The Animal Factory (27 page)

Earl bounced and popped his fingers in a dance. It’ll work. “It … fuckin’ … will … work,” he said, and actually felt dizzy. He’d seen a prayer answered with a miracle. He and Ronald Decker were going to break out of San Quentin.

The work whistle had blown, the yard gate opened, and convicts were streaming out when Earl went against the flow toward the North cellhouse rotunda. Ron was coming down the steel stairs, still bleary-eyed, when Earl leaped at him and squeezed his neck in a headlock. “Gimme some asshole and I’ll tell you the way out of here.”

“Naw, you’d burn me.”

“If I tell you, you’ll burn me.”

“That’s the chance you take.” Then Ron saw the elation glowing on his friend’s face. “You jivin’?”

“Not jivin’. It’s the trash truck.” He started shadowboxing, bobbing and weaving and throwing hooks into thin air. “Hear me, brother! It’s a winner. They don’t watch it ’cause they think a chump would get killed. But … the play is to dive in with some kind of brace, like four-by-fours, or a couple of Olympic-size weight bars. Put them against the back wall. Believe me, that motherfuckin’ crusher ain’t gonna bust no weight bar.”

Ron was incredulous. “It
can’t
be that easy.”

“I checked it out this morning.”

“How could they be so dumb?”

Earl shrugged.

“Or nobody else noticed it before this?”

“They weren’t looking. Like the bulls. The crusher stopped them.”

“When can we go? Tomorrow?” The last was obviously in jest.

“C’mon, fool. We gotta find out where it goes, where they empty it, and arrange for your mother to pick us up … or somebody. If she can’t make it—”

“She can—”

“—we’ll wait until T.J. goes out in a couple of months. We can’t just wander around like lost sheep. We wouldn’t last three days. Man, you’ve got
heat
when you split from
inside the walls
. It ain’t like runnin’ off from a camp.”

“I’ll get on my end right away. The padre will let me make a phone call home. I’ll get her out here.”

“No, no. You don’t want a visit. That’ll put heat on her. We’ll smuggle her a letter. She’s gotta make it look like she never left home.”

“How long is it going to take?”

“Two weeks. We’ve got to check out the swampers … make sure they aren’t stool pigeons … and get ’em out of the way if they are. I know it uses an outside dump somewhere. We might have to run when we get out of the truck. I think I’ll start jogging to get in shape.”

“When I see
you
jogging,
I’ll
have a heart attack.”

“Maybe I am being too extreme.”

The preparations to escape, once begun, went swiftly. A clerk in the maintenance office found the truck’s manual and confirmed that the crusher would never break a four-by-four, much less an Olympic weightlifting bar; and there was enough room for several men within the truck. The reputation of the two swampers was okay among convicts. Earl then had Seeman look at their files to find out if there was a recorded taint in their backgrounds. He told the lieutenant he needed to know to stop some trouble and Seeman didn’t question further. The records showed no prior snitching, and one had an unidentified crime partner still loose, which really
indicated
staunchness, for both the police and the parole board exerted pressure and threatened penalties in that situation. Ron talked to his mother on the chapel telephone and got the reassurance; then they smuggled the letter with detailed instructions and she confirmed with a telegram. She would rent a car, change the license plates, and follow the trash truck on three consecutive days from the moment it left the prison reservation, ready to rescue them whenever they made their move. She would have money, clothes, and a second car. Ron knew where to get phony I.D., but preferred to get it himself when they were out. She balked at having firearms waiting, which both Earl and Ron had expected, but Earl had insisted on asking. It didn’t really matter. He knew where to get shotguns and pistols as soon as they reached Los Angeles. Baby Boy, in paint-splattered white coveralls, pushed a handcart up the ramp to the kitchen yard. Under a tarp, amidst buckets of paint and thinner, were two weightlifting bars, and wrapped in dirty rags were two shivs. T.J. had stolen the bars from the gym. It was after lunch and the vegetable crew was gone for the day. Baby Boy climbed on top of sacks of potatoes and stashed the equipment next to the wall. Despite the promise from Ron’s mother, they gathered civilian shirts stolen from the laundry and sixty dollars in currency—just in case.

The escape was set for Tuesday. On Monday evening Earl was so tense that he couldn’t eat. Pains squeezed his chest. He spent twenty dollars of the escape money on two papers of heroin and they erased the anxiety.

