Well I had no one to discuss it with and I hated to suffer a sprained brain alone so I decided to try it out on Benny Rayburn. I talked, explaining what great stuff I’d learned, and he listened, but his eyes kept darting here and there. When I was just getting to the good part, he suddenly spotted somebody and just as suddenly excused himself saying he had to get some information from this guy to file a motion for him that was suddenly due the next day. And he took off.
Well, okay. I found Burgett doing pushups and tried it out on him when he came up for air. I mean, what are friends for? He listened for a few minutes with a stone face. Then he said. “Fuck you, Bill Baker,” and he walked away. I guess he was through doing push-ups for the day.
Okay. I wasn’t about to give up, though. I sought out Forest Tucker. Started explaining it to him. He would listen. He was a true friend. And he did listen, politely, looking me straight in the eye as true friends do. And when I was through, he said, “You need to come to band practice, Bill Baker. I need your help.” That’s what he said.
He sat there all that time, he did, listening politely as a sad dog, didn’t yawn once, well maybe his eyes glazed over a few times, and maybe he squirmed a few times, but he listened. And when I was done he sat silently until he was sure I was done and then he said, “You need to come to band practice, Bill Baker. I need your help.” That’s all he said. And he looked so pitiful and I felt so guilty because I had been skipping practice for a long time, that I said I would.
And I could have kicked my own ass afterward, for I knew why he needed me. He had a guitar player already who could read music and everything, he just couldn’t make it through any song without getting his timing turned around, and once he did that he couldn’t ever get straightened out because he didn’t know he was turned around. He was rhythm deaf. He had no natural sense of timing.
Me, I had a natural gift, both in timing and pitch. My only problem was that I couldn’t read music. So I guess old Forest Tucker figured that if he had one guitar player with perfect rhythm and another who could read music, he’d have himself a guitar player.
Life just wasn’t fair.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Simco was out of the hole. He was back on the yard and everybody was aware of it. Anybody else might have gone unnoticed, but not Simco. He was a coldblooded killer.
It wasn’t that he invited anybody’s notice, he didn’t. He was quiet, polite, and if you didn’t know better you’d swear he was recently graduated from some Ivy League college, maybe Yale, and then you might guess he’d gone on to serve his country for a few years, maybe as a fighter pilot. Clean-cut, handsome, with a good smooth jaw, you might want to introduce him to your daughter, do a little match-making, for he must have great genes. And he had those eyes, calm, non-offensive. Might be a marine, no, not enough fire in those eyes. The calm before the storm? Maybe. A cat ready to pounce? Absolutely not, for he was too relaxed, too sure of himself to bother with such aggressive games.
But then when he took his shirt off and you saw his smooth skin and slim, hard-packed waist and hard muscled body, well, something didn’t add up.
He had killed his punk. I don’t know why, I’m just telling you what I know. He killed his punk, his sissy, whatever you want to call him. He killed him in cold blood down in the shower room with a guard looking straight at him. He stood over his punk and calmly watched him die while the guard threw a roll of toilet paper at him from a distance trying to break it up. That’s the truth, threw a roll of toilet paper at him, which as far as I’m concerned was a brave act, for I wouldn’t even have done that. I’d have got the hell out of there as soon as I heard the sound of that knife thudding into flesh. The killing thrust of a knife is not silent. It has a distinct thud, and if you ever hear it you’ll remember it forever. Simco killed his punk right there in broad daylight in front of a guard who committed the brave act beyond the call of duty of throwing a roll of toilet paper at him.
And then Simco calmly and voluntarily allowed them—for in short order there were a whole gang of guards present, all out of breath and none willing to get close to that bloody knife—Simco allowed them to take him to the hole where he remained for many months until he went to court over in San Francisco and was found not guilty by a jury, not guilty of anything because the jury of ordinary people couldn’t believe for one minute that such a nice, clean-cut boy imprisoned at Alcatraz with all those monsters could possibly be guilty of murder and if he was he must have done it in self-defense to keep from being raped or mutilated or maybe even eaten alive.
