On the other hand, I’d rather she’d marry a prison guard than a sorry convict and become an Alcatraz widow.
But where was one of the sorry fuckers when you needed him? Not that I’d ever think of calling one of them, I wouldn’t in a million years, but damn!
Another thing Al Doolin had told me. A stranger is more dangerous than somebody you know—because you know how to deal with somebody you know, a stranger you don’t. I’d forgot about that too. Did Roy Drake’s little new-buddies have knives too? They might be stone cold killers and they were coming my way—not in any hurry, just sort of easing their way in and out among convicts walking the yard, trying to act like they weren’t intent on fencing me in; they were not even looking directly at me, just easing my way. Nor was Roy Drake in any hurry. He too was just easing his way along.
And that’s a good thing for it gave me time to think. I’m not the fastest thinker in the world.
Heightened awareness.
The yard was full of factory workers, convicts getting in their morning smoke before we went down the hill. Convicts wandering aimlessly, grazing like cattle.
Grazing. It’s funny I could think of that in the midst of danger, but I did. Maybe I’m over-dramatizing this in the retelling of it, but I don’t think so. I remember well how scared I was, and I was acutely aware of everything going down on that yard. Adrenalin was kicking my ass, the fight or flight thing. So, no, I’m not over-telling it. Every detail was permanently etched in my brain that day. I saw the seagulls overhead, I saw the sun coming up, I thought of Al Doolin and how stupid I was and all that. And I was scared.
But I remember that at some point I got pissed off at myself for thinking such cowardly thoughts. Was I a convict or a cowardly inmate? And that stiffened up my backbone. I needed a plan but couldn’t think of one, so fuck it.
I was aware of Jackrabbit and Forest Tucker cutting across the yard.
I hitched my pants a little higher, took a deep breath and started walking, a cowboy with an empty holster, a cowboy without a plan, but still a cowboy. For it was a Zane Grey day, and I was walking straight toward old Roy Drake. All that was missing was some background music and maybe a tumbleweed or something. Fuck Roy Drake and his raggedy new buddies, too. Without a brain in my head I was on my way.
Jackrabbit cut in front of me, turned to face me and block my path. Forest Tucker stopped and faced the other way, toward Roy Drake, his back to Jackrabbit.
I had to pull up to keep from bumping into Jackrabbit. I tried to look over his shoulder, to keep my eyes on Drake. “Damn, Jackrabbit, what are you doing?”
He talked calmly, chest to chest with me and not moving. “You’re going home next year—you don’t need to be doing this.”
“Hey, you two need to get out of the way, Roy Drake’s got a knife!”
“We know it and we’ll take care of it. Stay out of the way.” Jackrabbit was talking like it wasn’t nothing.
“There’s two more, one on each side of him,” I said, and I started around him, but he gripped my shoulder and held me still, gripped me with a hand of steel. “Damn, Jackrabbit,” was all I could say, for I could not move.
“We’ll take care of them, too,” he said calmly, old mild-mannered Jackrabbit.
Well the two new-buddies had come up on each side by now, but they just milled around undecided, thrown off by what they saw, I guess.
And Forest Tucker was facing Roy Drake, who was approaching now. And Forest Tucker stood there calm as you please. Forest Tucker. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. He didn’t say anything, just stood there.
Roy Drake stopped about five feet from Tucker, hesitated for a minute, then said, “This is between me and Bill Baker, you’d better get out of the way, Forest Tucker.”
“He’s going home next year. He’s too short to be getting into trouble now,” Tucker said, not a challenge or anything, just an easy-going statement.
Roy Drake decided Tucker wasn’t a real threat, I guess, because he just sort of guffawed and stuck his chest out. “I’ve got a knife here, Forest Tucker, so you’d better get out of the way unless you want some of this, too,” And he gripped the knife in his pocket with bravado, displaying the point of the knife through the cloth.
Well Forest Tucker spoke easy as you please, said, “I don’t have a knife, Roy Drake, but we’ll both use yours, if it comes down to it.”
Forest Tucker. That’s what came out of his mouth. It blew me away.
Well that threw old Roy Drake off. He looked at Tucker like he was crazy. He didn’t know what to say. He looked over toward one of his new buddies and then the other, but they didn’t seem to know what to do and turned away. Jackrabbit had turned to face Drake, now, and was shoulder to shoulder with Tucker.
“You too, huh Jackrabbit. I don’t have a problem with you.” He was whining now, took his hand out of his pocket, so he was through. But he was looking for a way to save face. His new buddies had disappeared, were nowhere in sight. He looked back at Jackrabbit, defeat in his eyes. But he had to say something. Jackrabbit just stood there, tall and straight, his eyes as cold as January. Man was I ever getting an education.
Finally Drake said to Jackrabbit, “This was just between me and him.” He wanted to say more but he’d lost his nerve.
Jackrabbit said quietly, “I know it was between you and him, but you had a knife and he didn’t, and you had two other guys to help you and he didn’t, but he does now, so why don’t you just go put that knife away and forget all about this and we’ll forget it. And I do mean forget it, do you understand what I’m saying?”
Roy Drake thought about that for a very short time, decided he understood. He nodded his head and walked away. And that was the end of that.
But it was not the end of my memory of it and the education I got from it. Jackrabbit and Forest Tucker. Two old mild-mannered convicts, the baddest fuckers on the yard that morning.
They finally blew work call and we went to work, with me a lot wiser.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The dirty dogs tricked us. They finished the shack to house the new metal detector, then they installed the metal detector in the shack, and then they put out the word that the metal detector would be put into operation Monday morning. That was their plan, we thought. And we were ready to buck.
