Charles Manson Behind Bars (21 page)

“Wow, Charlie! It looks so real,” I told him. “It looks like a real spider.” I was not trying to impress him or gain favor with my words. I was truly amazed at what I was holding.

“Soul, it took me 30 years to perfect how to make them,” Charlie bragged. He pointed out some of the detail that had eluded me, as though it were a real child, his baby.

“Hey, Charlie, are you going to color it,” I inquired.

“Boxcar, paint it for me, will you?” His words were halfway between a request and a command. I knew that just holding his artwork was a real honor for me, one that he would grant to precious few people. How much did he trust me and care for me to allow me to paint his creation, I wondered.

“Sure, I could color it with ink from a black ball point pen,” I offered.

“That’s cool with me,” assured Charlie. I grinned with pride that he was open to my suggestion. I inspected the spider again to assure myself that this was not merely a piece made in error, one that he was casting off in my direction rather than throwing it in the trash. I was pleased to see that the spider was perfect in every detail. This was no error; this was the work of a master.

I set about painting it immediately, completing the task in about forty five minutes. Because the spider needed about two hours to dry, I carefully placed it in a used potato chip bag that had been wiped and rinsed to the sterility of a surgeon’s scalpel.

“Hey Soul, I’m finished with it,” I informed Charlie later that day, “but it needs to dry. Soul, put it somewhere out of the way to dry, okay?”

“Boxcar, you are done coloring it already?” Charlie was surprised. Apparently, he didn’t realize how important this task was to me. I had done it quickly, but as carefully as if it were to be displayed in the Louvre.

“Yeah, Charlie,” I responded. “I did it just like you wanted. Now it looks like a real, live spider.”

“That’s good, Boxcar. That was really fast.” Charlie’s appreciation was clear. He slowly pulled his fishing line toward his cell, tenderly receiving the chip bag once it was within his grasp.

“Do you have enough string left to make me a scorpion?” I asked. I recalled Charlie offering to make me one several weeks prior. Charlie laughed.

“I got enough to make you a scorpion,” Charlie answered. “Soul, it’s just a little time from my sentence. The only thing that gets in the way is getting an extra pairs of boxers.”

“I know what you mean, Charlie,” I empathized, “but it’s a lot of work too, and I appreciate it.” I hoped that my gratitude appeared as sincere as I experienced it. I was certain that my friend had heard all kinds of false statements of appreciation from his fawning fans who wanted something from him. I wasn’t looking to receive from him; I was honored to receive what I had gotten already, which was much more than I deserved.

“Yes, but I’ve been doing this for so many years now that it’s easy for me to do.” Charlie countered, “I’ve gotten better and better at it. Nobody can make these babies as good or as fast as me.

“I’ve got a doll in Japan at the House of the Dead,” he continued. “The only way you can get a doll displayed in that museum is to be dead. Well, I’m a dead man walking three times so they put my doll in there. It’s a two-foot high doll. The ties on it are really small, too.”

“I bet its worth a lot of money,” I offered. Charlie went silent as he set about his next task. I hoped that he was working on the scorpion for me.

Charlie also created melodious harps. He once offered to show me one and even make one for me one. “You can tune it and play it like a real harp,” he had explained.

The next day, Charlie called over to me: “Boxcar, shoot me your line. I’ve got something for you. Shoot me a chip bag, too.”

I rushed to get a chip bag and line ready to extend to Charlie. I was eager to talk with him, but my curiosity consumed me. What was my friend going to show me this time? When he had my line in his possession, he told me to pull back slowly. I found one of Charlie’s scorpions in the bag when it finally arrived back in my cell. I was in awe. It was more intricate and delicate than the spider I had just painted for him. I couldn’t image how he created it in less than twenty-four hours. Perhaps he had started, or even completed it, weeks ago, I considered.

“Charlie, I’m going to color it black,” I promised. I was feeling very emotional at this gift. No one had given me anything like this before.

“Boxcar, a black scorpion is the most deadly scorpion in the whole wide world,” he told me. “It’s called the Emperor Scorpion.”

