by Jack Finney
I was conscious now of the aroma of the food; it smelled delicious. It had the appearance and aroma of very cleanly prepared, simply cooked food; and seated at the table, lost in this great mass of hundreds of identically and anonymously dressed men, I realized that I was in a temporary oasis of safety. I'd wondered how I could possibly choke down even a mouthful of food; but now, like the others, I methodically and rapidly, enjoying it ravenously, ate everything on my tray, including the four slices of bread. Presently I began sipping my coffee, and for the first time I sat back and really looked at the room around me. Two of the men at my table, their suppers finished, began to talk quietly, but I ignored them.
Glancing around, I was suddenly aware — it astonished me — that an entire wall of this enormous high-ceilinged room was a vast mural painting. It was crowded with giant figures, faces, and objects painted on the pastel-green wall in a warm shade of brown; burnt umber, I recognized. There was the sad intelligence of Albert Einstein's face under the great shock of white hair, and just below and to one side of this, a painted billboard which said, Restricted Area, Atomic Power. Beside this stood a man in a smock at a complex electrical switchboard of some kind; and there was an outdoor movie, cars lined up. before the giant screen. There was a football stadium seen from the air; an elevated superhighway — the entire panel was a crowded representation, of countless scenes, objects, and people of this present day and age, excellently done. It was a kind of shock to realize that a good artist was a prisoner here, and I wondered what he had done.
I turned on my stool toward the opposite wall, and there lay another great mural in burnt umber, a huge panoramic suggestion of California's history — gold miners, covered wagons, sailing ships. In an end wall, I noticed, there were tall windows; and skylights in the painted ceiling high overhead; the room was filled with daylight. It was a cheerful room, it occurred to me, the floor a rich red, tables of light wood, beautifully made and varnished, the walls a soft green and painted with murals. And it was immaculately clean. Not bad, I thought, and leaned back a little on my stool, comfortably; and my stomach full, I actually relaxed, wondering suddenly when the time would come — years from now, probably — when I could tell people of the incredible thing I had done.
I felt a definite sense of well being — and that betrayed me. With a volition of their own, my thumb and forefinger dipped from old habit into my shirt pocket as they had after every meal for years. They found the end of a cigarette in the open package there, withdrew it, and fitted it into the corner of my mouth. While I sat staring at the mural to my left, my two hands opened a match pack, tore out and struck a match, and lighted the end of the cigarette. I inhaled, then luxuriously and contentedly exhaled a jet of gray smoke. A hand smacked down on my shoulder, and I swung my head to stare up at the angry face of a guard.
"What the hell's the matter with you?" said the guard, glaring down at me, impatient for an answer, and for an instant my mind was frantic and astounded, then I understood. The air above the heads of these hundreds of men would have been thick with smoke if smoking were allowed; and instead, it was clear. I was the only man in this vast room with a lighted cigarette in my hand, and I hastily ducked the cigarette end in the dregs of my coffee and heard the slight hiss as it extinguished. From the other side of the great room, I was vaguely aware of raised voices. "Boo!" they yelled, "Boo!" and I saw the guard's jaw muscles tighten.
"Sorry," I managed to say, staring up at him, my face anguished as I felt my neck and ears redden.
"Boo!" The cry grew, and other guards walking fast, were coming down the side aisles.
"What's your name?"
"Jarvis," I said automatically, and my lips actually came together to say, Ben, Ben Jarvis, but I remembered in time, and said, "Arnie. Arnold Jarvis."
"Let's see your ID card."
I had no idea what the man meant, what he could possibly be talking about. "Boo!" the voices were shouting at him.
Then again my mind worked and cast up the information, and I reached into my shirt pocket and brought out the small plastic-encased card I'd taken from Arnie, and the guard took it.
The little inch-and-a-half high photograph with the number under the chin at which the guard was now staring was not my photograph. That was Arnie's face, sullenly and apathetically staring out at the camera which had snapped it over a year before. My eyes closed! I felt physically sick and withdrawn from the strange world around me. "Boo! Boo!" I wanted to sleep, I realized in astonishment; to close my eyes and leave a world that was beyond my capabilities.