Just before lockup in the South and East cellhouses, T.J. and Wayne cornered one of the trash truck swampers, Vito and Baby Boy the other, and told them what to expect and how to react—by acting normal and going on with their job. Telling them so late wasn’t to forestall them from snitching, but to keep them from gossiping to other convicts, who would gossip with yet more, until somewhere down the line a stool pigeon would hear.

After lockup, both Ron and Earl finished disposing of what was in their cells, giving away cigarettes, toiletries, bonaroo clothes, and books. Ron tore up letters and legal papers and put his photographs in a large manilla envelope that he would carry inside his shirt. Earl kept two packs of cigarettes, a spoon of coffee in an envelope for morning, and one squib of toothpaste on the brush. All he was taking with him were three snapshots in a shirt pocket. “Sheeit!” he muttered. “I travel light as Mahatma Gandhi.” He was soundly asleep before midnight, while Ron never really got to sleep. Ron had quit smoking months before, but that night he puffed nearly a pack.

The moment the security bar was lifted and North cellhouse convicts came out for breakfast, Ron went to Earl’s cell and found him snoring. The honor cellhouse door was unlocked and Ron pulled it open, tugging his friend’s foot through the blanket. Earl’s eyes opened immediately.

“Hey,” Ron said, uncertain if he should laugh or be indignant. “What’re you doing still asleep?”

Earl nodded in slow, dramatic patience. “Look, this is the first cellhouse out. The swampers and driver don’t even leave their cells for half an hour. It’s at least an hour before the truck starts rolling. What should we do, go to the vegetable room and cut up string beans until it gets there?”

Laughter won inside Ron. “Okay, but sometimes I can’t believe you. Sleeping!”

“Ain’t nothin’ better to do. But I’ll get up if you get me some hot water for coffee.”

When Ron came back from the hot water spigot at the end of the tier, carrying a steaming jar of water wrapped in a towel, Earl was buttoning the blue jail shirt over the candy-striped civilian one. Ron sat down on the end of the lower bunk, back against one wall, feet on the other, while Earl brushed his teeth, drank coffee, and hacked up the gummy phlegm of a heavy smoker.

Through the tall barred windows they could see the yard, the prison’s drabness even more monochromatic in the gray morning light. A line of convicts was starting to emerge from the East
cellhouse
at the far end, while below them North cellhouse residents were coming back.

“Shouldn’t we go say goodbye to our friends?” Ron asked.

Earl looked at him, smiled. “Yeah, we should—and I didn’t even think of it.”

They went downstairs, against a flow of convicts, and out into the still nearly empty yard—empty except for the long line of convicts stretching from mess hall to cellhouse. The yard would fill as the mess hall emptied. Now only a dozen convicts were standing around or pacing back and forth. Ron and Earl walked through and
scattered
a flock of pigeons waiting to be fed, and went to the concrete bench along the East cellhouse wall.

Moments later a pair of convicts came from the mess hall line—T.J. and Wayne, the former hugging Earl and shaking hands with Ron, the latter shaking hands, in reverse order, with both of them—and wishing them good luck.

“Yeah, good luck, brothers,” T.J. said. “We took care of that with that fool on the truck last night. He’s all right.”

“I’ll see you out there in a couple of months,” Earl said. “I’ve got your people’s address. I’ll get in touch when I think you’ve raised.”

“If you don’t make it,” Wayne said, “we’ll send you a care package into ‘B’ Section, smokes, coffee, and shit.”

“If we
don’t
,” Ron said, “send
me
some arsenic.”

“Ain’t that bad round here,” T.J. said. “Hell, there’s lots of
excitement
.” Then to Earl: “Send us a package of dope as soon as you can.”

“I’ll run off in a Thrifty drugstore for you.”

From the corner of the South mess hall, Vito and Baby Boy appeared, cutting through the lines and angling over.

“Glad we caught you,” Baby Boy said, shaking hands. “Sure wanted to say goodbye and wish you luck.”

Vito was more demonstrative, goosing Earl and giggling. “Say, man,” Earl said, slapping the hand away. “I’ll be glad to get away from you.”

The last of the mess hall lines was nearing the door.

“We gotta go,” Ron said.

The clique gave quick pats on the back, and then they crossed the yard and got in the end of the line.

“When we get inside,” Earl said, “follow me about ten feet behind.”

