Glass Cell Read Free Page A

the ward.
    At 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, when the visiting period began, Carter imagined Hazel in the big gray-green lobby downstairs protesting that she had come to see her husband and that she was not going to leave until she had seen him. Dr. Cassini had written a letter to her which Carter had dictated, saying that he would not be able to see her, and the letter had been smuggled out sometime on Friday, but Carter was not sure Hazel had received it by Saturday. Carter knew that, if she had, she would come anyway, because he had said his hands were “slightly injured,” but he also knew that the double gates of gray bars in the lobby, the officials in uniforms who examined identifications of visitors and checked on inmates’ status would defeat Hazel at last, and he writhed in his bed and pressed his face into his hard pillow.
    He got her last two letters from under his pillow and reread them, holding them with two fingers.
    . . . Darling, Timmy is bearing up pretty well, so don’t worry about him. I lecture him daily, though I try not to make it sound like a lecture. The kids are picking on him at school, of course, and I suppose human nature wouldn’t be human nature if they didn’t . . .
    And in the last letter:
    Darling Phil,
    Have just spent over an hour with Mr. Magran, the lawyer David has recommended all along over Tutting, you know, and I like him very much. He talks sense, is optimistic but not so optimistic (like Tutting) that you start to get suspicious. Anyway, Tutting has now said there is “nothing more” he can do. As if there weren’t the Supreme Court, but I wouldn’t even want Tutting handling that. I have paid Tutting off, that is, the last $500 of his fee, so if you’re quite agreed, Magran can take over. Magran said it will cost $3,000 to have a transcript of the trial typed up for the Supreme Court, but you know we can afford that. He wants to see you as soon as possible, of course. Oh, damnit darling, those idiotic regulations I’m greeted with every Sunday: 37765’s demerits do not permit him to have visitors this week. And for being out of step in a cafeteria line, you said. For goodness’ sake, darling, do your best to conform to their stupid rules.
    Magran is also writing to the Governor direct. He will send you a copy of the letter. You must not worry. Like you, I know this cannot go on forever, or even very long. Six to twelve years! It won’t even be six months. . . .
    Magran’s fee would be at least $3,000, Carter thought, and the $3,000 for the transcript besides would just about clean out their ready cash. Every figure seemed astronomical—$75,000 for his bail, for instance, which of course they hadn’t been able to raise, and Carter had not wanted to ask his Aunt Edna for it. Their $15,000 house was mortgaged, their Olds was worth $1,800, but Hazel needed it for marketing and also for driving the twenty-seven miles on Sundays to see him, or try to.
    And now his thumbs were out of joint. That was the final absurd fact. The doctor called it something else, but essentially that was what it was, and an operation, according to Dr. Cassini, would be of very dubious value. The prison—in which Carter had thought a couple of weeks would not be unbearable, not even a serious episode in his life—had now branded him forever. He would never have much articulation in the second joints, and a sort of hollow would remain below them. He would have funny-looking thumbs and he would not have much strength in them. Imaginative people, seeing them, might guess what had caused the deformation. He wouldn’t be able to deal a hand of bridge so adroitly, or whittle a bow and arrow for Timmy, and, by the time he got out, Timmy might not be interested in bows and arrows, anyway. He had written to Hazel within a couple of hours after the removal of the bandages that day, Sunday, holding the pen in a wobbling fashion between his index and middle fingers, and he had had to tell her what had happened,