THE BUNKS IN the Stroudsburg jail were rough planks. The food was oatmeal, and we were glad to have it. The judge would return in a few days and let us go upon our promise to leave town. That’s what we were told.
On our second day as his guests, Deputy Hastings took pity and passed me his Stroudsburg Sentinel. I had been pacing back and forth, and would have happily read the train schedule. But I never got to the trains, because on the first page, set in large type, were the words OUTRAGE IN DAMASCUS! The story told of a dastardly attack on a young woman who had been beaten, raped, and then thrown off a bridge into the Delaware River. She’d been found the next morning, barely alive. Then my heart made a fist—the woman was identified as the adopted daughter of David Fortnam of Tyler Hill, Miss Helen Slater. This had to be a dream. I shook my head and looked again. No, I was awake and the newspaper was real.
“Marie!”
She came to the small window between our cells, and I handed her the paper. A moment later she cried out. “Oh, Joseph! That poor girl! Helen. What are we to do?”
“I know what I’m going to do,” I said. “I’m going to get out of here and hunt those villains like dogs.” I ran my tin cup on the bars to get the deputy’s attention. He wasn’t amused.
“Those bastards raped my daughter!” I yelled.
The deputy gave a disbelieving look. “You saying that girl’s your daughter? She ain’t nobody’s daughter. Paper says she’s an orphan.”
“No, she’s mine! Let me out of here!”
In a clearer mind, I would have been less insistent, for we were to be set free in a day or two. But now I wanted out on a claim about a story in the newspaper, and they weren’t going to be “taken for fools.” That’s what the sheriff said.
Days passed. Then a week. The time had now gone when we should have been released. I was furious but could do nothing. My daughter’s attackers were getting away.
On the ninth day, Sheriff Briscoe walked back to my cell. “You’re going now,” he said as he unlocked the door. Then he clapped a set of irons on me. “You’re going to New York, that is. It seems you have some friends there.”
“What?”
“We have the warrant. And, yes, you were telling the truth about the girl, except it seems there’s some other question.” The sheriff curled his lip. “I think we ought to make an inspection. See what’s what. Wouldn’t want to arrest the wrong person. So if you’ve got a willie, let’s see it. Take them britches off.”
“I’m not taking off nothin’,” I said, pulling away.
“Maybe you need a little help,” the sheriff said, stepping toward me.
I raised my shackles, but he just laughed. “Whatever happens, it’s just you trying to escape custody, so I don’t care how much of a brawl you make. I’m gonna see what I want to see.”
I thought of my daughter at the hands of men who would rape and murder without a thought. I considered the sheriff one of them, and I was prepared to make him pay a price—I didn’t care what happened to me. Then Marie’s voice came from the next cell. “Sheriff?” she asked calmly. “Do you have a wife and children? Do you go to church? Do you care what people say about you?”
I think the sheriff had forgotten Marie was there. He quickly sobered and decided to get rid of us both. He opened Marie’s cell and told her that she was free.
“I’ll go where my husband goes,” she said.
“Your husband?” he said. “You call whatever that is your husband?”
I was led outside to a wagon and loaded onto the back where there was a little hay, one blanket, and a hasp to which I was fastened. The deputy snapped the reins, and I began the slow journey from Stroudsburg to Delhi—in irons, like I had killed someone.
Marie walked behind, crying. A mile out of town, the deputy stopped the wagon. “Get on,” he said. Marie thanked him and climbed up beside me. Three days in the back of that wagon was agony. Marie did what she could for me, but the trip was hardly any better for her.
* * *
Late on the third day, we pulled into the yard of the Delaware County almshouse. A man I didn’t know came out, a pistol strapped to his leg. He was with Jennings, a resident I knew. Deputy Hastings got down and went over to the men. A moment later he turned to me. “Mrs. Slater, this is Herm Cranston, housemaster. You are in his custody.”
“Where’s Mrs. McNee?”
“I don’t usually talk to crazy people,” said Cranston, “but the old hag is gone. And you and your kind are one of the reasons. Deputy, if I could call upon you for one last service? Would you help Jennings escort Mrs. Slater to her cell in the backhouse?”
“I’m not going there!” I shouted, suddenly realizing that they were going to lock me up with the insane.
“Yes, you are,” said Cranston, “and that’s where you’re gonna stay.”
Marie tried to say something, but Cranston shouted her down. “Watch yourself, missy,” he warned. “Step on this property, and I’ll have you arrested.”
Marie glared at him. Cranston gave a small smile. “Take the inmate up.” Deputy Hastings took me by the arm, and Jennings led the way. I didn’t fight. It wouldn’t have done any good, and I didn’t want to give this Cranston character a show. We went upstairs, Jennings opened a door, and in a moment, I was alone.
The pen was eight feet square with a bunk, a corn shuck tick, and a slop bucket. The place stank. There was no window, just a diamond-shaped hole in the door and a narrow opening at the bottom. A little later, a bowl of gruel slid through it.
“Who’s there?” I said.
