I mean, I woke up in the hole and it was the next day so he must have knocked me there.
I was messed up. I remember that much. My jaw was sore, my head was sore, and when I tried to move I realized my ribs were sore, too, but I had to move and move I did, because the remains of that bubbling home brew had my stomach in a death-grip and I spent the rest of that day on or around my toilet bowl. It wasn’t dark in my cell, that was a good thing, and I still had my clothes on so they hadn’t thrown me in the strip cell.
The hole in Alcatraz only had one strip cell. That cell was dark, had a hole in the floor for a toilet and bread and water for food, except every third day you got a meal. The rest of the hole cells had a regular toilet and were provided with a mattress and blanket at night. Then the second and third tier of D-block, Segregation, had regular cells and was used for long-term isolation.
The MTA finally came down making his rounds. They let him in my cell. He looked me over good and cleaned my wounds, more sympathetic than I expected. He said my ribs weren’t broken, though they sure felt like it. When he was through he asked, “How old are you?”
“Twenty-three,” I answered sadly.
He shook his head sympathetically, but when he left all he gave me was some aspirin. He told me to take two aspirin, drink plenty of water and take it easy.
Take it easy? Like what else was I going to do? I was in the hole. But, oh well, take two aspirin, drink plenty of water and walk slow, the standard treatment for all prison ailments. They hadn’t roughed me up too bad, just a few cuts and bruises here and there. They hadn’t really given me the genuine ass-whipping that they were capable of, so the old MTA’s magical remedy worked up to a point. I didn’t die.
I waited and waited for them to come and get me and take me to court, hating to think what the old captain was going to say about it. Days went by.
As usual when I had to do hole time I retreated into my head, thinking about this and that. At first I let my brain go where it wanted to go, and as usual it landed on my secret question about time and space which I usually wondered about when I was doing hole time and which I never discussed with anybody else, especially not another knothead like myself, less they suggest I sign up to see the nut doctor.
I remember the first time I ever thought about it. I was about twelve-years old wandering around in the woods on Zeb Hackney’s hundred-and-twenty acre farm. I had got a good peek at Kathleen Vinson’s pink panties that day in school when we were playing prison-base and she fell down and her dress went flying up in the air—but that’s another story. Anyway, that day my brain was wondering about things it had never wondered about before, and as I lay on my back under a big tree and looked through the leaves at a patch of bright blue sky I wondered about space: if I went straight up and just kept going up, when would I come to the end of space, and when I came to the end would there be a wall there, and if so, what would be on the other side of that wall? So the great mystery began, of space and time, give due credit to Kathleen Vinson’s pink underwear. And another great mystery began there too, for she was by far the prettiest girl in all of Caldwell County, Kentucky, maybe the whole world—and I thought about that too, those long glorious legs as she lay there with her dress all the way up above her hips.
Stop it!
Okay, I was in the hole in Alcatraz wondering about space and time, for by then I had figured, in my slow but dogged way, that space and time were somehow tied together, that they were even somehow related? The resemblance was remarkable: Space was forever, but that was impossible; time was also forever, but that was also impossible—the two great paradoxes of the universe. Einstein said if the answer to a question doesn’t make sense you are probably asking the wrong question?
I sprained my brain trying to find that missing question, a hopeless task, about as hopeless as trying to figure out how I had wound up in Alcatraz.
Guards came to let me out for a shower and I was given a razor and mirror to shave. I had been in the hole for about five days, I think, and I was hoping that letting me clean up was a sign they were getting me ready for kangaroo court. My bruises had turned a faded yellow, which meant they were healing fast. A convict in another cell told me I had been kicking and screaming when they dragged me into D block, and fighting like crazy, so I guess I was lucky to get off with just a light ass-whipping. I looked myself over real good in the mirror as I shaved. My face was okay, scratched up a little, bruised a little, but not bad.
