Again, the question frightened Jack and he did not answer. They took him back to the shelf, which was merely a section of single cells away from the main population. He knew now that San Quentin no longer had a hole. This frightened him, too. He was prepared for the hole; he was not prepared for anything else. He was afraid if he opened his mouth he would begin yelling for help. It was absurd, but that was the way he felt.
When they brought him back a couple of weeks later, the counselor smiled affably. He did not seem to have the hangover this morning, and he was quite brisk. “Well. Back again. Sorry about the long wait; the case load around here’s terrible. Now, let’s get this done, shall we? I’m going to assign you to the furniture factory for the time being. I don’t have to tell you it helps to be sort of busy around here; and there’s plenty to do. None of it’s make-work. I hope. And I’ve noticed on these records that you’re just a few semesters short of high school graduation. Would you like to finish up here? We have some pretty good instructors. You can get a certificate from the GED and the Great State of California making you a bona fide high school graduate, if you want. Then you can go to college and become a brain surgeon. Work in the plant mornings, and go to school in the afternoons. Study in the evening. Want to try it?”
There was only one way for Jack to react: he had to push.
“I won’t do it,” Jack said. “Fuck your factory.”
“Don’t you like that kind of work?”
“Drives me batty. I’ve done it before.”
A look of sympathy passed over the counselor’s face. “I know what you mean.” He did not seem bothered by the virtual “fuck you” Jack had flung at him. “Well, what would you like to do? I can’t find out unless you tell me.”
The softest job in the prison was kitchen work. “How about the kitchen?” Jack said. “I’ll work there.”
“You will, hey?”
“Sure. And, go to school, too. I mean, if you can work it.”
The counselor fussed with his papers. “We’ll see,” he said. Jack went back to isolation, expecting to feel justified and triumphant, but all he really felt was disgusted with himself. He was acting like a child. He was in isolation for another week, and then transferred to Billy Lancing’s cell and told that his schedule would be work in the kitchen from 4:30 A.M. to noon, with yard break, and then school in the afternoon. He could not understand it. Billy’s schedule was the same, except that he spent his afternoons teaching elementary arithmetic. “Ah’m a fuckin mathmatical genius, baby,” he told Jack with a delighted grin.
Thirteen
Jack spent his mornings mopping the dining hall, feeding one of the gigantic steam clippers, scouring pots and pans, all the KP duties of a newcomer to any kitchen, and in the morning break on the yard stood by himself in the sun. He ate early chow with the kitchen workers and then went on pass to the classroom and spent the afternoon in the oddly nostalgic atmosphere of learning. It was, in fact, the slowest part of the day. Their teacher was a convict, sent up for the usual white-collar crime of bad checks, a thin, egocentric man whose instruction moved painfully slowly, as slowly as if not more slowly than the dim comprehension of the dullest student, most of whom were much older than Jack. The young ones were nearly all fuckoffs from the factories and not even vaguely interested in grammar or English literature or California history. Jack was always glad when the day ended and he could go back to his cell. He brought his books with him and it was much easier just reading the books than studying them. And Billy was there, too, with another installment of his autobiography. Not that Billy wasn’t interested in Jack’s past or that he wanted to monopolize the conversation; just that Jack was not really talking yet. He was still trying to absorb the sights and sounds of the prison; it was his new home, and he expected it to be, almost wanted it to be, his home for the rest of his life. Because to think any other way was to hope, and he hoped he had given up hope.
Evenings were the best part of the day. After the bustle, the noise, the omnipresent danger and the constant sense of enforcement, being at home in a two-man cell was almost restful, even though there was always a threshold of noise that never lessened throughout the night, and even though there was another man sharing the semi-privacy. It was Jack’s luck that the other man was someone he could like and someone he could listen to with interest.
