The Ultimate Egoist

by Theodore Sturgeon

  After a while I heard him scratching himself. That was all right in itself but I never heard a man scratch himself before so it echoed. I mean inside him; it was as if that huge chest was a box and sounding board. I rolled over and looked at him. He’d stripped off the shirt and was burrowing his fingers into his chest. As soon as he caught my eye he stopped, and in spite of his swarthy skin, I could see him blush.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I asked.

  He grinned and shook his head. His teeth were very clean and strong. He looked very stupid. I said, “Cut it out, then.”

  It was about eight o’clock, and the radio in the area below the tiers of cell-blocks was blaring out a soap opera about a woman’s trials and tribs with her second marriage. I didn’t like it, but the guard did, so we heard it every night. You get used to things like that and after a week or so begin to follow them. So I rolled out of the bunk and went to the gratings to listen. Crawley was a hulk over in the corner; he’d been here about twenty minutes now and still had nothing to say, which was all right with me.

  The radio play dragged on and wound up as usual with another crisis in the life of the heroine, and who the hell really cared, but you’d tune in tomorrow night just to see if it would really be as dopey as you figured. Anyway, that was 8:45, and the lights would go out at nine. I moved back to my bunk, laid out a blanket, and began washing my face at the little sink by the door. At ten minutes to, I was ready to turn in, and Crawley still hadn’t moved. I said:

  “Figurin’ to stay up all night?”

  He started. “I—I—no, but I couldn’t possibly get into that upper bunk.”

  I looked him over. His toothpick arms and legs looked too spindly to support a sparrow’s weight, let alone the tremendous barrel of a chest. The chest looked powerful enough to push the rest of him through a twenty-foot wall. I just didn’t know.

  “You mean you can’t climb up?”

  He shook his head. So did I. I turned in. “What are you going to do? The guard’ll look in in a minute. If you ain’t in your bunk you’ll get solitary. I been there, fella. You wouldn’t like it. All by yourself. Dark. Stinks. No radio; no one to talk to; no nothin’. Better try to get into that bunk.” I turned over.

  A minute later he said, without moving, “No use trying. I couldn’t make it anyway.”

  Nothing happened until three minutes to nine when the lights blinked. I said “Hell!” and swung into the upper bunk, being careful to put my lucky bone elephant under the mattress first. Without saying a word—and “thanks” was noticeably the word he didn’t say—he got into the lower just as we heard footsteps of the guard coming along our deck. I went to sleep wondering why I ever did a thing like that for a homely looking thing like Crawley.

  The bell in the morning didn’t wake him; I had to. Sure, I should’ve let him sleep. What was he to me? Why not let the guard pitch ice-water on him and massage his feet with a night-stick? Well, that’s me. Sucker. I broke a man’s cheekbone once for kicking a cur dog. The dog turned around and bit me afterwards. Anyway, I hopped out of my bunk—almost killed myself; forgot for a minute it was an upper—and, seeing Crawley lying there whistling away out of his lungs, I put out a hand to shake him. But the hand stopped cold. I saw something.

  His chest was open a little. No, not cut. Open, like it was hinged—open like a clam in a fish market. Like a clam, too, it closed while I watched, a little more with each breath he took. I saw a man pulled out of the river one time in the fall. He’d drowned in the summer. That was awful. This was worse. I was shaking all over. I was sweating. I wiped my upper lip with my wrist and moved down and grabbed his feet and twisted them so he rolled off the bunk and fell on the floor. He squeaked and I said, “Hear that bell? That means you’re through sleeping; remember?” Then I went and stuck my head under the faucet. That made me feel better. I saw I’d been afraid of this Crawley feller for a minute. I was just sore now. I just didn’t like him.

  He got up off the floor very slowly, working hard to get his feet under him. He always moved like that, like a man with nothing in his stomach and two hundred pounds on his back. He had to sort of coil his legs under him and then hand-over-hand up the bunk supports. He was weak as a duck. He wheezed for a minute and then sat down to put on his pants. A man has to be sick or lazy to do that. I stood drying my face and looking at him through the rag towel.

