In the Shadow of the Bridge

by Joseph Caldwell

  Still, committed as I was to the purpose of the protest, would I be so eager to put myself on the line, to get myself arrested, to go to jail—and for how long—if it weren’t in the company of a woman I revered? A woman who, it must be added, was famous. Was I doing this not for the cause but to insinuate myself into her company? What allowed me to continue with the plan was, first, my belief in the rightness of the protest itself. And, to completely counter my suspicion that the lure of celebrity might be operative, I told myself I would never use any of the experience for personal gain. This meant that I’d never write about it. Did I keep my promise? The answer to that you see in front of you.

  While we were eating our hot lunch of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, Bobby suggested we make a pact. If either of us changed his mind at the last minute, the other would never refer to it; much less make any accusations of cowardice. I agreed.

  We went up to City Hall. I wore my good sports coat and a pair of pressed black slacks. Bobby wore a suit. I think we wore ties. In those days that was how people in general dressed for special occasions.

  There was Dorothy Day, walking in a wide circle with the other protesters. She carried a hand-printed sign quoting Pope John XXIII about peace and disarmament. Unlike most celebrities, she looked just like her pictures—somewhat tall but not imposing, the gray hair with the braid circling her head, the high cheekbones, her expression both thoughtful and relaxed. Maybe “patient” is the best way to describe it.

  She was wearing a loose-fitting cotton dress, the hem lower in the back than in the front. It had a pleasant, unmemorable pattern. (Upon later reflection, it occurred to me that the dress was, of course, chosen from among the castoffs given to The Worker for distribution to those in need, among whom she was by choice an uncomplaining recipient.)

  My guess was that there were about twenty marchers. Judith Malina, the actress and founder of The Living Theater, was leading the others, holding a large bouquet of red roses. She had, of course, earned the right to claim a degree of distinction: she had, on another occasion, been arrested with Miss Day and had served thirty days in the Women’s House of Detention (then on Sixth and Greenwich Avenues).

  Bobby objected to making a spectacle of himself by walking in the circle. He’d expected to sit on a bench and, when the sirens sounded, submit to arrest. Before we could sit down, the sirens were let loose and by law everyone was required to, at the least, stand in a doorway.

  A policeman with a bullhorn announced that we had five minutes to take shelter. The arrests would then be made. Bobby said, “I can’t do it.” We shook hands and he left the park, crossed Broadway, and headed for the entrance to the Woolworth Building. I joined the circle. Judith Malina had already left and I was told she had never intended to be arrested again after those thirty days, but had come in a show of solidarity with those of us willing now to take our turn.

  Two—or was it three?—paddy wagons were already in the park. The cop calmly, perhaps a bit wearily, said, “You are under arrest. Step this way, please.” He gestured toward the wagons. The women were directed toward one, the men toward another. Miss Day was made to surrender the long stick onto which she’d tacked the papal message, just to make sure she wouldn’t at some later time use it as a weapon. As we climbed in, with no trace of sarcasm, we thanked the cops. We were dressed like gentlemen and we behaved like gentlemen.

  It was then that I realized I’d cast myself on this particular occasion as a character somewhat distant from my own in a drama of Miss Day’s devising. I would now be playing an idealistic youth dedicated to a worthy cause. I would be kind and caring, gentle in my responses to whatever might happen. My humility would show itself by my amiable good cheer and patient acceptance. I’d already begun to savor the part.

  Inside the wagon, after the doors had shut us in, we chatted easily with one another, not once mentioning the circumstance into which we’d placed ourselves. We were taken to the Elizabeth Street Station, booked, and then the men were sent back into the wagons to be delivered to the Tombs. The women went to the House of Detention. As we were leaving the station, two men were filming us. Were we suspected subversives of interest to the FBI? I was impressed.

  At the Tombs, while waiting to be “processed,” we were served from a metal cart cold noodles and tepid cocoa. By now it was late afternoon and this would prove to be our dinner. Very much in my newly created character, I graciously thanked the men serving me and, to give my role a defining line, I made a point of asking one of the servers if he had done the cooking. I don’t think he understood the question, but I complimented him just the same.

  When the other men and I were herded into a capacious elevator, the cop at the controls turned, looked at how well dressed and youthful we were, and said, “What’d they do? Raid a fraternity house?”

  We were fingerprinted, then taken to an area to be processed further. From the other side of a counter, a cop told me to empty my pockets. “My coat pockets too?” I asked.

  With unrestrained exasperation, he said, “You want to change the world and you don’t even understand a simple sentence.” With even greater emphasis: “Yes! Your coat pockets!”

  For the next part of the process, we were told to strip—for what purpose I do not know, other than to make sure we each had the requisite anatomy that qualified us for residence in the men’s prison. If a prize were to be given for what was on display, it would have gone to Dave from the War Resisters League.

  At some point we were informed that we could send one message out. I gave them Bobby’s number. They were to tell him, “The emperor has no clothes.” (Sorry I couldn’t come up with anything better, but there you have it. I apologize.)

