The House of Numbers

by Jack Finney

  "Ben, I argued with Arnie outside the store — we almost fought. I felt certain that thirteen hundred dollars must be nearly all the money he had; it never occurred to me that he didn't have it at all. But he insisted he was going to buy me that ring, and no other, and — to tell the truth, I was pleased, and flattered, and touched that he wanted to buy me a ring he couldn't afford. And he bought it; that afternoon, just before they closed, and from the very same clerk; he made sure of that. Ben, he cashed checks at I don't know how many bars, small grocery stores, liquor stores, anywhere and everywhere he could, and paid for that ring with cash." There were tears in her eyes. "Why in the world did he do it, Ben? What was wrong with him? He moved right afterward, from one furnished apartment to another. But of course they found him, arrested and tried him, and — "

  "And sent him to Quentin for fraud," I said. "In California cashing bad checks is considered slightly worse than murder."

  She was crying. "I feel responsible, Ben; if it hadn't been for me — "

  I cut her off. "No, you're not, and you know it. You may feel you are; I don't doubt that you do. But Arnie did this himself. Why, all his life," I began, then stopped, and said, "Well, maybe I'll tell you about that some time. But I'm not surprised, Ruth. I was surprised the day I first heard he'd passed bad checks; Arnie's no fool. But I'm not surprised now at the reason; Ruth, he couldn't say no to buying that ring, not Arnie. But you're not responsible. Anyway," I said angrily, "he ought to be almost due for parole now; and instead he's got himself another two or three years on top of his first sentence. Attempted escape," I said bitterly. "Did you make him do that; was that your fault, too? Why, damn it, he didn't even begin to know what he was doing. He had no chance, they found him hiding out in the prison in less than an hour! And now it's costing him a good two or three years, and we're supposed to rescue him from that! Well, like hell we will. Arnie's my brother, I'm damn sorry for him, and I'd do a lot for him. But he has no more chance of escaping now than he did the first time. Less, in fact; now he's a maximum-security man. Anyway, I didn't put him in there, neither did you, and we're not going to end up in there with him. Escape," I said angrily. "Help Arnie escape. It's fantastic, it's ridiculous, and why I didn't know it the moment he asked me is more than I can tell you.

  "Why, damn it, Ruth; do you know what he did?" I said. "I drove up here Saturday; I come up from L. A. every month to visit him. I saw him Sunday, and we talked in the visitor's room for nearly the full hour; just chitchat, as always; nothing important. And he waited till the last few minutes to spring this on me! He had to escape he was suddenly telling me; he had to, and I was to get hold of you, and we had to help him. There was no time for questions. He told me how to reach you; that we both had to get our time free somehow, move into Marin County close to the prison, and be ready to help. I'm to come back tomorrow to hear the rest." I shook my head. "Then the guard was tapping me on the shoulder, I had to stand up and leave, and I left with this terrible feeling of urgency — you know how Arnie can communicate that to you, you know how excited he gets; I didn't have time to think! I phoned my boss in L. A. from a phone booth outside the prison, and just quit my job; I didn't know what else to do. I phoned my landlady and arranged to have her express my things up here. I visited real-estate agents and rushed around looking at furnished places for rent all afternoon, and took the house in Mill Valley. And in between, at every available phone booth I came to, I phoned you all afternoon and evening, and couldn't reach you. Then today — well, you know what today's been like."

  "I know" — she nodded slowly. "When you woke me, ringing my doorbell — Ben, you started talking while I was still half asleep. And then all I could think of was what I had to do, get to the office, and arrange to start my vacation — that took some talking! I told them my mother was very ill. Then packing, and moving into a house with an absolute stranger — " She shook her head again.

  "Well, there's time to think now," I said tiredly, "and it's about time we started to. Damn it," I said helplessly, "other men serve out their time in prison! Arnie can do it, too, without dragging us in there with him. This is just a sudden idea of his; he said so! And he doesn't know how he'd escape or even go about trying. Escape from San Quentin," I said contemptuously. "Look at it! It's impossible to get a man out of there; at least for us, it is. But it'd be damn easy to get into it trying. Come on," I said, winding the starter rope, "let's get the hell out of here. I'll drive you home in the morning, then go talk to Arnie, and tell him to grow up and behave." I yanked the rope hard. The motor caught, and I swung the rudder to head full throttle back the way we'd come, wondering what I could say to Arnie in the morning.

