Cast the First Stone

by Chester Himes

  We had a Softball team up on 5-4 but it was more or less a joke. There were a few very good players but the rest were very bad. Those fags wouldn’t do anything but stand out there on the field with their hands on their hips and flirt with someone on the sidelines, while the balls rolled by them for extra base hits. They called them the “Bloomer Girls.”

  But after Dido and I were transferred up there the guard started making plans to reorganize the team. He wanted to make me the captain but I refused. I had enough enemies as it was, without making any more. We consented to play, however.

  Our first game was with 3-4. We beat them easily. But the fellows in the company had bet against their team as usual. When we won they tried to welch and there was a big fight out on the diamond. The riot squad came out and took the entire company to court. They didn’t put anyone in the hole but the deputy barred me from playing.

  “I’ve already taken sixty days of your good-time, Monroe,” he said. “You ought to have enough, you ought to have enough.”

  “I see,” I said. “A man can’t even play ball in this joint.”

  “That’s enough,” he said. “That’s enough, that’s enough, that’s enough.”

  The deputy didn’t like me and I didn’t like him. That was the way it stood.

  Our next game was with the cripple company and I played, anyway. Tom tried to have me put off the field. He told the guard who was umpiring the game that the deputy had forbidden me to play. The guard said he didn’t have any orders about it and refused to take me out. Tom went and got the lieutenant in charge of the exercises and tried to have him stop the game. I told the lieutenant that the warden had given me permission to play. The lieutenant wouldn’t have anything to do with it. The game started and I took my position at short. Tom left the field and went after the deputy. I had played five innings before the deputy arrived. The deputy took me out of the game and said he was taking another thirty days of my good-time. If Tom had waited he could have saved himself the trouble and me the thirty days. I was lousy. I didn’t catch a ball. When they took me out the score was fifteen-to-nothing against us.

  After the game Tom said, “No hard feelings, Jim. I just didn’t figure my boys could beat you, that was all.”

  “That’s all right, Tom,” I said. “I know how you felt.” Tom was all right. I understood him.

  My mother came over again that month on a special visit. She told me that she had talked to the warden and that he had promised to investigate the charge against me. Two days later Gout called me over to the transfer office and said that the warden had had my charge investigated and felt that I was innocent. Gout said that my good-time had been restored to me and that the warden had directed him to transfer me into any company in the institution I wanted to go to, with the exception of the cripple company.

  “What about Dido?” I asked.

  “There weren’t any directions concerning Dido,” he said. “I haven’t got anything to do with it. If you got any beef to make, make it to the warden. I didn’t put you up there and I don’t know anything about it. But I think you’re a goddamned fool. Now where do you want to go?”

  “I’ll stay where I am,” I said.

  “That’s best,” he said. That suited him just fine because he didn’t want to transfer me, anyway. “It’s nice and quiet up there and you have a cell to yourself. You can do some studying.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  A week later, Okay Collins, the magazine man, told me that he had seen my name at the top of the transfer list for the farm. The guy in the next cell heard him and yelled it all over the block. “Say, man, old Monroe’s going to the farm. Sure is a lucky stiff.” Then they all had it. They talked about the fine fresh milk and the good fresh air I would get out there. From those cramped, stinking cells up on 5-4 the farm seemed like heaven.

  It scared Dido. I could see it in his eyes. But he didn’t break down. He tried in every way he could to show how happy he was for me. We didn’t know when they would call me but we figured in a day or two, anyway. All that night and the next day we were preparing for it. We both were very excited. I gave him a lot of things I wanted him to have and he gave me a picture of his mother and some things he wanted me to have. He wanted me to take his scrapbook but I wouldn’t take that. I knew his mother wanted him to keep it.

  We worked out an elaborate plan whereby we would send letters back and forth to each other by the driver of the milk truck who came in once a day from the farm. We contacted the driver, through the paper boy, and he promised to deliver the letters for a dollar each. Dido said he would go over to the Bertillon department and have a picture made to send to me. I promised to send him some money each month. We tried to cover all contingencies.

  All that day and night, clear up until bedtime, we were sending notes back and forth to each other. Finally the guys in the cells between us began to complain about having to pass so many notes. One of the surly bastards quit passing them altogether and let the last one I had sent lie on the range in front of his cell. After that we had to get the other fellows to throw them by his cell. I promised to give them a dollar each the next day.

  That night after the lights blinked I packed my things in two pillowcases. But I couldn’t sleep. After the guard had taken count I called down to Dido. “I can’t sleep,” I said.

  “I can’t either,” he called back.

  So we stuck our mirrors in the bars and smiled at each other and tried to talk by forming the words with our lips. We couldn’t understand each other but we could see each other’s faces and that was all that mattered. All that night we braced ourselves and when morning came we were ready.

  But I wasn’t called until ten days later. The paper boy told me that when Gout saw my name at the top of the transfer list he blew his top. He went to the deputy and got his support and they tried to get the warden to take my name off the list. But the parole board had okayed the transfer and the warden wouldn’t change it. So Gout held up the entire shipment, on one pretext and another, until the warden ordered him to get the men out of there.

  I was ordered to pack and be ready to leave right after breakfast the next morning. On the way to supper I stopped by Dido’s cell. He was smiling, although his lips were trembling and his eyes looked as if he had been crying. I tried to smile, too, but my lips felt very stiff.

