Cast the First Stone

by Chester Himes

  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

  EVER 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.

  It had all grown out of the fire. There had been a great deal of agitation about the congested condition of the prison due to the severe, harsh laws. Public sentiment had turned in favor of shorter sentences. Three bills were introduced that went through the legislature like a landslide.

  Those two hundred and seventy-seven convicts really did us a great service, even if they did have to die to do it.

  The first of the bills set a statutory minimum and maximum for all criminal felonies. It was retroactive. As a consequence the sentences of all convicts then serving time which exceeded the statutory minimum, reverted to the statutory minimum. The statutory minimum for robbery was ten years, the maximum twenty-five years. At the judge’s prerogative I had been sentenced to a twenty-year minimum. At the passage of the bill it reverted to ten years.

  The next bill, called the “good-time law,” provided for a graduated scale of time off for good behavior. This brought my ten years down to six years and five months. By these two bills thirteen years and seven months had been sliced from my minimum.

  The third bill instituted a new parole board of four members to take the place of the old parole board of three members. We were glad to see that old board go.

  The three bills were to take effect within sixty days. The Prison Times issued a special edition explaining the laws. The statutes were quoted in full and explained, item by item. A good-time scale had been drawn up for sentences of from one to twenty years minimum.

  By October the parole and record clerks had computed the amount of time each convict would be required to serve. Slips were put in the mail informing us when we would be eligible for parole. I got my slip among the first Our company guard brought them around with the evening’s mail. Briant, my cell mate, was doing second-degree life and he didn’t get any. They had to wait on a ruling by the attorney general. There were only the two of us in the cell at that time. We’d had others but they’d gone.

  I opened the envelope and read the single line that I would be eligible for a hearing by the parole board in May, 1952. I was so happy and excited I could hardly breathe. I was exultant. I had to talk to keep from leaping in the air. But, being a convict, I couldn’t say anything good about the legal processes. I had to beef or else not talk at all.

  “What the hell,” I said. “I’m supposed to be eligible in April. Those sons of bitches are trying to beat me out of a month.”

  Briant came
over, plumping the stump of his arm in the palm of his hand. “Let’s see.”

  I handed him the slip. “When did you come in?” he asked, with that quizzical expression he wore when he was getting ready to contradict you.

  “December.”

  “Did you come in the last or first of December?”

  “What the hell’s that got to do with it? You talk like a damned prosecutor.”

  “Unless you come in before the fifth of the month they don’t count it.”

  “They don’t need to count it,” I said. “Look here.” I got down the issue of the Prison Times that contained the good-time scale. “Figuring it out by this scale here, I’m supposed to serve six years, four months and eleven days. That would throw me up in April.”

  “They count the eleven days for a month,” he said. He had on that patient grin he wore when he was getting set for a long enjoyable argument. “That’s your month of April.”

  “That’s what I’m arguing about,” I said. “They count it for a month when it’s in their favor, but when it’s in our favor they won’t even count twenty-five days for a month.”

  “You’ve got a good argument,” he said, “but you’re wasting it on me.”

  Suddenly I was furious, boiling with all that hot rebellion I’d been feeling of late against the least thing that appeared to jeopardize my rights. I had become very conscious of my rights. I was also furious with Briant for not agreeing with me. I had been realizing for some time that I was losing my control. I would become raving mad at the slightest thing. I found it hard to take a direct order from a guard. And it burnt me up for anyone to find fault with me or disagree with anything I said. But I liked Briant. I didn’t want to be angry with him. “Goddammit, they figure every convict’s a fool,” I said. Briant took on that sanctimonious, exasperating, abiding look he wore when he realized that I was mad. He just looked at me and wouldn’t say anything else.

  I could hear the convicts’ excited voices as the guards passed out the slips on the other ranges.

  “Hey, Harry, when you make it for?”

  “I don’t know, I ain’t got my slip yet.”

  “Ain’t you guys getting your slips?”

  “The guard ain’t got down here yet.”

  “Say, hey, fellow, say, hey, cap, this ain’t mine.”

  “I got ‘em now, I got ‘em now, I got ‘em now, boy, I got ‘em now—Look out there, Broadway, here I come!”

  “January next year, man; I’m on the turn…”

  The whole cell house had come alive with voices. “Hey, Joe…! Hey, Charley…! Hey, Soldier…! Hey, Ray…!” All asking the same question: “When you make it for?”

  The voices were all excited and loud, merging into a high, steady din.

  “Everybody’s happy,” I said, trying to sound cynical.

  “I bet you’re as happy as anybody,” Briant said. “You lost thirteen and a half years in that shuffle.”

  “Watch out there, deacon,” I kidded. “You sound like a card slicker talking about shuffle.”

  He grinned. “I’ll bet I could beat plenty of you young jerks playing cards, who think you’re so slick,” he said. “When I used to gamble before I got religion—” He was a former West Virginia coal miner, full of God, Lewis, and the Bible.

  “Save it, pops,” I cut in. “That sounds like the beginning of one of those endless stories.” I was beginning to show my excitement in spite of myself. My voice had taken a higher note and I was talking silly.

  “You’re happy all right,” Briant said, complacently. “You can’t tell me you’re not happy over losing thirteen and a half years.”

  “Hell, I never thought I’d have to make my twenty years, anyway,” I said.

