Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade (52 page)

While the trouble was brewing
between the Nazi-Mex (he was, indeed, an admirer of the Nazis, especially the
black S.S. uniforms, but being illiterate how much could he know?) and the
black, another fuse was burning elsewhere. Two burly white bikers had swindled
a black for twenty papers of heroin with a counterfeit $100 bill. A wife of one
of the bikers had smuggled him several bills in the visiting room. The black
gave it to his own wife to buy more smack. She took their children to
Disneyland and the ticket booth recognized the counterfeit. She was taken in
and her children were taken away. Because she had no record and there was only
a single piece of currency, the US Attorney declined to indict. She, however,
was mad as hell, which was quite understandable. She told her man that she was
bringing him no more drugs. The black was enraged at being conned by a pair of
"motorcycle drivin', tattoo wearin', bad smellin' honkies . . ." An
hour after the standoff confrontation in the Big Yard, the victimized black and
several friends caught the two bikers at the rear of the South Cell House and
began swinging knives. The whites, both young and strong, managed to fight off
being killed, but they were badly carved up and hospitalized.

The leading white clique,
several of whom would later found the Aryan Brotherhood, knew about the burn
behind the stabbing and decided not to get involved. "They brought that
shit on themselves," was Bulldog's observation. "What'd they expect .
. . they could burn the dude and nothin' would happen? Bullshit!" He
emphasized his judgement by turning a thumb down, and that was the decision; he
had great influence over the clique. Far more than I did.

Because my job assignment was 4
p.m. to midnight, my days were free. I seldom ate lunch, and during the lunch
hour I frequendy preferred my cell to the crowded yard. It was then that I
typed what I had written in number two pencd the night before using a pilfered
flashlight that nobody cared I had. On this day, however, Paul Allen wanted me
to shill in a poker game he was running. How could I refuse? We had no idea
that the previous night's stabbing, aggravated by the one earlier today, had
started the war in earnest. Men who lived in the North Cell House could come
and go from their cells when they wanted. A tender on each tier unlocked the
gate when you asked.

While waiting for the poker
players on the yard so we could take them to the boiler room where the game was
being held, I tried to assess the tension on the yard. It was more than usual,
but far less than earlier in the day. I put it down to something residual, for
most convicts had no idea what was going on in such matters.

Guards appeared, hurrying from
several directions toward the North Cell House. Something had happened in the
cell house or up on Death Row. Everything on the yard stopped except the
whirling seagulls overhead. Everything was sdent except for their raucous
cries. All eyes faced the cell house door. Moments later, four white convicts
rushed out of the cell house carrying a man on a litter. Two guards trotted
along beside them. As the retinue crossed the yard diagonally toward the South
Cell House entrance and the hospital beyond, a couple of the man's friends came
out of the crowd and hurried along beside him. The escorting guards waved them
away and were ignored. I could see the man on the litter talking and gesturing.
When the litter reached the end of the building where the friends could go no
farther, they turned back. The yard was silent. Three thousand sets of eyes
were watching. The convict, whom I didn't know, threw his hands wide and
screamed:
"Goddamned fucking niggers!"

"I don't think we're
playing poker today," Paul said.

A queasiness started in my
stomach and spread through my limbs. This was so utterly senseless. Later, when
I was summoned to type the reports, my misgivings were replaced by indignation.
The wounded man would survive with some scars and diminished use of his right
hand because a tendon had been severed as he warded off knife blows. He was
doing time for receiving stolen property and worked in the furniture factory.
He'd never had a disciplinary infraction and had a medical lay-in. He was
taking a nap with his cell gate open. Why not? He had no enemies. One black
stepped in and stabbed him while the other kept lookout in the doorway. He had
no idea who they were, and they didn't know him. He was selected because he was
white and asleep. It could just as easily have been me, although I probably would
not have taken a nap with the gate unlocked. Still, the black tier tender could
have opened the gate for them.