One day a couple of guards came down and got me. I thought I was going to court, at last, but they escorted me into the cell house and put me in my old cell. I thought at first they’d made a mistake, so of course I didn’t say anything. Then lunch came and they opened the doors and my door opened too. Holy shit! I jumped up and went to lunch with everybody else, and it was just like homecoming, everybody hollering at me and ribbing me and shaking my hand like I was really somebody. Burgett gave me a Gullie hug and him and the rest of my buddies loaded me down with smokes. The one good thing about going to the hole was getting out of the hole. It was like getting out of prison. And once I discovered I was really free I was happy as a dog with two, uh, tails.
That afternoon I went down to work with my crew, still wondering about not going to court or anything. They’d just turned me loose without a word. Benny Rayburn, our jailhouse lawyer, finally set me straight. He told me that the guard had hit me first, and that was illegal, even at Alcatraz. And he figured that since they’d given me a good ass-whipping they’d just left me in the hole until my bruises were visibly healed and then turned me loose, calling it even. And, sure enough, the next time I went to court for something else, they didn’t even mention it, the getting drunk, the ass-whipping, nothing. It was like it had never happened.
I didn’t complain.
And one day down in the glove shop I went into the bathroom and saw Burgett dunking a plastic bag full of air into a sink full of water. He was mashing on the bag to see if it would hold the air. He saw me but didn’t say anything, so I didn’t say anything.
But it didn’t take a genius to figure out the only use for a bag full of air on Alcatraz Island.
CHAPTER FIVE
A seagull squalled a mating call. Or was that something inside me. I had seen a Doris Day movie that morning, and now I was up on the concrete bleachers looking out over the water at the San Francisco waterfront. It was an unusually clear day for the bay area and I could plainly see the tiny people, make out the women in bright colors. And seeing what I saw I had the most awesome revelation I’d ever had in my life, maybe even more awesome than the mind-blowing day Kathleen Vinson’s dress flew up and I witnessed her glorious long legs all the way from her ankles to the Holey Land, maybe even more awesome than that. For I thought of all the women over there walking up and down, doing this and that, every one of them walking around with a pussy between her legs like it wasn’t nothing, like it didn’t mean a thing. I mean, there must be millions and billions of women in this world just walking around with a pussy between their legs like it didn’t mean a thing. And here we were on Alcatraz Island, a bunch of raggedy-assed convicts who hadn’t seen a woman in a long, long time. It fucked my head up.
I just had to tell somebody about my revelation, so I cornered Burgett and told him, explaining it just like it had come to me. He listened, all right, but when I was through he gave me a dumb look and said, “You’ve been locked up too long, Bill Baker,” and he took off without another word.
So, okay, he was retarded, so I saw Jackrabbit and caught up with him walking. Maybe he would understand it, whereupon I explained it to him also as it had come to me.
Well, he listened and when I was through he didn’t say anything but I know he was thinking about it because I could see the play of emotions on his face. Then he stopped walking for just a minute and glanced at the wall like he’d suddenly been awakened from a dream or something and I saw a sadness on his face, just briefly, and then it faded and he started walking again. I
don’t know what he was thinking and he didn’t explain, but I knew he understood.
Which is more than I could say for myself, the understanding of it, because it had been revealed to me in the most basic form of knothead language to best fit my brain, but I knew it meant more than I could explain, the revelation.
Words like female companionship and love and loneliness come to mind, but that’s something you don’t talk about on Alcatraz Island. So pussy will have to do. I mean this is the story of Alcatraz. How we talked. How we lived. This is it. So if it’s a little too much for you, I’m sorry; in that case the flowery language of the Reader’s Digest version of prison life may be more suitable for you. For example, they are outraged that we get free dental care while they have to pay dearly for it. And they are distressed that we are not being more properly punished. “Are our prisoners being coddled?” they ask repeatedly and of course conclude that indeed we are, for reporters and politicians are constantly touring our prisons and noting that we are laughing and playing and seeming to be having a good old time, that we have movies and games and medical care and a factory where we learn good work habits (and get paid for it, for goodness sakes!). “I thought they were sent to prison to be punished for the crimes they committed, for goodness sakes! Are we coddling our prisoners?” And, of course we are, they conclude again, in a language embroidered with flowers to make it seem more convincing.
