Cast the First Stone

by Chester Himes

  17

  WITH ONLY FOUR more years to do I thought of learning some trade or profession I could practice when I got out. The warden had given the convicts permission to take correspondence courses and many of them had enrolled in one thing or another. The newspaper and magazine boys sold the courses, for which they got a fat commission.

  I stopped Okay Collins, the magazine man, one night and asked what courses he was peddling. He said he could enroll me in courses in agriculture, chicken farming, mechanical and civil engineering, architecture, writing, air-conditioning, economics, political history, ancient literature, and law. That law course caught my fancy. Maybe it was because I was pretty excited about law at that time, especially the law that had cut my minimum down thirteen years and seven months.

  I asked him how much the law course cost. He said I’d have to make a down payment of fifty dollars and sign a promissory note to pay twenty dollars monthly until the full five hundred and eight dollars was paid. Then, if I passed the examinations, I would receive a degree in law and all I’d have to do after that was pass the bar examinations and I could practice, That is, of course, if I ever got back my citizenship.

  “What the hell kind of a lousy school is this where you can get a degree in law for five hundred and eight bucks?” I asked.

  “Hell, you call that hay?”

  “Naw, but it ain’t Harvard, either.”

  “Why, fellow, this is the same school the welfare director studied his law from,” he said.

  “From is right,” I said.

  “He majored in medicine at the university,” Okay said. “And then later, while practicing medicine, he took this course, and when he had completed it he was able to pass the bar examination the first time he took it”

  “Was that a great achievement?” I asked.

  “Well, no, but it just goes to show that this course will give you a complete knowledge of the subject,” he said with his tongue in his cheek. “And then, too, even if you don’t intend to practice law, it’s a good thing to know. It is indispensable in any kind of business; in fact as a prisoner you will find it invaluable. They give you a copy of the constitution of the United States with your first lessons and when you have completed the course you will receive a revised edition of this state’s criminal code.”

  “All that for five hundred and eight bucks? And a degree too,” I said.

  “Not only that but—”

  “That’s enough,” I said. “I’ll take it.”

  I signed a cashier’s slip for fifty dollars and, about two weeks later, I received a set of yellow, paper-backed pamphlets in the mail. Some of the titles were: History of Law; Legal Reasoning; Case Law; Statutory Law; English Common Law; Civil Law; Criminal Procedure…and such. There was an outline and schedule for study, a list of reference books, and sets of questions to be answered and mailed in each week. The headquarters of the school was in Chicago.

  I found the Preface the most illuminating part of the entire course. It explained all about the “legal mind.” To succeed in the profession a lawyer needed most of all a legal mind, that is the ability to be reasonable and logical and to think concisely and quickly and sharply in the clinches. I felt certain that I would make the ideal lawyer as I felt there was probably no one in all the world more reasonable and logical than I; no one who could think more concisely, quickly, and sharply in the extremities I became slightly obsessed with the cold clear reasonableness of my thoughts and if anyone disagreed with their reasonableness I was ready to fight.

  For a time I studied diligently and sent in my lessons on time. I received high grades and a personal letter of commendation from the school president. What I found most interesting was the history of the law. I developed a profound respect for those ancient boys, Moses and Justinian and Napoleon, who had drawn up all these rules in the first place. I was also fascinated by case law. The courts’ opinions in many outstanding American civil and criminal cases were reproduced in full and, although it was tedious reading, I was completely intrigued by those old boys’ structural logic. They built up to their findings like a contractor building a house, starting at the foundation and building to the roof. Some of them, however, seemed to get off the foundation at times and once off they could get a long way off. In the course of time I came to see the necessity of exemplary justice, such as had been meted out to me. It was as necessary to take steps to prohibit crime as to punish it, I concluded. This did not make me feel any better toward the judge who had sentenced me, but I derived a certain satisfaction from learning of his mental processes.

