“Take the kid upstairs: lock him up with George. I’ll find out about him.”
The women were gone, the drunks were out, and I was the only one detained. It looked all wrong to me. The sergeant took me down to the end of the hall and opened an iron door. It was as if he had opened the door to hell. My blood stopped circulating. We stepped inside and he locked the door behind us. Never since, except perhaps in the half dreams of opium, have I been so frozen with horror. We were standing on a balcony overlooking the half basement that served as the city prison. In front of us was a latticework iron door that opened on an iron stairway leading down into the cell house. The cells were built around the four sides of a cement-floored square, and opened into it. It was supper time and pandemonium was on.
The sergeant rapped on the iron door with his heavy keys, trying to attract the attention of some one below. Failing to make himself heard, he told me to stay there till he could get a “trusty” to take me upstairs. He went out the way we came in, and left me locked in between the two doors on the balcony. The cells below had all been thrown open and there were about fifty prisoners in the open space. They seemed to be about equally divided between negroes and whites, of all ages. The air choked me; it was putrid, heavy, and thick with the stench of foul food, foul clothes, foul bodies, and foul sewers. In the farthest corner of the square a gigantic black was standing guard over a huge smoking caldron.
He was shirtless and barefoot. A leather belt supported his overalls, his only clothing. Sweat glinted on his broad back and chest. He was armed with a long-handled ladle which he dished out the “stew” with, or beat back the stronger and more venturesome prisoners who crowded too closely around the caldron.
I saw no jailers or guards. There was no pretense at order. The younger and stronger men shoved and elbowed their way to the big stew pot, snarling and snapping at each other like a pack of starved dogs. Old men and young boys stood around waiting meekly for the strong to be fed first.
The big negro wielded his ladle, filling the tin pans nearest him. Bread was being served from a large box in another spot, but there appeared to be plenty of it and there was no scramble there. Several new-looking prisoners walked about, making no effort to get food. They were “fresh fish,” new arrivals, who had not yet acquired the “chuck horrors,” that awful animal craving for food that comes after missing half a dozen meals.
At last the weaker ones were served. The cursing, shouting, and fighting were stilled. The big negro wheeled his stew pot away and the empty bread box disappeared. Some of the prisoners went into their cells to eat; some sat down outside on the floor, while others ate standing. Some had spoons, others ate with their fingers, sopping at the bottom of the pan with a piece of bread.
The meal was quickly over. The tin pans, unwashed, were thrown into the cells. The young negroes began singing and buck dancing. White men who had been tearing at each other ten minutes before around the big pot were now laughing and talking in a friendly fashion, and everybody lit up a smoke. The air was so filled with tobacco smoke and steam from the stew that I could barely distinguish forms below.
It was growing dark and gas jets were lighted but gave no light. I heard a rattling of keys; somewhere some one shouted “Inside.” The shadowy forms shuffled into their cells, and there came the tremendous din of iron doors being slammed shut. The prison was locked up for the night.
I do not know how long I had been standing there. Not more than fifteen minutes, but it seemed a lifetime. A trusty prisoner appeared at my side.