You can't win

by Jack Black

I was in perfect physical condition; the regular sleep, regular work, and short ration of food had done that for me. I still had the money the lawyer at Victoria did not claim on me, the discharge money, and fare to the town I was sent from; in all enough to last me a month by careful management. My mind had been so unsettled during the last weeks of my time in prison that I hadn’t decided where to go or just what I would do. There was no hurry about anything; it was a fine day; I had my liberty. I bought some tobacco and papers at a near-by store and lay down on the warm ground in the green grass under the Indian summer sun to think it over, take stock, and look to the future.

This would be a good place for me to say that I would have quit stealing then if the terrible lashing hadn’t embittered me and sent me out looking for revenge, but that would not be the truth. I don’t know to this day whether the law contemplates flogging as punishment, as a deterrent measure, or partly both. As a punishment it’s a success; as a deterrent it’s a failure; if it’s half and half one offsets the other and there’s nothing gained. The truth is I wouldn’t have quit, no matter how I was treated. The flogging just hardened me more, that’s all. I found myself somewhat more determined, more confident, and with a feeling that I would play this game of violence to the finish. I had taken everything they had in the way of violence and could take it again. Instead of going away in fear, I found my fears removed. The whipping post is a strange place to gather fresh confidence and courage, yet that’s what it gave me, and in that dark cell I left behind many fears and misgivings.

I got up and went my way with the thought that I had got more out of that prison and its keepers than they got out of me. I think the same to-day of every prison I went into. There were times when I thought I got a bit more punishment than was coming to me, but I don’t regret a minute of it now. Each of us must be tempered in some fire. Nobody had more to do with choosing the fire that tempered me than myself, and instead of finding fault with the fire I give thanks that I had the metal to take the temper and hold it.

I have hopes that these lines will be read by many convicts and ex-convicts, and they are nothing if not critical readers. I am not trying to lay down any “rules and regulations” for their guidance on the outside, but I want to say this—any prisoner who comes out of prison saying to himself, “I can’t quit; it’s too late; I’m wrecked and ruined; every man’s hand’s against me; if I get a job some copper will snitch on me to my boss, or if that don’t happen the other ‘cons’ will blackmail me; there’s no use trying, I can’t quit”—any “ex-con” who says that is sentencing himself to a jolt that the most heartless and hard-boiled criminal-court judge couldn’t conceive of.

The other “con” who comes out time after time saying to himself cold-bloodedly and calculatingly, “I won’t quit,” might change his mind some time and say, “I will quit.” When he wills it, he does it, and no copper snitches him out of his job. If there is any such animal as the blackmailing “ex-con” he gives the “will” chap a wide berth.

I now went to Vancouver and took it easy for a week, resting up, reading papers, and trying to get my bearings. I saw nothing of Chew Chee, the China boy. He didn’t show up in the prison while I was there, and I have no doubt he quit stealing while he was all to the good and went on the square.

Falling in with an outfit of bums and beggars at Vancouver I heard glowing reports of the prosperous mining towns in the interior of British Columbia and decided to visit them. A week’s journey over the Canadian Pacific Railway and down the Columbia River found me in the Kootenai mining district. Everything I touched turned to money. The sudden change from no liberty at all in prison to all the liberty in the world almost wrecked me. I didn’t think of saving the money so dangerously earned, but squandered it drinking, gambling, and making many trips across the line into the states where there were more opportunities for spending and dissipating.

At last a very valuable parcel of stones found its way into my hands. It was suicide to try to dispose of them on the Canadian side, and I bought a ticket to Pocatello and Salt Chunk Mary. I had been away from there almost four years, and had no fear that the town whittler would remember me, even if he was still on the job, and besides I was hungry for a look at Mary and for a feed of her beans and salt pork.

Arriving at Pocatello I hastened to her place. There was no change in its appearance except that it looked more forlorn and weather-beaten by reason of its contrast with the new buildings that had sprung up around it. In answer to my confident knock on the door a very genteel and refined colored woman opened it and asked me to step in. She looked at me strangely when I asked for Mary. “Why, Miss Mary Howard went away more than three years ago. She sold me the place for almost nothing, settled her affairs, and disappeared. Nobody in Pocatello knows why she left or where she went.”

I inquired at the bank, but they knew no more about her than the colored lady. I asked no more questions, but got the first train out for Butte, Montana, where I disposed of my stones and made the bums’ hangouts determined to find out the whys and wherefores of Mary’s disappearance. I remembered the night she crushed the calaboose for me, and if trouble had come to her I wanted to shoulder my end of it.