Hard Way Out of Hell

by Johnny D. Boggs

  I was given two cups, a tiny mirror, and a rough bar of lye soap. They gave me a comb, not that I needed one as closely as they had shorn my hair. Also one spoon, useless for digging my way out of that deathtrap. A mattress was placed on a tiny cot in the corner, before they handed me two towels—one for my dishes and another for my face—blankets, sheets, and a pillowcase. They gave me a Bible, too. Then they closed and locked the door.

  I could not turn around to see Ben Cayou march Bob and Jim down to their cells. I stared at the dark wall and found my “window”—a six-inch ventilation hole that let in cold air. I heard the doors open and close, the keys turn the locks, as my two brothers were also introduced to their new homes. Alone, I buried my face in my hands and wept bitter tears.

  * * * * *

  When they fetched us an hour later, we followed Ben Cayou to a factory, with three guards marching behind us to make sure we did not revolt. Or maybe they were afraid that Jesse and Frank James were going to show up to free us.

  “Most of the fish are making threshing machines,” Cayou told us as we went down damp stairs into a dark basement that smelled of mold and dead animals, probably rats. “You boys get to make buckets and tubs.” He handed Bob a paintbrush. “This is for you. That arm, I don’t think you’d be good for nothing else.”

  Bob stared at the brush as if he had never seen one before.

  “It’s not a Colt, is it, brother?” It was a mean thing for Jim to say, though probably only I understood the slurred words.

  “Shut up, fish!” Cayou waved the club underneath Jim’s shattered jaw.

  “Here’s how this will work,” Cayou explained. “As soon as you enter this … ahem … factory, you will remove your coat, put on an apron, and commence to work. You will not talk to any other prisoner without receiving special permission from the officer in charge. Today, that officer is me.” He nodded at a man who stepped out of the dark. It was the trustee we had seen when we first entered the prison.

  “This is the shop foreman,” Cayou said. “Erskine Green. Anything you say to him will be for work purposes only. If you need anything else, you may approach the officer in charge, salute him, show proper respect, and, upon receiving permission to speak, express your wants in a concise matter. Do your job to the best of your ability, and do it right. Failure to comply could revoke what few privileges you fish have, or send you to solitary. Now, get to work. Green, I’m going to the privy. When I return, I expect to find buckets being made. Otherwise, I’ll bring Griggs in here and ask him to serve as the officer in charge.”

  The door closed behind Cayou. I wet my lips, but could not bring myself to speak.

  Erskine Green grinned. “You boys know how to make buckets?” the Negro asked.

  Our heads shook.

  “Time you learned.” He moved toward a bench and looked back. “What’s the matter, fresh fish? The great Younger brothers be scared?”

  “Just not …” Bob started, but quickly stopped, glancing frightfully at the closed door.

  I finished Bob’s thought in a whisper: “Just not used to all these rules.”

  Erskine Green slapped his pants legs and cackled. “That right, white boys?” he said mockingly. “Y’all ain’t used to be bein’ tol’ where you can go, what you can do, what you can say?” The face hardened. “Well, Younger boys, now I reckon you’s ’bout to learn how I felt the first fifteen years of my miserable life as a slave down in Alabama.”

  Chapter Thirty

  That night I dreamed.

  * * * * *

  I stood on the white sands of a beach in Cuba, tasting the salt on the air as waves crashed against giant boulders and sprayed my face with a tangy mist. The sun felt warm, and I leaned low in the saddle, guiding my blood bay stallion into the surf, letting his hoofs splash the water. Ahead of me rode Jesse James on his fine racer, Stonewall, but I gained, and laughed as I passed him, knowing my stallion’s hoofs were now kicking up wet sand into Jesse’s face.

  Bob, Jim, John, Duck—even Dick—and old Maise Walker cheered as the stallion and I crossed the finish line. Frank James slapped his knee and pointed a mocking finger as his brother and that great steed of Jesse’s limped into a second-place finish. As I swung out of the saddle, I handed the reins to Clell Miller, who, pipe clenched between his teeth, spoke.

