CHAPTER XI
FRIDAY
In my cell, Friday evening, October 3.
This morning breaks gray and cloudy again. I wake early and hear the night officer, some time before six o’clock, come and wake my neighbor in the next cell. He and I tap each other “Good night” regularly now; and this morning I send through the stone wall a greeting for the day. He returns my message; and when the keeper comes again at six o’clock, this time to open his cell, he waits, apparently, until that officer’s back is turned and then, putting his head only just so far past the opening of my cell that his voice can reach me, utters a hoarse and hasty “Good morning” and vanishes. This puts me in thorough good humor, and as I hear the factory bells and whistles greet the new morn I turn over to take just one final nap before beginning my own preparations for the day’s work, wondering what new turn my adventure will take before night again falls.
Is it imagination, or is there more friendliness than usual in the nods and smiles which greet me from the faces upturned in the corridor below, as I traverse the gallery with my heavy bucket? It was extensively questioned among the convicts, in advance of my coming, whether I would do this particular part of the prison duty. As one of them told me, it was thought I would find some way to escape it; and the fact that I did not try to escape it, but assumed it cheerfully and as a matter of course, has much impressed them. As Joe put it to me three days ago, it was proof that I “meant business,” and took the thing seriously, meaning to do exactly what I said—live the actual life of a convict up to the possible limit.
Bucket duty performed and while I wait in my cell for the breakfast hour, Dickinson comes running to my door. The good fellow has heard from the Chaplain that his job is ready for him and he can go out to-morrow. “And I can never be grateful enough to you, sir,” he says with much feeling. “I shall never forget what you and the Chaplain have done for me; and I assure you you will never regret it, for I intend to go straight and show you that I mean every word I say.”
“I’m sure you do; and I’m sure you will go straight,” is my comment. “But how about your clothes? Have you anything but the prison suit you get on your discharge?”
“No, nothing.”
“Well, but you can’t go to work outside in those. People will spot you as an ex-con at once. Don’t you want me to fix it so that you can get a decent suit?”
“Oh, if you only would!” is his heartfelt exclamation. “And, say, Mr. Osborne—pardon me—I mean Mr. Brown, if you’ll please consider them not as a gift, if you’ll let me have the money as a loan, I shall be greatly obliged. And I’ll pay it back just as soon as I possibly can.”