Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/31

CHAPTER 2. ANTI-WAR AGITATION 18 I sent candy and other trinkets to them but they did not respond. We were not religious and I supposed we shocked them. My especial friend was William McCoy, of the McCoy–Hatfield feudists in Kentucky. He claimed to have killed six Hatfields. He could not write and I wrote his letters home for him. He had started out with Phillips, a friend, to shoot up the government when he heard that a war was on. The warden was afraid of him, he told me.

Before the transfer had come through for my work on the paint gang I had worked with hundreds of others on the construction gang, wheeling "Georgia buggies," a slang for wheelbarrows, full of concrete mixture and pouring it into the foundation walls for a mill to make duck for mail sacks. There were about 80 of us in a line. The platforms had been built in such a way that we had to make a mighty run to get to the top. So John, the wob from Australia and I took turns slowing up the line; stopping to tie a shoelace, to look intently at the wheel as if something was wrong with it, etc. About the time one of us would have the whole line waiting he would behave and the other one would take up the sabotage action. One afternoon of this and the boss took the hint and made the runways like they should have been in the first place.

Oklahoma Red had been in Atlanta doing a five year bit and was wanted for a murder rap that he felt he couldn't beat. In a few months now he would be released and turned over to the authorities for trial for murder. One day he saw an old fashioned flat coal car come in full of coal. It was made of wood and in the place where modern cars had a steel brace this wooden car had a nice little hiding place for such a skinny fellow as Oklahoma Red. He was working on the construction gang and said that the next time that car came he was going out with it in this cubby hole at the end where the brakes were. It is an unwritten law in some prisons that if a prisoner can make anything contraband and not get caught making it or taking it to his cell he can have it and no questions asked. Oklahoma Red had outgoing shoes, hat, suit, etc., made in the different prison departments, paying for them in tobacco, and hid this precious bundle of outgoing clothing in the rafters of the cement shed. Several weeks later that car came in. Red found out from the fellows at the power house that it would be switched out at 11.15 that morning. Some of us watched the toilet so no guard or stool pigeon could see Red changing his clothes; others of us kept the guard busy in conversation with head turned the other way. A preacher was watchman at the gate (in for violation of the Mann Act). This preacher trusty was reading his Bible and did not peer closely as the car went out with Red in the hiding place. About a quarter to twelve, guards were scurrying around making another count to see if they had made a mistake, or, if there was a man missing, who he might be. Finally the whistles blew and the guards and the trusties looked in every corner for Red. As far as I know they never got him.

A white man and a Negro had been killed by guards and I was incensed about it. My cell mates laughed and said I should worry about the living, for the dead were dead and no one could do anything about it. That if I wanted anything to do I should raise a fuss about the poor fish served on Fridays by the new mess guard, DeMoss, who had been heard to say that he would make his rakeoff by charging for good food and giving us junk. Accordingly I got