The citizens of San Francisco knew that the prisoners at Alcatraz were the most terrible creatures in the world. They knew because they were told so by glowing accounts in newspapers and radio and now even television. And of course the politicians and tour boat captains and everybody else who had never set foot on Alcatraz Island fanned the flames with wild rumors and ghost stories which reinforced what the public already believed. “So what was Simco doing at Alcatraz, anyway. The government must have made a mistake.”
And when Simco’s lawyer requested that Simco remove his shirt in the courtroom to prove a point, the point being forgotten when the ladies in the jury witnessed Simco’s hard young body—
Not guilty.
This, despite graphic testimony by the guard who had been an eye witness to the whole thing. I don’t know if the roll of toilet paper was introduced into evidence or not.
And Simco’s case was not the only one thrown out by a disbelieving jury. A big Iowa boy with a baby face strangled a guy to death while I was there. Again, the jury would not believe it was unjustified. Not guilty.
You had to kill a prison guard to be found guilty by a San Francisco jury. Then it was automatic.
Me, I knew both Simco and the other guy—though I can’t remember the Iowa boy’s name—and it was okay with me that they beat their cases. The guys they killed were not monsters, but neither were they pillars of prison society. And in prison when a murder happens it’s usually as much the fault of the victim as it is the guy who killed him.
Anyway, Simco, after being acquitted of the murder charge, still had to deal with prison authorities, and they didn’t care what the jury said, they kept him in the hole for many more months before they finally put him back in population. And now Simco was on the yard again.
Simco spelled his name Simcox, But it sounded like Simco so that’s how I’m spelling it. I mean you don’t walk around asking a cold blooded killer how to spell his last name. Not at Alcatraz you don’t.
He was really cool, though. I only saw him lose his composure one time, and that was up in the hospital one night. They checked me in overnight because I had a tooth pulled that day and it wouldn’t stop bleeding. Simco was also there for some minor reason, as were several other guys. We were all together in a little hospital ward containing maybe a half-dozen beds, but to get to the shower you had to cross the main hospital hallway. Well, Simco went across to take a shower and when he came back he was upset. He said Stroud (Birdman), who was in a single cell over that way, had hit on him for sex. But what he, Simco, was upset about was, in his own words, “Birdman hit on me to suck my dick, and I told the fucker, ‘You don’t hit on me, I’m the one who does the hitting, if I want my dick sucked I’ll hit on you!’” And he, Simco, said it quite loudly right there in the hospital ward for everybody to hear.
Messed my head up when I heard that. Simco was upset because he was a pitcher, not a catcher, and he left no doubt how he felt about it. He was the man, the hitter not the hittee. I almost laughed because it sounded so ridiculous. I believe his feelings were hurt.
But I was surprised, too, because Robert Stroud was a hero, a genuine bonafide hero. He had written the book about diseases in birds. He was the worldwide authority. After many painstaking years of study in a solitary cell in Leavenworth with real live birds, he had written the book. And he had endured most of his life in a solitary cell and still had life to go, and that alone was a heroic ac
complishment in my opinion, never mind the birds.
Everybody took showers, so I figured I’d better take one too whether I needed one or not. I got into my bathrobe and headed that way, sort of sneaked across the hall trying to avoid Birdman’s cell. But from a cell up the hall he called to me. He saw me and I saw him, and for a moment I stopped. What I saw in that brief moment was a dark cell with a gray shadow of a man peering out at me with bright white eyes streaked with red coal fires of hell, and I got no further. I turned around and got the heck away from there.
I didn’t take a shower. Like I said, I was young and just naturally clean. I vowed to take more showers when I got to be a dirty old man, if I ever made it that far. But right then, at that moment, I wasn’t in any mood to take a shower. I hit my bunk and did some serious thinking.
