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and so they wouldn't end up in hell too. The rich man said he knew they'd listen to a dead man come back to tell them something . But Abraham said he wouldn't do that either. 2 3 I took a sash off somebody's bathrobe at the state hospital, and I hung myself in a closet, but I didn't die. I don't remember the end of it, only that I didn't die. After that, they started watching me, and it was harder. I got a piece of glass and cut myself deep on the side of my neck and into my wrists, but it didn't work. So then they tied me down, and all I could do was to beat my head against things. I knew if I hit my nosebone just right, it would go back up into my brain and kill me. I tried to break my neck one time. It might sound funny now, but it wasn't then. I run across the dayroom fast as I could—the big room out where everybody sat around, one that was long enough so I could pick up speed—and I bent my head down and just before I hit the wall I crooked it over as far as I could. I figured it would snap my backbone at the back of my neck, like it would have if I'd fell out of a window and landed with my neck bent like that. But it didn't even knock me out. I run acrossthe room and slammed into the wall,and I heard somebody yell, "Touchdown," and then a few people laughing. They started giving me them medicines and shocks a whole lot and keeping me tied up, but there's only so much you can do. If a person wants to die, they'll keep on trying to find a way to do it. I started hiding anything I could get my hands on, just anything, 171 and not because I knew what I was going to do with it, but because maybe I could figure something out. I made a split in the side of my mattress, and I put things in there. If they let me out for a walk in the yard, while nobody was looking I'd get me a rock or pick up whatever else I might find on the ground, like a penny or a bobby pin. Or I might just reach down and get me a handful of grass or dirt and carry that back in. One time I found a long piece of tape, and that give me the idea for how to do it. I figured Fd take whatever I had in my mattress — and some of the stuffing would be good for it too—and Fd roll it up and tape it all up tight into a wad and wet it down good so I could mash it all together and then late one night after everybodywas asleep and I was locked in by myself and the attendant was way down the hall somewhere, sitting with his feet up and listening to the radio, Fd stick that wad down my windpipe. Fd get it just the right size so I could wedge it back there and then suck back real hard and it would have bobby pins and straight pins all bent up inside it, and I wouldn't be able to get it out even if I wanted to. I got it all fixed up, and it was about the size of a pecan, and I went ahead with it—breathed the wad back into my windpipe and almost choked to death, but then I woke up not dead again. After that I just sort of give up on dying for the time being. It would come sooner or later, I decided, and I figured maybe the deal was that I didn't deserve to die yet; maybe I was supposed to keep on living so I could think about everything some more and it could eat me away from the inside out. It ain't exactly true that I quit trying though. I did take a bottle of pills I got my hands on one time, after they had put me over in the prison. It was a full bottle with a long name on it that I can't remember now and didn't know what it...
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