Chapter 13

It was not a difficult matter to procure them. She would bring them up to us and hand them in through the chuck-hole, which the village blacksmith had repaired and once more reinforced with extra bars, "so them bastards won't even think of sawing out again," as the jailer had expressed it.

The evening she handed the keys in to us we were so excited we wanted to have "Whip the Devil" played again for our singing and dancing. But this might have once more awakened suspicion. Before, we had raised such a row as to have caused pedestrians to stop and listen in groups, wondering what made the men inside so happy....

There were three separate locks on the great cage door. One, two of them went back with an easy click. For the third we could find no key. There was nothing else to do now but to have recourse to singing and dancing again. Baykins started sawing his fiddle furiously while the big negro in for rape hammered and hammered on the lock to break it, with one prison stool after another, till all were tossed aside, broken as kindling wood is broken. It was good that the jailer was either deaf, or, like the heathen gods in the Old Testament, away on a journey. Finally, we gave up in despair. The big negro collapsed with a wail. The first sign of weakness I ever detected in him.

"Now it's shore either ninety-nine yeahs in de pen foh me, or ten yeahs for th' sheriff's son foh lawyah fees ... an' the footprints in de flowah bed ... of the man what done de rape was two sizes biggah dan mine."

* * * * *

The next day the jailer, of course, missed the keys. Panic-stricken, the mulatto girl was afraid to slip them back to their accustomed nail, for fear she'd be seen at it; or was it out of vindictiveness against the jailer that she had now actually hidden them somewhere (for, finding them of no use, we had handed them back to her)!

That same afternoon the sheriff, with his son and the little, shrivelled, stuttering, half-deaf jailer, came in at the door of the big room. It was easy to see what they wanted. They wanted the keys and they were going to make the girl confess where they were ... as she was the only other person, beside the prison authorities, that was in the way to come at them.

"Martha, we want them keys! Show us where they is, like a good girl!"

"'Deed, Ah don' know where dey is a-tall, Marse Sheriff!"

"Come on, gal, you was the only one downstairs exceptin' Jacklin heah!" pointing to the jailer.

The jailer nodded his head asseveratingly.

"Yes, Martha, tell us whar the keys air," urged the latter, with caressing softness and fright in his voice. He didn't want his mistress whipped.

"If you don't, by God, I'll whup the nigger hide clean off yore back," and the sheriff reached for the braided whip which his son Jimmy handed him.

"I sweah Ah don' know where dey is!"

"You dirty liah," taking out a watch; "I'll give you jest five minutes t' tell, an' then--" he menaced with the up-lifted whip.

In stubborn silence the girl waited the five minutes out.

"Jimmy!... Jacklin!... throw her down an' hold her, rump up, over that cot." They obeyed. With a jerk the sheriff had her dress up and her bare buttocks in view.

"I'm a-goin' to whup an' whup till you confess, Martha."

Crack! Crack! Crack! the whip descended, leaving red whelts each time. The mulatto girl writhed, but did not cry quits. Beads of perspiration glistened on the jailer's face. The girl shook off his lax grip on her arms ... the sheriff's son was holding her legs. We were crowded against the bars, angry and silent. We admired the girl's hopeless pluck. We saw she was holding out just to, somehow, have vengeance on the jailer for her being held in unwilling concubinage by him, hoping he would catch it hard for having let the keys hang carelessly in open view, and so, stolen.

"Damn you, Jacklin," shouted the sheriff, "I believe you're a little soft on the gal ... come here ... you swing the whip an' I'll hold her arms."

In mute agony Jacklin obeyed ... whipping the woman of whom he was fond.

"Harder, Jacklin, harder," and the sheriff drew his gun on him to emphasise the command.

Under such impulsion, a shower of heavy blows fell. The girl screamed.

"I'll give up ... Oh, good Lordy, I'll give up."

And she dug the keys out from under the mattress across which they had whipped her.

After they had gone she lay crying on her face for a long while. When night came she still lay crying. Nothing any of us could say would console her. Not even the little white cotton thief had power to allay her hurt....