Without going into detail about my roundabout reasoning, I came to several conclusions about what I’d seen and heard that evening. 1. Homosexuals could be heroes too, no getting around it. 2. I was in favor of capital punishment, provided it was carried out quickly. To sentence a man, no matter what his crime, to life in solitary confinement was wrong, no getting around that either, because there must come a time in the life of any prisoner serving such a sentence when the punishment far outweighs the severity of whatever crime he committed. And when that happens he is no longer responsible for the crime but is the victim instead. And when I saw the remains of Robert Stroud, Birdman, in that dark cell, that gray shadow with those bright white eyes streaked with the red coal fires of hell, I knew I was looking at the victim.
Many years before, when Birdman was serving time in Leavenworth, according to a guy I met later who was there and saw what happened, he, Robert Stroud, had a punk. They bunked together, ate their meals together and did whatever they did together. Well, this one guard kept messing with them in the mess hall when they went to eat. Maybe he didn’t like homosexuals, I don’t know, but he kept messing with Stroud and his punk every time they went to eat, so Stroud finally got tired of the whole thing and killed him, the guard. And that was that.
I’m not saying the killing was justified. Killing a guard is a serious matter, whether he needs killing or not, and while I might cuss one out or maybe put up a fight I sure wouldn’t think of killing one, no matter how sorry he was. But Robert Stroud was homicidal. And a homicidal homosexual is the most dangerous animal in the world. So Robert Stroud did what he did because he was who he was.
At that point if they had taken him to the hole and beat him to death, I would say, okay, call it even, an eye for an eye. He did what he did and they did what they did and that’s the end of the story. But they had to have more than that. They wanted his soul. They buried him alive.
But the soul is a hard thing to kill, I guess. Birdman wrote the book on birds and here he was, still alive. After all that time in solitary confinement it’s a wonder he wasn’t eating his own shit, so if he was still sane enough to suck a dick, more power to him, as long as he didn’t mess with mine.
History will even things out, anyway. It always does. Birdman will not only be a hero but he’ll be a martyr. The judge who sentenced him to life in solitary confinement will be the villain, as will the prison guards and the warden and the whole criminal justice system of the time.
To be fair and accurate, Birdman was at first sentenced to death for killing that guard, but he received a commutation to life by President Wilson and was then ordered to spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement.
Birdman eventually died in the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners at Springfield, Missouri. He was still in solitary confinement when he died. So they got every ounce of flesh out of him they could, but they still didn’t get his soul.
And History will have the last word.
I survived my ordeal with the dentist, which may have been a miracle, because somebody said he was a horse doctor over in San Francisco. He only worked part-time at Alcatraz, a contract worker or something like that. Anyway I got out of the hospital and hit the yard that weekend as usual, and I skipped band practice. Forest Tucker surely wouldn’t blame me after what I’d been through with that horse-doctor dentist. And it was such a beautiful day.
Me and Burgett and Jackrabbit sat up high on the bleachers so we could see. Jackrabbit wasn’t playing bridge that day because his beloved Boston Red Sox were playing and the game was being broadcast over the loud speakers up on the wall. The Red Sox were losing, as usual, but that didn’t matter, Jackrabbit loved them just the same.
The sky was high and blue. Sea gulls sailed on spread wings in search of who knows what. It was that kind of day. I remember it well because that was the day the girl in a bikini came into my life.
Small sail boats speckled the bay with their white sails blowing in the wind. Speed boats towed water skiers here and there. And here came the Alcatraz tour boat, right on schedule. They could only come so close to the Island, though, and there was a guard in the tall tower above the factory who had a bull horn to warn them away if they got too close and a high-powered rifle just in case they didn’t listen. The tour boat stopped and I could hear the loud speakers. I couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying, the loud speakers, but it would be the usual tourist stuff: Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, the escape attempts, and of course the monster stories and ghost stories, anything to excite the passengers. And I imagine they had a big DON’T FEED THE ANIMALS sign on the boat somewhere.