  I looked back once, and there it stood in the night-San Quentin — looking like a fortress, and I knew it was a fortress, high-walled and prowled by men with guns. Once more I glanced at the remote stars, and then at the vast reaches of silent water all around me, and I've never felt so small and alone. It was cold now, the mist gathering and drifting on the Bay, and I shivered. And as I did, I felt a sudden unanswerable stab of almost certain knowledge that we weren't finished at all — not as simply as this — and that somehow the frightened tired girl beside me and I were going to have to attack the great fortress behind us alone. And with my hand on the tiller, steering out into the blackness, I felt sick and afraid.

  2

  They had to help me escape. They had to, they had to, they HAD to! The phrase formed itself in my brain over and again till I was sick of the sound of it, and it lost its meaning.

  I had said it for the first time ten seconds after I woke up, the morning after I talked to Ben. It was six-thirty, and I lay listening to the big hollow rumble of the cell block waking, my eyes still closed trying to hold onto sleep, but I couldn't; I never can. Then a guard just outside on the walkway, called, "Jarvis?" and though I told myself he could be calling my name for any of a lot of reasons, I couldn't fool myself. I knew — I absolutely knew — and it was then the words first uttered themselves in my mind: They've got to help me escape.

  I turned my head on the pillow to look at the front of the cell just behind me. Al was standing at the barred door already dressed; just outside, the guard was looking down at the hectographed list in his hand, then glancing up at the cell numbers over the doors. I knew what he was doing: passing out the morning ducats, hurrying to get through before unlock; but I was in no hurry to get the one he had for me, and Al had no interest in helping him.

  It was the little Swede, and now, finger moving across his list, he had to find the cell number opposite my name, then look up to find the door with 1042 stenciled above it. "Jarvis?" he repeated, stepping to the door and peering in. "One of you guys Jarvis?"

  Al didn't answer; just looked at him. I said, "Yeah."

  "Ducat for you." He passed it between the bars, and I reached up from my bunk and took it; a little printed cardboard stub headed Inmate Pass, the blanks filled in with my name, number, and the time and place I had to report. Deliberately, I didn't look at it for a moment, trying to think of something to hope for, of some other reason why I might be getting a ducat: a new work assignment, a cell change, anything. But when I lowered my eyes, it said what I knew it would say. It was for nine-fifteen this morning, on the Porch — today the Disciplinary Committee was meeting.

  "Beef ducat?" Al said.

  "Yeah." I looked up at him. He's a tall thin man with a deep tan and white hair, neither old nor young-looking; it would be hard to guess his age. I'm twenty-eight, just under six feet, and fairly husky; black hair and blue eyes, like my brother. "Yeah," I said to Al, "but they got no beef on me."

  He just looked at me, knowing what this ducat must be about as well as I did. "Look," he said softly, "they had anything on that, you'd be in isolation right now." That was true, I realized. "They're just trying to pressure you," he said, "don't worry too much about it." I nodded and began to dress.

  Unlock at seven, then we had breakfast; ground meat on toast, only that i
sn't what we call it. I reported for work in the furniture factory, and at nine o'clock showed my ducat to the screw in charge of my work crew. He's a young guy, conscientious as hell, and I had to wait while he got "The Sheet" from the office — the hectographed list of all special inmate movements that day — and found my name on it. Ducats are forged sometimes, but not to go to the Porch, but he didn't know that yet. I was on the list. He nodded; and I walked out of the factory and down to the gate, showed my ducat to the gate bull and walked over to the Captain's garden, and the Porch just outside his office. A dozen or so inmates were already there in blue jeans and work shirts like me, lounging around, waiting — it was a nice sunny morning. Several were from my block but I didn't know them.

