The Glass Cell Read online

  The southern summer was long and hot. Despite the fact that the prison was on rather a height, there was almost never a breeze. When a breeze came, it was hot also, but men in the fields straightened to receive it, took their caps off in defiance of the hellish sun, and let the moving air touch their sweating foreheads. The bricks and stones of the old prison absorbed the sun’s rays week after week, and retained the heat as they had retained the winter’s cold, and by August the cell blocks were like vast ovens, breezeless and suffocating even by night, stinking of urine and the sweat of blacks and whites.

  In August, when, Hazel said, the town of Fremont was nearly empty and what people there were were so dazed by the heat that they never left their houses, she went to New York with David Sullivan. Sullivan had some friends there called the Knowltons, who had an apartment on West 53rd Street, just opposite the Museum of Modern Art, and they offered their apartment, which was air-conditioned, to Sullivan for the month of August while they were in Europe. Carter had at first been aghast at the idea of her going, then angry, then simply stunned, or possibly defeated. He went through these emotions within three days of getting her letter about it. It was true that the Knowltons’ twenty-year-old daughter would spend a couple of weekends at the apartment (it seemed to be a huge apartment with a penthouse), since she had a summer job at some resort outside of New York and she had weekends off. It was true that Timmy would be with Hazel. But a big apartment to Carter seemed just as private, just as suspect, in plain words, as a single room in a hotel where they registered as man and wife. Carter wrote, “Haven’t we got money enough for a hotel?”

  And Hazel wrote back, “Do you know what it costs to stay a month in New York at a hotel? And eating every meal out with Timmy also? I’ll see you Sunday and can talk better then . . .”

  On Sunday, Hazel said, “I am very fond of Dave, darling, it’s true, but I swear to you he’s become an old shoe—like an old shoe.” And she laughed, in sudden good spirits such as Carter had not seen since the days they had been together in the house in Fremont—the house where Sullivan was now such a familiar figure, he was like an old shoe.

  “I don’t think he thinks of himself as an old shoe to you,” Carter said, not smiling at all.

  Hazel looked at him and lifted her eyebrows. “Are you saying you don’t want me to go to New York? With David? Go ahead. You have the right.”

  Carter hesitated. Sullivan could escort her, of course, to places she couldn’t go to very well on her own. She’d have more fun with Sullivan. Carter couldn’t deprive her of that. “No. No, I’m not.”

  Hazel looked a bit relieved. She smiled at him. “Are you saying you don’t think there’s such a thing as a platonic friendship between a man and a woman?”

  Carter smiled. “I suppose that’s what I’m saying.”

  “I can assure you from a woman’s point of view there is.”

  “A woman’s point of view—is never the same as a man’s.”

  “Oh, bosh. Male chauvinism.”

  “Older women, not so attractive women, maybe. But you’re too pretty. It gets in the way.”

  Anyway, she went, and August for Carter was not an easy month to get through, despite the stream of postcards and letters from Hazel. Timmy adored the Museum of Natural History. Sullivan had taken him one day to the Planetarium, while Hazel went shopping for shoes: she bought three pairs at a sale. “The black patents I’ll save. We’ll go dancing one night and I’ll put them on for the first time . . . What did Dr. Cassini say about the last X-rays?”

  Dr. Cassini said a lot of mumbo jumbo, but the essential thing was that the posterior end of the second phalanx was abnormally large now and could not be put back into its socket. The paring down of the bone, which Carter suggested, was an operation evidently beyond Dr. Cassini’s abilities. He did not advise trying it. Carter wanted to see another doctor, a hand specialist, but he thought he might be out by the autumn, or by December, after the Supreme Court hearing, so he did not press to get a specialist’s examination in August. It would involve permission from the warden, armed escort in case he had to leave the prison to see the specialist, a snarl of red tape that dismayed Carter even to imagine. The swelling was much less in his thumbs, and he did not wear bandages now, but the skin was pink, as if it glowed with the faint and ever-present pain beneath. There was no strength in his thumbs to mention. They were as useless as appendices, almost, yet not quite, otherwise Carter would have considered having them amputated. He still took at least four big shots, or about six grains, of morphine per day. That amount was a necessity. He had started out with one or two grains per day. So his addiction had increased.

  Hazel and Timmy were away three weeks and two days. She flew back on a Saturday so that she could see him the next day. On that Saturday, a day so hot there were seven cases of heat prostration brought up to the ward, Carter received a letter from Lawrence Magran saying with great regret that the Supreme Court of the State had denied the request for a new trial.

