The Ultimate Egoist Read Online Free PDF Page A

there’s not much to do. You make your bunk. If you have a break, you can usually drag up something interesting to talk about with your cellmate. As long as your cell is halfway clean looking, it’s okay, but they’re all scrubbed bone-white and chrome-shiny because that’s all there is to do. After I’d sat for an hour and a half smoking more than I could afford and trying to find something new to think about, I grabbed the bucket and brush and began to polish the floor. I made up my mind to do just half of it. That was a bright idea. When the guards came around inspecting for dirty cells at ten-thirty, one-half of this one would look crummy because the other half would be really scrubbed. That and Crawley’s dirty messkit would get him into a nice jam. The guards knew by this time how I kept my cell.
    Feeling almost happy at the idea, I turned to and began wearing out my knees and knuckles. I really bore down. When I came to the middle of the cell I went back and started over. I worked right up to Crawley’s messkit. I stopped there. I picked it up and washed it and put it away. Crawley moved over to the clean half. I finished washing the floor. It certainly looked well-scrubbed. All over. Ah, don’t ask me why.
    I put the gear away and sat down for a while. I tried to kid myself that I felt good because I’d shown that lazy monstrosity up. Then I realized I didn’t feel good at all. What was he doing; pushing me around? I looked up and glared at him. He didn’t say anything. I went on sitting. Hell with him. This was the pay-off. Why, I wouldn’t even talk to him. Let him sit there and rot, the worthless accident.
    After a while I said, “What’s the rap?”
    He looked up at me inquiringly. “What are you in for?” I asked again.
    “Vag.”
    “No visible means of support, or no address?”
    “Visible.”
    “What’d the man in black soak you?”
    “I ain’t seen him. I don’t know how much it’s good for.”
    “Oh; waiting trial, huh?”
    “Yeah. Friday noon. I got to get out of here before that.”
    I laughed. “Got a lawyer?”
    He shook his head.
    “Listen,” I told him, “you’re not in here on somebody’s complaint, you know. The county put you here and the county’ll prosecute. They won’t retract the charge to spring you. What’s your bail?”
    “Three hundred.”
    “Have you got it?” I asked. He shook his head.
    “Can you get it?”
    “Not a chance.”
    “An’ you ‘got to get out of here’.”
    “I will.”
    “Not before Friday.”
    “Uh-huh. Before Friday. Tomorrow. Stick around; you’ll see.”
    I looked at him, his toothpick arms and legs. “Nobody ever broke this jail and it’s forty-two years old. I’m six foot three an’ two-twenty soaking wet, an’ I wouldn’t try it. What chance you got?”
    He said again, “Stick around.”
    I sat and thought about that for a while. I could hardly believe it. The man couldn’t lift his own weight off the floor. He had no more punch than a bedbug, and a lot less courage. And he was going to break this jail, with its twelve-foot walls and its case-hardened steel bars! Sure, I’d stick around.
    “You’re as dumb as you look,” I said. “In the first place, it’s dumb to even dream about cracking this bastille. In the second place, it’s dumb not to wait for your trial, take your rap—it won’t be more than sixty—and then you get out of here clean.”
    “You’re wrong,” he said. There was an urgency about his strange, groaning voice. “I’m waiting trial. They haven’t mugged me or printed me or given me an examination. If they convict me—and they will if I ever go to court—they’ll give me a physical. Any doc—even a prison doc—would give his eyeteeth to X-ray me.” He tapped his monstrous chest. “I’ll never get away from them if they see the plates.”
    “What’s your trouble?”
    “It’s no trouble. It’s the way I am.”
    “How are you?”
    “Fine. How are you?”
    Okay, so it