Cast the First Stone

by Chester Himes

  “Didn’t you hear me asking about this book?” I could feel the blood rushing to my head.

  “I was going to give it to you.”

  I snatched up the book and started to slap him in the face with it. Someone called, “Pst…pst…Cody.”

  Sergeant Cody came into the room. I whirled away from Wilkerson, red-faced and jerky. Then Wilkerson whispered, teasingly, “I like you to get mad. You’re pretty when you’re mad.”

  Something clamped over my head, hot and tight, blinding me. Turning, I went back and hit him over the ear. He fell half from his seat and clambered to his feet on the other side. I leaned across the desk and hit him twice in the face. When I hit at him the third time my feet slipped and I fell across the desk. While lying there I hit him again in the stomach. He began screaming but he didn’t fight back.

  “Pst…pst…Cody,” someone kept whispering.

  “Damn Cody!” I raved.

  Cody took his time about separating us. He took us to the hole. The next morning when we were brought out to face the deputy, Wilkerson said he didn’t want to fight. The deputy let him go and kept me a day longer.

  Gout was the cause of that. “You back again, Monroe? You’re here more often than the deputy.” He picked up my report file and looked at it. “You haven’t been here but nine months and you’ve been in court seven times. What’s the matter with you?”

  “The trouble isn’t with me,” I said. “Why don’t you talk to some of those guys who keep digging at me?”

  “We got a place for you guys who can’t keep out of trouble,” he said. “We’ll put you in the redshirt gang.”

  When I got out the next day Blocker had a couple of sandwiches for me. “You better let me get you an army, kid,” he grinned.

  “They need one around here just to keep these chumps in their place,” I said.

  “Man, you get mad quicker than anybody I’ve ever seen.” We grinned.

  “I’m gonna take it easy from now on in,” I said.

  Then about a week later I had a little trouble about a pair of pants. Captain Bull had given me a pants order and I’d gotten a new pair from the commissary. I sent them up to the tailor shop to have them taken up in the waist, and another hip pocket and two watch pockets put in. The boy who was doing my work then—Hank the Crank—sent them back but they were still too large in the waist. I started to send them back. But Snag, the colored runner for the school, who was a good friend of Blocker’s, said, “You better get a tailor-shop slip from Bull. Some of those guys up there might try to clip you for these strides now that you got ‘em all fixed up.”

  So I got the tailor shop tag to give them some protection. And then some sucker stole them. I told Bull and he sent me up to see the tailor-shop guard. The tailor-shop guard wanted me to take some second-hand strides in their place.

  “Hell, mine were new,” I protested.

  “Well, these are all I can give you,” he said. “You can take them or leave them.”

  “I’m going to see the deputy,” I said.

  When I went over to see the deputy, old Pop Henshaw, the hole guard, asked me what I wanted to see him for. I told him I’d lost my new pants in the tailor shop and I wanted an order for another pair. He looked at the ones I had on and asked me where I’d gotten them. I was wearing my old pair but they were in good shape. I told Pop I got them from Snag, the runner, for relief pants. He told me to keep them.

  “Hell, I’m due a new pair,” I argued. “I’m charged with them. I got to pay for them out of my earnings. What the hell—I want to see the deputy.”

  He sent me back to school. I sat there and got to burning, thinking about how I’d been gypped out of my new strides. I was determined to get me another pair, or bust, and I wasn’t going to buy them, either. That evening in the dormitory I borrowed a knife and cut the pair I was wearing into shreds.

  “You’ll get into trouble doing that, kid,” Blocker warned me.

  “I don’t care,” I said. “I’m going to get a new pair or die in the attempt.”

  He grinned. “Well let me fix them for you, then. They’ll know these have been cut.” He borrowed one of the tin graters the convicts used to grate up scrap soap to make new bars, and raveled off the edges of the slits so they’d look more like tears than cuts. But they still looked like cuts.

