The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim by Iceberg Slim

Author:Iceberg Slim
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Cash Money Content

During my long, idiotic quest for something for nothing, I met under nonsociable conditions in four penitentiaries an army of hacks, bulls, screws—prison guards. At least ninety-eight percent of them were fear-ridden scum trapped in a paranoia that they themselves had created through physical and mental cruelties inflicted on hapless convicts.

But one seemed different or perhaps age had withered the brute in him when I met him. He was “Old Tom,” the guard on duty the night those half corpses down the way from my steel casket hacksawed themselves free into the nightmare shadows of the darkened cell house to stalk unwary “Old Tom” with that peculiar patience that men driven mad often summon.

Like I said, Tom wasn’t too stinking as hacks go. He wouldn’t motherfuck you if you asked for extra aspirin, and he was on rare occasion almost kindly and even concerned about my health. I saw in his eyes and heard beneath his casual chitchat his awareness of and his desire to escape the trick bag of atrocity and danger that cops and screws are put into for the protection and benefit of the corrupt big wheels of the Establishment.

One night I put Tom’s humanity to the stiffest test. I was desperate as hell to hit on him for a special favor before his shift ended. But I kept stalling and watching him passing my cell on his rounds of the cell house until I felt I would blow up with tension. I got off my bunk and stood by the cell door. At last I heard the scrape of his feet making the next-to-last round of his shift. His startled eyes glowed in his seamed face as his flashlight caught me standing in the quiet blackness. I whispered, “Tom, this telegram came from California today. My old lady is dying, and I’m the low-life ass that’s been pushing her along for twenty years. I wrote some things she has to hear before she goes. Will you please take the letter out with you tonight and put air mail special stamps on it? I can oil you with a double saw note. How about it? Huh?”

He grunted and flashed his torch on the telegram. I unfolded it and held it in the spotlight. He grunted again and growled, “Tough luck about your mother, but what the hell you think I am, a patsy? You goddamn well know it’s a serious violation of the rules for an officer to lug a kite for an inmate. Now get the hell in that bunk and send your mail through regular channels tomorrow. And money is contraband. Haven’t you got enough problems? Get rid of it.”

I said, “I can’t use the joint mail. With the censoring and a three-cent stamp on it, she could be buried before the letter got to California. You’re the only hope I got.”

He looked at me for a long moment and said, “Make a deal with somebody on the day shift.”

I said, “The only one that would do it for me is off tomorrow.

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