Read Ebook: A prison make by Stuart William W Finlay Virgil Illustrator

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Ebook has 133 lines and 9960 words, and 3 pages

Illustrator: Virgil Finlay

Release date: November 20, 2023

Original publication: New York, NY: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1962

A Prison Make

Illustrated by FINLAY

Any similarity between the hero of this Kafka-esque tale and Everyman who chooses the security of the horrible known rather than face the unknown, is not by any means coincidental.

The man on the bunk woke, but not up. Not up at all. He didn't move, except for a sort of general half-twitch, half-shrug; didn't even open his eyes. Just past the black borderland of sleep in the miasmic, grey fog in which he found or failed to find himself, two things only seemed sure. One of these was that there was no hurry whatever about opening his eyes to his immediate surroundings. That could wait. He didn't know why but he knew it could wait.

He knew that. He knew also that he was a man. No doubt there. Not for an instant did he so much as suspect that he might be a small boy, a girl, woman, or some nameless beast. No; he was a man. Not an old man, either. A man and still at least reasonably young.

These things he felt he knew but he could take no very great satisfaction in them. It didn't seem a very extensive knowledge; basic, but not extensive. What about other, collateral data--such as his name, status, situation, condition and present whereabouts?

He couldn't seem to think. No, no, he hadn't lost his memory. He felt confident that all those things were clearly recorded there someplace. Only they were obscured, out there in that mist, out where it was hard to grasp them just now. After a bit, it would all come back to him.

In the meantime he lay there.

He twitched again, a reflective thing, no volition entering into it. The surface under him gave a little; a bed of some sort, must be. It seemed rather too firm, a harder bed than he felt he was properly accustomed to. Not too bad though. He could--he had, apparently, rested well enough on it. Sheets? He couldn't feel any sheets, only something scratchy; a blanket. And it didn't, come to notice, feel as though he were wearing pajamas; more like ordinary clothes. And--he wiggled his toes--socks, yes. Shoes? No, at least he wasn't wearing shoes.

Now where would a man, not drunk, of course he wasn't drunk, be likely to go to bed in a hard bunk, blanket, no sheets, all or most of his clothes on except his shoes? Could be some sort of an Armed Forces outpost or ... jail? The situation seemed to fit the pattern of a jail all too closely. And how would the fine young man he was sure he must be know all this about a jail pattern? Must have read it someplace; seen it in a show. Well....

He opened his eyes to a further greyness, only less thick than that inside. And there were bars in this greyness, there in front of him, heavy steel bars; on the sides, he turned his head, walls of solid steel plate. To the rear? He lifted his head and turned it--a damp, dirty concrete wall. Oh it was a jail all right. He was in jail, in a cell. He didn't, at once, move any more. From where he lay on the cell's single bunk hung by chains from the right side wall, he could see a narrow, concrete corridor through the bars in front. A bare light bulb shone tiredly in a dirt-crusted metal reflector in the corridor's high ceiling; grey light oozed in through a high, barred window. It must be early morning, he figured.

Probably it was morning, at that. But, as he found in later time, you couldn't judge it from that window. It had only two tones, grey light or black; night or day. It was a window remote from any sun and the grey day-time quality was subject to no variations, or at least none that he could ever classify or use as a basis of measurement.

Well, assuming as he did then that it was morning in jail, what was he, whoever he was, doing in jail? The detail of his past was still solidly fogged in. But he wasn't a--a criminal. Anything like that he would surely know about, remember. It must be a mistake of some sort. Or could he be in jail for some justifiable, thoroughly respectable sin? Income tax, price fixing, collusion, something like that, actually creditable rather than otherwise? No. He hadn't been through a trial, couldn't have been; and nobody ever went to jail for things like that except, perhaps, for a month or so and that after years of trials and appeals first.

Nevertheless, he was in jail. So? It must be an accident, a mistake of some sort. Of course. That would be it.

He sat up then, on the bunk. Shoes? He swung his stocking feet over the edge of the bunk and felt; bent down and looked. No shoes in sight. Well ... he stood up. Ow! That concrete floor was cold. But he wouldn't have to stand for it--on it--for long. Whatever the mistake or misunderstanding had put him in jail, he would straighten it out quickly enough. He walked to the front of the cell to grasp bars, one in each hand, the conventional prisoners' pose.

"Hey!" he shouted, "hey!!" He rattled the cell door, doing all the normal, conventional things. And, standing there shaking his cell door, he was a conventional, non-remarkable looking young man. Middling height, not short, not tall. Young, not more than thirty or so; not bad looking. Slim enough of waist so the lack of a belt didn't endanger the security of his pants. Naturally, they drooped and, naturally, he looked unshaven, dishevelled. But his suit was of good quality. Shirt--no necktie, of course--too. He might very well have been a young executive, caught in a non-executive moment. Probably, he was, or had been. But in jail there are no executives. He was only a prisoner rattling a jail cell door.