At last we began cursing and railing at her. That made her stop, after a fashion. But still she occasionally gave vent to a heart-deep, dry, racking sob.

* * * * *

Locked in there behind bars and forced to be impotent onlookers, the whipping we had witnessed made us as restless as wild animals. That night, under the dim flare of our jail-made lamps, the boys gambled as usual, for their strips of paper,--and as eagerly as if it were real currency. I, for my part, drew away to the vacant cell at the far end of the cage to study and read and dream my dreams....

As I sat there I was soon possessed with a disagreeable feeling that a malignant, ill-wishing presence hovered near. I shifted in my seat uneasily. I looked up. There stood, in the doorway, the lusty young farmer who was in for stealing the bales of cotton. He wore an evil, combative leer on his face. He was "spoiling" for a quarrel--just for the mere sake of quarrelling--that I could see. But I dissembled.

"Well, Jack?" I asked gently.

"You're a nice one," he muttered, "you pale-faced Yankee son of a b---- ... think you're better 'n the rest of us, don't ye?... readin' in yore books?"

"Nonsense, what are you picking at me for? I'm not harming anybody, am I?"

"No, but you're a God damned fool!"

"Look here, what have I ever done to you?"

"Nothin', only you're a white-livered stinker, an' I'm jest a-spoilin' foh a fight with you-all."

"But I don't want to fight with you."

"I'll make you," he replied, striding in; and fetching me a cuff on the ear ... then, in a far-away voice that did not seem myself, I heard myself pleading to be let alone ... by this time all the other boys had crowded down about the cell to see the fun.

I was humiliated, ashamed ... but, try as I would, the thought and vision of my uncle came on me like a palsy.

Bud stepped up. He had always been so meek and placid before that what he did then was a surprise to me.

"_I'll_ fight!"

"What! you?" glowered the young farmer, surprised.

"Yes, I'll give you all the fighting you want, you dirty cotton thief!"

Instantly the farmer made at him. Bud ran in, fetched him two blows in the face, and clinched.

It was not going very well for the desperado. From somewhere on his person he whipped forth a knife, and, with a series of flashes through the air, began stabbing Bud again and again in the back.

I thank God for what came over me then. Too glad of soul to believe it, I experienced a warm surge of angry courage rushing through me like an electric storm. All the others were panic-stricken for the moment. But I burst through the group, rushed back to the toilet, and, with frenzied strength, tore loose a length of pipe from the exposed plumbing. I came rushing back. I brought down the soft lead-pipe across "Jack's" ear, accompanying the blow with a volley of oaths in a roaring voice.

The farmer whipped about to face his new antagonist, letting Bud drop back. Bud sank to the iron floor. The farmer was astonished almost to powerlessness to find facing him, with a length of swinging pipe in his hand, the boy who had a few minutes before been afraid.

But he rapidly recovered and came on at me, gibbering like an incensed baboon.

By this time all the humiliations I had suffered in the past, since succumbing to the fear-complex that my uncle had beaten into me--all the outrage of them was boiling in me for vengeance. I saw the blood bathing the torn ear of my antagonist. It looked beautiful. I was no longer afraid of anything. Yelling my uncle's name I came on ... I beat the knife out of the other's hand and bloodied his knuckles with the next blow. I beat him down with rapid blows, threshing at him, shouting and yelling exultantly.

The other men thought me gone crazy. I had, for the time, gone crazy. The fellow lay at my feet, inert. I stopped for the moment.

In that moment the gang began to close in on me, half frightened themselves. I threatened them back.

"By hell, I've had enough of bullying," I shouted wildly; "I'm not afraid of anything or anybody any more ... if there's anyone else here that wants a taste of this pipe, let them step up."

"We ain't a-tryin' to fight you-all," called out the big negro who was in for rape, "we jest don' want you to kill him an' git hung foh murduh."

At the word "murder" I stepped quickly back.

"Well, don't let him come bothering me or my pal for a fight any more when we've done nothing to him."

"Don' worry, he won't no moh!" assured the fiddler....