  I read so much about the legal mind and legal reasoning that I developed an interest in psychology. My mother had sent me a set of textbooks on the subject the year before, and I began studying them along with the law. I felt that I should know more about the anatomy of criminal impulses in order to understand, more thoroughly, the psychology of jurisprudence. As it had been throughout all my life, I believed most of what I read in books. I found it difficult to reconcile the human compulsions expounded by psychology to the social restraints impounded by law, but I did not let this throw me. When I had finished applying my “legal mind” to the “psychological equations of humanity” I arrived at what I thought was the understanding of what I referred to, for lack of a better term, as the human factor. I thought a great deal about the laws governing homosexuality and concluded that they were outmoded. Although biologically there were only two sexes, psychologically there had always been three, I concluded, with great originality. I was becoming very educated, I thought. There was no telling how educated I might have become in time if we had stayed on 2-2.

  But the week before Christmas we were transferred to the 2-6 dormitory and the prison activity took hold of me again. We had a nice Christmas and a fine New Year’s Day with lots to eat. By that time the warden had worked his spite out on the convicts for “passive resistance.” In addition, it had become stylish to be humane. Everybody was humane to the convicts along through there. Everybody sympathized with them, pitied them. “Rehabilitate the convicts”—that was the hue and cry. The only drawback was that the convicts, who were the parties of the first part, didn’t know just what the hell it meant. I imagined that some of the humanitarians must have found it very trying indeed, in their efforts to rehabilitate those convicts who couldn’t understand what they were trying to do and were suspicious of them for doing it.

  “Man, there’s a catch in it somewhere, you hear me. It just ain’t right for a convict to be treated so good.”

  “You ain’t told no lie.”

  “Damn right. I ain’t been able to sleep worth nothing since they passed those laws. I’m losing weight, my appetite’s left me, I’m nervous all the time, and when I do get to sleep what do I have but nightmares? I dreamt last night I had lost all my good-time, and had to do them ten full years, and I woke up sweating wet. That good-time’s all right, it’s fine, but it’s a hell of a lot of worry. It’s got me scared to breathe for fear I might lose some of it.”

  That was the way with it that Christmas. The convicts had the good-time like the man had the bear. They were very good convicts that Christmas. But it worried them. Every moment they looked for something to happen which would make them lose their good-time. They lost all their joy and happiness in suspicion, and when the parole board didn’t release those fifteen hundred convicts who were eligible the first of the year they showed their relief.

  “I knew it. Mac, I knew it all along. I knew there was a catch in it, somewhere. You can’t fool me. Mac, I been out too long. I’m hip to all that stuff. Rehabilitate the convicts—you get that, Mac? The old slide game, the old short con—conning us convicts right out this American country.”

  But the good citizens of the state and their official lawmakers—the legislature—and their unofficial lawmakers, the press—were not to be outdone. They were going to rehabilitate those convicts if it killed them. So next, the welfare department established a “Classification Bureau.” I
t consisted of three specialists—a psychiatrist, a psychologist, and a sociologist—and their staffs. They outlined a great and far-reaching program. They were going to inaugurate a system of classification within the prison. After systematic examinations each convict would be classified according to his desire to lead a straight and normal life. The repeaters and degenerates would be separated from the first offenders and the reformed. The old men would be separated from the young, the industrious from the slothful, the wolves from the fags. But first they were assigned the task of interviewing convicts who were eligible for a hearing by the parole board. As there were fifteen hundred convicts then eligible, and hundreds more coming up each month, that was as far as the bureau ever got.

  Anyway, as soon as the sharp edge of their zeal and enthusiasm and high fervor of humanitarianism, inspired in part no doubt by the regularity of their pay checks, wore down and was blunted on the stolid, unyielding unresponsiveness of those convicts, the members of both the classification bureau and the parole board reverted to type. They became callous and indifferent and cynical as does everyone else, sooner or later, when dealing with convicts.