Well, okay, but let me tell you something, and I must tell you in terms reduced to the crudest language, for we had no flowers at Alcatraz, only weeds, so stop up your ears, if you must, because here it is, plain and simple: We were men. And we weren’t getting any pussy. And that’s the punishment. Get it, Reader’s Digest? That’s the punishment, maybe the most severe punishment ever inflicted by one human being on another, except for the loss of freedom itself.
Love is a four-letter word in prison, one you don’t use when fuck will do, for you dare not show your weakness in the middle of a jungle where a spear may pierce that most vulnerable place in your heart. And loneliness is a word you never use even in a whisper.
Me, I loved my grandma and I loved my dog, and that’s it. And I was never lonely except maybe sometimes in the privacy of my cell at night when I heard a tugboat chugging through a heavy fog and heard those foghorns bawing out in the bay. I mean I’ve heard a freight train whistle in the distance and I’ve heard a whippoorwill call, but nothing is lonelier than a foghorn calling out in the middle of the night from a cell on Alcatraz Island. Nothing except maybe Elvis Presley singing Heartbreak Hotel on the radio. I’ll never admit any of this in broad daylight, though.
Hold it, Reader’s Digest! I’m not through with you yet. What about freedom, what about that? What about the loss of freedom, you who have no idea what freedom is, you who chain your family dog to a tree in your back yard and take it for granted that he’s still going to wag his tail at the sight of you and lick the hand that throws him a bone. Do you think for one minute that he doesn’t yearn with every breath to be off that chain, to be free? Yet he still jumps and plays in the small space that you’ve confined him to, so he must be happy.
Come back here, tourists and politicians and journalists, whatever you are; this is for you too! You who toured the plantations of the slave owners in the Old South and reported, “The darkies must be happy. See how they laugh and play? Why, they’re like children.”—you who have no idea what freedom is.
That’s the punishment, get it?
The law reads: “I sentence you to prison as punishment for your crimes,” as punishment, not for punishment. It means: “As punishment for your crimes, I sentence you to lose the most precious thing in your life, I sentence you to lose your freedom.” That’s what it means.
I wag my tail when they feed me a big spaghetti dinner, and I laugh and play, but don’t you dare think I don’t know where I am ever second of every day. That gray background in my head makes sure I don’t forget. And I dream prison dreams at night. I mean I even do time in my dreams.
So go fondle your tulips, Reader’s Digest, and leave me alone.
My, what an outburst. But Reader’s Digest? What got into you? (My do-gooder conscience weighing in.)
Fuck you. (My response.)
Okay, so maybe once in a while I wake up cross-eyed. But I get over it.
I started watering my little strip of weeds and grass again, mainly because it irritated old Simmons. And, sure enough, when he couldn’t take it anymore, he pulled up on me. “Baker, why do you keep doing that? It rained all night and half the morning, and the ground’s saturated with water. Why do you keep doing that?”
I shrugged. “I dunno. Something to do, I guess.” He shook his head and walked away, headed over and talked to the captain who was duty officer that weekend and was checking out the yard at the time. I saw Simmons pointing at me as he talked and the captain was looking my way, so they must have been talking about me.
Well, here they came, the captain and Simmons, sidled up to me and stood there looking. Then the captain said, “How’re you doing, Baker.” He was talking to me. “Okay,” I answered, and I think I had a shit-eating grin on my face, for I wasn’t used to being asked that question by a captain in the middle of the yard in broad daylight, and I sort of liked the old fucker, anyway, so I didn’t have my guard up.
He, the captain, studied that little raggedy patch of weeds, walked over next to the fence and looked closer, for the growth was pretty sparse, and he sort of bent down to look even closer, then he stood up straight and just stood there for a minute, then he turned to Simmons and said, “Leave it alone.” That’s what he said. And he walked away without another word. Just like that.