  We were then separated and taken to different cell blocks. Mine was a great hall with several tiers of cells rising on each side, an architectural motif soon to be replicated by the leading hack architect of the time, Philip Johnson, in his design for the State Theatre at Lincoln Center and later for the Bobst Library at New York University on Washington Square.

  I had not yet been shown my assigned cell. It was that part of the evening when we inmates were let out of our confines and allowed to move around in the great space, greeting and talking to each other if we wanted. I had the sense that I was among men arrested for nonviolent infractions or at least those considered not particularly dangerous. In this, as in many things set down here, I could be wrong. Still, the population seemed to be in their twenties or early thirties. I don’t remember talking to anyone.

  I do, however, remember a young man in his early twenties, his light brown hair longer than what was considered permissible at the time, combed straight back and drawn together at the nape in a style then designated a ducktail. He was, with effortless self-assurance, telling one of the guards that he wanted to return to his cell. The guard was not about to cooperate. My surmise was that the schedule of inmate activity was rigidly specified and requests for exception were not permitted.

  My first thought was that he simply wanted to use the toilet. But I soon suspected that the petitioner’s true purpose was to challenge the rules. Success would be a source of great satisfaction. The guard finally relented.

  At this point my fellow inmate noticed my interest and tilted his head to the side to acknowledge the attention, then turned and went into his cell on the same level as the great hall itself. That he had detected in my behavior as something more than casual curiosity annoyed me. The part I was playing allowed for no such shenanigans. I quickly looked away.

  We continued to mill around like commuters in Grand Central Station waiting for the announcement of our destination, in this instance, lockdown for the night. Meanwhile, I noticed that one form of punishment was already in place. High, high up, were some windows that opened at a slant, the top having been pulled downward so that, looking up, there was no way any of us could see the least bit of sky.

  Just before
lockdown, at what I insist was an inadvertence, I glanced at the young man in his cell. I had to look somewhere and he was in my line of vision. I was given, in return, a knowing half smile reserved among the initiated as an acknowledgment that an offering was being signaled. I looked the other way, pretending an ignorance of the message being sent. (I don’t doubt that the smile widened to a near laugh at my absurd claim of innocence.)

  Before too long I was taken to my cell and given the lower bunk. No other inmate had yet been assigned to the top. It was lights-out and I lay down on the blanket. Quiet did not descend. Conversations were called back and forth with no concern for privacy—for which there seemed little need considering the innocuous nature of what was being said.

  Off in the distance someone was singing in a rather fine baritone voice songs popular at the time. The singer’s enunciation was perfect, as was expected in those days. Song requests would be called out, sometimes with the promise that the next morning’s cornflakes would be offered in payment. I don’t remember which songs were sung, with the exception of the one that was reprised more than once, “Mack the Knife.”

  My cellmate arrived. Much scraping of metal on metal. In character, I stood up and held out my hand. I became aware in the dim light from outside the cell that he had only a left arm. Also, when offered a brief greeting, a muttered response in Spanish to let me know he spoke no English.

  The calling voices, the sung songs, became less urgent when, again, with the sound of metal on metal, the cell door opened.

  “Joseph Caldwell?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’ve been bailed out.”

  For this, I was completely unprepared. It was an unstated agreement among those arrested with Dorothy Day that they would never post bail. Had I done so, I would have removed myself from a central tenet of Miss Day’s. She would avail herself of nothing that was not also available to the poor. Upon her arrests, friends and admirers would offer to pay bail or fines. Again and again she would refuse. Our bail had been set at one thousand dollars, an appreciable sum at any time.

  I realized later that the bail was punitive considering the level of our criminality. The judge and like-thinking officials did all they could to discourage opposition to the country’s nuclear determination. I don’t remember the name of the judge who set the bail, but I know for a certainty that he had abused the law to a far greater degree than any of us.

  With no note of impatience, the cop repeated, “You’ve been bailed out.”

  Prompted by the role I was playing, I had no difficulty saying, “Can I give it to someone else?”

  Less patiently: “No. You’ve got to get out.”

  I got up and asked my cellmate if there were any phone calls I could make for him. I understood him to say no.

  After some procedures I’ve forgotten, I was sent through a downstairs door. There, waiting for me, were Bobby and another friend, Ted Thieme. Bobby, of course, had bailed me out. It was late, but the restaurants in nearby Chinatown were still open. As we walked there, as we settled in at our booth, some explanations were forthcoming. My phone message about the unclothed emperor had been revised to “The eagle has one eye.” (Was my admittedly unimaginative borrowing of an all-too-easy cliché about His Imperial Majesty been considered too incendiary to be transmitted outside prison walls? I’ll never know.)

  Before I go any further, I must say that even though I hadn’t felt the least bit of claustrophobia in the Tombs, I became euphoric to be free. Free to be with friends, free to walk the streets, free to look up at the sky, free to choose from the menu (sweet-and-sour pork). I had been given a chance to realize what it was like to be in prison, even for that brief time. The knowledge, the appreciation of freedom, continues to lurk somewhere not too deeply in my psyche, rising to the surface, unbidden, from time to time since that clear spring night.