“Is that right?” I didn’t doubt his knowledge of animals, particularly deadly ones.

“Yes, one sting from an Emperor Scorpion and you’re dead real fast,” he warned.

I thanked Charlie, but he didn’t like me showing appreciation. “Boxcar, don’t tell me, ‘thank you.’” His words became strangely serious. “Hobos don’t have to say ‘thank you' because they get what they got coming, so there’s no need to say it to me, Soul. Understand?”

“Yeah, I understand, Charlie.” I didn’t understand what he was talking about. I did understand that I was not to thank him for his generosity. Whether he blurted this out in a need for control or out of embarrassment, I don’t know. I made a mental note not to say “thank you” to him ever again. I would have to find alternate ways to express my appreciation for him, I realized.

About two weeks later, soon after I had colored the scorpion to a menacing purple-black shade, I began to hear a strange sound emanating from Charlie’s cell.

“Boing, boing, boing.” It sounded like the twanging of a door stop or the reverberations of a flexible strip of metal slapped against on the top of a table.

“Boxcar, can you hear this?” Charlie asked me. There was no question that everyone on the tier could hear it.

“Yeah, I can hear it.” I replied. How was it possible to not hear it, unless you were approaching complete deafness, I wondered. It appeared as though Charlie was trying to get my attention, rather than the usual other way around. “What is it?” I asked.

“It’s a string on a harp I’ve made, “Charlie gloated. “I’m tuning it right now.” The delight in his voice was contagious. “When you come out for shower, take a look in my cell. That way I can keep it out of sight of the guards.”

We had showers at 2:15 that afternoon. I was third on our tier to make the trek to the shower room. I peeked into Charlie’s window as I walked past his cell. I tried to do it smoothly so as not to draw unnecessary attention to myself or to Charlie’s harp. Several inmates had been written up for disrupting the tier while heading to the shower. I didn’t intend to join that group. I caste a glance into his cell and saw his harp. He was holding it up toward the window as if he were offering it for auction. He was proud of it, and I was honored to see it.

It was truly an amazing piece of art—and it played too! I wondered how many hours had been used to fashion it and what Charlie had used to create it.

“Hey, Charlie,” I said after I had returned to my cell. “That’s a trip. You actually made a harp that plays. I can’t believe it.”

“I told you, Soul,” Charlie said, “I’ve been doing this for years and years. Did you see the beads on it to separate the strings?”

“Yes, I saw them.” I had also seen that they were black.

By this time, all the strings were in place and Charlie was attempting to tune them. They each made a distinct sound that promised to harmonize in a soothing melody once they were all accurately tightened. This was the most creative item I had ever seen fashioned in a cell. Charlie told me that it was made solely of toilet paper, dental floss, and some elastic from boxer shorts. Other, mostly food, items were used to color it. For this creation alone, Charles Manson could be considered a genius. However, I saw more, far, far more emanating from this man’s brain.

I asked him how he made the harp, one day. I actually had to ask him a second time because he was not facing the right direction when I spoke or his hearing was causing him problems again.

“Well, Boxcar,” Charlie began. “How I make a harp is to get piles of toilet paper arranged on my sink. I get so many piles that I can wet them and arrange them around the rim of my sink. I’ve also used the toilet rim to make a harp with a different shape.

“You gotta squeeze the water out of the wet paper,” He continued. “This part takes hours. I just sit and squeeze, like I do with the beads, only it takes much longer. I also make sure that the paper is evenly distributed around the rim. I put pen inserts in place to make the necessary holes; it’s best to have the paper dry with the holes already in it. It takes a couple of days to dry and paint. Then you’ve got your harp.”

I couldn’t imagine the value of one of these instruments. I had heard that a piece of his hair could fetch $100, a crude drawing, $500 if it was autographed. Geraldo Rivera did an interview with Charlie and later sold the one hour videos for $19.99. Charlie was certain that the reporter made millions of dollars from this venture.

“If you have money, you have power,” Manson had ranted. “Power is strength and money will get you a lot of respect, too!” His ability to manipulate the simplest of pieces of paper and food into world-class works of art earned him my total respect, regardless of how much money he had.

