Cast the First Stone (23 page)

That was passive resistance—that mad surging degeneration of human beings.

And finally, as it had to be, there was a riot. None of the convicts who witnessed it thought that it was very much of a riot. But the papers carried headlines three inches tall. I wasn’t there. The night before I had gone to the hospital for an opiate. I couldn’t sleep. They had given me a shot of morphine. I just collapsed, they said.

What was known as the front gate was a series of heavily barred, interlocking anterooms, extending from the front offices through the front cell house to the prison yard. These rooms were at different levels and separated by heavily barred doors, electrically operated. The last of these rooms, just before entering the yard, was called the guards’ room. It was here that the guards were checked in and out when the shifts changed and here they left their coats and parcels which they were not permitted to take inside. A guard remained on duty in this room at all hours to operate the gate that opened into the yard. The guard whose duty it was to operate the gate leading to the next room sat on the other side of the second gate. The last three gates were operated from the warden’s office, out front.

The guards’ room was flanked by the stair wells of the 3&4 cell block and the 5&6 dormitories. There were bars in between. The convicts could see through the bars into the guards’ room.

The riot was started by an argument between a convict in the 3&4 stair well and a guard sergeant in the guards’ room. Some convict on 2-3, hearing the argument, shouted down to the convict, “Aw, hit him in the mouth.” The convict couldn’t possibly hit the guard who was standing some distance on the other side of the bars, so the suggestion was rhetorical. But it made the sergeant mad. He snatched out his pistol and fired several shots in the direction of 2-3, wounding an innocent convict in the arm. The shooting brought the whole surging mass of convicts out of their cells. They charged down the stairs and pushed against the bars, screaming epithets at the guards.

A number of guardsmen rushed in from the yard and forced the convicts back up on the ranges at bayonet point Machine guns were mounted in the stair well and at the head of each range. Finally the convicts were forced into the cells and warned that if they came out on the range they would be shot. That was the riot. But it gave the warden a chance to say that the convicts were disorderly and he blew it up.

That night the guardsmen constructed a wire-enclosed stockade on the ball diamond and set up two rows of pup tents. They strung lights around the wire enclosure and placed machine guns in each corner. The next morning the major and his staff deployed the guardsmen in battle formation about the yard, and all the way to the stockade. The convicts were then taken from the 3-4 cell block and marched down to the stockade. The other convicts stood about in vantage points, keeping their distance from the soldiers, and watched. It was done very quietly.

That afternoon I awakened and was released from the hospital I noticed immediately that the convicts had become subdued.

That night the convicts in the stockade set fire to their tents. The guardsmen let the tents burn down. They didn’t replace them. After that the convicts in the stockade had to sleep in the open on the ground.

Slowly the routine was re-established. The major ordered a nine-o’clock curfew. Notices were posted that anyone seen on the yard after nine o’clock at night would be shot on sight. No one was shot, but it was risky business running that blockade at night. Once Blocker and I dropped a bag of merchandise, running from one dormitory to another, but were afraid to go back after it.

Two days after the riot the convicts in the stockade were put on short rations. The guardsmen began corralling the remainder of the convicts. The convicts were gathered from a dormitory or cell block and lined up on the yard. They were required to give their names and numbers and were then assigned to companies. The guards returned to take over the companies. Many of the convicts hid out in the industrial buildings and the burnt cell house to keep from being put back into the companies. But most of them were caught trying to slip into the dining room.

When Blocker and I were caught I told of being a patient of the industrial commission. Blocker was humpbacked. We were put over in 1-6 dormitory with the cripples. The convicts in the dormitories upstairs kept me very nervous by throwing buckets of water and bottles down at the soldiers on the first floor. Although the guardsmen were youngsters their officers weren’t. The top sergeant, in charge of the soldiers in the dormitory, was very tough. He told the convicts that the first time one of his boys was hit he was going to smoke them out. Sure enough, when one youngster got hit on the head with a pop bottle the sergeant took his squad up there and brought those convicts out like rats. He kicked them down the stairs so fast they piled up three-high on the landing. After that it was very quiet in the dormitories.

