punch and gave him a knee in the nuts and down he went. Then down I went as the others laid into me with their canes. Miles wrote me up on the spot and told them to put me in the hole.
As the hacks dragged me out, he said I don’t believe you’ll be with us for long, Mr. Pierpont.
Me neither, I said, but my mouth wasn’t working quite right and he might not have understood me.
P endleton was a larger and more modern version of Jeffersonville. Like J-ville it had a clothes plant, a bigger one, and its laundry was about twice the size of J-ville’s. It had a shop for making furniture and cabinetry, and a foundry for producing all kinds of ironwork. And just as at J-ville, all of it was operated for profit by a bunch of private bloodsuckers using inmate labor.
I was in solitary for two weeks before they assigned me to the furniture shop. The other inmates were respectful of me right from the start. Fight the hacks in front of the superintendent on your first day in the joint and nobody fails to understand that you’re not afraid of punishment and are not to be trifled with. But there was more to it than that. In any prison, everybody knows everything that’s on everyone else’s record, and a hell of a lot that’s not. By the time I came out of solitary every guy in Pendleton knew why I was there and had heard a lot more.
On my first day in the yard there were whispers all around me everywhere I went.
That’s him right there…Handsome Harry…Robs banks, man…. Shot a man in Indytown… Killed a guy in J-ville with his bare hands….
And so forth.
I won’t deny the pleasure I got from all the talk, from the looks I drew. I never would care for public recognition out in the free world, but in the joint all you’ve got is the reputation you make for yourself and the balls to back it up. In the joint recognition is everything.
The first time I went to the mess hall, I picked out a table by the wall, where three guys were already sitting. I set my tray down and stood there staring at them. One didn’t lose any time picking up his tray and moving to another table. The other two looked at each other and then back at me and for a minute I thought they’d make a stand. But then they got up and moved too. It was my table from that day on and everybody knew it.
I’d been out of solitary less than a week when three guys came over at lunchtime one day and asked if they could join me. Two of them, Timmy Ross and Joe Pantano, I knew from J-ville. I’d never seen the other one before. I gave them the okay to sit down.
Ross introduced the third guy as John Dillinger. He pronounced the last syllable of his name the way John himself always did— grrr, like a growl, and not jer, the way everybody in the country would be saying it one day.
John offered his hand and I shook it. He said he was glad to know me, he’d heard a lot about me and so on. He was dark-haired and short, not much over five and a half feet, but he had a limber way of moving, like a boxer or a dancer—I would come to find out he’d been a good semipro baseball player—and he had a hell of a grip. He was only a year younger than me, but at the time he struck me as hardly more than a kid. There was nothing in particular about him to make you think he’d ever be the stuff of headlines. He was one of the few married guys in the place—I think he’d been married a year or so at the time—and he was dippy as hell for his wife. Beryl, her name was.
It was his first time in stir and he’d gotten a raw deal. Every guy behind bars says the same thing but in John’s case it was true. He and some stumblebum a lot older than him had robbed a grocer, and inthe course of things John gave the grocer a good whack on the head. It wasn’t long before they got pinched and were charged with felonious conspiracy and assault with intent to rob. The prosecutor assured John that if he pled guilty the judge would go easy on him as a first-time offender. So he
As the hacks dragged me out, he said I don’t believe you’ll be with us for long, Mr. Pierpont.
Me neither, I said, but my mouth wasn’t working quite right and he might not have understood me.
P endleton was a larger and more modern version of Jeffersonville. Like J-ville it had a clothes plant, a bigger one, and its laundry was about twice the size of J-ville’s. It had a shop for making furniture and cabinetry, and a foundry for producing all kinds of ironwork. And just as at J-ville, all of it was operated for profit by a bunch of private bloodsuckers using inmate labor.
I was in solitary for two weeks before they assigned me to the furniture shop. The other inmates were respectful of me right from the start. Fight the hacks in front of the superintendent on your first day in the joint and nobody fails to understand that you’re not afraid of punishment and are not to be trifled with. But there was more to it than that. In any prison, everybody knows everything that’s on everyone else’s record, and a hell of a lot that’s not. By the time I came out of solitary every guy in Pendleton knew why I was there and had heard a lot more.
On my first day in the yard there were whispers all around me everywhere I went.
That’s him right there…Handsome Harry…Robs banks, man…. Shot a man in Indytown… Killed a guy in J-ville with his bare hands….
And so forth.
I won’t deny the pleasure I got from all the talk, from the looks I drew. I never would care for public recognition out in the free world, but in the joint all you’ve got is the reputation you make for yourself and the balls to back it up. In the joint recognition is everything.
The first time I went to the mess hall, I picked out a table by the wall, where three guys were already sitting. I set my tray down and stood there staring at them. One didn’t lose any time picking up his tray and moving to another table. The other two looked at each other and then back at me and for a minute I thought they’d make a stand. But then they got up and moved too. It was my table from that day on and everybody knew it.
I’d been out of solitary less than a week when three guys came over at lunchtime one day and asked if they could join me. Two of them, Timmy Ross and Joe Pantano, I knew from J-ville. I’d never seen the other one before. I gave them the okay to sit down.
Ross introduced the third guy as John Dillinger. He pronounced the last syllable of his name the way John himself always did— grrr, like a growl, and not jer, the way everybody in the country would be saying it one day.
John offered his hand and I shook it. He said he was glad to know me, he’d heard a lot about me and so on. He was dark-haired and short, not much over five and a half feet, but he had a limber way of moving, like a boxer or a dancer—I would come to find out he’d been a good semipro baseball player—and he had a hell of a grip. He was only a year younger than me, but at the time he struck me as hardly more than a kid. There was nothing in particular about him to make you think he’d ever be the stuff of headlines. He was one of the few married guys in the place—I think he’d been married a year or so at the time—and he was dippy as hell for his wife. Beryl, her name was.
It was his first time in stir and he’d gotten a raw deal. Every guy behind bars says the same thing but in John’s case it was true. He and some stumblebum a lot older than him had robbed a grocer, and inthe course of things John gave the grocer a good whack on the head. It wasn’t long before they got pinched and were charged with felonious conspiracy and assault with intent to rob. The prosecutor assured John that if he pled guilty the judge would go easy on him as a first-time offender. So he
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