I threw down the lead pipe. It had seemed to me that all the while it was my Uncle Landon who had received the blows.

The rough-neck farmer was in bad shape; he was bloodied all over like a stuck pig. The mulatto girl on the outside had for the last five minutes been occupied in calling out of the window for help. She managed to attract the attention of a passerby-by.

"What's the matter?" was called up to her....

"The jailer ain't downstairs ... an' de boys is killin' each other up heah!"

* * * * *

By the time the angry-faced sheriff came with his son, the jailer, and a couple of doctors, we had quieted down.

Bud and the farmer were taken out; by the side of each a pail of water was placed ... they were seated on stools, stripped to the waist. The surgeons dressed their wounds as if on a battlefield. "Jack" needed ten stitches in his scalp.... Bud had four knife wounds that demanded sewing up. Both the boys went pale like ghosts and spewed their bellies empty from weakness and loss of blood....

"Mind you, you chaps in there have raised 'bout enough hell ... ef I hear o' any more trouble, I'll take you all out one by one an' treat each one o' you-all to a good cowhidin', law or no law!"

* * * * *

I was let alone after that. My cowardice had gone forever. I was now a man among men. I was happy. I saw what an easy thing it is to fight, to defend yourself. I saw what an exhilaration, a pleasure, the exchanging of righteous blows can be.

* * * * *

Always my dream was of being a big man when I got out--some day. Always I acted as if living a famous prison romance like that of Baron Von Trenck's.

* * * * *

I collected from the living voices of my fellow prisoners innumerable jail and cocaine songs, and rhymes of the criminal world. I wrote them down on pieces of wrapping paper that the jailer occasionally covered the food-basket with in lieu of newspaper.

"Oh, coco-Marie, and coco-Marai, I'se gon' ta whiff cocaine 'twill I die. Ho! (sniff) Ho! (sniff) baby, take a whiff of me!"

(The sniffing sound indicating the snuffing up into the nostril of the "snow," or "happy dust," as it is called in the underworld.)

Then there was the song about lice:

"There's a lice in jail As big as a rail; When you lie down They'll tickle your tail-- Hard times in jail, poor boy!..."

And another, more general:

"Along come the jailer About 'leven o'clock, Bunch o' keys in his right hand, The jailhouse do'h was locked.... 'Cheer up, you pris'ners,' I heard that jailer say, 'You got to go to the cane-brakes Foh ninety yeahs to stay!'"

As you can guess, most of these jail songs and ballads of the underworld could only be printed in asterisks. I was hoping, in the interests of folklore, to preserve them for some learned society's private printing press.

* * * * *

A fresher green came to the stray branches of the trees that crossed our barred windows. The world outside seemed to waken with bird-song. It was spring, and time for the sitting of the grand jury that was to decide whether we were, each of us, to be held over for trial by petty jury ... days of fretful eagerness and discontent ... from the windows the yellow trusty-girl said she could see lines of buggies driving in to town. It was the custom of farmers for miles around to drive in to their county seat during the court assizes ... a week or so of holidays like a continuous circus for them.

When the sheriff would have occasion to come into the room in which stood our big cage, the boys would crowd up to the bars, each one hoping for news favourable to his case ... the prevailing atmosphere was one of hope.

* * * * *

The negro who had murdered his wife and her sweetheart with a shotgun had already had his trial. He was--and had been--but waiting the arrival of the prison contractor, as the latter went from county jail to county jail, gathering in his flock, and taking them away, chained together, to the penitentiary and the cane brakes ... "where only a big buck nigger can live," the little pickpocket had told me, with fear in his voice....

He came ... the contractor ... to our jail at midnight. All of us leaped from our mattresses to witness the dreary procession of neck-chained and be-manacled convicted men. In the light of the swinging lanterns, a lurid spectacle. Our man was taken out and chained in with the gang. They clanked away down the stairs, leaving us who remained with heavy chains on our hope instead of on our necks and hands and legs ... because of the sight we had just seen. For the passing day or so we were so depressed that we wandered about saying nothing to each other, like dumb men.

