Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade (20 page)

Outside on the tier, a heavy key banged on a pipe and
a voice bellowed: "Count time on two!"

Time to stand up where I'd be easy to see. A shadow
appeared. "Let's see a hand," said a voice. I put my fingers through
the slot. Two guards went by, each counting to himself. At the end they
compared figures. If both were the same, the count was phoned to Control. The
calls came from cell houses, Death Row, hospital and the ranch. When each unit
was right and the total was right, a steam whistle blew the "all
clear."

I happened to be peering out of the slot. Within a
minute of the all clear, a torrent of guards began streaming through the Garden
Beautiful toward the pedestrian sallyport. It was the day shift going off duty.

I went back to
The
Fountainhead,
the heroic architect, the cynical publisher, the woman
columnist who married the publisher and loved the architect. Much of my
childhood and youth had been spent like this, locked in a cell with a book. Far
more than most, what I thought about the world was the imprint of what I read,
filling the void usually reserved for family and community.

A key turned in the lock. Two guards passed in two
gray blankets and a pillowcase carrying a "fish kit." It had several
items: a toothbrush, a tiny brown paper bag with toothpowder, a three piece
safety razor and two Gillette thin blades. There was a sharpened pencil stub
(actually a pencil cut in half), two sheets of lined paper and two stamped
envelopes. There was a booklet:
Dept. of
Corrections, Rules and Regulations.
There was a form:
Application for

Mail & Visiting.
We were allowed ten names, excluding attorneys of
record.

Who should I put on the list? Mrs Hal Wallis for sure.
Not Al Matthews. He had given up. Yes for Dr Frym. He knew San Quentin's chief
psychiatrist — and wherever I went they wanted psychiatric reports. My Aunt
Eva, yes. She was my only contact with my father. She would tell me how he was
getting along. Thinking about my father in the dreary rest home stung my eyes.
At least he wouldn't know where I was. What about my mother? Should I put her
on my list? She might send a few dollars and that could make life easier in San
Quentin, but the sad, simple truth was that I had no affection for her. The
State of California had raised me. She had another husband and another child;
she had a decent if dull life. I was a leftover from her youth. The bottom line
was being unable to forgive her for telling a juvenile court judge that she was
unable to control me. That removed the last vestige of affection. I scarcely
knew her, and this was the time to end the charade of mother and son. She would
be better off, too. I left her name off the application. Some months later the
Protestant chaplain called me in and said my mother had written the Warden, who
had referred it to him. I told him that I didn't want anything to do with her.
When he tried to convince me otherwise, I told him to mind his own business.

Was there anyone else? No. Voices summoned me to the
slot. Down below the misty raindrops were caught in powerful floodlights.
Convicts with collars turned up and books under their arms trudged in lines
with their heads down against the wind, no doubt coming from night school. The
last time I'd gone to school, I was ten years old. In reform school we were
supposed to go to school for half a day, but I was always in lockup for one
thing or another, fighting another kid or the Man. I couldn't do that here. The
walls had eaten tougher men than me. Nobody was going to send me to Broadway,
because I was too much trouble.
Nobody
was that
tough. Without anyone telling me, I knew that anyone too tough to handle would
simply be killed, one way or another. This was no kiddy playpen like the places
I'd been. This was San Quentin. The question was: how different could I be?

We don't really choose what we are except within a
certain range. Yet looking through the narrow slot at the rain falling through
the floodlights onto the prison, I did make one vow: I would feed my hunger
for knowledge. I would make this time serve me while I served it.

I was still reading when I heard the lament of a
trumpet blowing "Taps" somewhere nearby. For a moment I thought it
was dream or delusion, but it was real, the long, sad notes blowing across San
Quentin prison. A minute later the cell light was turned off from somewhere
else.

Later, a flashlight beam in my eyes awakened me. A
guard was taking count. When he was gone, I was still lying on the floor,
looking up through the narrow slot. I could see an inch of night sky and a
single glittering star. It was hypnotic. I remembered a book from reform
school:
Star Rover
by Jack London, the tale
of a man in a San Quentin cell like this, perhaps the very same cell that I
occupied. He was put in a straitjacket, this man of awesome, unyielding
willpower. He would fix his mind on a star and somehow project himself through
space and time and live other lives. Was it real or only in his mind? I
couldn't remember which, or if it had been clarified. It didn't seem to matter
for the theme of the tale, which was that he could escape his torment through
the use of his mind.

Thinking
of
Star Rover
excited me. Knowing history let
anyone see more of life. How could we know where we were if we didn't know
where we'd been before? Now I was in the "Big House," as someone
called it in a movie. How long would I be here? Up to ten years was what the
statute said, six months to ten years, a truly indeterminate sentence. The idea
of the maximum was unthinkable, but the difference between three, four, five or
even six years was a lot of indeterminate time. Convicts knew the
average
usually served before parole, but I was
never average in the judgement of the authorities. Then, too, would I survive?
Men died in prison, especially those who were magnets for trouble. If past is
prologue, I belonged in the magnet category. Fear was in my belly and resolve
in my heart when I finally fell asleep that rainy first night in San Quentin,
a
-20284
bunker, e.h.

