Cell 2455, Death Row

by Caryl Chessman

  Sponge-like, Whit sopped up both practical and academic knowledge from correspondence courses and school classes. He read voraciously, particularly the works of the philosophers. He read of the gentle Nazarene and of the cat-faced Florentine, Niccolo Machiavelli. He read and studied and thought. He enrolled in the typing class. The teacher, an elderly, fidgety gossipy woman, seated him before an old typewriter, handed him a typing book opened to the first lesson and then, regarding her job done, walked away, back to her desk. Undismayed, he taught himself to type, and won a job in the assistant superintendent’s office as an inmate clerk.

  Whit worked willingly, cheerfully, keeping his brooding thoughts to himself, his eyes and ears open, determined to learn all there was to know about the school’s administration and its personnel. He soon added the word “nepotism” to his vocabulary and its practical meaning became clear to him. Because, seeking, he found too much, cynicism formed an essential ingredient of his philosophy—not an affected, surface cynicism, but a cynicism that lay deep and hidden inside him.

  Without suspecting it, the free personnel became his implacable enemies. The sincere and honest ones, comprising the majority, piqued him with their myopic innocence.

  When you least expected it, it rose and smote you between the eyes. One Sunday Whit attended the services conducted by the Protestant chaplain, who meant well and undoubtedly did good. Holy Joe, most inmates called him. As a thundering condemnation of sin was being delivered from the pulpit, a homosexual in the back row seat slid down and committed an act of sex perversion on four boys, one after the other. Practically every inmate in the church knew what was going on; the chaplain and the supervisor present didn’t. Things like that —even when you had no part in them—made you wonder. They made it temptingly easy to sneer. Or to vomit.

  Release from the school on parole was granted the inmate after he earned five thousand credits, which then took an average of fourteen mondis. Credits were given, in varying amounts, for maintaining a satisfactory work record, for school and church attendance, turning in lost keys, being in a company diat won a competitive drill, catching anodier inmate who attempted to escape (as mentioned earlier) and for other reasons. They were lost, also in varying amounts, for a violation of the rules. Any employee could “write-up” an inmate. The inmate was written up on a “slip” and the slips were turned in to the chief detail officer, who supervised custody and discipline.

  The chief detail officer marked on the slip the number of credits to be forfeited and forwarded it to the assistant superintendent’s secretary, a young woman in whose office Whit worked. These slips were kept in a locked drawer of the secretary’s desk until the credit forfeitures were posted in a master book.

  Whit had no difficulty in picking the lock on that desk. He had his own sense of justice. The slips of his friends and those he regarded as right he destroyed as often as he could, and with a great deal of satisfaction. The slips against the snitches, the rats, the escape-catchers and others of that breed, he left. So far as he was concerned such characters would have to look out for themselves. They were on their own.

  And all the while Whit was learning his lessons, making his adjustment to the school in his own way, applying a studied “why?” to almost every situation.

  He adapted and he hardened. He looked out for himself. He had the guts and the flexibility and the cunning to do that. And he didn’t mind getting hurt, getting his face beaten out of shape. That was a relatively cheap price to pay to keep his entity and his integrity. But look what happened to those who were less cunning, who couldn’t stand physical pain, who couldn’t resist the tyranny of those who specialized in degradation. Well, if society didn’t seem to care what happened to them, why should he?

  Why? Because of guys like Skinny, that was why.

  Skinny, the scrawny hater, became his friend. Skinny hated everybody and everything. Skinny said the gods were dead. He often raised his tortured eyes to the heavens and blasphemed his Creator until he ran out of breath. He argued with Whit—and he worshipped him, and he hated himself because he did. He was afraid of friendship; afraid because he feared he would betray it, because everything except hate and cynicism was an illusion. “They know you got brains and they’ll use you,” Skinny told Whit bitterly. “They’ll use a lot of sweet talk to split you off. They’ll tell you to look out for yourself.”

  Whit interrupted. “Sure they will, Skin, only they’ll be wasting breath.”

