Cast the First Stone Read Online Free PDF Page A

had assigned me to a porter’s job he didn’t speak to me for an hour. I reported to him and he walked away. I wandered about the dormitory trying to find something to do. Captain Warren came in and asked me why I wasn’t working. I told him B&O hadn’t given me anything to do.
    “You know what to do, you know what to do,” Captain Warren said. “Didn’t nobody tell you to rob those folks but you did that. You’ll do this, too.”
    I went to look for a mop. Finally I found one in a pail of water. Another porter came up and said that was his. Then B&O hollered at me from across the dormitory.
    “Get that barrel over there and go get some shavings,” he ordered.
    I found the barrel in a corner. I rolled it out on the floor. “Where do I get the shavings?” I asked.
    “At the planing mill. Where the hell you think?”
    I didn’t know where the planing mill was. But I didn’t ask. I picked up the barrel and started outside. Captain Warren saw me when I came around by the coal pile. “Get a wheelbarrow, get a wheelbarrow,” he said. I looked around for a wheelbarrow.
    “They’re down in the shed,” a convict volunteered. I went down to the coal shed and got a wheelbarrow and put the barrel in it and started off. I didn’t know where I was going. I went around the powerhouse and came out into an expanse of open yard that looked like a ball diamond. I kept on going.
    Down at the end of the wooden laundry building a guard stopped me. “Where you going, boy?”
    “To the planing mill to get some shavings.”
    “You’re new, aren’t you?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    He showed me how to get to the planing mill. I went down some slush-covered alleys between brick buildings. I could hear the steady looms of the woolen mill, and a hundred other sounds of activity I couldn’t identify. Finally, after what seemed like a long distance, I came to a tin shed where convicts were cutting and planing lumber.
    I went up to the guard and told him I’d come to get some shavings. He pointed to a pile. After filling the barrel I came back the other way, down to the crossroad and over by the sunken gardens next to the dining room, and back of the dining room by the long glass-enclosed greenhouse, back to the dormitory.
    It was some prison. There were convicts just walking about everywhere you could see and the waiters hung out the dining-room doors and stared when I passed. They looked me over and asked if I wasn’t a new man and if I didn’t want them to get me a better job so I could move into their company. I didn’t answer any of them. I was fed up with it because I knew what it was all about.
    When I got back with the shavings I put them in the corner and sat out at the table and played gin rummy with another porter until the company came in, about eleven o’clock, to wash up for dinner. After dinner they had an hour to smoke and rest and then went back to the coal pile until four-thirty. Then they came in and washed up again and went to supper. We had soupy beans, tea and bread for supper. By that time it was dark outside. When we returned to the dormitory we were through for the day. Until nine o’clock we could do whatever we pleased, as long as it wasn’t against the rules or the guard didn’t catch us. We could gamble, read, wrestle, dance, sing, write, study, talk, walk, cry or shout. We could yell as loud as we pleased. Couldn’t anybody hear us, anyway, and if anybody did there wasn’t anybody to give a damn. The only thing we weren’t allowed to do was whistle. I never knew why we weren’t allowed to whistle. But if we were caught just whistling softly we’d be sent to the hole.
    Right after supper they called out mail. I got a letter from my mother and a note from my father with a hundred-dollar money order inside. The colored runner, Deacon Smith, brought the money order for me to sign. Later I learned that Deacon was the secretary of the Sunday School and assistant to the Protestant chaplain. When the