The photograph on the card formed itself clearly behind my closed eyes; the dark crisp hair and the forehead hairline could have been mine, I knew; but the face was Arnie's, resembling mine only in the general resemblance of brothers. But when I opened my eyes after a moment to stare up at the guard in hopeless withdrawn apathy, he only glanced at me as he handed the card back, and I didn't know whether it had even occurred to him to compare the tiny photographed face with the living face before him.
"You're not a fish; you've been here long enough to know better," he said, and I understood that the date of Arnie's admission must be on the card. "What's wrong with you?"
"Boo!" came the shouts from other parts of the room, and I heard the other guards' voices. I simply shook my head; I couldn't speak for a moment, and I moved one shoulder in a shrug. "Just forgot," I croaked, then cleared my throat. "Just dreaming, I guess; I forgot."
For a moment longer the guard stared down at me — from the corner of my eye I could see another guard standing just beside and behind me, listening — then the guard who had spoken to me turned away. "All right, quiet down," he called out to the room, not loudly, keeping his voice calm and relaxed. But I could detect the tenseness in his voice, and I understood that a handful of guards among hundreds of prisoners were men in a powder keg, and I had struck a spark — I expected punishment.
Slipping my card back into my shirt pocket, I glanced up at the other three faces at my table and managed a rueful smile and shrug. The man opposite lifted a brow and one corner of his mouth in a faint shrug and smile of jeering sympathy, and continued to stare at me for a moment in thoughtful wonder. Then he looked away.
When would the punishment come, and what form would it take? I didn't know. If it came tonight, if I were taken from my cell to an isolation cell — I didn't know what the procedure was — then I was lost. If it came tomorrow, if Arnold Jarvis, the man who had smoked in the mess hall, were picked up and sent to isolation, I was equally lost. I looked down at the now soggy length of cigarette in my coffee cup; it wasn't easy to understand that a single puff on a cigarette might send me to prison for many years, but I knew it was true.
The men at my table were getting to their feet, apparently at some signal that I hadn't seen or heard, and I stood up with them. Each of them, I saw, was taking his silverware with him, and I picked up mine, too. Then, as I turned toward the main aisle, I saw that the guard I'd noticed from the corner of my eye was still standing just beside and behind the stool I'd been sitting on. And as I lifted my eyes to his face, I saw it was Nova, the San Quentin guard who lived next door to me in Mill Valley.
I gave up. I'd taken a risk, an impossible one; I'd lost; and it was almost a relief to simply give up and let whatever happened now just go ahead and happen. He was smiling, of course; the same nasty, mean-eyed little smile, and he stood looking at me, nodding his head slowly in quiet, pleased, and utterly malicious satisfaction. "Hello, Jarvis," he said softly, and I didn't even bother trying to answer; I just stood, waiting, lost in a kind of unreal apathy.
Nova jerked his head, gesturing at the main aisle. "Get moving," he said, and I walked toward the door I'd come in, Nova right behind me. At the door stood a big metal bucket, and as the inmates ahead of me passed it, they dropped their silverware into it, and I did the same.
I returned the way I'd come, Nova right behind me. Back in the cell block, I turned to look at him, and again, with a
jerk of his head, he indicated that I was to walk on; I turned onto the stairway and began to climb it, Nova still behind me. I didn't know what he meant to do, but it didn't matter; I knew it would be disastrous for me, and at some moment, climbing those stairs, I realized what I was going to do. There was a part of my brain able to stand off and consider in absolute horror and astonishment what the rest of my mind had decided to do, but I knew I would do it. I was simply not going to be confined for years in San Quentin Prison; I couldn't take it; and whatever the consequences, I was going to do what I had to to prevent it. Maybe any man can kill if circumstances demand it; certainly millions come to it in every war. But to know you're going to — to cross the line you've never crossed before, and know you are about to kill a man — must always be an unbelievable moment.
