9009/Chapter 7
“Listen!” A shock-headed, square-bodied little safe-cracker, called “Shorty” Hayes, and doing fifty years, admonished 9009 in the subtle language of those who are watched.
The two sat on a board, suspended by ropes from the roof, far above the ground, painting the wall. They had been working all day and had arrived to the space immediately below the windows of the office of the captain of the yard.
“Shorty” did not speak aloud. He did not use his tongue at all. He talked with his eyes—a single sharp shifting of the eyeballs and a flash of light from them, both shift and light-flash moving toward the window, slightly ajar just above their heads.
It was Jennings who was talking within the office. His voice, suddenly, had gone to a lower key. “Things are moving,” he said quietly.
There was the creak of an office-chair turning in its socket; then the subdued but big growling voice of the captain.
“Good. Will it come through?”
The voice of Jennings came back with metallic positiveness.
“Yes—four of them are framing. Inside of a month that fool Miller will be giving away his clothes again and telling his friends he’s going to be paroled. There’ll be a dozen of them in it by that time———”
“Can we handle it?” The captain’s voice was anxious.
“Leave that to me. One of the four is my man. How’s the warden?”
“The governor is just aching for a chance to get at him. You work that, and he’s done for. And there’ll be something for you and me———”
Just then, the trusty in charge called 9009 and the safe-cracker down for dinner, and 9009 heard nothing more. He was not interested, anyway. He was still keeping to himself with savage determination and hugging his copper. In that alone was he interested, in that and a subtle combat which was going on between himself and the whole prison.
He had become—he saw this plainly—the butt of a series of petty persecutions which he ascribed to Jennings. This painting was one of them. The turpentine made him deathly sick, yet he was kept at it for a straight three weeks. He was often given the more loathsome prison work. At meals, if a convict within ten places from him broke the rule by talking, it was he, 9009, who was accused and punished by being deprived of his next meal. At the jute-mill Jennings tormented him subtly. He would plant himself behind 9009, boring into his back with his hard eyes, while the convict fought, under these conditions, to keep his attention rigid upon the machine, with its ceaseless exactions.
What had happened was this. From the first Jennings had decided that 9009 was a “bad one.” He had sowed this belief into the mind of the captain of the yard. The captain had passed it on to the other guards. And the trusties had soon caught the hint. Jennings, the captain, and the guards were engaged in “breaking” 9009; the trusties, catching with their infallible noses the desire of their protectors, were ceaselessly watching for 9009’s first stumble, counting up already the Judas reward that would come of it. But 9009 did not understand all this. He knew only, vaguely, that he was being attacked, and that he must not strike back.
Of these persecutions, depriving him of his sunlight was the worst.
Every alternating Sunday, the inmates of one of the cell-houses had two hours of recreation in the yard while those of the second cell-house were at chapel.
For two of these alternating Sundays it had rained. When the third came, 9009 was famished. It was sunny in the yard; a soft breeze, laden with a scent of warm, wet earth and lush grass was rolling languidly over the walls; it passed the chapel and carried to the cell-house the sound of women’s voices, singing. But the men in the cell-house did not listen. They stood at lock-step in the corridor, their feet shuffling on the concrete floor. The line was moving very slowly toward the outer door; at times a tremor as of impatience passed along its gray links.
Jennings stood at the door of the cell-house. As each man slid forward to him, he handed him a slip of paper—his pass. Without this pass, no convict could stay in the yard. The sallow guard glanced coldly at each felon; occasionally his white-gray eyes roved back along the line. Once, as they settled upon 9009, they glinted; then the blurring film crept back over them.
Finally 9009, now the head of the diminished line, was standing at the door, his eyes upon the ground, his right hand held up for the pass, and there was a weary hunger in his face.
“Well?” said Jennings sharply.
“My pass,” said 9009, his eyes on the ground, his hand still held out.
“Go on,” said Jennings; “don’t be stopping the line.”
“My pass,” repeated 9009 doggedly; “you didn’t give me no pass.”
“You lie,” said Jennings evenly; “how many passes do you want?”
9009’s hand dropped; then rose again in mute begging gesture.
“Move on,” Jennings ordered.
The striped line surged forward, and 9009, forced through the door, passed out into the sunlit yard.
It was warm; the sunshine was a golden downpour; the breeze, rolling languidly over the wall, fell into the yard heavy with the scent of wet earth and lush grass; a bee, afloat upon it, came buzzing from the outer world and thrice circled 9009 with its murmur, like a consolatory secret. And the earth, hard-beaten though it was by thousands of clumsy brogans, was springy under foot, elastic as steel and concrete were not; and the dome above was high and blue, and away up at its apex was a little white cloud. When you looked up at the little white cloud, it seemed to recede, farther and farther up and away; but when, after deceiving it by gazing at the ground for a time, you looked up at it again, there it was, back in the same place. Vaguely 9009 enjoyed all this; but all the time he was moving from group to group, trying to evade as long as possible the guard who had begun already to collect the passes.
There was noise in the yard, the noise of men’s voices lifted unrestrained, like the voices of boys in a school-yard. The convicts had thrown themselves into play with violence.