  “They got a lot of breath to waste,” Skinny said wryly, thawing out.

  Whit grinned. “Social halitosis never reformed anybody.”

  • 12 •

  I Can Kill!

  Playboy they called him, and he liked the name. At twenty he was the budding personification of what he fancied himself—a pimp. A tall stringbean with rather oily good looks, he was one of those at the school who spent full time looking out for himself. If this happened to be at the expense of another or others, well—so what? It was dog eat dog. He flattered and did favors for the bad dukes and those inmates who carried any weight—and readily, neatly doublecrossed them whenever it was to his advantage and he didn’t think he’d get caught doing so. He kept The Man’s favor by passing along whatever he heard he thought The Man might like to know. Of course, when The Man turned his back the words came out of the other side of Playboy’s mouth. With the ladies—the female employees—he was a perfect gentleman. So long as they were within seeing and hearing distance, that is. When they weren’t around, he had some fantastic tales to relate how they were falling over one another in their desire to bestow their favors upon him.

  To quite a few of the inmates, Playboy was a hero of no small stature. To Whit he was another question mark. How was it that characters like Playboy were such a success in this world while the Skinnys were such a failure? And what made the Playboys tick? How did they get that way in the first place?

  Whit decided to find out. He decided he should know. He didn’t realize at the time what certain kinds of knowledge can do to you. So he cultivated Playboy and drew him out.

  This fledgling pimp usually prefaced all his conversations with an observation on womankind: “Stand ’em on their heads and they all look the same.” And to Playboy every female under discussion was a bitch. (Not discussed, of course, were the listener’s mother, sisters, girl friend or wife.) “When I hit the bricks this time I’m going to get me a stable of high-class bitches,” Whit was told.

  Then Whit learned that Playboy’s idea of the good life was to acquire—this required a practiced eye—a number of voluptuous courtesans, install them in expensive “houses,” put in a fix with the bulls, establish himself in a swank apartment, ride around in a Cadillac convertible, play the ponies and hobnob with others of the pimping gentry. That, man, was really living!

  Playboy gave assurance he was no lunch-bucket pimp. He had no time for ordinary hustlers—women of the world who bartered their charms on street corners, in bars and other such common places. And he had connections; he knew where the right houses were and the people who ran them; in L.A. he knew pimpdom’s wheels. Moreover, he was versed in the pimping arts; an old hand had perceived his potential and had taught him the tricks of the trade. If Whit was interested, Playboy could knock him down (introduce him) to those worth knowing. And when Whit feigned a polite skepticism that Playboy could be the possessor of such a useful fund of information, Playboy was so ill-advised as to name names, to give addresses, to furnish details. And Whit smiled, nodded and filed this intelligence away in his mind.

  How did Playboy happen to aspire toward pimpdom’s lush heights? Well, therein hung a tale. He admitted he hadn’t always been big time. (This was a preliminary admission which assisted in demonstrating how unerringly his pimping genius had asserted itself at the proper time.) Seems there’d been a married broad in the district where he lived; not old, maybe twenty-five or thirty, and not bad looking, “a sexy bitch, with hot pants.” Playboy and the lady hooked up. He told his fr
iends of his find and they enjoined him to cut them in. An accommodating sort, Playboy did so—for a reasonable fee. Oh, sure, the gal had posed the question of the proprieties in having highschool boys beating a path to her door, particularly when rumors reached her of the commercial aspects of the project. But Playboy soft conned her. Didn’t she love him? Well, what was wrong with doing a few friends a favor? Confident that she would succumb to such unanswerable—if not exactly Aristotelian—logic, but still a thorough campaigner, Playboy allowed as how he also “told the bitch I might not be able to keep some of the disappointed guys from letting her old man know what’s been going on with us.”

