Cast the First Stone

by Chester Himes

  “Aw, let him alone,” the dealer said.

  “Screw you!” I shouted wildly. “Screw all you dirty sons of bitches!” My face was hot enough to burn and I wanted to fight. I wanted to fight everybody.

  But they just grinned. They were just trying to get my goat.

  “He’s a spunky young bastard,” one of them said.

  “Yeah, boy, spunk is what gets you kilt.”

  The guy who had been talking to me took me by the arm and pulled me down the aisle. “Some of these guys are hard losers,” he said. “They’re superstitious about anyone standing behind them.” He grinned to show he wasn’t superstitious.

  “None of them can gamble,” I said.

  He looked at me. “You gamble?”

  “I can beat all those chumps. None of them can gamble.”

  “Some of ‘em are supposed to be pretty good.”

  “What the hell did he get puffed up for? I’ve stood behind guys who were better gamblers on their worst days than he’ll ever be; guys who won and lost more money in a single sitting than he ever had.”

  “They broke me last night and I’m a pretty good gambler myself,” he said.

  “They must have been lucky, because none of them can gamble.”

  He didn’t want to argue. “My name’s Maiden Streator,” he said. “They call me Mal.”

  We turned by the door and came on back by the washtrough and the guardstand where the guard sat chewing tobacco and reading a magazine; then turned again down at the lower end and came up the other side where the bunks were closer to the aisle. When we passed the game again I looked that con who’d yelled at me dead in the eye. He looked back until I had gone so far I couldn’t look at him without turning my head and I didn’t want to do that.

  “We look enough alike to be cousins,” Mal said.

  “What are you in for?” I asked, just to say something.

  “First degree.”

  “Who’d you kill, your wife?”

  “No, a state trooper. He came across the line to arrest me.”

  “They can’t do that,” I said.

  “I was in Centralia,” he said. “I’d just got in from Chicago. I was running snow from the coast to Detroit and there was a reader out on me. They’d been chasing me and I’d got across the line. I was in the kitchen, eating. They bust down the door and bust in.”

  “And you let ‘em have it?”

  “Yeah, yeah, he bust in and I bust his heartstring loose. I bust his heart wide open. I bust that other son of a bitch too, but he lived.” His face was flushed and his eyes sparked.

  I was impressed. “It’s a wonder they didn’t give you the chair.”

  “They did. I was in death row eighteen months and three days and two hours and forty-seven minutes.”

  “In death row?” I was shocked. “How’d you get out?”

  We turned by the front door and came on back out the other side of the aisle. Jeep came out from between the bunks and said, “Want another smoke, Jim?”

  “No, I got some left. I still got those two. Thanks, anyway.”

  Mal waited for me but he wouldn’t look at Jeep. Jeep glanced at Mal and said to me, “Come on down to my bunk, Jim. I got something to show you. You know that fellow who was playing on the mandolin when you passed?” He kept looking at Mal. “He’s going to play and I’m gonna sing. We’re practicing for Sunday service week after next. You know how to sing?”

  Mal wheeled around and said harshly, “Hell, naw, he don’t know how to sing. He’s a man. He don’t want to sing with you, anyway.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Jeep said.

  “Come on, Jim,” Mal said.

  “He’s coming with me,” Jeep said, taking hold of my arm.

  “Turn loose of me, goddammit!” I snarled, jerking my arm free.

  Mal’s face had turned brick colored. “Go on, go on, beat it, fink,” he said to Jeep. “You dirty punk! Scram! Jim’s walking with me.”

  “You ain’t nothing but a goddamn punk yourself,” Jeep said. “You’re one of those swap-up bitches. One of those secret whores. You go out in the coal shed so can’t nobody see you.”

  Mal turned a sickly white. He started after Jeep. Jeep backed up and put his hand in his pocket. Mal grabbed me by the arm and pulled me down the aisle.

  “They’re after him already,” I heard a voice behind me saying. I felt embarrassed as hell.

  “Fighting to start off with,” another said. Somebody laughed. My face started to burn.

