Cast the First Stone by Chester Himes Read Free Book Online Page A

commissary price. But I thought I’d better not, since Mal had warned me against it.
    Mal got a checkerboard and we played pool checkers until bedtime. I won fifty-two out of eighty-one games, but I think he was just letting me win. He made some good moves there, once or twice, to lose fifty-two games to me.
    The next day was Sunday. We dressed up in our blue denim shirts and our white string ties. My shirt was so large the collar sagged down to my chest. After a breakfast of coffee cake, peanut butter and coffee we lined up for church.
    The Catholics and Christian Scientists went first. There were about twenty Catholics and two Christian Scientists in our company. We didn’t have any Jews. After they’d gone the Protestants lined up and marched to the Protestant chapel. Everybody who didn’t have one of the three other faiths was a Protestant. Church was compulsory.
    I didn’t have to go. The porters were exempted. But I went to get out of sweeping. In the regular line Mal marched several men ahead of me. But Sunday he fell back in line and marched just ahead, so we could sit together in the chapel.
    The yard was filled with long gray lines of convicts. Every walk was filled. All the men were out. It didn’t seem possible that the prison could house all those men. Even the honor men came in from the honor dormitory, in their neat blue suits and white shirts, looking like civilians, and filled up the front seats reserved for them. The honor men were big shots. It was something to be an honor man and wear a blue serge suit and a white shirt and look important.
    We entered the chapel from the back. It was made like a theater, with the seats graduating up to the roof at the rear. There was a large stage with wings and curtains, as in the legitimate theater. The deputy warden sat in a chair at the extreme left of the stage. His head was bald as an egg, with big dark freckles and he had a flat-nosed pug’s face. He was a big man. His body shook from some sort of nervous disorder. They called him Jumpy Stone because on his bad days he was a sight to see. His blue eyes, shaded by tufted brows and enlarged by polished spectacles, looked bright and sharp. He sat there watching us as we entered, with a sardonic expression.
    The pulpit was in the center of the stage. Behind it were three heavy oak chairs with black leather upholstering. The chaplain sat on the left. He wore a tailored black suit and his shoes were polished to a brilliant luster. His face was slightly narrow, but well filled-out, and his head was well-shaped. He wore his hair parted on one side. He looked smooth and slick. His name was Preston Douglas Perry.
    The guest minister sat in the center. His name was Glisser. There was an anemic, fanatical air about him. Deacon Smith, the colored convict who had delivered my money order, sat at the right.
    Behind them, to one side, sat the convict orchestra. They were dressed in their grays but wore white shirts and black bow ties. They looked self-conscious and recently bathed and shaved. To the other side of the stage were two rows of chairs. These were occupied by men and women visiting from Reverend Glisser’s church in the city.
    Except for the convicts and the chaplain and the deputy, everyone looked very religious. Deacon Smith looked sanctimonious.
    Deacon Smith opened the services with a prayer. He had a fine oratorical voice and his enunciation was scholarly. Congregational singing followed. But few of the convicts joined in. Chaplain Perry rose and introduced Reverend Glisser. The convicts knew Reverend Glisser from previous visits. He was greeted by a few scattered boos.
    Reverend Glisser had a very bad pulpit manner. He seemed vindictive and slightly hysterical. It seemed as if he hated the convicts. In the course of his sermon he said it was good we were there. I think he meant it was good we were in church, not in prison. But most of the convicts accepted the latter meaning. They began booing so loudly that