Manhunt. Volume 5, Number 5, May 1957

“Still in all, you never can tell,” Stuart said. “Remember what happened to Smitty, don’t you? Twice they put him off, boy. Twice.”

Suddenly Stuart’s big fist hit the wall. “I killed a girl in five minutes. It didn’t take months of torture! No reprieves, no petitions, just my hands around her neck and that was all. If you want to know something, Joss, I think it was damn humane!”

“Hands,” Joslin said thoughtfully. “I guess that’ll be the way.”

“The bet?” Stuart whispered. “That what you mean?”

“Sure. It’s probably the one chance I’ve got.”

From a cell further down, Arbenz’ voice was raised in anger. “My constitutional rights were disregarded and that voids the conviction. Anybody knows that much.”

Joslin’s nerves were being stretched almost to the breaking point. Everything irritated him. His nose was running and he felt dust and dirt everywhere.

He didn’t sleep at all during the night, but lay awake watching as much sky as he could see from the recessed window above. Toward morning, he was watching the effect of every change in light on the cracks in the ceiling, the never-ending patterns that were being made.

A soft tapping on the wall signalled that Stuart wanted to talk. “You asleep, Joss? I was just thinking, they say it’s all over so soon you can’t hardly take a deep breath.”

Somebody made that remark at least once a day.

“Just the same,” Joslin said, “the bet’s still on.”

He had a recurrence of the pains he’d felt yesterday morning, cutting his stomach in two. He heard every step of the awakening of the men, with interest as if it were all new. Radnik prayed in the morning. Brent was talking to Arbenz about southern cooking. In cell five, McGivern sang something jaunty, then abruptly cut it off.

Men turned the leaves of their morning papers. Brent was reading aloud the day’s installment of Pogo. Stuart growled over the sports news.

Joslin was barely conscious of a guard telling him, “Your breakfast’s getting cold.” When he didn’t acknowledge it, the guard said irritably, just like a parent, “There’s plenty people in the world would give a fortune for a good breakfast like that one.”

Joslin’s eyes had started hurting; there was still the pain in his stomach...

It seemed impossible that lunch had already been set down near the cell. That time was going so fast made him get up quickly, almost frantically. In a moment, he fell back, breathing heavily.

An assistant warden came along and asked Joslin if he wanted to see any reporters. Joslin didn’t answer.

“That isn’t getting you anything,” the assistant warden snapped. “Do you mind if a couple of reporters are witnesses, tonight? You can tell me if you think any of them are objectionable to you... Okay, if you feel like keeping quiet. You want to send any messages?... Okay, okay, you ain’t talking.”

Joslin had no family. If he’d had one, he would probably have wished he didn’t have one.

Because he hadn’t said a word to the assistant warden, the idea was getting around that Joslin was numb, paralyzed with grief. The guards were therefore expecting to have an easy time with him.

The assistant warden was talking to somebody else, when Arbenz asked him, “Nothing on Joslin’s appeal?”

“Nothing I know about.”

“He’s got a chance, hasn’t he?”

“How should I know!” the assistant warden demanded, and left muttering.

In the afternoon, Joslin was taken to a small room where the prison barber, one of the inmates, shaved his head. Before Joslin left, the inmate called out, “I hope the governor likes you.”

When he arrived back at the cell block, Arbenz and Stuart were joking about waiting lists for cells. They stopped abruptly.

Stuart paced his cell. From where he lay, Joslin could hear him cracking his knuckles. Father Mullins arrived, and asked Joslin patiently if he wanted to talk to him. Brent and McGivern began arguing about baseball, began making fantastic bets.

Joslin had been asked for his preference as far as dinner was concerned, but he had said nothing. When dinner was placed on a small chair outside the cell, he discovered that he was hungry. And if he ate, he thought, he would be sustaining the part he had set himself to play.

He didn’t move or talk when told by the assistant warden that his lawyer’s final petition had been denied.

He could hear Arbenz ask, “Are you sure?” and mutter, “I’d have thought he was pretty well set.”

When McGivern barked out, “Shut up!” Arbenz muttered, “These goddam lawyers, they don’t care what happens to you!”

Later on, the cell block door opened. Two sets of footsteps approached. Joslin grew tense. He didn’t look up, but forced himself to lie still.

The door of his cell was opened.

“Come on, Joslin.”

Joslin turned, lay down full on the bed, then rose from it. He was slow and calm. His face looked haggard.

One of the guards, a heavy man shifting the weight on his feet, asked, “You all set?”

He nodded instead of answering. The top of his head, shorn as it was, felt cold. On the threshold of the cell, he touched the bars with one palm, then the other.