Boy's Cinema (1933)

In a long shed \vh->rc the white convicts fed, two men were putting tin plates upon the tables which stretched from one end of the structure to the other. In a room fitted up as a kitchen, attached to Skinner's office, a favoured convict was frying eggs in a pan—but the eggs were for Billings and the guards. A man named Burgess was cook for the chain gang, and he was busy in a kitchen which opened out of the long shed, cutting loaves of bread into thick slices with a keen edged knife and an air of ferocity. A negro prisoner who enjoyed the doubtful privilege of acting as his as- sistant looked up from a bowl of batter which was to be converted into flap- jacks—for Billings and the guards. "You sure give me de willies wid dat knife," he said nervously. "I always wanted to be a surgeon," confided Burgess, slicing away at the bread. "You know—cut up people." "Did yo' study for one?' inquired the black. s "No," growled Burgess. "I only got to the third grade when I was drafted into the army." W itfa the knife poised in midair as though about to slit a throat, he turned and stared through the dirty panes of a window beside him. The convicts were marching past, in two long rows, carry- ing one end of their chains which were attached to their ankles. They were washed, now, and dressed in the livery of their servitude—shirts and trousers of blue denim, the shifts open at the neck and decorated at the back with huge targets of white and black rings so that should they try to escape they would be easy to shoot. The ankle-irons to which the chains were attached were known as "pick- irons," and had a point that curved downwards in the front and a point that curved upwards at the back, so that should their wearers try to run they must, spin in or even break their ankle as the front point bit into the ground, and at the same time suffer agonies from the rear point as it pierced the thigh. "Look after that coffee." barked Bur- gess, "they're comin' in!" The Sweat Box. WILLIAM BILLINGS had reached the camp in his touring-car. He made it a practice of having breakfast at the same time as those who worked for him, though he had it, in his office—sometimes alone, some- times witli Blacksnake Skinner, who was in his pay as well as the Govern- ment's, and had his uses. Billings was a hard-featured man, a brute by nature, cunning, avaricious, and without a scruple. Skinner was a lean and swarthy ruffian, black of hair, eyebrows, and moustache. II is eyes were green and evil, and his face was heavily lined. He might have been a murderer, but he was captain of the guards. Having glanced at his papers on his desk, Billings went to the door of his office to watch the procession of chained men to the shed where they were to breakfast. Skinner came up with an assistant who altered some figures on a blackboard attached to the outer wall, and Billings scowled. The trouble about convict labour was that as men finished their sentence they left the road to regain their freedom. The figures on the board changed too often. There were still thirty-two mules, one hundred and fifty picks, a corresponding number of shovels, January 21st, 1833. BOY'S CINEMA thirty sledges, and so forth, but between darkness and daylight he had lost men. Angrily he strode down the step to Skinner. "That means I've got ten men less on the job," he growled, jerking a thumb at the blackboard. 'Don't worry," said Skinner smoothly. "You'll get plenty of work done." "You don't understand," complained Billings. "I underbid my nearest com- petitor by nearly half to get this con- tract, and it stands to reason that I've got to get twice as much work out of convict labour." "You're doing all right," said Skinner, with a wink. "Umph!" grunted the contractor; and did not invite him to breakfast in the office. The white convicts, by this tunc, were seated at the tables in the long shed; the blacks were in their own separate shed. Blink Maxic, a moon-faced, elderly man, who wore spectacles because he was practically blind without them, tasted the coffee which had been splashed into his tin mug and made a grimace. "You'll eat anything, won't you?" he said scornfully to an ugly fellow oppo- site, who was devouring bread as though lie were starved. "I'll eat anything that don't bite me first." responded the ugly one. When the meal was over, according to schedule, a guard at the door shouted : "Getthf up! Gettin' up!" The men rose, but one of them, a narrow-eyed man named Hype, covertly picked up a spoon and slipped it into