Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade (26 page)
Read Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade Online
Authors: Edward Bunker
No matter. They'd made their
declaration; so had I, although I was now tormented with misgivings. I wanted
to go home. I hadn't realized what I had going for me when I first met Mrs Hal
Wallis. Now I felt that she was indeed Mom, as she signed her letters. She
wanted to open doors for me; she wanted me to help myself. She'd arranged a job
at the McKinley Home for Boys on Riverside Drive and Woodman. It would become a
giant shopping mall, anchored by two department stores, but that was two
decades away. Now it was still a rustic home for boys, with Louise Wallis their
foremost benefactor — and mine. Because of her I had a chance to fulfill my
dreams — or at least I had a chance untd morning. This seemed like a repeat of
a few weeks earlier when Leon had interceded for me. He'd saved my ass one way
or another, from getting my brains kicked in or being charged with a felony for
sticking one or both of them. How could I have gotten into almost the same
situation? It was because I had originally spoken to them and told Leon it was
okay. I'd put myself in the middle, and I was responsible. I still felt gudt
for not instandy pulling Jimmy Barry's punk off Leon, and I felt in debt
because he had saved my parole by getting between me and the dynamic duo of
Spotlight and Dolomite. God, they were ugly.
This time I wouldn't let him down, no doubt of that —
but goddamn I wanted to get out. I'd been too quick with my retort. Why did I
have to declare myself when Walt told me how they intended to pay — or not pay?
I could have played it off and gone off to plan something instead of this
gunfight at the OK Corral confrontation. I should have at least gone to see
Leon before threatening to kill people. For a smart guy I was sure dumb
sometimes. Still, there was no way back without putting my tail between my
legs.
At least I had behaved so I
could look in the mirror. Mine was a macho world, with some rules that belonged
in the Code of Chivalry. Fuck it. Whatever happened . . . happened. The first
birds were beginning to chirp. Soon enough the early morning unlocks would
start.
I was waiting fully dressed when
the flashlight beam probed the cell and the silhouette called softly:
"Bunker."
"Got it, boss."
Ten minutes later, I stepped
onto the tier and closed the cell gate. Down the tier another figure was
dressing. I headed for the stairway to the south dining room. Instead of
grabbing a tray and getting in line, I walked up the center aisle, circled
behind the steam tables and entered the main kitchen. Other convicts assigned
to food service were coming to work, going through the kitchen to a locker room
where they changed into white kitchen clothes. Avoiding the locker room, I went
down a corridor through double doors into the vegetable room. The vegetable
crew, eight Chicanos, were peeling potatoes and throwing them into huge pans of
water. They looked up without expression as I passed through and opened the
rear door onto the loading dock behind the kitchen. The kitchen had its own
yard with weights. A wall on one side overlooked the lower yard. The gun bull
with the carbine watched both. The route he patrolled took him away from the
kitchen yard. On the other side of the kitchen yard was a fence, and beyond it
a yard for the West Honor Unit, where convicts could come and go from their
cells from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Leon's cell was on the fifth tier at the rear. He'd
moved to the honor unit a couple of weeks earlier. I'd helped him carry his
gear.
A couple of convicts wearing
high boots, heavy rubber aprons and thick gloves were using steam hoses to
clean garbage cans. I feigned interest in that until the gun bull turned his
back to walk the other way. Then I scrambled over the fence. It ratded loudly,
but the gun bull never heard it.
Across the honor unit yard to
the big steel doors into the building rotunda. I pulled one door to make sure
it was unlocked but hesitated to pull it open. Across the rotunda, just within
the cell house itself, was the small Sergeant's Office. During the day convicts
came and went freely, but maybe he would notice someone entering at this time
of morning. The sun was up because it was summer, but the mainline had not yet
begun the breakfast unlock.
As I debated what to do, the
rotunda door was pushed open from the other side. Three convicts came out.
"Where's the bull?" I asked.
"He's up on the
tiers," one replied.
I slipped inside, crossed the
rotunda, walked the length of the cell house and went up the rear stairs two at
a time. When I reached the top, I swung around the corner. Leon lived half a
dozen cells down the tier. The gate was open and Country was leaning against
the doorframe. What was going on? I was only three or four steps away. I
stopped. My face must have taken on a weird expression that the human animal
assumes in such situations. My mind had been locked into stabbing this man, but
I had no knife. I'd planned to get it after I talked to Leon.
Country started with surprise.
"Bunk! You live here now?"
"Naw. I'm still in the
garbage can."
Leon came to the doorway.
"What's up?" he said. He was wearing white shorts and T-shirt and his
hair stood up like watch springs, which would have made me laugh at another
time.
"I wanted to see you,"
I said.
"Wait a minute until I roll
this joint." He had an open magazine on the top bunk and on top of it an
aluminum fod bag of Topper, a rough tobacco which was once issued to California
convicts. The situation looked more convivial than confrontational. Leon
finished rolling the joint and handed it to Country.
"I gotta go," Country
said. "See you."
"Yeah. Right."
Country walked away.
"What brings you here this
time of day?" Leon asked.
Quickly I told Leon what had
happened, and that it was at the final lockup last night.
"Country showed up when
they opened this morning. He asked me what I'd lost and kicked it out. No
hassle." Leon held up some US currency. "What do you think?"
"Who knows? Walt couldn't
have sent word since I talked to him. He's still in his cell right now."
Leon looked puzzled. "I'll
bet Walt was just talking for himself, y'know what I mean? And I don't think he
expected your reaction. He was just fat-mouthing." Leon grinned. "He
didn't know you were deadly serious."
