Through the Shadows with O'Henry

by Эл Дженнингс

  It was the first time I had ever heard Porter speak of Maralatt, the Prison Demon, yet he had perhaps to sponge him off two or three times a week. Maralatt was the untamed tiger of the "stir." He was the prison horror. He had attacked and stabbed a dozen guards.

  For fourteen years he had been in solitary, practically buried alive in the black hole in the basement without a bed, without blankets, without light.

  When the guards would attempt to clean out the cell Ira would spring at them. They would overpower him, beat him and hang him up by the wrists. Still he was unsubdued. He kept the prison in recurring spasms of fright.

  No one knew who would be his next victim. He was as ferocious as a mad bull.

  I had never seen him. Porter's exclamation filled me with curiosity. I went over the next evening to ask him about Maralatt. We were standing in one of the wards just above the punishment cell.

  A sudden wild, terrific scream, tortured and agonized, split the air. There was a frenzied scuffle, a booming thud, and a guard's voice shrilled out in frantic terror.

  Porter's tranquil face quivered. "Maralatt," he whispered. "Murder at last!"

  The next morning excitement shot like a flash from face to face. A big secret was out. Maralatt had nearly strangled a guard the night before. He was to be moved from his dungeon in solitary to a steel cage built in solid stone at the end of the east corridor.

  For months they had been building the cage. It was a revolting thing, made as if to house some ferocious jungle beast. It opened into a niche in the stone about four by eight feet. In the niche Ira was to sleep.

  We got the tip from the warden's office. I had been sent on a message across the campus. I came into the alley-like corridor, passing a few guards. A look of riven terror held them staring and silent. Their frightened eyes were fastened on the door that led to the solitary cells.

  The door sprang open, and a spectacle to freeze the heart with its terrific and grisly horror was before us. I saw the Prison Demon. Hulk-shouldered, gigantic, lurched forward, he towered above the dozen guards like a huge, ferocious gorilla-man.

  I could see his face. The hair was matted about him, the clothes torn in ragged strips.

  The guards stood at a distance, pushing him forward with long poles. They stood on either side. The demon could not escape. At the ends of the poles were strong iron hooks, fastened into his flesh, and as the guards pushed the hooks jagged into the prisoner's bones. He was compelled to walk.

  On his foot was the monstrous Oregon boot. Every step must have been an agony. There was no sound from the Prison Demon. Across the grass to the new-made dungeon in the old A and B block the hellish procession took its way. Ira Maralatt was riveted to his steel cage and a sign, "Prison Demon," pasted above the grating.

  The Prison Demon became an attraction at the penitentiary. His fame spread over the city—almost over the State. He was known as the brute man—the hell fiend. Visitors wanted a sight of him. The old warden saw a chance to turn a penny.

  For 25 cents citizens were taken down the east corridor and allowed to stare at the degraded thing that had once been a man.

  Ira was not a willing party to the bargain. He had a mean habit of crouching down in the far corner of his black cage and cheating the visitors of their money's worth. One day a distinguished citizen stood in the alley half an hour waiting for the demon to exhibit himself. Threats and prods from the guards were fruitless. The matter was reported to the warden. Incensed and blustering, he came running down the corridor.

  "Open the door," he called to one of the guards. No one moved. They did not dare obey the order.

  "Open the door," Coffin yelled, snatching the club from one of the guards. He sprang into the cage, the club raised, rushing furiously toward the crouching giant in the corner.

  "Come out, you fiend!" he bawled. The Demon reared, hurled himself upright and lunged with the violence of a raging Colossus against the warden. The sudden mad impact bowled the warden over.

  Ira snatched the club and flung it forth for a crashing blow on Coffin's head. Two guards dashed into the cage, caught Ira by the feet and sent him thundering backward against the wall.

  The visitor got his 25 cents' worth that day.

  The warden's escape was little short of a miracle. It taught him a lesson. He devised a safer scheme for bringing Maralatt out of his wretched hole. From a window in the inner hall he had a hose attached to the cage. It would send down a storming current of ice-cold water that would cut the flesh of the cowering Demon.

