Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade (19 page)

Beyond the gate was a tunnel of about twenty yards'
length. At the other end was a big steel door framing a smaller steel door,
which had a tiny observation window. A guard sat there, looking through the
small window and opening the door for authorized persons. Both gates were never
opened simultaneously.

A bench was bolted along both side walls. Near the
other end was an open door on the left. A sign read
receiving and
release
. The new arrivals were being directed through it. Inside
were three rows of benches, already full except for one space. Behind me the
Sergeant stopped the newcomers. "We'll do it in two groups. Sit the rest
out there.

"Strip down until you're butt ass naked. If you
want to send your clothes home, you have to pay for them. If you want to donate
them to the Salvation Army, throw them in that laundry hamper over
yonder."

Nearly everyone, including me, threw their clothes in
the donation hamper. We went back to the benches, all of us buck naked, some
fish white, some nut brown, some fat, some skinny, some soft, some muscular as
panthers.

The Sergeant took a position in front of us,
"Shaddup and listen up!" he commanded. Most fell silent, but someone
in the rear continued to whisper to his companion. "Shaddup back there.
You might learn something if you listen."

"Hey, Sarge, I heard you give this speech five
years ago."

"Hear it again." He waited until the room
was silent and began: "Everybody here has already thought about escaping.
As soon as you drove up, you wondered if you could find a way out.

"You might escape. Every few years we lose
somebody from inside the walls. I've been here sixteen years and we've had
three from inside the walls. Outside the walls, that's easy.

"Whatever way they go, we get all of them back.
We only have one who's still gone. He was from Ecuador. He got away about
eleven years ago.

"But let me tell you one thing . . . nobody gets
out with a hostage. You can take me, you can take the Warden. Shit, you can
take the Warden's daughter—"

"He ain' got no daughter," said a voice.

"If
he had a daughter
... if
you take his wife . . . nobody is going to unlock the gate. No matter what,
nobody
gets out with a hostage. It's against the
law to open the gate in a hostage situation. If the Governor
orders
a gate open, nobody's going to open
it."

At the rear of the room, a steel door opened. The
speech stopped and heads turned. A skinny lieutenant with deep acne scars came
in, accompanied by two correctional officers. The guards waited while the
lieutenant went up front to consult with the Sergeant.

"Is Bunker with this group?" asked the
lieutenant.

I put up my hand. "Yessir." I had learned
to' say "sir" a long time since.

"Come here."

Naked, embarrassed, I sidled along the aisle of other
naked bodies and went up front.

The lieutenant was disconcerted. "You're
Bunker?" he asked, a note of incredulity in his voice.

"Yessir."

"You know Cap'n Nelson?"

"Oh yeah. From Lancaster."

"Well, he's Captain here now." The
lieutenant looked me up and down. I was a skinny seventeen-year-old with
freckles, 5'll" and weighed about 145 pounds. "You don't look
tough," he said, almost as if thinking aloud.

"I'm not tough. Tough guys are in the
grave." It was a convict observation I'd heard in the county jail — and
would hear often in prison as the years went by.

"You're not going to be a troublemaker, are
you?"

"No, sir."

"This isn't a kiddy school. This is San
Quentin."

"I know, sir." My military school training
was occasionally useful.

"Go sit down. Stay out of trouble."

As I walked back, my peach-fuzzed cheeks were red. I
tried to look hard. I made my eyes appear mean to the naked men watching me but
avoiding my gaze. Had anyone looked me in the eye, I would have asked them what
they were looking at. If the reply struck me wrong, I would ask if they wanted
trouble. If I disliked the ensuing answer, I would Sunday punch him. Maybe he'd
go down, maybe not, but either way my arrival in the penitentiary would be
noted. I'd been taking courses in prison survival since my first trip to
juvenile hall at ten. Although men in prison might respect wit and
intelligence, the violent had the power. If to seek help from the authorities
was a mortal sin no matter what, it followed that each man — often with the
help of friends — had to protect himself and make his own space in the
Hobbesian world behind the walls. Stripped away were facades of class, family,
money, clothes. There was no legal redress for injury or insult.

When the lieutenant was gone, a convict dragged a
laundry hamper into the middle of the floor. It was filled with rolled-up white
jumpsuits, one size fits all, pockets sewn so nothing could go in them, plus a
pair of socks and cloth slippers.