It was clear, of course, that Billy wasn’t talking just to hear himself, or to tell Jack about his adventures. By recapitulating the past Billy was in a sense getting out of the present, getting back into the world outside, as if by the magic of speech and memory he could for a few hours free himself from the cell, and as far as Jack was concerned, it worked. It not only drew Billy out, it took Jack with him, by the very simple fact that Jack could not think about Billy and think about himself at the same time. So, for a few hours each evening, the two of them wandered around the northern parts of the United States, living, reliving, the life of a small-time gambler. Those things Jack thought he would miss most, the colors and tastes of life on the outside, came back to him as he tried to picture the things Billy talked about, and often afterward he would lie on his bunk and wonder with some inner excitement if he wasn’t developing a hidden resource in his imagination; if there weren’t, after all, ways of beating the joint without actually leaving.
But he knew better. When the excitement went away, he was left with the sour knowledge that Billy was trying not so much to escape via his memory, as to find out, in fact, why the harmless, lonely life he lived had led him straight to prison. Not the specific crime; he knew what that was, but the things that changed him into a man who would commit such a crime. He had written a phony check and been caught for it; that was his crime. But what he wanted to know was, how did it happen that a wise fellow like himself had done such a stupid thing. He never did find out, but he told some good stories.
“Man, I tell you the queerest thing ever happened to me was up in Idaho. I’ll never figure that cat out if I live a thousand years. I was in this all-night joint; I come about a hundred miles to get in this crap game in this guy’s garage, you know, and man, I spent a good half-hour losin every penny I had, an so I cut out an went for this all-night poolhall an was just sittin there out of the weather watchin some old white cats playin billiards an wonderin where in hell I was gonna get some food. Man, you can say what you want about this joint, but you get three squares and a flop, and when you aint got em, they’re somethin! I thought of everythin. Hock my stick? What stick! My magical Willie Hoppe Special? What a joke! I bought that son of a bitch about a month after I left Seattle, you know I just had to have one, an then some cocksucker in Walnut Creek, man, took and busted it over his knee when I wiped him out in snooker. I got another one later; left it at Whitehead’s when I got busted at last. Sell my ass? Sho, I read about cats doin that, you know, they get busted an sit around the bus depot cussin like hell, an then some cute guy comes along an gives em half a million to cop their joint; well, shit, I thought about it, but I didn’t want to, and man, I didn’t even know how! I thought about bustin into a house an stealin the family fur coats, but shit, I’m too chickenshit for that kind of action, and anyway, what the hell do you do with a fur coat? I didn’t know any fences. You hear a lot of shit about that. Man, every big-city poolhall’s got about fifteen guys always hangin around tryin to sell you a watch or a radio or somethin, but you never see these guys with any bread, do you? Hell, no!
“Anyhow, I’m sittin there in this poolhall and in comes the guy; it must of been two in the mornin, dressed in this business suit, nice-lookin guy, maybe fifty, looked like an executive, you know? He sits down and watches this billiard game, too. There wasn’t nothin else happenin in the joint; one old guy in back cleanin off the tables, the houseman asleep back of the candy counter, you know; and then this executive comes up to me an wants to know if I want to play rotation for two dollars or somethin. Rotation! Well, shit. Maybe he’s a queer, I think, and now’s my big chance to sell my ass; but then,
you know, maybe not. I says to myself, Billy, you been an honest man all your goddam life, and now you’re broke! Play on your guts, Billy, and take that man’s two dollars, and if you lose, let him try to find two dollars worth of your hide. I don’t know who that cat was or what he thought an never did find out, but he sure wanted to play. So I did it, I got up an played him rotation, half scared he’d find out I was broke, half scared he’d beat me; but hell, he handled a cue like it was a deadly snake, and man, he couldn’t hit his ass with a six-by-eight.