the neck of his shirt. He was serving a long term for manslaughter, and he had suffered much from Blacksnake Skinner's whip. A spoon need not always be a spoon, and even a captain of the guard was not immortal. Out from the shed into the blazing sunshine marched the chained men, holding their chains, walking slowly to avoid pain, and singing as they marched : " When John Henry was a little boy, Sitting on his father's knee, Pointed down to the ground At a small piece of steel, Saying: 'That'll be the death of me !' " On their way put of the camp they acquired pickaxes and shovels in their stride, which they carried over their shoulders :o a section of the unmade road where work with "jacks"—as they called tin pickaxes—was necessary. There in a long, winding row they swung the picks, breaking up rocky earth while the sun blazed down upon them and sweat poured from their faces; and they sang as they worked, so that no man should falter, a song that ■ I as interminable as their task. " They took John Henry to the mountains, Gave him a ten-pound hammer A young fellow named Carter, who looked hardly strong enough to be a hardened criminal, swayed on his feet, .-tared dazedly at his hands:, which were raw and bleeding, and suddenly dropped bis pick. Duke, who was working near him, saw but did not appear to see. A guard, who carried a whip instead of a rifle, swooped down on the Offender, "Keep the lick there, Carter!" he roared!, "I can't," protested the sufferer, ex- Every Tuesday hibiting his lacerated palms. "My hands arc falling apart!" The rawhide thong of the whip ilcd about the boy's bare neck, and feebly he picked up the fallen "jack." The song had not been interrupted; Carter swung his pick again, though he was in agony. A few minutes later he crumpled up and fell face downwards; and the guard was standing over his prostrate form, hesitating to slash at him again when Skinner came striding up. "What's the trouble?" he demanded harshly. " Learning a new prisoner we won't stand for loafing," replied the guard, himself more than half afraid of Skinner's wrath. The captain raised his own whip, the thong of which was longer and more formidable than the guard's, and Duke, without stopping work, ventured a protest. "The kid's soft, captain," he said. ''Why don't you give him a couple of days to get in shape?" Skinner scowled, but he knew Duke's power with the other men. "Sure," he said; "he probably needs a good tonic! Take him down to the hospital, Burt, and give him the best we've got." The guard dragged the unfortunate Carter to his feet and went off with him along the road. Duke watched distrustfully as ho wielded his pick— and Skinner swooped on a negro who had deserted a team of mules to 6tand and stare. "Hi, you baboon!" ho shouted. "Don't you know better than to leave them mules out in the 6un?" " Yas sah, boss, yas suh," said the black, hurriedly returning to • his charges. "Mules cost forty dollars a head, and convicts don' cost nothin' ! Cm on here !" Far down the road, in an isolated position, stood a structure much the size and shape of a telephone box, but made of corrugated iron with a door bearing padlocked bars top and bottom; and it was to this structure, which Skinner had called the "hospital," but which was more generally known as the ' at box," that Carter was taken. The guard unlocked and opened the narrow door and thrust his half-fainting captive inside. From the roof a wide leather collar hung 'on a chain; on the floor, at the back of the box, was a thick block of with two semi-circular cuts in it to take a man's heels; and iron bands were hinged to the wood. "Come on, get your feet in there!" commanded the guard. And Carter, staggering backwards, managed to obey. The collar was passed round his throat and padlocked; the bands were pad- locked round his ankles. He could move his hands, but his feet were fixed, and he could not move his head more than a few inches without choking him- self. . . 3 _ " Well, young fellow," jeered the guard, as he backed out from the box and closed the door, "you won't catch a cold in there." The door was locked, and no air could get in or out, except through the cracks between the hinges. Burt went back to his former position behind the chain- gang. Ilvpe, the convict who had filched the 6poon, was working with a different gang engaged in breaking rocks with hammers, and already ho had managed surreptitiously to flatten the spoon out of shape. But it did not yot look any- thing like the dagger it was intended to become.