“Well, I didn’t mean to gossip with you so much, but I thought maybe you would like to know something about it and so long as the alderman sent you over I wanted to do all I could for you. Give my respects to the alderman. I guess he’ll be a candidate next spring. He says he won’t, but I think he will. He always knows what he’s doing. All he wants is to throw them reform guys off the track. They might know that they couldn’t beat him. Our people out there don’t care anything about municipal ownership and Civil Service Reform, and things like that. What they want is turkeys on Thanksgiving and to be helped out of the lock-up and pardoned out of the Bridewell and found jobs. That’s what they want, and there ain’t an alderman in town that tends to the business of his ward better than ours, and we don’t care whether the railroads and gas companies give him money or not. We don’t expect him to work for nothin’ and don’t want him to; and what do we care about the streets? None of us has horses and the fellows that wants ‘em ought to pay for ‘em. Well, here’s Jackson, and I’ll tell the guard to let you stay with him all you want to; he’s a good fellow and will do what I want. You can say anything you please to Jackson and he can talk to you all he wants to; the guard won’t listen if he knows you’re all right, but it isn’t any more than fair, anyhow, for this is his last night.”
Hank listened to the guard without being impatient for, in the first place, he felt as if he had made a new friend, and he liked him; he was such a good talker and told him so much that was new and he didn’t seem the least bit stuck up, although he had such a good job. Then all the time he felt nervous and uneasy about meeting Jackson; the Jackson he knew was not a criminal but a good fellow who used to play pool and drink beer and go to primaries, while this man was a murderer who was to be hung next day; then again he didn’t seem a real man, but a sort of ghost, so that Hank had a good deal the feeling he used to know as a child when he went past a graveyard, or that he felt in a morgue, or when he went to look at some dead friend.
When he came up to the cell Jackson was smoking a cigar and talking with the guard. At the first glance the uneasy feeling passed away. It was the same Jim Jackson that he knew, except thinner and paler than when he saw him last. Before the guard had time to speak Jackson reached out his hand, smiled and said “Hello, Hank, I’m awful glad you came. I’ve been looking for you all the afternoon.” Hank took his hand without the least feeling that it was the hand of a murderer. It was only the old friend and comrade he had known.
The guard unlocked the door and told Hank to go in. Then he said:
“Now, you folks talk all you want to. I won’t hear a single word you say. I’ll sit out here and if there is anything I can do, let me know.”
Hank went into the little cell. On one side was an iron shelf and on this a straw tick and some bed clothing. A little wash-stand and slop-pail stood in one corner, a chair was near the stand, and a few pictures taken from colored supplements were on the white walls. The guard handed in another chair and the two friends sat down. At first there was a short, painful silence. It was plain that both had been thinking what to say and neither knew just how to begin. Hank had thought that he would ask Jim how he happened to kill his wife; he thought he ought to talk with him and tell him how terrible it was. He believed that perhaps this was his duty toward a fellow-being standing so near the presence of his Maker. Then, too, he had the feeling that unless he really told Jim what he thought about his crime, it would be almost the same as being an accessory to the act. In fact, when Hank was going to the jail he had a vague idea that his only right to visit Jim was to preach to him in some way. He would almost have thought it a crime to meet him on equal terms.
After they sat down Jim was again the first to speak. “My room here’s pretty crowded but I guess it’ll do for tonight. Make yourself just as comfortable as possible for I’d like to have you stay with me as long as you can. It’s a little lonesome you know. The guard’s a good fellow. He visits with me every night and is as friendly as he can be. He told me that he was in jail himself once for burglary, but you mustn’t say anything about it. His lawyer got him out, but he says he was really guilty. That was a good many years ago. He says he believes if he had gone to the penitentiary he would never have amounted to anything, but as soon as he got out of jail he turned over a new leaf and made up his mind to make something of himself, and just see where he is now. He is an awful kind fellow. I know he feels sorry for me. He gives me all the cigars I want and all the privileges he can. There’s a guard here in the daytime that I don’t like; he was appointed by the Citizens’ Association. He’s strict and awful good. He’s always asking me questions about myself, says he’s getting statistics for the association. He seems to think that it must have been whisky that made me do it, and he gives me tracts; of course that’s all right, but still you’d think that once in a while he’d say something else to a fellow, or at least give him a cigar. Some way he don’t seem to have any feeling. I s’pose he’s a good deal better than the other guard but I don’t like him near so well.
