"You're right. Prisons are a joke, but the grim laugh is on the fellow who gets caught." Bill Porter had pushed the door of the post-office open. No greeting; no amiable raillery; no droll quips. Abruptness was a new mood even with this whimsical chameleon.
"I'm on the edge of the abyss. I'm going to jump over."
I looked at him, amazed at the astounding confession. Something unusually shocking and sinister must have happened to throw Bill Porter's reticent, proud self-possession into open despondency. His face was drawn and worried, the usually quiet, appraising gray eyes were shot through with nervous anger and for once the silky yellow hair was frayed down over his forehead.
"Caged beasts are free compared to us. They aren't satisfied to stunt our bodies—they damn our souls. I'm going to get out."
Porter let himself slump down on the straightback chair and sat regarding me in silence.
"Al, I ran into a mess today so foul a leper would fight shy of it. And they want me to stick my hands into it! You were right. The crimes that men are paying for behind these walls are mere foibles compared to the monstrous corruption of the free men on the outside.
"Why, they walk into the State treasury and fill their pockets with the people's gold and walk out again and no one even mentions a word of the theft. And I'm supposed to put my signature to the infamous steal! Colonel, they'd make you look like a pickpocket—the colossal thievery they're going to put over!"
"Whose dopin' out the medicine, Bill? When do they tackle the job? I might hold the horses, you know, and collect my divvy." Porter tossed his head in irritable impatience. "This is tragic. Don't be the jester at a funeral. You know that requisition for meat and beans you sent over? Do you know what happened and what is about to happen?"
I had a pretty good idea. I had been "wised up" to the practice. As secretary to the warden I gave the order for all purchases required in the penitentiary. If the State shop wanted wool, or the bolt contract needed steel or the butcher shop meat, the lists were sent into the warden's office. I sent the requisitions to the steward and Bill Porter, as his secretary, was supposed to let out the bids. The merchant on the outside would then contract to keep us supplied for a specified length of time.
There were certain big business men who solicited the prison trade. When the bids were called for, these men would send in prices far in excess of the market values. The bids were, of course, supposed to be secret and the lowest man was presumably given the deal. In practice, however, the letting of the bids was an empty formality.
The state and prison officials had friends. The bids would be opened and if the friend had not guessed right, he would be tipped off and allowed to submit another bid just a fraction less than the lowest. He would then send to the pen the most inferior products, charging an incredibly exorbitant price.
The State paid enough to run the prison as a first-class hotel. The food it received was so wretched it broke down the health and ruined the digestion of the most robust. It was the same with every other commodity purchased for prison use.
"Do you know what happened?" Porter repeated. There was a grating harshness in the low voice. "The bids came in today. The prices were outrageous. I had made a study of the market values. I wished to refer the bids back to the contractors and demand a fair rate. The suggestion was ignored.
"That was not the worst of it. The contract was not given to the lowest bidder, but to another. He was informed of his competitor's figure and allowed to underbid it by one cent. It means that the tax-payers of this community are deliberately robbed of thousands and thousands of dollars on this one contract alone. And a convict who is here on a charge of taking a paltry $5,000, not one cent of which he ever got, must be a party to the scandal."
"You know of these things, Al?" It seemed to prick Porter that I was not greatly impressed.
"Sure, Bill. Here, take a gulp for your misery." I poured him a glass of fine old burgundy. "Pretty good, isn't it? It came from the fellow who got the last bean contract. My predecessor left it here for me. Like as not we'll be in line now for all manner of presents from the thieves whose purses we help to line."
Porter pushed the wine from him. "Do you mean to say, Al, that you will wink at such outrageous crime? Why, the convicts doing life here are stainless compared to these highwaymen."
"Bill, you're up against it. You might as well be graceful about it. It would be easier for you to tear down these stone walls with your naked hand than to overthrow the iron masonry of political corruption. What can your protest accomplish? The system of legitimate stealing from the government was here long before we arrived. It will survive our puny opposition.
"I should prefer then to leave the steward's office. I shall hand in my resignation tomorrow." Porter got up to leave. He was just rash and impulsive enough to do the mad thing. I knew where he would end if he did. I didn't like the vision of the well-groomed and immaculate Bill heaped into a loathsome cell in solitary. Still less did I like the thought of him strapped over the trough and beaten to insensibility.
