The Animal Factory (18 page)

“Say, I don’t want to do any time in that shitty jail.”

“Who’s handling this? That’s the clincher. It makes it look good and gives the judge another option to think about.”

“But that’s the world’s most fucked-up jail.”

“Oi vay, a sniveler I raised already. I suppose you wanna stay here … go to the parole board in five more years. By then I’ll be long gone to Broadway.”

The report with a reasonable facsimile of the chief psychiatrist’s signature went out via Mr. Harrell.

“Now we wait,” Earl said. “I’d say in about six weeks you’ll be on the sheriff ’s bus back to sunny Southern California.”

They were on benches against the cellhouse wall, sitting in the evening sun. It was after supper and most men were going indoors while the hungry sea gulls dove to inhale pieces of bread.

“If I get out,” Ron said, “I’ll be so fuckin’ in debt to you …”

“Oh, fool, you’ll forget me the first time you see some neon. That’s standard shit. There’s a curtain between here and out there.”

The younger man’s eyes turned wet. “Don’t think that, bro’. You’re my friend. I’ve never had a real friend before. When I get out, you can have whatever you want. You can shoot dope every day, or drive a Cadillac around the yard if they’ll let you have it.”

“The main thing I want is for you not to get busted. If you do, I’m fuckin’ you when you get back. Remember that.” He feinted a playful punch and then clenched Ron’s hand. “I know you won’t forget me. Just send the dope so I can suppress the pain.”

The last stragglers were entering the cellhouse. Earl got up to go back to the yard office. “I’ll bring some burritos in tonight.”

“Fuck, we’re doing so good I might not want to go to the pad.”

“I’ll bet you ain’t late for the bus, what you bet?”

Earl went across the shadowed, empty yard toward the gate.

On a crystalline afternoon, while Mr. Harrell had individual members of the class reading aloud, Ron sat in reverie at his desk next to an open window overlooking the plaza. He’d finished marking papers from a spelling test, and while the stumbling voices droned on in the background, he looked out at the flowers,
fountain
, and convicts feeding the fish. Soon he’d be going back to court, and he had no doubt that he would go free. Although he was overjoyed, that joy was not unalloyed. He felt that he could still learn things here, that in the ten months of San Quentin he’d aged ten years, had become stronger. He smiled to himself, privately anticipating what he would do for his friend if the judge acted right. Just the forged letter from the psychiatrist was a huge debt—and it was one of so many. In this ugly place Earl had become his father—and T.J., Paul, and the still segregated Bad Eye his cousins and friends.

Mr. Harrell finished the reading lesson and it was time for two hours of educational films. Ron brought the wheeled projector from the hallway closet and set up the film. He pulled the curtains and Harrell turned off the lights. Then Ron started up the aisle toward the rear where he always sat. He felt a hand stroke his ass and a voice hissed, “You’re sure fine, baby.” He slapped at the hand
reflexively
and whirled, too stunned for immediate anger. In the
darkness
he could see a pale face, and he knew who it was from the location. Buck Rowan, the hulking newcomer. He’d been in the class a week, and Ron had noticed him staring, but had not given it any importance until now. He’d become accustomed to stares. Ron recalled the hillbilly twang and could smell the fetid breath.

“Are you crazy, you asshole?” Ron snapped.

“Watch it, bitch! Ah’ll whup yo’ ass. You’re a girl an’ Ah’m gonna put my dick in your ass.”

Ron was paralyzed for a moment. It was too sudden, too insane. He suddenly remembered Earl’s advice about not arguing with fools until things were right. He spun and walked to the rear of the room, oblivious to the images on the screen. He trembled and his face was afire. He nearly wanted to laugh. A year earlier and he would have been quaking like a rabbit without a way to run. Now the fear was tiny, and that was reined in. Everyone is mortal; everyone bleeds. As the minutes ticked away, his stunned bewilderment became a controlled rage.

