The House of Numbers

by Jack Finney

  We were silent for a long time then, just sitting there in the sun staring out at the Yard. Then Al said softly, "Once in a long while, some guy — a guy who knows what I been tryin' to tell you — he makes it. And they never hear of him again. Whether you're that guy, I don't know. I ain't; I don't know how to do what ain't possible. So I just serve out my time."

  "You've done a lot, haven't you, Al?"

  "That's right."

  "How? How in hell do you do it? How do you do long time year after year?"

  "A day at a time," he said. "And I sleep a lot." Guys were coming out into the Yard from the mess halls now, and Al got to his feet. "Good luck," he said quietly, nodding his head once, then walked away.

  In the factory, I said I had stomach cramps, got a pass back to the block, and I lay down on my bunk there. I had the afternoon, that evening, and tonight, before Ben came to visit me tomorrow — to figure out how to do the impossible.

  4

  Ruth's bags were packed and on the floor by the front door when I got back from the prison Tuesday morning. She was sitting in the big living-room easy chair smoking, waiting for me to drive her back to her San Francisco apartment and to hear how Arnie had taken our decision. I didn't say anything right away. Closing the front door behind me, I just looked at her, then walked over to the davenport and sat down across the room from her, tossing my hat to the cushions beside me.

  "Well?" she said angrily, impatiently — I knew how she was feeling. She was wearing a light-green summer dress and cloth shoes to match and looking very pretty.

  I nodded. "I saw him. And told him."

  Then she wanted to put off hearing about it. "Maybe you could tell me about it driving over," she said and started to stand.

  "I think you better hear this before you leave," I said. She stared at my face for a moment then sat back in her chair. "I told you escaping was a sudden idea of Arnie's," I said quietly. "And it is. Last Thursday Arnie struck a guard. From behind, up on a tier of his cell block, with a glass insulator he'd stolen. He didn't think anyone was around to see him; the block was nearly empty at the time."

  "Struck a guard?" She was frowning, trying to understand that. "Ben, why?"

  I shook my head, slumping back on the davenport feeling very tired. "I don't really know, Ruth. He tried to tell me, but about all he really said was that the guard was a punk, a wise young punk, he said." I shook my head again. "And Arnie says he hit him because he hit him, that's all. You get charged-up in prison, he says; those were his words. Men have ripped wash basins off the walls of their cells with their hands, he says. Or clogged up the plumbing and flooded their cells, or torn up mattresses, or anything they can lay their hands on. Other men fight." I shrugged. "And Arnie hit a guard. I think the guard had been ribbing him, taunting him about something or other, and that's something Arnie never could take. Maybe you've noticed it; strike at Arnie's ego, and he just can't take it. Anyway, they don't know who did it; there were a couple dozen men in the block at the time and any of them might have hit the guard; he didn't see who struck him. But an inmate saw it; he was due out on parole in the morning so he kept his mouth shut until he was out. But now they're bringing him to the prison. He'll arrive Saturday morning — this Saturday, Ruth — to point out the man who struck that guard."

  She was nodding slowly, though without understanding. "But — is the guard all right?"

  "Sure. He was knocked out. They had to take a couple stitches but he's all right now."

  "And Arnie wants to escape to avoid punishment?"

  I nodded. "Yeah."

  "Well" — she was frowning puzzledly — "what's the punishment?"

  I could feel my face go pale as I spoke. "Ruth, they'll execute him."

  "Execute him?" She simply didn't understand. "How do you mean?"

  "I mean in the gas chamber, damn it!" I shouted, getting to my feet and glaring down at her. "They'll take him to San Rafael, and try him in a courtroom for assault, find him guilty, and the penalty is death! They'll send him to Condemned Row, and execute him — that's what I mean!"

  She was shaking her head, actually smiling a little without realizing it, her voice almost patient as she explained to me how this was impossible. "No, Ben. They couldn't. Not for striking a man who wasn't even hurt and who's all right now. They couldn't."

