Branded Part 3

Scars

I was twenty-five years old, almost to a day, when Judge Haskins p.r.o.nounced the words which were to make me for the next five years or less--the period to be determined upon my good behavior--an inmate of the State penitentiary. Lacking the needful good behavior, five long years would be taken out of the best part of life for me, and what was worse (I realized this even in the tumultuous storm of first-moment impressions and emotions), my entire point of view was certain to be hopelessly twisted and distorted for all the years that I might live beyond my release.

Surely little blame can attach to the confession that out of the tumult came a hot-hearted and vindictive determination to live for a single purpose; to work and strive and endure so that I might be the sooner free to square my account with Abel Geddis and Abner Withers. I need make no secret now of the depth of this hatred. At times, when the obsession was strongest upon me, the fear that one or both of them might die before my chance should come was almost maddening. They were both old men, and in the nature of things there was always a possibility that death might forestall me.

So it was this motive at first that made me jealous of my good-conduct marks; made me study the prison regulations and live up to them with a rigidity that knew no lapses. I am not defending the motive; I cheerfully admit that it was unworthy. None the less, I owe it something: it sustained me and kept me sane and cool-headed at a time when, without some such stimulus, I might have lost my reason.

Of the three succeeding years and what they brought or failed to bring the least said will be, perhaps, the soonest mended. I am glad to be able to write it down that my native State had, and still has, a fairly enlightened prison system; or at least it is less brutalizing than many others. During my period of incarceration the warden-in-office was an upright and impartial man, just to his charges and even kindly and fatherly when the circ.u.mstances would warrant. After my steady determination to earn an early release became apparent, I was made a "trusty," and for two of the three years I was the prison bookkeeper.

Study as I might, I could never determine how the prison life affected my a.s.sociates; but for me it held few real hardships beyond the confinement, the disgrace, and the fear that before I could outlive it I should become a criminal in fact. Fight the idea as we may, environment, a.s.sociation, and suggestion have a great deal to say to the human atom. I was treated as a criminal, was believed to be a criminal, and mingled daily with criminals. Put yourself in my place and try to imagine what it would make of you in three changes of the calendar.

During the three years I received but one letter from home, and wrote but one. Almost as soon as my sentence period began I had a heart-broken letter from my sister. She and my mother had returned from Canada, only to find me dead and buried to the world. I answered the letter, begging her not to write again, or to expect me to write. It seemed a refinement of humiliation to have the home letters come addressed to me in a prison; and besides, I was like the sick man who turns his face to the wall, wishing neither to see nor to hear until the paroxysm has pa.s.sed. I may say here that both of these good women respected my wishes and my foolish scruples. They wrote no more; and, what was still harder for my mother, I think, they made no journeys half across the State on the prison visiting days.

It will be seen that I have cut the time down from the five-year limit imposed by my sentence; and so it was cut down in reality. After I had been promoted to the work in the prison offices my life settled into a monotonous routine, with nothing eventful or disturbing to mark the pa.s.sing weeks and months; and by living strictly within the prison requirements, working faithfully, and never once earning even a reprimand from the kindly warden or his deputy, I was given the full benefit of my "good time," and at the end of the third year, with a prison-provided suit on my back and five dollars of the State's money in my pocket, I was paroled.

Though I have been its beneficiary and victim, and have been made to suffer cruelly under its restrictions, I make here no arraignment of the law which provides in some States--my own among the number--for the indeterminate prison sentence. The reform was doubtless conceived in mercy and a true spirit of sociological lenity toward the offender. But in practice it may be so surrounded with safeguards and limitations, so wrapped up in provisos and conditions, as to completely defeat its own end and reverse its intent.

Under the law as it stood--and still stands, I believe--in my own commonwealth, I was required to remain in the State; to report, at least once a month, by letter to the prison authorities, and in person to the chief of police in any city in which I might be living; to retain my own name; and to bind myself to tell a straightforward story of my conviction and imprisonment at any time and to any one who should require it. The omission to comply with any of these restrictions and requirements would automatically cancel my parole and subject me to arrest and re-imprisonment for the unexpired period of the original sentence.