I was getting very tired of all the death and violence. It was a relief when they split up the dormitory and moved the real cripples down to the tag-warehouse basement. Blocker and I were moved with the others. All we had to do was stay inside the thick brick walls and keep out of everybody’s way. I was grateful. It was the dormitory where the coal company had bunked before the fire.

Before then I had always had a physical aversion toward people who had lost their legs or arms or eyes. I had always been slightly repulsed by the sight of anything deformed. But down there in the cripple company I got over it. I learned to take those twisted, one-legged, one-armed, peg-legged, crutch-walking, evil, cranky, crippled convicts as I did any others.

I jumped up in our poker game once and shouted at a fellow, “I’ll take something and knock your goddamned brains out. Don’t think I’m going to be light on you because you only got one arm.” Before I knew what was happening he had taken his one arm and slapped me off the bench. He had his knife out and was over me and if it hadn’t been for several fellows grabbing him he might have cut my throat. I found out that those cranky devils didn’t expect anyone to be light on them. One of the cripples could snatch off his peg leg quicker than a man could draw a knife, and brain you while standing on one leg. They said that the deputy used to lock his peg leg up for a week when he became too unmanageable.

Suddenly the prison got tough. The convicts in the stockade were labeled agitators and returned to the 3&4 block where they were kept locked, day and night, in their cells. Their food was brought over twice a day from the dining room and kicked beneath their door.

The Committee of Nine were rounded up and put in the hole. Most of us had forgotten the committee by the end of that year, but even then, those who had not died were still in the hole. They said that Dunlap hung himself. One went blind. Three died of tuberculosis. The convicts who had cheered them when they had been in power said later they were fools to try to fight the warden.

The committee and the convicts in the 3&4 cell block took the fall. They took the fall for everything that had happened or would happen or had ever happened. They took the fall for all the humiliation which the warden had suffered from the roastings he received from the newspapers. They took the fall for the rout of discipline, for the starting of the fire, for the convicts who were burnt to death. They took the fall and the warden weathered the storm.

The guard personnel was changed. A few of the old guards returned, and under the protection of the soldiers, they became insufferable. But most of the new guards who were hired were young, athletic fellows—ham prize fighters, second-rate wrestlers, neighborhood bullies, clip-joint bouncers, psychopathic vets and big beefy red-faced ex-coppers who had been kicked out of various police departments for cruelty. The ex-coppers were hired as guard lieutenants. Twelve yard lieutenants took the place of the sergeants. Cody was made the head lieutenant. Cody had not been seen within the prison since the day before the fire. But when he returned he was the same Cody. Another lieutenant was called Pick Handle Slim. He was an ex-railroad dick. He got his name from beating frozen hobos to death with a hickory pick handle he carried with him. He was a tall, flat-chested, maniacal Texan. There was a lieutenant called Dog Back. He was from Arkansas. There was a lieutenant called the Hangman. He was a sadistic little gray-haired kill-crazy man. All of them were as tough as a man can be when he’s got the law on his side, and the only gun, and orders to whip a convict’s head as long as his head will last.

“Talking in line!” one would say, jerking the convict out.

“But. lieutenant, I ain’t said—” And before he could finish he’d have his skull split open and be stretched his length on the ground.

There was a bull-necked, ax-faced yard captain with the title of director. He had a gas-tank belly and a mile of shoulders and a Mussolini complex. His uniform was always immaculate; his Sam Browne belt polished, his mustache waxed, his brass buttons shined. He strutted about the yard, with Gout trotting at his heels like a yellow dog.

All of those convicts who had stayed out in the freedom of the yard and kidded Blocker and me because we let them get us in the cripple company now broke for the protection of our company like rats from a sinking ship. But there was only room for a few. Most got caught in the awful grind.

