Junket

“ In the dock stood a medium-sized man with nondescript features, a thin black moustache, iron-gray hair and disheveled clothing. Each side of him stood a constable gripping an arm—they were the somethings that had followed him into the dock. For a moment the prisoner, who seemed to radiate indignation, looked about him, his breath coming in short, passionate sobs. The clerk stooped to pick up his glasses, the magistrate blew his nose violently to gain time, the reporters prepared to take notes. ”

“ It is impossible to conceive of the sudden isolation in which a suspected criminal is placed. The gendarmes who apprehend him, the commissioner who questions him, those who take him to prison, the warders who lead him to his cell—which is actually called a cachot, a dungeon or hiding-place, those again who take him by the arms to put him into a prison-van—every being that comes near him from the moment of his arrest is either speechless, or takes note of all he says, to be repeated to the police or to the judge. ”

“ The night is warm, general. Don't over-exert yourself. The door is locked and the key is in my pocket, and besides, if I should let you out you would only fall into the hands of more of my men. Your outside guard is also bound and gagged, and reclining against the wall of the jail [Pg 258] in the shadow. The sentinels you saw on patrol when you approached the jail are my men. You see, there is no escape. ”

“ All sorts of ways were resorted to, the favorite way being to start a well and dig down ten or twelve feet, then start a tunnel in it near the surface of the ground. By this means the fresh dirt would be accounted for, as well digging was within the limits of the prison rules. But before the “gopher-hole,” as the tunnels were called by the western boys, was far advanced, a gang of negroes appeared upon the scene and dug it up. We always believed there were spies among us. Some thought the spies were some of our own men who were playing traitor to curry favor with Wirz. ”

“ In the morning we are ordered into the new section of the prison. The old bums go [Pg 49] to the workhouse, and we await our turn to be placed in the shops, according to our sentences and our work or profession. The distribution of labor among us is strange and mysterious. A butcher, for instance, is sent to work in the stone quarry, a smuggler into the kitchen gang, a lawyer in the "skin gang," a "sissy" into the coal gang, a waiter into the garden; a burglar is sent to make socks, and I am sent into the tailor shop. ”

“ He ached for it all—for the woman sleepless on her pillow, for the prisoner in prison. The spirit widened; he stood calm under all, quiet, with suspended judgment. Whip-poor-will! Whip-poor-will! He looked up and studied the stars between the silver branches of the sycamore, then dropped his gaze and leaned slightly forward, for he heard the tread of horses on the road.
Two horsemen, one in front, the other a little way behind, came quietly up the silver streak. ”

“ Dead men have told many tales. More than once a dead man’s tales have brought men to the gallows. But gangsters have not learned this. They are a stupid lot.
One fact consoled Johnny. These gangsters wanted something. They wanted the telltale bullets that were capable of sending their fellow gangster, him of the masked face, to the electric chair or to prison for life. These they would have at all cost. They undoubtedly expected to find them on Johnny’s person. ”

“ Turn the water on in my tub and I'll be slipping into decent duds in a jiffy. Here's an extra I picked up downtown. The scream of the evening is a kidnaping—most deplorable line of business! Have you ever noticed a certain periodicity in child stealing? About every so often you hear of such a case. Despicable; a foul crime hardly second to murder. Hanging is not too severe a punishment. Clear out now, for if we begin talking I'll never get dressed!"
The account of the kidnaping in the park was little more than a bulletin, but Archie soon had it committed to memory. ”

“ Crime and madness have a certain resemblance. To see the prisoners of the Conciergerie in the yard, or the madmen in the garden of an asylum, is much the same thing. Prisoners and lunatics walk to and fro, avoiding each other, looking up with more or less strange or vicious glances, according to the mood of the moment, but never cheerful, never grave; they know each other, or they dread each other. ”

“ Even in the dead of the night, even well beyond the stockade, even, as they hoped, in the bottom of the gully running down to the river, there might be wakeful ears. The workers made the least possible noise, the hundred and odd waiting prisoners made none at all. Crouched in silence they breathed the night air and the sweat dried upon them.... The hole in the roof became large enough to let a man through. Footholds had already been made along the side of the tunnel. The workers laid down their picks, mounted, and tried their weight upon the edges of the opening. The earth held. ”

“ I remained eight days in this frightful state, and when they found that it was impossible I could have got rid of the seal in the way suspected, I was ordered to the usual prison. On learning this intelligence, I pretended, as is often done under such circumstances, to be exceedingly weak and scarcely able to bear the light of day. The unwholesome state of the dungeon made this very probable, and the gendarmes fell completely into the snare and carried their complaisance so far as to cover my eyes with a handkerchief, and then deposited me in a hackney-coach. ”

“ One man, lurching from a wineshop, cut at me aimlessly with a notched and bloody sabre; but I evaded him with ease, and he fell into the midst of the pursuers, retarding them a little. I reached the south-west angle of the prison, where the Place split up, like the blown corner of a flag, into many little crooked ribbons of streets, and amongst these I dived, racing haphazard, while the red-socks thudded in my wake and my heart in my ribs. ”

“ Pete, the gangster, sat near by with his gun in his lap. The slightest move on their part and he would shoot at them. They realized that they were in a very bad predicament.
The gangster began his preaching again. “Now if you kids had minded your own business,” he said, “as you should have, you wouldn’t get into this thing. You should have been out playing baseball or swimming instead of snooping around. And what do you get for it? I don’t know what the boss is going to do to you. He may even dump you and that’ll be too bad because you’re still kids.” ”

