Glass Cell Read Online Free

$5,000 and one diamond bracelet worth about $8,000. Nobody seemed to know or care that Palmer could eat and drink about $500 worth a month, and did, or that his airline tickets cost him anything, or that both girls had got rid of expensive automobiles just before they came down for the trial, or that Palmer might have salted some away in Brazil.
    Carter crept back into bed. While he had been sitting on the edge of the bed, the Negro with the bandaged head had stared at him unblinking, as if he watched a boring movie. Carter had tried to talk to him a couple of times, but had got no response, and Dr. Cassini this morning had told him that the Negro had abscesses in both ears, had had a series of them, and that he did not expect to preserve much, if anything, of his hearing.
    He reread Hazel’s last four letters, one that he had had in his pocket when they strung him up and the three that had been delivered since. Carter held them between his fingers while his fat thumbs throbbed in unison like silent drums between his eyes and the pages. Hazel had put a drop of her perfume on her last letter, which was the most cheerful of the four. The male nurse Pete came with the morphine needle and silently prepared it. Pete had only one eye, the other was a sunken hollow, whether the result of disease or injury, Carter could not guess. The needle slid into his arm. In silence, Pete went away, and Carter lifted his letters again. As the morphine stole through his blood, he began to hear Hazel’s voice reading her own words, and he read all the letters as if they were brand new. He heard also Timmy’s voice interrupting her, and Hazel saying, “Just a minute, sweetie, can’t you see I’m writing to Daddy?— Oh, all right, your catcher’s mitt. Why, it’s right there in front of you. On the sofa. That’s a fine place for it, anyway, can’t you take it up to your room?” Timmy socked a small fist into the undersized mitt. “When’s Daddy coming home?” “Just as soon as . . .” “When’s Daddy coming home ? . . . When’s Daddy coming home? . . .” Carter changed his position in bed and forced himself away from that vision, lay passive with his eyes on Hazel’s writing until another vision swam into its place. He saw their bedroom. Hazel stood by her dressing table, brushing her hair for the night. He was in his pajamas. As he moved toward her, she smiled at him in the mirror. They kissed, a long kiss. With the morphine to enhance memory, it was almost as if Hazel lay beside him in the hard bed.
    Carter could watch his visions as if they took place on a stage. No one was in the theater but him. He was the sole spectator. No one had ever seen the show before. Nobody ever would, but him. Here the voices of the inmates were shut out. At least for his ruined thumbs he had been granted a few days of quiet, more or less. A groan of pain from someone, the clatter of bedpans were like music compared to the excretory sounds of 6:30 a.m. in the cell block, or the insane titters in the night, like women’s laughter, and the other no less deranging sounds of men who sought relief by themselves. Who was mad? Carter wondered. Which ones of them? Which jurors and which judges out of the thousands who had sent these six thousand men here?

3
    I t was Wednesday before Carter could walk. Dr. Cassini got for him a new suit of prison clothes, which fitted him better than the ones he had been wearing. He was still weak. His weakness shocked him.
    “It’s not unusual,” said Dr. Cassini.
    Carter nodded, his mind baffled and blank as it always was when the doctor spoke in his matter-of-fact way about the Hole. “But you said you’d seen other cases—like mine.”
    “Oh, yes, a few. After all, I’ve been here four years— Look, I’m not saying what they do is right. I’ve sent letters to the warden. He promises to look into it. He fires a guard or has him transferred.” Dr. Cassini’s hands flew out in a hopeless gesture, then he