Shortly after noon the two largest national broadcasting systems installed mikes on the main walk down near the front gates. News analysts interviewed some of the convicts who had gathered around. Most of the convicts who showed any manner of heroism during the fire were asleep at the time. Those who got a chance to talk over the air were the loud-mouthed phonies. I noticed that they all shouted into the mikes. They ignored the questions of the interviewers and shouted loudly about their great heroism. One began proclaiming that he was innocent of the crime for which he’d been convicted. They had to pull him away from the mike. Most of them just told how many convicts’ lives they had saved.
A colored convict called Hard-Walking Shorty because he was a small, gnarled man with a game leg, began by clutching the mike as if it was an all-day sucker and shouting, “This is Hard-Walking Shorty. Hello, world! I’m a man of a few words but a lot of action. I brought down thirty men from 6-8. I doan know how I did it. I was stumblin’ through the smoke and flame with two men on each shoulder…” Before he got through he had saved over four hundred and ninety-nine men by actual count.
In fact, the dozen or so convicts who went on the air, by their accounts, had saved more lives than there were convicts in the prison. The news analysts didn’t seem to realize that the convicts were simply talking for a pardon. Finally the men began blaming the warden for the fire. The warden sent a couple of honor men down into the front yard to cut the broadcasting lines. But by then many of the convicts who hadn’t gotten any closer to the burning cell block than I had had become national celebrities.
That night it was rumored that during the confusion of the fire one convict had changed into civilian clothes, picked a pass from a reporter’s pocket, and walked calmly through the front gate. But he was the only one who escaped. Even the condemned men who were out on the yard did not try to escape. The convict whom the fireman shot in front of the dormitory and another who was shot by a guard—shot in the guts with a shotgun loaded with bird shot—were the only ones who had been killed. Their bodies had been hidden under some tarpaulin in the hole and the next morning loaded on one of the trucks with the burnt convicts, without word of the killings getting about. We learned afterward that the bodies had been taken to the fairgrounds and laid out in rows on the tables until identified and claimed. Those that were not claimed by relatives or friends were buried in Potter’s Field.
During the night the guardsmen were organized into patrol groups. Machine guns were mounted at strategic points about the yard, on top of buildings, and along the walls. When they saw the machine guns next morning some of the convicts permitted the guards to line them up and march them back to work. But most of the convicts still maintained their defiance.
That morning a Committee of Nine was organized by the convicts, in defiance of the warden. Dunlap, the instigator, called a mass meeting of the convicts on the yard that afternoon. The committeemen circulated among the convicts, passing along the word. They wore badges which said “Committee” and assumed the authority of guards.
Most of the convicts attended the meeting that afternoon. The yard was jammed with milling, noisy convicts. The patrol units of guardsmen and sailors were spaced along the outer walks. They carried rifles, riot guns and gas grenades. A platform had been erected by the alligator pool, and the p.a. system borrowed from the chapel. Dun-lap mounted the platform and called for silence. He was a short, powerfully built man with a forceful personality. He said it was the idea of the committee to direct a campaign of passive resistance against the warden.
“We just want to get rid of that bastard. We don’t want to riot. We don’t want to destroy any property. We don’t want to harm any of the guards or officials. Just ignore them if they say anything to you. Now this is the idea. We won’t have any more companies, no more routine, and no more work until the welfare department has completed an investigation and appointed a new warden and a new order of guards.” Everybody screamed and whistled and hurrahed. “The only person we want to keep is the deputy,” Dunlap said. “The deputy is all right. We’re going to ask the governor to appoint him warden.” The convicts shouted their approval.
The deputy was standing at the edge of the mass of convicts, bobbing his head. We felt that he condoned the proceedings and in time the rumor grew that he had instigated them. Before the fire he had never been actively disliked as had Gout, the warden, and others, but he had never been very popular. But following that meeting the convicts began to worship him. He couldn’t do anything wrong. He was the only official whom the convicts would obey. For a time the other officials and guards would not set foot within the yard. They congregated in the front offices and remained there all day.
Passive resistance was the order of the day. In conversation it took the place of the fire. All you could hear was “down with the pig.” The committee ran all activities within the walls. The deputy worked with them. The laundry, dining room, and powerhouse were kept in operation. All other activities were suspended. The convicts ate, slept, and gambled. They had that punk they’d always wanted, stayed up all night, ran wild in droves like hungry wolves, stole from each other and robbed each other with knives at throats in the darkness, raped each other. But no one escaped.
It was bitchery and abomination, Sodom and Gomorrah in the flower of its vulgarity, stark and putrid and obscene, grotesque and nauseating. I moved through the sickening, stinking, sordid, sloppy, sensuous sights and scenes hollow-eyed and stunned, as if I was walking in my sleep. All that time I couldn’t sleep. I lost weight rapidly and became very thin. Nothing I saw made any impression on me. I could no longer see any connection between the convicts and humanity. I didn’t even think of humanity at all.
Tables were carried outdoors and the convicts gambled on the yard. Blocker and I ran our game on a desk we dragged from the school. At night we dragged it back inside the school. We took turns to eat because our game ran continuously, day and night. We had to hire three extra dealers to work shifts, and six tough convicts to protect the game from being robbed.