“ The danger of discovery was continual, for the guards were under instructions from the prison commandant to make occasional visits to every accessible part of the building; so that it was not unusual for a sergeant and several men to enter the south door of Rat Hell in the daytime, while the diggers were at labor in the dark north end. During these visits the digger would watch the intruders with his head sticking out of the tunnel, while the others would crouch behind the low stone fenders, or crawl quickly under the straw. ”

“ Then he begged, "Don't take my life—a prisoner,' but I put the gun to him, and he said, 'You may kill me, but it will be revenged; there are 80,000 persons sworn to carry on this work.' That was his last expression. We bore him out on the bridge with the purpose then of hanging him; we had no rope, and none could be found; it was a moment of wild excitement. ”

“ He explained to me how the gang waylay the unwary traveller, enter into conversation with him, and have him suddenly seized, when the superior throws his own girdle round the victim's neck and strangles him, pressing the knuckles against the spine. Taking off his own girdle, he passed it round my arm, and showed me the turn as coolly as a sailor once taught me the hangman's knot. The Thug is of any caste, and from any part of India. The profession have particular stations, which they generally select for murder, throwing the body of their victim into a well. ”

“ Sir, you are in danger; the people are to rush through the gate when it is opened for you. I immediately dismounted, and endeavoured to escape to one side; but it was too late. The mob was now in motion, and with a tumultuous shout pressed violently towards the gate. The guard within, seeing my danger, opened it, and the multitude rushing through, carried me forward in the torrent a considerable space: so that I was literally borne into Juggernaut by the Hindoos themselves. ”

“ He promised he would not put me in the dungeon, he was only going to put me in my cell, he said, and to my cell I went, willingly enough, and stayed there a week, during which time I suppose everyone of my shopmates thought I was in the dungeon, undergoing severe punishment for my rebellions conduct.
I had learned now the worst lesson which a prisoner can learn—that is, that my keepers were afraid of me. To a limited extent, it is true, I was now my own master and keeper. In a few days Deputy Morey came to me and asked me if I was “willing” to come out and work. ”

“ Among the many schemes devised for escape from our prison were innumerable tunnel devices, and many of these were planned and worked upon, but nearly all the various workings were discovered in one way or another, and but one was a success, although many men escaped at different times in other ways.
The stockade was full of rumors about probable parole, and these stories, evidently prompted and encouraged by our captors to prevent attempts to escape, kept many of us from [Pg 52] risking recapture, and possible death, by uncertain attempts to regain our freedom. ”

“ Like characters in the developing Theatre of the Absurd, the junkies in this play and in the books of the era live a life of no exit; they exist in tight, self-contained worlds of their own creation, existential men carving a separate reality out of nothingness with the hypodermic needle. Or to put it in Burroughs' own words, from Junkie, "Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. ”

“ Do you intend to torture me needlessly?"
"No; what do you want?"
"Let me go to my own cabin, and let me [Pg 241] have these handcuffs off," pleaded the prisoner. "I need rest; I'm nearly a wreck."
"I can let you go to your cabin, and even remove the handcuffs," agreed Mr. Jephson. "But I'll have to place a guard in there with you.
"All right, then," sighed the prisoner. ”

“ Instantly that youth demanded his sovereign, which the man refused, vowing and calling others to witness that another number had been guessed.
“I’ll bring the police,” cried the voice, and instantly there was a movement in the group as of some one endeavouring to force his way out.
“Knock him over!” some one cried; “he’s only one of them donkey schoolboys. What business have they here at all?” And at the signal two or three of the juggler’s accomplices made a dash at the retreating youth and seized him. ”

“ You take a turn on the platform together, and he explains the whole mystery. “The fact is,” he begins, “I am Sergeant Witchem, of the Detective police.”
“And your four victims are?”—
“Members of a crack school of swell-mobsmen.”
“What do you mean by ‘school?’ ”
“Gang. There is a variety of gangs—that is to say, of men who ‘work’ together, who play into one another’s hands. These gentlemen hold the first rank, both for skill and enterprise, and had they been allowed to remain would have brought back a considerable booty. Their chief is the Frenchman.” ”

“ Our erstwhile guardians gathered up the handcuffs and chain and departed for Niagara Falls, while we, under new guardians, were led away into the prison. While we were in the office, our number had been added to by other squads of newly arrived prisoners, so that we were now a procession forty or fifty strong.
Know, ye unimprisoned, that traffic is as restricted inside a large prison as commerce was in the Middle Ages. Once inside a penitentiary, one cannot move about at will. Every few steps are encountered great steel doors or gates which are always kept locked. ”

“ Through the thick drizzle of the early morning the convicts were marched in gangs to their daily tasks, some to build new walls within the prison precincts, some to break stone in the round yard, encircled by enormous iron railings fifteen feet high, some to the great kitchen of the prison and to the different workshops. ”

“ The fourth time, a poor man had been kidnapped, also at night, and forced into the same illegal jail. He sat in the dock—an innocent man, to be made into a beast. The metamorphosis had begun;—he was already in chains and his human heart seemed dead in him; sixty ruffians were about him, aiding in this drama, hired out of the brothels and rum-shops for a few days, the lust of kidnapping serving to vary the continual glut of those other and less brutal appetites of unbridled flesh. ”

“ The prisoner, smarting under some sharp act of discipline on the part of the tobacco-supplier, determines upon having his revenge, and humiliating his janitor, he quietly bides his time till the chief warder or governor comes round, when he asks to speak to him, and “blows the gaff.”
A circumstance of this nature took place with a man who was confined in a cell close to the one occupied by Peace. The man was a moody, contemptible ruffian, and had given some trouble to one of the warders in charge of that portion of the building. ”