The heavy thunk of the turning key brought me
simultaneously awake and on my feet. One inmate filled the door. "The
tray," he said, extending a hand.

I grabbed the preceding evening's tray and handed it
to him. He backed out and another inmate handed me another tray. Breakfast was
cold grits and a cold fried egg. Actually it was burned crisp brown on the
bottom while raw on the top, so to say it was cooked might be an error. I mixed
the runny part with the grits and folded the burned part in a piece of bread,
and washed the whole mess down with weak, lukewarm coffee.

It was still too early for much activity around the
Garden Beautiful and the Captain's Porch in the old mansion across the way. I
went back to Ayn Rand. Howard Roark had blown up his own buildings because his
plans had been changed. Although I was in his corner, I thought he over-reacted
just a little.

Steel doors were being opened down the tier, the sound
growing louder as they worked closer. Finally mine opened. A guard stood there.
"Wanna empty that shit bucket and get some water."

"Sure do, boss." Experts had taught me how
to "buck dance" for the Man.

Grabbing the water can in one hand and the shit bucket
in the other, turning my head away from the latter, I stepped out of the cell
onto the walkway. The post-rain morning was sunlight bright; it made me turn my
eyes aside. Below me and off to the left, I could see several convicts
loitering and trying not to attract attention. They strolled in one direction
for fifteen or twenty feet; then turned and went the other way, trying to blend
into the stream of convicts going and coming. Standing still would more swiftly
attract the eye of the gun guard on the catwalk over the pedestrian sallyport.
The cons were trying to surreptitiously talk to someone off to my right.

A
figure was coming from each cell, and each carried the water can and the shit
bucket. I had to pause while a convict swept the trash from his cell onto the
walkway, where most of it fell through the slats to the ground below. His shirt
was off and his muscular body was marked with blue tattoos. When he turned his
head, I saw plucked eyebrows, eye shadow and red lips. His jeans were absurdly
tight. He was a screaming faggot who looked like a linebacker. He stepped into
his cell to let me go by. I smiled to myself.

From another cell stepped a petite Chicano, doe-eyed
pretty and swishy as a model. Then I saw two more female parodies, shirt tails
tied at the waist.

I was momentarily weak, as if punched in the stomach.
Captain L.S. (Red) Nelson had taken revenge for when I pulled off his gas mask
and belted him in the chops. He'd put me on queens' row.

The weakness was inundated by blinding rage.
"Bullshit!" I screamed, swinging the shit bucket in a wide arc. It
slammed into the wall and splattered several sissies with shit and piss. They
screamed and bolted down the tier toward the rear. One or two jumped into their
cells and closed the door. The loitering convicts below stopped pacing and
simply stared.

"I ain't no punk!" I yelled. To be so
labeled was to forfeit all standing. It was to be an object without manhood.
Only child molesters and stool pigeons had less standing in the prison
hierarchy. It was terrible! It was
untrue!

I heard the click clack sound of a cartridge being
levered into a rifle's firing chamber. The gunrail guard had moved along the
walkway. It was about fifty yards. On the ground next to the garden, a crowd of
convicts was quickly growing. Except for me, the tier was empty, although one
sissy down the way was peeking around the corner of his doorway.

A guard appeared at the end of the tier. He stopped a
safe distance away. "What's going on?"

"Hey, I'm not no fuckin' punk, man!"

"Who said you're a punk."

A second guard appeared on the gunrail.

"Shoot! Goddamnit! Go ahead and shoot! I ain't
staying here."

A sergeant came around the end of the tier. He had a
big white mustache and the face of experience. He moved toward me, slowly,
carefully maintaining enough distance to avoid a swing of the bucket. Before I
could move into range, the two gunrail guards would add some lead to my body
weight.

"Take it easy, kid. Nobody says you're a
punk."

"I'm here . . . with the punks. I'm not stayin'
here. You gotta kill me first."

"We can do that," said another voice. A
lieutenant in a creased uniform had come around the other way. He was closer,
but he was at an open door, ready to duck inside if I swung. He had a gas billy
in hand. "Now put that bucket down and get in your cell."

"So all of you can dance on me."

"Nobody's gonna do that."

From below the voices yelled: "Don't do it!"
"Don't believe 'em," and so forth.

"I'm no fruiter ... no faggot ... no punk . . .
and I'm not fuckin' stayin' here. I don't give a fuck what you do."

"Ho . . . hold it. You've got it wrong. Those
first two cells, they're not queens' row. They're holding cells."

