Part 21 (1/2)
At this time I doubt that I weighed an ounce over ninety pounds. Yet, two years before, when the doors of San Quentin first closed on me, I had weighed one hundred and sixty-five pounds. It seems incredible that there was another ounce I could part with and still live. Yet in the months that followed, ounce by ounce I was reduced until I know I must have weighed nearer eighty than ninety pounds. I do know, after I managed my escape from solitary and struck the guard Thurston on the nose, that before they took me to San Rafael for trial, while I was being cleaned and shaved I weighed eighty-nine pounds.
There are those who wonder how men grow hard. Warden Atherton was a hard man. He made me hard, and my very hardness reacted on him and made him harder. And yet he never succeeded in killing me. It required the state law of California, a hanging judge, and an unpardoning governor to send me to the scaffold for striking a prison guard with my fist. I shall always contend that that guard had a nose most easily bleedable. I was a bat-eyed, tottery skeleton at the time. I sometimes wonder if his nose really did bleed. Of course he swore it did, on the witness stand. But I have known prison guards take oath to worse perjuries than that.
Ed Morrell was eager to know if I had succeeded with the experiment; but when he attempted to talk with me he was shut up by Smith, the guard who happened to be on duty in solitary.
”That's all right, Ed,” I rapped to him. ”You and Jake keep quiet, and I'll tell you about it. Smith can't prevent you from listening, and he can't prevent me from talking. They have done their worst, and I am still here.”
”Cut that out, Standing!” Smith bellowed at me from the corridor on which all the cells opened.
Smith was a peculiarly saturnine individual, by far the most cruel and vindictive of our guards. We used to canva.s.s whether his wife bullied him or whether he had chronic indigestion.
I continued rapping with my knuckles, and he came to the wicket to glare in at me.
”I told you to out that out,” he snarled.
”Sorry,” I said suavely. ”But I have a sort of premonition that I shall go right on rapping. And--er--excuse me for asking a personal question--what are you going to do about it?”
”I'll--” he began explosively, proving, by his inability to conclude the remark, that he thought in henids.
”Yes?” I encouraged. ”Just what, pray?”
”I'll have the Warden here,” he said lamely.
”Do, please. A most charming gentleman, to be sure. A s.h.i.+ning example of the refining influences that are creeping into our prisons. Bring him to me at once. I wish to report you to him.”
”Me?”
”Yes, just precisely you,” I continued. ”You persist, in a rude and boorish manner, in interrupting my conversation with the other guests in this hostelry.”
And Warden Atherton came. The door was unlocked, and he bl.u.s.tered into my cell. But oh, I was so safe! He had done his worst. I was beyond his power.
”I'll shut off your grub,” he threatened.
”As you please,” I answered. ”I'm used to it. I haven't eaten for ten days, and, do you know, trying to begin to eat again is a confounded nuisance.
”Oh, ho, you're threatening me, are you? A hunger strike, eh?”
”Pardon me,” I said, my voice sulky with politeness. ”The proposition was yours, not mine. Do try and be logical on occasion. I trust you will believe me when I tell you that your illogic is far more painful for me to endure than all your tortures.”
”Are you going to stop your knuckle-talking?” he demanded.
”No; forgive me for vexing you--for I feel so strong a compulsion to talk with my knuckles that--”
”For two cents I'll put you back in the jacket,” he broke in.
”Do, please. I dote on the jacket. I am the jacket baby. I get fat in the jacket. Look at that arm.” I pulled up my sleeve and showed a biceps so attenuated that when I flexed it it had the appearance of a string. ”A real blacksmith's biceps, eh, Warden? Cast your eyes on my swelling chest. Sandow had better look out for his laurels. And my abdomen--why, man, I am growing so stout that my case will be a scandal of prison overfeeding. Watch out, Warden, or you'll have the taxpayers after you.”
”Are you going to stop knuckle-talk?” he roared.
”No, thanking you for your kind solicitude. On mature deliberation I have decided that I shall keep on knuckle-talking.”
He stared at me speechlessly for a moment, and then, out of sheer impotency, turned to go.