Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade (48 page)

At 8 p.m., a bell rings.
Typewriters fall sdent. Perhaps someone would ask someone nearby, "Did you
get a score on the Dodger game?" There is no boisterous noise or prolonged
conversations — not "behind the screen" in Folsom Prison where at
least half the men would never see a day beyond the walls. Most wanted you to
be quiet, and when push came to shove, they didn't care if it was the quiet of
your grave — or their own, for that matter.

A decade and a half earlier when
my indiscriminate reading began to be influenced by some critical acumen, I
focused primarily, though not exclusively, on American writers of the
twentieth century. Now, however, with Colin Wilson's
The Outsider
as a catalyst, I was immersed
in European writers, mostly French and Russian and some German, who dealt with
themes of existence. Herman Hesse's
Steppenwolf, Siddartha
and
Magister Ludi.
Robert Musil's
Man Without Qualities.
Camus' novels, plays and
essays. From Sartre I learned that understanding existentialism was visceral as
much as intellectual, and to reach visceral understanding required going
through the "nausea of existence." Reading Dostoevsky was like
listening to someone foaming and overwrought as they told stories about the
souls of human beings: he knew how guilt can chew at some men's souls. And
there was the Italian, Alberto Moravia, who could narrate with depth and
clarity what went on in the mind of his characters. In my sixth novel I was
trying to write of the underworld. Many books are written about criminals, but
the writer is always observing them and the world from society's perspective. I
was trying to make the reader see the world from the criminal's perspective:
what he saw, what he thought, what he felt — and why. I was also trying to
write on three levels, first for the excitement of the story, second to reveal
psychological makeup, and third to promulgate a philosophical view. I was
trying to follow Hemingway's dictum that a writer should be as devoted to truth
as a prelate of the Church is to God. Unlike most pundits and all politicians,
I have never shaved a fact to fit an assertion. I sometimes end up positioning
things that contradict each other, but we all know that foolish consistency is
the hobgoblin of little minds, which I read in the essay, not in Bardett's
Familiar Quotations.

At that time, all across America
it was a time of disruption. Blacks rioted in the cities, and there were
impassioned protests against Vietnam on college campuses. In other California
prisons there had been some racial conflict and protests against the injustice
of the indeterminate sentence law. Folsom however, had been quiet except for
the usual quota of knifings, although recendy someone calling himself "The
Oudaw" had been putting out fliers printed on stencd, calling for a strike
against the indeterminate sentence. A couple of days earlier I'd gone into the
library rest room where the janitor was ripping up a copy of the
Outlaw
flier.

"What's the matter?" I
asked. "You against the strike?"

"Man, if they strike we
won't get the weekend movie. Damn, man, it's
Bonnie and Clyde.
I don't want to miss
that."

"I don't want 'em to
strike."

"You don't?"

"No ...
I want 'em to riot and burn the
joint down." Actually I didn't care one way or another. It was true that
the indeterminate sentence had been abused by the powers that be, but I doubted
that anything convicts could do would alter anything. I was simply upsetting
someone I considered a fool. I seldom went to movies. While they were being
shown, Joe Morgan and I were usually in the yard. It was the one time when I
could get on the handball court.

I forgot the verbal exchange the
moment I left the rest room, nor did I think of it during the main count lockup
when a sergeant and a guard appeared outside my cell. The Sergeant unlocked the
cell gate and someone raised the security bar. "Let's go, Bunker."

The Sergeant carried a white
sheet of paper, the lockup authorization.

I made no protest. What was the
use? I grabbed my denim jacket and mentally inventoried my pockets. No
contraband. Good.

As we headed down the tier, I
asked: "Who signed the order?"

The Sergeant looked at it.
"Associate Warden."

The Associate Warden. Damn.
That was unusual. A lieutenant
commonly signed lockup orders. What could it be? "What's the charge?"

"Nothing."

"Whaddya mean,
nothing?"

"Protective custody."

"Protective custody!
Bullshit!" I stopped dead and everyone bumped into each other.

"Watch it, Bunker."
They were ready to pile on. For a few seconds it was undecided. "C'mon,
Bunker, don't make it worse."