  Ira would come roaring like an infuriated lion to the bars of the cage. He would grab the steel in his mighty hands, shaking it, and filling the alley with wild, maniac screams.

  This practice continued two or three months. The new warden came in, took down the sign from Ira's cage and prevented the shameful exhibits.

  The sequel to Ira's tragic history came many months later, after I had been appointed private secretary to Warden W. N. Darby. Darby had a kind, magnificent sympathy in his enthusiastic nature. He had an eager ear for suggestions, even from the meanest convict. A chance incident opened the dark book of Ira Maralatt's ghastly life.

  One evening I was walking down the east corridor on my way to the asylum. I had taken an apple from the warden's table where I ate. I was bringing the fruit to a poor fellow in the prison "bughouse." He had lost his mind and his eyesight in the hoe polishing shop. The hoes were polished on emery wheels.

  Millions of steel particles darted about, often puncturing the convicts in the face and neck. The sparks had gotten this poor devil in the forehead and eyes. I used to bring him an extra bit to eat.

  As a I passed the prison demon's cage I caught a glimpse of a haggard face at the low opening into the stone cell. Like a dumb, pathetic apparition, wretched and uncertain, the lumbering figure groped from corner to corner. The red, sunken eyes seemed to be burning deep into the smeared and pallid cheeks.

  One hand that was but a mammoth yellow claw was pressed against the rough mat of black hair. More like a hurt and broken Samson than like a hell fiend Ira Maralatt looked as his eye met mine in startled fear.

  Something in the defenseless misery of his glance held me. I ran back to his cage, took the apple from my pocket, pressed it through the bars, rolling it over to Maralatt. He drew back. I called softly to him.

  "There's an apple for you, Ira." He made no answer. I stepped into a shadow in the corridor and waited.

  In a moment I saw the huge creature creeping stealthily forward on his hands and knees. The great yellow claw reached out. The broken cuff and link on his arm clanked on the cement. The chain was imbedded into his wrist and the flesh bulged out over it. The hand closed over the apple. The Demon leaped back to his corner.

  After that I felt myself drawn to the Prison Demon's cage. Ira no longer seemed a fiend to me, but an abused and tormented human. I sat outside his cell and called to him. He must have recognized my voice, for he came creeping with a hunching ing swiftness to the front of the cage. He always went on all fours.

  "Did you like the apple, Ira?" He looked up at me, as though a thought were struggling in his mind. He did not answer, but sat there watching me. Then he shook his shaggy head and crept back to the stone niche.

  I thought I would ask Bill Porter about him. Whenever Ira had been beaten Bill, as the hospital attendant, had been called in to revive him. The theme nauseated Porter. The memory of the raw and bleeding flesh he had so many times sponged sent a shudder of revulsion through him.

  "Don't speak of it. This place becomes more unendurable each moment. I try to write in the night. Some wretch, racked with unbearable pain, screams out. It goes like a cold blade to the throat. It comes into my story like a death rattle in the midst of a wedding. Then I can work no longer."

  "But you saw Ira and watched him more than others. Is he a demon?"

  "Colonel, the man should be in an insane asylum, not in a prison. There's something pressing on his brain. That's my opinion."
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  I felt satisfied with the verdict. Every night I used to go down to Ira's cage, bringing him pieces of biscuit or meat from the warden's table. In a little while I knew that Ira counted on these visits. I would find him waiting for me.

  This wild man, who had become a thing of terror with his hand against his fellows, would be sitting close to the bars, his glowing, uncomprehending eyes peering with a glance of cringing supplication for my coming.

  He would take the biscuits from my hands and eat them before me. For fourteen years no one had ever seen the Prison Demon eat. His food would be shoved through the grating. He would not touch it. In the night he would drag it into his cell.

  We would talk about the prison. Ira could answer intelligently. Then I would try to draw his history from him. I could hardly ever get more than three or four words. He couldn't remember. He would point to his head and press his hand against it.