The yard became physically dangerous. A convict ran the risk of being killed by marching across the yard silently in line, obeying every order that was given him. Those young, crazy hacks, given authority for the first time in their lives, were unpredictable. They had been taken from the streets and suddenly given power of life and death over companies of convicts. They got to be so tough they would go in the hospital and discharge dangerously sick patients on their own authority. They’d put convicts in the hole without anyone’s permission or knowledge.

One Sunday afternoon nine young guards went up on 2-3 because some unidentified convict had cursed at a guard whom he could not see and did not recognize. They started at the first cell and took the convicts out on the range, one at a time, and beat them all into semi-consciousness and locked them back in their cells. When the night crew came on at six o’clock they found fourteen delirious, bloody-headed convicts in the cells along with the others who were injured less severely. The night captain came over and inspected them and decided they had been fighting among themselves. He took the fourteen delirious men over and locked them in the hole. Two died before morning. Six went crazy, they said. We were very fortunate that only the lieutenants were permitted to carry pistols. A great number of convicts owed their lives to this fact.

A riot squad had been created. They consisted of twelve armed guards and a lieutenant in charge. During the day, when the convicts marched across the yard, they stood at attention in front of the Protestant chapel. Each wore a ring-handled forty-five in a side holster. The two at each end carried knapsacks of tear-gas bombs. Those next to them held submachine guns propped at their thighs, while the four in the center held riot guns at rabbit-shooting angles. At the least sign of a commotion in the lines they’d dash across the yard and level down on the entire company. God help a convict who got out of place. It was power on parade, and an ever-present reminder that the wages of rioting was death. Rioting was a term which covered a multitude of minor infractions, the wages of most of which were death.

“Look at the toys,” the convicts would whisper as they marched down the other side of the yard. “All they need is a tree over them and you’d think it was Christmas.”

“All they need is dirt over them and I’d know damn well it was Christmas.”

“Hell, take one man with one gun—”

“Step out of line, Burke!” the guard would order. “I saw you talking.” Burke would step out of line. Four men from the riot squad would dash across the yard. Too bad Burke didn’t have that one gun.

The deputy’s wings had been clipped. He had been shorn of all authority for condoning the actions of the Committee of Nine. He was the deputy warden only in name. And only that because he had powerful friends in the welfare department and the warden couldn’t fire him. Now the director held court. Gout, looking like a bloated frog in dog harness, had been demoted to transfer clerk and the director’s boy.

It was now the warden’s prison. He owned it. “I hold the destiny for you four thousand convicts in the palm of my hand,” he said. He did not lie. They said he was afraid to come into the yard. A hundred different convicts had sworn separately that the moment he stepped into the yard they’d hang a knife in his ribs. One day when the lines were marching from the dining room he came into the yard and stood to one side of the main walk, talking casually to two visitors. Three thousand convicts marched past his turned back within touching distance. He never stopped talking nor did he once look around. They were his convicts.

16

E
VER SINCE THE
first of the year there had been talk of the laws being changed. It had begun as soon as the new governor had taken office. The newspapers were mostly for the change. There were enough amateur penologists around to fill the prison, but most of them were loose. In the late summer after the bills had been drawn up by the legislative committee the
Prison Times
had been filled with it each week. So when it actually happened we were pretty much prepared for it. But still, the night when word came in that the state legislature had passed the first of the three bills you could hear us yelling all the way to town.

At the time we were celling in 2-2. During the prison reorganization we’d been moved three times, first to the 1-6 dormitory and then upstairs to 3-6 dorm, and finally over to the four-man cells on 2-2. We cripples had been a great problem during that get-tough period. We couldn’t work; they couldn’t whip our heads. They didn’t know what to do with us. Finally they hid us over on 2-2 where they didn’t have to watch us goldbricking, and labeled us “agitators.”

It was about ten o’clock at night when we got word that the bill had passed. The yelling began in the front dormitories, where the news came first, and in five minutes the whole prison had it. We jumped from our bunks and clung to the bars and cut loose. We scraped our buckets on the bars, banked our stools against the doors. The morning papers said that all available police had been rushed in riot cars to the prison, and the army camp had been alerted.