“We played, and I kind of kept it down an beat him by about ten points, man that game took twenty minutes, and he pulls out this wallet and opens it up, and you can see me kind of leanin over to look inside while I’m rackin the balls, and he pulls up two singles, bran new lookin, an throws em on the green and wants to play for four! Well, I says to myself, you got money for breakfast. You could throw it in right now, because your dream came true; or you can play on your guts again an get hustled into jail. Maybe the cat’s a cop or somethin. But screw it, I played him an beat him out of the four, still wonderin if the cat ain’t a hustler I just never met, waitin for him to throw me the okey-doke, but he doubles the bet another time or two and still can’t hit a lick, and finally I think to myself, Billy, this john don’t know the way home, and I cut loose myself and wrapped him up. Man, we started playin for fifty dollars a game, and I’d break and run every ball off that table sometimes, and he’d just be polite and say `Nice shootin, you got talent,’ or somethin, an give me the money and I’d rack the balls again an let him break and he’d go zong! and miscue or bounce the cue ball halfway across the room, and I’d shoot my sixty-one points, and out would come that wallet! I thought it would never end. I thought I was still sittin there having a dream. Finally the cat says, `Thank you for the games, I seem to be broke, could you pay my share of the time?’—lookin anxious like he was violatin the rules; pay his share? I had two thousand fuckin dollars!”
Billy’s laugh was easy, but his eyes glinted with remembrance of his riches. “Two grand.” He looked at Jack. “Did I run back to that crap game, even before I ate breakfast? Is a bullfrog green?”
“Oh, don’t tell me,” Jack said. “You didn’t lose it?” He felt almost sick at the thought. He could almost feel the thick wads of money slipping out of his own pocket.
“Lose it? Lose it? Are you out of your mind? Don’t you know anything about luck? I come into that crap game like a madwoman flingin shit, an won another nine hundred before everybody fled. Man, I just got out of there and trod on Idaho lookin for somebody I couldn’t beat.” He laughed again. “Lose it? Hell no! You think this story’s hard to believe; listen to this: Man, I took that money an thought an thought what to do with it, and I ended up goin to college!” His eyes were bright, almost feverish. “Ain’t that a bitch?”
“Man, do you have any idea how many niggers there is in night school? They’re scared, baby, they quit high school just like I did an go out an face that tough Cholly world and stand around on street corners an sneer, an when they get home they got no money an they wasted all that good sneerin; and up jumps the Army, an they hear their old man yellin around about automation, and it just scares the shit out of em. Night school! That’s the scene! Man, they’re so fuckin dumb, the most of them, they get all worked up and come to these classes, an then act just like they was back in high school, layin around payin no attention an thinkin the teacher’s got it out for em cause they’re black. Most of em. I made it through night school in a year, man, flyin low, spendin my days in Hollywood shootin pool, and I was gonna register at UCLA but this old dream of mine caught hold of me somewhere, and I went home to Seattle. I wanted to go to the University of Washington, right there in Seattle, and live near my folks, all that shit, you know; and man, I got there an my family was gone, every last one. I don’t know where the hell they went. I should have wrote. Anyway, I went to the University, got a conditional acceptance, signed up for a bunch of wild-ass courses like French, biology, history, English composition, you know. Moved into a dorm, bought me some sweaters, dig; went to football games, all that shit, studied like hell, but man, how cold! What did I care?
“I didn’t want to go to college; that was a bunch of shit. It was okay for some of them guys; hell, they was gonna end up runnin the country, you know? College is okay for them an for the cats who want to find some nice safe hole and crawl in it, but that wasn’t me. I know, because I wasn’t there three months before I had me a poker game goin in my room, an I was pushin benny at final time; taught them college athletes how to play nine-ball at the rec hall an was just rollin in money. Sure I studied. All the goddam time I’d be up all night hittin the books, but it didn’t make any difference; the only courses I got anywhere with were biology and algebra; the rest were Cs and Ds, an you know me, daddy, I got to be up in the top or I don’t play. So, shit. After a while, I felt like an asshole. You know, the worse thing in the whole fuckin world is to wake up in the middle of the night, when you’re helpless, man, an think to yourself, Billy, you’re a phony. You went to college because your heart ached, an now your heart aches still! What’s the matter, you sick? You lonely?
“I wasn’t the only one. There was cats all over that college wakin up scared. Some of em did it for fun, you know, sittin around drinkin coffee an talkin about life; with this now there aint no God so what the hell we gonna do time; some of these cats would come an bang on my door and come in an want to talk about niggers, what a hard lot they got, an want to score for some benny or make me take them down to a colored whorehouse, and laugh and yell an get drunk and have a high old time, but they was just as upset as I was, an we all knew it; we was all scared of the Army an life an all that shit; an what we really wanted most of all was to get comfortable, you know?