  We knew that Ira was in for murder, that he had choked a man to death. No one knew the circumstances leading to the crime. No one had ever cared. I thought I would send a letter to some friends if he had any. They might help him.

  "Don't know. Head hurts," he would answer in a guttural indistinct voice. "Got a lick on the head once. Coal car hit me.

  Night and night, after the most laborious pauses, he would give me the same answers. He wanted to remember. When he failed he would press his powerful hands together and turn to me in abject, appealing despair. But once he seemed to have a gleam of recollection.

  I became absorbed in piecing together the solitary words he muttered. I must have been sitting there half an hour. A runner from the warden came shouting down the main corridor for me.

  "Where in hell have you been serenading?" Darby thundered. On a quick impulse I told him of the demon and the apple.

  "Ira's only a poor demented creature. He got a lick on the head once. He's harmless as an infant if you handle him right."

  Darby looked at me as though I were mad.

  "It's a fact. He eats out of my hand."

  "If that's true then I'll take him out of there."

  We went down the next morning to the cage. The warden ordered the door opened. I could see the dark outlines of Ira's figure. The guard was frightened. Darby took the key, turned the lock and stepped forward. If he had suddenly flung himself under a moving engine, death would not have seemed more certain. Ira drew back, hesitated, then leaped with all his mighty bulk toward Darby.

  "Ira!" I shouted. The massive figure stiffened as though an electric voltage had suddenly gone through him. The Prison Demon dropped his arm to the ground and came creeping toward me.

  "Be good, Ira," I whispered.

  The warden braced himself. We went into the tiny cell room. The stench and filth of the hole came up like a sickening wave against us. "Come outside, Ira," the warden said. I nodded. "If I give you a good job, Ira, will you behave?"

  It was the first time Ira had heard a kind word from a prison official. He looked about, his eyes narrowing distrustfully, and began to edge away from the warden.

  "He'll treat you square, Ira."

  The towering giant could have crushed me in his two hands. He was about a foot taller than I, but he shuffled along at my side, looking down at me with a meek docility that filled the guards with wonder.

  The warden made straight for the hospital, ordered good food and skilled attention for the Demon. Three weeks later the Ohio penitentiary had a soft- tongued Hercules in the place of the insensate beast that had been Ira Maralatt. The doctors had found the skull pressing on the brain, operated and removed the "dent" that had sent Ira into his mad fits of murderous, unreasoning rage. Memory returned to him. Ira told a story, moving and compelling in its elemental tragedy.

  He had been an iron puddler in the steel mills of Cleveland. Before a furnace, vast and roaring as a hell pit, the half -nude puddler works, stirring the molten iron. He breathes in a red hot, blasting hurricane. He moves in a bellowing clamor louder than the shout of a thousand engines. Only the strongest can withstand the deafening tumult, the scorching air of that bedlam. Ira Maralatt was one of these.

  There came a strike in the mills. Ira went home to his wife. He had been married but a year. They had been paying down on a little home. Ira could get no work. The walkout dashed their hopes.

  "I'm going to Canaltown, to the mines," he told the girl- wife one day. "I'll be back as soon as it's settled." She walked with him to the gate. He never saw her again. When Ira returned to the little home all that had been dear and sacred to him was gone.

  In West Virginia Maralatt got a job in the coal mines. He was working near one of the pillars. A coal car shot along the tracks to the chutes to be filled. The car with its tonnage started down the grade.

  Just at the pillar it should have switched. Instead, it came heading straight toward Ira. Further down the track twenty men were working. The car, with the tremendous speed of the runaway, would have crushed them to a pulp.

  There was one chance of escape for them. Ira took it. The gigantic hands went out, caught the bolting car and with a smashing force sent the top-heavy four-wheeler sideways.

  In the terrible impact Ira caromed against the wall of the mine. The lives of twenty men were saved. The mashed and unconscious form of the gigantic Maralatt was dragged out and sent to the hospital.

