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By Root 1235 0

his own rising in his throat, a terror in his own heart; he yelled for the boy to shut up, and heard the other boys in the cells yelling at him; but the new kid would not stop, and Jack and the others started yelling for the guard to come in and get him out of there. Jack was feeling panic; he was afraid that if the other boy did not stop screaming he would go crazy, but the boy would not stop; the screaming went on for hours, and then finally a single guard came in. Jack knew it must be nighttime, because it was only one guard that came in. During the daytime, or any time they brought a boy in or let a boy out, the guards came in pairs. So it was night, and the one guard went past Jack’s cell and called in to the new kid, “Shut up in there, God damn it.” The kid cried out that his stomach was hurting, and the guard was silent for a moment, and then said, “He’s only fakin,” and left. Jack and the other boys started yelling and screaming in rage at the guard’s cowardice, because they knew the guard had been afraid to open the cell without a partner along, and Jack again thought he was going to go crazy; he yelled and swore and sobbed in rage, until there was nothing left in him and he lay on the floor of his cell face down, trembling with his hatred of the guard and his rediscovered terror of the dark. The only sounds that could be heard now were the low moans of agony from the new kid, and eventually they, too, stopped, and the punishment cells were silent. This silence was even more terrifying, and Jack bit his lips bloody to keep from screaming himself.

In the morning, when the doctor and three guards came, the boy was already dead. He had died of a burst appendix, and Jack could hear the furious anger of the doctor and the mumbled embarrassment and self-defense of the guards. But the boy was dead, a boy Jack had never seen, and he felt despair for himself again.

There was an investigation, and the night guard was fired. When the State Senator who was in charge of the investigation got to Jack’s cell, he asked through the door how long Jack had been in there, and Jack did not answer. The State Senator sent one of the guards for the punishment records, and Jack for the first time learned how long he had been in there, the State Senator saying in an amazed, almost hushed voice, that according to these records, this boy has been in this cell for 87 days, and with shock making his voice tremble, the State Senator demanded that the cell be opened and the boy brought out, and Jack did not know whether the State Senator was planning to free him or just wanted to see what kind of animal could live in total darkness for 87 days without dying, because when the door opened and the faint light blazed against Jack’s eyes, something dark and joyful exploded inside him and he hit the State Senator, grabbed at him, and tried to murder him, out of control, feeble, fumbling, helpless, nevertheless with his hands on the State Senator’s throat and his fingers squeezing, odd noises in his ears, almost drowned out by a roaring sound from within; and then the guards pulled him off the Senator and threw him back in his cell, and the State Senator went back to Salem and the investigation went into file thirteen, and that was the end of that.

When they came to let him out, the day before his eighteenth birthday, they opened the door and jumped back, four guards crowding the passageway, one of them holding a white canvas restraining jacket. But Jack stood up and walked out into the passageway calmly, his eyes shut. The first thing he said to the guards was, “My eyes hurt like hell.” He was blindfolded, to protect his eyes, and taken, inside the restraining jacket, to a place where there were two psychiatrists to examine him. The plan had been to transfer Jack from the reformatory to the State mental hospital, because the authorities did not feel in all conscience that they could let him go and the law said they had to give up his custody when he turned eighteen. The two psychiatrists asked Jack a lot of questions, and he answered them calmly,