  “You sick?” He looked up and said no.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing. I told you that last night. What do you care, anyway?”

  “Mind your mouth, cellmate. They used to call me Killer back home. I tore a guy’s arm off one time and beat him over the head with the bloody end of it. He was a little freak like you. He didn’t excuse himself when he walked in front of me.”

  Crawley took all this noise calmly enough. He just sat there looking up at me with muddy eyes and didn’t say anything. It made me sore. I said, “I don’t think I like you. See that crack on the floor? That one there. You stay on this side of it. Cross that line and I pop you. See?”

  Now that was a dirty trick; the running water was on “my” side of the line, and so was the cell door, where he’d have to go to get his eats. So was the bunk. He got up off the bunk clumsy-like, and crossed over to the window and stood with his back to it, looking at me. He didn’t look scared and he didn’t look sore and he didn’t look sorry. He just watched me, quiet, obedient like a hound dog, but all patience and hatred inside like a fat tabby cat. I snorted and turned my back to him, grasping the grating, waiting for chow. Prison rules were that if a man didn’t want to eat he didn’t have to. If he didn’t want to eat he wouldn’t show up at the grating when the mess wagon came along his deck. If he was sick, there was a sick call at ten o’clock. That was none of the trusty’s business, the guy who pushed the wagon. He fed whoever was reaching through the bars with his square messkit and his tin cup and spoon.

  So I hung out there, and Crawley was backed up against the other wall and I could feel his eyes on my back. My mind was clicking right along. Funny, though. Like—well, like this:

  “I oughta get paid for having to bunk with a sideshow. By God I will get paid, too. I got two messkits, his and mine. I can feel them eyes. Here’s one time I get four prunes and four pieces of bread and by golly enough prune juice to really sweeten that lousy coffee. Hot damn—tomorrow’s Wednesday. Two eggs instead of one! I’ll starve the—until he gets so weak an’ sick they’ll ship him out of here. Oh, boy—wait’ll Sunday! Wait’ll that misshapen cockroach has to watch me eatin’ two lumps of ice cream! An’ if he squeals I’ll break his neck an’ stuff it under his belt. I can feel—two sets of eyes!”

  The wagon came. I stuck out one kit. A spoon of oatmeal and a dribble of watered, canned milk in one side; two prunes and juice in the other. Coffee in the cup. Two hunks of bread on the cup. I quickly stuck out the other kit. The trusty didn’t even look. He filled up again and moved on. I backed away with a kit in each fist. I was afraid to turn around. There was one guy behind me and I could feel two pairs of eyes on my back. I spilled a couple of drops of coffee from my left hand and saw I was shaking. I stood there like a damn fool because I was afraid to turn around.

  I said to myself, what the hell, he could not pull his finger out of a tub of lard and he’s got you on the run. Put down the grub and walk on him. If you don’t like his eyes, close ’em. Close all—I gulped—four of them.

  Aw, this was silly. I went over to him and said, “Here,” and gave him his messkit. I spooned a little oatmeal into his dish. I told him to go and sit on his bunk and eat. I showed him how to sweeten his coffee with prune juice. I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know why I never reminded him again about the line. He didn’t say a damn thing. Not even thanks.

  I ate and washed my kit before he was half through. He chewed enough for two people. I guess I knew from the start that there was more to him than just one guy. When he was done he sat there looking at me again.
He put his kit on the floor beside him and then went and stood by the window. I was going to say something to him about it, but I figured I’d let him be.

  It was raining, gloomy outside. That was lousy. On a clear day they let us in the yard for an hour in the afternoon. Rainy days we had a half-hour in the area under the cell-blocks. If you had money you could get candy and smokes and magazines. If you didn’t have money you did without. I still had twenty cents. I was rolling my own, stretching it. Wasn’t nobody going to bring me cash money. I was doing a little sixty-day stretch for something that doesn’t matter very much, and if I watched it I could keep smoking until I was done here.

