Adam's Chain Gang Imprisonment

After his discharge from the army in 1890, Adam Trask did not return home to Connecticut. Instead, he wandered for over three years as a bindlestiff across the American South and West, a period of rootless freedom that ended when he was picked up for vagrancy near Tallahassee, Florida. The sheriff's men judged him a vagrant and sentenced him to six months on a road gang, the standard method of road-building in that era. Before he could draw a free breath, he was released and instantly picked up again for a second six-month term, a revolving-door system designed to keep the labor supply constant. Adam thus served nearly a full year in leg irons, learning firsthand how men can consider other men as beasts and that the easiest way to get along with such men was to become a beast himself.

The Brutality of the System

The road gang was governed by savage discipline. The prisoners were guarded at work by men with shotguns and shackled by the ankle at night to a chain. The savage whippings for the least stir of will, for the smallest shred of dignity or resistance, indicated to Adam that the guards were afraid of the prisoners. Drawing on his years in the army, he knew that a man afraid is a dangerous animal. He feared what whipping would do to his body and his spirit, and he responded by drawing a curtain around himself. He removed expression from his face, light from his eyes, and silenced his speech. It was a triumph of self-control to see a man whipped until the muscles of his back show white and glistening through the cuts and to give no sign of pity or anger or interest, and Adam learned this.

The Strategy of Invisibility

During his second sentence, Adam reduced his personality to a minus. He caused no stir, put out no vibration, and became as nearly invisible as it is possible to be. When the guards could not feel him, they were not afraid of him. They gave him the jobs of cleaning the camps, handing out the slops to the prisoners, and filling the water buckets. This strategy of self-erasure was the only protection available, and it worked. He waited until three days before his second release. Right after noon that day, he filled the water buckets and went back to the little river for more. He filled his buckets with stones and sank them, then eased himself into the water and swam a long way downstream, rested, and swam farther down. He kept moving in the water until at dusk he found a place under a bank with bushes for cover. He did not get out of the water.

The Escape

Late in the night, he heard the hounds go by, covering both sides of the river. He had rubbed his hair hard with green leaves to cover human odor. He sat in the water with his nose and eyes clear. In the morning, the hounds came back, disinterested, and the men were too tired to beat the banks properly. When they were gone, Adam dug a piece of water-logged fried sowbelly out of his pocket and ate it. He had schooled himself against hurry, knowing that most men were caught bolting. It took him five days to cross the short distance into Georgia. He took no chances, holding back his impatience with an iron control. He was astonished at his own ability. On the edge of Valdosta, Georgia, he lay hidden until long after midnight, entered the town like a shadow, and forced a window of a cheap store. He stole a pair of cheap trousers, a white shirt, black shoes, black hat, and an oilskin raincoat, trying on each article for fit. He forced himself to make sure nothing looked disturbed before he climbed out the window. He had taken nothing which was not heavily stocked and had not even looked for the cash drawer. He lay hidden during the day and went in search of food at night—turnips, a few ears of corn from a crib, a few windfall apples—nothing that would be missed. He broke the newness of the shoes with rubbed sand and kneaded the raincoat to destroy its newness. It was three days before he got the rain he needed, or in his extreme caution felt he needed. The rain started late in the afternoon. Adam huddled under his oilskin, waiting for the dark to come, and when it did he walked through the dripping night into the town of Valdosta. He made his way to the station and peered through a rain-blurred window. The station agent, in green eyeshade and black alpaca worksleeves, leaned through the ticket window, talking to a friend. It was twenty minutes before the friend went away. Adam watched him off the platform, took a deep breath to calm himself, and went inside.

Aftermath and Significance

Adam's imprisonment on the chain gang was far more horrible afterward than when it was happening. The experience taught him a profound lesson in self-preservation through self-effacement, a skill he carried with him for the rest of his life. It also left him with a deep and abiding shame. When he finally returned to the Trask farm in Connecticut, he confessed to his brother Charles that he had been a prisoner and an escaped convict, and that he had robbed a store for clothes and money to send the telegram that brought him home. The confession was a measure of how deeply the experience had marked him, and it was the only time in his life that he ever spoke of it. The chain gang was the crucible in which Adam's passive, nonviolent nature was forged, and it remained a secret burden that shaped his every subsequent decision.