On the Yard

by Malcolm Braly

  As the fish were led in through three-post they were greeted with a gale of whistling and catcalls, and as they were walked down the edge of the yard a number of inmates ran alongside them yelling, “You and me, baby. You and me.” Or, “Put that pretty thing in my cell.” The comments were broad, the invitations facetious, but the real content was hostility, as if the whistles and calls were fists and bricks. Manning sensed the hatred even though he couldn’t as quickly determine the motive, but the thought that disturbed him was that he might be changed as these men must have been changed, shaped and molded to fit the habits and passions of this thousand-legged animal that was greeting them with such savage and contemptuous mockery.

  “Don’t let it bug you,” Nunn said. “This is sort of a tradition.”

  It seemed to Manning that every prisoner in the big yard had joined in the shivaree, just as it seemed to him they were all identical—jeering mouths wrenched open under the round stiff-billed hats. Actually less than a third of the yard was engaged in active hazing. Many stood and stared for no better reason than that it was something different to look at, and almost everyone searched the new faces for a friend, a buddy fresh from the streets. Still others noted hopefully the large number of fish, because they saw the prison as if it were a giant bin, and if busload after busload of fish were stuffed into the bottom of the bin it only stood to reason that the pressure of the growing population would shove them out the top a few months earlier. It was true, facilities through-out the state were dangerously overcrowded, but the cynics maintained they would be housed three to a cell before a single man was released a day early.

  Now they were moving along a row of wooden tables, constructed like picnic benches and painted the same forest green, where a dozen domino games were in progress. Each table was the center of a crowd, players and their audience, and the games were being conducted with great animation and a running scrimmage of loud talk, insults, depreciation, and repeated invitations to “get fucked.” Scattered through the domino crowd like tortoises somehow abandoned in the monkey house were a few chess players. They hunched over their boards in fierce concentration, and seemed oblivious to the bedlam around them.

  “Chilly,” Nunn was shouting. “Hey, Chilly.”

  Manning followed the direction of Nunn’s eyes and noticed Society Red playing dominos with three other men. He was partnered with a slender young man who was bent forward studying the pattern of the game, and when he made his own play he didn’t just place the domino on the table—he swung his hand over so hard and fast centrifugal force fixed the tile to his fingers until it slapped against the table, and was then deftly flicked into play. The whole action was performed with the vigor and style of a tennis smash.

  “Five-four, hit the door,” he chanted, then turned to look at Nunn. His eyes were bleak.

  “Goddam, Chilly,” Nunn said.

  “Sucker, just what the hell are you doing back?”

  “The wheels came off.”

  “They always do, don’t they. On the first hard bump. All right, you’re back. We’ll rap tomorrow after breakfast.”

  “Same office?”

  “Now what do you think.”

  As they were moving away, Chilly took a partial pack of cigarettes from his pocket and threw them to Nunn. He shook his head, and turned back to the game.

  “If Chilly wasn’t doing the big bitch,” Nunn told Manning, “he’d own half this state.”

  “The big bitch?”

  “Forty to life and that’s as hard as they come.”

  “But he seems so young.”

  “Chilly’s twenty-five, maybe twenty-six, but he was born old. They’ve got him made, that’s why they tied him down with so much time. He’ll walk someday, but it’s going to be awhile.”

  They were entering the rotunda of the south block—skid row, Nunn called it—where all new men were automatically celled. A block officer read their cell assignments from an onionskin flimsy. Manning drew A-3-64.

  “Where’s that?” he asked Nunn.

  “Third tier, A-section, cell sixty-four. Come on, I’ll take you halfway.”

  A case of wide metal stairs led up through the center of the block, and through the open metal door on each landing Manning received an impression of shadowed space and somehow dampness. On each landing they also passed a utility tunnel, crowded with pipes and wiring, and they seemed to stretch for a mile before they terminated in small rectangles of light. They were closed by barred doors and behind one of these doors an inmate, wearing a leather belt clustered with tools, stood waiting to be released.

  “Just drive up?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Nunn answered.

  “Where’d you come in from?”

  “Delano.”

  The floors were concrete and had once been painted a deep maroon that had now worn away to a pale tint, except in the corners where the original paint was still clinging in shrinking islands. All light was fluorescent, the fixtures clung to the wall like phosphorescent fungus, and did little to brighten the natural light that filtered through the paint, dust, and bird droppings that coated the outside windows.

  Nunn paused on the third landing and pointed out a door with a large A painted on it. “Right through there—and take it slow. Keep dummied up until you learn your way around.”

  Manning started down the tier. The cells were numbered from one. He could see more of the building now, and the outer shell was similar to an enormous hangar, while the actual block of cells occupied the center as if it were a separate and smaller structure stored in the larger one. There was a steady and undifferentiated drone, a thousand conversations muffled in the concrete walls, broken by an occasional shout, and through this was threaded an intimation of music that seemed to be coming from everywhere at once as if it were a property of the air. Later Manning was to realize that this impression was created by the earphones, two in every cell, no one audible in itself, but together they created a subliminal murmur. It was Tales from the Vienna Woods he heard as he walked along the third tier for the first time.