"I guess. You got enough to
give me a joint?"
"Of course."
As I waited, I decided that Leon
was right. Country had intended to pay all along. I had spent an unnecessary
sleepless night, working myself up to murderous violence. A ton of weight had
been lifted from my shoulders: I wouldn't lose my parole and spend a couple of
years in segregation.
I never talked to Walt again.
Years later when he was dead (in a wreck after a highway patrol chase), I
learned that he had managed to send word to Country by a convict nurse who came
up on the tier to deliver medication to another convict. The nurse got off duty
at midnight and lived in the West Honor Unit in a cell next to Country's. They
had planned to stiff Leon. They never thought I would get involved because they
were white and friends of mine. Besides that, all three were pretty tough.
Duane, by himself, could punch me out very quickly in a fistfight. But they
also thought I was crazy - and having trouble with a knife-wielding maniac
wasn't what they planned. What I did for a black friend in the mid '50s I would
never have even considered a decade later. Back when I did it a few would
mutter "nigger lover," but not loud enough for me to hear. That would
end it. But when the race wars were in full swing it would have been like a
Tutsi having a Hutu friend. By
the time Martin Luther King was
assassinated, racial estrangement was absolute in San Quentin. And it remains
almost the same three decades later.
In the summer of '56, I was
paroled from San Quentin. Louise Wallis arranged for me to pick up a ticket at
the United Airlines office on Union Square in San Francisco. It was still the
age of low-flying prop airliners, so as I hurtled through the afternoon light
above the Salinas Valley, I could see the plane's shadow racing across the
geometric patterns of green and brown fields below me. There were white
farmhouses, each one encircled by a stand of trees. Everything looked so neat
and so empty of people. I thought of Steinbeck's tales mined from this
relatively empty land. If he could find
The Grapes of Wrath, East
of Eden
and
Of Mice and Men
down there, my meager writing
skills should have been able to find stories in the places I had been and the
people I had known. Reading taught me that prison had been the crucible that
had formed several great writers. Cervantes wrote much of
Don Quixote
in a prison cell, and
Dostoevsky was a mediocre writer until he was sentenced to death, had the sentence
commuted within a few hours of execution and was then sent to prison in
Siberia. After these experiences he became a great writer. There are two worlds
where men are stripped of all facades so you can see their core. One is the
battlefield, the other is prison. Beyond any doubt I had plenty of raw
material; the question was my talent. Louise reported that friends of hers had
read my
manuscript
and said it wasn't publishable but showed promise. I'd felt great simply
finishing it, but reading it a year later it seemed pathetic, although I saw
improvement between the first and the last chapters. I'd learned something in
300 pages. I was almost a hundred pages into my second novel and hoped it would
be a quantum improvement. I really wanted to be a writer, although I didn't yet
have all my hopes and dreams invested therein. Who knew what I would find in
the world outside. Maybe I would feel different about everything. Erich Fromm
made me aware of one aspect of my nature — I had the hunger to transcend.
Sipping a bourbon and 7-Up as I
looked at the plane's shadow rushing over the terrain, many things went through
my mind. I was free. I had gone into San Quentin at seventeen and now was out
at twenty-two. I had grown to manhood behind high prison walls. As I mentally
weighed my assets and liabilities it was obvious to me that I had more going
for myself than almost anyone else I knew. Mrs Hal Wallis would help me to help
myself. What else did I need? I'd never heard of anyone being released without
being issued a package of work clothes — except me. The field parole agent sent
word that she would take care of my wardrobe. She had an apartment for me, too,
although she hadn't divulged the address because she didn't want me to hand it
out to my convict pals. That was okay, for although I had many friends, I would
only keep in touch with one or two, and I could send them the address after I
was free.
Even without Mrs Hal Wallis, or
anything else, I was confident of my abilities. In a test that compared anyone
taking it to a graduating class of Harvard liberal arts majors, I was equal to
the top 5 percent, plus I had skills they never dreamed about. I had knowledge
of life that many people never learn, and never have need to learn. But I knew
I had gaping flaws, too, emotions and impulses without the internal controls
that we learn from parents and society. Most people obey the law not from fear
of the consequences but because they have accepted its beliefs as their own. My
beliefs were based on what I had learned from the underworld and jail. I would
never have followed Raskolnikov's example and made a spontaneous confession to
murder because of conscience. For years after reading
Crime and Punishment,
I thought Dostoevsky was wrong
in that regard — until I saw two men I knew quite well, Jack Mahone and Bobby
Buder, men I thought were hard core convicts, turn themselves in for murders
for which there was no evidence against them. That would never happen to me.
For one thing, I wasn't a killer, although there had been times in prison when
I would have killed in self-defense. I wasn't going to run. I wasn't vengeful,
nor did I feel remorse for most things I had done. I believed that yesterday
could be learned from, but never erased. If I had dwelled on my past there is a
good chance I would have gone insane. I had done too much already, and too much
had been done to me.
Still, all this was simply
squirrel-caging, running around in a circle. Leon gave me the only advice that
mattered: "You're not normal, but you're not crazy. It's up to you if you
commit another crime. Whether you do or not is all that matters."
It was true. I
was
different. How could I be
anything else? I would never view the world or behave as a member of the
bourgeoisie, nor did I so desire. I craved experience and wisdom, not the
average life of quiet desperation. The best I could hope for was a marginal
adjustment, but that was all I needed. I had brains, I had Louise — and as the
plane came over the mountains and the Los Angeles basin, I had great expectations.