There was no alternative; Nova dead was the only possible hope for me now; and with a terrible clarity of mind I saw how I was going to do it. There were very few men in the cell block now. After supper, I knew, most of them were off' to classes, the athletic fields, movies, band practice; the guards were lounging around their hut on the cell-block floor. Climbing the stairs to the third tier now, and leaning over the stair rail looking up, I saw only three or four men on the walkway, strolling toward their cells.
When I reached the third tier, I'd walk along toward my cell; and once the walkway was clear, the cells directly behind me empty, I'd stop, lean on the railing on my forearms, hands clasped, staring down at the cell-block floor three stories below. It was the kind of posture that invites duplication; whatever Nova had in mind, he could hardly talk to me without leaning on the railing beside me. I'd listen, watching the runway from the corners of my eyes, making certain it remained clear of witnesses. Then I'd pull out my handkerchief, drop it, stoop to pick it up, and instead, crouched there on the walkway, I'd grab Nova tight around the legs like a tackling football player and instantly lift him right over the railing. He'd be leaning half over the rail to begin with; I'd lift him all the way over, and he couldn't hang on — not upside down — and a fall of three stories onto the concrete floor far below would kill him. The instant he dropped, I'd turn into the empty cell behind me with its door ajar, and when he hit, I'd come rushing out with the others on the tier to see what happened. Then I'd return to my own cell. In the two or three seconds it took me to heave Nova over the railing, I could be seen by anyone rounding a corner of this walkway, or stepping out of a cell anywhere down the line, but even so I was not going to be an inmate here.
On the third tier, two men far ahead strolled along the walkway as I did, Nova just behind me. Then they turned into a cell, and I stopped, leaned on the railing, and when Nova stopped beside me, I looked up and said, "Well?"
He answered something or other; I didn't even listen. Moving only my eyes, I glanced to the other side of me; a man was walking toward the other end of the walkway — he was nearly there — and I watched him disappear around the corner. As though shifting my position slightly, I glanced over Nova's shoulder. A man was just stepping into a cell; in a second the walkway would be empty, and I reached toward my hip pocket and the handkerchief in it, my heart throbbing full strength.
The mind is always being baffled by itself and its incredible abilities. Even in the instant my muscles were tensing with movement, I was able to stand off and watch myself in a part of my mind, and realize that incredibly I, Ben Jarvis, was about to kill a man. But another part of my mind seemed to accept the very same thing almost calmly, telling me that this was a primitive matter of me or him, and that there was no choice of decisions. And in that same instant of simultaneous thought — my hand actually touching my handkerchief bringing it out and letting it fall, and then bending my knees to stoop down toward it — I understood that I could not do it. I was willing; I could justify it; I knew I had to do it, and, in that moment, I hated Nova. But I could not kill him, could not reach out, grip this man's knees, and throw him over a failing onto a concrete floor.
In only the fractional moment it took to know absolutely that I was incapable of the act of murder, I paused — then picked up my handkerchief, all hope gone, and stood up again. And now I wanted it over with, wanted this man beside me to quit talking and do what he meant to do; and I actually opened my mouth to say so.
The mind is incredible, capable of a dozen intertwined threads of simultaneous but separate thought. My mouth actually opening to speak, my brain was repeating as though it were a recording the first words Nova had spoken just a moment or two before.
"I know your brother." I realized now that he had said this while I nodded unhearingly, and now the words sounded again in my mind. What did he mean? He didn't know Arnie; he had said so only last night. Had he looked up Arnie since then, or — And then, in the split second before I could speak, I understood; and stood there open-mouthed staring at Nova. He thought I was Arnie! He hadn't recognized me; he thought he was talking to my San Quentin brother! I couldn't believe it, leaning there on the railing again, Nova's voice rumbling on. He'd seen my face only night before last; how could he possibly fail to recognize me now? Then I understood. I had sat in the San Quentin mess hall eating supper; I'd sat there in the standard prison dress of blue denims and work shirt like the hundreds of others all around me. And of course to this man I could only be Arnold Jarvis, the man he knew was an inmate here; naturally Arnold Jarvis would resemble his brother. But resemble him exactly? I thought doubtfully. Then I remembered that Nova had seen me, after all, only at night, standing in the shadows outside my front door. It was true — a man who looked like the man he'd seen momentarily in semidarkness the night before, who was wearing prison clothes, and who was here at San Quentin as an inmate, could only be the brother he already knew was confined here. Any other thought was fantastic, and would not cross his mind.