  Carter had a strange reaction. He sat down with the letter on his bed. He felt no shock at all, no surprise or disappointment, even though in the last month or so he had been feeling more and more confident that he would get a new trial. Magran had found three more witnesses of Palmer’s check-cashing and two more banks had been uncovered to add to the three others where Palmer had been tucking money away like a squirrel. It had certainly seemed “new and significant evidence” to Carter, and that was what was needed to warrant a new trial. Magran himself had thought so, too, even though Palmer’s total deposits amounted to less than $50,000. Magran said he was surprised and profoundly sorry, and that he would come to see Carter, if not this Sunday then the next. Carter got up and walked to the window at the end of the ward. Half a mile away, shimmering in the heat of the sunset, he saw the great arched sign, like signs he had seen at the entrances to amusement parks or cemeteries, that spanned the road to the prison: STATE PENITENTIARY it said, backward, and on clear days without heat waves the letters were quite legible from the window. A black car moved toward it, raising a trail of dust, passed under the sign and out, into the world. Hazel doesn’t know yet, he thought suddenly. At that very minute she was in the air. Her plane was due to land at 7:10 p.m. She was flying home at several hundred miles an hour—for this piece of rotten news.

  The prison has absolutely knocked out my feelings, Carter said to himself, and it was this that made him angry.

  By 7:30 p.m., his thoughts had entirely changed, and he was sitting at Dr. Cassini’s typewriter in a room down the hall, laboriously (as far as the typing went) writing a letter to Lawrence Magran. After acknowledging Magran’s letter and its news, he wrote:

  I see no hope anywhere now except in what David Sullivan may be able to discover in the way of new facts and in particular facts as to Gregory Gawill’s connections, if any, with Palmer’s activities. Or—if any—Gawill’s deposits in various banks. I realize this would only spread the guilt a little more thinly, but Sullivan may yet come up with more witnesses. According to my wife, he is still keenly interested in the case. Would eight or ten witnesses, if we had them, count for more than the few we’ve got?

  Carter went to bed, though it was not much after 8 o’clock. He felt too discouraged and paralyzed even to take a morphine shot as he usually did before trying to sleep. His thumbs were throbbing gently, just enough to be annoying, just enough possibly to keep him awake—for how long? Until 1, perhaps, when the pain would get so bad he’d have to take a shot? The morphine he saw as another enemy. Was that going to get him, too, like the prison? A curious enemy, the morphine, both a friend and an enemy, just like a living person. Like David Sullivan, for instance. Like the law, which in some cases protected people—there was no doubt of that—and in some cases persecuted them, there was no doubt of that, either.

  Hazel had heard the news when she came to see him on Sunday. Carter knew s
he had as soon as she came into the visiting room. Her smile was a little forced, there was none of the sparkle that usually radiated from her, attracting the eyes of guards and inmates, too. She said that Sullivan had telephoned Magran that morning, and Magran had told him. Then Sullivan had called her.

  “I’m sorry, Haze,” Carter said. He thought of the many letters she had written, angry letters, naïve letters and—with such patience and second drafts—formal letters to the local newspaper, to the New York Times, to the governor. Hazel had always sent him the carbons to read.

  “David’s here,” Hazel said. “He wants to see you.”

  She sounded so low, Carter made a great effort to appear strong. “Well, Magran once said there’s no law against appealing twice to the Supreme Court. Magran didn’t say anything about coming today, did he?”

  “No. I don’t know. He might’ve said something to David.”

  They made an effort to talk about New York, about pleasant things she and Timmy had done there.

  Carter said, “Timmy’s not too bored, back in Fremont?”

  “Oh, Phil!” Hazel suddenly plunged forward, her face in her hands.

  The top of her head, her glossy hair was very near Carter’s hands, separated from his hands by the glass. “Darling, don’t cry,” Carter said, trying to laugh. “We’ve got eight minutes yet.”

  Hazel looked up and sat back. “I’m not,” she said calmly, though her eyes were wet.

  And then, somehow, they managed to talk about New York until the time was up.

  “I’ll write you tonight,” Hazel said as she left. “Stay for David, darling.”

  Sullivan was just then walking into the room.

  “I have a visitor,” Carter said, indicating Sullivan.

  The guard verified on Sullivan’s pass that he was to see Carter, and then Carter and Sullivan took chairs opposite each other.

  David Sullivan was about thirty-five, a couple of inches taller than Carter and more slender ordinarily, though Carter had lost about fifteen pounds since going to prison. Sullivan had blue eyes, rather like Carter’s but the blue in Sullivan’s was stronger. His eyes were smallish, and their expression was nearly always the same: calm, poised, thoughtful, like Sullivan himself. Sullivan did not waste words in commiserating with him over the Supreme Court rejection.

  “Of course, you can appeal a second time,” Sullivan said. “I’m sure Magran has that in mind. Don’t take this as a defeat, Phil. We’ll just come at them again with more facts and we’ll have more time to gather them.”

  Carter’s feelings were ambiguous, his thoughts also. Carter felt his case had become a sort of hobby with Sullivan. Years from now, if Sullivan ever wrote his memoirs, there would be a few pages devoted to the baffling and maddening Carter case. “Carter’s wife became my wife, the partner of my . . .” Carter checked his wandering mind and tried to listen.

  “I’m doing the same with Gawill, in other words, as Tutting tried to do with Palmer. I’m checking even with his liquor dealers, and believe me there’s plenty of them, as to how much and when he spent it. Unfortunately, a lot of the dealers haven’t kept their old bills.” Sullivan’s tanned forehead wrinkled, his sun-whitened eyebrows jutted forward as he ground out his cigarette in the ashtray. “Gawill was with Palmer in New York on at least two occasions. They were careful enough not to stay in the same hotel or even to fly from here in the same plane. That’s part of what I was doing in New York, inquiring at ten or twenty hotels there.”