"Sit down, Bill, you damn' fool, and listen to reason." I caught his arm and pulled him back. "The government knows these criminals are at large. It likes them. It gives them wealth and homage. They're the big fellows of the State. They speak at all public meetings. They're the pillars of society."
Porter looked at me with an expression of repulsion.
"What do you propose to do about it?" I asked.
"I shall go to the officials of this institution. I will tell them I am not a thief, though I am a convict. I will defy them to sign up these infamous contracts. I will tell them to get another secretary."
"And the next day you will find yourself back in a mean little cell and in a week or so you'll be in solitary on a trumped up charge. And then you'll be torn up like Ira Maralatt. That's just about what your foolhardy honor will bring you."
A shadow went like a dark red scale over Bill's handsome face. He drew in his lips in disgust.
"By God, that would finish me."
He stood up, the panther in him ready to spring, just as it had leaped once before at the throat of the Spanish don. He flung out his hands as though he had suddenly found himself covered with odious welts from a guard's blows. "I'd wring their damn necks dry. Let anyone use me so!"
"You're nobody in particular except to yourself. You might as well look out for that self. Your whole future is absolutely ruined if you protest. The men you would balk are the biggest bugs in the country. They'd grind you right down to the dirt."
Porter sat there as though a sudden chill silence had frozen speech in him forever. The nine o'clock gong sounded. It was the signal for lights out. He started nervously toward the door and then came back, laughing bitterly.
"I thought I would get locked out. But I have a midnight key to the steward's office."
"Locked out? No such luck, Bill, we're just locked in."
He nodded. "Body and soul." He took up the glass of the grafter's wine, held it a moment to the light and with one gulp tossed it off.
It was the end of the struggle. The pulsing, clamorous silence that holds the tongue while thoughts shout from mind to mind was between us. Porter seemed exhausted by the defeat. The joy in his promotion was dissipated. He became more aloof than ever.
"What a terrible isolation there is in the prison life," he said after a pause that weighed like a stone upon us. "We are forgotten by the friends we left in the world and we are used by the friends we claim here."
I knew that Porter had a wife and child. I did not know then that he had reached his home after our separation in Texas to find his wife dying. Nor did I know that the $3,000 had given him a measure of independence in those last sad months before his trial and conviction.
In all our intimacy at prison, Porter never once alluded to his family affairs. Not once did he speak of the child who was ever in his thoughts. Billy and I sent out innumerable letters to little Margaret. Only once did Porter slip a word. It was that time when a story had been refused. He was disappointed, he said, for he had wanted to send a present to a little friend.
"We may not be forgotten by the folks on the outside," I offered.
"Forgotten or despised, what difference does it make? I left many there. They were powerful. They could have won a pardon for me." He looked at me with troubled suspense. "Al, do you think I am guilty?"
"No. Bill, I'd bank on you any day."
"Thanks. I've got one friend anyway. I'm glad they let me alone. I do not wish to be indebted to anyone. I am the master of my own fate. If I bungled my course and got myself here, then all right. When I get out I will be under an obligation to none."
Many of those friends would today hold it their highest honor to have aided O. Henry when he was just Bill Porter the convict. If anyone ever interested himself in Bill, he did not seem to know anything of it.
"I haven't much longer to stay here, colonel—how many contracts do you suppose there'll be to give out?"
"Oh, quite a few. Why?"
"There might be some way of escape for us."
"Yes, your way out is to feather your own nest and keep your trap shut. Take another swig."
After that there were many glasses of wine—many fingers of whiskey—many long conversations after the nine o'clock lights were out. Porter gave in, vanquished, but the surrender nagged at him like an ugly worm biting incessantly at his heart. He tried to keep the bids secret ; he fought to give the contract to the lowest man. He would be asked to show the bids. He was a mere piece of furniture in the office. He had to do as he was told and without question.
"The dirty scoundrels," he would say to me.
"Pay no attention to it," I would advise. "Honesty is not the best policy in prison. Don't let it worry you."
"Of course I will not worry over it. We are nothing but slaves to their roguery."
Even so, Porter and I had tremendous power in letting out the contracts. The wealthy thieves, who profited at the expense of the State and two helpless convicts, sent us cases of the choicest wines. They sent us cigars and canned delicacies, as tokens of their esteem. We kept the contraband in the post- office and many a stolen feast, Billy and Porter and I enjoyed.