Cast the First Stone

by Chester Himes

  My feelings toward Dido couldn’t get back to where they had been before. There was a vague lack of confidence, and the understanding between us was lost so that we were never quite in tune with the other’s mood, never quite sympathetic with it. I felt a slight, dull revulsion; a vague dissatisfaction. Maybe it was just a letdown after all the high hopes and driving, tense excitement. And he could feel it. It put a tight-drawn recklessness in his actions, a strained desperation which seemed always about to explode.

  There was an excitement, but it was different. It was strained and frantic and panicky. It was infirm and chaotic and stained with a dull monotone of hopelessness. And through it the incidents rushed in, surging pell-mell, sweeping us before them, and neither of us knew where they would take us. I tried to keep my head, but I felt a helplessness. It was as if I was beginning to go haywire myself.

  We were still close, but only superficially. The separation was deep and dull and hidden. He didn’t give me anything any more, but he was my responsibility. August burnt through, like a fuse on a stick of dynamite, and each day tightened us more and more against the explosion that seemed so imminent.

  His mother wrote me a letter which I received on the 20th, and that loosened us a little. It postponed the explosion but did not dispel the feeling of it.

  Dear James:

  I am so glad to hear that you are to be released next month. I do wish you all the success and good luck in life which I know you so truly deserve. I trust that it will not be long until I see you.

  I just wrote my son and know he will be very glad to get my letter and the good lot of news that I wrote him. I will tell you as I do my other son, be of good courage and be good boys and the time will soon pass, then we will all be able to see each other face to face, and what a day that will be. You seem so much like my own son since having heard so much of you through Pepi. He surely thinks that the sun rises and sets in you, so to speak, and him thinking that way about you I know that you must be nice and I am going to adopt you as my second son. He sent me a snapshot of you which I was pleased to have. I wonder sometimes why he does not send me one of himself, maybe they don’t allow him to have any made. I pray for you both, and I want you to pray for me. Be as good as you can, and be of good cheer.

  With prayers for your success,

  Mother Davis.

  When I read that letter I felt like crying, I felt so sorry for her. “You have a wonderful mother, kid,” I said to him. He didn’t answer. He wasn’t talking much those days.

  But her letter helped us a lot. It brought us closer together again. It took some of the desperation out of him and I was pleased. I felt encouraged. He might make it after all, I thought.

  Then the whispering campaign started. It must have been going on all along, but we were just beginning to feel it. Tom called me down and told me about it. “Listen, Jim,” he said, not looking at me, “I’m not trying to run your business, but you and Dido have got to watch yourselves.”

  I got on my muscle. “Why? Why have we got to watch ourselves?”

  “Listen, Jim, there’s no need of all that,” he said, spreading his hands, palms upward. “Three lieutenants have asked me about you two and a week ago the deputy called me into his office and showed me a whole drawerful of notes which fellows up here in the dormitory had written over there, about you and Dido. They said you did whatever you wanted to and I let you do it.”

  That shocked me. I should have known that they would be ratting on us, but I had never given it a thought. We had been so wrapped up in each other that we hadn’t thought about the other convicts in the dormitory.

  “I told the deputy that there wasn’t anything between you two,” Tom went on. “I explained how Dido had helped you a little when your arm was in splints, but that was just because I had asked him to. They discharged you from the hospital with the splints still on and somebody had to help you get your clothes on, I told him. What have they got against Dido, anyway?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, Tom,” I said. “It could be about him losing those two ball games but I doubt if they’d carry it this far. It’s just that they don’t like him, really. He doesn’t associate with them and doesn’t have to ask them for anything. His mother sends him everything he wants and they don’t like that. The truth is, Tom, we’ve just been getting along too good for them.”

