Free The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti: A New England Legend by Howard Fast

prison; and the Warden, who had been told earlier that trouble might be expected and that reinforcements were on their way, went out to greet them, and eyed them most dubiously.
    When the chief of the state police had first called the Warden and said that, acting upon instructions of the Governor, he was sending additional forces to the prison, the Warden replied querulously and with a good deal of annoyance.
    â€œWhat kind of trouble?” the Warden wanted to know.
    They did not say what kind of trouble. They had no way of knowing what kind of trouble. It just seemed that there was trouble in the making, and that they ought to be prepared to meet it.
    â€œWell, if you feel that way about it, I suppose that’s your feeling and you have got some basis for it,” the Warden said to the chief of police, thinking to himself that there was plenty of trouble and would be a good deal more before this bitter day finished; but not that kind of trouble. What did they think, the Warden wondered? Did they think that an army was coming to blast through the prison walls and take out the two anarchists? In his own thoughts, the Warden was somewhat defensive about Sacco and Vanzetti. He had come to believe that he was possessed of an area of knowledge about the condemned men denied to the average man and woman; and he knew very well what mild and quiet people these poor devils were. That was such knowledge as grew inside of a prison and nowhere else. The Warden could think back to many years of learning how mild and quiet some people were, people whom the whole outside world condemned with one voice.
    Now he went outside to talk to the captain of the state police, who headed up the semi-military detachment; and the Warden told him sourly that he could use his own judgment in stationing his men here and there—wherever he saw fit.
    â€œWhat kind of trouble do you expect?” the captain of the state police asked him.
    â€œI don’t expect trouble,” the Warden snapped. “Not your kind of trouble, anyway.”
    Then he went back to his office, leaving the captain of police to say to a lieutenant, “Now what in hell is eating him? You’d just think he had some call to take our heads off!”
    The Warden returned to his office, his face as dark and threatening as a cloud-filled sky. Several people who were waiting outside of his office and had one thing and another to discuss with him, changed their minds and decided that what they had to talk about would hold until his mood changed a little; that is, all except the electrician, for like the Warden, the electrician had not chosen this day but had instead been confronted with it, and he had things to discuss with the Warden whether the Warden’s face was solemn or not. He entered the Warden’s office and pointed out to him with necessary bluntness that here it was a quarter of an hour past eleven o’clock in the morning, and he had not tested the current.
    â€œWell, why the devil don’t you test it?” the Warden wanted to know.
    â€œOnly because I was told to see you and talk to you before I tested it,” the electrician answered defensively.
    The Warden now remembered that he had given those instructions. It was just a small kindness he had thought of, for it did no good for the prison population to see the lights wax and wane, grow dim, and then come on again. When that happened, they knew everywhere in the prison that juice was being fed into the electric chair, and that here was a sort of rehearsal for the taking of life. Not being a completely insensitive man, the Warden was aware that every prisoner in the place shared to some extent in the suffering of the three doomed men, and waited for the time of execution with fear and at least some heartsickness. The prison bound its population into a unit that was like a living body, and when a part of this body died, a little of each individual also died. People who have never