Another
voice yelled:
"You
banjo-lipped nigger motherfuckers!"

"Fuck you,
honky!"
was the retort from someone in the black crowd.

On the overhead catwalk appeared
a guard with a bucket of tear gas grenades and a short-barreled launcher.
Behind him, sweating and panting from the exertion, came a couple of guards
lugging carbines. The convicts below, black and white, were confused. The shot
callers had told them nothing. They had no idea what to do.

The steam whistle blew afternoon
work call and the convicts, like trained milk cows, began moving slowly toward
their job assignments. I went back to my cell to continue reading a biography
of Alexander the Great. Never in history did anyone deserve that appellation
more than the Macedonian warrior king. I learned about the victory over Darius
and the Persians, the burning of Persepolis and the founding of the world's
first great library at Alexandria by Ptolemy, Alexander's general, whose
descendants nded Egypt through Cleopatra. In a lockup somewhere, I'd had an
argument with a semi-literate black who asserted that Cleopatra was a
"black African queen with skin of ebony." It almost reached a physical
altercation when I said that she may indeed have been black, but no reputable
historian disputes that her antecedents were Greek - that was an undisputed
fact. Then came the
ad hominem
vitriol: "White devils steal the black man's
history." I had not known of Alexander's fantastic march through the Kush
and the Khyber Pass, conquering all who opposed him and tainting his golden
image with what we would call war crimes. His will was indomitable, and he was
often victorious through sheer determination. When he was my age he had already
conquered the world and was both dead and immortal, whereas I was an outlaw and
outcast serving time in a gray rock penitentiary. I had been born in the wrong
era and the wrong circumstances.

About 2.30 I had switched to
Camus' "Reflection on the Guillotine," perhaps the most thoughtful,
and certainly the most beautifully written, essay on capital punishment. I
stood up to un-kink my back and take a leak. When I turned away from the
toilet, I could see the yard through the windows. Convicts were trudging
en masse
toward the cell houses. No
lines were being formed. It was an hour and a half until the regular lockup.
Something was still going on and I knew it was about race conflict. Had there
been another incident?

Within a minute I could hear
them begin to come through the rotunda door and trudge up the stairway to the
tiers. A few passed my cell, moving too fast to stop and ask. Then Billy
Michaels appeared. A tall, blond handsome dope fiend — what is called a
"hope-to-die" dope fiend - he was the kind that wants more than
merely feeling good. He wants to keep fixing until his chin rests on his chest
and he is oblivious of the world around him. Before I could ask him what was
going on, he asked: "Lemme borrow your outfit."

"Whaddya got?"

"I ain't got nuthin, but
Chente just came off a visit. His old lady gave him a taste. A couple grams. He
can't get his back at the job because they're lockin' the joint down. I can
slide in if I can get him a rig."

"I
don't have it here." "Shit!"

The tiers were rapidly filling
with bodies. A voice on the loudspeaker said that all inmates were to proceed
to their assignment for the main count. That meant me. "I can go get it
and bring it back after the count clears."

"Oh, man, I'd sure
appreciate that."

"I know I'm good for a
fix."

"Oh man! He ain't got but a
gram or two."

"Two fixes is pretty easy -
if he wants to get high tonight."

"I'll put it to him."

"What's this lockup
about?"

"I dunno. Probably about
all this race shit."

"Something else
happen?"

"I didn't hear anything. I
was cutting hair downstairs."

The cell house bell rang out.
Security bars were raised and a thousand gates opened as convicts stepped in. I
stepped out onto an empty tier of slamming gates and the inevitable straggler
running hard to reach his cell before being locked out. Missing a lockup wasn't
a disciplinary offense, but several misses could bring one. It tended to be the
same convicts who missed lockups.