  “That’s what I told the deputy,” he said. “You’ve always got a little money and he gets what he wants from home. Just because you guys are getting along nobody likes it. I told the deputy you were just getting along too good for these envious bastards up here. You know, Jim, I can’t understand what makes people like that. I’ve seen a lot of people outside like that. They did me the same way when I was commissioner. They couldn’t stand to see me make a little dough. They started crying for an investigation, people I’d been supporting, feeding. You’d be surprised if I told you who some of the fellows were who wrote notes about you and Dido.”

  “You’d better not tell me, Tom,” I said.

  “What I wanted to tell you,” Tom went on, “is that Gout sent a transfer up here for Dido this morning. He was going to transfer him to 5-4.” That was the girl-boy company.

  I sucked air. I was so scared I was weak. My stomach went hollow and my knees knocked together. My mouth came open but I couldn’t get the words out.

  “I sent the transfer back and then went out to see the warden,” Tom said. “I’ve done him a lot of favors and I asked him to do me a favor. I told him to let you and Dido stay in here and I’d be responsible. I told him that I would see to it that no more complaints reached him. He had almost as many notes about you as the deputy had.”

  “What did he say?” I gasped.

  “He said he’d let you stay on one condition, that he didn’t receive another complaint. But listen, Jim, you’d better cut it out. Or make it less obvious, anyway.”

  “There isn’t anything to cut out, Tom,” I said. “We’re just good friends.” His eyebrows went up. “I’m not trying to string you, Tom,” I said. “Listen, can’t a man have a friend in this joint? Is there any crime in having a friend?”

  He spread his hands. “I don’t write the rules, Jim. You know how it is, you’re not a fool.”

  “What do they want me to do, quit talking to him?” I said. “I guess they don’t even want me to look at him. I guess they want to tell me who I can talk to, I guess that’s what they want to do.” The more I talked the less afraid and the more angry I became. “I guess they want a guy to do like they want him to or else they’re going to rat on him.”

  “Take it easy, Jim,” Tom said. “Keep your head, boy.”

  The Softball team was going along great then. We hadn’t lost a game nor looked back since I had begun playing again. It looked as if we were headed for an intra-wall championship. We hadn’t played the dining room yet but we were pointing for them and we figured we could beat them. Tom didn’t want anything to happen before that game. I knew that was his first thought but he didn’t come right out and say it.

  “You don’t have to stop talking to him,” he said. “But don’t do it at night. And don’t hang around your bunks all day. Come on out like you used to do and gamble and mix with the other fellows. That will help. You’re living off the games but you don’t even play in them any more.”

  “Hell, they can have the games,” I said.

  “That wouldn’t help,” he said. “You got to get back to your old self. And tell Dido to stop playing his guitar while the colored fellows are having church on Wednesday nights. They’re the ones who have been putting up the biggest howl. You know the chaplain gave them privilege to hold church once a week and they’ve been ratting to the chaplain ever since Dido’s been in the dormitory. You come on out and mingle with the fellows again, Jim. They all like you but they think you’ve gone high hat. They think you don’t want to know them any more because you’re going home. They think you think you’re too good to associate with them. You know how t
o handle them. Do it, Jim, and you and Dido take it easy. The next time I won’t be able to do a thing.”

  “Okay, Tom, I will,” I said.

  “Don’t be a fool boy,” he said. “You’ve made it now. Don’t spoil it.”

  At first I didn’t tell Dido. But he couldn’t understand why all of a sudden I wanted to go out in the aisle and walk around and talk to the other convicts.

  “What’s the matter, Jimmy, don’t you like to talk to me any more?” he asked.

  Then I had to tell him about the whispering campaign. He was flamingly furious. “The chicken-livered bastards,” he raved. “I wish I knew just one of them.”

  “That’s why I didn’t find out,” I said.

  “You needn’t worry,” he said. “I won’t do anything to hurt you. But oh, if it wasn’t that you were going home I’d show them!”

  He tried to show them anyway, it seemed. After that he wanted to fight everybody. If a convict just so much as looked at him he’d challenge him to a fight. It kept me constantly apprehensive. I knew that if he ever got into a fight I’d be in it too. That was the only thing that really kept him out of serious trouble. But he went out of his way to show them how contemptuous of them he was.

