The Animal Factory (10 page)

The tumult made it impossible to talk, but they pushed through the crowd toward others of the Brotherhood a few feet away, leaving the supine figure to be walked on—or to die for all they cared.

The two crowds were screaming at each other, brandishing makeshift weapons.

Bad Eye cupped his hands to Earl’s ear. “We’ll get the black
motherfuckers
this time. All they’ve got is some sticks.”

Earl said nothing, but looked again at the riflemen. The two crowds started to surge toward each other and the submachine gun hammered three short bursts, tearing up chunks of asphalt in stitches. Then the rifles volleyed. Bullets swept down the open zone and the crowds froze and fell back. The gunfire silenced the screaming.

One black was twisting on the ground. Obviously a guard had shot into the crowd instead of in front of it. The black was holding his thigh and trying to get up. Two blacks started forward to help him, but a bullet whipped over their heads to drive them back.

Some of the hysteria had drained away. Glazed eyes began to narrow, madness was replaced by questions about what to do, what was going to happen.

“Attention in the yard! All inmates by the mess hall will go the the lower yard.”

The answering bellow of defiance was a shadow of a few minutes earlier. Some men yelled and shook their fists, but they would have done the same if told to stand fast or go home.

The tear-gas grenades flew over the men, landing under the shed beyond the fringe of the crowd. The gas drove convicts crashing into others, sending a reverberation through the crowd and jamming bodies together again. The route of escape was through the gate. They couldn’t go down the road because the visored tactical squad was waiting with clubs and mace, so they surged down the stairs, some falling until another body stopped them.

They were herded like cattle into the thinning fog. All was gray under the lightless sky; the walls looked soft in the fog, lined by faceless silhouettes with rifles. The lower yard was big, and the convicts spread out like water on a plain. Everyone searched for a friend, sensing that this was a dangerous situation, for no guards were on the ground and those on the walls were too far away to see what was going on. It was a chance to settle old grudges. The law of brutality was replaced by no law whatsoever.

The Brotherhood gathered near the wall of the prison laundry. Or at least most of them, about thirty men, all younger than Earl and Paul, but all with wizened, bitter faces and hard eyes. Most were dangerous, though a few were faking, using the Brotherhood for protection. Those who counted among them respected and listened to Earl and Paul as much as to anyone. They had to listen to T.J. and Bad Eye.

The temperature was below freezing. Because there was no wind, it took a while for the cold to seep in, but soon the convicts were stomping their feet, trying to keep warm, and vapor issued from their mouths and nostrils. Faintly they heard the loudspeakers in the big yard order the blacks into the cellhouses to lockup. “Typical shit,” someone said. “Let the niggers go in while we freeze our asses off.”

“Sheeit!” Paul said. “What you bet them redneck bulls ain’t clubbin’ the shit out of ’em?”

“The bulls’re scared of ’em,” Bad Eye said.

“That’s where hate come from, baby—fear.”

“And Whitey’s slicker,” Earl said bitterly, thinking how the
officials
had turned a strike against them into a race riot by the simple expedient of separating the two groups and letting nature run its course.

“Fuck ’em,” Bad Eye said. “I hate niggers
and
bulls—but the bulls ain’t no threat to kill me just for walkin’ around, and the niggers are …”

“The boy’s got a point,” Paul said. “Ya’ll sho nuff a smart young motherfucker,” he said, grabbing Bad Eye’s arm and shaking it
playfully
. “How’d you get so smart?”

Earl was unable to dispute Bad Eye. It was impossible not to be a racist—whatever one’s color—where blacks and whites murdered each other indiscriminately. Nevertheless, he was bitter about tomorrow’s headlines that would scream “
San Quentin Racial
Disturbance
.” Not a word would be printed about the protest of conditions. He lit a cigarette, hunched his shoulders, and stared out across the canyon of the yard.

Flocks of sea gulls swooped, soared and circled overhead,
emitting
shrill cries. The twelve hundred shivering convicts were now quiet, spread across the baseball field, most of them in left field, the farthest point from the wall with the armed men. The laundry where Earl’s group stood was in deepest center field. The building hid them from another wall. More guards with weapons were hurrying along the skyline. Maybe three dozen were positioned for a clear shot.

Some convicts had pulled the benches from the third-base dugout and were starting a fire.