While we were still getting dressed, inmate clerks
began taking our fingerprints, rolling each digit across a card; then the thumb
flat, and four fingers flat. Each new inmate had four cards: FBI, Sacramento,
Department of Corrections, the prison itself. It took a long time. As the
fingerprints were finished, we were photographed front and profile, with a
sign:
Calif. Dept. of Corrections,
with the
date and name and number. Mine was forever more A20284. The man ahead of me was
A20283, and the one behind me A20285. The brand was a matter of chance. Every
memo in my prison life would be A20284 Bunker. Eventually it would be on a
Harper's
cover, but that was decades away from the
rainy morning when A20284 became my primary name.

I'd just finished with the mug photo when the same
lieutenant with the same two guards appeared. He carried a sheet of white
paper, a form of some kind. Later I would recognize it as a lockup order. I
sensed his purpose now, so I wasn't surprised when he spotted me, said something
to the guards and all three headed toward me.

On the way out, the lieutenant was almost apologetic.
"I wasn't going to lock you up. This came from the Captain himself. He's
locking you up until he can talk to you."

They walked me from Receiving and Release through the
tunnel and out the inner door to the world of San Quentin. My first vision
stopped me cold. At my feet was a formal garden about an acre square. It was
criss-crossed with walking paths. Even in bleak December it was impressive. If
some of it was winter barren, other places had bright red chrysanthemums and a
carpet of yellow and black pansies. I remembered being told about it: the
Garden Beautiful they called it.

Facing the garden on the right was a huge Victorian
mansion. Once it must have housed the Warden; now it was the custody office. A
porch ran along its front with two doors and a teller's window where passes
were issued.

We didn't cross the garden. We went left along the
base of the building we'd just exited. It served as a wall with a catwalk
running along it. A guard with a carbine walked along above us, looking down to
give cover if necessary. The catwalk led to others throughout the prison. It
was designed so men with rifles could disperse to almost anywhere inside the
walls without coming down to the ground.

Across the garden from the mansion was a hundred year
old cell house. The roof was of corrugated sheet metal. The second and third
floors had wooden slat walkways, a tiny space between each. The cell doors
fastened with huge steel straps on hinges and swung over hasps so a huge
padlock that hung on a chain could be snapped shut.

To reach the walkways necessitated going around the
vintage building. It was called the Old Spanish Block. There was a fence topped
with barbed wire. A grizzled sergeant opened the gate and took the paper from
the lieutenant. "He's been searched?"

"Yeah. He just got off the train."

"You're startin' quick, boy," the Sergeant
said, peering at me down a cigar clenched in his teeth. "C'mon."

He
unlocked a gate to some stairs leading to the walkways around the building. He
led the way, I came next and the lieutenant followed. The two guards waited
below. On the second tier the Sergeant walked around to the side facing the
garden and the mansion beyond. The solid steel doors had observation slits at
eye level. Someone inside could stick out four fingers, nothing more. Eyes
peered from one or two. As we passed one, a voice called: "Hey, Sarge,
lemme see you for a minute."

"On the way back," the Sergeant said. At the
last cell he produced a big key that fit a big padlock. He removed the padlock
and peeled off the steel strap. Using another key, he opened the steel door.

The entrance was a round arch about three feet thick
and made of brick. Later I would learn that both brick and mortar were rotting.
A diligent convict with a spoon could dig himself out, or at least into the
next cell, which is what two lovers would do.

"Step in," the Sergeant said.

I entered and the steel door slammed into the steel
frame, cutting off all light except the sliver that came through the
observation slot. The lieutenant's eyes blotted out that as he looked in.
"You've got two buckets in there," he said. "One's got drinking
water, the other is to shit and piss in. I don't think you'll mix them up.
They'll bring you some bedding after count. Take it easy."

Their footsteps sounded as they moved away. I stood at
the door, my eyes adjusting to the near total darkness. I could see the shape
of the sagging US Army cot,
circa
1917, with
a thin mattress that sagged with it. The cell block was built before the advent
of electricity, so the meager wiring came through a conduit along the ceiling.
Wires dangled and held a bare 40 watt light bulb. It went on when I screwed it
tighter. Its glow was faint; then again, there was little to see. The old cot
had missing springs along one side, so when I stretched out, that side gave
way. I dragged the mattress onto the floor. They would see me easy enough when
they looked through the slot. Sleeping on the bunk was out of the question.

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.