happened here since my last letter — or at least a lot for a place where one day is so much like another. I was out doing the garbage last week, which means taking my turn to pick up and deliver to the dump, and when I got back, four new political prisoners had arrived. Or reds; either way; but I feel the proper designation is political. You remember the story about Thoreau being put in the local jail because of his refusal to pay taxes to support the Mexican War, and Emerson came by and said, ‘Henry, what are you doing in there?' to which Thoreau answered, ‘Ralph, what are you doing out there?'

“Of course, that's an old saw and when I was in college, I sort of assumed that Thoreau was the first, last, and only political prisoner in our history, which really says something about the teaching of history. It never occurred to me that the thousands of strikers and protesters who had been tossed into clink might also be regarded as such. I did get off on this, but when I write to you I tend to become discursive, perhaps because I have no one here to whom I can really talk and who will know what I am talking about. Or has that changed?

“Let me tell you about the four new arrivals who turned up last week. Begin with Hal Legerman. You'll remember my telling you about our meeting in India. He's become quite a success as a producer on the Coast, and he's one of the group that were subpoenaed by the House Un-American Committee. He and his friends stood their ground on the First Amendment — but why am I telling you all this? You know their history better than I do. The second member of that West Coast group is Oscar Hill, the writer, and that set me back on my heels. He's written some of the best short stories I have ever read, and I place him right up there with John O'Hara as two of the best short fiction writers in this country. That he should have been shackled and dragged off to prison shames America. I can accept the fact that I put my nose into that famine story, and that now the associated characters in M1 and the CIA are slapping me down, but to do this to Oscar Hill is an outrage. The third member of the Hollywood contingent is Fritz Scharnoff, a successful director and not a nice man at all, indeed a consummate pain in the ass.

“Let me define him a little more specifically. The day after the four men arrived, while Demming was still trying to decide where to assign them, they were put on lawn mowers. We have some two dozen ancient hand mowers that are constantly in and out of the shop for repairs, but with the exorbitant labor pool that we have here at the prison, it's easier to put twenty-four men on twenty-four hand mowers for a few hours than to buy a big power mower that would do the whole job. Our green, rolling lawns are the warden's pride and joy. A very hot summer day. I'm down in the garage, doing my stint, when Fritz Scharnoff comes storming down to see me. Four o'clock in the afternoon now. The lawns are mowed. Scharnoff says to me, ‘How do you turn someone in?' I ask myself, Is the man crazy? I ask him what he means, and he tells me that while he was breaking his back in the hot sun with his lawn mower, two other convicts with mowers were sitting in the shade. I said to him, ‘Mister, you're in jail. Those cons are earning twenty cents an hour. Sure they're goofing — why not? But if you turn them in, you'll be dead in the morning. Real dead. No heartbeat.' Do you know, the fool didn't believe me. He said he made the films where that kind of thing happened. I had to get Legerman to read him the rules, and it left me wondering what kind of organization your friends run with characters like Scharnoff in the membership.

