The Animal Factory (26 page)

Ron Decker got the job. He had talked to the chaplain often when getting books before the Buck Rowan stabbing, and Lieutenant Seeman was a staunch Catholic and recommended him. Ron was happy to escape the cotton textile mill (every day he came up the stairs with cotton lint stuck to his clothes and his hair and the rhythmic noise of looms ringing in his ears), but he really wanted to escape from San Quentin. Earl had implanted the idea, and it grew to dominate everything else. A smuggled letter to his mother brought a reply—in veiled words—that she would be on hand
whenever
he needed her; she would hide them and help them get out of the country, whatever the cost. This was kerosene on the flame of Ron’s desire. And because he had arranged for the all-important outside help, he felt no qualms about hounding Earl to find the way out. When Earl asked him if he wanted to move back to the North cellhouse, Ron answered that it was all right for now, but he really wanted to move to Mexico.

As for Earl, the more they hashed it over and the more he reflected, the more certain he was that they needed a truck. He excluded other ideas. He’d hoped that they could use the laundry truck, a route taken fifteen years earlier without the officials learning how the man got out. The laundry foreman watched while the panel truck was loaded with bundles of free personnel clothing, and then he rode it to the sallyport gate and gave it clearance. But there was a
thirty-second
weakness. After the truck was loaded at a vehicle entrance, the foreman locked that from inside and walked fifteen feet to come out of the building through a pedestrian door. Then he got in the truck. While he covered the fifteen feet, there was time to burrow under the bundles being taken out to the prison reservation. The scheme required cooperation from the convict truck driver—and when Earl checked on this one he found, to his chagrin, that the man was suspected of being a stool pigeon. Earl contemplated having the driver bashed in the head with a pipe—hurt but not slain—to get him out of the way. He decided against it because nobody knew who would get the job and because he didn’t want to get any of his friends in trouble.

False gas tanks and false seats were also run through the mental grinder. The former could be made in the sheet metal shop, the latter in upholstery. They
might
work, especially a false-bottomed gas tank, but just one body could go out.

The trucks easiest to use were those loaded with products, mainly furniture, in the industrial area. A guard stood on the loading dock watching everything and then locking the truck. It was good
security
. If the procedure was followed diligently, nobody could sneak into a truck and through the walls. The flaw was human nature. After months or years of uneventful routine—what could be more dull than watching trucks be loaded, unless it was sitting all night in a dark gun tower watching a wall?—any guard lost his
concentration
, and many could be distracted for the few seconds needed to duck into a truck. Earl knew of two successful escapes from San Quentin under exactly those circumstances. Naturally they were years apart, for after one happened, the security was intense for a year, two years. It had been eight years since anyone had used it. Besides having a phenomenal success percentage, this particular way required no commitment until the actual moment. The guard was “turned” or not turned. It was different from cutting the bars or digging a tunnel (the last was impossible because the prison was on bedrock and the walls went nearly as deep into the earth as up into the sky) where the convict was committed the moment the hacksaw blade made a groove.

The insurmountable problem in using industrial area trucks was an inability to reach them. Even Earl couldn’t go there without a pass or a phone call to the guard on the industries gate. Even
industries
clerks couldn’t loiter day after day on the loading dock. Just a few convicts—those on the dock itself and, perhaps, those working in the shipping room—could wait and watch for the chance. If he, Earl Copen, got a job change to loading trucks in the furniture factory, he might as well announce his plans in the
San Quentin
News
. And if Ron also got a job change … sheeit! Even if it was possible, the chance to go might be months away, and Earl’s life was much too easy to exchange it for blisters, splinters, and a sore back.