  "They can! They will!" The cords of my neck were standing out. Then I stopped shouting and sat down again, leaning forward, staring across the room at her. "Listen, Ruth," I said softly and urgently, "it was hard for me to believe and accept, too. I couldn't get it through my head, and it's still hard to believe. But it's true. It's the law in the great state of California. And it's enforced! Section 4500 of the California Penal Code. Arnie quoted it to me; he knows it word for word — listen! 'Every person undergoing a life sentence who commits an assault upon the person of another with a deadly weapon or by any means likely to produce great bodily injury is punishable with death'! That's what it says or close to it."

  "But — Arnie hasn't a life sentence!"

  "Yes, he has! Five to life is how his sentence reads: the penalty for attempted escape. He wouldn't even serve the five years, of course; two, maybe, or three; it doesn't really mean life imprisonment. But that's how the sentence reads. Ruth, he's technically a lifer."

  She was staring at me across the room. "And — they'd execute him? For striking a guard?"

  I nodded. "They would. They do. And they will. There are two men on Condemned Row in San Quentin now for just that reason. Ruth! Arnie's got to escape! And before next Saturday morning!" I actually clapped my hands down onto my head in desperation.

  After a moment she said, "And you're going to help him?"

  I shrugged angrily, got up, and began pacing the room. "What else?" I said "What else can I possibly do?" and she nodded.

  "Ben," she said quietly, "how? How are you going to do it?"

  I sat down then and told her. I explained in detail what Arnie had worked out the night before, lying on his bunk till daylight. And when finally I finished, Ruth was shaking her head.

  "No," she whispered. "No, Ben" — she was still shaking her head, staring at me, eyes wide — "you don't have to do that, not even for Arnie. And no matter what it means. Ben, nobody has to do that!" Then, watching my face, she said slowly, "But you're going to," and when I nodded, she was silent for several long moments. Then she glanced at her bags by the door. "All right," she said. "I'll have to help, too; you can't do that alone."

  "No," I said, "I can't. Ruth, I hate to ask you, but — "

  "But we can't let Arnie die. All right, Ben" — she stood up — "we've got a lot to do by two o'clock in the morning."

  5

  We began right away, hardly able to believe what we were doing, but knowing we had to do it. Ruth sat in the big easy chair with a pad and pen while I lay stretched out on the davenport staring up at the ceiling, and we began listing everything we'd need. We went over every least thing we were going to do, step by careful step, trying to think of every possible thing we'd. need to do it. We covered that ground three times; a mistake or an error of omission simply could not be allowed. Finally we had to decide that our list was finished. Ruth made us some lunch with some supplies we'd laid in yesterday, and we ate outdoors in the back yard, sitting on the grass.

  We talked a little, Ruth asking some questions about what we were going to do, and I tried to answer them. Then, sitting there cross-legged on the lawn, half a sandwich in her hand, staring across the yard, Ruth turned to look at me. I was lying on my side now, head propped on one arm, eating an apple. "You're a lot different from Arnie, aren't you, Ben?" she said; it was more a statement than a question.

  "Yeah, I guess so." I nodded. "Arnie's a lot more up and down than I am. He could always get more fun out of something than I could; he's more impulsive and carefree; lets himself go more. But he'd get more depressed and blue and discouraged than I ever did, too."

  Nodding her head, Ruth said, "I wonder
why. Two brothers both growing up in the same way."

  "Just a difference between people." I shrugged.

  "You'd never have done what he did; about the ring, I mean."

