“What in hell is yer going to do with it?” asked Benjamin.
“No-a hell,” replied Shorty. “Heaven! Go wash your face.”
Larry’s time drew near. Shorty’s chum and teacher was to go out through the “little door” and be killed. How Shorty prayed for him! But prayers are not always answered in the Death-Chamber. Larry said good-by to us and departed; seven others have bidden me good-by. And now there was no one for Shorty to talk to in his mother tongue.
Shorty’s time drew near, the day was fixed. Loving brother wrote to him, there was much news in the letter. The girl over in Jersey, whom Shorty always spoke of as “my wife,” had married another. The couple, her father, and the mutual friends who had brought Shorty to call so long ago and Shorty’s brother were going to buy a keg and have a picnic on a certain day, the same day that Shorty looked ahead to on his calendar, and— The picnic was to be in honor of that event.
It was just after this letter that Shorty’s eyes went way back into his head. Shorty ate little or nothing. Those terrible prison lines began to cut into Shorty’s face. Every day they grew deeper, starting at the eyes, carving furrows to each end of the mouth, and extending to the chin. They divided Shorty’s face into three ghastly panels. Shorty’s skin was turning clay color—and why not? Shorty will soon be—dust. He got thin; you could almost see through Shorty’s hands.
Shorty prayed night and day, crawling up and down his cell on his hands and knees, kissing the floor, licking the feet of the crucifix they had given him. All night long, all night long he did this. We who lay awake and tried to read heard him mumbling as the beads dropped through his fingers; heard the tap, tap, tap of his forehead on the floor, repeated hundreds of times before each of the many pictures of the saints which were stuck up on the walls. In front of each of these pictures were little fly-covered heaps of decaying food—Shorty’s votive offering to the good saints. The saints never accepted the offerings, but the flies and roaches did. They came by millions, flying and crawling to devour it; they covered the walls of Shorty’s cell; they covered Shorty. The saints, in gorgeous crimson and blue robes, with their mitres, crooks, and uplifted fingers regarded Shorty. Their eyes followed him about wherever he knelt. Perhaps they will save Shorty’s soul, but they do not drive away the flies.
Shorty’s brown knees came through his trousers, the toes of Shorty’s slippers turned up like cotton hooks from kneeling, kneeling, all day long, all night long.
The priest noticed these things, heard the account of Shorty’s nocturnal devotions, and told him to stop them, for he realized then—what we had known long before—that the strain had been too much for Shorty’s intellect—that Shorty was insane. But Shorty prayed on, harder than ever. The good Sisters and the priest did all they could to moderate his devotions. During those final weeks we noticed that they besought him to do something; what, it was a mystery to us. Finally the morning came—the last morning.
The priest blessed him, and as they opened the cell-door in the early morning for the last time, asked him, “Do you forgive your enemies?” then pleaded “you must do it. Say ‘yes,’ for God’s sake say yes. You must, or God will not—” The priest was weeping now.
“No! no—no!” screamed Shorty, as they marched him away.