  “Now, Bishop Cole, ain’t this a fine way to spend all that Yankee money?”

  Before I could answer, another voice called my name, and I turned and felt my heart increase its pace. Lizzie Brown grinned as she walked to me, wearing a fine blue-and-white striped bathing outfit, her hair pinned up in a bonnet. Wet sand coated her rosy cheeks.

  “That was amazing, Cole,” she said, and I could smell the oils on her body. Pineapple. Coconut. Banana. Whatever the hell they grew in Cuba.

  Lizzie put a hand on my shoulder. “Cole,” she murmured, and I closed my eyes.

  * * * * *

  When they opened, a dread enveloped me. Coughing, I pulled up my blanket. Something was crawling over my hand, and I flinched, sat up with a curse as pain tore through my head, my shoulder, my hip—reminders of the bank robbery that had failed. I had no match to strike, and no light shone in the five-by-seven-foot cell that was far, far away from any Cuban beach.

  The bug that had crawled over my hand had dropped to the floor. I could hear the cockroach’s legs pattering as it made its way across the damp floor. But not just one cockroach. Ten, maybe twenty. Grabbing the end of my blanket and biting back the pain, I flipped the thin piece of wool up and down a few times to send any other roaches off my cot.

  I could not fall back asleep that night.

  Worse, I would never again dream of Cuban beaches or of Lizzie Brown.

  * * * * *

  After an hour of work, Ben Cayou left us in the basement with Erskine Green to visit the privy.

  “That’s Cayou’s way,” Erskine Green whispered as we tarred a tub. “You wants to talk, do it now, but do it quietly and quickly. Cayou ain’t a bad gent. An’ his wife be a bonafide God-fearin’ lady.”

  “This … is … hell.” Just hearing Jim try to speak, each word a struggle and hard to understand, gnawed at my gut, my conscience. He had lost most of his upper teeth and part of his jaw. While Bob and I ate boiled corned beef and mashed potatoes for supper, Jim sucked up gruel through a straw.

  “It’s all my fault.” Tears welled in Bob’s eyes. “I’m sorry …”

  “Hush,” I said. “If anybody’s to blame, it’s me.”

  “No …” Bob cried. “It’s me. It’s all my fault. I never should have listened to …”

  “Hush, damn it.” I would not even let Bob mention Jesse’s name, not in front of Erskine Green. Not in front of anyone.

  Jim swallowed painfully. “We … got to … get … out of … here.”

  Covering his mouth as he coughed, Bob glanced at Erskine Green, and then me. “Escape,” he mouthed.

  “No,” I said. “Folks in this state are already ticked that they couldn’t hang us. They’re trying to get that law revoked. We do anything to show they can’t trust us, and they’ll kill us.”

  “That’s right,” Erskine Green said. “You smart for a dumb-ass white boy.”

  “We played a hard game,” I said, “and we lost. This is our comeuppance, and we’ll take it like Youngers. We get out of here … we won’t be looking over our shoulders the rest of our lives. We’ll get out of here by pardon or parole.”

  “Or …” Jim swallowed. “Death.”

  Chilled, I made myself nod. “Or death.”

  * * * * *

  So we made buckets every day.

  “Mr. Cole,” Erskine Green told me one afternoon, “why you’s becomin’ crackerjack at paintin’ ’em pails.”

  I glanced at my fingers, coated with so much tar, I knew I would be tearing off skin when I tried to clean them
once my shift ended.

  “Up in heaven,” I told the black man, “my ma is telling my pa … ‘You see, Henry, I always said Coleman would amount to something.’ ”

  At night, I grew accustomed to the cockroaches—but the bedbugs proved to be a much worse nuisance. They ate my legs and arms raw, or so it seemed, and I found myself spending more time in bed than in the basement. They even had to haul me to the prison hospital ward from time to time.

  News came one day. A friendly guard, who had begun bringing my supper to my cell about a week into our imprisonment, motioned me over as he slid a tin plate and tin cup underneath the iron bars.

  “Read yesterday’s evening paper,” he said softly. “The James boys made it back to Missouri. Don’t know where they are now.”