Easy as his existence was by convict standards, something happened to herald that it could become even easier. One
afternoon
he was crossing the plaza toward the chapel when Tex Waco came out of the custodial offices en route to the front gate. The new associate warden was as plump as Stoneface had been
cadaverous
. His not-quite-fat physique was the same as the last time Earl had seen him, but the hair was thinner and fashionably longer, and where his uniforms had once been patched and his shoes resoled, now he was garbed more fashionably than any other official. It was something convicts talked about; and as a group they gave a few points to a sharp dresser. Earl nodded and smiled. Why not? He’d known the man for a dozen years, had even covered for him on New Year’s Day when he came to work still reeking of gin and
staggering
, his thermos full of scotch for his keyman (it was a while before he learned that he couldn’t trust convicts and couldn’t afford to be too “good” without being betrayed). New Year’s Day was a show in the mess hall; nearly every nightclub in the Bay area sent its show. Those who didn’t go to the show could watch the Bowl games in the gym. The few who wanted to do neither had to stay locked in their cells. The cellhouse tiers were empty. Earl was the South cellhouse clerk, Seeman was cellhouse sergeant. Correctional Officer Tex Waco had sneaked into a mattress storage room for a drunken nap. A lieutenant came around, asked for the officer. Earl told a lie that Waco was on the fifth tier searching a cell, and when the lieutenant said he wanted to talk to him, Earl had volunteered to get him, waked him, and straightened him out. The lieutenant’s nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed, but nothing was said. Nor did Officer Waco ever mention it. He’d gone up the promotional ladder quickly, moving from institution to institution, and now was associate warden where he’d started. He recognized Earl and beckoned him. “When the hell’re you gonna stay out, Earl?” he asked.

“When they stop catchin’ me.”

Tex Waco shook his head and made a clucking noise. “My clerk is going on parole in four months. If you want the job, you can have it.”

When Earl mentioned the offer to Seeman, who still had a good clerk so that Earl actually did no work, the lieutenant told him to take the job. Seeman grinned, “Hell, I need a friend in high places. And it could just get you out in a few years—even with that
unfortunate
incident.”

Earl wanted the job, knowing Waco was a poor writer in an
executive
position that required lots of reports, memorandums, and administrative orders. The associate warden would be dependent on his clerk. Earl could take up the slack, just as he’d done with the term papers years ago, and by doing the work, he would have access to some of the power. Even under Stoneface, the associate warden’s clerk was treated respectfully by lieutenants and deferentially by lowly guards who didn’t want to spend a year in a graveyard-shift wall post. The clerk could arrange cell moves simply by asking the control sergeant to do the favor—a dozen a week at five cartons apiece was a nice income. Job assignments were even easier to arrange. Even getting a man—all other things being equal—a transfer to a minimum prison or camp wasn’t impossible. Waco was easygoing, had a conscience, and could be manipulated. Earl would certainly be a whale in a fishpond. He’d be able to patronize Lieutenant Hodges, the Christian, and Lieutenant Captain Midnight, the
undercover
racist. The average clerk working so close to officials suffered the suspicion of yard convicts. They might ask and pay for favors, and the mere fact of the job wasn’t enough to brand a man, but usually there was a question mark after his name. Earl wouldn’t even have
that
problem, except to fish and fools. His friends were the most notorious white clique in San Quentin, he’d known the leaders of the Chicano clique since reform school, and the meanest blacks respected him. Everything in the prison world would be his, and it was neither more nor less hollow a triumph than anything else—especially considering that it was all Vanity, or so said Eccelesties (sic). And what had Milton’s Satan said when God hurled him from heaven to the abyss? Something about it being better to reign in the pit than serve in heaven.

But when Ron heard, the younger man made a flatulent, disparaging sound with his mouth. “Earl, brother,” he reproached. “Let’s get out of here.”

“We’re gonna do that. I’m just runnin’ it down. What the fuck. You want we should just go kick on the gate and say, ‘Let us out, cocksucker?’ Is that it?”

“Don’t ridicule me with that phony country twang. You’re the one who said that people want to escape when they get here, and then settle into a routine and the fever dies. They get too
comfortable
, don’t want to put it together, don’t want to take the risk.” Ron shook his head for emphasis. “I’m not going to let myself get like that … and I’m not going to let you rest until we’re sipping Margaritas in Culiacán.”

“Fuck! I raised a monster. Maybe we should think about having somebody subpoena us out to a small county jail. The gimmick is to take the tools with you from here—handcuff key, hacksaw blades between the shoe soles. We can get it done in the shoe shop.”