  Many of the convicts refused to report to the classification bureau when they were called. They were given their choice to be examined or put in the hole. They went in the hole.

  “They’ll never get me over there and trick me,” Pink Panties said. “I know I’m one and that’s all there is to it.”

  Old man Lajole said, “I went over there like a fool, and do you know what that fellow asked me? He asked me had I ever had relations with a man. I told him I was a gentleman, by God, and I picked up my hat and went over to the deputy and I told the deputy, by God, I don’t mind answering some decent questions even if I don’t see any sense in ‘em, but by God, when a fellow starts asking me that stuff that’s the limit. I’m not a degenerate, I told the deputy, and I won’t have anyone saying I am. The deputy said I didn’t have to go over there any more, by God.”

  “Did you see that little fellow with the bald head and the hunched shoulders, with his glasses sitting up on the top of his nose?”

  “Yeah, that’s the psy-psy—”

  “Psychiatrist,” someone supplied.

  “Yeah, that’s him. The—what’d you call him, Mac?”

  “Psychiatrist.”

  “Yeah, that’s him all right. Batty a-looking beauty as I ever saw. He gave me some sugar to taste then he ast me whether it was sweet or sour. I said, ‘Say, what’s the matter with you, fellow, who’s crazy around here, you or me? This is sugar, when the hell did sugar ever get to be sour?’ And he said, ‘Oh, it’s just a matter of routine,’ and I said, ‘Some hell of a routine, if you ast me, why any goddamn body knows that sugar’s sweet,’ and he said, ‘Never mind, just answer my questions and let me do all the knowing that’s to be done,’ and I said, ‘All right, bud, it’s your party.’ So he gave me some vinegar to taste and then he ast me, ‘Sweet or sour?’ and I licked my lips and looked solemn as an owl and said, ‘Sweet as sugar.’ Then he looked up at me and said, ‘Does it have the same taste as the substance which you tasted before?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, only it tastes a little wetter.’ He looked at me and then he looked at his papers he had there and then he wrote down something. Then he stuck me with a needle and ast, ‘Blunt or sharp?’ and I said, ‘Blunt.’ He began looking suspicious then. Then he stuck me again a hell of a lot harder and I said, ‘It’s still blunt, bud.’ He turned red as a beet and said, ‘You go on back to your company,’ and I said, ‘Suits me, bud.’”

  “Haw-haw-haw, he thought he was giving you the needle and you were giving him the needle.”

  Pretty soon the classification bureau was just a joke. After it was rumored around that a convict who had refused to be interviewed by them had been granted a parole, it was through. They could have packed up their five-hundred-dollar solid-mahogany desks and cut on out, right then, and saved the state a hell of a lot of money.

  That was the way it was that year. The prison was all different. It was easier. It had never been so easy. But the dormitory was the same. It had never been tough, so in still being easy we missed the feeling of the change which touched the others in the mills and shops and on the yard. We convicts in the cripple company seldom felt the heavy, merciless, brutal weight of prison as the others in the mills and shops did. We went along smoothly, serenely, easily, spoiling away the years. There were, of course, our petty arguments and troubles and vexations, and now and then the officials, noticing that we were having it so easy, clamped down a bit and gave us a taste of discipline, but never the excessive discipline that eternally lay over the working men. It seemed as if we were more on the edge of prison than actually inside, but yet could look over into the prison and see all the teaming, driven, brutal life; the savage flareups and merciless quellings; all the constant hell that everyone was catching but us. We slept and read and lied and talked and gambled our days away and called it tough. As one colored convict said, we ate our good-doin’ bread and called it punk, slept on our good-doin’ bed and called it bunk.

  “Man, what is you talkin’ Trout! You doin’ better heah than you ever done before. You get yo’ three meals a day—”

  “Man, what you mean? Ah always had three meals every day—”

  “Yasss, but dese is regular. You has a man to wake you up in de mawnin’. You has a man to car’y you to breakfus. You has a man to watch over you an’ protect you. You has a man to shave you an’ a hospital for you when you sick. What mo’ you want? You couldn’t git all dat in de Majestic Hotel.”