As they stepped within, Earl bypassed taking a tray and stepped out of the line, walking along the rear wall where off-duty kitchen workers were standing. They gave cover. He glanced back and Ron was following.

It was the same in the confusion of the huge kitchen. Nobody even looked curiously at them.

Just two of the
braceros
were still working when Earl opened the vegetable room door. They were using hose and squeegee to clean scraps from the tile floor. They glanced up and kept working; they were nearly done.

Earl held the door until Ron ducked through. Then Earl told him to keep lookout down the hallway and scrambled onto the sacks of potatoes, retrieving the weightlifting bars and shivs. The
braceros
still said nothing, but hurried to scoop up the scraps and get out of the room.

Earl handed one shiv to Ron and put the other under his shirt. He propped both weight bars next to the loading dock door and leaned forward, staring out at the kitchen yard and the top of the ramp. Ron stayed, watching the corridor.

The sound of the truck came before it was visible, but the time lapse was just a few seconds. Ron heard, and felt as if something that should have been in his chest had worked up into his throat and was trying to gag him. He could hear the truck growling loud as it strained in low gear; then it stopped and the gears shifted. He could hear it backing up.

Earl watched the gun tower on the wall against the gray sky. The guard had his back turned, as usual. The truck backed in less than ten feet away. The swampers bounded off, going for the trash barrels.

“C’mon, Ron,” Earl said, his words punctuated by the crash of the first barrel.

As Ron moved, the tension dissolved—burst and went away. He was as calm and detached as at any time in his life, and so keyed up his senses captured every impression intensely. He even noticed that Earl’s cheek was twitching.

They each held one of the long bars, pausing just momentarily at the door. “You get in first,” Earl said. “Push the bar ahead of you … and don’t drop the fucker.” He opened the door and Ron went out onto the dock, nearly bumping into a barrel, causing Earl to step on his heels.

The swampers looked at them with wide eyes and stopped work, stepping back to give them room.

Ron put his head down and plunged into the hole, running into a stench like a wall and instantly starting to breathe through his mouth, thinking that he had to get a handkerchief out to breathe into as soon as he was seated. His knees waded through the trash, and he pushed the bar ahead of him.

The moment Ron’s head and shoulders went in, Earl heard the truck’s cab open and he knew the guard was getting out. He couldn’t stay where he was, and he wouldn’t have time to follow Ron. Both of them would be caught. All of this took one second to register, and then he stepped around the rear of the truck and jumped down from the loading dock, angling as if heading toward the other kitchen door, appearing just a few feet from the old guard. “Hey, Smitty,” he said as if mildly surprised.

The guard’s head came up but there was no suspicion as he
recognized
Earl. “Copen. You’re a little out of your usual run, aren’t you?”

Earl held the weightlifting bar. “Yeah, somebody carted this out of the gym to the kitchen—who knows what for—and Rand sent me to get it.” As Earl finished the sentence, he heard a barrel being dumped and knew Ron was safe.

“Goddamn convicts would steal false teeth,” the guard said.

Earl nodded, said nothing, and walked away.

In the darkness Ron heard the voices, recognized Earl’s without the words. The fact of
any
talk was terrible. Ron’s hopes withered, he
knew
they were caught. Then a barrel of trash flew in, sending dust toward him, and he dug for the handkerchief. Another barrel came. There was no alarm. His thoughts and feelings were tangled. Something had made Earl back off. He couldn’t think further because the truck’s motor started and he heard the clunk of the crusher. He braced the bar against the wall and held it with both hands like a lance. The trash crept over his feet, but when the crusher hit the steel brace it stopped. Everything held for a few seconds that seemed like minutes, and then the crush receded and the square of light reappeared.

Ron’s confusion and terror evaporated in soaring elation. He was going to be
free
in a few minutes. The half-dozen stops were routine; he was over the hurdle. In the smelly darkness his thoughts had already left prison and were on life.

In the shadows of the kitchen doorway Earl Copen watched the high, ungainly truck roll down the ramp. His lips were pressed together but drawn as far back as possible, and his eyes were squinted into slits to suppress their stinging. His friend was gone and he was left behind, but it was better that one should be free than neither. Still, the hurt was deep—but when the truck had disappeared, Earl turned away, then snorted an ironical laugh. “Aw, fuck it. I run something around here. I’d probably starve to death out there.”