“Do you know anybody to subpoena us?”

“Not offhand.”

“The principles—or theories—are wonderful. I agree about the trucks. I agree with what you just said. But let’s put theory into practice. Can you dig it?”

Earl sighed. “Yeah, I can dig it. Say, why don’t you find the hole?”

“I’m trying, but I wasn’t born here.”

“Thanks, smartass motherfucker.”

They grinned at each other.

The revelation came two nights later when Earl was somnolent on heroin. He was on his back, naked, a sheet over him, a cigarette in one hand while he lackadaisically scratched his pubic hair with the  other, savoring the ultimate euphoria. He wasn‘t really thinking, but images of the day’s event floated through his mind. Big Rand had looked from the yard office window; then said he’d like to put troublemaking niggers in the Dempsey Dumpster. Earl had grunted and looked. The huge year-old trash truck was halted in front of the education building. The swampers were dumping barrels of trash in it. The guard sat in the cab of the flat-nosed vehicle. Earl had already thought about and discarded the dumpster for the same reason that the guard could sit in the cab instead of watching. Where the old truck had been double watched, and probed with stakes at the gate, and watched while dumped, the new truck protected itself … anyone climbing into the dumpster would be committing suicide: a crusher inside applied tons of pressure. Earl didn’t know how many tons, but probably enough to turn a convict into a pancake.

Except …

If …

His heart pounded with his excited thoughts. He tried to calm himself by looking out at the night and the lights twinkling in the hills across the Bay. It looked so easy that an inexorable pendulum of doubt swung back through the certainty. Yet doubt had no facts, while his inspiration seemed to have all the facts. Ruthlessly he throttled enthusiasm, and stifled his impulse to wake Ron and tell him as soon as the cell doors opened. Earl would check it out first.

Too excited to sleep, feeling too good because of the dope, he smoked cigarettes until his mouth was raw. Near dawn he dozed off without expecting to. And dreamed of escaping from Alcatraz, or trying to; he was running up and down the shoreline, unable for some reason to plunge into the water and swim for freedom.

When Earl came awake, the cell doors were open and everyone else had gone to the mess hall. He dressed quickly, not bothering to wash or comb his hair, wanting to get into the mess hall before it closed.

A guard was starting to close the steel door, but held it when Earl called. Once inside, he went through the line, but abandoned the tray the moment he reached the table. Instead, he went back up the aisle into the kitchen. It was out of bounds, but convict cooks, pot washers, and other workers were everywhere and provided cover. The free stewards paid not one glance to yet another convict. He circled the huge vats, tiptoed through sudsy water, and turned down a short corridor toward wire double doors. This was the vegetable room, its air heavy with the odor of peeled potatoes soaking in barrels, of grated carrots and onions. When Earl entered, the crew of half a dozen Chicanos was shucking corn, chattering Spanish, and listening to Mexican music on a portable radio. They were a clique of
braceros
who spoke no English and stayed together for mutual support. The vegetable room was their domain. When one left, they selected another of the brethren to replace him. They looked at Earl expressionlessly, neither questioning nor hostile. He motioned that he wanted nothing from them and went to a large double door at the rear, made sure it was unlocked, and peered out through mesh wire at a small yard behind the kitchen. It was the loading zone for trucks. Empty crates were stacked against a wall next to empty milk cans. Two convicts in high boots and heavy rubber gloves and aprons were using a steam hose to rinse garbage cans. The road to the small yard came up a ramp through an archway in a wall—though beyond the wall was only the lower yard. A guard tower sat on top of the wall. This was the first stop the trash truck made every morning, the beginning of its route, and Earl knew it was also the most secluded. It was the best place to see if what he thought was true, and if it was true, it would be the best place to make the gamble.

A quarter of an hour later the truck came up the ramp, its flat snout high until it reached level ground. It swung around and backed to the loading dock—ten feet from the vegetable room door—where the trash barrels waited. Two convicts stepped off the rear and began dumping them. The guard stayed inside the cab. The convict driver waited until signaled by a swamper and then threw a lever. The compressor whined the crushed trash.