  The next morning I walked out of school and went over to the courtroom. When Pop Henshaw saw those pants he went straight up into the air. He grabbed me by the arm and rushed me in to the deputy. He told the deputy what I had done. I told the deputy how they’d tricked me out of my new pants up in the tailor shop. The deputy ordered Pops to take me over to the commissary and get me another pair. Pops took me over to the commissary but when the clerk started to give me a new pair he told him to get me a second-hand pair. They were about six inches too short. Pops made me put them on. I was so mad I wanted to knock him down the stairs.

  When Blocker saw me he started laughing. “You look like you’re coming ‘round the mountain, kid,” he said.

  Later that morning one of the guards hit a convict in school. There was a lot of yelling and gesticulating, and a few blows were passed. A couple of the guards got rubbed up a little. They had to send for the deputy. The deputy was in his sins by then. He was irritable and impatient and twitching like a wino with the shakes.

  I waited until he’d gotten the men quieted down a bit and then I grabbed him by the arm and said, “Look at these pants, deputy. These are the pants that Captain Henshaw got for me.”

  He tried to break away but I held on to him. He was so angry his face turned purple but he didn’t do anything to me for fear of stirring up the riot again. Everyone was waiting tensely for him to slap me.

  He looked down at my pants. “What’s the matter with them, what’s the matter with them, what’s the matter with them?” he snapped.

  “Hell, you can see,” I said, holding up one leg. “They’re too small and they’re too short and, anyway, I’m due a new pair. I’m charged with a new pair.”

  “Wear those, wear those, wear those,” he said, pulling away again.

  “I can’t wear these, goddammit!” I shouted. “What the hell’s the matter with you people?”

  The deputy turned clear around and looked at me. He looked as if he was just seeing me for the first time. Several guards rushed up to encircle me.

  “Cap Smith,” the deputy said to one of them. “Take this lad and get him some new trousers. Tell him about the trouser freak, the trouser freak, the trouser freak we had here. Had to send him to the insane asylum, had to send him to the insane asylum.”

  On the way to the commissary Captain Smith told me about the fellow who used to bleach his trousers white. As soon as they’d take one pair he’d bleach his new ones white. When they asked him why he did it he said he preferred Palm Beach clothing. They had to send him to the asylum for the criminally insane.

  One night Deacon Smith came over to our dormitory and held church. It was during a two-week revival meeting that was going on in the prison and they were looking for converts from every source. All of the colored convicts in the dormitory went down to hear Deacon Smith preach. One of the convicts, called Beau Diddly, got so happy he jumped up and dived head first into a commode. Beau Diddly was a rat and a degenerate and a very ugly, knotty, black Negro. But he must have had a whole lot of religion, or he must have gotten a whole lot on a very short notice.

  One night I was sitting on the deal box dealing—all the dealers used boxes to elevate them over the players—when a pistol went off five startling times, outside of the dormitory. It looked as if somebody was shooting directly at me. I had never looked down the barrel of a blasting pistol in the dark. I never knew what it was to be so scared. I jumped straight back off the box and landed in the aisle on the small of my spine. But I didn’t even feel any pain. By the time the echoes died away I was underneath a bunk on the other side of the dormitory. Our deal box had fallen open on the floor and merchandise�
��tobacco, cigarettes, soap, tooth paste, and such—was scattered everywhere. But we didn’t lose a single sack of weed. Everyone else was too busy ducking bullets to think of grabbing tobacco.

  When it was all over we rushed to the window to see what it was all about. We saw a body twitching convulsively in the circle of light cast by the yard guard’s torch.

  “One good boy got his final release,” somebody said.

  One of the bullets had entered through a window and struck the center pillar, less than six inches above Captain Charlie’s head. Another had creased a convict’s shoulder. Blocker and I gathered up our merchandise and I went back dealing stud. The morning paper said that a convict “Red” Swayzee, had been shot by a guard, Captain Catlin, while trying to escape. It said that the convict had fashioned a ladder of sheets and had wrapped it about his body. He had feigned sickness and had asked to be taken to the hospital. On the way to the hospital he had broken away from the guard and had tried to escape. That was one hell of a poor way to escape, I thought. I supposed he must have been planning on flying up to the top of the wall and then lowering himself down on the other side, with the ladder. But you never knew what a convict thought.