Bunks had been moved into the school to house convicts from the 7&8 cell block and, for a time, the school became the center of gambling and perversion. One night some convicts got hold of a package of marijuana weed. A dozen or so convicts stripped naked and had a “circus” in one of the schoolrooms. Convicts came from all over the prison to watch.
Occasionally Blocker and I would leave the game and wander about the prison to see what was going on in other places. We always took along two bodyguards. I saw a colored convict in the coal company who had twelve radios stacked about his bunk. Most of them were burnt and damaged beyond repair. None of them would play. But they were now his and he sat in the middle of them, looking very proud.
The fags paid fabulous sums to have articles of feminine apparel and make-up smuggled inside. It was said one cop made enough money from this business to buy a new car. In the 3&4 cell block the fags paraded about in their silk panties and nylon stockings and bright colored kimonos and diaphanous negligees. They wore heavily padded pink and black satin loincloths and their legs and arms and armpits were shaved. Their bodies were powdered and their faces rouged and their mouths heavy with lipstick. During the day they switched about the yard, rouged and powdered, but wearing their uniform trousers and silk blouses. They solicited around the gambling tables and at night they returned to their cells and did business.
Mississippi Rose, the liver-lipped colored convict whom I had seen robbing the dead Negro on the yard the night of the fire, had opened a red-light dive on 5-3. He had curtained off the front of the cell and covered the inside light with red tissue paper. Chick, a small blond fellow, had his hair marcelled. He had a cell on 5-4 where four or five fags worked in turns. The most popular girl-boy of all was a small, girlish sailor who was very animated and cute and had quick little movements and a bright little smile. It was rumored that he was charging twenty-five dollars and getting it.
A canteen had been set up in f
ront of the chapel where ice cream, cake and cigarettes could be bought. All day long it was crowded with convicts spoiling with their kids.
The following Sunday services were held in commemoration of “…our dear dead comrades,” as Deacon Smith defined them. I attended the services in the Protestant chapel. The chaplain said a prayer for the departed souls. That was the first time I had seen him since the previous Sunday. I hadn’t even thought of him. Afterward Deacon Smith said a prayer and several visiting ministers prayed. I thought that the souls were getting a great send-off. Then a fat-faced fag sang “My Buddy.” Tears poured down his cheeks like showers of rain. Many of the convicts began crying. I began crying also. I wondered what the hell I was crying about. But I couldn’t help it. The chaplain said another prayer for the living convicts and we got up and sauntered out. As we crossed the yard we saw little black Doorbelly chasing big black Gravy down the main walk. Doorbelly had a brick in each hand and Gravy was highballing. The guardsmen were laughing. Doorbelly cut loose with one of the bricks and smashed a dining-room window. One of the committeemen ran over and stopped him.
There was plenty of money. I heard a National Guardsman who was watching a crap game say, “By golly, there’s more money in here than I ever seen before.” There probably was.
That was passive resistance—that mad surging degeneration of human beings.
And finally, as it had to be, there was a riot. None of the convicts who witnessed it thought that it was very much of a riot. But the papers carried headlines three inches tall. I wasn’t there. The night before I had gone to the hospital for an opiate. I couldn’t sleep. They had given me a shot of morphine. I just collapsed, they said.
What was known as the front gate was a series of heavily barred, interlocking anterooms, extending from the front offices through the front cell house to the prison yard. These rooms were at different levels and separated by heavily barred doors, electrically operated. The last of these rooms, just before entering the yard, was called the guards’ room. It was here that the guards were checked in and out when the shifts changed and here they left their coats and parcels which they were not permitted to take inside. A guard remained on duty in this room at all hours to operate the gate that opened into the yard. The guard whose duty it was to operate the gate leading to the next room sat on the other side of the second gate. The last three gates were operated from the warden’s office, out front.
The guards’ room was flanked by the stair wells of the 3&4 cell block and the 5&6 dormitories. There were bars in between. The convicts could see through the bars into the guards’ room.
The riot was started by an argument between a convict in the 3&4 stair well and a guard sergeant in the guards’ room. Some convict on 2-3, hearing the argument, shouted down to the convict, “Aw, hit him in the mouth.” The convict couldn’t possibly hit the guard who was standing some distance on the other side of the bars, so the suggestion was rhetorical. But it made the sergeant mad. He snatched out his pistol and fired several shots in the direction of 2-3, wounding an innocent convict in the arm. The shooting brought the whole surging mass of convicts out of their cells. They charged down the stairs and pushed against the bars, screaming epithets at the guards.
A number of guardsmen rushed in from the yard and forced the convicts back up on the ranges at bayonet point Machine guns were mounted in the stair well and at the head of each range. Finally the convicts were forced into the cells and warned that if they came out on the range they would be shot. That was the riot. But it gave the warden a chance to say that the convicts were disorderly and he blew it up.