  “I’ll see you again tomorrow morning,” I said, “but I just want to tell you now that I’ve loved you from the first.”

  “I’ve loved you, too,” he said, “from the very first.”

  He leaned forward and I kissed him. It was the first and only time I had ever kissed him. There was no passion in the kiss but it had a great tenderness. A couple of guys passing on the range at the moment made kissing sounds but we didn’t care.

  “Take it easy, kid,” I said. “Just don’t let anything get too important.”

  “To the stars, Jimmy,” he said. His voice was choked.

  We didn’t send any notes that night. We had said everything there was to say.

  After the lights went off, I lay awake, thinking about him. I hope he’ll make it, I thought. It’ll certainly be tough on him. He really loves me, I thought. He gave me a lot, too, I thought. But now I’m going on, I thought. I hoped I had given him something in passing. Finally I went to sleep.

  Along in the early hours of the morning I was awakened by a commotion down the range. I was abruptly alert, chilled by a sudden fear.

  “Dido!” I yelled. “Dido!”

  “He’s hurt, Jimmy,” someone called.

  I stuck my mirror in the bars so I could see. Two guards were dragging Dido from his cell. His head dangled queerly to one side. There was something wrong with his neck.

  “Dido! Dido!” I screamed. I grabbed my coffee bucket and raked it on the bars. “Let me out of here!” I screamed. “Goddammit, let me out of here.” I could hear the entire block coming awake. I grabbed my mirror and stuck it back into the bars. They were carrying Dido around the c
orner of the range. No one paid any attention to me. I watched until they had taken him from sight.

  “Captain Baker!” I yelled. Captain Baker was our night guard. “Captain Baker! Let me out of here!”

  Everybody in the whole block was talking at once. I heard someone ask, “What’s the matter up there?”

  “A guy hung himself.”

  The block suddenly silenced.

  “Who?”

  “A guy named Dido.”

  I began crying, all down inside. I could feel a strange hurt going down through my lungs and stomach and tearing me all loose inside. “Somebody please let me out,” I begged.

  “Is he dead?” I heard someone ask. “They don’t know. They’re taking him to the hospital.” I couldn’t stand up any longer. I sagged down on the floor by the bars and clung to the bars for support. It seemed like a long time afterward I heard somebody say, “Yeah, he was dead when they cut him down.” It seemed as if I had known all along that he was dead.

  “What was the matter with him?”

  “His buddy’s going out. He couldn’t take it.”

  “Who’s his buddy?”

  “Monroe.”

  “Jimmy Monroe?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey, Jimmy!” I didn’t answer. I couldn’t have answered. “Hey, Jimmy! You ain’t hanging yourself too, are you?”

  “Not him,” I heard someone say. “He likes himself too much to do anything like that.”

  You son of a bitch, I thought. You dirty son of a bitch. I wanted to scream curses at him but I couldn’t make my voice work.

  After awhile the block quieted down. Just another convict had hanged himself. I was grateful for the silence. I knelt where I had dropped. I hadn’t moved. When the guard took count again he stopped and started to say something to me, then he changed his mind. He came back every now and then to see how I was getting along but he didn’t say anything. After a long time I had an impulse to pray for Dido. But I couldn’t bring myself to put the prayer into words. If God couldn’t forgive him on His own account nothing I could say would help. What hurt most was that I hadn’t done anything to stop him. Deep down inside of me I must have wanted him to do it.

  I knew, beyond all doubt, that he had done it for me. He had done it to give me a perfect ending. It was so much like him to do this one irrevocable thing to let me know for always that I was the only one. Along with the terrible hurt I could not help but feel a great gladness and exaltation. I knew that he would have wanted me to.

  When the lights came on I got up and dressed. A lot of the fellows stopped by my cell on their way to breakfast and tried to cheer me up. I was able to answer them without crying and I found that I could move around all right. I was filled with strange, numbing emotions but otherwise I was the same as always. I didn’t go to breakfast. For a moment I considered going down to his cell and sitting there while the others were out to breakfast, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I had already told him good-by.

  They came for me right after breakfast. I picked up my two sacks of belongings and followed the runner down the range.

  “Good-by, Jimmy So long, Jimmy Take it easy, Jimmy…” the various fellows called as I passed their cells.

  “So long, fellows,” I said.

  “Good luck, Jimmy.”

  “The same to you,” I said.

  When I passed Dido’s cell I looked straight ahead. They took me down to the guards room. There were three other fellows already waiting. They kept us there until they had assembled all fifteen of the fellows who were to go. As I sat there I thought about Dido’s mother. I would have to write to her the first thing and explain what had happened, I thought. She would get the official notice but there would be so much she wouldn’t understand. It would really be a blow to her, I thought. Then I thought of how Dido would never pass through those gates again in life. I could feel myself beginning to cry again inside.

  But when they took us through the outer gates and down the front sidewalk to the waiting truck, I quit thinking about Dido. It was a bright, clear morning. It felt strange to be outside. I could look down the street without having my view blocked by walls. It began feeling good to be outside the walls. It would feel better still when I got out to the farm, I thought. Just before climbing into the truck I turned and looked back at the prison. You big tough son of a bitch, you tried to kill me but I’ve got you beat now, I thought. Because the farm was the way to freedom.