  Part of what he was doing.

  “All this takes time. I know it’s not fun for you spending the time in this superannuated—” Sullivan looked around him, at the ceiling. “They should’ve torn this place down about the turn of the century. If not before.”

  “Or never built it.”

  “That’s more like it,” Sullivan said with a laugh. He had good teeth, a trifle small for his long face, like his mouth.

  Carter knew he should comment on Gawill’s having been to New York when Palmer was there. Gawill had probably been sharing Palmer’s girl friends. Gawill was a party-loving bachelor, too, like Palmer. But Carter couldn’t comment. “So you had a good time in New York—Hazel said.”

  “Oh, I hope she did. She was off on her own a lot, except in the evenings. I was introducing my old friends to Hazel and she was introducing hers to me, so the evenings were usually pretty social. Timmy went with us most of the time, because we were at people’s houses a lot and we could just put him in a back room when he got sleepy.”

  “How do you think Hazel’s bearing up—really? You can spend so much more time with her than I can.”

  Sullivan’s face grew more serious.

  Carter waited, wishing his question hadn’t sounded so plaintive, so dependent on what Sullivan thought.

  “I think it’s a good thing she went into this dress shop venture. It gives her something to do. Not that she hasn’t enough to do, but to take her mind off— You know. She’s got a lot of strength. Strength of will, I guess you’d call it,” Sullivan said.

  “She’s very fond of you—she says.”

  “Oh, yes. Well, I hope so,” Sullivan said in a frank tone.

  “And—I’m sure you like her, too, or you wouldn’t spend so much time with her.”

  Sullivan blinked, on guard, but he smiled slightly and his face was quite unworried. “Phil, if I had any dishonorable intentions with your wife, do you think I’d come visiting you in prison? Do you think I or anyone else could be that hypocritical?”

  Gawill had simply said Sullivan was that hypocritical. “I didn’t say you had any dishonorable intentions,” Carter said, feeling uncomfortable now.

  “Hazel’s probably the most loyal woman I’ve ever met.”

  Because he’d tried her and found out?

  “It shows in everything,” Sullivan went on. “All she talks about is you, writing you, seeing you. And around Fremont, when we take drives, she points out spots where you walked or had a picnic.” Sullivan shrugged, looking pensively down at the tabletop now. “She talks about the things you’ll do when you get out. She wants to go to Europe. You two were there once, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.” They had had their honeymoon in Europe, a present from Uncle John and Aunt Edna. “Are you in love with her?” Carter asked.

  A flush came in Sullivan’s cheeks, and a blank, solemn expression came over his face. “There’s really no reason for you to ask that.”

  Carter smiled a little. “No, maybe there isn’t. But I’m asking.”

  “I don’t think it’s of the slightest importance.”

  “Oh, come on. I think it’s of great importance,” Carter said quickly.

  “All right, since you’re asking,” Sullivan said, his voice steady and professional again, “I am in love with her. And nothing can be done about it. I’m not trying to do anything about it.”

  “Oh. Did you tell her?”

  “Yes. She said—it was impossible. She said maybe I’d better not see her anymore. And she was sorry, that I could see,” Sullivan said with a glance at Carter. “Consequently, I was sorry, too, that I told her.”

  Carter’s eyes were fixed on his face.

  “So I said, all right, I didn’t ever have to mention it again, but I’d still like to see her.”

  “I see,” Carter said, not seeing at all, really. All he saw was a dangerous situation in which something would have to explode at some time.

  “I suppose it was six months ago that I told her. Since then I’ve never mentioned it.” He looked levelly at Carter, serious and self-possessed, and rather as if he thought himself pretty noble.

  “Do you enjoy this kind of self-torture?”

  “I don’t consider it self-torture. I like it better than not seeing her at all,” Sullivan said, without a trace of humor or
a smile.

  Carter nodded. “If I hadn’t been in prison, would you have told her? Would you even have been in love with her?”

  Sullivan took a moment. “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you know,” Carter said in a nasty way, and saw it jog Sullivan as if he had poked him in the face.

  Sullivan pushed his chair back from the table and recrossed his legs. “Well, you’re right. Of course it had something to do with it. I didn’t know how long you were going to be in prison, neither did Hazel. Neither do we now. A man can ask, can’t he, if he’s in love? That’s all I did.”

  Carter pressed his thumbs against the matchbook he was holding on the table. “I thought you said you told her, not asked her anything.”

  “I didn’t ask her anything. I told her I loved her. It didn’t go on from there.”

  Carter did not believe that. But if Hazel was still willing to see Sullivan, what he had said could not have been too annoying, or importunate. Carter knew Hazel: she wouldn’t spend time with any man who annoyed her. That, in fact, was the most important thing in the picture. “It’s—sort of like working at cross-purposes, isn’t it, being in love with Hazel and trying to get me out of this place?”