From Charlie, I learned how to multi-task and get several things done at the same time. He helped motivate me to accomplish many tasks, and to aspire to great things. His ability with beads and dolls and harps encouraged me to think big and do the best that I could at everything. I may never write the songs he has or master an instrument like him, but I can still be the best that I can be.

I certainly don’t want to be “brain dead” like many people in the world. Charlie often warned me about this. “Most people are not using their brains,” he told me.” They are just walking around like damn robots with no fucking direction whatsoever.” Charlie was always moving, always creating, always thinking. I learned to do the same.

Nothing made Charlie happier while doing his time than talking about his guitar. “I sure wish I had my guitar right now,” Charlie would exclaim. “I could play all day and all night. With my guitar, I go into my music and go places, man. I can make sounds that will make you wonder how I could do the sounds on a musical instrument!”

“Charlie,” I replied. “I could just imagine you playing a guitar, especially an electric guitar with all of the years of experience that you have. I bet you could make some really great sounds.”

“Man, I can play better than anyone you’ve ever heard play,” boasted Charlie.

I believed him, too.

Charlie reminisced often about his time in San Quentin State Prison. He spent several years there, first on death row for the 7 murders in the Tate and La Bianca attacks, and then in a unit segregated from the general population when the death penalty was rescinded in California in 1972. To me, he never criticized the institution any more than any other prison in which he had served. He recounted numerous stories about events in that facility that stands in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge. Each story was as fascinating as the story teller.

Located in Marin County, just outside San Rafael in Northern California, San Quentin State Prison opened in 1852, making it the oldest penal institution in the state. The first prison at that location comprised a wooden ship moored in the San Francisco Bay in 1851. It was prepared to house thirty inmates. The boat prison was later replaced with a structure constructed just yards from where the boat was moored. Until 1932, the facility held women as well as men. It boasts of being the site of the first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in 1941.

Today, it’s the sole location of California’s death row, housing all of the state’s prisoners who have been sentenced to die. Since 1996, executions have been carried out by lethal injection. Still, San Quentin retains its gas chamber. The property is so large (432 acres), and houses so many inmates (over 5,000, nearly twice its capacity) that it possesses its own postal code. Few other penal institutions in the United States have so many inmates.

Famous residents at San Quentin include Richard Ramirez, the night stalker; Scott Peterson who killed his wife and unborn son, placing them in the San Francisco Bay; and David Carpenter, the trailside killer. Nevertheless, the biggest celebrity to ever be housed in San Quentin would have to be my friend, Charles Manson.

One afternoon, while I was in my cell minding my own business, reading some books sent to me by a publishing house in San Francisco, I heard a rap on the wall. It was Charlie. “Boxcar!”

“Yeah, what’s up, Charlie?” I queried.

“Back when I was in San Quentin,” he said launching into a story, “some guys tried to punk me.”

“Is that right, Charlie?” I was interested in what he was about to say.

“Yeah,” he continued. “They said I snitched on some of my people, and told me not to come out of my cell or they’d kill me.”

“Is that right, Charlie?” I repeated.

“Yeah, so I came out of my cell the first chance I could, and two big white guys are standing over me.” His voice betrayed no fear. “They began yelling at me, ‘we told you to not come out of your cell, you rat.’”

As Charlie spoke, he seemed to be reliving the experience. He told me how he responded to the threat: “I’m a man. Who are you to tell me not to come out of my cell? Are you a guard?”

Apparently, two other San Quentin inmates, also large men, who were friendly to Charlie, had heard the commotion. Charlie told me that they interrupted the two men who had confronted him. Charlie’s friends demanded proof that Charlie had snitched.

“I never snitched on them. I ain’t never finked on nobody about nothing,” Charlie recounted what he had said to his attackers. Because the men could not get their stories straight to the satisfaction of Charlie’s friends, the men who accused Charlie ended up wandering away like dogs with their tales between their legs. Manson impressed upon me how close he had come to being killed in that altercation.