The Sergeant, too, had moved closer from the other
direction, but still maintained a safe distance. "You're on holding cell
status until you see the Cap'n."

As I looked at the Sergeant, the lieutenant came on
fast tiptoe. "Look out!" yelled the convicts below.

I turned to face the lieutenant just as he extended
his arm and fired the tear gas directly into my face. The explosive charge was
a shotgun cartridge, but instead of shot there was tear gas. It instantly
blinded me. The force drove my head into the wall.

They were on me in a second: a fist in the gut, a
towel around the neck. The towel was twisted. It cut off the blood to my brain,
and within a few seconds I sank into black unconsciousness. Such choke holds
can kill very quickly if the pressure is maintained, but if it is released, the
blood flows back and consciousness returns.

The cell door was closing behind me as I revived. I
wanted to cry, but my eyes were already on fire. I'd eaten tear gas before, but
that didn't make it any easier. At least it had happened outside the cell. If
it had been inside, for days afterward the particles of gas would stir up
whenever I moved. I knew from experience that it was best to lie down and let
it settle, which is exactly what I did.

It still burned, but was bearable, an hour later when
a key banged on the door and eyes appeared at the slot. "Cap'n wants to
see you. Don't give us trouble when we open the door."

The key turned, the door opened and I got up, my eyes
burning more as my movements stirred up the particles.

In a tight group, three guards and me, we went down
the rear stairs, through the gate and across the garden to the porch. One door
was marked
captain's office
, and one next to it
said
associate warden, custody.

The lieutenant motioned me to wait as he went inside.
His name, I would learn, was Carl Hocker. He was called "The Hawk"
and was already a legend in San Quentin. As the yard lieutenant he had more
power than other lieutenants. He would eventually become Warden of the Nevada
State Prison at Carson City, the only American prison with sanctioned gambling.

One of the guards watching me told the other:
"Here comes the Warden."

True enough, along the walkway to the porch came a man
in a business suit. The gunrail guard trailed along above him. He nodded at the
guards and they said, "Good morning, Warden." He glanced at me and
went through the door into the Captain's Office.

"This is the first time I've seen him inside the
walls," one guard said.

"He was inside a month ago."

"Yeah . . . when the Governor was making a
tour."

It was true, as I would learn, that wardens almost
never enter the walls of the prison they supervise. Associate wardens, the
Captain and his lieutenants run the world within the walls. The Warden deals
with Sacramento and the Department of Corrections bureaucracy.

A minute later Lieutenant Hocker opened the door and
beckoned me.

Captain Nelson was behind the desk. Warden Harley O.
Teets was seated to the side, while Lieutenant Hocker stayed a little behind me
to the side, where he could jump me if I tried anything.

"Here he is" Red Nelson said to Warden
Teets. "One day . . . not even one day . . . and he's causing
trouble."

" Wli . . . wh . . . why'd you put me with the
queens? I thought you were trying to put a fag jacket on me."

Nelson tsk-tsked and shook his head. "You blew
your top before you knew anything. I put you there until I could talk to
you."

"You didn't tell me that."

"I don't have to tell you a goddamned thing . . .
convict!"

"That's right. You don't have to. But if you
don't, how do I know what you're doing. How would you feel?"

Behind me, Hocker laughed, and even Warden Teets put a
hand over his mouth to hide a grin.

Red Nelson was always conscious of his image. He
wanted everyone to know that he was a hard man — but a fair man, too.
"Don't run your mouth," he said. "Just listen for a
minute."

I nodded.

"I'd be justified in locking you up in
segregation for a year or two for this incident. We should send reports to
Sacramento over the tear gas. It was almost a serious incident. With your
background, nobody would question it. I'm not going to . . . not this time.
Warden Teets and I have talked it over. We're going to give you this one break.
I'm going to put you in the yard with a clean slate. The first time you cause
trouble, you'll rot in the hole. Got it?"

I nodded. "I got it." I felt good. I was
going to general population. I also felt fear, for San Quentin's general
population, "on the yard," it was called, was an unknown terrain
fraught with dangerous men.

Red Nelson looked to Warden Teets. "Let's
classify him maximum custody right now."

"Sounds good," the Warden said; then he
looked at me. "You're just a kid. You can straighten up your life if you
want. If you don't, if you give us trouble, we can handle you, I guarantee it.
Nobody is too tough for San Quentin—"

"Nobody we've met," Lieutenant Hocker added.

Red Nelson wrote something on a form and signed it. He
held it out and Lieutenant Hocker took it. "I'll let him out after work
call."

"Good enough," Red Nelson said.

Lieutenant Hocker crooked a finger. "Let's
go."

I followed him out onto the porch overlooking the
Garden Beautiful. In an hour I would be on the Big Yard. Thus did I enter San
Quentin, the youngest convict there at the time.