  I showed my ducat to the guard in charge, then glanced into the Captain's office through the big plate-glass window. He was there, standing behind his desk shuffling through some papers, wearing as always a very neat, well-pressed tan uniform and his cap with the gold insignia. He's a thin-faced, quiet-spoken, smart-as-hell man, maybe forty-five years old. Allingham and Fengle sat one at each side of his desk. The Captain looked up, saw me, and deliberately leaned forward a little, squinting, as though to make sure it was me. For a moment we stood staring at each other through the big sheet of glass; and I couldn't help it: my stomach contracted into a tight hard knot.

  At nine-thirty the buzzer sounded; the guard stuck his head into the office; the Captain spoke; then the guard turned and called, "Cahill." A heavy-set guy maybe thirty-five years old, with deep permanent circles under his eyes, pushed himself erect from the porch railing and walked into the bare little office to stand before the Captain's desk. It was another hot as hell August day so the door was ajar and I could hear what went on; it was like a hundred other weekly Disciplinary Committee hearings.

  "Cahill," said Allingham, reading from the pink sheet on the desk before him, "you're down for 'foul and abusive language to an officer. Refusal to obey orders.'" Allingham's a busy, cheerful, little man with a red face and stiff iron gray hair; Associate Warden of Custody and Treatment. He usually wears slacks and a sport jacket. "What about it?" he said.

  The man didn't answer, just shrugged. I was leaning with one shoulder against the brick wall of the building so that I could see into the office. The hearing continued; it was a typical case.

  This Cahill had refused to pick up a pair of shoes. A guard looked into his cell, saw the shoes in the middle of the floor, and told Cahill — he was lying on the lower bunk — to put them under the bunk. They weren't his shoes, and he refused.

  "Look, Cahill," the Captain said quietly, "I don't know of a cell in this prison you can't reach across wall to wall without straining yourself. Why didn't you just reach out without even moving from your bunk, pick up the damned shoes and put them under the bunk? Something wrong with picking up your cellmate's shoes? He got athlete's foot or something?"

  Cahill grinned a little and shrugged. "No."

  "All right. Time you got around to letting the officer in on whose shoes they were, he was mad. Three times he tells you to put them away, and you refuse. The third time you tell him they aren't your shoes, and by then he don't care; he tells you to put them away anyway. And you won't do it, and you curse him out. That right?"

  "I'm just lying in my bunk bothering nobody, and my shoes are where they belong, and — "

  "And if an officer tells you to put away some shoes, you put them away, no matter whose they are! An officer tells you to stuff some shoes down the toilet, you stuff 'em down the toilet. That's how easy it is to get along in prison, Cahill. When the officers tell you to do something, do it."

  Fengle spoke up. He's a psychiatrist; a young, blondish, plump-faced man in heavy black-rimmed glasses, wearing a gray suit. I'd never talked to him. "You get mad, Cahill," he said, "and get stubborn over trifles like a child. That's what got you in here, that's what's keeping you here, and that's what's back of all your troubles in here."

  I murmured to a guy standing next to me, "He needs a degree to figure that out?" and the man smiled.

  Cahill shrugged, and after a moment said, "Sometimes it's all right, and you just do what they say, like the Captain says. And sometimes you wouldn't do it if they killed you. Easy for you to talk; you're out. But I'm in."

  "That's right," the Captain cut in. "I'm out, and I can nail my shoes to my ceiling if I want. You better get out, too, Cahill. And the way to get out is get yourself up before the parole board when your next date comes up. And the way to get up to the board is to have a clean bill for six months before. And the way to keep your sheet clean is pick up the shoes as long as you're in; and anything else you're told." He glanced at Allingham, then Fengle, and when neither of them spoke, he nodded shortly at Cahill. "All right," he said; and Cahill turned and walked to the door, the guard following. Outside, Cahill walked off toward the Yard, pulling his ducat out of his shirt pocket. They gave him seven days' isolation, and maybe it was worth it.

  "Manfred," the guard called, and one of the men standing near the office stepped inside and stopped in front of the Captain's desk — a thin, tense-faced man maybe twenty-three years old.

  The Captain picked up his record: a big white sheet of printed cardboard with the man's photograph stapled to it. "'Seven days' isolation, December, fighting,'" he said, reading from the card. "Suspended."