  All I did was shrug, but my heart felt lighter. Frank was alive. Hell, so were Bob, Jim, and me. Alive. But far from living.

  * * * * *

  “You are an intelligent man, Cole Younger.”

  Marching out of the chapel one Sunday, in step to the music being sung and played on an organ, I felt a hand on my arm that pulled me out of line. The guard named Griggs shoved me toward Warden Reed.

  What, by Jacks, had I done now? I thought.

  For there were rules about Sunday services, too. You rose and sat when the deputy warden hit the gavel. You sat ramrod straight, arms folded. You looked straight ahead at the preacher, or the guard in charge. You didn’t have to pray. You didn’t have to sing. But you had to be there.

  “No demerits.” Warden Reed looked at some papers in his hand, then studied my face. “You can read and write. How much schooling did you have in Missouri?”

  I kept quiet, till Griggs ran that club of his up and down my backbone. “Answer the warden, you God …”

  “Griggs,” Warden Reed said, “that will be all.” The club fell away from my person, Griggs muttered something, and I heard his footsteps as he sought out some other prisoner to torment.

  “You may speak,” Reed said.

  “My mother and father saw to it that I received the best education I could get,” I said.

  “Yet you turned to outlawry.”

  I held my tongue.

  “Speak freely,” the warden said.

  “Sir, I didn’t have much of a choice.”

  The warden gave that sad, condescending shake of his head. “I daresay everyone housed behind these stone walls would say the same thing. I’d like to meet one guilty person in prison.”

  “I did not proclaim my innocence, sir,” I told him. “I just said I had no choice. Nor did my brothers.”

  “Everyone here had a choice.”

  “But only Bob, Jim, and I came from Missouri, I would guess. Missouri during the war.”

  The warden thought about that, lowering the papers in his hand and saying: “Starting tomorrow, you and your brothers will be upgraded to second-class status. You will report to Between the Gates to be issued new uniforms, and new privileges.” He rolled the papers as he spoke, the waved them in my face like a billy club. “But know this, Number Eight Hundred Ninety-Nine. One demerit. One mistake. And you’re back to third-class, and will remain so for at least a year.”

  The usual rule, Erskine Green told us, was two demerits in one month would send you back to third-class. But we were Youngers, and different rules applied to men of our stature.

  * * * * *

  We exchanged our striped uniforms and caps for black-and-gray checks. The roaches and bedbugs didn’t seem to notice any difference. Once a fortnight, we were allowed to write a letter, and every week we could draw a four-ounce ration of tobacco: cigarette, pipe, or chewing. They brought a wooden chair to my cell, another reward for a second-class convict.

  Now we got to eat with other prisoners of second-class rank. That took some getting used to.

  They even gave us rules on how to eat. Griggs read the instructions to us once, but remembering everything seemed to be impossible. There were many times in the first month or two that we went hungry. Finally, we figured it all out. It’s amazing how hunger can improve your memory.

  You did not eat, or drink, until a guard or trustee sounded the gong.

  No food could be left on a plate, not even crumbs or a crust of bread. We had to learn to eat pickled beets with beef, bread, and vegetable soup for dinner every Monday. If you wanted any extra food or drink, it went like this.

  Hold up your right hand for extra bread.

  Hold up your cup for coffee or water.

  Hold up your fork for more meat.

  Hold up your spoon for more soup.

  Hold up your knife for extra vegetables.

  No talking. No laughing. This appeared to be the number one rule no matter where you were in Stillwater, not that we often found any reason to laugh.

  We were also transferred from the basement and the tubs and buckets to the thresher factory.

  A company called Seymour & Sabin had started production on the Minnesota Chief, and I am happy to say that Bob, Jim, and I helped many a hayseed with his wheat crops over the next several years. We did not work together, of course. Warden Reed and Griggs feared that we would plot the greatest prison break in the history of prisons should we be allowed to communicate more than once a month. I made sieves. Jim helped with the belts. Again, they stuck a paintbrush in Bob’s hand, since he never recovered the full use of or the strength in his hand which limited almost anything he could do. His job was whitewashing the factory’s walls.