Earl saw Ronald Decker standing with Tony Bork behind second base. The young man’s hands were jammed in his pockets and he was jumping up and down to generate circulation. Twenty yards beyond him, apparently unnoticed, was Psycho Mike and three of his sullen-visaged henchmen. They were squatted, bringing clenched rags to their mouths—shoe glue, Earl knew—and glancing in Ron’s direction. Earl knew what they were thinking. They were working up courage for a ripoff.

On sudden impulse Earl pushed away from the laundry wall and walked to Ron and Tony, who saw him coming and told the younger man. Ron had open, candid eyes; he didn’t try to look tough as did so many young men in prison, as Earl himself had in his day. As Earl came up to them, he looked beyond, gazing at Psycho Mike expressionlessly; but the combination of the gaze and his action conveyed the message. “C’mon over by the laundry,” he said to Tony. “It’s warmer.”

Tony looked to Ron, who shrugged. As they started toward the laundry, Earl looked over his shoulder at the glue-sniffers, cocking his head sideways and jutting his chin pugnaciously.

The clique of tough young convicts eyed the newcomer; they would have raised an eyebrow except that such an expression wasn’t in their repertoire. “Don’t be so
mean
, Earl,” one said, the voice unrecognized, making Earl blush and some others smile. He didn’t want to discomfit the youth, but Ron apparently hadn’t caught the implication.

“Nobody would believe this,” Ron said.

“Nobody cares.”

“They killed that man—kicked him to death—for nothing.”

“He was a damn fool for trying to cross a picket line of berserk niggers.”

Ron shook his head. He was shivering and had his hands stuck under his armpits. “How long will they keep us here?”

“God knows. They’re thinking about it.” And Earl was thinking that Ron was pretty. “Were you down here?”

Ron told what he’d seen, as if describing it could erase some of the horror still within him. Earl listened, liking the precision and economy of Ron’s words, without the convict’s usual obscenity every few syllables. The manner of speech indicated a keen, logical mind.

Simultaneously Earl watched Psycho Mike and his gang, but they had gone to where a crowd had gathered at the fire and weren’t looking toward the laundry.

“This is really a study in stupidity,” Ron said.

“What’s that?”

“The races at each other’s throats to give the guards an excuse for target practice.”

“I had about the same thought—but it’s not that simple, not just black and white, to make a poor pun. It’s something nobody can control … and nobody can stay uninvolved. I’ll run it down to you sometime … what I think.”

Baby Boy came over to Earl. “Say, bro’,” he said, “check the play. Ponchie’s boys are gonna down somebody.” He gestured to the field where a tall pale Chicano was slipping through the scattered crowd toward the dense group around the fire. His cap was pulled low, his coat collar up, and he moved in a furtive way. Flanking him were two others. The trio was obviously stalking someone.

“Maybe we should see if they need some slack,” Bad Eye said. “They’re our allies.”

“They don’t need no help,” T.J. said.

Ron sensed the heightened tension and stared in the same
direction
, toward the crowd at the fire, trying to pick out who was going to be assaulted.

“Bet they nail Shadow,” Earl said, touching Ron’s arm. “That tall skinny dude in the white pants. He burned them for some money … made a bad move. They’ve been layin’ to catch him.”

The middle Chicano with the cap, his head down to shield his face, paused ten feet behind the back of the victim, pulled a long knife from beneath his shirt, and ran forward on tiptoe. Three strides and the weapon came down, buried to the hilt in the man’s back. Ron grunted involuntarily, as if he’d felt the blow. The victim was driven forward into the fire, his hands extending reflexively to stop his fall. The two backup men were looking around, their hands inside their shirts. The stabber had spun away the instant he delivered the blow, began walking nonchalantly, sort of wandering, but heading toward the laundry. Ron lost him, looked at the man fighting his way back from the flames and hot coals, the taped handle of the knife jutting from between his shoulder blades.

The men around the fire had pulled back, away from trouble.

Ron expected the man to fall. He had to be dead. But he got to his feet, began walking in a circle, a hand groping unsuccessfully to reach the thing in his back. Then he suddenly began walking away, off the baseball diamond and toward the stairs in the direction of the hospital.

“Unnnnh,” Earl grunted. “That’s the weirdest thing I ever saw. He’s got fourteen inches of blade in him.”

The man who’d done the stabbing passed by the Brotherhood, grinned, gave a clenched-fist salute, and kept going. Ron saw a gang of Chicanos farther along the laundry wall who were waiting for their associates.