Simmons’ face turned red, and he too went away, visibly shaken.
I watered the hell out of those weeds from then on.
And I remember that about that time I was studying my bridge book, preparing to challenge old Jackrabbit again, preparing to beat his smart ass, which turned out to be a disaster, for even though I studied till my face turned blue and pumped my nuts up until I walked like John Wayne, Jackrabbit again gave me a beating on that bridge table that hurt worse than the ass-whipping I took in the hole that day I got drunk, for he hurt my feelings.
Bastard!
Maybe spades was my game. Or marbles. I could shoot the hell out of marbles.
We got two showers a week at Alcatraz whether we needed them or not. I really didn’t need a shower all that often, for I was young and fair-skinned and just naturally clean, but I took one just the same every shower day because that’s the only place we got hot water, the shower room. And we had to take a shower to get clean clothes.
And besides, taking a shower was a good excuse to get out of my cell.
The evenings were long and boring. We had our earphones. That helped. Television was changing radio programs, but we still got Lux Radio Theatre, and Jack Benny and Amos and Andy and the Lone Ranger and Fibber Magee and Molly, and shows like that. And we got the ball games, we got those. And we got Lucky Lager Dance Time every night at ten o’clock. That was a music program sorta like a hit parade and I listened to it just about every night.
And we got the news. But all news programs were censored very closely by somebody out front, sort of like the magazines were censored: when any news came on about prison riots or bank-robbing or anything like that, the radio suddenly went dead, which always caused a hell of a commotion because when the radio went dead we got our tin cups and started banging on the bars, which did no good but we let them know we were there. Those tin cups banging on those steel bars made a racket you could hear all over the island. Somebody said that on a foggy night you could hear the banging all the way over in San Francisco, but I don’t know whether I believe that or not.
Old Promising Paul made his rounds of the factory at least once a month, listening to complaints, mainly, and when he came in our shop half the workers gathered around him, mostly with desperate requests for a transfer somewhere else, anywhere e
lse. Promising Paul had a little pad with him that he wrote complaints and requests on, he did that, and he promised everybody he’d see about it, but nothing ever came of it that I know of, for the same people gathered around him on every visit with the same woeful pleas, but nobody went anywhere.
Me, I didn’t bother. I didn’t have enough time left anyway. But Burgett did, and he was one of the people on the wailing wall every time the old warden came down.
I figured Burgett was working on a Plan B, though, with those air bags, that if a transfer didn’t come through he’d try for a midnight parole. That’s what I figured but I never asked him about it, for you didn’t even dare whisper the word “escape” at Alcatraz for fear the snitches would hear it. Yes, we had snitches at Alcatraz, too. They had invisible antenna in their heads that constantly searched the air waves for plots that might be a ticket for a transfer. Anywhere you have desperate people you have snitches. And there were a lot of desperate people with a lot of serious time on Alcatraz Island.
Drake was one of those people. And he was a snitch, but we didn’t learn about him until it was too late. They finally caught up with him in Leavenworth and set his cell on fire with him in it. But that’s another story. That’s Roy Drake, not John Drake who was also at Alcatraz at the time. I don’t want to hang a bad jacket on the wrong man.
When Promising Paul made his tours of the factory, he had a lot of shops to visit. On the waterfront, where I worked, was the glove shop and tailor shop and brush factory and, I think, a furniture factory down there somewhere, though I don’t remember for sure for we were never allowed to see any of them unless we worked there. And on the landing going up the steps they had a laundry where they not only did convict’s clothing but had a juicy contract with the military and with some hospitals, I think. All the shops had contracts with the military. And all of them made big money. The money they paid us didn’t amount to much compared to what the factory made for Federal Prison Industries, which had factories in all the federal prisons. Jackrabbit told us this. He worked in the factory business office as a convict clerk, so he knew.
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