Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade

by Edward Bunker

  Against the back wall was a bucket with a folded newspaper on top. I lifted the newspaper and immediately put it back on the bucket. The other can was the drinking water. It was a gallon can, on top of which was a book with the cover torn off. The can held a couple pints of water; the book was Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Otherwise the cell was empty. Hearing something outside, I went to the slot and peered out. The batch of fish with whom I'd arrived were moving in a cluster through the garden. They disappeared from view. Across the way, I could see blue-clad convicts going onto the porch of the mansion and up to the window that reminded me of a bank teller's. It was, I would learn, the "pass window." If someone had a visit, they got their pass at that window. If they had a medical lie in, it was issued by the pass window. They circled the garden to get there. Only free personnel and convicts under escort used the pathways through the garden. Some went from the window to the sallyport gate, while others came back and moved out of sight. Some wore bright yellow rubber raincoats, others had on long-billed convict hats and turned up their collars. Some passed nearby and yelled up to someone in a cell near mine. If they tried to loiter, the gun guard over the sallyport gate chased them away.

  A steam whistle blasted. The signal that made both convicts and guards quicken their pace: it signaled the main count lockup. Within a couple of minutes, no convicts were visible. It was time to lie down and read. Thank God someone had left a book, one I'd heard mentioned in the county jail. The first page was gone, but that was a minor obstacle. Within a minute I was enmeshed in the tale of Howard Roark, architect of genius and integrity who stood unbending and alone with the pack of mediocrities nipping at his heels, hating him because he would not compromise his ideals. Even more than Howard Roark, I was enchanted by the newspaper publisher who had fought his way to wealth and power and had a penthouse with glass roof and walls, so when he opened the drapes he could make love under the stars and above the metropolis. I quickly realized that it was different than any other book I'd read, and it had me mesmerized and turning pages. On my own, without ever having heard of literary criticism, I could tell that it wasn't supposed to be real people. They all represented ideas of some kind: the individual idealist, the altruist who wished to destroy the individual who dared to stand alone.

  A key in the lock made me slip the book under the mattress. Maybe reading was forbidden in here, I thought. A guard held the door open and a convict appeared carrying a stainless steel tray. He stopped in the doorway and I took it from him, standard institution fare consisting of watery spaghetti, overcooked string beans, three pieces of bread with white margarine (the law forbade margarine makers from yellowing it to resemble butter), a dessert of tapioca de San Quentin, and a stainless steel cup of weak coffee - made weaker by the inmate cooks who stole and sold it. It was edible but far from appetizing. Oh well, as some ex-con said, they treated me better than I would have treated them. I ate everything but the string beans. They were canned string beans boiled to death.

  Outside on the tier, a heavy key banged on a pipe and a voice bellowed: "Count time on two!"

  Time to stand up where I'd be easy to see. A shadow appeared. "Let's see a hand," said a voice. I put my fingers through the slot. Two guards went by, each counting to himself. At the end they compared figures. If both were the same, the count was phoned to Control. The calls came from cell houses, Death Row, hospital and the ranch. When each unit was right and the total was right, a steam whistle blew the "all clear."

  I happened to be peering out of the slot. Within a minute of the all clear, a torrent of guards began streaming through the Garden Beautiful toward the pedestrian sallyport. It was the day shift going off duty.

  I went back to The Fountainhead, the heroic architect, the cynical publisher, the woman columnist who married the publisher and loved the architect. Much of my childhood and youth had been spent like this, locked in a cell with a book. Far more than most, what I thought about the world was the imprint of what I read, filling the void usually reserved for family and community.

  A key turned in the lock. Two guards passed in two gray blankets and a pillowcase carrying a "fish kit." It had several items: a toothbrush, a tiny brown paper bag with toothpowder, a three piece safety razor and two Gillette thin blades. There was a sharpened pencil stub (actually a pencil cut in half), two sheets of lined paper and two stamped envelopes. There was a booklet: Dept. of Corrections, Rules and Regulations. There was a form: Application for

  Mail & Visiting. We were allowed ten names, excluding attorneys of record.