  Flushed with success, Playboy grew more ambitious—and more ruthlessly avaricious. One bitch wasn’t enough. He began casting about for more. For younger, unsuspecting ones he could break in right. He narrated, in elaborate detail, how he converted them into “two-way bitches.” He recited with some satisfaction how he had broken the will of the sexy bitch and compelled her to aid him. Playboy thought it real funny that her old man had tried to commit suicide when he got wise, and that she had ultimately been committed to an insane asylum. He further assured Whit that part of his enthusiasm for pimping derived from the fact that “you make the bitch do what you tell her, and like it, or you kick her teeth out.”

  Oh, sure, it’s an attractive calling! Who can deny that? And it’s an addiction, too, like a shot of “H” in the main line. You get so you got to have it. It’s a lust to degrade. It’s holding a whip and using it. It’s power—perverted, debased, but still power. It’s another part of the jungle. “You get the bitch drunk, see, and then you lay it on the line to her. You tell her what she’s going to do and how. And when she tells you she’s never done anything like that, you slap her a couple of times and tell her this is when she starts.”

  The darkness wasn’t black; it was red, a red so intense and thick it blotted out sight. It was the redness of molten lava spewing from an erupting volcano.

  “Hey, what’s the matter?” Playboy said. “You look sick.”

  “I’m O.K.,” Whit said. “Yeah, I’m just fine. Never felt better.” He brushed his forehead with his hand; it was wet with a cold perspiration. One thought obscured all others. It came to him with a perfect clarity: I can kill!

  He could be his own law: judge, prosecutor, jury, executioner. Even gravedigger, if necessary. He could grin and calmly pump slugs into the degraders, all of them. And never stop grinning. He could kill and kill and kill—but what would it prove? What did death prove? He could reach out and tear the life out of Playboy. And grin. But not know who was responsible for the world’s Playboys.

  Paradoxically, the realization he could kill was quieting. It brought Whit a new detachment and a satisfaction. Almost an impersonal satisfaction. And a neo-sanity from emotional bedlam. A violent calmness. The red haze receded. Slowly. Very slowly.

  Playboy came back into focus, but with a new face beneath his old one—a toad’s face.

  Whit’s voice was controlled, casual. “I just don’t think I got the qualifications to be a P.I.,” he said.

  Playboy nodded and observed as how those qualifications were for a fact rather rigid.

  One April morning in 1938 Whit was called to the detail grounds and told to go immediately to his company and get his personal property. “A court release just came through for you,” he was informed.

  A court release! That meant he was free, and no strings attached. He learned that the chief juvenile judge of the county from which he had been committed had ordered that he be turned loose unconditionally. His release seemed almost too good to be true.

  That evening Whit was in San Francisco, walking down Market Street, looking at the sights, getting the feel of his sudden new freedom. The next day he was home, and his homecoming was a happy one. For his part, Whit was glad to be with his mother and father again, and he knew they were equally glad to have him back with them. Not a word of censure did he hear. His parents’ sole concern was for his future and how it could be made a success. And they were immensely pleased at how sturdy and healthy he appeared. Although not tall, he had grown several inches and had put on weight.

  “And do you know something? I never had one attack of that darned asthma the whole time I was at the school!” How bright was the future—for a few days.

  He tried to see the chief juvenile judge who had ordered his release. Did he want to see the judge on business? Not exactly. He wanted to thank the judge and discuss a personal idea with him. The judge was busy. Couldn’t he come back another time? Yes, he could; and did. And the judge was busy; so couldn’t he come back another time? Yes, he could; but he didn’t.

  He borrowed his dad’s car and drove out to the juvenile hall. After waiting for almost an hour, he was permitted to see the lady juvenile court referee who originally had committed him to reform school. She appeared genuinely pleased to see him. She said she was sorry she could spare only a few minutes. Yes, he understood how jammed her calendar was. She said he was looking well—the school had been good for him, now hadn’t it? She hoped that he’d learned his lesson; she was sure he had; she was glad. The trouble was that some youngsters were obstinate: they just wouldn’t benefit by institutional training. (How good she was, how well-meaning, how humane, and yet how tragically innocent for all her years, degrees and position!) She simply would have to continue calling her calendar; but wouldn’t he stay for the next case, a particularly troublesome one?

