Yea, dear brother of the outside world, while the whitewash was running off the press, while the august senators were wining and dining, we three of the living dead, buried alive in solidarity, were sweating our pain in the canvas torture.
And after the dinner, warm with wine, Warden Atherton himself came to see how fared it with us. Me, as usual, they found in coma. Doctor Jackson for the first time must have been alarmed. I was brought back across the dark to consciousness with the bite of ammonia in my nostrils. I smiled into the faces bent over me.
“Shamming,” snorted the Warden, and I knew by the flush on his face and the thickness in his tongue that he had been drinking.
I licked my lips as a sign for water, for I desired to speak.
“You are an ass,” I at last managed to say with cold distinctness. “You are an ass, a coward, a cur, a pitiful thing so low that spittle would be wasted on your face. In such matter Jake Oppenheimer is over-generous with you. As for me, without shame I tell you the only reason I do not spit upon you is that I cannot demean myself nor so degrade my spittle.”
“I’ve reached the limit of my patience!” he bellowed. “I will kill you, Standing!”
“You’ve been drinking,” I retorted. “And I would advise you, if you must say such things, not to take so many of your prison curs into your confidence. They will snitch on you some day, and you will lose your job.”
But the wine was up and master of him.
“Put another jacket on him,” he commanded. “You are a dead man, Standing. But you’ll not die in the jacket. We’ll bury you from the hospital.”
This time, over the previous jacket, the second jacket was put on from behind and laced up in front.