  Without a thought of himself and his own life, Ira Maralatt had hurled himself across the path of the runaway coal car. If he had died his fellows would have exalted the memory of the man whose splendid courage had saved twenty lives. Ira lived but the sacrifice took a dearer thing than mere existence. It gave him not honor, but a shameful brand. He became the Prison Demon.

  After the tragic disaster in the coal mine, Ira lay for months in the hospital. He was finally sent out as cured.

  The strike at the steel mills had been settled. Back to Cleveland and the little home the iron puddler went.

  There was a pathway, hedged with cowslips, leading up to the door. Ira walked quickly, meaning to surprise the wife who had not heard from him in the months he had been at the hospital.

  There were new curtains at the window. A hand rustled muslin drapery aside. A strange face looked with doubtful question on the man at the hedge.

  "Good morning, sir," the woman said.

  "Good morning, indeed," Maralatt answered, mystified and startled.

  "Who lives here?"

  "What's that to you?" the woman snapped.

  "This is my home and my wife's!" Suddenly excited and trembling, Ira turned upon the strange woman.

  "Where is my wife?" Where is Dora Maralatt?"

  "Oh, her! She's gone. I don't know where. Got put out. Are you the missing husband?" the woman sneered. "Well, there's your bag and baggage over in the lot there!" With a laughing shrug, she pushed the curtain to its place.

  Over in the lot, dumped out like a rubbish heap, Maralatt found the remnants of his home. There was the chest with the wrought-steel corners he had given Dora for a birthday gift—there was the dining-room table and the six chairs that had been the pride of the girl's heart. There, too, was a thing Ira had never seen before—a clothes basket tied with pink stuff and ribbons.

  Distracted, enraged, like one suddenly demented, he ran back to the cottage door and banged on the panel.

  "Go away from here with your noise," the woman called. "I'll have you arrested!"

  "Open the door," Maralatt stormed, "please, I'll not come in. Open it just a moment. My wife, did you see her go? Is she alive? Tell me just that. How long is she gone? Where can she be?"

  The woman softened. "Don't get so excited and I'll tell you. She went out alive. But she was pretty well done in. She looked about gone. I don't know where she went. Maybe she's dead now."

  "The baby—did it die, too?"

  "I don't know about that. She left before it was born. "Well, now, I'm sorry for you, poor fellow, but I don't know where she is. I'll tell you—you might go down to the landlord. He knows. He's the o
ne that ordered those things dumped out. He's down at the same old office."

  Before the words were out of her mouth Maralatt bolted down the path, tearing like a wild man through the streets. "Where's my wife?" Where's Dora Maralatt? Where's the girl you put out of the bungalow on the hill?"

  In a rushing fury the questions tumbled from his lips. The agent looked at him with contemptuous insult. "Who let this maniac into the office? Throw him out?"

  The order calmed Maralatt. He leaned forward, touching the man's hand. "Excuse me, I'm a bit excited. I've been away. You know me, don't you? I was buying that little cottage on C street. I've been sick. I came back. I can't find my wife.

  Could you tell me where she is? They say you put her out."

  "Oh, you're the missing puddler! Well, you've lost the house. Yes, the woman was put out. I remember it all now. She made a fuss about it. We had to throw her out."

  "Where is she?" Maralatt was breathing quick and short in a choking panic. "Where's my wife gone?"

  "Oh, get out of here! The house is lost. What do I care about your wife. Why didn't you stick around and look after her?"

  "Well, you put her out, didn't you? Where did she go to?"

  "The damn' scrub's in hell, where she ought to be! Who cares about your------ of a wife anyway! Get out of here!"

  The balance slipped. A blood-crazed panther, Maralatt, leaped over the counter, "My what of a wife! What—what—what—you damned scoundrel! My wife— what? Say it again! You thief, you villain, say it again!"

  Iron hands swooped the agent from the floor, wrenching the neck as though it were but a chicken's. Back and forth until the skin on the scarlet cheeks was like to burst, Maralatt knocked that grasping head. It took three officers to break those hands loose from the dead man's throat.

  A foaming maniac, Maralatt was knocked insensible, thrown into the patrol wagon, and taken off to the station house.