* * * * *

One after the other the men had true bills found against them, and little slips of folded paper were thrust in to them through the bars of their cells. And shyster lawyers who fatten on the misfortunes of the prison-held being, began to hold whispered conversations (and conferences) from without, mainly to find out just how much each prisoner could raise for fees for defence....

Bud and I were the only ones left. All the others had had true bills found against them.

* * * * *

But there came an afternoon when the big, hulky sheriff, with the cruel, quizzical eyes, came to the back bars of our cell and summoned us up with a mysterious air....

"Well, boys," he began, pausing to squirt a long, brown stream of tobacco juice, "well, boys--" and he paused again.

My nerves were so on edge that I controlled with difficulty a mad impulse to curse at the sheriff for holding us in such needless suspense....

Taking another deliberate chew off his plug, he told us that after mature deliberation the grand jury had decided that there was not enough grounds for finding a true bill against us, and, as a consequence, we were to be let go free.

* * * * *

The following morning I had the satisfaction of hearing from old Jacklin, the jailer, that Womber, the owner of the warehouse, had himself gone before the grand jury and informed them that he did not wish to press the charge of burglary against us....

Womber, Jacklin said, had received my letter and at first had tossed it aside ... even thrown it contemptuously into the wastebasket. But his wife and daughter had raked it out and read it and had, day and night, given him no peace till he had promised to "go easy on the poor boys."

This was my triumph over Bud--the triumph of romance over realism.

"I'm glad we're getting out, but there's more damn fools in the world than I thought," he remarked, with a sour smile of gratification.

* * * * *

And now, with new, trembling eagerness, we two began waiting for the hour of our release. That very afternoon it would be surely, we thought ... that night ... then the next morning ... then ... the next day....

But until a week more had flown, the sheriff did not let us go. In order to make a little more profit on his feeding contract, averred our prisoners.

But on Saturday morning he came to turn us loose. By this time we seemed blood brothers to the others in the cage ... negro ... mulatto ... white ... criminal and vicious ... weak, and victims of circumstance ... everything sloughed away. Genuine tears stood in our eyes as with strong hand-grips we wished the poor lads good luck!

We stumbled down the jail stairway up which, three months before, we had been conducted to our long incarceration in the cage. The light of free day stormed in on our prison-inured eyes in a blinding deluge of white and gold ... we stepped out into what seemed not an ordinary world, but a madness and tumult of birds, a delirious green of trees too beautiful for any place outside the garden of Paradise.

"Come on," said Bud, "let's go on down the main street and thank Womber for not pressing the case--"

"To hell with Womber!"

"Well, then, I'm going to thank him."

"I'm grateful enough.... I might write him a letter thanking him ... but I'm not anxious to linger in this neighbourhood."

So Bud and I parted company, shaking hands good-bye; he headed west ... to China and the East, finally, he said ... I never knew his real name ... neither of us gave his right name to the town's officials....

As I sought the railroad tracks again, the good air and my unwonted freedom made me stagger, so that several negroes laughed at me heartily, thinking I was drunk.

* * * * *

I sat down on a railroad tie and tenderly and solicitously took a brown package out of my inside pocket--the brown paper on which I had inscribed with enthusiasm the curious songs of jail, cocaine, criminal, and prostitute life I had heard during my three months' sojourn behind bars.

I looked them over again. With all their smut and filth, they were yet full of naïve folk-touches and approximations to real balladry. I was as tender of the manuscript as a woman would be with her baby.

* * * * *

The sky grew overcast. A rain storm blew up. A heavy wind mixed with driving wet ... chilly ... I found shelter under a leaky shed ... was soggy and miserable ... even wished, in a weak moment, for the comparative comfort of my cell again....

The fast freight I was waiting for came rocking along. I made a run for it in the rapidly gathering dusk. I grabbed the bar on one side and made a leap for the step, but missed, like a frantic fool, with one foot--luckily caught it with the other, or I might have fallen underneath--and was aboard, my arms almost wrenched from their sockets.

