9009/Chapter 8
9009 gripped two bars of his cell-door and shook the steel till the rattle went resounding down the corridor in harsh crescendo.
“Here—you up there in 17, be quiet or I’ll throw you into the dungeon!”
The voice of the night guard came up through the shadows; it had the tone of one who is irritated by a common annoyance. 9009 stepped back quickly and threw himself on his bunk. “What’s got into me, anyhow?” he whispered up to his cell-mate, in the bunk above him.
They had arrived by this time to a certain degree of confidence. This had begun one day when, as 9009 was returning, grim and sullen, from his third short term in the dungeon, the little black-faced, spike-haired man had drawn from his blouse two pieces of bread that he had stolen from the dining-room and had handed them to him without a word.
“What’s got into me,” whispered 9009; “am I going nuts?”
“I used to get that way,” wheezed back the little man from the darkness above; “lots does it; it’s spells comes on you.”
9009 stretched himself out flatly and took hold of the sides of his bunk. He was afraid. He had caught himself at this sort of thing before; he feared this new impulse which crouched within him now always, hiding stealthily for days to spring out without warning and contort his sinews to action. Two or three times it had roused within him suddenly as, marching in the lock-step line, he stole a look up at the guard on the wall, pacing with his gun loose in hand, like a hunter; it had bidden him rush for the wall. Twice in the jute-mill, with Jennings behind him, it had told him to turn upon the sallow guard—and so loudly, so commandingly had it ordered, that he had almost obeyed before taking other thought. And this time, when at the sound of the guard’s voice he had found himself with hands knotted about his bars, he knew that again the thing had taken possession of him, convulsing his being.
It came always strongest after a period of strange half-delicious insomnia, during which his mind left him and wandered through the world outside the walls. These periods came often, and lasted sometimes as long as a week. Every night, then, leaving his body tossing, hot, on the narrow bunk in the steel cell, his mind, leaping the walls, flitted from place to place in the wide open world. Dawn saw him always haggard after one of these nights of semi-freedom, and within him the impulse would be crouching, stealthy, waiting to trap him to action. He watched against it incessantly, but a huge irritation vibrated along his nerves.
The whole atmosphere about him, anyhow, now held a suppressed excitement. He had felt it at first as an indefinable thing, a vague restlessness. Then he had become conscious of a subtle change in the routine about him. After several days of close observation, he had been able to place this.
Every morning, now, at cleaning time, as striped men with brooms and creaking buckets passed along the corridors or massed by the sinks, gibing cruelly or sliding lipless words from dead faces, four convicts would gather, heads close together, for a few moments. Each morning the same four, in the same apparently accidental manner, came together near the sinks and conferred for a few moments, saying little, and most of that with their lid-hidden eyes, swiftly.
9009 had marked these four men. One was Miller, the red-striped highwayman who was catching in the ball game the day that 9009 had been denied his pass. He was a big, gaunt man with a neck made crooked by a gunshot scar; he had made several attempts at escape in the past, and had a mania for giving away his clothes before each of such breaks. The second man was the ferret-eyed, wiry pickpocket who had played short-stop; the third was one of the bullet-headed burglars who had been boxing, and the fourth was Nichols, the stony-faced confidence-man who had umpired the game.
When these four talked, their speech was different from that of the others. It held purpose. When no guard was near, it was tense and hurried; and when guard, trusty, or ordinary convict approached, it sprang up into spasms of argument or rough laughter. The arguments were too vibrant and the laughter was too loud. In these stolen conferences Nichols, the stony-faced confidence-man, seemed to be leader.
“Here, you up in 17; try that again and I chuck you into the dungeon!”
The voice of the guard came up through the shadow, and 9009 again found himself with hands knotted about bars, while down the corridor came still the echo of rattling steel.
He threw himself back upon his bunk, and stretched himself flat, taking hold of the rods at the sides. “Pard,” he whispered, “I am going nuts.”
“It’s just spells,” came back the pacifying wheeze from above; “just spells; we all have ’em.”
9009 lay on his back, motionless, staring up into the darkness. Above him, at regular intervals, drearily, there sounded a dry weary coughing.
“What makes ye cough so—so hard and dry-like,” he asked at length. He had asked this several times before, and knew; but now, suddenly, he wanted to talk.
“’Tis the emery dust a-cuttin’ away me lungs,” the answer returned from the darkness.
“It’s worse every day,” went on 9009.
There was a silence; then words floated down again. “It keeps ye awake nights,” said the invisible cell-mate meekly.
“I guess yes”—9009 kicked at his blanket viciously.
They were quiet for a time. A guard hissed by in his rubber shoes along the gangway.
“You ought to kick,” 9009 began again. “I’d roar till somebody heard.”
Two words fell back through the darkness. “No use.”
“Why in hell don’t you go to the hospital?”
“Can’t.”
They were silent for a long time. The darkness lay upon them like a heavy vapour, lay upon the strong man in the lower bunk, tortured with twitching nerves, upon the little man above, nauseated with weakness; it lay upon them heavy, tainted, without mercy, turned from the sweet poppy-consoler to a hostile, sullen power keeping them awake to their torments. And the little man began to cough, a long dreary fit that seemed to have no end.
When it did terminate, 9009 let out a big breath; he found that he had held it all through the time that his mate was coughing. He lay silent a while longer, then, hesitatingly, “C’n I—help you—anyways?” he asked.
The response was slow in coming; then it dropped down softly. “Ye’re the first man as ever asked me that in this hell-hole,” said the little cell-mate.
They were quiet again, long. 9009 had thrown off his blanket and lay very still. But the darkness now was less heavy upon him; between the two bunks it seemed to have become less opaque, to have parted a bit to let through a softness.