  The boy who was brought in was a surly, angry lad with a freckled face and an air of defiance. His mother accompanied him, a tired, tried, plain-looking woman. The boy had a long record of minor offenses. Then he had been caught in a burglary. The best thing for him, said the lady judge, was a commitment to reform school. Whit was proof. The lady judge told the boy and his mother about Whit. Whit had learned his lesson. (It was very simple: you learned your lesson or you didn’t, and it was entirely up to you. Only it wasn’t very simple—it was very complicated—when you were the one learning the lesson.) Whit tried to say so; he failed, not because of a lack of words, but because of an absence of understanding. The surly, angry lad heard himself committed, glared at all the parties present and was led away. The mother left, crying softly. The lady judge thanked Whit, told him to come back from time to time and let her know how he was doing, said goodbye and wished him luck.

  Less than a week following his release from the school Whit began wheezing and grew increasingly short of breath. He lost his appetite and became thin again before his parents’ eyes. They worried when he went off by himself, staying away for hours at a time. He sat in a park nearby, in a deserted spot, listening to the wind rustling the leaves of the trees, watching cloud battalions scud across the sky above him. But mostly his eyes were turned inward, and he was only vaguely conscious of the grandeur of early spring. There were devils inside him. And he knew some of their names: philosophic anarchism, pluralism, empiricism.

  A society, a religion, even existence itself, when built upon fear, was false. Whit refused to concede it possessed any validity, particularly when maintained by force. But how did you demonstrate its invalidity? Whit thought of Nietzsche. The German’s advocacy of forcible self-assertion as a means of achieving perfection might prove to be just the mental battering ram he needed. He could use it to batter the gates of absolutism. And how he hated the absolutists! He hated them so passionately he would emulate them. His end would justify his means. Dead these four hundred years, Machiavelli, his friend Niccolo, would vouch for the efficacy of that cynical doctrine. And the means? Why, by declaring war in the jungle, of course. Of course.

  • 13 •

  And He Ran Faster

  “That boy’s a bad one. He’s about to go off the deep end again. I can tell by the funny look in his eye.”

  “Well, what can you expect? Surely you know his mother was abandoned on some church steps a day or two after she was born. The Cottles took the poor waif in and raised her in a God-fearin
g atmosphere.”

  “And they never knew who her parents were?”

  “Why, no, they never did. But if you ask me . . .”

  Ah, God; if you ask me! But I’m not asking you. I don’t care what you think. And damn your sly insinuations! There’s more than one kind of bastard.

  “Mom,” Whit said, “I want you to tell me every single thing you know about yourself.”

  Hallie told her son. She added that more than almost anything else in the world she had prayed that the mystery of her birth might one day be solved. But Mother and Dad Cottle, those stern puritans, had vigorously resisted any moves on her part to learn the truth. Trying to penetrate the mystery would be questioning God’s will. And that could produce calamitous results. It wasn’t done.

  Except by the Whits, the bad ones.

  He asked his grandmother about his mother. And he got a lecture instead of an answer. His grandmother warned him about Hell and told him about God. If he didn’t obey God’s commandments he would go to Hell; it would be there, in a kind of Dante’s Inferno, he would spend eternity, burning and burning and burning. The boy shouldn’t concern himself with the question of the parentage of “my little girl.” God knew best. The book should remain closed.

  Whit still wanted to know about his mother.

  The tiny old lady talked on and said nothing. She saw herself as the chosen instrument of God’s Charity. She and Dad Cottle had taken his mother in and raised her, never shirking their duty. Even so, the sins of the father had been visited upon her little girl. And wasn’t it written that this should be so?

  And wasn’t it written that the streets of hell are paved with good intentions?

  The wife of the Pasadena, California, Postmaster made an honest mistake. She parked her husband’s 1937 Ford V8 sedan at the curb of a busy Pasadena street one May morning in the year 1938, leaving the ignition key in it. When she returned from a brief shopping tour the car was gone. . . .