  The cells reminded him vaguely of exhibits, their uniform size—yes, they were like the window displays in the museum of natural history, where stuffed animals had stood each in a static splinter of its particular habitat. The cells in similar fashion reflected the men who lived in them, though the variation was naturally limited. Some were elaborately decorated with curtained shelves, set solid with family photos and Christmas, Easter, and birthday cards grouped like shrines. Other cells were filthy—a shambles of peeling paint, floors furred with dust, the space under the bunk packed with old newspapers and magazines. Some displayed the Virgin, others were decorated with the calendars distributed by various religious organizations. Manning saw models of hot-rods, original oil paintings, hand-tooled copper plaques.

  As he passed each cell he was aware of heads swiveling to stare at him, heads as meaningless as flesh-colored balloons with features painted on them.

  “Hey, pop, where’d you fall from?”

  “Did you just come in from Bakersfield? Did a stud called Jingles come in with you?”

  “Hey, mac ...”

  “Hey, buddy ...”

  “Hey, man ...”

  “... what’s happening out in that free world?”

  Manning hurried on, his face half hidden in his blanket roll. When he reached the cell assigned him he was shocked to find another man already inside. He had been hungering for solitude. Now he had to step into this tiny room and share it with a stranger.

  The inmate was sitting in the top bunk, his back against one wall and his feet propped on the other. The cell was so narrow his knees were still as high as his head. He was reading. He glanced sideways, saw Manning, and closed the book on his finger. He took in the pillowcase of cell supplies and the blanket roll and for a moment his face betrayed disappointment—then he smiled.

  Manning received an impression of dense black hair, a white eroded complexion, and light blue eyes sunk
en under heavy brows. Then a guard far down the tier was manipulating the automatic controls, causing a sound like muffled but rapidly approaching gunfire as the stops in the lever box were tried and discarded one by one until the door of cell 63 jerked and rolled open. Manning stepped in, holding his gear in front of him, and the door slammed at his back.

  “Just come in?”

  “Yes, an hour or so ago.”

  “Just an hour ago ... oh, my name’s Juleson. Paul Juleson.” He held out his hand.

  “Will Manning.”

  They shook hands solemnly.

  “I’m afraid,” Juleson said pleasantly, “that you’re stuck with the bottom bunk. Not that there’s any big difference. The light’s a little better up here.”

  Now that he was inside, Manning realized that the cell was much too small to hold two men. It was no more than four by ten feet in floor space, and around eight feet high. The double bunk filled half the cell, the sink and toilet bowl protruded into what was left. Above the sink two warped wooden shelves teetered on L-braces. One shelf was stacked with books, the other was empty.

  “That’s your shelf,” Juleson said, having followed Manning’s brief inspection. “For your toilet gear and anything like letters you want to keep. Have you been here before?”

  “No, this is my first time.”

  “I thought it might be. These cells were originally designed for one man. It’s a hardship, but you get used to it.”

  “It was the same in the county jail. Always crowded. Men sleeping on the floor.”

  Juleson smiled and his somber eyes flickered. “The jail business is picking up. When they built this place they had no idea how popular it was going to become.”

  Manning walked to the rear of the cell and looked at the toilet. It had not been designed for comfort and below the waterline the bowl was deeply stained. “You hear about these places all your life,” he said quietly, “but you never quite realize they exist in the same world you live in.”

  “I’m not sure they do. If there is an underworld, this is it. I’ve talked to men who have pulled time all over the country and they say it’s the same everywhere. Here, I’ll help you make up your bunk.”

  The routine task was grotesquely complicated by the confines of the cell, but Juleson showed Manning the method by which countless convicts had assisted each other to make their beds over the years. When the bunk was square Juleson jumped back into the upper and picked up his book.

  “This is my fix,” he said. “I lead other people’s lives.”

  Manning slipped into the lower, and lay face up staring at the metal webbing bellied down in the rough contours of Juleson’s body. Every time Juleson shifted to turn a page the entire bunk swayed. The subtle feeling that he wasn’t well began to come on Manning again, and, even as he thought about it, his lips seemed to be swelling, growing thick and hypersensitive. A stitch ran down his side.

  “What would happen if you took sick while you were locked up like this?” he asked.

  “We’d rattle the bars until someone came to see what was wrong.” Juleson’s face appeared, upside down, over the edge of his bunk. “What’s the matter? Don’t you feel well?”

  “I feel all right—I just wondered.”

  “The medical attention isn’t bad. Sometimes you might get a fast shuffle on the sick line, but you have to remember that every shuck in the prison’s in that line trying to play on the doctors for a cell pass, or a few days in the hospital. But if they see you’re really sick, you probably get better attention here than you would on the streets. A lot of high-class specialists donate their time over here.”

