Machine, more and more that of his own; till the finger of the accusing past seemed to touch his forehead and he wanted to sweat and couldn’t; till he wanted to be sick, and couldn’t. All he could do was heave.
If only Lester would break down. It would be so good for Frankie’s soul. If the punk would only start bawling like a baby, beg for mercy like a girl, scream for his dead mother—if he didn’t, Frankie felt, Frankie Machine might start screaming himself: there was a small panic in his throat that he had to keep swallowing down; and had to keep assuring himself that there was nothing on the books against him more serious than the theft of an electric iron.
A single senseless cry, from some con fighting the same pressure which Lester’s pretense had been putting upon them all, rang through the walls. Immediately a hundred sleepers wakened, calling passionately to each other, none knowing why he called or what it was that all feared so wildly. The night-guards came off their stools shouting, it was one of those reasonless tides of panic which seize men and women in jails and asylums, which cannot be subdued by blows but dies instead, as abruptly as it has begun, of its own accord; and just as reasonlessly.
They said, between the bakery and the laundry, between print-shop and mess, they said he’d come out of the cell wearing the long black tights and the white shirt buttoned over one shoulder like a fencer’s shirt, looking proud as he could be of his fancy outfit. They said it had taken hardly a minute to adjust the chair. They said, they said. They said there had been one contact for the nape of the neck and one for the pale right ankle. They said that after the unseen switch had been pulled the left knee had kicked up just once, as if tapped by a sharp ruler. Just once was all, they said. Toward the chin already hanging loose.
They said the single shoulder button had been stripped off in taking the shirt down, to expose the poor seared heart. Six doctors then, in alphabetical order, had pronounced the heart as dead as any Westside punk’s heart can get: a charred lump of spoiled meat sagging where once the living heart had burned.
There had been one hundred and twenty men and two women on the benches, one of the trustees said, in the front row reserved for newspaper men.
It had all been spick and span behind the glass, everything had gone off in tip-top legal order, there had not been so much as a tell-tale flickering of the lights throughout the vast building.
Four buttons had been pushed by four unnamed men—but only one had pushed a live one. No one would have to think it was himself had pushed the live one and none would ever know who had.
They had used an amperage of eight, everyone knew, because that was the regular amperage for white men. Everyone said. Just like the regular amperage for colored men was seven and a half.
Then they’d thrown him nine hundred extra volts just to make dead sure. Everyone knew all about it. Everyone told everyone else just how it had gone off just as if each had been the sole witness.
It wasn’t until after he’d been released, two months later, that Frankie Machine learned that Little Lester hadn’t reached the chair. He had died on his death-cell bed with fourteen weary hours yet to go.
A heart attack or strychnine, the warden said one thing and the coroner’s physician another.
It depended so much upon whom you asked. And mattered so little either way.
PAPER DAISIES
A light rain brought the spring, that year, to a cold, autumnal close.
Frankie Machine came down Division, where only arc-lamps and fire-hydrants grow, feeling that a tightly wound spring within himself had snapped, and that there could be no re-winding. A stretch at 26th and California had left his fingers feeling weakened by the lack of a fresh deck’s touch; five months is too long for a dealer to be kept out of a dealer’s slot.
“But once you got the touch,” he assured
If only Lester would break down. It would be so good for Frankie’s soul. If the punk would only start bawling like a baby, beg for mercy like a girl, scream for his dead mother—if he didn’t, Frankie felt, Frankie Machine might start screaming himself: there was a small panic in his throat that he had to keep swallowing down; and had to keep assuring himself that there was nothing on the books against him more serious than the theft of an electric iron.
A single senseless cry, from some con fighting the same pressure which Lester’s pretense had been putting upon them all, rang through the walls. Immediately a hundred sleepers wakened, calling passionately to each other, none knowing why he called or what it was that all feared so wildly. The night-guards came off their stools shouting, it was one of those reasonless tides of panic which seize men and women in jails and asylums, which cannot be subdued by blows but dies instead, as abruptly as it has begun, of its own accord; and just as reasonlessly.
They said, between the bakery and the laundry, between print-shop and mess, they said he’d come out of the cell wearing the long black tights and the white shirt buttoned over one shoulder like a fencer’s shirt, looking proud as he could be of his fancy outfit. They said it had taken hardly a minute to adjust the chair. They said, they said. They said there had been one contact for the nape of the neck and one for the pale right ankle. They said that after the unseen switch had been pulled the left knee had kicked up just once, as if tapped by a sharp ruler. Just once was all, they said. Toward the chin already hanging loose.
They said the single shoulder button had been stripped off in taking the shirt down, to expose the poor seared heart. Six doctors then, in alphabetical order, had pronounced the heart as dead as any Westside punk’s heart can get: a charred lump of spoiled meat sagging where once the living heart had burned.
There had been one hundred and twenty men and two women on the benches, one of the trustees said, in the front row reserved for newspaper men.
It had all been spick and span behind the glass, everything had gone off in tip-top legal order, there had not been so much as a tell-tale flickering of the lights throughout the vast building.
Four buttons had been pushed by four unnamed men—but only one had pushed a live one. No one would have to think it was himself had pushed the live one and none would ever know who had.
They had used an amperage of eight, everyone knew, because that was the regular amperage for white men. Everyone said. Just like the regular amperage for colored men was seven and a half.
Then they’d thrown him nine hundred extra volts just to make dead sure. Everyone knew all about it. Everyone told everyone else just how it had gone off just as if each had been the sole witness.
It wasn’t until after he’d been released, two months later, that Frankie Machine learned that Little Lester hadn’t reached the chair. He had died on his death-cell bed with fourteen weary hours yet to go.
A heart attack or strychnine, the warden said one thing and the coroner’s physician another.
It depended so much upon whom you asked. And mattered so little either way.
PAPER DAISIES
A light rain brought the spring, that year, to a cold, autumnal close.
Frankie Machine came down Division, where only arc-lamps and fire-hydrants grow, feeling that a tightly wound spring within himself had snapped, and that there could be no re-winding. A stretch at 26th and California had left his fingers feeling weakened by the lack of a fresh deck’s touch; five months is too long for a dealer to be kept out of a dealer’s slot.
“But once you got the touch,” he assured
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