Again I ask you to put yourself in the place of a man paroled under such conditions. With such handicaps, what possible chance can a released man have to secure honest employment? Fortunately for me, I was still only twenty-eight--young and hopeful; and I started out to do my best, saying only that nothing should tempt me to go back to Glendale where, I was told, my mother and sister were still living in retirement and under the shadow of the family disgrace.

Knowing that the released convict usually heads for the largest city he can reach, thus obeying the common-sense instinct which prompts him to lose himself quickly in a crowd, I planned to do the opposite thing. I told myself that I was not a criminal, and therefore would not follow the criminal's example. I would board an interurban trolley and expend a portion of my five dollars in reaching some obscure town in a distant part of the State, where I would begin the new life honestly and openly in any employment that might offer.

There was n.o.body to meet me as I forthfared from the prison gates, but I was not expecting any one and so was not disappointed. None the less, on my way to the central trolley station I had a half-confirmed conviction that I was followed; that the follower had been behind me all the way from the prison street.

After making several fruitless attempts I finally succeeded in fixing upon the particular person in the scattering sidewalk procession who made all the turns that I made, keeping always a few paces in the rear. He was a man of about my own age, round-faced and rather fleshy. In my Glendale days I should have set him down at once as a traveling salesman.

He looked the part and dressed it.

Farther along, upon reaching the interurban station, I was able to breathe freer and to smile at the qualms of my new-liberty nervousness.

Just as I was parting with two of my five dollars for a ticket to the chosen destination my man came up to the ticket window, followed by a hotel porter carrying a grip and a sample case. I saw then how facilely easy it was going to be to take fright at shadows. Evidently the young man was a salesman, and his apparent pursuit of me had been merely a coincidence in corner turnings. And in the recoil from the apprehensive extreme I refused to attach any significance to the fact that he was purchasing a ticket to the same distant town to which I had but now paid my own pa.s.sage.

During the leisurely five-hour run across the State the object of my suspicions--my foolish suspicions, I was now calling them--paid no attention to me, so far as I could determine. Save for the few minutes at noon when the interurban car stopped to permit its pa.s.sengers to s.n.a.t.c.h a hasty luncheon at a farm-town restaurant, he did not once leave his place, which was two seats behind mine and on the opposite side of the car. On the contrary, like a seasoned traveler, he made himself comfortable behind the barricade of hand-baggage and wore out the entire time with sundry newspapers and magazines. Moreover, at our common destination he did not follow me to the one old-fashioned hotel; instead, he led the way to it, and was buying a cigar at the little counter show-case when I came up to bargain, with another of my precious dollars, for the supper, lodging and breakfast which were to launch me upon the new career.

After this, I saw the fat-faced traveling man but twice, and both times casually. At supper he had a small table to himself in one corner of the room; and the following morning, when I went out to lay siege to my new world, he was smoking in the hotel office and again buried in a newspaper. Two hours later I had found employment driving a grocer's delivery wagon, and in the triumph of having so soon found even this humblest of footholds in a workaday world, I had completely forgotten him.

Having thus made my cast for fortune and secured the foothold, it took me less than a week to learn that I had made a capital mistake in choosing a small town. Under that condition of my parole which required me to report in my true character to the town marshal I a.s.sured myself that I might as well have published my story in the county newspaper. Before the end of the week half of my customers on the delivery route were beginning to look askance at me, and when the Sat.u.r.day night came I was discharged. I knew perfectly well what was coming when the boss, a big-bodied, good-natured man who had made his money as a farmer and was now losing it as the town grocer, called me into his little box of an office at the back of the shop.

"Say, Weyburn; when I asked you where you had been working before you came here, you didn't tell me the truth," was the way he began on me.