Two sides were busy in a ball game. A ring of stripes-clad spectators pressed close about the home-plate where “Shorty,” the shock-headed, square-bodied little safe-cracker, was standing, swinging his bat in circles, bringing it down upon the plate resoundingly. He was jeering the pitcher, a long pale-faced sneak-thief who, winding himself up ostentatiously for his delivery, looked in his stripes like a snake upright on its tail. And behind this one and to the right, a short wiry pickpocket bent his body and straightened it nervously, and rubbed his thin-fingered hands together, watching the batter with ferret eyes. Behind the safe-cracker, a tall, gaunt highwayman named Miller—he had been leader in several attempts to escape and had a mania for giving away his clothes before such breaks—crouched in his red stripes, eyes gleaming. Suddenly the pitcher’s contorted body unlocked with a snap; the ball sped, white in the sunlight; the safe-cracker swung his bat with terrific force, wildly; the ball thumped into the broad mit of the red-striped highwayman. “Strike one,” yelled the umpire, a stony-faced confidence-man. The crowd whooped. The safe-cracker spat in his hands, taking his bat with a new grip. The pickpocket threw a back handspring.
In a corner, near the stone building where were the condemned and solitary cells, two bullet-headed burglars were shoving their hands into tattered boxing gloves; without premonitory fiddling, they began slamming blows thick and fast into each other’s faces. Near them, men were pitching quoits, using horseshoes; they capered wildly as the horseshoes rose high into the air, and shouted after them as if to direct their flights.
All these men played without repression, with violence. And even those who merely walked, singly or in pairs, threw out their legs like horses just out of the stable. All save a few who paced stiffly with bowed heads, hands folded behind them—they were old-timers—and one or two who stood still or moved only to spasms of impulse, talking aloud to themselves—these had tempted madness by counting their days too often in the darkness of dungeon or drear of “solitary.”
“Where’s your pass?”
9009 started. He had forgotten, watching the others.
“I got none,” he said sullenly to the guard at his elbow.
“Go in, then.”
The guard spoke without passion or resentment, almost wearily. He waved his hand toward the cell-house. 9009 went back to his cell.
He went back to his cell and sat down on his three-legged stool. After a while, still seated, he began to slide the stool across the steel floor in little jumps, his eyes, meanwhile, turned upward attentively. When thus, in small tentative slides, he had covered the few square yards of the cell’s free area, he returned to a point near the centre, moved a fraction of an inch forward, then a still smaller fraction to the right, and was still, his big clasped hands hanging loosely between his knees, his face turned upward. The posture emphasised the heaviness of his jaw, the ugly lines from ends of nostrils to corners of mouth; but even then, it was an attitude almost of prayer.
He was gazing, past the bars, on and up through a little window near the ceiling of the cell-house, at a patch of sky. It was a little patch, irregularly framed by the top and right side of his cell-door and the sill and left side of the window, and slashed angularly by the roof of a near building; and exactly where he sat it showed a bit larger than it did from any other place in the cell. It was blue, a very tender blue; when 9009 stared at it hard, the faint taint in the air of the cell-house, with its added Sunday reek of chloride of lime, left him, and he seemed to breathe again that heavy, warm and sweet air which was rolling over the wall, into the prison yard. He sat on the stool, back bent (with his head low he could see more of the blue), his hands hanging between his knees, his face turned upward; gradually his lips loosened, his | heavy jaw dropped, and in his eyes, looking up in that attitude, almost of prayer, there came slowly an expression of longing, of vague patient longing, like a dog’s.
It was very still in the cell-house. At times, as if from far off, there came the attenuated tumult of the yard; in the air was the taint, and the added Sunday reek of chloride of lime. But 9009 was unconscious of this. He looked. Bowed on his seat, he looked up with loose lips and troubled eyes at the little patch of blue sky. After a while a film seemed to creep into it. Gradually this deepened into a whitish opalescence. It was a cloud; 9009 fancied it was the cloud that he had seen earlier in the day, when in the yard. He cast his eyes down to play with it again, to play the receding and approaching game of hide-and-go-seek. When he looked up again, the cloud was gone. It had been a very little cloud. And the blue was again there, the fresh tender blue.
A step sounded along the corridor; a shadow cut off the light; 9009 dropped his eyes levelly across the bars. Jennings was standing there, looking at him.
He looked at 9009 curiously, a long moment, then looked up at the window, far above. He glanced back into the cell, then, turning his back, shifted his position a foot. The patch of blue disappeared.
9009 remained where he was; his lips were no longer loose, his jaw did not droop, and the expression in his eyes was not of longing. The guard stood there, motionless; his back, square and brutal, rose like a wall before the cell-door.
For a long time they were thus. Occasionally, from the yard outside, there came whoops, cries of animal enjoyment; and again in the air was the taint, the taint from many cages near by. The afternoon waned, dusk came, the convicts returned; and then Jennings spoke.
“I’m going to break you,” he said; then turned on his heel and strode off down the corridor.
On the next Sunday, 9009 was again denied his pass, and the window, which had been white-washed during the week, was closed, cutting off the patch of blue. After that, 9009 ceased to ask for his pass; he spent his Sunday afternoons on his back, staring up at the bunk above him.
Sometimes his cell-mate, the little black-faced, spike-haired man, returning from the yard turned upon him his inflamed eyes with a strange look, almost of wistfulness, as though he wanted to speak; but 9009 mastered a desire to break their silence, and lay without a word, staring upward sullenly.