  "No, but I don't know that that's because of any special virtue in me; we're just made differently, that's all; we react differently to things. Arnie had to do that, Ruth. It's always been terribly important to Arnie what people thought of him. It is to everyone to some extent, but with Arnie if the people around him thought he was great, then he knew he was. And if they thought he was no good, then that's how he felt. I think most people feel they pretty well know what they are, both good and bad, even though they may be mistaken. And if someone else thinks differently it's they who've made the mistake. You know what I mean; someone compliments you for some quality you really haven't got, you may be pleased, but you know better. But I always thought that ability was left out of Arnie, he has no conviction inside himself about what he really is; it has to be supplied to him all the time — you can flatter Arnie, if you're even halfway plausible. Arnie's a lot of good things, plenty of them, but he can't believe it himself; it has to be confirmed outside himself before he can accept it. So what people think of Arnie is what he is at the moment as far as he's concerned. It was absolutely vital for Arnie to buy back the opinion of himself that he'd have lost if that clerk were allowed to think that Arnie wasn't what he'd tried to make the clerk think he was." I smiled. "If that makes any sense."

  "It does," Ruth said. "Arnie loves me, I'm certain; but I also think that my going out with him, and becoming engaged to him, fits in with some sort of notion of his of what he'd like to be, or ought to be." She shook her head. "And now being a San Quentin inmate, a convict; it must be terrible for him."

  I nodded, twisting the stem off my apple, staring down at it. "This may have been an accident of timing," I said. "I've always thought it might be." Ruth was watching me questioningly, and I continued, "When my father lost his job, I was in eighth grade, but Arnie was a sophomore in high school. My dad was an official of a building-and-loan association, a small company but a fairly important job. He made a nice salary for those days anyway, and we lived in a nice home in a nice part of San Francisco. And I guess, to kids, their place in the world seems sort of preordained and natural; they don't question it or anticipate any change. Well, my dad's firm went broke. There was some sort of scandal about it, and the three top officials, including him, were indicted. But it soon turned out that my father knew nothing about the semi-crooked business that had been going on; which was almost worse than if he had known. He'd been absolutely naive; the other two had fooled him completely; he was almost a sort of innocent front man, used by his partners. And he never again had another good job. I remember how at first he was certain he would; he'd have appointments and lunch dates with friends, men he'd known in business; and he was calm and cheerful, certain he'd very soon be given a position, as he called it, that his former position qualified him for. But after a while it dawned on him that he never would. Pleasant as his old associates were to him — first-name stuff and all, treating him like an equal who still belonged with them — nobody was putting into a job of any importance a man who could be so completely innocent of what was really going on in the company he was supposed to be helping to run. And when his money began running out, he did what he had to: sold the house, and rented a cheaper one; and took what he could get, a job, not a position. It didn't seem to break him up. He worried and all that, but he seemed happy enough afterward. He got a job in a small cabinet shop; he was always good with tools. And after a while, the place grew a little, and he became a sort of foreman and made not bad money. I think maybe he was even happier in a job he was actually more fitted for; and my mother took it all well enough. She'd belonged to a few clubs of one sort or another, not really social, but sort of. And she'd had to quit those for lack of money and never did rejoin, though maybe she could have after a while.

  "And the whole business didn't affect me at all. All that mattered to me, I remember, was that we were still in the same school district after we moved and I didn't have to change schools and give up any friends. I don't think a single kid I knew ever even mentioned to me what was happening about my father; it just didn't mean anything to them. But I've wondered if it wasn't awfully different for Arnie, a sophomore in high school. You know how it is in high school; the kids are beginning to grow up, and sort themselves out, more or less according to the standing of their families. We'd had a car that Arnie could drive, a nice car. And he had an allowance and all that. Well, my dad sold the car. We got another after a while, but it was second-hand, and pretty beat-up. And I know Arnie had to start carrying his lunch to school instead of eating in the school cafeteria; he had to join the lunch-carriers and drop out of the group that bought theirs. And I suppose what was happening to my father was talked about in high school.

  "Anyway, thinking about it much later, I always wondered if that wasn't when Arnie changed. The place he'd had in the world with a sort of guarantee from God wasn't guaranteed at all, and he was dumped right out of it at just the time, maybe, when he was finding out who and what he was in the world. When I got to high school, I remember he sort of sneered at the set who had money in their pockets, cars to drive, and who could go somewhere fairly expensive after school dances; that sort of stuff. He was a pretty good track man and got on the school track team, and that pepped him up for a while. But then he just quit all of a sudden, I don't know why. And once he had a fight with a kid, one of the school hot-shots, one of the 'leaders,' so called. I never did know why either.

