Read Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade Online
Authors: Edward Bunker
Everybody gets lucky sometime.
About three months later the wardens and superintendents of various California
prisons met in Sacramento. It had long been a policy for wardens to rid
themselves of troublemakers by transferring them. They still did so from medium
and minimum security institutions, but the policy had changed in high security
prisons. San Quentin, Folsom and Soledad were required to handle whoever they
had locked up. The wardens did make trades, and trades were on the Sacramento
agenda. Locked up in San Quentin was Red Fenton who had killed a man in San
Quentin fifteen years earlier and had been in the attempted breakout of Folsom
in '61, when the visiting girls' choir was taken hostage. After going to court
and getting a new five year to life sentence, and spending several years in the
Folsom adjustment center, he had been transferred to San Quentin and given a
chance on the mainline. His reputation preceded him. Weaklings were asking for
protection by the score, so he had been locked up and remained locked up for
two years. L.S. (Red) Nelson, San Quentin's Warden, wanted to get rid of him and
was willing to take me in exchange. So Red Fenton came back to Folsom and I
rode the bus to San Quentin, which was always my joint. Within weeks I had a
single cell in the honor block and a new job where I could run around the
prison until midnight.
In the century and some since a
Spanish prison ship ran aground on the tip of the peninsula called Point San
Quentin, and a plank was run to shore to create San Quentin Prison, it has been
the site of turbulent events. I cannot imagine how many murders have been
committed there. In the age of the noose, it shared with Folsom in having a
gallows, but with the gas chamber's advent, San Quentin stood alone as
California's execution site. It has had violent breakouts (once they took the
parole board; now the parole board meets outside the walls), and an escape or
two where they don't know how the con got out (I do). It once headquartered a
counterfeiting ring. The opposite side of the coin is that it was once the
studio for a coast to coast radio program (long before television), called
San Quentin on the Air,
broadcast over the NBC Blue
network during prime time on Sunday evening. Convict 4242 sang the theme song:
"Time On My Hands."
Nothing, however, was both so
wdd and so hilarious as the time of which I write. From the early '40s through
the '50s, San Quentin went from being one of America's most notoriously brutal
prisons to being a leader in progressive penology and rehabilitation. Like
other prisons, it was not ready for what happened when the revolution came to
America. As drugs flooded the cities, they flooded San Quentin. The racial
turmoil of the streets was magnified in San Quentin's sardine can world. The
polarization within can be illustrated by two events. In 1963 when John Kennedy
was assassinated, it was lunchtime in the Big Yard. Everyone fell into a
stunned silence. Eyes that hadn't cried since early childhood filled with
tears, including those of the toughest black convicts. Five years later when
Bobby Kennedy was shot in the head, the response was different. Black convicts
called out: "Right on!" "The chickens come home to roost,"
said the Black Panther newspaper. "Ten for one" was the cry of black
nationalists: kill ten whites for one black and they would win the revolution.
The fiery political rhetoric was
taken literally by unsophisticated men within the cage. In Soledad a rifleman
in a gun tower fired three shots into a melee where five blacks had jumped two
whites in the adjustment center yard. He killed three black convicts, one of
them the brother of Cornell Nolan, who celled beside me in the Folsom
adjustment center. That night in another wing of Soledad, a young white guard
was thrown off the third tier to the concrete below. He died. Three black
convicts, George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo and Clutchette, were locked up and
charged with the crime. A Bay Area lawyer, Fay Stender, a socialist if not a
full-blown Marxist, took George Jackson's case. She edited his letters, got
Jean Genet to write an introduction and had them published as
Soledad Brother.
The book made the three a
cause celebre.
She got them a change of venue
to San Francisco and arranged for a transfer to San Quentin, where they were
locked in the adjustment center. Because of the attention to the case, Angela
Davis came to the courtroom. An avowed Marxist, Miss Davis lived in a different
universe than the bourgeoisie. She saw a handsome, powerful black man in chains
— and they did weigh him with tonnage. She became instantly enamored with the
image and the fantasy, for that was all it could be. Nothing could come of it
but a miracle, and a sort of miracle did come to pass, for Cluchette and Drumgo
were eventually acquitted. Alas, George Jackson was pure sociopath and had the
sociopath's characteristic lack of patience. Moreover, he had a worm's eye view
of the world, and somehow believed the revolution was imminent.