  "Suspended?" said Fengle.

  "Yeah." The Captain nodded. "It was just before Christmas."

  Allingham smiled. "Imbued with the Christmas spirit at the time, Nate?"

  "No." The Captain shook his head. "Around Christmas you get a run of more serious cases; you got to leave room for them." He looked down at the card again. "January, February, March, May, June, and July; more fighting. You missed April; must have been sick. Quite a hard-nose, aren't you, Manfred?"

  The man shrugged.

  "Don't take nothin' from nobody, that right?"

  "That's right," Manfred said. He drew fourteen days' isolation.

  They had a young colored kid in, nineteen years old. He'd rigged up a framework of wire coat hangers and suspended in it a can of shellac with a little hole in the cork. The shellac dripped on the cut end of a loaf of bread underneath. From the bottom of the loaf, the clear filtered fluid dripped into a funnel stuck into the neck of a narrow-mouthed bottle. He had this rig hidden in a paint locker in the paint shop where he worked. "One thing I hate to do," said Allingham. "I hate to phone a man's relatives and tell them he's dying in the hospital because he drank shellac or paint thinner or something."

  "Yes, sir," said the man. "You won't have to phone my relatives."

  "Why not?" says Allingham.

  "I haven't got any," the man said and smiled a little. He lost his job and got twenty-nine days, the maximum.

  They had a little fat guy in. The block bulls had found a complete dismantled phonograph in his cell in a surprise shakedown. They had a couple of homosexuals in; then a guy who'd torn a corset ad from a prison-library magazine, and a man who'd shouted at a woman visitor on one of the tours of the prison that they're always running through the place. They had a fight case and a man who had threatened another inmate with an ax he stole from the supply room. They had a guy in who'd been found with a homemade knife in his sock in a shakedown at the industrial-area gate; a guy who'd scratched his name on the painted wall of his cell; and so on. I got tired of listening, and just stood leaning on the rail of the Porch looking out at the garden. It's a beautiful garden, all right, maybe a quarter acre of plants, shrubs, and crisscrossing paths set in the northeast corner of the prison, and probably the best-tended garden in the world. Across the garden, on the second tier of the old Spanish cell block, one of the old men who live there was leaning on the rail smoking a pipe.

  The last case before they called me in was a young Mexican in for fighting, and I listened to that. He wanted a job, he said; if he only had a job, he'd keep out of trouble.

  "You had a job," the Captain said. "How come you
lost it?"

  The man shrugged, smiling; the Captain knew why he'd lost his job.

  "What kind of job you been asking for?"

  "Mess hall, Captain," and when the Captain grinned, he quickly added, "or quarry. Quarry's all right; I can work, Captain."

  "Mess hall or quarry; pretty easily satisfied, aren't you, Jiminez?" The Captain smiled, and so did Jiminez. "All right; I'll give you a job." The Captain pretended to think, then said, "Navy cleaning plant."

  Jiminez rolled his eyes and pretended to whistle soundlessly in mock astonishment.

  "What's the matter?" the Captain said innocently and turned to Allingham. "One of the preferred jobs; a waiting list long as your arm. And with maximum pay. And he doesn't want it. Look at him" — he nodded at Jiminez, who was grinning — "you'd think I'd insulted him. You want a job," he said to Jiminez, "but not Navy cleaning; how come?'

  "You know how come, Captain."

  "Tell me."

  "Well" — Jiminez shrugged — "I'd be all right for a month, maybe two months. Then I'd be wheelin' and dealin' again."

  All three of them burst into laughter, the young Mexican joining them; we smiled a little, too, out on the Porch. "You know yourself, don't you?" said Allingham.

  "I ought to."

  "Well" — Allingham glanced at the pink charge sheet — "you're here for fighting, and you'll get something for that, but you can do it; you've done it before. Hell, you could do twenty-nine days on your ear, so it doesn't matter." He shrugged. "Doesn't matter if you keep right on getting into trouble. The most we can keep you here is three more years, unless you kill somebody. And what's three years?"