  Who should I put on the list? Mrs Hal Wallis for sure. Not Al Matthews. He had given up. Yes for Dr Frym. He knew San Quentin's chief psychiatrist — and wherever I went they wanted psychiatric reports. My Aunt Eva, yes. She was my only contact with my father. She would tell me how he was getting along. Thinking about my father in the dreary rest home stung my eyes. At least he wouldn't know where I was. What about my mother? Should I put her on my list? She might send a few dollars and that could make life easier in San Quentin, but the sad, simple truth was that I had no affection for her. The State of California had raised me. She had another husband and another child; she had a decent if dull life. I was a leftover from her youth. The bottom line was being unable to forgive her for telling a juvenile court judge that she was unable to control me. That removed the last vestige of affection. I scarcely knew her, and this was the time to end the charade of mother and son. She would be better off, too. I left her name off the application. Some months later the Protestant chaplain called me in and said my mother had written the Warden, who had referred it to him. I told him that I didn't want anything to do with her. When he tried to convince me otherwise, I told him to mind his own business.

  Was there anyone else? No. Voices summoned me to the slot. Down below the misty raindrops were caught in powerful floodlights. Convicts with collars turned up and books under their arms trudged in lines with their heads down against the wind, no doubt coming from night school. The last time I'd gone to school, I was ten years old. In reform school we were supposed to go to school for half a day, but I was always in lockup for one thing or another, fighting another kid or the Man. I couldn't do that here. The walls had eaten tougher men than me. Nobody was going to send me to Broadway, because I was too much trouble. Nobody was that tough. Without anyone telling me, I knew that anyone too tough to handle would simply be killed, one way or another. This was no kiddy playpen like the places I'd been. This was San Quentin. The question was: how different could I be?

  We don't really choose what we are except within a certain range. Yet looking through the narrow slot at the rain falling through the floodlights onto the prison, I did make one vow: I would feed my hunger for knowledge. I would make this time serve me while I served it.

  I was still reading when I heard the lament of a trumpet blowing "Taps" somewhere nearby. For a moment I thought it was dream or delusion, but it was real, the long, sad notes blowing across San Quentin prison. A minute later the cell light was turned off from somewhere else.

  Later, a flashlight beam in my eyes awakened me. A guard was taking count. When he was gone, I was still lying on the floor, looking up through the narrow slot. I could see an inch of night sky and a single glittering star. It was hypnotic. I remembered a book from reform school: Star Rover by Jack London, the tale of a man in a San Quentin cell like this, perhaps the very same cell that I occupied. He was put in a straitjacket, this man of awesome, unyielding willpower. He would fix his mind on a star and somehow project himself through space and time and live other lives. Was it real or only in his mind? I couldn't remember which, or if it had been clarified. It didn't seem to matter for the theme of the tale, which was that he could escape his torment through the use of his mind.

  Thinking of Star Rover excited me. Knowing history let anyone see more of life. How could we know where we were if we didn't know where we'd been before? Now I was in the "Big House," as someone called it in a movie. How long would I be here?
Up to ten years was what the statute said, six months to ten years, a truly indeterminate sentence. The idea of the maximum was unthinkable, but the difference between three, four, five or even six years was a lot of indeterminate time. Convicts knew the average usually served before parole, but I was never average in the judgement of the authorities. Then, too, would I survive? Men died in prison, especially those who were magnets for trouble. If past is prologue, I belonged in the magnet category. Fear was in my belly and resolve in my heart when I finally fell asleep that rainy first night in San Quentin, a-20284 bunker, e.h.

  The heavy thunk of the turning key brought me simultaneously awake and on my feet. One inmate filled the door. "The tray," he said, extending a hand.