“Anyway, we come to the fourth convict I met in the hospital. His name is Professor Lewis Duprey, and he is or was the head of the Department of Romance Languages at New York University. I don't know whether he's a communist or not, but he's here because he belonged to an organization that maintains a hospital in Toulouse, France, for the sick and wounded survivors of the Spanish Republican war against Franco. I imagine you know more about that outfit than I do, but he was on the board of directors when the House Un-American Committee subpoenaed their books and records and the list of their contributors. He voted not to give them the books or names, and here he is. He's an absolutely delightful man who takes his imprisonment with philosophical detachment and without resentment. Since he's middle-aged and somewhat overweight, Mr. Demming has created the job of librarian for him. We have a small library room with two tables and about eight or nine hundred books. Professor Duprey will not be paid the twenty cents an hour that people like myself, who work in what are called ‘essential positions,' are rewarded with, but he accepts that with equanimity. Oscar Hill was put in the hospital to learn what he can from Mac Olsen, who's due for release next month, and then Hill will be in charge. He's a sweet, vulnerable, and talented man, and very excited about being in charge of a prison hospital. I suppose all writers dream of being something else — note the auto mechanic you're married to — and Hill has buried himself in the four medical tomes the hospital contains. Right now, the hospital is empty, so Oscar Hill has a breather in which to become a doctor. Of course, there are some negatives in the picture. You know that Dad gave me a subscription to the
New York Times
, and every morning I pick up my newspaper at postal and then stroll to the hospital — usually empty — where I use the private toilet, a right earned by payment to Mac Olsen of a pack of cigarettes once a week. The joy of a bowel movement in private, accompanied by the
New York Times
, cannot be overstated. Well, Oscar Hill has put an end to all this by appealing to my conscience, my sense of sanitation, my obligation to the sick — of whom there are none — and prison rules. By offering to replace my weekly pack of Camel cigarettes as a gift to Olsen, he swung Olsen to his side.

“But I took my own small revenge as follows: Hill wanted to know how one could get writing out of prison, and instead of telling him that the warden would facilitate it, I suggested that he write on thin onionskin, which they have in the Administration Building, shake the tobacco out of a pack of cigarettes, roll up the onionskin, use it to replace the tobacco, and then switch packs when his wife comes to visit. He's very romantic, and believe it or not, he's doing exactly what I suggest.

“So much for that. Legerman was assigned to the shop crew at the garage, and since by now, with so many of the original crew having been released, I am chief mechanic once removed from the top — the top being a colored guy by the name of Sam Jones, who was trained by General Motors and who's brilliant — I made Legerman my assistant. Scharnoff created a problem. He is a total horse's ass; he earned some six hundred thousand dollars last year, and he goes around letting it drop. You can imagine how the cons react. Demming put him in the kitchen, but after two days, the chief cook booted him out, and finally he was put on brooms, sweeping the various buildings. He brought it on himself.

“Have I said anything about myself? Question: Can you count, dear lovely lady? I was sentenced, you will remember, to a year less a day — that is, three hundred and sixty-four days precisely. Now, Federal law gives me three days off each month for good behavior, and aside from my encounter with Baxter, which has been ignored by the administration, I am one of the best behaved cons in the institution. That adds up to thirty-six days, which means I will be released on October twelfth, two months and five days away. Suppose you tell me how that grabs you?”

A week later, a letter from Molly said: “It grabs me everywhere. The news of war breaking out in Korea filled me with horror, and all I could think about was the possibility that you would not be released at all, and certainly if this had spread into the third world war, my immediate fear, that might well have been the case. But it doesn't seem so, and all I can think of is that you'll soon be with me. I seem to repeat myself, with
all I can think of
over and over, but that's the way it is, and when I say all I can think of, I mean that nothing, absolutely nothing in the world is as important to me as putting my arms around you and getting on with the business of life and having kids and being together, and finding names for the kids and speculating on boy or girl and red hair or brown hair and blue eyes or brown eyes, and probably green. Which is all right too, because as you may have suspected, green is not an unimportant color to your Molly Maguire Bacon. I have been reading up on old Nathaniel Bacon, and of course you know all that there is to know about him, but suppose he had not died so suddenly and the American Revolution had taken place a hundred years earlier, under his leadership, as it well might have. Oh, well, one can dream about such things. By the way, if the first one's a boy, shouldn't it be named Nathaniel? We'll discuss that. I've met Oscar Hill, a lovely and totally impractical man. I don't know your professor, but he sounds charming. How fortunate of your prison to have two professors, and as for the Hollywood director, I've heard about him. Oh, I've met good people and even saintly people in the movement, but with that, all too many Fritz Scharnoffs. But maybe I speak with some bitterness because I was formally chastised by the group at the paper for my petit bourgeois ambitions, and it's true. I have all the ambitions I listed above. I've had the class struggle, and I have paid my dues and so have you.