  Well, anyway, on rainy days there’s not much to do. You make your bunk. If you have a break, you can usually drag up something interesting to talk about with your cellmate. As long as your cell is halfway clean looking, it’s okay, but they’re all scrubbed bone-white and chrome-shiny because that’s all there is to do. After I’d sat for an hour and a half smoking more than I could afford and trying to find something new to think about, I grabbed the bucket and brush and began to polish the floor. I made up my mind to do just half of it. That was a bright idea. When the guards came around inspecting for dirty cells at ten-thirty, one-half of this one would look crummy because the other half would be really scrubbed. That and Crawley’s dirty messkit would get him into a nice jam. The guards knew by this time how I kept my cell.

  Feeling almost happy at the idea, I turned to and began wearing out my knees and knuckles. I really bore down. When I came to the middle of the cell I went back and started over. I worked right up to Crawley’s messkit. I stopped there. I picked it up and washed it and put it away. Crawley moved over to the clean half. I finished washing the floor. It certainly looked well-scrubbed. All over. Ah, don’t ask me why.

  I put the gear away and sat down for a while. I tried to kid myself that I felt good because I’d shown that lazy monstrosity up. Then I realized I didn’t feel good at all. What was he doing; pushing me around? I looked up and glared at him. He didn’t say anything. I went on sitting. Hell with him. This was the pay-off. Why, I wouldn’t even talk to him. Let him sit there and rot, the worthless accident.

  After a while I said, “What’s the rap?”

  He looked up at me inquiringly. “What are you in for?” I asked again.

  “Vag.”

  “No visible means of support, or no address?”

  “Visible.”

  “What’d the man in black soak you?”

  “I ain’t seen him. I don’t know how much it’s good for.”

  “Oh; waiting trial, huh?”

  “Yeah. Friday noon. I got to get out of here before that.”

  I laughed. “Got a lawyer?”

  He shook his head.

  “Listen,” I told him, “you’re not in here on somebody’s complaint, you know. The county put you here and the county’ll prosecute. They won’t retract the charge to spring you. What’s your bail?”

  “Three hundred.”

  “Have you got it?” I asked. He shook his head.

  “Can you get it?”

  “Not a chance.”

  “An’ you ‘got to get out of here’.”

  “I will.”

  “Not before Friday.”

  “Uh-huh. Before Friday. Tomorrow. Stick around; you’ll see.”

  I looked at him, his toothpick arms and legs. “Nobody ever broke this jail and it’s forty-two years old. I’m six foot three an’ two-twenty soaking wet, an’ I wouldn’t try it. What chance you got?”

  He said again, “Stick around.”

  I sat and thought about that for a while. I could hardly believe it. The man couldn’t lift his own weight off the floor. He had no more punch than a bedbug, and a lot less courage. And he was going to break this jail, with its twelve-foot walls and its case-hardened steel bars! Sure, I’d stick around.

  “You’re as dumb as you look,” I said. “In the first place, it’s dumb to even dream about cracking this bastille. In the second place, it’s dumb not to wait for your trial, take your rap—it won’t be more than sixty—and then you get out of here clean.”

  “You’re wrong,” he said. There was an urgency about his strange, groaning voice. “I’m waiting trial. They haven’t mugged me or printed me or given me an examination. If they convict me—and they will if I ever go to court—they’ll give me a physical. Any doc—even a prison doc—would give his eyeteeth to X-ray me.” He tapped his monstrous chest. “I’ll never get away from them if they see the plates.”

  “What’s your trouble?”

  “It’s no trouble. It’s the way I am.”

  “How are you?”

  “Fine. How are you?”

  Okay, so it was none of my business. I shut up. But I was astonished at that long spiel of his. I didn’t know he could talk that much.

  Lunch came and went, and he got his share, in spite of myself, and a little more. Nothing much was said; Crawley just didn’t seem to be interested in anything that went on around him. You’d think a guy whose trial is coming up would worry about it. You’d think a guy who was planning a jail-break would worry about it. Not Crawley. He just sat and waited for the time to come. Damn if I didn’t do all his fretting for him!