“Ye can’t help me,” began the voice above again; “ye can’t; nobody can’t. I’m up against the push. It’s this way:
“I left this hell-hole once, left it on parole, and I got throwed back. I got throwed back. Fer why? Fer why did I get throwed back? What do ye think? Fer stealin’? Fer killin’? Fer snuffing a gofe? Fer cookin’ a bull? Guess why. Fer why did I get throwed back?”
The voice had risen clear now, pitched thin like a penny whistle; the questions dropped upon 9009 fiercely insistent. He lay silent, waiting, and at length the questioner, whom he could feel leaning out of his bunk above him, answered himself:
“I got throwed back in this hell-hole,” he said, “fer marrying. Yes,” he repeated drearily; “fer marrying.
“Ye see, I was doing ten years”—the words, long repressed, now came flowing one upon the other tumultuously—“I was doing my ten spot and had five done already; and I got hold of religion. Oh, ’twas on the square all right. I know now it’s all rot, but I was on the square then. I was psalm-singing, and they got me paroled———
“It’s a fine thing, that parole business. If ye’ve got a bad friend in the world, he’s got ye. Every man has ye foul. Did you ever read the rules for paroled cons? Ye can’t breathe the wrong way, or back ye go. Ye’re a con just the same. And the whole outside is yer prison. And every citizen is a stool-pigeon a-watching to tell on ye.
“Well,’d made bad friends in the pen. Wan was yer friend Jennings (9009, in the darkness below, exploded in an oath); t’other was that cat-faced trusty of the captain’s office, Wilson (9009 swore again and spit out of his bunk). The two was just starting the dope ring—selling opium to the cons. I was a trusty, a-tending the cells. They needed the cell-tenders to peddle the dope to the cons, an’ they thought I was just the man fer that because I was playing smooth in the chapel. But I was on the square about that chapel business. I wouldn’t stand fer their graft. And so they tried to job me, but my friends on the outside who’d got me religion, they beat them to it and got me paroled.
“Well, I learned all about that parole snap in short order. The first month I was in the city I got pinched six times by the perlice fer jobs I didn’t know nothing about. Every time a bull or detective passed me, he pinched me fer luck; and between them and their stool-pigeons I was ready to jump out of the State. But then I got to the Whosoever Will Mission where they take in ex-cons. They treated me good, and I lived wit’ them. And then———
“1 met a girl there.”
9009 thought of Nell, and swiftly, as usual, he put the thought from him.
“I met a girl there. She’d been on the town and turned straight. Ye know that kind; if they turn square, and it’s on the square wit’ them, they’re so straight all hell couldn’t touch them. Well, that was her. A slip of a girl, and she was nursing and working in the mission. They had a sort of hospital for broken-down bums, and she was taking care of them old whiskey-soaks. Well, we got stuck, and we didn’t give a cuss for them parole rules, and the mission people, they thought it’d be all right, and we got married———
“A con can’t get married, and a con on parole is a con. Jennings, he came down to the city on his vacation and seen the marriage license in the paper. We’d been married wan day when they pinched me.
“They throwed me back here and put me in the foundry at the emery wheel, and the emery wheel is a-cuttin’ away me lungs. Jennings, he fixes the jobs; he’s a-gettin’ back at me.”
The voice in the darkness above stopped. A long dreary fit of coughing followed. 9009, lying on his back, straining his eyes upward, thought of Nell, and put the thought out of his mind. “What’s become of her,” he asked curiously; “of the girl you got stuck on and married?”
“Oh,” came back the cell-mate’s voice, and all the shrill strength was out of it, and it fell down heavy as lead; “oh, she’s cut out religion—gone back to hell!”
They sank into a final silence; again the darkness drew about them, crushing, tainted, without mercy. Above, the littl man coughed, drearily, endlessly; below, the strong man twitched to the torture of his nerves; and to their ears, uncouth and fantastic, there came the breathing of the prison.
And after a while, like a kindness, sleep enwrapped the upper bunk. And in the lower, 9009 felt slowly his mind leave his tossing body to wander over walls, in the free wide world. He lay there, in semi-ecstatic insomnia; his senses were drugged. Suddenly they awoke to a tapping.
They awoke and were immediately alert. From a cell down the corridor, there came a tapping, a soft tapping, faint but insistent:
“Tap-tap (pause); tap-tap (long pause); tap-tap-tap-tap-tap (pause); tap (long pause); tap-tap-tap (pause); tap-tap-tap-tap (long pause); tap-tap”—it stopped.
And immediately, from another cell, alert, tense and affirmative: “Tap-tap; tap-tap; tap-tap.”
Then, again from the first cell, very softly, but with insistence, the first call: “tap-tap (pause); tap-tap (long pause); tap-tap-tap-tap-tap (pause); tap (long pause); tap-tap-tap (pause); tap-tap-tap (long pause); tap-tap.”
And from far down the corridor, a third cell spoke; decisively, almost ragefully: “tap-tap; tap-tap; tap-tap.”
“Tap-tap,” began the first cell again; “tap-tap; tap-tap-tap-tap-tap”———
It broke off short; to 9009 came again the prison’s uncouth breathing; then, shadowy, a guard passed along the cells, hissing in his rubber shoes.
The tapping was not resumed. It was some alphabetical communication, 9009 knew; he had heard of such a thing. Lying on his back he thought of the four men—of Miller, the gaunt highwayman, of the pickpocket, the bulletheaded burglar, the stony-faced confidence-man—who met every morning by the sinks and talked lipless words; and after a while he felt himself sinking into a blessed somnolence.
“Here, you up there in 17; stop it, stop it!”
And again 9009 awoke to find himself up against his cell-door, his hands knotted about the vibrating bars; and from the depths of the corridor there came to him the harsh echo of rattling steel.
This time the little window near the roof was pale with dawn.