  12

  AT FIRST IT HAD been summer. We had shed our coats and vests and had gone about in our tailor-made shirts and caps and trousers, our sandals and silk socks. The cells had been stifling during the day, suffocating at night. It was against the rules to sleep naked. At nights we had lain on our sheets and panted.

  Summer was the spoiling season. The convicts slipped away from their companies and visited. They held rendezvous in the lumber shed, inside empty boxcars that had been sided with loads of lumber, flour or cement. They wandered aimlessly about the yard, without passes. The boy-girls had a chance to show their shapes. There was a laxity in the routine during summer. Almost every convict liked summer best.

  And then it was fall. Blocker and I ran our game. We went to school, to the bath, to the barbershop, to the dining room, to church, to bed. We put on our coats.

  And now it was winter again. We added our vests, brought out our gloves, donned our illegal sweaters underneath our shirts, our heavy shoes and two pairs of socks.

  The days changed in length. Their color changed from winter gray to spring yellow to summer’s blinding white to fall’s burnished tints, and again to winter gray. But the pattern was the same. Days in an endless procession, swinging out on the paradeground of days. Days, end to end, stretching back from the beginning of always, out to the end of always. Almost all of the days belonged to the prison. They were steel-laced and unvarying, shaped and molded for eternity. Another day. And then another. What was the difference?

  But there were those rare days that belonged to the convicts. Decoration Day. Thanksgiving. And now it was Christmas. We found a clean blue cotton prison sock filled with candy, an apple, an orange, and some nuts beside our plates at dinnertime. We had roast loin of pork, candied sweet potatoes, jellied salad, coffee with milk, and raisin bread for dinner and apple pie for dessert. And afterwards we had a minstrel show sponsored by the warden’s wife. The convict cast had been rehearsing since the first of November and now they faltered, cheerfully, through their lines. It was very funny.

  “Wuccup, wuccup, wuccup!” said the bear man in the cage.

  “Wut he mean by dat?” asked tall, big-mouthed, black, ludicrous Flamdingo, who didn’t need any make-up to be an end man.

  “Oh, man,” the other short black end man interpreted, “he mean by dat he thinks it am a beautiful day and dat he thinks de clouds is awful pretty and dat he thought dat po’k we had fur dinner was mighty fine and dat when he got up dis mawnin’ he remember dat it was Christmas and dat he was terrible happy.”

  “He mean all dat by just dat?”

  “Yeah man, he mean every bit of dat by just dat lil bit of dat. What he say in his language mean a whole lot.”

  “It mean a hell of a lot, you heah me!”

  And then the beautiful maiden passes the bear man’s cage. The beautiful maiden is played by Renee, the prison’s most notorious fag. The bear man begins jumping up and down in his cage and wrestling with the bars. He begins talking excitedly, “Wuccup, wuccup, wuccup, wuccup, wuccup, wuccup, wuccup, wuccup, wuccup…”

  And old Flam yelling, “Hey, somebody cum git dis heah bear man, he done talked fo’ story books already.”

  All of Christmas Eve and Christmas day the boxes had been coming. They came all during the night and were delivered as soon as they were received by the guards at the front gates and searched. A crew of honor men brought them around to the dormitories and cells. They had been coming all that week and the week before. But on Christmas day there was a deluge. The lights were kept on all night Christmas Eve. Nobody slept.

  Some of the convicts got two boxes, some got three, some got four and five. If you didn’t get a box on Christmas you were pitiful, you were the saddest convict I ever saw. My mother sent me a box. I received it first and then, a day later, I received a box from my father. There was a twelve-pound bag of flour in my dad’s box. We were allowed to receive sugar and he must have thought it was sugar. I could see him fumbling around in a self-service store picking up a bag of flour, thinking it was sugar, and packing it along with the cheap store cakes and candies and fruits, without looking at it. I didn’t know how it got by the guards who were supposed to search the boxes. As far as I knew we were not allowed to receive flour. But perhaps they had let it come on through so I could make some biscuits.