  At two o’clock the bolts shot back. I said, “Come on, Crawley. We got a chance to stretch our legs in the area. If you got any money you can buy something to read or smoke.”

  Crawley said, “I’m okay here. Besides, I got no money. They sell candy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You got money?”

  “Yep. Twenty cents. Tobacco for me for another two weeks at the rate of two or three home-made cigarettes per day. There ain’t one penny for anyone or anything else.”

  “Hell with that. Bring back four candy bars. Two marshmallow, one coconut, one fudge.”

  I laughed in his face and went out, thinking that here was one time when I’d have a story to tell the rest of the boys that would keep a lifer laughing. But somehow I never did get a chance to say anything to anybody about Crawley. I couldn’t tell you how it happened. I started to talk to one fellow and the guard called him over. I said howdy to another and he told me to dry up, he had some blues he wanted to soak in. It just didn’t work out. Once I really thought I had a start—one of the stoolies, this time; but just as I said, “Hey, you ought to get a load of my cellmate,” the bell rang for us to get back in the cells. I just had time to get to the prison store before the shutter banged down over the counter. I went back up to my deck and into my cell. I pitched Crawley his candy bars. He took them without saying aye, yes, or no—or thanks.

  Hardly a word passed between us until long after supper. He wanted to know how to fix one blanket so it felt like two. I showed him. Then I hopped into the upper bunk and said:

  “Try sleepin’ tonight.”

  He said, “What’s the matter with you?”

  “You was talking in your sleep last night.”

  “I wasn’t talking to myself,” he said defensively.

  “You sure wasn’t talking to me.”

  “I was talking to—my brother,” said Crawley, and he laughed. My God, what a laugh that was. It was sort of dragged out of him, and it was grating and high-pitched and muffled and it went on and on. I looked over the edge of the bunk, thinking maybe he wasn’t laughing, maybe he was having a fit. His face was strained, his eyes were screwed shut. All right, but his mouth was shut. His lips were clamped tight together. His mouth was shut and he went on laughing! He was laughing from inside somewhere, from his chest, some way I never even heard of before. I couldn’t stand it. If that laughing didn’t stop right away I’d have to stop breathing. My heart would stop breathing. My life was squirting out through my pores, turning to sweat. The laughter went higher and higher, just as loud, just as shrill, and I knew I could hear it and Crawley could, but no one else. It went up and up until I stopped hearing it, but even then I knew it was still going on and up, and though I c
ouldn’t hear it any more, I knew when it stopped. My back teeth ached from the way my jaws had driven them into the gums. I think I passed out, and then slept afterward. I don’t remember the lights going out at nine, or the guards checking up.

  I been slugged before, many a time, and I know what it’s like to come to after being knocked out. But when I came out of this it was more like waking up, so I must have slept. Anyway, it wasn’t morning. Must have been about three or four, before the sun came up. There was a weak moon hanging around outside the old walls, poking a gray finger in at us, me and Crawley. I didn’t move for a few minutes, and I heard Crawley talking. And I heard someone else answering.

  Crawley was saying something about money. “We got to get money, Bub. This is a hell of a jam. We thought we didn’t need it. We could get anything we wanted without it. See what happened? Just because I’m no beauty winner a cop asks us questions. They stick us in here. Now we’ve got to break it. Oh, we can do it; but if we get some money it don’t have to happen again. You can figure something, can’t you, Bub?”

  And then came the answering voice. It was the grating one that had been laughing before. That wasn’t Crawley’s voice! That belonged to somebody else. Aw, that was foolish. Two men to a cell. One man to a bunk. But here were two men talking, and I wasn’t saying anything. I suddenly had a feeling my brains were bubbling like an egg frying in too much grease.

  The voice shrilled, “Oh, sure. Money’s no trouble to get. Not the way we work, Crawley. He, he!” They laughed together. My blood felt so cold I was afraid to move in case my veins broke. The voice went on. “About this break; you know just what we’re going to do?”