  Mal looked at me to see how I’d taken what Jeep had said. “I ought to go back and hit him in the mouth,” he said, getting very fierce.

  “You oughta hit ‘em when you had ‘im,” I said. I was getting pissed-off, fed up with the whole thing. It had taken me down again.

  He looked at me. “You don’t believe that stuff, do you?”

  “No, why should I? I don’t believe anything.”

  “I just hate that stuff so I don’t even want anybody to believe anything like that about me, even when I know it isn’t true.”

  “I don’t blame you,” I said.

  “Don’t get any more cigarettes from him,” he said. “If I had some you could smoke mine. But I got broke yesterday. I only got some Bull Durham. I’ll show you how to roll your own and you can smoke that until I get some tailor-mades. Everybody in here smokes it, anyway.”

  We turned at the door and came back down the other side.

  “I know how to roll them,” I said.

  “I’ll get you a bag.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll have some money by tomorrow. I should have had it already. I told my old man to send me a hundred dollars right away.”

  He was impressed.

  “You can’t spend any of it until next week,” he said. “I’ll get you that bag of Bull Durham and when it’s gone I’ll get you another one.” He stopped and borrowed a bag of weed from one of the gamekeepers. “What did you want so much money for?” he asked, when he’d caught up with me again.

  “I want to get a radio but I don’t see anybody in here with one. I thought we were allowed to have them.”

  “We are. They took ours when they moved us down here in this hole. You know, this is a regular nigger’s job. Niggers work down here most of the time. We were in school. They shipped us down here for punishment and took our radios.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I had one but when I saw they weren’t going to let us have them in here I sold mine.”

  We had just passed the latrines again and an elderly, serious-looking stiff-backed fellow stepped out from between two bunks and called, “Maiden! Maiden! Step here a minute.”

  Mal turned to me. “I’ll be back in a minute, Jim. I got to talk to the General. I’ll be back in just a minute.”

  I went over and started watching the game again. I sure wished I had some money. There was a fat fellow across the table, with most of the chips, and he was through playing. He was just sitting there. He’d won his load. He was sitting there tossing in a chip or two on the first card, or maybe looking at the third if the ante wasn’t too high. Just trying to catch a big pair and ring the dealer in. Didn’t anybody else have any chips worth gambling for. They were trying to ring him in a pot so they could draw out on him. But he was just laying dead.

  It was late, close to bedtime. Most of the guys had stopped whatever they were doing and were getting ready for bed. Only a couple of cons were still walking the aisle. The guard had got up and was walking around a little. The seat of his blue serge uniform pants was shiny as glass.

  The gamekeeper called it a day and took up his blanket. When the fat guy got ready to cash out a crowd collected. He turned in his chips and said, “I’ll come back and get my stuff.” All the beggars looked disappointed. He had a few chips left over, thirty or forty cents’ worth, and three guys were begging him for them.

  While I stood there the lights flashed. The guard rapped his stick on the table top. From all over the prison c
ame the sound of rapping sticks. It was bedtime. And suddenly it was back on top of me—prison and my twenty years. I turned and went slowly to my bunk. I felt numbed.

  I had a top bunk next to the outside wall, directly beneath one of the high, barred windows. Hanging at the head was my wooden identification plate with my name and number. I had hung my aluminum coffee pot by a piece of wire to the foot of the bunk frame, and had stuffed my soap, prison-made face towel and tin comb down into it. I had put my Sunday shirt of blue denim and my white string tie underneath the mattress. That, with what I had on, was everything I owned.

  Many convicts had wooden boxes. Some were made like trunks and foot lockers with big padlocks. They kept these underneath their bunks at night and on top of their bunks during the day so the floors could be swept and mopped. They were allowed to have these boxes to hold their personal things—tobacco, toilet articles, and such store-bought clothing as we were allowed to have: shoes, underwear, socks and handkerchiefs. But always they were subject to confiscation. The prison supplied a duffel bag but I didn’t even have one of those.