  Every Friday morning, after breakfast, we got marched to the bathhouse, twenty-eight prisoners at a time. Now, as desperate as we Younger brothers were—with Jim still taking every meal through a straw, and Bob’s cough getting worse and worse—never were we put in the same group.

  I’d stand in line in front of a shower, and the water would begin to spray, but I did not step naked under those blasts of stinking water until the officer in charge tapped his cane twice on the floor. When the guard tapped again, the water stopped spraying, we dried ourselves off with towels that felt like sandpaper, and went to get our fresh clothes out from a pigeonhole downstairs. They also gave us a clean handkerchief and a clean pair of socks. Fifteen minutes later, we were back in the shop, back at work, producing more Minnesota Chiefs to make Seymour & Sabin richer and richer.

  Such is how we lived—if you could call that living—the next seven years.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “Dreamin’,” Erskine Green once told me, “will just drive you mad, Mr. Cole.”

  Not since that first night in that cold, damp cell had I dreamed. Or if I had, I had willed myself to forget the nightmare—for all dreams are haunted when you are in prison for life—immediately upon awakening.

  Shortly before midnight on the night of January 25, 1884, I awoke to the scream of a whistle. The cellblock remained pitch dark as the whistle blared outside. A faint scent of smoke reached my nostrils, yet I felt unconcerned. Then came the pounding of shoes, the clanging of iron keys, and shouts up and down the cells.

  “Up! Up! Up!”

  Prisoners answered with the vilest of curses.

  The yellow light of waving lanterns flashed down the hallway. Doors to cells creaked open, guards barked, and prisoners moaned.

  Ben Cayou appeared at my door and rammed a key into the lock. “Get up, Cole!”

  Sighing, I warned the roaches. “Move along, boys. It’s time.”

  The door opened. “Now, Cole!” He jerked the door open.

  With the nonchalance of a lifer, I tossed aside the blanket. “What’s this ruction all about, Ben?”

  A man somewhere on the upper tiers started to scream.

  “Damn it, Cole!” Ben Cayou bellowed. “Do you want to burn to death? It’s a fire. A damned fire. And a big one!”

  I came to my feet, started to pull on my shoes.

&n
bsp; “There’s no time!” Cayou shouted.

  I blinked, still befuddled by sleep. I could not quite grasp anything Ben Cayou said. His words seemed to be slurred like Jim’s speech had been before he finally got that bullet out of his mouth back in ’79.

  “The cell house is on fire!”

  At last, I understood and so grabbed the worsted wristlets that Mrs. Cayou had given me for Christmas. Once I had slipped those on, I reached for my two books: Wit and Humor and God’s Book of Nature.

  “No, no, no! Leave everything. Just get out.”

  Cayou had no more time to deal with a sleepyheaded fool. He moved down to the next cell, and, leaving the books General Henry Sibley had given me on a recent visit, I walked to the open cell door. I glanced out and swallowed down the bile as I saw the flames from hell.

  “Out!” Cayou was shoving Terry Logan toward me as I looked away from the flames. Other prisoners moved down the stone-walled corridor.

  “To the yard!” Ben Cayou ordered as he went to unlock the next cell.

  Another guard waited down the hallway, putting iron manacles on the prisoners waiting patiently in line, then sending them into the frigid yard. By the time I reached this guard—an ashen-faced Griggs—smoke had filled the chamber, and I had to cover my nose and mouth with the crook of my arm.

  Griggs looked up, his eyes filled with terror. He focused on the flames, the thick, choking smoke, coughed once himself, and glanced at me.

  “Don’t bother with the iron, Griggs,” I said. “You have my word I shall not try to escape.”

  “Get out!” he yelled, and I obeyed. Yet Griggs did not wait for me, or any of the prisoners coming behind me. He left the keys and the manacles, and ran, pushing past me, knocking a man convicted of rape to the floor, and dropping below the thick smoke.

  I did not blame him. I wanted to run myself.

  Flames had been sucked under the cell house’s roof, and suddenly the roof exploded, sending sparks and coals showering to the stone floor below.