  I grabbed the preceding evening's tray and handed it to him. He backed out and another inmate handed me another tray. Breakfast was cold grits and a cold fried egg. Actually it was burned crisp brown on the bottom while raw on the top, so to say it was cooked might be an error. I mixed the runny part with the grits and folded the burned part in a piece of bread, and washed the whole mess down with weak, lukewarm coffee.

  It was still too early for much activity around the Garden Beautiful and the Captain's Porch in the old mansion across the way. I went back to Ayn Rand. Howard Roark had blown up his own buildings because his plans had been changed. Although I was in his corner, I thought he over-reacted just a little.

  Steel doors were being opened down the tier, the sound growing louder as they worked closer. Finally mine opened. A guard stood there. "Wanna empty that shit bucket and get some water."

  "Sure do, boss." Experts had taught me how to "buck dance" for the Man.

  Grabbing the water can in one hand and the shit bucket in the other, turning my head away from the latter, I stepped out of the cell onto the walkway. The post-rain morning was sunlight bright; it made me turn my eyes aside. Below me and off to the left, I could see several convicts loitering and trying not to attract attention. They strolled in one direction for fifteen or twenty feet; then turned and went the other way, trying to blend into the stream of convicts going and coming. Standing still would more swiftly attract the eye of the gun guard on the catwalk over the pedestrian sallyport. The cons were trying to surreptitiously talk to someone off to my right.

  A figure was coming from each cell, and each carried the water can and the shit bucket. I had to pause while a convict swept the trash from his cell onto the walkway, where most of it fell through the slats to the ground below. His shirt was off and his muscular body was marked with blue tattoos. When he turned his head, I saw plucked eyebrows, eye shadow and red lips. His jeans were absurdly tight. He was a screaming faggot who looked like a linebacker. He stepped into his cell to let me go by. I smiled to myself.

  From another cell stepped a petite Chicano, doe-eyed pretty and swishy as a model. Then I saw two more female parodies, shirt tails tied at the waist.

  I was momentarily weak, as if punched in the stomach. Captain L.S. (Red) Nelson had taken revenge for when I pulled off his gas mask and belted him in the chops. He'd put me on queens' row.

  The weakness was inundated by blinding rage. "Bullshit!" I screamed, swinging the shit bucket in a wide arc. It slammed into the wall and splattered several sissies with shit and piss. They screamed and bolted down the tier toward the rear. One or two jumped into their cells and closed the door. The loitering convicts below stopped pacing and simply stared.

  "I ain't no punk!" I yelled. To be so labeled was to forfeit all standing. It was to be an object without manhood. Only child molesters and stool pigeons had less standing in the prison hierarchy. It was terrible! It was untrue!

  I heard the click clack sound of a cartridge being levered into a rifle's firing chamber. The gunrail guard had moved along the walkway. It was about fifty yards. On the ground next to the garden, a crowd of convicts was quickly growing. Except for me, the tier was empty, although one sissy down the way was peeking around the corner of his doorway.

  A guard appeared at the end of the tier. He stopped a safe distance away. "What's going on?"

  "Hey, I'm not no fuckin' punk, man!"

  "Who said you're a punk."

  A second guard appeared on the gunrail.

  "Shoot! Goddamnit! Go ahead and shoot! I ain't staying here."

  A sergeant came around the end of the tier. He had a big white mustache and the face of experience. He moved toward me, slowly, carefully maintaining enough distance to avoid a swing of the bucket. Before I could move into range, the two gunrail guards would add some lead to my body weight.

  "Take it easy, kid. Nobody says you're a punk."

  "I'm here . . . with the punks. I'm not stayin' here. You gotta kill me first."

  "We can do that," said another voice. A lieutenant in a creased uniform had come around the other way. He was closer, but he was at an open door, ready to duck inside if I swung. He had a gas billy in hand. "Now put that bucket down and get in your cell."

  "So all of you can dance on me."

  "Nobody's gonna do that."

  From below the voices yelled: "Don't do it!" "Don't believe 'em," and so forth.

  "I'm no fruiter ... no faggot ... no punk . . . and I'm not fuckin' stayin' here. I don't give a fuck what you do."