  I took off my coat, shirt, pants, cap and shoes. I kept on my long cotton drawers to sleep in. My prison number was stenciled in the neckband. I put the rest of my clothes on the foot of my bunk and crawled beneath the ironed sheet and two dull, gray, dusty-smelling blankets.

  Most of the convicts slept in their underwear. We changed them once a week when we took a bath. We didn’t once take them off the rest of the time, winter or summer. A few of the convicts slept in pajamas, and others, like Jeep, slept in their shirts and shorts.

  A moment later the guard began to take count. He started at one corner of the dormitory and went up and down the long aisles, counting the empty bunks. He was an old man, pot-bellied and slump-shouldered, but now he walked rapidly and the convicts scrambled to their bunks to be counted. When the guard finished he rapped his stick on the guardstand. That meant the count was right. If the count had not been right he would have counted again. And then if it had still been wrong, he’d have called in the night captain.

  The convicts began moving about again; some to the latrine, others from bunk to bunk borrowing magazines, tobacco, matches. The guard turned off the lights over the bunks. Every third light down the center aisle remained on all night. But there was enough light left to see what went on in any part of the dormitory. There was never complete darkness in any part of the prison. The convicts who bunked near the night lights could read as long as they wished. Several convicts sat on their bunks, taking a last puff on their cigarettes. Smoking in bed was prohibited.

  For a time the guard walked up and down the center aisle. When the convicts had become settled for the night he returned to his padded chair on the guardstand and began reading his magazine again.

  I turned over and looked at the ceiling. It was about three feet above my eyes. I felt as if I was someone else. It couldn’t be me, Jim Monroe, lying there on an upper bunk in a prison dormitory. It just wasn’t so.

  “Jim.”

  I spun over.

  Mal was standing by my bunk. “I brought you some matches,” he said.

  I took them. “Thanks.” They felt like splinters and I tried to see them in the dim light.

  “They’re split,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “I couldn’t get back. That guy got to singing the blues and I couldn’t get away.”

  “That was all right.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  After Mal left it seemed that something had changed. I looked around and listened. Then I realized it was the silence; it had become silent. Now the whispering started again. A high, falsetto voice piped, “Good night.” From another part of the dormitory a similar voice replied, “Good night.” Somebody snickered. I slid ‘way down beneath the covers and ignored them.

  A half-hour later, when I thought everybody had gone to sleep, I climbed down from my bunk and went over to the latrine. Those of us who had upper bunks had wooden stools to step on. I felt very conspicuous going across the floor under the center aisle lights in my large floppy drawers. I hoped everybody was asleep. But as soon as I stepped into the light a great hissing and whistling began. The guard rapped his stick for silence. I gritted my teeth. To hell with ‘em! I told myself.

  While I was standing at the urinal Jeep came out and joined me. He just stood there. “What’d that guy say about me?” he asked.

  “He didn’t say any more about you than you said about him,” I grunted.

  “What you want to do is wait and find out for yourself,” he said. He was wearing nylon shorts, which showed his round hairless legs. Practically everybody I’d seen slept in their long drawers. His bare flesh looked obscene.

  I felt embarrassed standing so close to him. “Look, let me alone,” I said. I went back and climbed into my bunk. I tried to go to sleep but I couldn’t. All that stuff that happened in Chicago kept coming back. I could see myself asking that sonofabitching pawnbroker for five hundred dollars for the ring, and him saying just a minute and slipping out in the back room. I’d known he was calling the police. Even if he did have that one ring I had a lot of other stuff. But I couldn’t run. I never could run.

  I could feel the cops hitting me in the mouth, hanging me by my handcuffed feet upside down over a door, beating my ribs with their gun butts. I could feel the blood running down my legs from where the handcuffs pinched them on the anklebone.

  I had stood it as long as I could, I thought, looking at the ceiling. I might have stood it longer if I’d lost consciousness. But there had been too much pain and not enough hurt to lose consciousness. I had confessed.

  I had never confessed anything in my life before. Since I was old enough to remember, the beatings I’d gotten from mother and father had taught me one lesson: Never confess. No matter what you ever did, always say you didn’t do it. Let ‘em prove it. But still deny it. That had been the one rigid rule in my code of existence. Never confess. Then there would always be a doubt, if not a chance.