  But he was transferred after all. Not out of the dormitory but down front, right next to the guard-stand. After that we both quit speaking to everybody. We walked over convicts who got in our way and didn’t look at them. We treated them like scum.

  The whole dormitory was watching us and waiting for an opportunity to laugh. But we didn’t give them any. Either I was up at his bunk or he was down at mine.

  “Don’t let them see how much it hurts you, kid,” I said. “That’ll take the joy out of it.” We didn’t and it did. We laughed at them and laughed at everything and kept up a front of gayety and treated it like a lark. At night I would go down and sit on his bunk and talk to him for hours while everybody in the dormitory watched.

  And on Wednesday nights, when the colored convicts held church, we went down and sat on the end of the table and Dido played his guitar so loud the congregation couldn’t hear themselves pray. And I was with him all the way. We wanted someone to say they didn’t like it. They might have jumped Dido alone but they didn’t really want to do anything to hurt me. And I didn’t even appreciate it.

  The whole dormitory was against us. There was an undercurrent of tension which seemed about to explode any moment. We went down to a game one day and got to squeezing the players in pots, and when the gamekeeper tried to stop us from saving I jumped up and snatched the blanket off the table and broke up the game. It was just the goodness of their hearts that kept those convicts off me that time.

  The next day Tom stopped all of the gambling and that night Captain Charlie banned it, too. And then things grew tense for real. But Dido and I still went about defiantly, as if daring anyone to protest. Our insolence was towering. The funny part about it was that before the dormitory got down on him I had almost lost all feeling for Dido. But now I was all the way for him. I quit trying to preach to him and let him have his way. And his way was my way.

  At nights, when the dormitory was asleep, Captain Charlie would pull his chair over to Dido’s bunk and try to talk to him. The next day Dido would tell me what Captain Charlie had said. “He’s trying to reform me. He thinks I’m too nice to be like I am. He told me that if I’d stop you from coming down here and give you up entirely he’d go to the front for me. He’s a kind of nice old man and he likes you, Jimmy. He thinks you are really great, but he doesn’t think we ought to be friends. He doesn’t think we’re good for each other.”

  And the next morning he said, “Captain Charlie said we’re making it pretty tough for him. He said I’d have to stop coming down here to your bunk altogether.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “He’s such a nice old man and he talked so pitifully I couldn’t—I didn’t have the heart to refuse him. After all, he asked me if I wouldn’t, he didn’t order me to. I hope you’re not angry.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “You did just right, kid. He is a swell old fellow. I’ll come down to your bunk after this.”

  “But he doesn’t want that, either.”

  “Hell, can’t anybody say anything about that. It’s right under the gun. What can be said about that?”

  So we sat on his bunk down front by the guard-stand after that. We quieted down a little and gave Captain Charlie a break. But it didn’t help. There was a solid wall of antagonism in the dormitory against us. Tom told me that the notes were getting worse than ever.

  “But you needn’t worry, Jim,” he said. “You just keep on like you’re doing, and stay out of trouble, and I’ll see to it nothing happens to you before you go home.”

  “Thanks, Tom,” I said.

  Dido and I read to each other. That was the most of what we had left but we got more out of it than ever. Once we were reading a story in a magazine and came across a line about someone who “forever remained unnamed.”

  “That touches your imagination, doesn’t it?” I said. ‘To live in this world and to be so insignificant as to forever remain unnamed?”

  “That might be any convict,” Dido said, and I said, “It might be me.”

  The protest started boiling up again and I said, ‘To hell with these goddamned convicts, come on down to my bunk.”

  Dido gave me an odd, searching look. “If you say so, Jimmy,” he said.

  We went down and lay side-by-side on my bunk and began reading another story. One by one the rats went up and reported us to Captain Charlie. I saw them but I didn’t give a damn. After awhile Captain Charlie sent for me. He looked pitiful.