"I told you I had worked in a bank in Glendale," I protested; "which was and is the truth."

"I know; but you didn't tell me that you'd put in the last three years in the pen, and were out on parole."

"No, I didn't tell you that. But I would have told you if you had asked me."

"I can't stand for it," he grumbled, chewing at the unlighted cigar which was his Sat.u.r.day night indulgence. "And if I could, the customers wouldn't. I suppose as many as a dozen women have been to me in the last few days. They say they can't afford to be watchin' the back door every time you come 'round with the groceries. You see how it is."

I saw; but I was still foolish enough to try to stem the pitiless tide.

"Would it make any difference if I were to say that I was as innocent of the crime for which I was convicted as any of these frightened women?" I suggested.

"They all say that," was the colorless retort. "The point is, Weyburn, that you was convicted. There ain't no gettin' 'round that. You've worn the stripes, and you'll just have to make up your mind to live it down before you can expect people to forget it."

If I hadn't been the wretched victim of this paradox it might have provoked a smile.

"How am I ever going to live it down, Mr. Bucks, if n.o.body will give me a chance?" I asked.

"I know," he agreed readily enough. "But I'm losin' money here, every day, as it is, and I can't afford to make experiments. I'm sorry for you, honestly, Weyburn; but you see how it is."

"Yes, I see," I returned. "You think I ought to be given a chance, but you prefer to have somebody else give it to me. I don't blame you.

Perhaps under similar conditions I'd do the same thing myself. Pay me and I'll disappear."

He did pay me, and tried to give me two dollars more than the agreed weekly wage, generously putting it upon the ground of the lack of notice.

I shall always be glad that I still had pride enough left to refuse the charity. Even at this early twisting of the thumb-screws I was beginning to realize that self-respect would be the first thing to go by the board, and the fight to save it was almost instinctive.

Before leaving Bucks I tried to find out how he had learned my story; this though I was definitely charging the exposure to the town marshal as being the only person who could have spread it abroad. To my surprise, the grocer defended the marshal promptly and warmly.

"That shows how little you know Cal Giddings," he retorted. "He's the last man on top of earth to go 'round givin' you a black eye of that sort."

"May I ask what reason you have for thinking so?" I inquired.

"Sure you may. I've known Cal ever since we was little kids together.

I've seen him every day this week, and he knew you was workin' for me.

If he'd 'a' told anybody, it would 'a' been me; you can bet your hat on that."

"Then where did you hear the story?" I persisted.

"Why, I dunno just where I did hear it first. Everybody in town seems to know it," he a.s.serted; and with this unsatisfying answer I was obliged to be contented.

The next attempt was made in a small industrial city on the opposite side of the State. This time I went to the chief of police as soon as I arrived, and after making the required report, I had it out with him in plain speech.

"I am going to try to get work here in your city," I said, "and I'd like to know beforehand how much leeway you are going to give me."

The portly thief-taker leaned back in his chair and regarded me with a coldly appraisive eye. He was a coa.r.s.e-featured man with a face that would have fitted admirably in any rogues' gallery in the land.

"You're in bad, young fellow," he growled. "We've got plenty and more than enough of your kind in this town, without takin' on any more."

"But I am keeping my parole," I pleaded. "I have come to you like a man the first thing, and have made my report according to the conditions.

Somebody has got to give me a chance."

"You'll earn it, d.a.m.n' good and plenty, if you stay here to get it," was the gruff response. "What kind of a job are you lookin' for?"

It was hard to confide in such a man, even casually, but I had no choice.

"I am willing to take anything I can get, but my experience has been mostly in office work," I told him; adding: "I suppose I might call myself a fairly expert bookkeeper."

"Umph!" he grunted, shifting his cigar from one corner of the hard-bitted mouth to the other. "That means that you want to try for a job where you can work the till-tapping game again."

Not having as yet learned my lesson line by line, I was incautious enough to say: "I have yet to work it the first time."