  But I had confessed. Now it was too new to stand thinking about. I felt like vomiting whenever I thought about it. I felt ruptured and nutted.

  I tried to think of my mother. But I’d almost gotten to the place where I couldn’t think of her. I tried to think of the boys out at the club. But I’d almost gotten past them, too.

  It was thinking of Chicago that I couldn’t get past. It came and went and when it went I tried to get some sleep. But it never went far enough so I could get much sleep. I’d sleep a little and then I’d wake up thinking about it. It seemed as if no sooner than I’d gotten to sleep I’d see myself lying huddled on the concrete floor in the Loop detective bureau, confessing.

  I turned my head and looked out the window that was just a little above the level of my eyes. I saw the moon in a deep blue sky and a guard-turret with spotlights down the walls. I saw the guard silhouetted against the sky, a rifle cradled in his arm, the intermittent glow of the cigarette in his mouth. I saw the long black sweep of the walls beneath the deep blue distance. When you looked at the walls your vision stopped. Everything stopped at the walls. The walls were about fifty feet from the dormitory building. Just fifty feet away was freedom, I thought. Fifty feet—and twenty years.

  2

  WHEN THE LIGHTS came on next morning I put on my shoes and socks sitting cross-legged on my bunk, then lay down and stuck my legs in the air and pulled on my pants. I jumped down and got my towel and soap out of the coffee bucket and went over to the trough to wash.

  It was very cold in the dormitory in the morning. The air was cold, the iron bunk frames were cold, the concrete floor was cold, anything you touched was cold. The water that spilled in thin streams from a half-inch sprinkling pipe was icy cold. It was so cold that even the strong lye soap wouldn’t lather. I caught some water in my cupped hands and dashed it in my face. Then I wiped at my face with the towel. The homespun cloth felt greasy. Until it had been washed se
veral times it wouldn’t absorb any water. I said to hell with it, it was my dirt. I went back to my bunk and put on my hickory-striped shirt, gray vest, gray coat and gray cap. None of the garments fitted. They weren’t made to fit. They weren’t made up as suits. Over in the commissary, where I’d been outfitted, there were stacks of coats, vests and pants of different sizes, some new and some used. The commissary clerks gave out the used clothes first. They were the uniforms left by the convicts who’d gone out. All of my things were used except my Sunday shirt. My coat was patched at both elbows. It was much too small. My vest was too big and my pants were too short. I had used-shoes also; the heels were run-over and the soles were thin. But I was dressed as well as anybody, better than most.

  The breakfast bell rang. The guard knocked his stick. We lined up down the wide center aisle in two lines, two-by-two in each line. The tall men stood at the front, graduating down to the short men at the rear. Two medium-sized men marched at the very front of each line to pace us. I was stationed by the guard, according to height, somewhere about the middle of the line. The guard knocked his stick again and we marched out of the dormitory, down a narrow alleyway between the dining room and a three-storied red-brick building, and turned into a side entrance.

  The dining room was a flat, one-storied building with two wings separated by the kitchen. Our company was the first to enter. We marched down the wide center aisle and filed in between the narrow slate-topped counters and stood with our arms folded. Each of us stood behind a stool. There were ten to a counter. We filled twenty-and-a-fraction counters. When everyone had found a place we stood for a moment until the guard was satisfied and knocked his stick. We took off our caps, put them underneath the stools, and sat down. We looked at our breakfast. It was the same breakfast I’d had since arriving.

  Aluminum bowls were half-filled with soupy oatmeal. Milk, made by adding water to powdered milk, had been poured over it. But it had been standing for so long that the body of the milk had settled to the bottom in a white scum which covered the oatmeal. The water had come to the top. To one side of the cereal were aluminum plates, holding one link of fried sausage which had cold-welded to the aluminum by congealed grease. It was very cold in the dining room. The food was stone cold. Empty cups were lined against the front ledges of the counters. The knives and forks and spoons were made of some metal that had turned black.