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

the deputy finally had to stand up and wave his hands for silence. They respected the deputy and quieted down. The Reverend Glisser went on denouncing sin. To relieve the tension he began telling a joke about “an old darky eating porridge with his fingers.” The colored convicts started booing then, and the deputy and nobody else could stop them. They kept booing until Reverend Glisser had to sit down. His face was fiery red. His breath came in gasps and he looked diabolically mean and malevolent.
    The chaplain rose and in his confidential voice, looking like a solid con man, prayed for the convicts’ souls. He sounded for all the world like a ward heeler at a political meeting. After concluding his prayer he went into the wings and changed into a rubber suit, and came out to baptize some sixteen convicts who had been converted the Sunday before.
    The pool was beneath the floor in the center aisle at the front of the stage. When the sections of flooring had been removed the converted convicts lined up and went forward, one by one, and were dipped into the water by the chaplain and an assistant. The chaplain recited in a parrot-like voice, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”
    Mal said one of the converts had been brought over from the hole where he was serving out a rap for sex perversion. The deputy seemed amused by the proceedings. Once or twice he laughed out loud. All of us enjoyed it very much. The convicts came out of the water, cold and shivering, their wet overalls clinging to their thin bodies. I wondered how many of them would be in the sick bay the next day.
    After it was all over the orchestra began playing jazz. The deputy arose and waved us out. We left laughing and talking. It smelled better outside and I got some of the odor of those smelly convicts out of my nostrils.
    For Sunday’s dinner we had roast pork, potatoes, gray cooked dried peas, and applesauce. There was a piece of soggy gingerbread at our plates which we could eat there or carry back to the cells for supper. We didn’t return to the dining room any more on Sunday. As we marched out we were given two slices of bread and a slab of cheese, from tubs sitting at each side of the doorway. A convict waiter worked at each tub, and the guards stood by and watched to see that no one got more than his share. The cheese sandwich and the gingerbread was our supper.
    I sat around and talked to Mal and read the Sunday paper. We played some checkers but he won easily. Then I watched the poker game until I was tired of swallowing bets. I went over to my bunk and took a nap.
    When the coffee came Mal woke me. I got my coffee bucket and fell into the line that had formed. Two dining-room waiters had brought over a couple of five-gallon coffee cans of light-colored coffee. As we passed in line they poured our coffee buckets half full. I had forgotten to rinse out my bucket and the coffee tasted like soap. Mal gave me some of his but it didn’t taste much better. He said he had put some sugar in it but I couldn’t taste it. As a rule he sweetened it with saccharin tablets he bought from the hospital but he had run out, he said. I said that was all right. I didn’t like coffee anyway.
    “That’s right, you’re still drinking milk,” he said.
    I told him about the time I took a quart of milk to a night club. He told me about his wife and showed me her picture. She was a pretty woman. I started telling him about my great affairs. Most of it I made up but some of it was true. But I didn’t tell him about Margy or Joan. Those two did not stand telling about.
    “You were a hell of a guy, Jimmy,” he said, flatteringly.
    I liked it. We were down on his bunk eating a couple of roast-pork sandwiches he had gotten from somewhere. He asked me if I’d had any dreams since I’d been in and I said, sure, every night.
    He laughed. “ Every night?”
    “Well, maybe I missed a night or two.”
    “Do you carry on?”
    “Carry