A black inmate who was scheduled
to testify against them for a parole was being held in the San Quentin prison
hospital in a locked room with a guard at the door. Albert Johnson and another
black convict managed to sneak into the hospital and make their way to the
second floor. They murdered the guard seated outside the door. They never
imagined that the guard wouldn't have the room key. Poorly planned, one might
say.
Another black inmate, Yogi
Pinell, made a spear by rolling up pages of a magazine and fastening a stabbing
device at the end. He managed to stab and kill a guard through the bars.
In the mess hall a black convict
named Willy Christmas suddenly pulled a knife and went after the guard at the
end of the steam table. The incident had a hilarious aspect, the guard running
through the kitchen screaming for help with Willy Christmas in hot pursuit,
knife in hand.
For almost two decades no guard
had been killed in a California prison. Then within a few months a dozen were
murdered in San Quentin, Soledad and Folsom, all by blacks. Guards, who are
invariably conservative and narrow-minded at the outset, heard the inflammatory
rhetoric along with the murders and saw it as a direct personal threat. If they
had been secret bigots, they now turned into outright racists.
For several years before the
guards became combatants there had been a race war limited to Black Muslims and
the self-proclaimed American Nazis. They had one copy of
Mein Kampf
that they passed around as if
it were the Holy Bible. No one could really understand it. How could they? It
borders on gibberish. Except for one or two, these erstwhile Nazis were skinny,
pimple-faced kids who were afraid that someone would fuck them but that fear
didn't mean that several together would hesitate to stab someone. Indeed, most
wanted
to stab someone and get a
reputation. My concern was academic. As long as they limited the murders to
each other, or as my friend Danny Trejo said, "Power to the people as long
as they don't hurt my white old lady or dent my Cadillac," everything was
okay by me. It was George Jackson who expanded the violence to the
non-involved. It started when several Muslims ambushed Stan Owens, the lead
Nazi, and used him for bayonet practice. Anywhere else he would have died, but
as I said,
San Quentin's doctors are the
world's best with knife wounds. He lived — with one less kidney and a severe
limp. Within the week the Nazis retaliated three times: one died, one survived
as a paraplegic. The blacks in lockup thought the doctors deliberately let the
black man die.
That was too much for George
Jackson. He was not a Black Muslim, he was a racial militant. One day he pulled
together a crew of three or four and at the after-lunch lockup, he led them
along the second tier of the South Cell House. There they stabbed every white
on the tier, all of whom wore white jumpsuits; they had just gotten off the bus
and had no idea they would be attacked for being white. One died, and one who
vaulted the railing to avoid the stabbing blades broke both his ankles on the
concrete below.
Within hours all the assadants
were in the hole, but none was indicted in outside court. George Jackson was
transferred to Tracy, where he ignited another racial conflict. He got himself
locked up and transferred to Soledad.
In prison movies it is a
convention bordering on cliche that some super-tough convict runs the show. In
the days of Bogart and Cagney that kingpin con was white; now he was usually
black. That notion may have validity in a small, soft prison someplace like
Maine or Vermont: But if someone really hardcore turns up in one of those
joints they are transferred under the Interstate Prison Compact. No convict
runs the show in Leavenworth, Marion, San Quentin, Folsom, Angola, Jeff City,
Joliet, Huntsville or other hard core penitentiaries. Nobody of any color is
that tough. Indeed, convicts do have little proverbs, such as: "Tough guys
are in the grave." or: "Everybody bleeds, everybody dies, and anybody
can kill you." Over the years I saw bona fide tough guys come to San
Quentin or Folsom (usually San Quentin because they don't last long enough to
reach Folsom) and think they can take over on the muscle. One of them, a Bronx
Puerto Rican who weighed about 120 pounds, stabbed somebody within weeks of
reaching the guidance center. He seriously believed that he was a killer and
had everyone intimidated. He lasted eleven months. They found him in his cell
with a piece of electrician's wire wrapped around his neck and eleven puncture
wounds just under his ribcage, most of them directly in the heart. Someone gave
a very terse eulogy: "Another
tough
motherfucker bites the dust."
With those parameters and
constraints in mind, I think I had as much power and influence as any convict
among the 4,000 walking San Quentin's yard. Over the years I had assumed a code
and attitude that mixed John Wayne with Machiavelli. I respected every man,
including the weak and despicable, for it is better to have anyone or anything
as a friend, even a mangy dog, rather than as an enemy. In the '60s my friends
were the toughest white and Chicano convicts. I maintained their loyalty by
being loyal, and their respect by being smart in several areas. One, Denis
Kanos, whom I left in Folsom when I was transferred, had been granted a hearing
in the California Supreme Court, on the petition I had filed. Not only was the
hearing granted, but the conviction was reversed. Denis, who had been required
to wait fifteen years before being even
eligible
for parole, went free.
