Cast the First Stone (19 page)

“He doesn’t do that outside,” I said. “He just does it in here because he knows he’s got protection.”

“You know, he’s the sort of fellow I despise.” His grin was one-sided and showed several gold crowns.

“He’ll get his some day,” I said.

“More than likely some little fellow whom he thinks is weak will be the one to kill him.”

“That’s just about the way it’ll happen,” I said. While he was rolling a cigarette I picked up the book he’d been reading. It was a textbook on short-story writing. “What you doing, studying short-story writing?”

“Yes, it’s rather interesting.”

“I was sort of under the impression that you had to be gifted to write short stories.”

“Maybe you’re right,” he said, “although the good doctor here seems to feel, unless I have misunderstood him, that he can teach you the art without your being gifted.”

“Maybe he can,” I conceded, grinning slowly.

“Oh, I don’t ever expect to really write any stories,” he said. “I’m a jeweler by profession. I’m just studying this for something to do. You know a fellow has to do something.”

“Damn right. I’d like to look it over sometime.”

“Sure, come on down and study it with me,” he invited. “I’d like to have you. Maybe we could get together and swap some ideas. You know, the most of these fellows are difficult to converse with. They’re so damned set in their opinions. It wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t so damned ignorant too.”

“That’s the kind who’s the most positive,” I said. “I’m going to take you up on that writing course,” I said. “I’d like to know something about writing.”

“Sure, I’d be glad to have you.” That had been shortly after Thanksgiving.

I went down the next night and we ran through a few pages of the text and then we began talking about ourselves. Within a week or so we had developed a close companionship. It came out that he had owned a part interest in a jewelry store in Lake City from which he received a comfortable income, but he had been unfortunate enough in marrying a slut by whom he had a child and whom afterward he had killed. If it had not been for the child he would simply have divorced her.

However, the details of his crime did not come from him, they came from other convicts whom I talked to about him. He seldom spoke of his home life, and never of the woman he had killed. The way it was told to me is that one night he saw his wife riding down Western Parkway in a taxi with another man, kissing him in the taxi, after she had told him that she was going to visit her sisters. He’d gone home and got his pistol and begun searching for her. He was in a taxi also and he had his driver drive up one street and down another, intending to comb the entire city. Finally he had run across his wife and the man, getting into a taxi in front of a restaurant in the shopping center at Western Parkway and Grand Avenue. They were headed in the opposite direction. He had his driver turn around and overtake them down near the Christian Science chapel, not far from the Grand Avenue precinct station. He had leaned from the window of his taxi, aimed the pistol at his wife, and shot her dead. His attorneys had gotten the case down to manslaughter, and he’d been sentenced to seven to twenty years. At that time he’d been in prison three years.

Our companionship was strangely separate from all my other prison activities. Although Blocker and I were still running our poker game and Mal and I were still good cousins, the companionship between Metz and myself did not include either of them, nor the poker game, nor any other phase of prison activity. It was as if we were members of the same club and had discovered a common interest in chess and conversation.

Blocker used to stop by Metz’s bunk sometimes and ask, “How’re you and the professor doing, kid?”

And Metz would say, “I guess you’re cheating everybody’s eye teeth out, Blocker.”

“You better come down and let me get some of you, professor,” Blocker would say.

Metz would shake his head. “No, you’re too slick for me. You know, I never gamble with a man with fingernails as long as yours. You might not be slick, in fact you might even be a square—”

“I am,” Blocker would cut him off, winking at me. “You can trim me. I ain’t nothing but a square.”

“No, sir, any man who has fingernails as long as yours, I let them go.”

They were all right with each other. Neither of them ever said anything disparaging of the other that I knew of. But they had nothing in common except gambling and Metz had just about quit gambling after his flare-up in Lippy Mike’s game. On the other hand, Mal didn’t seem to care so much for the idea. “Are you still fooling around with that short-story writing?” he would ask.

“Sure, I like it. I think it’s interesting.”

“That guy can’t teach you anything. He doesn’t even know as much as you do.”

“He’s not teaching me anything. I’m just taking a course with him.”