  That was the way it was in the dormitory that year. They moved quite a few other convicts in with us; convicts who had been in working companies and undergone operations and were put in with us to convalesce; or who had been injured in some way or other and were allowed to remain idle for a certain number of days. We always felt condescending toward them as if they didn’t really belong with us in our dormitory. By then we had developed a class system. The upper-class cripples were those who had been in the company ever since the fire. It was as if our ancestors had come over on the Mayflower. The others were lower-class climbers. We treated them very coldly until they finally muscled into our class and in turn treated other climbers with the same coldness. It was different with the fresh fish from outside. We were always glad to get a new one from the street. Especially if he was young and good-looking or had any money.

  Blocker and I had begun our game immediately. By then it was an obligation. Everyone wanted us to run a game. If we hadn’t there probably wouldn’t have been any to amount to anything. Many of the poker players wouldn’t play with any other gamekeepers. We still used marked cards. I think by then everybody knew it. But they would rather play with us with our marked cards than with anybody else. One thing, we always gave them a play. Nobody could say he didn’t get his gamble in our game.

  The game held little interest for me, then. I got Candy to help Blocker run it. Now and then I’d go down and play a little in the field. I was still interested in my law course and my psychology books and I devoted most of my time to them. There was a convict called Signifying Johnson who muscled in on the job of selling chips. When the poker game got dull Blocker started a dice game. He had a kid named George to help him. He left the poker game to Candy and Signifier.

  George was a good-natured little kid with long black hair that fell down over his forehead and we used to tease him a lot.

  “This is my kid,” Blocker would say. “Don’t you bother this kid.”

  “That’s all right,” I’d say. “I’m going to take him away from you.” Then I’d lean over and whisper to George, “I’m coming down and see you tonight.”

  George was a straight little kid and it would just slide off of him. He didn’t have to holler because he was never hit. One night on the way to the latrine I got the idea to stop and tease him, so I slipped down the back aisle and sneaked up beside his bunk—he had a top bunk—and then jumped up and grabbed him by the
shoulders and said, “Kiss me, you sweet little punk,” leaning over him as if I was really going to kiss him.

  The only thing about it was I had the wrong fellow. I had sneaked up to the wrong bunk. A little fat, old, bald-headed man called Pappy Yokum jumped up in bed and gave one look at me and his eyes got big as saucers. “Hey, what tha—Help! Leggo!” I had already let him go. I backed away frantically and beat it down the aisle in one direction, and he jumped out of his bunk and started highballing it in the opposite direction. Several guys seeing the rumpus congregated about him and asked him what was the trouble and he told them I’d just tried to rape him. I went down and told him that I had made a mistake and apologized. By then the guard had come down to see what it was all about. I told him we were just trying to catch a rat I saw trying to climb up in his bunk. It wasn’t until afterward I realized how funny that was. After he’d gone back to his bunk I told Blocker and George and Candy and Signifier the whole story and we had a good laugh.

  “Can you imagine that old man figuring somebody would want to rape him?” Candy said.

  “That ain’t the trouble with him,” Signifier said. “He’s just hoping.”

  Along near the end of February the industrial commission doctors came over to examine me again. They wanted to know if I’d been in a cast and I told them no, I hadn’t, and they wanted to know why, and I told them I didn’t know why. They gave the doctor hell. The doctor told them I had refused a cast. So they called me back to give me hell. They told me if I didn’t think I needed a cast I didn’t need any compensation, so I told them I’d go in a cast whenever they wanted me to. So the first of March the bone specialist, Dr. Castle, came in and X-rayed me. The next week when he visited the prison again he called me over and wrapped me in a cast. That was one quick job.

  “When did you have a bath last?” he asked.