Turning his head and pressing against bars, he could look up and down the corridor outside. To his right, sighted through the left eye, it stretched, maybe a hundred feet, maybe more, to end in a right angle turn and a blank wall. The other way, some indeterminate, dim distance off, he could barely make out another barred door. There were, he could sense rather than see, other cells in neat, penal line on either side of his. Occupied? Yes. There were noises; grunts, yawns, mumbling, nothing distinguishable in the way of conversation but clear enough evidence that there were other prisoners. He was glad of that.

"Hey!" he yelled again, "hey, somebody. Come let me out of here, damnit." But nobody did.

After a bit he went back to his bunk and sat. Routine, he supposed, and rules. Probably it was too early yet. But certainly before long someone would come. They would have to let him see someone in authority; straighten this mess out fast enough then.

He stood and went through his pockets. Not much; but, at least, a crumpled pack with three cigarettes and one book of matches. He sat again and smoked. Patience.

Later, not long probably, he was roused from a dull torpor by a metallic clatter from the corridor. He leaped to his feet--damn that cold floor--and to the front of his cell. Outside, just one or two cells down from his own was a rig of some sort; some kind of a steam table on wheels, apparently. Anyway, it was steaming greasily. There were metal trays stacked at one end; buckets of one thing or another in apertures along its eight foot length. Breakfast? Something, anyway, being served up by four hopeless slatterns dressed in sack-like, brown and dirty white striped denim uniforms. The women whined and mumbled at each other as they dragged along, filling trays and tin cups from the containers in their steam table, passing them into cells, dispensers of the state's bounty, no benediction.

"Well now look at here, girls," said the lead witch, coming abreast of the man's cell, "looks like we got us a real juicy young buster, a nice gentleman prisoner type. Fresh meat, hah?"

They all screeched and squawked then, crowding to the front of his cell to look, exchanging viciously obscene guesses regarding his probable past history of despicable crime, present intimate personal condition, and future possibilities, all singularly unattractive. He gaped at them a moment in shocked disgust and then backed from the door of his cell to sit on the bunk, head down, not looking, trying not to listen.

"Yeah, that's the way it goes. He don't like our service; don't think what we got is sweet enough and pretty enough for his fine taste; not now, he don't. It's gonna surprise him some, ain't it, dears, how he'll learn to like our dishes and our room service after a little time, hah?" The first charmer hummed an unrecognizable non-musical bar or two and lifted straggling skirts high, higher to prance a misshapen dance step. The others cackled wildly.

"Show him Belle. Show him something to put in his dreams. He'll come around fast enough."

He squeezed his eyelids tighter shut.

"All right then, Sweetie, Jail-Birdie Boy," said Belle, dropping skirts. "Your appetite for our cell block service'll change. How d'you want your eggs, Bird-Boy?" She laughed.

He raised his head, dully. "Any way you feel like laying them, goddamnit," he snarled.

The harsh amusement dissolved. "A funny one? Did I say fresh meat, dears? Too fresh, hah? All right. Should we serve him a chef's special?"

The other two gruntingly pushed the steam table forward. One lifted a metal plate, something between a dish and a bowl, and scooped a ladle full of a greyish mess of whatever, mush of some sort. Edible? Conceivably. Then she reached into some nauseous recess of the table and brought out a stout roach, legs moving feebly. She dropped it into the mush. Number two drew a steaming cup of muddy liquid from an urn. Coffee? Well, it was a brown-grey, it had a smell, it wasn't soup. Coffee. The hag with the cup hawked gurglingly and spat into the cup. The third grinned evilly and dropped three slices of grey-white bread--grey was in everything--on the gritty corridor floor; stirred them around with her bunion cut left shoe; picked them up.

"Breakfast is served, Birdie. Juicy worms for the early jail bird." Belle opened the cell door. The man sat still on his bunk, staring fixedly at the floor. The stout slattern laughed, slopped the filthy bread on top of the expiring roach and Belle took the plate-bowl and the cup to slap them down beside him. "Breakfast. Bread's your lunch. Maybe you'll be gladder to see us by supper. No? Then tomorrow, or the next day; or the next." She backed out and clanged the cell door shut. "No tipping," she said. The others cackled. "Please ... no tipping."