“But that wasn’t what I got you here for. I really wanted to talk with you. You see no one that I knew has been to see me since I came. I don’t s’pose I ought to expect they would. I used to know a good many fellers who went to jail but I never went to see ‘em. I always kind of thought they wa’n’t fit for me to associate with, and I s’pose that’s the way most people believe. But since I came here somehow it don’t look quite the same. Maybe that’s on account of what I done. I told the priest I thought you’d come because we was always such good friends, and he told me he would go and see you. He’s been awful good to me although I never went to church any when I was out. He talks to me as if I was just like other people. Of course he tells me I done wrong, and I know I did, but he don’t tell me as if I was the only one that ever done wrong, and as if he and everyone else was so much different, and as if he couldn’t see how I done it. He talks just as if my soul was worth as much as anybody’s and as if I’d have a better chance afterward than I ever had before. Anyhow he’s done me lots of good and I honestly believe he’s made me a better man, and if I only had a chance to do anything now I’d amount to something; but of course I can’t. But still, I wanted to tell you a few things that I couldn’t even tell him, for you know that, no matter how good he is, he somehow seems different from you; you know I kind of feel as if you was just like me. You’ll excuse me, I know, for saying this, bein’ as the time is so short.
“You remember about my boy. Now of course I always was a rough fellow and never did quite right ever before that, but still I guess you know I always loved that kid. Strange thing, he’ll be four years old tomorrow on the very day—well, poor little fellow, I hope he don’t know nothing about it. You remember the time that kid had the croup and how we thought he couldn’t get well, and you know I went down to the yard to tell you about it and how bad I felt. I almost wish now he’d died, but maybe that’s wicked and God will take care of the kid better’n he did of me. Well, I haven’t heard a word about that boy since I came to the jail, or since I left him at the house that night, except a little bit in court and what that good guard says. He kind of holds out that he’s in some kind of an orphan asylum where he’s gettin’ plenty to eat and where he’ll learn what’s right and wrong, and be a good man, and that’s all right, but I’d like to know where the kid is. He says if I thought so much of him I ought to have showed it before, and I s’pose I ought; but I did think lots of him; just as much as them rich folks think of their boys. I want him to be taken care of and to be educated and grow up to be a good man, and maybe it’s a good deal better if he never knows anything about his father, but somehow I can’t help wantin’ him to know who I was and don’t want him to think of me just like the newspapers and everybody else does. I wouldn’t want him to grow up like that guard, even if he is real good. And you see there wa’n’t any one but you that I could send for and tell them just how it all happened. No one yet has ever known how it was, and everybody says I was to blame and that I’m a demon and a monster, and I thought maybe if I explained the whole thing to you, just as it was, you could see that I wa’n’t so much to blame; anyhow that there was some excuse for what I done, and then some time when the boy’s growed up he’d know that I wa’n’t so bad as everyone says I was.
“Of course I know you can’t, for I know you’re poor like me, but so many times when I thought about the boy I thought that maybe you and your mother might raise him just the way I would have done; and then your mother was always so good to all of us. I remember how she used to raise the little geese down along the canal if anything happened to the old goose; don’t you remember about that? My, but them was fine times, wa’n’t they? Of course if you could do it I don’t know but the alderman would help you; anyhow he’d get free books and clothes off’n the county when he went to school. How are politics up in the ward? Is he goin’ to run again? I never hear anything only what I get out of the papers and they’re all against him, but I think he’ll show ‘em yet. Wish I was out so I could help. But I must go on with what I brought you to hear. I’m goin’ to tell you the whole story just exactly as it is, and you know that I wouldn’t tell you a lie tonight with what they are goin’ to do in the mornin’. I can’t make you understand unless I commence clear at the beginnin’, but I know you won’t mind, seein’ it’s my last time.”