  "In college, we had to work, both of us; in restaurants, cleaning the gym, that sort of stuff. And we had to work all summer, every year. It seemed natural enough to me; I'd never expected anything different. But maybe Arnie remembered a time when he was beginning to think about college, and had every reason to believe it was going to be different from the way it turned out. I know that for a few years after we finished college, Arnie used to wear a fraternity pin, one of the fraternities at the school. But we'd neither of us belonged to it or any other; we didn't begin to have the money. And again" — I shrugged — "that never bothered me particularly. I had a lot of friends in all the fraterni ties; I spent a lot of time in various fraternity houses and went to a lot of their dances by invitation. They knew why I didn't belong to one of them; I didn't have the money. And I knew I could have belonged to one — only money prevented it. And so could Arnie, but I don't think he was sure of it any more.

  "I don't know" — I shrugged again — "maybe it's too simple an explanation, or maybe that isn't all of it. But I've known for most of my life that nothing, nothing, is more important to Arnie than his status. Wherever he's worked, at whatever job, he's always described his job and given it a name — not lying, exactly, but giving an impression that it was more important than it was. We were both in the Army, and after we were out I met Arnie for lunch once in a bar. There was a friend standing there with him when I came in. Arnie introduced us, and this guy said, "We were just talking about the Army, Captain," and then went on to say something or other about that. I was a staff sergeant, Ruth, and Arnie made master sergeant; but he'd told his friend that I'd been a captain, and Arnie, I suppose, was a major. That made him happy, Ruth. The fact that this casual friend he'd run into in a bar believed his brother had been a captain and that he'd been a major, maybe, was good enough for Arnie at the moment. It was as good as true at the time. Once he got out of school where people knew what he was, he was free to make up for all that and free to enjoy having people believe he was what he wanted to be.

  "And that, damn it, got him into prison; and that was still worse for him and he tried to escape; that got him in deeper, and then it was still worse; and now he may get himself killed, executed — Arnie, my brother!" I threw my apple core away, hard, against the fence. Then I smiled and got up. "Better get started," I said, "we've got a lot to do," and Ruth reached out her hand, and I helped her to
her feet.

  We drove over the bridge to the city, and at just after one o'clock we were walking out of a parking lot near Mission Street, heading for Market Street. On Market, we separated; we'd divided the list and were to meet at the car at two-thirty. We were to shop only in the biggest and busiest stores we could find.

  We were home by three-fifteen, unloading our packages in the attached garage, the big garage door pulled down and closed. Ruth had bought blue jeans and a work shirt with snap fasteners at the big J. C. Penney's on Market. She bought half a dozen pints of cream and three one-pound tins of coffee at the Emporium, and another half-dozen pints of cream and three more tins of coffee at the Crystal Palace. In a big supermarket she bought sandwich meat, cheese, bread, fruit, cookies, and eight more pints of cream. She withdrew money from her bank, and she bought four big packages of absorbent cotton at a drugstore. I bought an army trenching tool and a square of dark-green canvas — it was half a pup tent — at an Army surplus store. At a hardware store I bought a two-foot length of pipe, a square of fine screening, a small can of brown enamel, a cheap paint brush, and a dozen rolls of black friction tape. At a second hardware store I bought a dozen large bolts and nuts, a good flashlight, two spare bulbs, half a dozen spare dry cells, a large coil of copper wire, and a hundred-foot coil of new quarter-inch rope. On the way home, I stopped at a lumber yard in the Sunset district and bought half a sheet of three-quarter-inch plywood which I put into the car trunk. While I was doing that, Ruth walked across the street to a supermarket and bought half a dozen more pints of cream.