It is Sunday noon. The rangeman pushes the dinner wagon along the tier. I stand at the door, ready to receive the meal. The overseer glances at me, then motions to the prisoner. The cart rolls past my cell.
"Officer," I call out, "you missed me."
"Smell the pot-pie, do you?"
"Where's my dinner?"
"You get none."
The odor of the steaming delicacy, so keenly looked forward to every second Sunday, reaches my nostrils and sharpens my hunger. I have eaten sparingly all week in expectation of the treat, and now—I am humiliated and enraged by being so unceremoniously deprived of the rare dinner. Angrily I rap the cup across the door; again and again I strike the tin against it, the successive falls from bar to bar producing a sharp, piercing clatter.
A guard hastens along. "Stop that damn racket," he commands. "What's the matter with you?"
"I didn't get dinner."
"Yes, you did."
"I did not."