  Manning wanted to continue the conversation, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. He nodded to signify his thanks and Juleson went back to his book. Manning rolled over on his side, and his breath came with the tension of the awareness that he was breathing at all. His throat was thickening again.

  “Shine em up!” someone said sharply outside the cell. Manning rose up to find himself staring into a pair of violently bitter eyes—green as he would imagine the deepest shades in the heart of an iceberg.

  “Take off, Slim,” Juleson said from the upper bunk.

  “Ain’t talking to you. I’m asking this new fellow if he’d like to get his shoes shined.”

  “I’m telling you to get out of here,” Juleson said with greater force. “Now move on, you unclassifiable degenerate.”

  “Talk smart, don’t you.”

  “Get!”

  The man slipped away, his eyes lingering over Manning’s feet as he left.

  “Who was that?” Manning asked.

  “Sanitary Slim. He’s some kind of machinery. He always comes around and hits on the fish to shine their shoes. It’s an obsession with him—he’s got it like cancer.”

  Bells began to ring and minutes later the men from the yard were beginning to file in. More bells, and they stood up at the bars to be counted. Still another bell, and they were released, tier by tier, for dinner. Manning followed after Juleson and they entered what appeared to be an enormous cafeteria. They waited near the end of a long line that was passing in front of the steam table. Somehow Manning had expected silence, but the air was heavy with the shuffling blur of private conversation multiplied many times over and punctuated with the sharp clicking of metal on metal, speeded by repetition until it seemed like the whirring of a cloud of aluminum crickets, and added to this was the deeper racket caused by the beating of dippers against the trays as they were passed along the steam table. Manning closed his eyes.

  “Hey,” Juleson said quietly.

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “Believe me, you get used to all this—and maybe that’s the worst thing that happens to you.”

  The food was better than the food he had been eating in the county jail, but he had no appetite for it. He picked at the edge of his fish, and drank half a cup of black coffee.

  “Aren’t you going to eat?” Juleson asked tentatively.

  “No, I’m not hungry.”

  “May I have your fish? And the pie if you don’t want it?”

  “Certainly, help yourself.”

  Juleson hesitated, then drew Manning’s tray next to his own. “I’m always hungry,” he said in an apologetic tone.

  Another bell sounded to send them filing from the mess hall, back to the cells. Again Juleson settled down with his book and Manning lay beneath him listening to the dry flick, flick as he turned the pages. Manning’s mind began to move relentlessly towards the inventory he knew he had to take, and had been putting off ever since he heard the judge intoning “... as the law prescribes.” And with those words killed Manning right there in front of his bench, executed his past and all the meaningful continuity of his life, destroyed Willard Manning and left an unknown in his place, a man whose nature and future he was afraid to guess at.

  He was forty-four and it was apparent. He was soft and his wind was going. He had an incipient hernia, and definite hemorrhoids and there was no way to guess what illness and disabilities might be waiting in the gradual deterioration of his health. His upper teeth were false, and one dentist had already advised him to have the lowers extracted as well.

  He didn’t know how old he would be when they handed him back the right to wage economic war. But he might well be fifty. How would he survive? Who was going to hire a middle-aged, unbonded accountant with no record of previous employment? Who was going to hire a morals offender even with his excellent employment record? Yes, they would reason, but who knows what ideas he may have picked up in prison, what friends he might have made, schemes entered into. Why risk it? He’s fifty anyway. They say you can never cure a sex offender.

  What would he do? It seemed hopeless—at best the rest of his years would shiver in the shadow of his former life. But it never occurred to Manning to give up.

  As he was falling asleep, he tried to remember the date. It seemed important he know what day it was, but he wasn’t surprised when this
simple fact eluded him. It was only by going back to the day of his arrest, when all normal time had ceased, and working forward week by week, that he was finally able to tell himself that it was November the 16th.

  3

  PAUL JULESON read for an hour and forty-five minutes. Then he put his book aside, sat up tailor fashion, and started to roll a cigarette. He used the state-issue tobacco—it was free, but not exactly a bargain. There were two types available—a fine powdery rolling tobacco, called “dust”—and a pipe cut which wasn’t quite inferior enough to warrant a derisive nickname. Originally the state tobacco was thought of as an important step forward in the advance of penal reforms because just previous to the first free issue two men had been killed for debt—between them they had owed four bags of Bull Durham. If the prison were to process tobacco and make it available to everyone, no one need die because he had borrowed a sack of Bull Durham he couldn’t repay. But they had reckoned without the universal contempt for welfare of any kind, and the specifically convict resentment of anything provided by the state. The only inmates who smoked the tobacco were those who had absolutely nothing else and no way of getting anything and were still so lacking in pride they could acknowledge this publicly. It was widely held, though Juleson did not agree, that the state tobacco was deliberately spoiled, held to the lowest quality, so no one could possibly prefer it to the tailor-mades and pipe tobaccos sold on the inmate canteen at retail prices and, presumably, retail profits.