“It’s me, Jennings,” came the answer in a hushed voice. I ran to the hole and peered at him. “I’m sorry for your trouble, Joe,” he said. “I’m not even ’sposed to say nothin’ to ya, and iffen I know Cranston, he’s countin’ the seconds.”
“What happened to Mrs. McNee?”
“She’s gone. You did right, Joe, to leave. Things are bad now. No one works in town anymore. The garden’s gone to hell. Cranston thinks he can get things to grow by pointing his gun.”
“Where’s Marie?”
“She went to town, but Cranston’s expecting somethin’. And he says he’ll shoot anyone trying to get you outta here, including Miss Marie. I gotta go.”
“God bless you, Jennings.”
I felt afraid for Marie, for I knew she would come. In another day, I was more afraid for myself. I was inside a ship that had sunk at sea.
On my third night, I woke to a faint tap on the door. “Joseph?”
I was up in an instant. “I'm here, Marie,” I whispered. “How did you get in? You’re in danger.”
“Never mind that. Listen. I met with Mrs. Caldwell. I think she’s going to help. And I talked to the sheriff, or at least I tried to. He wasn’t happy to see me and said right out that he didn’t want to know anything. He said he hoped you wouldn’t break the law.”
A dog out back began to bark—the neighbor’s bitch.
“Marie, Cranston will shoot you if he catches you here.”
“Then listen. Be ready. I don’t know when.”
* * *
Days went by. Nothing happened, and no encouraging message found its way to me. I began to despair. I could not imagine anyone lasting more than a week or two in this hell before his humanity was extinguished for all time. Why was this allowed? It would be more kind to shoot the insane. Truly.
I tried to think of things to do to keep myself from coming undone. I made a crude clock by marking the travels of a sliver of light that came from the outside through a crack. I tried to think of ways to open that crack so that the light might be a fraction larger. I found a nail that I could grip. It wasn’t loose, but the wood around it was old and dry. I tapped it a little each day with my shoe, and then slipped the lip of my tin plate under the head to see if it would come out. A few days of trying, and I had the nail, about the size of my little finger.
I used the nail to widen the crack in the board, but I took care not to work it too hard—I had plans for it. If I were to remain penned up, I was certain that Cranston, at some time, would come to admire his work. And when he did, I would act broken, and I probably would be broken by then, except that I would have saved just a small piece of myself for the occasion. I’d wait for him to relax or turn his back, and then I’d spring up and bury the nail in his neck.
A day or two later, a fever came on. I lay in the darkness, sweating and aching. Now where was the broth, the soft word, or the hand to the brow? I thought about my mother. I strained to remember when I was young and she loved me and took care of me. Why had she changed?
The sickness stayed for a week. When it left, I tried to keep track of the days, but couldn’t. At times, I cried for the lack of anything else. No messages and no Marie. Had she been arrested? I had no way to find out, for the man who brought my food was someone I didn’t know, and he wouldn’t say a thing. I stopped hoping for rescue, because the daily dimming of that hope was more than I could bear. I began to think of other uses for my nail—a particular vein in my arm called to me.
“Joseph, we’re here.” I had heard Marie’s voice before—been woken by her voice on several occasions only to discover that the voice was just a wish inside my head. Marie spoke again, so I answered into the dark. What came in return was something that made me think I wasn’t dreaming. It was a man’s voice I didn’t recognize. “Joe,” he said in a whisper, “we’re going to pry the hasp. You ready?” I said I was, and then I heard some tapping and a few grunts. Then louder tapping and low cursing.
“Joe,” said the man, “it’s stronger than we thought. I’ve got a bar, and I’m ready to do it, but it’s gonna make a lot of noise. You and Miss Perry will be on your own. Understand?”
“Do it,” I said, not lowering my voice.
There were three hard bangs and the sound of groaning wood. The inmates in the backhouse began to howl, along with all the dogs on the west end of Delhi. Three more bangs, and the door flew open.
“God bless you, gentlemen,” said Marie. All I ever saw of my rescuers was a pair of shadows fleeing down the hall.
Marie found my hand and pulled me behind her, down the stairs and out into the yard. Several rooms in the house were already lit. Cranston’s voice could be heard above all. “Herbert, Jennings! Get the clubs!” Then he was on the porch. “What’s going on out there? Don’t play any tricks. I’ve got a gun!”
Marie and I ran behind the chicken coop, which gave us cover till we got around to the side of the house where Marie had hidden her bag. From there we couldn’t see Cranston, but from his shouts it seemed that he hadn’t moved off the porch. Then a shot was fired. It couldn’t have been fired at us, but we ducked anyway and crouched low as we hurried across the front yard, moving toward the road and freedom.
Suddenly, a man came out of the dark. He was coming around the house from the other side and nearly ran into us, a stick or a club in his hand. A terrified moment later we recognized the man as Jennings, and it took about the same time for him to see it was us.
Cranston’s voice came from out back. “Jennings, anything out there?”
I knew that Paul Jennings wished us no harm, but I also knew him to be obedient. I didn’t dare speak, nor could I plead with my eyes because of the dark. I stopped breathing.
“Can’t see nothin’,” he shouted.