make so many,” Bonarue told him sourly.
And the greenish-gray light wavered, with Frankie’s unwavering wonder, along the whitewashed, silent halls.
He couldn’t get over Little Lester’s composure. Like any punk, with less luck than most. A kid who had seen double-headers at Comiskey Park and shot six-no-count pool and watched a striptease act on North Clark and played nickel-and-dime poker in the back of a neighborhood bar and had crapped out on a twelve-dollar pass and had carried a pass to Sportsman’s Park in his wallet; one who’d worn bright new trunks to show off in front of the girls on the North Avenue Beach on a summer morning when summer was going to last forever.
“What if them tennis-shoe laces break,” Frankie worried to himself late that night—“Would that punk just tie them up and forget it or would he send for a new pair, just as though he was going to be around to wear them out? Did Lester really
believe
he was going to die? Actually die? A break in the shoe laces, Frankie realized tensely, would put Lester to the test: if the punk ordered a new pair it would show he didn’t believe in his own death. If he didn’t, it would show he didn’t have the nerve to pretend any longer. But what if they broke—and he ordered a new pair just to show off? Or if he said, “Don’t bother with a new pair, Warden. I’m kicking off on the 15th of next month, I’ll make these last until then.”
Frankie harassed himself into an uneasy sleep.
At night, they said, Little Lester had not been sleeping well. He would waken and ask to play casino with the night screw through the bars. The night screw had taught him the game, Lester had grown to like it as the shadows behind him grew longer.
One night, somebody told Bonarue, somebody who’d had it right from the night screw, Lester had had a long laugh at a misplay thescrew had made. He had been happy because of beating the guard at the guard’s own game.
And that, somehow, hit Frankie worse than if they’d said he was lying on his bunk in a dead-cold nightmare, sweating out the chair. Instead he was sitting there killing the time with casino and “sigerettes.” Just as Frankie himself had, so often at home, sitting by the sink, while a clock ticked off the hours and his own shadows had lengthened.
Here there were no clocks. Yet each man knew the hour. All clocks were set forever here at midnight. If you wanted to know the time you asked the screw and were told, inevitably, “What you want to know for? You’re not going nowheres.”
And always it seemed to Frankie that it was wrong of Little Lester to tie his shoelaces neatly as it was for him to be reading his favorite book, something called
How to Write Better Business Letters
. As wrong as it had been for him to crow over beating the night-screw or sending for the barber to have his sideburns trimmed. The punk would be asking to have the collar starched on that last white shirt he’d ever wear, Frankie felt. And waited.
Everyone waited, with something like resentment, for Lester to break. Everyone sensed he had only been acting to keep up his nerve.
“He’ll forget his act when they take him downstairs,” Bonarue assured Frankie on the execution night. “Wait till they trim off them side-burns and make him try on them long black tights for size.”
It was rumored that Lester had already boasted of what his last meal should be: “A t-bone wit’ enough sheenie-bread so’s I can sop up the gravy.” A copy of
Esquire
and a package of gum was the rest of it.
“He won’t even be on his legs when he goes through the little white door,” Bonarue decided. “They’ll have to lift him into the seat ’n shove his nose through the helmet. Wait till he feels that sponge pressin’ his ankle and his leg gettin’ bound to the voltage clamp. He’ll konk out. I know that brave-guy type.”
And as Bonarue spoke so, in the bunk above his own, the figure of Little Lester became, to Frankie
And the greenish-gray light wavered, with Frankie’s unwavering wonder, along the whitewashed, silent halls.
He couldn’t get over Little Lester’s composure. Like any punk, with less luck than most. A kid who had seen double-headers at Comiskey Park and shot six-no-count pool and watched a striptease act on North Clark and played nickel-and-dime poker in the back of a neighborhood bar and had crapped out on a twelve-dollar pass and had carried a pass to Sportsman’s Park in his wallet; one who’d worn bright new trunks to show off in front of the girls on the North Avenue Beach on a summer morning when summer was going to last forever.
“What if them tennis-shoe laces break,” Frankie worried to himself late that night—“Would that punk just tie them up and forget it or would he send for a new pair, just as though he was going to be around to wear them out? Did Lester really
believe
he was going to die? Actually die? A break in the shoe laces, Frankie realized tensely, would put Lester to the test: if the punk ordered a new pair it would show he didn’t believe in his own death. If he didn’t, it would show he didn’t have the nerve to pretend any longer. But what if they broke—and he ordered a new pair just to show off? Or if he said, “Don’t bother with a new pair, Warden. I’m kicking off on the 15th of next month, I’ll make these last until then.”
Frankie harassed himself into an uneasy sleep.
At night, they said, Little Lester had not been sleeping well. He would waken and ask to play casino with the night screw through the bars. The night screw had taught him the game, Lester had grown to like it as the shadows behind him grew longer.
One night, somebody told Bonarue, somebody who’d had it right from the night screw, Lester had had a long laugh at a misplay thescrew had made. He had been happy because of beating the guard at the guard’s own game.
And that, somehow, hit Frankie worse than if they’d said he was lying on his bunk in a dead-cold nightmare, sweating out the chair. Instead he was sitting there killing the time with casino and “sigerettes.” Just as Frankie himself had, so often at home, sitting by the sink, while a clock ticked off the hours and his own shadows had lengthened.
Here there were no clocks. Yet each man knew the hour. All clocks were set forever here at midnight. If you wanted to know the time you asked the screw and were told, inevitably, “What you want to know for? You’re not going nowheres.”
And always it seemed to Frankie that it was wrong of Little Lester to tie his shoelaces neatly as it was for him to be reading his favorite book, something called
How to Write Better Business Letters
. As wrong as it had been for him to crow over beating the night-screw or sending for the barber to have his sideburns trimmed. The punk would be asking to have the collar starched on that last white shirt he’d ever wear, Frankie felt. And waited.
Everyone waited, with something like resentment, for Lester to break. Everyone sensed he had only been acting to keep up his nerve.
“He’ll forget his act when they take him downstairs,” Bonarue assured Frankie on the execution night. “Wait till they trim off them side-burns and make him try on them long black tights for size.”
It was rumored that Lester had already boasted of what his last meal should be: “A t-bone wit’ enough sheenie-bread so’s I can sop up the gravy.” A copy of
Esquire
and a package of gum was the rest of it.
“He won’t even be on his legs when he goes through the little white door,” Bonarue decided. “They’ll have to lift him into the seat ’n shove his nose through the helmet. Wait till he feels that sponge pressin’ his ankle and his leg gettin’ bound to the voltage clamp. He’ll konk out. I know that brave-guy type.”
And as Bonarue spoke so, in the bunk above his own, the figure of Little Lester became, to Frankie
Similar Books