The boat finally left.
We weren’t talking much, me and Burgett and Jackrabbit, just soaking up some springtime sun. The artists were up there, too, with their easels, painting freedom. And I was leaning back watching the seagulls in their lazy travels, some venturing higher than others or farther out toward the open sea, the adventurous ones, maybe preparing their genes for the coming of the Chosen One. I didn’t know anything about Jonathon Livingston Seagull at the time, of course, because the book hadn’t yet been written, but I could tell something was up, that some gulls were more daring than others, and I could imagine that someday one brave bird would break free from the flock and sail away on a great adventure and might never return. I remember thinking that.
From the corner of my eye I saw Burgett suddenly straighten up, saw his back stiffen. At first I thought a fly ball might be heading our way, but then he stood up and hollered my name and pointed excitedly toward something in the bay. So I jumped up, too.
And there she was, a girl in a bikini on water skis heading straight for Alcatraz, and getting closer every second. Damn! Closer and closer she came, causing the tower guard to take quick action. First he bellowed on the bull horn for her to stop, even though it was obvious that she wasn’t going to, that the speedboat wasn’t going to, though I wasn’t paying any attention to the speed boat. The guard lowered his rifle and hollered into his bull horn again, this time in a high-pitched voice, then he picked up his rifle again, aimed it.
At the last possible second the speedboat turned sharply away. The girl in the bikini was on a long tow rope, so when the boat turned it slung her in a long wide arc that sent her even closer to the shore. She was so close we could plainly hear her high-pitched laughter, for she was having a real thrill, no doubt about it. The guard pointed his rifle again as she reached the closest point of her arc, but he couldn’t pull the trigger, I guess. Instead he screamed into his bullhorn again.
Then the speed boat sped away taking her with it. She shook her red bikinied butt as she skied away, swerving this way and that.
She wasn’t through though. Here she came back. This time she came closer, daringly. And by now half the prisoners on the yard were up on the bleachers yelling at the top of their lungs, cheering her on. And on she came. The guard couldn’t stand it anymore. He let out a scream and then he picked up his rifle and fired it into the air.
And again the speed boat swerved and slung the girl in a wide circle which brought her dangerously close to shore. Long hair flying, she was laughing still. Man, she was beautiful. And she wasn’t
no mermaid, either, for she had long white legs to go with her slim shapely body. She laughed and waved as she swung close, then she was gone, her round butt bobbing sadly as she left.
And I was in love with her for days afterward.
CHAPTER NINE
How did I wind up in Alcatraz? Good question. But I don’t know; must have been something I did.
Let’s see, when I got out of the state prison in Salem, Oregon, I walked down to the bus station, well I sort of bounced down there for my legs were on springs of happiness. I mean getting out of prison is the best feeling in the whole world, and if I had died that day I know I’d have gone straight to heaven because I know the heavenly angels would have scooped me up as one of their own so full of joy was I, and old Saint Peter would have waved me right in without even asking for ID. That’s how happy I was.
My old step dad had set me free when I was sixteen, so I didn’t have any place to go, but I had twenty-five bucks of gate money in my pocket and the clothes on my back and that’s all I needed. I went where most other ex-convicts went who didn’t have anywhere else to go. I went to Portland, and once I got there I went again to where a lot of ex-convicts went, I went to Denty Moore’s Tavern downtown.
Denty Moore’s tavern had a little restaurant in the back part of it where I sat down and ordered the house special, which was a bowl of Denty Moore’s beef stew right fresh out of a can. I didn’t order a beer right then because I was so high on getting out of prison that I was afraid a beer would make me sober. I ordered a glass of milk. And I guess my trip to Alcatraz started right there, not that the glass of milk had anything to do with it, but it so happened that the guy who ran the restaurant was a small-time fence for stolen goods and I fell right in with his program, ready and willing and the sooner the better, for the twenty-five bucks I had started out with was already half gone.
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