When the second film started, he went down a side aisle and through the door to take a piss. He was still trying to decide what to do. In the toilet he couldn’t empty his bladder. He was too tight. He rinsed his hands, splashed water on his fevered face. “A man does whatever he has to,” he muttered, and accepted the possibility of killing the fool. It dismayed him, but there was no indecision. He would try for reason, but if that failed …

As he stepped from the toilet the classroom door opened and Buck came out, carrying a few seconds of movie sound track with him. His searching eyes said that he had followed Ron, who felt fear but was unashamed of it. Earl said that fear was good for survival and only fools were without it. Ron stepped forward to the edge of the stairs. It was unlikely that Buck had a shiv—and his hands were exposed so he would have to reach for it. By then, Ron could leap down the stairs and into the plaza. Buck was a couple of inches over six feet and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. He was built like a bear and was too big to fight.

“You hear what I said in there?” he asked. “I wanna play from you.”

I hope it’s a joke.”

“Ain’ a joke. We ain’ gonna have no mess of trouble, are we?”

“I don’t ever want trouble.”

“Baby, you’re
fine
. I’ve been watchin’ you an’ watchin’ you an’ my dick stays hard as Chinese arithmetic. I don’t wanna have to beat you up, but you’re gonna cooperate one way or another.”

Ron’s face was expressionless, but his mind sneered at the gross stupidity. “I’m not a punk. If you heard different, you heard some bad information.” He knew as he spoke that the words were hurled against a gale.

“Bullshit! You’re too pretty. An’ Ah done seen you with that dude. I ain’ Ned in the first reader. Ah been to Huntsville and Raiford. You might even be makin’ tortillas with that teacher in there.”

“I’m going back to court for modification. I don’t want any trouble to mess that up.” The situation sickened Ron, but a cold, detached part of his mind told him that Buck was accustomed to brawls with fists, feet, and teeth. San Quentin had a different ethos. Buck was a bear unaware that he was in the sights of a
high-powered
rifle.

“You can go back to court. The only way there’ll be trouble is if your old man finds out. I’ll just kick his ass. You an’ me, we just meet somewhere.”

Ron nodded, as if digesting the information, whereas he was really looking at Buck’s shoes, visualizing the toes jutting upward from beneath a sheet.

The classroom door rattled. Ron and Buck both turned to face Mr. Harrell. The teacher’s eyes flitted from face to face and he
obviously
felt the tension. “Oh, here you are,” he said to Ron. “Would you go down to the book storeroom and pick up a box that came in?” Harrell nervously stood his ground until Ron had gone
downstairs
and Buck returned to the classroom.

As Ron stepped into the sunlight, he faced the yard office, thought of Earl, and vowed that he would keep his friend out of trouble. Earl had done too much already, was too near getting out himself. Ron walked to the education building, but he had no thought of getting the box. He was certain that Buck would have to be stabbed, and Ron wanted to do it—kill a mad dog—but was uncertain of himself. How did T.J. say? Underhanded and just beneath the ribs slightly to the left.

Fitz waved from the yard office, and Big Rand knocked on the glass and gave him the finger. Ron nodded, remembering that Earl had said it was almost impossible to be convicted for a prison murder unless a guard actually saw it, or unless there was a confession. For every informer willing to testify for the prosecution, a dozen would testify that the accused was in Timbuctoo—and a swearing contest between convicts never satisfies the burden of proof “beyond a reasonable doubt.” And there had been several killings within recent years before hundreds of witnesses without anyone telling anything even in privacy. Too many convict clerks could find out too much.

“Yeah, we’ll see who gets fucked,” Ron said, turning into the education building. It was built on the slope that led to the lower yard, so that the office space was on the upper floor while the
classrooms
were downstairs. Ron went to the file section without speaking to the clerks. He ran through the drawers’ newest numbers until he found Buck’s folder. The hillbilly was “close” custody and lived on the bottom tier in the East cellhouse. That was the information Ron wanted, but he looked over the remaining data. Buck Rowan was thirty-four years of age, had a low-normal I.Q., and claimed a high school education (unverified) while scoring fourth grade on his scholastic tests. He’d served an eight-year term in Texas and three years in Florida, the first for rape-robbery, the second for burglary. He was on escape from Florida when arrested in Sacramento, California, for robbery. The picture was of a tough petty criminal, a fool asking to be killed.

