Stanley Elkin - A Bad Man

More than once Feldman had tried to get Bisch to suggest that they drop their pursuit of each other, but the man treated these moves as further maneuvers, and always they had to return to their silly game. Feldman had even told Bisch some overzealous convict jokes that he made up himself, but while Bisch laughed, he never offered to tell Feldman any stories of his own, and Feldman, suspecting Bisch might use these jokes against him, decided he couldn’t risk telling him others. Their strategies spiraled.

Only one time, and that to his cost, had Feldman, weary of their duel, spoken forthrightly. Bisch, obviously trying to tempt him into an open declaration of his feelings, had told him that he personally knew of a conspiracy to break jail. “Oh, come on, Bisch,” Feldman had said. “Grow up. If you know about a jailbreak, either blow the whistle on the guys who are planning it or keep it to yourself. Don’t tell me about it. I’ve only got four months before I get out of here. Why would I get involved in something like that?”

“Oh, so you admit it. You want to get out.”

“Well, Jesus, Bisch, of course I want to get out.”

“It doesn’t make any difference at all to you whether you’ve paid your debt to society or not. I’ll remember that one when your time comes.”

“What do you mean ‘when my time comes’?”

“Never mind,” Bisch said, and from his guilty blush Feldman realized he hadn’t been joking. “Never mind,” Bisch repeated, “the important thing is that you’re unregenerate.”

“I’m not unregenerate,” Feldman said.

“Oh ho, sure not.”

“I’m not.”

“Tell it to the Marines.”

“I’m regenerate,” Feldman said.

It was how, he realized finally, he had to speak, and in a way, because he dared not speak otherwise, he was regenerate.

With others, of course, he was equally wary. Even with the bad men Walls and Sky and Flesh, he was cautious, and with Herb Mix, the bad man who attached himself to Feldman in the exercise yard. (Where, Feldman noticed, the bad men continued to jump about erratically, just as he had seen them do that first time from his cell. He himself, concentrating on imitating the more normal walks of the other convicts so as not to call attention to himself, sometimes found the restraint too great, the sheer watchful concentration too difficult, and would often start abruptly forward, making the disturbing movement of a man bolting in sleep.) But bad men had little to hope for from vigilanteeism. The paroles such tactics might bring others would not be given them, and one might have supposed that they would have fewer occasions, since they had less need, to make warden’s mouths. They made them anyway, at least in the canteen when there were convicts to overhear them. At these times Feldman, who had adopted a somewhat different approach with the bad men than the one he took with Bisch, would go about his business, paying no heed to their absurd challenges of him. If pushed too far, he might stop and call out to the convicts in the canteen, “You men see what I’m doing. You’re my witnesses. See me work. See me fill your orders and make change and keep the books and dust the shelves.”

In certain respects, nevertheless, he was a real offender against the new system. An astonishing news item appeared in the prison paper:

NATION’S 2ND OLDEST CONVICT REVEALS BRIBERY PLOT

Ed Slipper, this country’s second oldest living convict now serving time in a federal or state prison, voluntarily disclosed to Warden’s Office Thursday the existence of thirty-two dollars and forty cents in his personal savings account at the prison. Slipper, the last of whose relatives died many years ago, has admitted that up until eight months ago he had no scource of outside income whatever for several years, and that the money has been accumulating in his account due to direct deposits by the business associates of Leo Feldman, a fellow inmate and “bad man” sentenced to one year’s incarceration here.

Slipper charged that the money had been put into his account on Feldman’s insistence, and that in return he was to render Feldman such services as Feldman saw fit to require of him, and to impart whatever informations affecting Feldman that he as trusty might be privy to.

Slipper, who is himself a “bad man” but who was, in accordance with prison custom and policy, declared an “ancient” and made trusty on his seventy-fifth birthday, insists that he has made use of only seven dollars and sixty cents of the forty dollars placed in his account in eight monthly five-dollar installments. He declared that he has rendered Feldman no services and that he asked Feldman to stop the checks months ago but that Feldman declined. (At present no machinery exists whereby a convict can turn down monies deposited to his account by an outside source, though Warden’s Office has revealed that a rule to that effect is now being considered as a result of this case.)

Slipper has asked that the funds be turned over to the prison infirmary for the purchase of additional medicines.

An editorial in the same edition offered commentary on the affair and disclosed some surprising additional facts:

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT

That the moral atmosphere of this institution has markedly improved, no one who has witnessed the changes of the past few months can doubt. Yet there remain certain private pockets of pollution which, for all that, smell the worse and offend the more.

A recent fact-finding committee, charged with bringing to light vestigial episodes of corruption among the prisoners at this institution, has stated that while exact figures are unavailable, there is considerable evidence to support a conservative assertion that at least two dozen permission slips are still forged monthly, along with a like number of passes; that while absenteeism is down fortyseven percent, a check with the infirmary has revealed that only eighty-one percent of the current absenteeism is legitimate; that there are perhaps two or three warden’s-flag missions subverted to private ends each month; and that there are even now a handful of convicts who do not observe the proper seating arrangements in the dining hall. All this, capped by the recent frightful disclosure of attempted bribery in the Feldman/Slipper case, demonstrates that some — if admittedly only a few — convicts still seek to exploit their position.

Some good signs are likewise in the wind, of course. The same blue-ribbon committee has reported that attendance is up in Warden’s Forest and that on the whole most cons have responded encouragingly to Warden Fisher’s assembly plea that they keep a closer check on each other, but these ameliorating factors are tainted by the discouraging persistence of even a “little” corruption. Once again, the few bad apples have spoiled the barrel, and many are made to suffer for the mistakes of a few self-styled “privileged” characters. It is no accident, of course, that the bribery attempt, long known to Warden’s Office but only just now revealed by Slipper himself, was the work of a bad man. Perhaps the sad statistics in the committee’s report are largely the responsibility of bad men. Perhaps, too, Feldman himself will be discovered to have contributed even more to these statistics than is now known. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

Meanwhile, it is only fair that we applaud Ed Slipper for his recent revelations, however belated they may have been. It is pertinent too, at this juncture, to encourage the frankness of others. Only with the cooperation of a vigilant population can this prison move closer to the ideals and goals articulated for it by its administration.

As yet, there have been no purges here among the prisoners themselves, and while history informs us that a climate of purge is often sticky, we would remind history that it has always been stickiest for the guilty.