I tried to cheer him up with the thought that he would be released in two weeks; but he shook his head. Terror was written on his ghastly features. "Please, I don't want to die in jail," he said.
They were his last words.
XVI
A boy with blond hair, blue eyes, pink and white as a girl, modest as a nun, gentlemanly and soft spoken as Lord Fauntleroy, came upstairs to be operated on for a tumor. A sentence of two and a half years had been inflicted on him for selling cocaine. This deadly drug was furnished to him by a friend once when he was suffering from a cold. He did not know what it was, but he felt a wonderful exhilaration and a new strength come upon him, so that his illness seemed to vanish. The reaction was terrific, but he became addicted to the drug; and as he could not afford to buy the stuff, he began selling it, both for the profit and to be able to acquire it. His youth, and his already weak will, made him an easy prey to the evil company into which he was soon thrown. His father and mother and sisters were respectable and law abiding people of the middle class, but they did not seem able to cope with the peculiar conditions into which he had fallen.
Now that he is behind the bars he seems to realize the danger of his weakness, and he speaks of going back home to work among his own people.
After he was well again they sent him downstairs to work in the machine shop. Within two months he was back again in the hospital to be operated on for another tumor.
What a transformation! Instead of the gentle, well-mannered, repentant young sinner, we found a pale-faced young tough, with a sneering grin, walking with stooped shoulders, chin forward, arms curved, closed fists, in imitation of "gorillas" looking for trouble.
In his speech there was also a great change. Where there had been little personality or color, there was now a picturesque wealth of blasphemies; names and adjectives and punctuation were expressed by short but intensely vile words.