"Yeah, okay." I
started moving, but inside I was seething. It wasn't right. Nobody was locked
up for protection unless they asked for it, and it was a stigma hard to live
down. I couldn't imagine asking for protection. If three mad dog killers were
waiting for me on the yard, I wouldn't have asked for protection.
Never.
If I was really facing death, I
might do something crazy to get locked up, but I would never ask for
protection. I once had trouble with a known prison killer. He vowed to kill me
as soon as we went to the Big Yard. It was during my first term. I wanted
neither to die nor to kill him and go to the gas chamber or, more likely, get
another sentence that would cost a dozen years in San Quentin. I saw him in the
mess hall, walked up behind him and busted his head with a stainless steel
tray. We were never on the yard together, and it added to my stature and
reputation, although in truth I'd attacked from fear.

The Sergeant and the guard
marched me down the stairs and through the mess hall and kitchen. In a corridor
between the two mess halls was the adjustment center entrance. One of the
escorts pressed the door buzzer. A moment later a guard looked out; then let us
in.

I could go through the strip
search like a minuet rehearsed for years. After they looked up my naked ass and
down my throat, I put my undershorts back on. A guard walked me down the bottom
floor in front of the cells. I was going to the strip cell in the rear. I
always seemed to go to the strip cell in the rear. I looked at the faces
looking out at me and thought about the big cats in the cages at Griffith Park.
When I was about eight, I climbed onto the bars roofing the big cats. The only
one that jumped up to swipe at me was the mountain lion. The Hons and tigers
were too lazy. There was Big Raymond. I nodded and gave him a clenched fist.
When I was eleven or twelve Raymond and I had been in the lockup in
"B" Company in juvenile hall, the two strip cells that faced each
other across an alcove. We tore it up, lying on our backs and kicking the sheet
metal covered doors. The sound thundered. Nobody could sleep. The Man agitated
several of the thirty boys in the company to jump us when we were let out to
shower. We fought side by side in the combination washroom and shower. He was
over six feet, skinny and strong as a steel cable, even then. In a melee like
that, one seldom lands a punch with leverage and accuracy. Raymond did. Down
one guy went. Another one, tussling with me, slipped and broke his wrist on the
tile floor.

We'd known each other since
then, so I nodded and showed respect, even though he was black. I'd heard that
he'd transferred in from Soledad, but he'd gone directly to the hole, so this
was the first time I'd seen him in more than a decade.

I could hear the control panel
being unlocked. It was "maximum" segregation. One side was reserved
for those considered the hardest of the hard core. The majority had killed
someone in prison or were considered likely to do so. The other side of the
bottom floor was mostly for men serving a few days of hole time punishment for
rule violations. Ten days for making home brew, a week for having two joints,
plus referral to the local district attorney for possible prosecution,
twenty-nine days for having a shiv, plus referral to the local district
attorney for possible prosecution, five days for possessing football parlay
tickets, or for stealing sugar from the mess hall to make home brew. We came to
the last cell gate; it was open and I stepped in. Five by seven, I knew it
well. The escort signaled the front to close it. The gate slammed shut. The
escort walked away.

Here I was with graffiti-etched walls to read, todet
bowl and sink in need of cleanser. I'd thought I had a good chance for parole
at my next parole board hearing. Now it was in the air, depending
on what they said I did, and
what their finding was.

On the following Friday I went
in front of the disciplinary committee. Hearings were conducted in the outer
office of the adjustment center and were chaired by the Captain or Associate
Warden, flanked by a shrink and a flunky to keep minutes. Today it was the
Associate Warden, whom I'd known since he started as a lowly turnkey guard. He
looked like an undergraduate student and had an affable demeanor over a lousy
attitude. Still, he was better than Captain Joe Campoy, who referred to the
inmates as "his animals."

"You're charged with D
1101, Inmate Behavior. Writing and distributing an illicit newspaper, The
Outlaw,
calling for a sit-down strike
against the parole board.

"You're further charged
with contraband, pilfering state supplies on which to create the illicit
newspaper. How do you plead?"

"It's all bullshit."

"I assume that's 'not
gudty.'"

"Not gudty as it
gets."

"You also told an inmate
you hoped for a riot where they'd burn the place down."

Instantly I knew that it was the
dingbat janitor in the rest room, the one who wanted to see
Bonnie and Clyde.
"I don't know anything
about it. I barely read a copy of that . . . that
Outlaw."

"Bunker . . . Bunker . . .
come on. I even recognize your literary style."

"What can I say . . . if
you recognize the style."

"Nothing."

The result was ten days'
isolation and assignment to maximum administrative segregation, to be reviewed
in ninety days — and every ninety days thereafter. The average sojourn in
segregation was eighteen months.

Now that I'd been before the
disciplinary committee, I was eligible to go to the exercise yard. Actually the
adjustment center had two exercise yards. Like much of Folsom, the adjustment
center was carved into a hillside. One exercise yard was on the bottom floor.
This was for the bottom floor, where I was assigned: max 4A. A guard appeared.
"Wanna exercise?"