Within a couple of months of his
release he was, as always, a kingpin drug trafficker again in Southern
California. Every month or so, he would send me an ounce of heroin. Other men who
got narcotics had to sell enough to pay for it. I paid nothing and was generous
with my friends. It is difficult to convey what heroin is really worth in
prison. Cocaine had almost no value, for convicts wanted what soothed them, not
what made them crazier. A gram of heroin, a tiny fraction of an ounce, could
easdy purchase murder from many takers. When someone wanted to know who had
heroin, they asked: "Who's God today?" Such was the power of the
white serpent.
Although I played the game (it was the only game in
town), I was really tired of it. I had prison under control, but I started
thinking about when I was free again. Without a miracle I would return to
crime. It was the only way I knew to make money. God, if I could only sell a
book. That, however, was like hitting Lotto.
It was 4 p.m. From my cell on
the third tier of the yard side of the North Cell House, I could look out the
high window into the Big Yard. It was rapidly filling with convicts pouring in
from their jobs. I had just finished typing out a handwritten page of my sixth
novel and was adding it to the extra-large looseleaf binder. It was nearly
finished. I had no idea if it was any good. It was, however, the first I'd
written without self-consciously trying to follow a formula, or a combination
of formulas found in the "how to" books advertised in
Writer's Digest.
That manuscript would become
No Beast So Fierce,
my first published novel and, I
think, my best all the way around.
Soon the Big Yard would be
filled, the whisdes would blow and all the 4,000 cons would file into the cell
houses for lockup and count. That meant it was time for me to go out. As usual
the yard looked cold. Rain was predicted. I pulled a gray sweatshirt with
neiman marcus
across the chest over my prison shirt; then added two
jackets, a black melton on the inside, covered by denim on the outside. In San
Quentin it was always a good idea to take a jacket to the yard.
The North Cell House was one of
two honor blocks. A convict tender on each tier had a key to the cells. As I
went down the tier I told him to lock my cell behind me.
I descended the steel stairway.
To reach the yard I had to pass the cell house office. Several guards were
around the doorway, getting packets of mail each would count for the tier. As I
started past, the Sergeant stepped out. "Bunker."
My first thought was a frisk,
but the Sergeant was extending an envelope. A letter. Who might write me?
"Thanks." I looked at the return:
Alexander Aris,
26 Main Geranium, Elbow, Texas.
It was from Denis and the return made me grin. It was a joke only a few would
understand.
"I'm watching you,
Bunker," the Sergeant said.
"Hey, you know I'm a model
inmate."
"It was your cell, wasn't
it?"
Oh no,
I thought. "No, oh
no," I replied.
He nodded in a way that said yes
it was. A week earlier, several convicts were fixing in my cell. I fixed first,
then left. Three were still in the cell cooking up, with a lookout (point man)
standing on the tier. No guard could walk up unseen — except that the outfit
plugged up. The convicts in the cell were trying to unplug it. Their heads were
huddled together. The lookout on the tier
looked over his shoulder, got interested and
came inside. "Hey,
ese.
Put some water in the dropper and put a fire on the needle as
you squeeze. It will swell up the metal and spit it out."
Just then the Sergeant, who was
on a routine patrol, happened to come down the third tier. When he reached my
cell, he looked in and saw four of San Quentin's well known sleazy convicts
with their heads together like a football huddle. He walked in, put his head in
the huddle and simply took the outfit out of the guy's hand. Chaos. He blocked
the door, and he must have been panicked, too. He managed to get their ID cards
and walked them down to the office to call for backup.
Pretty Henry found me in the Big
Yard right after that and told me what had happened. I told him to go back to
my cell, put the stool away, straighten it up, turn out the light and close the
door.
Sure enough, the Sergeant went
back. He wasn't sure if it was the third or the fourth tier so he walked up and
down, looking in the cells. He was unable to remember — at least not until late
that night when I returned from work near midnight and he had to let me into my
cell. Then a light lit up. He told Lieutenant Ziemer, but Ziemer told him that
he didn't have a case. The next night Ziemer told me to watch myself.
"He'd like to bust you. It would be a feather in his cap, and he if gets
you dirty, I can't stop it."