" — snooty sort of bastard, thinks he's above people," Nova was saying, still smiling at me in a pleased malicious way. "Wouldn't ask me in; kept me standin' there at his door. But maybe you're different," he said, enjoying our positions; me, the convict, having to stand and listen to whatever he chose to say to me. "Maybe you're not so high and mighty. And maybe you are. I didn't ask your permission to speak; kind of ordered you around, in fact." He grinned at me contemptuously. "Maybe I shoulda asked for an introduction."
I shook my head, and managed to smile. "My brother's a funny guy," I said, and tried to talk through, my nose just a little and slur my words a bit, altering my voice. "He's not so bad, though, once you get to know him." I shrugged. "Lots of people get the idea, he's standoffish; don't mean a thing, though. And hell, no, I'm not that way." I nodded at him pleasantly, the two of us leaning there on the rail. "Glad to know you, myself." I'd almost added, "Mr. Nova," but stopped in time.
"Well, that's just fine," he said sarcastically. "Glad to know I made the grade with one branch of the family, anyway. Even if it's the San Quentin branch." He shook his head wonderingly. "Snooty," he repeated. "And with a brother in Quentin."
I shrugged, as though I didn't understand it either.
"Well" — Nova stood erect and stared at me thoughtfully for another moment or so — "see you around. And keep your nose clean; you got fouled up tonight, and I'll have an eye on you from now on. Wouldn't want to to bring back any bad news to your brother, would I? Or that hot-lookin' sister-in-law of yours."
I shrugged again, smiling. "Hope not."
"You better hope." He stared at me hard-eyed for another moment, then turned, and walked back toward the stairway.
When he'd gone, I walked around to the other side of the tier, found cell 1042, walked in, dropped on the bunk, and closed my eyes, glad that Al wasn't there yet.
And then I let it all flood over me. I'd come as close as I possibly could to actually killing a man; I'd wanted to, I'd tried to. And already I knew that I hadn't even begun to think out the consequences. Turmoil would have broken loose in the whole East block if a guard had come hurtling down from a tier to die on the floor; I'd never have c
ome through all that would have followed, still unsuspected and safe. I'd have lost my freedom and quite likely my life, out of panic started by a single absent-minded puff on a cigarette. And now I knew I was walking a tightrope through the most dangerous moments of my life, and that it still stretched out before me.
I moved a little on the bunk, restlessly, wanting to quit thinking, to just shut off my mind and thoughts and find a way to merely endure. I moved, and a hard object was pressing my elbow, and I felt for it with my hand and discovered a set of black earphones on the blanket. Then, remembering what Arnie had often told me about this, I picked up the earphones and fitted them over my ears. The tiny sound of music — Kaye Starr singing "Learning the Blues" — sounded in my ears, and I lay back, hands clasped under my head, to listen. And after a time, listening to one record after another of good popular music, the dull depression of long-sustained fear began to lift. I felt almost pleasantly tired now, relaxing both in body and mind, and the pendulum swung as I felt an almost lighthearted defiance of further worry and fear.
I sat up, removing the earphones, wondered for a moment whether Arnie wore pajamas, then smiled at the thought. Arnie had explained what I was to do now, and sitting on the edge of my bunk, I took off my pants and shirt and stood up to hang them on a hook at the back of the cell. Sitting on my bunk, then, I took off my shoes and socks, stuffing the socks into the shoes, and set them under the bunk. Then I crawled under the blankets, put on the earphones again, and once more lay there listening to the music — Louis Armstrong, now. A gong rang in the cell block, and I opened my eyes. A moment later, from the tier above, I heard the sound of a guitar being tuned, and from somewhere else in the block, a horn began to tootle; a trumpeter warming up. Another stringed instrument began to plink from somewhere below me, and I heard a mouth organ. This I remembered now — Arnie had talked about it — was the music hour; anyone owning a musical instrument was free to play it, or try, during the next hour.