That night the guardsmen constructed a wire-enclosed stockade on the ball diamond and set up two rows of pup tents. They strung lights around the wire enclosure and placed machine guns in each corner. The next morning the major and his staff deployed the guardsmen in battle formation about the yard, and all the way to the stockade. The convicts were then taken from the 3-4 cell block and marched down to the stockade. The other convicts stood about in vantage points, keeping their distance from the soldiers, and watched. It was done very quietly.
That afternoon I awakened and was released from the hospital I noticed immediately that the convicts had become subdued.
That night the convicts in the stockade set fire to their tents. The guardsmen let the tents burn down. They didn’t replace them. After that the convicts in the stockade had to sleep in the open on the ground.
Slowly the routine was re-established. The major ordered a nine-o’clock curfew. Notices were posted that anyone seen on the yard after nine o’clock at night would be shot on sight. No one was shot, but it was risky business running that blockade at night. Once Blocker and I dropped a bag of merchandise, running from one dormitory to another, but were afraid to go back after it.
Two days after the riot the convicts in the stockade were put on short rations. The guardsmen began corralling the remainder of the convicts. The convicts were gathered from a dormitory or cell block and lined up on the yard. They were required to give their names and numbers and were then assigned to companies. The guards returned to take over the companies. Many of the convicts hid out in the industrial buildings and the burnt cell house to keep from being put back into the companies. But most of them were caught trying to slip into the dining room.
When Blocker and I were caught I told of being a patient of the industrial commission. Blocker was humpbacked. We were put over in 1-6 dormitory with the cripples. The convicts in the dormitories upstairs kept me very nervous by throwing buckets of water and bottles down at the soldiers on the first floor. Although the guardsmen were youngsters their officers weren’t. The top sergeant, in charge of the soldiers in the dormitory, was very tough. He told the convicts that the first time one of his boys was hit he was going to smoke them out. Sure enough, when one youngster got hit on the head with a pop bottle the sergeant took his squad up there and brought those convicts out like rats. He kicked them down the stairs so fast they piled up three-high on the landing. After that it was very quiet in the dormitories.
I was getting very tired of all the death and violence. It was a relief when they split up the dormitory and moved the real cripples down to the tag-warehouse basement. Blocker and I were moved with the others. All we had to do was stay inside the thick brick walls and keep out of everybody’s way. I was grateful. It was the dormitory where the coal company had bunked before the fire.
Before then I had always had a physical aversion toward people who had lost their legs or arms or eyes. I had always been slightly repulsed by the sight of anything deformed. But down there in the cripple company I got over it. I learned to take those twisted, one-legged, one-armed, peg-legged, crutch-walking, evil, cranky, crippled convicts as I did any others.
I jumped up in our poker game once and shouted at a fellow, “I’ll take something and knock your goddamned brains out. Don’t think I’m going to be light on you because you only got one arm.” Before I knew what was happening he had taken his one arm and slapped me off the bench. He had his knife out and was over me and if it hadn’t been for several fellows grabbing him he might have cut my throat. I found out that those cranky devils didn’t expect anyone to be light on them. One of the cripples could snatch off his peg leg quicker than a man could draw a knife, and brain you while standing on one leg. They said that the deputy used to lock his peg leg up for a week when he became too unmanageable.
Suddenly the prison got tough. The convicts in the stockade were labeled agitators and returned to the 3&4 block where they were kept locked, day and night, in their cells. Their food was brought over twice a day from the dining room and kicked beneath their door.
The Committee of Nine were rounded up and put in the hole. Most of us had forgotten the committee by the end of that year, but even then, those who had not died were still in the hole. They said that Dunlap hung himself. One went blind. Three died of tuberculosis. The convicts who had cheered them when they had been in power said later
they were fools to try to fight the warden.
The committee and the convicts in the 3&4 cell block took the fall. They took the fall for everything that had happened or would happen or had ever happened. They took the fall for all the humiliation which the warden had suffered from the roastings he received from the newspapers. They took the fall for the rout of discipline, for the starting of the fire, for the convicts who were burnt to death. They took the fall and the warden weathered the storm.
The guard personnel was changed. A few of the old guards returned, and under the protection of the soldiers, they became insufferable. But most of the new guards who were hired were young, athletic fellows—ham prize fighters, second-rate wrestlers, neighborhood bullies, clip-joint bouncers, psychopathic vets and big beefy red-faced ex-coppers who had been kicked out of various police departments for cruelty. The ex-coppers were hired as guard lieutenants. Twelve yard lieutenants took the place of the sergeants. Cody was made the head lieutenant. Cody had not been seen within the prison since the day before the fire. But when he returned he was the same Cody. Another lieutenant was called Pick Handle Slim. He was an ex-railroad dick. He got his name from beating frozen hobos to death with a hickory pick handle he carried with him. He was a tall, flat-chested, maniacal Texan. There was a lieutenant called Dog Back. He was from Arkansas. There was a lieutenant called the Hangman. He was a sadistic little gray-haired kill-crazy man. All of them were as tough as a man can be when he’s got the law on his side, and the only gun, and orders to whip a convict’s head as long as his head will last.
“Talking in line!” one would say, jerking the convict out.
“But. lieutenant, I ain’t said—” And before he could finish he’d have his skull split open and be stretched his length on the ground.
Cast the First Stone Page 18