"Sure do."

Inmates were released from their
cells one at a time. They came out in their underwear and walked to a grille
gate where several guards waited. They stepped inside, were searched and given
a jumpsuit without pockets folded around a pair of high top shoes, which were
kept in an open-faced locker. They gave me my jumpsuit and shoes and opened the
door to the yard. It was formed by the walls of the adjustment center on two
sides, and the massive pde of concrete of number 2 cell house. The ground was
all concrete. There were no guards on the ground, but high up on number 2 cell
house was a rifleman with a cradled carbine. He kept order with his gun.

I had to move across a red line
some distance from the door before starting to put on my clothes. I was the
last of the dozen or so to be let out. I knew about half of the others. Red
Howard, slender country boy and card mechanic, a good guy with a paranoid
streak. He hadn't killed anyone yet, but he had cut up a couple, including Big
Barry, a friend of Red's. There was Gene Chester, a homicidal homosexual. Cornell
Nolan, black heavyweight prizefighter, tough and mean as could be. His younger
brother was later killed by a guard with a rifle in Soledad, the first death in
a cause and effect chain that would leave dozens dead before it was over. Above
all, Joe Morgan was in the yard. I'd known him since 1955 when he transferred
to San Quentin from Folsom with a parole date.

As I put on the jumpsuit and sat
on the concrete to slip on the shoes, I expected those I knew to greet me; for
Joe, especially, to grin and say something funny. Nobody said a word to me. You
cannot imagine the sudden, total anxiety the sdence aroused. Had somebody said
I was a stool pigeon? Was Joe angry at me? Or Red, or anyone there? Should I go
over to him and ask? Was he putting me on?

Suddenly, from peripheral
vision, I saw a fast movement twenty feet away. A tall, skinny white guy had
produced a weapon the size and shape of an ice pick (God knows where he got it)
and was moving on an Indian, whose name I knew was Bobby Lee. He was a known
troublemaker and general asshole. He wore no
shirt and the first strike
created a trickle of blood down his chest. I didn't know how deep it was.
Puncture wounds can cause internal bleeding even when they look superficial.

The white guy trailed him like a
boxer cutting off the ring. I was hypnotized, still holding a shoelace half
tied.

The whistle blasted from above.
Then again, followed by the mandatory warning shot. In the concrete canyon it
sounded like a howitzer. I jumped and looked up. The rifleman, behind dark
glasses, was drawing down on the pair.
Boom!
Shards of concrete jumped up. I could hear the
ricochet. It might bounce anywhere in all this concrete.

Men were scattering. I followed
Joe Morgan. He would know the best way to go.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Bullets were kicking up the
concrete around the white guy's feet. He never took his eyes off Bobby Lee, who
was now darting back and forth.

The building door opened. Guards
stuck out their heads. Bobby Lee fled to their arms and the door closed.

Joe Morgan looked at me,
grinning, over his shoulder. "Another day in 4A," he said. "I
hear you're trying to start a strike on the yard."

"Ahhh, man . . . that's
bulllllllshit!"

In another minute the door
opened, a guard banged a key on the door frame. "Lockup." He looked
at the white guy. "You first, Pope."

The slender white guy gave Joe a
gesture of camaraderie and headed toward the door, clothes in one hand, shoes
in the other. That was my first sight of Andy Pope, who became a friend for all
seasons — thirty years' worth. He was an early endorser of my literary
ambitions, and gave me Strunk and White's
Elements of Style
and Lajos Egri's
The Art of Dramatic
Writing.

Back in the building, the
authorities called us out for questioning one at a time. Convicts put a premium
on getting out quickly. Without sitting down, before they could even ask a
question, I gave my rote response: "I didn't see nuthin', I didn't hear
nuthin', I don't know nuthin', lemme go."

The Associate Warden made a
sound like a fart with his mouth, looked at the ceding and jerked a thumb
toward the door for me to leave. In record time.

That night in the shadowed cell, I looked out between
the bars at the barred windows and thought,
I'm gonna be slammed in
this cell for a year or more.
The thought fit the gloom of the world around me.
"Ah well," I muttered, "when it gets too tough for everybody
else, it's just the way I like it." After a few seconds, I added:
You're a lyin' bo diddy
and your breath smells shitty.
But the truth was that I could withstand whatever
they did to me. If they killed me, I wouldn't know about it. I was mentally
prepared to spend at least a year in the adjustment center.