  "Ho . . . hold it. You've got it wrong. Those first two cells, they're not queens' row. They're holding cells."

  The Sergeant, too, had moved closer from the other direction, but still maintained a safe distance. "You're on holding cell status until you see the Cap'n."

  As I looked at the Sergeant, the lieutenant came on fast tiptoe. "Look out!" yelled the convicts below.

  I turned to face the lieutenant just as he extended his arm and fired the tear gas directly into my face. The explosive charge was a shotgun cartridge, but instead of shot there was tear gas. It instantly blinded me. The force drove my head into the wall.

  They were on me in a second: a fist in the gut, a towel around the neck. The towel was twisted. It cut off the blood to my brain, and within a few seconds I sank into black unconsciousness. Such choke holds can kill very quickly if the pressure is maintained, but if it is released, the blood flows back and consciousness returns.

  The cell door was closing behind me as I revived. I wanted to cry, but my eyes were already on fire. I'd eaten tear gas before, but that didn't make it any easier. At least it had happened outside the cell. If it had been inside, for days afterward the particles of gas would stir up whenever I moved. I knew from experience that it was best to lie down and let it settle, which is exactly what I did.

  It still burned, but was bearable, an hour later when a key banged on the door and eyes appeared at the slot. "Cap'n wants to see you. Don't give us trouble when we open the door."

  The key turned, the door opened and I got up, my eyes burning more as my movements stirred up the particles.

  In a tight group, three guards and me, we went down the rear stairs, through the gate and across the garden to the porch. One door was marked captain's office, and one next to it said associate warden, custody.

  The lieutenant motioned me to wait as he went inside. His name, I would learn, was Carl Hocker. He was called "The Hawk" and was already a legend in San Quentin. As the yard lieutenant he had more power than other lieutenants. He would eventually become Warden of the Nevada State Prison at Carson City, the only American prison with sanctioned gambling.

  One of the guards watching me told the other: "Here comes the Warden."

  True enough, along the walkway to the porch came a man in a business suit. The gunrail guard trailed along above him. He nodded at the guards and they said, "Good morning, Warden." He glanced at me and went through the door into the Captain's Office.

  "This is the first time I've seen him inside the walls," one guard said.

  "He was inside a month ago."

  "Yeah . . . when the Governor was making a tour."

  It was true, as I would learn, that wardens almost never enter the walls of the prison the
y supervise. Associate wardens, the Captain and his lieutenants run the world within the walls. The Warden deals with Sacramento and the Department of Corrections bureaucracy.

  A minute later Lieutenant Hocker opened the door and beckoned me.

  Captain Nelson was behind the desk. Warden Harley O. Teets was seated to the side, while Lieutenant Hocker stayed a little behind me to the side, where he could jump me if I tried anything.

  "Here he is" Red Nelson said to Warden Teets. "One day . . . not even one day . . . and he's causing trouble."

  " Wli . . . wh . . . why'd you put me with the queens? I thought you were trying to put a fag jacket on me."

  Nelson tsk-tsked and shook his head. "You blew your top before you knew anything. I put you there until I could talk to you."

  "You didn't tell me that."

  "I don't have to tell you a goddamned thing . . . convict!"

  "That's right. You don't have to. But if you don't, how do I know what you're doing. How would you feel?"

  Behind me, Hocker laughed, and even Warden Teets put a hand over his mouth to hide a grin.

  Red Nelson was always conscious of his image. He wanted everyone to know that he was a hard man — but a fair man, too. "Don't run your mouth," he said. "Just listen for a minute."

  I nodded.

  "I'd be justified in locking you up in segregation for a year or two for this incident. We should send reports to Sacramento over the tear gas. It was almost a serious incident. With your background, nobody would question it. I'm not going to . . . not this time. Warden Teets and I have talked it over. We're going to give you this one break. I'm going to put you in the yard with a clean slate. The first time you cause trouble, you'll rot in the hole. Got it?"