“I’ll bet before it’s done with he’ll want you to help pay for it.”

“Aw, you’re nuts!”

But we kept right on with it all through the winter. It was more the companionship of Metz than the course in short-story writing that interested me. His conversation was a relief from the stale, monotonous babble of the prison. I’d get away from that when we talked. I’d get away from all the sex. I’d get away from all those fags that had leaned on me, surrounded me; and those would-be wolves who had kept shooting at me on the sly, long after they’d concluded that I wouldn’t go. Metz was the first really decent fellow whom I had met in prison, although Blocker was my only true friend. After Mal had moved away from the coal company, that first month I was in prison, I had never really liked him. But it was as if he had come to be my responsibility. In some strange way I’d gotten to feel I had to support him, keep him supplied with things he needed, give him money and time. But I liked to talk to Metz.

Almost any subject that came into the conversation was enough for us to argue about. He was so intense in his assertions that many times, knowing I was wrong, I would argue for the sheer delight of trying to outwit him. And because he was a very reasonable fellow I would often convince him of the logic of my viewpoint when I wasn’t even convinced of it myself. He was always quick to see the other fellow’s point and that made our arguments interesting, without rancor.

Neither of us, it came out, was religious. But Metz claimed to be an atheist. I told him that I didn’t believe it possible to be an atheist and he said, why, and I said because I didn’t believe any man could live without believing in some force superior to the human being, and he said there wasn’t anything superior to the human being, that it was the human being who created the God.

And I said, “I believe that, all right. And I believe, in addition, that each person who believes in a God has a separate individual God of his own.”

“Do you believe in an afterlife?” he asked.

“Not for me,” I said, “because I don’t believe in it. But I believe if a man did believe sincerely in an afterlife that his belief would create an afterlife. I believe that this life and God and religion and an afterlife, and everything, exists only in the belief that it exists; and if one believes in an afterlife, as he believes that he is living in this life, that for him there will be an afterlife. I believe that the only time anything comes to an end is when belief in its existence comes to an end, and I believe that life and the world will only exist for persons as long as their belief that it exists, exists. I don’t know whether I’m very clear,” I said.

“Oh, I understand what you mean,” he said. “It is your opinion that things only exist in belief.”

“Yes, that’s it. For us humans, I mean. I don’t think it is like that for everything. I think that is why humans are given the power to believe or reject. I believe that afterlife is like flying—as long as people believed they couldn’t fly they couldn’t fly, but when they believed they could fly they did.”

“What about a person flying like a bird without the aid of machinery?” he asked, grinning. “Do you believe that a man with sufficient faith could go up to the top of a building and jump off and begin flying like a bird?”

“I do,” I said solemnly. “I believe that if a person could believe he could fly he wouldn’t need any building but could fly up from the ground. But I’ll never believe that a person can believe that until some person does believe and does fly and I see him and then—” I added, grinning, “I might not even believe it.”

“I see what you mean,” he said. “But that doesn’t give me any argument.”

“That’s it,” I said.

Or we’d argue about sex perversion in prison. He contended that it was unnecessary and spiritually and morally injurious to those who participated in it. He would begin upon the premise that any form of perverted sex was both physically and spiritually degrading, and I’d say, just to make an argument, “They tell me that married people do everything; they say that’s part of the sex act itself.”

And he’d grin and say, “But these convicts aren’t married.”

And I’d grin and say, “Don’t be too sure about that.”

Once I said, “You’re right, of course, but I’m not as positive in my judgment as I was when I came in. I suppose I’ve changed a little.”

“You don’t want to change too much,” he said, looking at me.

14

I
HAD GOTTEN TO
the place where I left the greater part of the running of our poker game to Blocker. Almost every evening after supper found me perched atop Metz’s bunk, feeling him out for a discussion.

We were sitting there that Easter Monday evening, talking about the fatalism of Omar Khayyam. “You know, I like the sound of his work as well, if not better, than the content,” he grinned. “Listen to this: Then to the Lip of this poor earthen Urn I lean’d, the Secret of my Life to learn: And Lip to Lip it murmur’d—While you live, Drink!—for, once dead, you never shall return.’”