They moved on down the row of cells. The man sat. Maybe he should have been more friendly; played up to them. Then he could have asked them ... something ... about seeing somebody, somebody in charge, a lawyer ... anybody. He sat a while, ignoring the filthy bread, the noisome mush and the grey-tan coffee slush with the yellowish blob of spittle on top. But it bothered him. Not that he wanted to eat. God no. His stomach growled; let it growl. He was too nervous, too upset to eat anything, let alone ... that. But his mouth, his throat were parched, cotton dry, a desert, a burned out waste of dehydrated tissue. Liquid ... damn them. He went back again to the cell door. Shook it. Yelled, a hoarse croak. No answer, except a croaking echo, the subdued mutter from other cells. He quit trying to yell. His throat was too dry; it hurt.

For the first time since waking then, he really looked around, checked over the rest of the cell. It wasn't fancy. The bunk, hard mattress, blanket. Bars, walls. And, at the rear of the cell, stark, yellow-white, unadorned and unlovely, was one toilet bowl, no wooden seat, just the stained enamel. To it and through from the dim concrete ceiling above ran a heavy iron water pipe. Just where the pipe met the bowl was the handle. He had seen it all before without taking real notice. A toilet. Hell no, he didn't need a toilet. He was all dried out, tensed, frozen inside. But ... he walked the three short paces to the rear of the cell. He reached out, down; took the handle, pressed it. Water rushed out in a roaring flood, bubbling and swirling in stained bowl. Slowly the flow cut down and stopped. He pressed the handle again; again the rush of water. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Water.

Sure, there was water, plenty of water. Water, water ... nor any drop ... to drink? No, Good Lord no; it was unthinkable. A man couldn't, not conceivably, drink water that came from such a thing. He would choke on it, strangle, die. But water.... He would die. The iron pipe above the bowl was sweating, tiny droplets. He pressed his tongue, his face against it. Water.

Damned little water there. He hugged the pipe for a while, breath coming in harsh gasps. And, as he gasped, his mind emptied, slowly to a blank, clear, unreflecting lucidity of, not thought, of direct motor response. A minute, two. Then, moving deliberately, not thinking deliberately, he turned back to his bunk. A dish. A cup of nauseating muck.

A little later he wiped his mouth with his sleeve and lit one of his two remaining cigarettes. The cup, rinsed, clean and filled with water, he had placed carefully down at the foot of the bunk on the inboard side. He sighed. His stomach rumbled. Food ... no, not that. He wasn't really hungry. Even if, maybe, a piece or two of the bread might be cleaned off a bit ... no.

He lay back on the bunk looking upward. Hm-m. There was something he hadn't noticed. Up there, maybe eight feet above the floor level, four under the ceiling, was a black box, about eight inches square by three deep. Standing on the bunk in his stocking feet, he could get to it easily enough. A wire ran from it into the ceiling. A speaker. At the bottom was a button. He pressed it. First, nothing but a faint hum. Then....

"Click. Good morning." It spoke with a coolly feminine-metallic voice, "welcome to the Kembel State Home of Protective Custody, Crime Prevention and Correction Number One-One-Seven."

"Jail," said the man, sitting back down on the bunk. "All it is, it's a crummy jail." It pleased him to tell the voice that, firmly and clearly.

"This," continued the speaker, "is a recording." The man shrugged. So what about it? "You have been admitted to protective custody here pending investigation, trial, review and ultimate disposition of your case. This is--click--Sunday morning. Sunday is a rest day. Cell block therapeutic work schedules are in effect Monday through Friday--click."

Work? What kind of work?

"You, as a custodial ward of the State, are entitled by law to representation of your own, freely selected legal counsel."

Ah! His lawyer would clear this mess up quickly enough.

"If you wish to name counsel you may do so now. Speak clearly, directly into your home-room sound box. Spell out name of counsel, home and business address, code, phone, and qualifications before the bar of this State. Click."

His lawyer? Did he have a lawyer? Who? Think, damnit, think. The sound box was silent except for a faint hum, waiting. But he couldn't think. The name Lucille came into his mind, but it seemed unlikely that Lucille could be a lawyer.

"Click." The box spoke out again. "You have no expressed choice of counsel. You have therefore opted to avail yourself of the privilege of representation by State appointed counsel. You are now represented, with full power of attorney, by State Public Defenders, Contract 34-RC, Hollingsworth, Schintz and Associates, Attorneys at Law. Counsel will consult with client twice weekly. Sunday and Thursday between the hours of 1500 and 1600."

Well, at least he'd get to see some kind of a lawyer.

"And now," the voice seemed to take on the faintest note of enthusiastic interest, "you, as a custodial ward of the State will need a clear understanding of how we live here at Kembel State Home One-One-Seven. A clear understanding of the rules and policies applicable to custodial wards of the State will enable you to avoid difficulties and misunderstandings during your institutional life. Please listen carefully."

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