“That wasn’t how to collect,” Ron said wryly. “He can’t pay them in the morgue.”

“He can’t pay anyway. He’s broke. And there’s no small claims court so it’s a lesson to others.”

Ron said nothing.

A pale sun hinted through the overcast without noticeably raising the temperature. Now three fires were burning. Some of the clique wanted to break into the laundry to get warm or to find fuel so they could start a fire on their own.

Stoneface had come to the wall, a battery-powered bullhorn in hand. “
Attention in the lower yard! All inmates will form in the left field grass
—”

A halfhearted Bronx cheer was the reply. The men were playing out their roles, their hot fury long since chilled. They were ready to go to their cells—and many stirred to follow the order.

They didn’t have a chance. Stoneface gave a signal. Without warning, the rifles and shotguns began firing and the bullets fell like rain. The shotgun pellets percolated patches of lawn. Some men were swatted down, as if struck by an unseen fist, and the others dived for the ground though it offered no protection.

A window above Ron’s head disintegrated and a rattle like a handful of pebbles came from nearby. He found himself on the pavement, and Earl was chanting, “Shit, shit, shit….”

The gunfire echoed from the walls. It seemed to go on forever, but it actually lasted just thirty seconds. When it stopped, the silence exaggerated the moans of the injured and the cries of frantic sea gulls beating through the mackeral sky.

Every convict except one was face down on the earth, and the exception was running doubled over holding his belly where he’d been shot.

Stoneface raised the bullhorn: “
You have thirty seconds to form on the outfield grass
.”

No defiant yells answered the order; men were hurrying, but under their breaths they cursed and their eyes were filled with bitter hate.

The tactical squad, highway patrolmen, and other guards had been waiting in the wings. They carried clubs, pick handles,
shotguns
, and cans of mace. As they closed around the convicts, Stoneface spoke again, ordering them to strip to their underwear. Everyone complied; the choice was between that or more bullets. A dozen men were still down on the grass and dirt, some moving, some not. One was missing the back of his head. The sea gulls were swooping down to scavenge what had sprayed from his skull.

Now the convicts were driven up the stairs in a line—or a chaotic stream. It was a driven stampede of seminaked bodies. Guards and patrolmen were on the flanks, jabbing with clubs and shotgun butts. The guards, terrified earlier by the mass beast, now gave vent to the rage engendered by that terror. Many who were usually decent turned brutal. Any convict who faltered was immediately attacked.

Earl lost his friends and his senses. He struggled to keep his feet and push forward. Once he slipped to a knee on the stairs and a highway patrolman’s shotgun butt crashed into his spine, making him yelp involuntarily and sending him upward despite the pain. He wanted to fight, but it wasn’t worth the consequences.

In the cellhouses the men ran single-file up the stairs to the tiers. The police swung clubs as they went by. When one went down, he was beaten for faltering.

Earl got into his cell, fell on the bunk, panting and sweating. After a few minutes be began to laugh. “It sure as fuck broke the monotony,” he said, laughing again.

An hour later the San Francisco radio stations gave news bulletins the convicts could hear on their earphones. Officials reported that four inmates had been slain and nineteen injured in a racial
altercation
between neo-Nazi white inmates and black militants. The situation was now under control with all inmates in their cells. Ringleaders were being isolated, and there would be an
investigation
.

All during the afternoon and evening Earl heard security bars being raised and cell doors being unlocked, and then the dull sound of blows and falling bodies. Sometimes pleas of “No more,” or from guards, “Asshole troublemaking nigger … how tough are you?” And more blows.

A hundred men were rounded up, three quarters of them black. Some went to the Adjustment Center, others to “B” Section
segregation
. The two hundred prisoners already in “B” Section heard the beatings and went berserk, smashing toilets by lighting fires
underneath
the porcelain and kicking it; the toilets collapsed. They hurled the chunks through the bars. They burned mattresses, tore bunks from bolts on the walls. One young queen and his jocker in
adjacent
cells used the bunks to dig through the five inches of concrete separating them. Guards couldn’t go down the tiers to count because the convicts hurled jars against the bars, spewing out glass shrapnel. Firehoses and tear gas were turned on them—“B” Section was a mass of burned, waterlogged mattresses, broken beds, shattered windows, singed paint, fragmented toilets, and miserably wet convicts. Only the Queen and her jocker were happy.