  Bobby explained that he’d been told that I had indeed asked for bail. (Other people are framed to be put in jail. I was framed to be put out.) Bobby being Bobby, his first response was to ask if he could bail me out with his Diners Club Card. (Credit cards had not yet become standard equipage for any self-reliant citizen.) Told no, he set about raising the money, which had to be in cash. These friends, those friends, checks cashed by merchants sufficiently appreciative of Bobby’s custom, cash from Ted, cash of his own.

  To demonstrate the range of his efforts, he showed me a form he’d had to fill out listing the serial number of each and every bill he was submitting. It was over a page long, noting denominations large and small. Everything said by any of us during our celebratory meal was a cue for laughter. What a fine day it had proved to be.

  Bobby went with me to the trial. When he asked me the name of the judge, I told him, “Judge Glowa.”

  His response: “Hanging Judge Glowa?”

  The sentences were handed down in another room. We’d already pleaded guilty and were now offered a chance to make a presentencing statement. Each of us, with one exception, declined the offer. One man read a prepared speech prophesying that America would one day be shrouded in sackcloth and ashes, much to our general embarrassment. We had presented ourselves as pacific people. Calling down a wrathful curse was inconsistent with our character, especially the one I was playing.

  Each of us was given ten days. Then a few names were called, mine among them. Since this was our first offense, our sentence was suspended. We were free to go; the others to be carted off—women to the Women’s House of Detention (since demolished and replaced with a stunningly beautiful garden) and the men to Riker’s Island, still standing (alas).

  With this, it would seem that the drama was over. But I got an idea. The drama could continue, as would the performance by the character into which I’d cast myself. I would offer my services to The Worker for the days of my suspended sentence. How could I refuse this extended engagement?

  I phoned The Worker and identified myself as one who had been in the protest and was now, in response to my suspended sentence, offering my services for those ten days. The offer was accepted with no indication whatsoever that anyone was as impressed by my apparent nobility as I was. Which is easily understandable. The Worker’s entire existence was founded and persists because of voluntary enlistments that exceed by far my paltry ten days.

  My assignment was to plaster and paint the apartment in which Miss Day would live after she was out of jail. The Worker had recently lost its Christie Street building to make way for a new subway entrance, and it now occupied the ground floor and a few loft floors on Spring Street in Little Italy. There they would serve meals, with some spaces set aside for administrative purposes or hospitality for those in desperate need. The regular volunteers were being housed in shared apartments in the neighborhood, with Miss Day and a full-time volunteer, Judith Gregory, to occupy a first-floor apartment on the corner of Kenmare and Lafayette Streets. These were tenement apartments much in need of repair, especially Miss Day’s and Judith’s.

  Judith and I would do the job. She was, I’d guess, in her mid-twenties. Because she wore glasses and had long, somewhat unstyled hair, she might be considered a bit plain. However, to me she was soon made highly attractive by her intelligence, her energy, and her unfailing good cheer. She wore a full skirt whose hem went farther below the knees than was usual at the time and a blouse of no particular distinction, obviously procured from among the donated clothing. I did notice, however, a seeming anomaly. Sometimes, slung from her shoulder, was what I recognized, thanks to my friend Ted Thieme, as a “coop bag,” available only at the coop of his alma mater, Harvard. A few days into our association I asked Judith about it, an inquiry probably not without a hint of incredulity. If there was no shrug of Judith’s shoulder, there was a shrug in her voice. “I went to Radcliffe.”

  We plastered—a lot. We painted the walls in the two main rooms and the bathroom and the kitchen. We painted the window and door frames. We plast
ered and painted the ceilings.

  We talked. We amused each other. I asked about The Worker. She answered. I told her I was a writer, that I’d been a playwriting fellow at Yale—twice. She was not particularly impressed. She herself was, don’t forget, a Radcliffe girl.

  The works of The Catholic Worker are not done on a nine-to-five schedule. Sometimes Judith and I worked together; sometimes I’d work alone. Sometimes in the morning, other times in the afternoon or evenings. My own situation allowed for this improvisation. I was currently subsisting as first reader for my play agent, Cindy Degner. I’d read a manuscript, write a summary and a critique. For this highly skilled service I was paid five dollars a script. Some weeks I’d have four plays, sometimes two, sometimes none. But I wasn’t starving. Unbelievable as it sounds, New York was then an inexpensive city. As I’ve mentioned, my Hague Street rent was twenty-four dollars a month. Food costs were not quite comparable, but close enough for me to survive.

  One day Judith asked me if I had any other regular job. I then explained that I was able to work as a volunteer because I was avoiding a regular paying job. I told her that I wanted to finish a play I’d begun.

  What I didn’t tell Judith was that even though I was sufficiently nourished, my rent, my telephone, gas, and electric bills were rapidly accumulating. At one point I ran into the lawyer in my neighborhood who was the agent for my landlord. “Can’t I have at least five dollars?” he pleaded. My own plea was for patience.

  One day after Judith and I had labored together for The Worker, she invited me to the soup kitchen on Spring Street for lunch. It was a late serving—after the food line had come and gone. I was included now as a fellow volunteer (living in voluntary poverty?).