"I always watch myself,
boss." That wasn't quite true. When the day shift left at 4.30, Lieutenant
Ziemer was the Watch Commander. He was the highest ranking officer in the
prison. If the Warden or Associate Warden or Captain came inside, whoever was
on the gate would phone ahead. I had the run of San Quentin during those hours.
Before stepping onto the yard, I
opened the letter from Denis. It said, "Twelve-page habeas petition mailed
Marin County Court this afternoon." It translated: twelve spoons, or
twenty-four grams, of heroin had been sent to an address in Marin County. The
address was that of Big Arm Barney's mother. She would deliver it.
There was one problem. The post
office had gone on strike yesterday.
I plunged into the wall of noise
made by the accumulation of several thousand voices in the pit formed by the
cell houses. They made a churning lake of blue denim and faces. Right here it
was all black. I veered left, along the East Cell House wall, past the hot
water spigot that steamed near boiling. It was for making instant coffee. As
always, a few convicts loitered about, clutching plastic Tupperware tumblers
wrapped in tape, steam rising. It was cold on the yard. Somewhere I'd read,
perhaps in Ripley's
Believe It Or Not,
that the San Quentin Big Yard
was the only place in the world where the wind blew four ways at once. And it
did seem to swirl every direction simultaneously . . .
I moved carefully through the
mass of men, acknowledging those I knew with a nod or other gesture. Paranoia
was too common in this milieu. Who could know what trivial slight might stir
crazy thoughts? I was looking for Paul Allen and, to a lesser extent, the tough
youngsters who were our partners and our backup. I found them gathered far down
by the East Cell House wall. Paul, as usual, had the floor, while the younger men,
T.D. Bingham, Wayne Odom, Blinky Williamson, Veto Rodriquez, Dicky Bird and a
couple more listened with grins on their faces. Paul was telling a story:
"... about fifteen of us in this jad yard when the guy got stabbed. It had
one stall urinal off in the corner. They called everyone in for questioning and
the next day the newspaper said. 'Nobody witnesses stabbing. Fifteen prisoners
using one urinal during incident.'"
Paul noticed my arrival.
"What's up?"
I proffered the note from Denis.
Paul read it; then grinned and pumped his elbows in a parody of the funky
chicken. "Awright! We're in power again. Did you tell Big Arm?"
"I just came out the door.
Don't get too happy. The post office is goin' on strike tomorrow. Right?"
The glee was wiped from Paul's face.
"Aww . . . shit! I thought public employees can't strike. It's against the
law, isn't it?"
"All I know is what I read
in the paper. The
Chronicle
says they're gonna strike. We'll get it as soon as
the strike's over."
"That's right," Wayne
said. "Barney's ma ain' gonna shoot it up."
Suddenly a dozen police whisdes
shrilled. It was 4.30, time for the main count lockup. Guards moved along the
domino tables, "Pick 'em up . . . pick 'em up."
I moved against the tide toward
the yard gate, where a few stragglers were still coming in. I was on an out
count, along with a couple of other convicts, at the Yard Office, that faindy
resembled a modernistic hot dog stand. It had two rooms and a rest room. Except
for the rest room it had windows all the way around. The former Yard Office had
had a closed back room which had acquired some notoriety over the years.
Nothing could happen unseen in the new Yard Office. It had a cyclone fence and
two gates across the road in front, one for vehicles, one for pedestrians. Direcdy
behind it was the modern adjustment center, its door ten feet from the back
door to the Yard Office. The Yard Office was situated so that anyone coming or
going from the yard to the garden chapel, custody office, dental department and
other departments had to pass in front of it. The bridge to the Old Industrial
Building, which had contained the gym when I arrived, was in front of the Yard
Office. Now all the upper floors were empty. Because the budding was made of
brick with lots of old, dry wood floors and other inflammable materials a
convict was assigned as a "fire watch." It was known as a
bonaroo
job. Whoever had it, had the
run of the huge old budding. It had many crevices and spaces where home brew
could be made. One fire watch convict constructed a still for white lightning.
As I neared the yard office, I
saw Bulldog hurrying across the Garden Beautiful, which was now nearly bare
earth. He was about 5'7", with heart and a grin as big as anyone's. A
talented athlete, he could have been a professional golfer. He had certainly
carried my clumsy ass on the handball court more than once. I waited outside
the door; then walked a few paces with him back toward the yard. "Where
you been?" I asked.