  Before Blocker or anyone else had a chance to discover it I wrapped it in some old newspapers and sneaked down and threw it in the wastepaper bag. One of the porters found it the next morning. They wanted to know who got the bag of flour for Christmas. But I never did tell.

  Blocker didn’t get a box. I shared my mother’s box with him and sent my father’s box, without the flour, to Mal who didn’t get a box either. I bought candy and fruit and meats from all those convicts who would sell them for money or poker chips, and distributed the stuff about to other guys who didn’t get boxes. I was very sorry for everyone that Christmas.

  We read in the newspapers about two convicts who got Christmas pardons. But they were very remote. Only a few fellows whom I talked to had ever heard of them. I was sorry for all those convicts that Christmas.

  There was a beautifully lighted Christmas tree in the yard which had been installed by the electricians from the powerhouse. Its installation had been supervised, as had been all the Christmas activities, by the warden’s wife. The convicts called her Ma. They swore by Ma. They loved her and worshiped her. She was the one who always interceded for them. She got them handkerchiefs and permission to wash them. They hated the warden. But they loved Ma.

  All the convicts in the dormitory were very excited. Everybody was happy, it seemed. They all wanted to give each other something, or gamble. Everyone had a little money for a time. We gave Dave, who was our newest flunky, some cards and chips and let him run an apple and orange poker game during the season. He took in bushels of them.

  Lippy Mike started a game and the guys gave him the play for a time. That was the way with every new game. Blocker and I took it easy for awhile.

  It had snowed early that winter and Christmas was cold and white. It was cold in the dormitory. At night I burrowed down beneath my two new prison blankets and my outside blanket—a warm, fluffy blue and white checked creation of double thickness which had cost me thirty dollars.

  My mother had been visiting me as regularly as possible but my father had not been down at all.

  But on the whole everything was well under control that winter. I was doing the easiest time I ever did. Everything was hunky-dory. Mal was my old lady, Blocker said. So what? If you didn’t have an old lady, you hadn’t been out long—you weren’t even serving time. But that was long distance. In the dormitory I was little boy blue. I was the dormitory’s most eligible swain. All the whores were shooting at me. I was the institution’s pr
ize touch. I fattened frogs for snakes. No kid could say that I refused him his beg, whether it was for a fin or a bag of weed. So what? I didn’t get anything but what I had always wanted most in life, and that was adulation. I got too much adulation.

  They called me the prison’s smartest poker dealer. They said what I couldn’t do with a deck of cards couldn’t be done. They said I’d been a big shot outside, too. They toadied to me. They made up my bunk for me in the morning, shined my shoes, laundered my pajamas, underwear and socks, pressed my uniform. They considered it a privilege to talk to me. It all cost me plenty. Everything cost me plenty. But I didn’t have anything else to do with my money.

  What a convict has been on the outside means very little in prison, no matter what they tell you. The convicts who were gangsters outside usually turn into finks inside, or they acquire t.b. and die, or they have money to buy their way and then they are still big shots. The toughies who had nothing but their outside reps got their throats cut by hick-ville punks who had never heard of them. Money talked as loud there as it does anywhere—if not louder.

  And the days passed. Square and angular, with hard-beaten surfaces; confining, restricting, congesting. But down in the heart of these precise, square blocks of days there was love and hate; ambition and regret; there was hope, too, shining eternally through the long gray years; and perhaps there was even a little happiness.

  Starting off with the morning wash-up: “Git up and knock on de rock…Ain’ quite day but iss fo’ o’clock…! Haw, hawww, hawwwwww! Ah calls yuh. yuh wanna fight. But de white cap’n call yuh dass jes awright…!