As I went through the yard gate,
two groups of guards were hustling a pair of black convicts toward
"B" Section lockup. I knew neither by name, but one had frequented
the Folsom law library when I was the clerk. He was trying to find an error in
his extradition. The FBI had kidnapped him from Mexico. He was barely literate.
He was one of many convicts who seem to believe that if you find the right
cases and repeat the citations like some kind of magical chant the prison gates
will fly open. I tried to explain the essential law: the Supreme Court said
that it didn't matter how they got you before the court, the court didn't lose
jurisdiction. He didn't like it. I remember saying, "Okay, okay, forget
it. I was just trying to help you." His reply was laden with venom.
"No white man ever helped a black man." It left nothing more to say;
then or now. He had been Fanonized, even if he never heard of Franz Fanon. He
sneered at me as he went by. Not to be undone, I sneered in reply, but inside I
felt a keening ache. It was a sad, sad day.

When I reached the Yard Office,
I found out what had happened. A fifty-year-old white convict who was being
transferred wanted to say goodbye to a teacher. The classroom was up a stairway
in an annex to the education budding. Three blacks waited in the shadows on the
landing to ambush whatever white appeared. It happened to be the man being
transferred. They came out of the shadows whde he was on the top stair before
the landing, surprising him so that he fell crashing back down the stairway.

In the classroom, the teacher
heard the ruckus and went to the door. As he opened it, the assadants were
going down the stairs. The victim cried out and the teacher sounded the alarm
with his whistle. Nearby guards came running. They caught two of the blacks as
they ran out. As they were led away, one yelled: "Power to the
people!" The elderly white convict had a sprained ankle.

That aborted assault was enough
to bring the order to lock the prison down. The cons were sent back to the cell
houses. On the tiers, paranoia ran high, for in the narrow space it was
impossible to know when, or if, the long shivs would be pulled. Men without
friends, those trying to quietly serve a term and get out, were in the worst
predicament. They had no allies. Whites were indignant and afraid. Blacks were
both jubdant and afraid, though they waited to yell their pleasure until they
were locked in their cells and were anonymous voices.

That night guards and freemen
began a search of the prison that would continue for days and reveal hundreds
of weapons. Cell blocks were first. Personnel fded along the fifth tier without
warning, until two stood outside each cell gate. Riflemen behind them gave
cover. Security bars were raised and convicts were ordered to strip to their
underwear and step out onto the tier. As soon as the convicts realized what was
happening, knives were thrown between the bars, sailing down to clatter on the
floor of the bottom tier. It was really unnecessary to discard the weapons, for
the searchers were sadly out of shape, accustomed to sitting on their butts.
Before finishing two cells they were panting, unable to do more than
perfunctorily raise a mattress. Many just walked into cells and sat down.

On each tier behind the cells is
a narrow service passage with plumbing and electrical conduits. Convict
electricians and plumbers have access to the passages. Guards found two dozen
knives and three roofing hatchets in the East Cell House passageways. The
arsenal belonged to whites and Chicanos: the plumber and electrician were a
white and Chicano.

The only convicts out of their cells
were essential workers - a couple of Captain's Office clerks, hospital
attendants, the firewatch, the late cleanup crew in the kitchen, and me. I
could wander almost wherever I wanted within San Quentin's walls until
midnight. I went to the South Cell House. It was the Skid Row of San Quentin.
The oldest of the big cell houses, it was divided into four sections, one of
them a notorious long-term segregation unit named "B" Section. The
rest of the cell house was quiet, but "B" Section was a cacophonous uproar
until dawn; then the men slept the day away, rising up just for meals and an
hour in the exercise yard. Many were now in segregation from the last race war.
I don't remember all the detads of that one, but after a cycle of stabbing,
retaliation, stabbing, retaliation, the militant white convicts worked up a
plan. Each of several really violent convicts would take a group of two or
three or four to various positions, i.e. the library, the education budding and
elsewhere. As soon as the afternoon work whistle blew at 1 p.m., each squad
would attack and murder every black in the vicinity.