Not till I had climbed in between the cars on the bumpers did I realise that my coat had been torn open and my much-valued songs jostled out.

Without hesitation I hurled myself bodily off the train. My one idea to regain the MSS. I landed on my shoulders, saw stars, rolled over and over. I groped up and down. And tears rained from my eyes when I understood those rhymes were lost forever....

It was midnight before I caught another freight. I climbed wearily into an empty box car while the freight was standing still. I was seen. A brakeman came to the door and lifted up his lantern, glancing within, I was crouching, wet and forlorn, in a corner of the car, waiting for the freight to be under way.

"Come on out with you! Hit the grit!" commanded the "shack" grimly.

I rose. I came to the door. I hated him in my heart, but quite simply and movingly I recited the story of my imprisonment, ending by asking him to let me ride, in the name of God.

He crunched away down the path, his lantern bobbing as he went.

* * * * *

All night long I rode ... bumpity-bump, bumpity-bump, bumpity-bump! All night long my head was a-ferment with dreams of the great things I would achieve, now that I was free of the shadow of imprisonment.

* * * * *

When I walked down the streets of Haberford once more, though I was leathery and stronger-looking, my adventures had added no meat to my bones. I was amused at myself as I walked along more than usually erect, for no other reason than to keep my coat-tail well down in back in order not to show the hole in the seat of my trousers. As I came down the street on which my father and I had lived, an anticipatory pleasure of being recognised as a sort of returned Odysseus beat through my veins like a drum. But no one saw me who knew me. It hurt me to come home, unheralded.

I came to the house where I had dwelt. I pulled the bell. There was no answer. I walked around the corner to the telegraph office. I was overjoyed to see lean, lanky Phil, the telegraph operator, half sleeping, as usual, over the key of his instrument.

"Hel-lo, John Gregory!" he shouted, with glad surprise in his voice.

* * * * *

He telephoned my father ... who came over from the works, running with gladness. I was immediately taken home. I took three baths that afternoon before I felt civilised again....

* * * * *

My father had returned to the Composite Works. I was alone in my little room, with all my cherished books once more. They had been, I could plainly observe, kept orderly and free of dust, against cay home-coming. I took down my favourite books, kissing each one of them like a sweetheart. Then I read here and there in all of them, observing all the old passages I had marked. I lay in all attitudes. Sprawling on the floor on my back, on my belly ... on my side ... now with my knees crossed....

Whitman, Shakespeare, Scott, Shelley, Byron ... Speke, Burton, Stanley ... my real comrades!... my real world! Rather a world of books than a world of actuality!...

I was so glad to be among my books again that for a month I gave no thought to the future. I did nothing but read and study ... except at those times when I was talking to people prodigiously of my trip and what I had seen and been through. And naturally and deftly I wove huge strips of imagination and sheer invention into the woof of every tale or anecdote....

I captained ships, saw Chinese slaughtered by the thousands, fought bandits on the outskirts of Manila, helped loot the palace of the empress in the Sacred City at Pekin ... tales of peril and adventure that I had heard others relate at camp-fires, in jail, in the forecastle, on the transport, I unhesitatingly appropriated as my own experiences.

All the papers printed stories about me. And I was proud about it. And I became prouder still when I sold a story in two parts to a New York Sunday paper ... I liked the notoriety....

But as usual, the yarns I retailed struck in upon my own imagination, too ... just as had my earlier stories of killing Indians. Particularly the tale I had related of having seen dead Chinamen in heaps with their heads lopped off. A nightmare of this imaginary episode began to come to me. And another dream I had--of a huge Boxer, with a cutlass, standing over me. And he was about to carve me piecemeal while I lay bound and helpless before him. The dream persisted so strongly that, after I awoke, I still seemed to see him standing in a corner of my room. And I cried aloud. And felt foolish when it brought my father in. So I stopped making up adventures, especially the disagreeable ones, because they eventually had more effect on me than they did on my auditors.

* * * * *

My father had changed boarding places ... but, as usual, it was not better food, but a little, dark widow that attracted him to that boarding house.

* * * * *