“Look, there’s a fire in the 10&11 block!” someone yelled.

We sauntered over to the window. At first there was no great excitement. “Hell, what’s to burn over there? They’re still working on that block.”

“There’s all that wooden scaffolding and stuff where they’re pouring the concrete.”

“Let her burn. There ain’t nobody in there.”

“And the 7&8 block is fireproof.”

“Fireproof and every other kind of proof.”

“There ain’t nothing to burn in that 7&8 block but the convicts.”

From the dormitory window we could see the north end of the 7&8 cell house. As we watched, talking and excited, the smoke thickened, rolled up from the roof, came out of the windows. Behind the smoke the sun set, red and majestic. Fire trucks came in through the stockade. We could hear the clang of the bells, the motor roar. We could see convicts beginning to run across the yard. Negro convicts came running from the coal company in a sudden surge, carrying blankets in their arms. Then white convicts came running from the dining-room company, around the corner of the dining room, cutting across the yard toward the burning cell house. Guards came running. Everyone was running. In all that mob that passed before our view I did not see a single person walking. Excitement ate into us, watching from the window, gutted our control.

“That’s bad!” someone said. “That’s bad! That’s too much smoke!”

Someone else said, “Goddammit, I’m going out! My brother’s in 5-8. I’m going out! Everybody else is already out. I’m going out, goddammit, I’m going out!” He broke away from the jam and ran toward the door.

“I’m going out too,” I said, breaking after him.

The day guard was standing in front of the door. “Get out of the way, I’m going out!” the convict said.

“We’re going out!” I said.

“You can’t go out,” the guard said.

“The hell I can’t!” the convict said. He swung a long arched right and hit the guard just below the eye. The guard drew back his stick and the convict caught it in the air. I hit the guard in the stomach, as hard as I could with my left. I was excited out of my reason. The guard grunted, “Umph!” and doubled over. The convict came up with an uppercut and caught him in the face. I pushed him over to one side. Just as he fell the door opened from the outside and Nick came in, bareheaded and panting.

“Get some blankets, boys,” he gasped, in a ravished voice. “Hurry and get some blankets. The boys are burning to death over there. Oh God, the boys are burning to death over there. Oh God, it’s terrible, it’s awful, they’re burning to death in their cells.”

I snatched a blanket from a bunk and ran out of the door. Turning, I ran around the back of the hospital and started across the yard. Already the early night had settled over the prison. There was a wind blowing, making the air cool. I was coatless and hatless. I could feel the coolness of the air through my shirt, on my head.

Smoke rolled up from the burning cell house in black, fire-tinged waves. The wind caught it and pushed it down over the prison yard like a thick, gray shroud, so low you could reach up and touch it with your hand. Flames, shooting through the windows and the roof of the cell house, seen through the smoke, looked like red tongues stuck out at the black night. Buildings were shadows in the crazy pattern of yellow light that streaked the black blanket of smoke. It was startling to be out at night. The fire was startling. The night itself was startling—it was like something suddenly discovered—like the night itself had been suddenly discovered and the fire in the night had been discovered.

The front cell house stretching across the front of the prison was a big gray face of solid stone with grilled steel bars checkerboarding the yellow glow of windows. It was like a horizon about the night. The night stopped there.

When I came out into the yard I had the odd feeling that I could hear those convicts a hundred yards away, crying, “Oh, God! Save me! Oh, God! Save me!” over and over again. The words spun a sudden, cold-tight fear through my mind.

I looked up and the whole face of the yard was in my view. It was a mass of churning confusion. Thousands of convicts were loose on the yard. Everyone was running at top speed in a different direction, yelling to one another. Everybody was yelling and nobody was listening. In the background was the burning cell house and beside it the 7&8 cell house. The 7&8 cell house was like a huge, fire-eating monster sucking in the flame and smoke upon the writhing convicts in its belly. And beyond, down past the stockade behind the mills, was the gray stretch of walls, connecting the earth with the sky, closing in a world.