“It wasn’t money, I found that out in a hurry. Money, man, I could get money. I had money. That’s how goddam dumb I was then. I thought me an my brains and my good right arm could get me all the money I wanted. You know? The big problem was I guess I was just empty most of the time. When I first got out of the house, run off to Portland, that’s when I met you, an had a bed of my own, I thought that was the best goddam thing in the world; a bed you could spread out in, a room that was quiet. You know that feeling? But, shit, it got old, not that I ever wanted to go back to the housing project an live like a hog; but I was just plain empty. A long time before I went to college I thought, well, fuck the niggers, I aint gonna worry about that. I don’t want no troubles I aint made for myself, I aint gonna join no black club; that’s just lookin for protection cause you’re scared. I wasn’t scared, I told myself, cause I had my brains an my right arm, an that made me different; I was unique, like Willie Mays. Because you know all that keeps the niggers apart an down is the lack of money; and I could get all the money I wanted. And if any white cat wants to call me nigger an spit in my face, I figured I could take that. It happens, you know. Some cat in some backhole poolhall says somethin about the smell, or somethin. He says, `Man, what’s that awful smell? ’—meanin me, an I come back at him real quick, `I guess that must be the smell of big money; I guess you aint ever smelled a fifty-dollar bill,’ an haul out my wad and ask the man, `Do you want to take some of this home and get a good sniff at it?’—and some of them dumb fuckin crackers’d get so mad they’d play me, and I’d take their money home an smell it, and it smelled good.
“Well, an sometimes they’d lose their tempers, too, and take me out an beat me up an take the money back, and mine too, but that’s a lot tougher than it looks when my money is on the line. I left a few surprised cats around, man.
“Don’t ask me what happened next, man. It was too funny. I was goin with this chick from the college, and one night I get real scared and can’t sleep and can’t think an lay there in my bed feelin the horrors come down and sit on my chest an I’m thinkin about all that shit, you know, there aint no God and the world is the worse fuckin place there is an we’re all out to eat each other up and eve
rything goes, an I’m just a speck in a universe full of specks an one of these days there’s gonna be one less speck an nobody will know; all that cryin shit, you know, an somehow it got stuck in my head that love was the answer, an I was goin with this girl, so I must of loved her, so I gets up out of bed and jumps over to her place, she was livin at home, an bangs on her window, an in about twelve seconds I was married, workin at the bowlin alley and had two kids. Wham! My old lady wanted to be a social worker, dig, and I was gonna work in the bowlin alley—I didn’t give a shit for college—while she finished up her schoolin, groovy, I had the money, but then she got pregnant and all I hear from her is bringin new life into the world an all that crap until the baby comes, an she’s gonna go back to school anyway, an here comes the second kid, an that was that. Man, my whole life changed. For a while I dug it, naturally, I had me a good job at the alley, and they put in a bunch of pool tables an I had that all goin for me, I was a pretty big man there for my age; but every once in a while the whole bit got old and I’d hit the road again, leave the shoeshine stand in the hands of my assistant; you know, and head for San Francisco, LA, or Chicago. Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost, but I always kept the caseroll tight, and when I’d get lonely, I’d come home. Man, how dull it got.”
It was at about this time, three weeks after Jack started working in the kitchen, that Claymore disappeared from San Quentin. Everyone was delighted, and began making book on his capture. With not too much else to do that had the spice of life to it, gambling was very important to some of the convicts, and they would bet on almost anything. Of course the biggest bets were on the men in death row, and of them, the most action was on Caryl Chessman, who had been there over four years already and whose arrogant, intelligent face inspired nearly everybody. To them, to some of them, he was one little man, using his larceny and his brains against the entire machinery of the State. If he finally won, there was an unconscious yearning in many of them that the State, the machinery, all, would just fizzle away and the gates open and they could go home. The odds on Chessman at this time were there to four against. Jack saw him once, crossing the big yard under escort; he was surprised at how small Chessman was.
Hard Rain Falling Page 18