"Visiting room."
"I didn't think you got any
visitors."
"Check this. C'mon."
I looked back over my shoulder.
I had a minute and could get back before the count started. I walked with him
toward the yard.
"You'll never guess who it
was." He paused, then said: "That broad lawyer. Fay Stender."
"That radical. The one
that's representing Jackson?"
"Yeah. He's out there now.
He was waiting to see her after me, and he looked kinda hot 'cause he had to
wait."
"Shit, 'dog, he's a
celebrity. Damn near a star." I wanted to add that all it took was an act
of suicidal rebellion, but Bulldog cut me off.
"You won't believe this,
man, but you know what that broad wanted . . . she wanted us, white dudes, to
kill some bulls."
"Say what? She said it
right out like that?"
"Yeah . . . well . . . like
she said, how come the blacks are in the revolution and we're not helping 'em
with the pigs?"
"I'd have told her there's
no bull wantin' to kill me. She's nutty as a fruitcake. What'd you tell
her?"
"I told her she was nutty
as a fruitcake . . . No, I really told her that I'd talk to the fellas and blah
blah blah . . . Can you imagine . . . ? I want outta here. Killin' a bull ain't
gonna get me out . . . or put any money in my pocket. I ain't no cop lover, but
I'm no cop killer either. If I get in a spot and kill a cop, it's 'cause it was
that or throwin' down my gun for a life sentence. Damn, killin' anybody is
serious — double serious. Isn't that the craziest shit you ever heard?"
"Damn near." And it
was. When we reached the yard gate, I had to turn back. As he hurried through,
I could see that the yard was almost empty. The last of the lines were going
into the East Cell House. Some vagrant sunlight got through the clouds and
sparkled on the fifty-foot-high cell house windows. I remembered seeing this
same view from the same perspective eighteen years earlier, and now it went
through my mind that if I had known I would stand here eighteen years later, I
would have killed myself. But I hadn't anticipated it, and couldn't anticipate
another eighteen years, or anywhere near it. I turned and headed back toward
the yard office.
Big Brown was yard office
officer during the day watch. He was just huge, neither particularly muscular
nor particularly fat. He was 310 pounds and playful as an eight-year-old.
"What were you talking to Bulldog about?" he asked me.
"'Bulldog!' Who's
Bulldog?"
"I'll bet you were makin'
some kind of drug deal. You think I don't know."
"No, Brown, we were talkin'
about your mama."
"Hey, hey, that's enough of
that."
"Fuck you, Brown."
He jerked open the bottom desk
drawer and pulled out a nightstick. "Lemme smack you on the kneecap with
this," he said. "I wanna see if it works." He slammed it down on
the desk. It was a wicked sound. Nightsticks hurt. I can still feel the one
that crashed into my back when I was fourteen years old and trying to sneak
into a movie theater.
"You sure do sound
smart," I said with mocking scorn. Big Brown liked all this. "Fuck
around and I'll snitch you off. . . 'bout that medallion under your
shirt." Brown wore a heavy swastika medallion on a chain around his neck.
He had gotten it when a guard was murdered in the prison hospital. Although he
had previously held racist views, having once told me, "I can't help it, I
just think niggers on the whole are dumber than white people," he had been
even-handed in how he treated convicts. Now, however, following the several
long hot summers of burning American cities and the racial murders in San
Quentin - he'd seen a Portuguese convict named Rios fight a black one on one in
the lower yard, where a mob of blacks attacked and stomped and beat Rios's head
in with a baseball bat, until his skull was as flat as if an automobile had run
over it — Brown's subdued bigotry had become nearly obsessed racial hatred. He
had a peace officer's right to carry a pistol and repeatedly told me he was
waiting for the right situation to kill a nigger and get away with it. I could
understand how he felt, just as I could understand the streak of paranoid hate
that ran through many blacks toward whites. I'd often thought that if I was black
I would have made white society kill me a long time ago. I wasn't black and I
didn't intend to be a poster boy for black vengeance either. I'd learned in
juvende hall and reform school that black racism is perhaps more virulent than
white racism. Someone had once told me, "When we're racists, we just want
to stay away from 'em. When they're racists, they want to kill us." It was
true: black racists wanted revenge, white racists wanted segregation. But not
every black was every racist; nor was every white. I really wished that
everyone was oblivious to race and, failing that, everyone should be civd and
respectful to everyone else. It is impossible to have a civil society without
civility.