  “Well you won’t now unless you lose an awful lot of time.”

  “Now we got to be bothered with that, too,” I said.

  But I was plenty happy all right. Those four years seemed very short. Looking at them, after having stared so long into the gray opaqueness of those solid twenty years, it seemed as if I could look right through them and see the end; see freedom in all its glory, standing there. It was a new and different kind of freedom than any I had seen before. It was a cool, merciful, present freedom, like God, that was always there at the end of a long straight road. It was like the promised land which you look forward to knowing that it is not here now, but yet it is not too far away, and with care and caution and faith it can be reached in time. In Johnny Time. Johnny Time was a little boy now. It was like driving down that long parkway, knowing that you will reach the city some sunny day if the tires hold out and the motor doesn’t conk out or the law doesn’t get you, or you don’t get into a wreck or get caught in any of the thousand and one things which can happen to you but which you never think about happening as you sail down that long white road.

  It was so unlike the first freedom, the completely lost, completely remote, merciless, indifferent, impossible freedom at the end of twenty years—always at the end of twenty years—never coming closer; which left you feeling that you were walking on a treadmill, trudging doggedly, persistently, continuously, deliberately onward but never coming closer.

  And although at that time freedom was in its embryo form, being more or less the feeling that it was the city at the end of the road, still it was not to be taken too seriously. You could never take freedom too seriously, for then it would kill you. It was just something at the end of time which made the days shorter and bearable and pointed and containing meaning and ambition and aim and end—mostly end.

  The next morning when we marched around the yard for exercise I fell back with Blocker and he said he would go up that May.

  “There’ll be many a man going out of here the first of next year,” I said. “I hear there’s fifteen hundred eligible for parole immediately.”

  “They won’t let them all go at once,” he said. “You can bet a man they won’t do that.”

  “No, I guess not. But even at that they’ll have to let a hell of a lot of them go. Maybe they’ll let some out each week. But even at that, there’ll be more and more coming up for a hearing each month.”

  “I don’t know what they’re going to do,” he said. “But you can bet a big fat man they ain’t going to dump no whole lot of convicts out of here at one time.”

  And he didn’t tell any lie. When the newspapers found out the number of convicts eligible for immediate parole they fell out for dead. All those wonderful editorials calling for a change in the laws began to read like, who’s responsible for this awful crime wave?

  “Let these men out,” one newspaper said, “and our women and children won’t dare walk the streets without a police guard.”

  “These newspapers are a son of a bitch,” I said to Briant one night. “One day they’re all for the convicts and the next day a convict is lower than whale turd.”

  Briant didn’t answer, so I started needling him. “When the hell you second-degree lifers going to get your slips?”

  “Some of them already have theirs,” he said. “I suppose I’ll get mine soon.”

  “If I hadn’t got mine when they first came out I’d be going nuts by now,” I said. “I’d be over to the deputy’s office every day pitching me a bitch.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t care whether you got your slip or not,” he said. “You said you knew you wouldn’t have to serve twenty years, anyway.”

  “That’s not what I said. I said I never thought I’d have to do my twenty years. That’s a little different. And I didn’t say I didn’t care whether I got my slip or not, because I care like hell. If they’re going to cut one single convict’s time they’re supposed to cut mine, too. I got the same rights as any other convict.”

  “You haven’t got any more rights after you come in here,” he said. “You see that sign over the door when you came in?”

  “Over what door?”

  “Over the door to the prison—the outside door?”

  “No, what did it
say?”

  “It said, Ye who enter here leave all hope behind.”

  “I don’t believe it,” I said. “I don’t believe they’d put a sign like that over a prison gate. Why some newspaper reporter would have had it all over the papers a long time ago.”

  “I don’t care whether you believe it or not, it’s over there.” He turned and yelled over to the next cell. “Hey, Boone, ain’t there a sign over the gate which says ‘Ye who enter here leave all hope behind’?”

  “Sure is,” Boone called back. “Why?”

  “Monroe don’t believe it.”

  “He will believe it.”

  “Hell, all the one-armed people stick together,” I said “I don’t believe either one of you.”

  “You will believe us,” they both said, in unison.

  “You’re too pessimistic,” I said.

  Briant held up his nub arm and said, “Hey, boy, what you mean I’m one-armed? I got two good arms, I only got one hand.”

  “You only got one arm too,” I said. “That other thing’s a wing. It ain’t no good.”

  “I got more strength in it than you got in either of yours,” he said, flapping it about.

  “Say, quit flopping that thing around me,” I said. “First thing you know you’ll have it off at the shoulder.”

  He rubbed the soft, pulpy stump across my head. “How’s it feel?”

  “Hey, don’t do that, goddammit,” I said.

  “It won’t hurt you.”

  “I bet I’ll hurt it.”

  “You can’t hurt this stump,” he said. “That’s a good job. Dr Castle, the bone specialist who comes in here sometimes, said that’s the best job he ever saw.”

  “Aw, don’t go into that brag again,” I said “You got a good stump. The doctor did a good job. He made a swell cushion. Now forget about it.”

  He climbed back on his bunk without replying. He was hurt.

  “Aw, hell, can’t you take a joke?” I said. “I was only kidding.” But he wouldn’t say anything else. Those cripples were a sensitive lot about the surgical jobs on their stumps.