For a moment Ron thought of the imminent court appearance. He could avoid trouble by having himself locked up. The thought went as quickly as it came. He could also submit, and that idea went even more quickly. If anyone fucked him, it would be Earl. The thought was sardonic, and he grinned at how he could now handle it with humor. Ron knew about southern prisons, the grinding labor in the cotton and sugarcane fields and on the roads, with stool pigeons as con bosses and convicts with rifles guarding other convicts. They did it and lived. Buck Rowan was obviously blind to how quickly men killed in San Quentin; it had more murders in one year than all the prisons in the country put together.

It was nearly 3:00 p.m. when Ron crossed the yard and entered the North cellhouse, hurrying up the stairs toward the service alley on the fifth tier. He knew where the cache of long knives was hidden.

Earl was high on heroin and in the shower when Ron entered the building. The shower area was in view of the stairs, and Earl saw his friend hurry by. He momentarily wondered why Ron was out of work so early, but he felt no concern. Instead, he thought that his friend would soon be gone, and though there would be a sense of loss, it was a happy thought. I’ve done him some good, Earl thought, but he’s done me good, too. I’m thinking about the streets … and I’m gonna get there one more time.

A minute later, Buzzard, the elderly Mexican, hurried down the stairs toward Earl. “Your friend just got a piece out of the
clavo
,” he said.

Without fully rinsing off the soap or drying himself. Earl threw on a pair of pants and shower thongs and hurried up the stairs, carrying the rest of his clothes and toiletries in his hand. He was shirtless and beads of water dripped from his shoulders. Ron’s cell was the only one with its gate open, and Earl was twenty yards away when Ron came out and started to close it. The younger man wore a heavy black coat zipped up and had a knit cap on his head, the standard disguise for trouble. Ron looked up and his face was drawn tight, his eyes glassy, and he seemed unhappy at Earl’s presence.

“What’s to it?” Earl said, stomach churning.

Ron shook his head. Earl reached out and patted the coat, feeling the hardness of the weapon under it. “Shit … something’s sure as fuck wrong.”

“Let me handle it.”

“What the fuck are you talkin’ about? Man, you’re going to the streets in a hot minute. What’re you doin’ with a shiv? That’s a new sentence.”

“That’s a secret?” Ron said, smiling sarcastically.

Earl held back his anger. This was serious, for Ron wasn’t like many young cons who taped on shivs and talked murder so nobody would mess with them. Earl was afraid, not of violence but of the aftermath. A stabbing would keep the young man inside; a killing would mean at least five or six more years even without a trial. And he himself was involved. That was unquestioned, and if something happened, it would snuff out his own candle of hope. If it was unavoidable, then it had to be—but he wanted to make sure it couldn’t be handled some other way. He pressed for the story and Ron told it, at first haltingly, finally without reservation. And into Earl’s worry came fury. The gross stupidity of Buck Rowan, whom he didn’t know, made him want to kill the man. He was mildly relieved that it was a white man; at least it wouldn’t ignite a race war. And Earl knew that any white would be without backing against the Brotherhood. The man was not merely a brute; he was also an absolute fool.

“Maybe we can get around snuffing him,” Earl said. “Show him what he’s up against. The
best
he can get is killed.”

“He’s too dumb. Jesus, I hate stupid—”

“If we gotta, we gotta, but let’s make sure it’s necessary. It isn’t as if he was an immediate threat to your life this afternoon.”

“He’s not trying to fuck
you
. Let me handle it.”

“What! If you make a move, you’d better get ready to down me first, and then T.J. and Bad Eye will—”

“Oh, man, I don’t want to get you into trouble.”

“Fuck all that.”

“Yeah, okay. I don’t want to kill him … or rather I don’t want the penalties for it.”

“Let’s check him out. Let me see if I recognize him. Then we’ll plan. We’ll go to the library and you point him out through the window when school lets out.”

As they crossed the yard and went out the gate, Ron grabbed Earl’s elbow. “Look, motherfucker, promise me … if it comes to trouble, don’t take over for me. Don’t go get T.J. and do something without me. I’d hate you if you did that. I’ve learned how to hold up my end. Promise …?”

“I promise. I can dig it.”

Inside the library they waited near a front window until the school bell rang and a horde of convicts burst from the education building, many carrying schoolbooks. A minute later the literacy training class came from the annex. Buck Rowan stood out and he was alone, carrying his books. He had a clodhopper stride, arms hanging straight down, feet stepping high—as if he were pulling them from ploughed dirt.