“Now for the good news. Any day now, if not already, you will be getting an advance copy of a book called
Invitation to the Theater
by Bruce Nathaniel Bacon. Please remember that I told you what a wonderful, extraordinary book it is, because I want credit where credit is due. Your publisher in San Francisco called twice, so we're old friends now; and I do like Mr. Johnson. The first time he called, it was to tell me that he had gone to press with a print order of five thousand books and already he had orders for seven thousand, so he was going to have another printing of ten thousand. The second time he called was to tell me that advance sales were over twenty thousand. He had bound five hundred copies and had sent them to newspapers and magazines and TV and radio stations all over the country. There are now thirty thousand copies in print, and Johnson assures me that he is moving very cautiously because he does not want to oversell the book. However, he feels that at this point it is selling itself, and he is still a month away from publication. I suggested that he put off the publication until you are out of prison, but he is becoming increasingly nervous and he wants the book to have the protection of the light of day. He feels that even the unproven implication that the British forces in India were responsible for six million deaths, a number that matches the slaughter of the Jews by Hitler, is earthshaking. He has put the MS into the hands of five Bengali residents here, two of them diplomats, and every one of them declares that you are absolutely right in the conclusions you draw; but to have them say that is one thing and to get them to make a public statement is another. The diplomats do not want a confrontation with the British at this point; they need British help too desperately, and the others are afraid that, as resident aliens, they will simply get tossed out of the country.

“Two other bits of information on this score. Both the FBI and the State Department have sent emissaries to the Temple Press. Oh, no, not for the world do they want to interfere with the publication of the Bacon book. We don't ban books in the United States. We are a free country, where freedom of the press is enshrined. But on the other hand, we are in the process of uniting and rebuilding a continent stricken by the war. Part of that is our ally, Great Britain. Wouldn't it be better to delay the publication of so inflammatory a manuscript? And of course the FBI man came with the usual half threat. The Director doesn't approve of the publication of the book. The Director feels that a patriotic American would not publish the book. Not real threats, only the feelings of that dreadful little man in Washington who speaks to God or perhaps feels that he is God. All of this over the phone from Johnson. He's scared, but firm as a rock. He wants to know whether we need money. He's prepared to advance you another five thousand dollars right now, bless his heart. Do you want it?

“So much for today. Send my blessing to Hal Legerman, the undaunted, and take care of Professor Duprey.

“I love you so much.”

The morning after he read Molly's letter, Bruce was giving Legerman not Molly's blessing, but a mild reprimand and a lecture on pistons and cylinders. A truck engine hung from a chain hoist, and Bruce was explaining, “This, my friend, is an engine block. A cylinder block. The pistons move up and down in those holes, which we call cylinders, and that's what moves the truck. It doesn't matter how filthy and oily this shop is — the inside of those cylinders must be clean and pure. Absolutely and utterly clean and pure, virgin, not a speck of dust, but as smooth and unsullied as a baby's ass. There is an intercourse between piston and cylinder that must be honored and respected.”

Legerman was nodding and grinning. “Sure. Absolutely. Do you talk to the others this way?”

Jones overheard. “He do. He sure do.”

When they broke for lunch, Legerman said to Bruce, “I just don't believe it — Bruce Bacon running a repair shop.”

“I don't run it. Sam Jones runs it. Keep that in mind, Hal.”

“Got you.”

“And damn it, I've driven cars since I was a kid, and I never knew what made the damn things run. I've had an eight-month course in auto mechanics, and I'm pretty good. That'll help if I can't make a living writing.”

“I know. It's just a damned uncommon thing to see a jail turn a man into an auto mechanic instead of a seasoned crook.”

“I suppose so. But there's no other jail like this in the country, maybe in the world, and I have the feeling that the warden doesn't love J. Edgar. Maybe this place is the way it is because it's so hard to get to.”