  “Jim,” he said. “I’ve know you for a long time. Remember when you were over in 5-6 dormitory? That was your first year. Remember how we used to talk at nights and how my wife used to make candy and send it in to you? Remember the time we caught the fellows with that April Fool’s candy that had cotton and stones inside of it?” The old man touched me then. “I’ve always liked you, Jim, and I’ve always figured that you liked me, too,” he said. “I knew even ‘way back then that you were going to make it and get out and become a fine, upright man in the world some day. I never lost confidence in you, Jim.”

  “Thank you, Cap,” I said. “I like you too. I want you to know that, Cap. I want you to know that I like you, no matter what happens.”

  “I do know it, Jim,” he said. “I’m going to tell you something that I’ve never told anyone. Remember back when they moved you fellows out of 1-6 and put some of you on 3-6 and some of you in here?” I nodded. “Well, that night they caught you down on 2-6 in the poker game and I had to sort of, er, speak up for you—”

  “I remember, Cap,” I said. “You told a lie for me to get me out of a jam. I’ve never told you, Cap, but I appreciated that. I appreciated that very much, sir.”

  “Captain Lansing was the guard on the third floor then. You remember he caught you going back up the stairs? Well, he knew that I was lying to protect you and he reported me to the warden. Captain Lansing had the ear of the warden then, you know. They put me on the walls at night shortly after that. You didn’t know it because you had been transferred into the cells over on 2-2 by then. But I stayed on the walls at night for almost a year.” His voice got so heavy with tears he wouldn’t look at me. “It’s lonely on the walls, son. You don’t know how lonely it can get up there at night on those walls. There were some little gray mice up there and I used to feed them scraps out of my lunch so they would come around for company. They were nice little mice.”

  He paused for a moment. I was choked.

  “I was sixty-six last week,” he said after a time. “I couldn’t do another year on those walls. Listen, Jim, I don’t want to have to report you and Dido because I like both of you. I’ve never seen you do anything. But don’t have him down there at your bunk any more. Do that for me, will you, Jim? If you don’t, these convicts are going to put me on the wall agai
n.”

  I had never been as sorry for anyone as I was for him. I looked away to keep from having to look at the pleading in his eyes. And then I saw the convicts. While we had been talking they had congregated about us. They stood behind me in a semicircle, not close enough to be disrespectful to him, but just standing there, pressuring him, waiting like vultures. I doubted if they had heard what he had said to me. They just wanted to see what he was going to do with me. I turned around to face them, trying to show the contempt I had for them. Then I turned back to Captain Charlie.

  “You’re all right, Cap,” I said in a low voice. “You’re square and you’re fair and you’re honest. I’d like for you to know that I’d like to do that for you. I like you, Cap, I really like you, sir. But when these convicts think they can run my business, then I’m forced to refuse.” Watching the hurt come to his face I said, “Listen, Cap, you got a blackjack. You take your blackjack and knock me in the head and send me over for insubordination.”

  “You know I can’t do that, Jim,” he said.

  “Try, Cap, just try.” I lowered my head across the desk. “Just take out your blackjack and close your eyes and swing.”

  “That’s not the way, Jim,” he said. “You know that’s not the way.”

  “Then do what you have to do, Cap,” I said. I turned and faced the mob of convicts. I wanted to kill them. I wanted to stand up on the table with a tommy gun and shoot them down like dogs. But I just walked blindly through them. If any one of them had said anything to me I would have tried to kill him. But they just got out of the way and let me through.

  I didn’t see Dido until he grabbed me by the arm. “I’d better not go back to your bunk any more, Jimmy,” he said.

  “Come on back and sit down, goddammit,” I said. “I’m not taking orders from all the convicts in the world.”

  He didn’t want to go but I grabbed him by the arm and forced him. But he wouldn’t sit down. He stood at the end of the bunk nearest the aisle.