Benny Rayburn said it was just a metal detector that operated on magnetism and was completely harmless to human beings, but the convict who worked in the warehouse said just the contrary, that it was a fluoroscope and that it shot out rays that would make us all sterile, and that didn’t sound good at all, the sterile part. To some of us, sterile meant you couldn’t father a baby, to others it meant you couldn’t do “it” at all—meaning you couldn’t fuck, and that didn’t go over too well.
So, whatever that metal detector was, we weren’t taking any chances, we weren’t going through the damn thing, period. We were all set to buck when we went to work that morning.
Well, we went down the hill to work and there wasn’t no guard in the shack. It wasn’t open. So we walked right around it and on down the hill wondering what was going on. And for the rest of that day and two or three more days, we went up and down the hill and nothing happened with that metal detector. It set there on the landing like a forgotten toy—forgotten being the key word here, for we got so used to it setting there that we forgot all about it, I guess. Then one day on the way up the hill to lunch, wham, they already had half the factory through that thing before we woke up, and then it was too late. They had tricked us good.
Me, I wasn’t about to buck by myself, so I went through it too. I sort of believed Benny Rayburn anyway. But I sort of checked my Thing pretty regular to make sure it was still working all right, and it was, so I soon forgot all about that metal detector, whatever it was.
Christmas came and we got our Christmas bags and ate good and I hung a sock on a bar for Santa and it was empty the next morning as I knew it would be but I did it anyway for the memory of my g
randma when my socks were always full, and then New Year’s Eve came and Jackrabbit started a game of twenty-questions which we finished late in the night to the sound of tug boats bawing in the bay.
And the next morning it was nineteen-fifty-nine. My year to get out.
But I still had that detainer from Oregon for escaping from jail, so I didn’t have much hope of going free, but there was still a chance. There are two ways to think about a detainer. The first is that you start pushing for a dismissal when you first get locked up—that way you settle it one way or the other, you either get it dropped or they take you back and try you for it and you lose, usually, but at least you know. The second way is you wait until you do most of your time hoping that as time passes the heat on your case cools enough so that you have a better chance of a dismissal. I chose the second way.
Benny Rayburn helped me write a letter to the prosecuting attorney in Portland, Oregon. It was a good letter, logical and clear as were all Benny’s legal letters, not demanding, just politely requesting, for, as he told me, a letter to a prosecuting attorney asking for a dismissal of a detainer was not a writ, it was just a humble request—you’ve got to kiss a little ass, he said, because a prosecuting attorney was not compelled to do anything he didn’t want to do. So I sent the letter off and waited for a reply.
January was a slow month. And, like most Januarys on Alcatraz Island, it was a damp cold month, and we hunched up in our jackets with our chins down on the way to work and back, for there was most often a wind blowing in from the west across the water and up that hill to greet us as went down and to speed us on as we went up. Even the slow walkers climbed those steps a little faster during the winter months.
Sometime during the month I got a birthday card from my mother. No big deal. She always sent me a card on Christmas and on my birthday. I liked Christmas but a birthday was just another day. Nevertheless the cards reminded me, as always, that somebody was out there.
And one day that month—I don’t remember whether it was a work day or a weekend—one day that month of January I was puffing on a cigarette when Jackrabbit sidled up beside me and bumped me with his elbow. “Let’s go over to the bleachers, he said,” and he headed that way. So I followed.
Benny Rayburn was sitting there talking to Forest Tucker. As I approached they looked up and quit talking. Both of them had shit-eating grins on their faces, so I knew something was up but I didn’t know what. When we were all in a bunch I looked around suspiciously. Jackrabbit was grinning too. As if on cue they all started singing like three idiots: “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, Bill Baker, happy birthday to you!” And all the while they were singing I was squirming with embarrassment. I mean I nearly dropped dead. I was looking around to see if anybody else on the yard noticed what was going on. And to nail a final nail in my coffin a bunch of convicts who were hanging around here and there started clapping their hands and whistling and cheering when the song was over. Damn! It was awful.
Then Jackrabbit came out of his coat with a homemade birthday card which he presented to me. I took it. I could not do otherwise. On the front in big letters was HAPPY 23rd BIRTHDAY, and that really got me. I had to laugh, and laugh I did. Jackrabbit was on to me.
I opened the card. It was signed with a whole bunch of names, some that I didn’t even know. Everybody was still grinning, and that’s about when I started grinning too, I think. And feeling good.
They weren’t through. Benny came out with a bag of goodies and we all sat around sucking on hard candy and shooting the shit. I guess birthdays weren’t so bad after all—not when you had family and friends, and these raggedy Alcatraz convicts were both.
February came, and with it came the letter I’d been waiting for. It was a letter from a clerk in the prosecuting attorney’s office. And it was good news. He said when the new prosecuting attorney came in he’d thrown out a lot of old cases and mine was one of those cases. I had no detainer on me now.
I still had a bunch of lost good-time, though, so I figured I might as well ask the warden to give it back. I probably wouldn’t get it, but I had nothing to lose by asking. So I hit the wailing wall the next time old Promising Paul came down to the factory. I hated to beg, and I didn’t, but I must have looked pretty pitiful just the same, for he took my name down and said he’d check on it.
And no more than a couple of days later I got a notice in the mail from him, old Promising Paul himself, that all my lost good-time was restored as of that day. And with that my new release date written in black and white right on that notice, was only two months away, the beginning of Summer. And the Hummingbird of Happiness flew up my nose.
Those two months went by slow but good. I counted every day, marking my calendar with joyful anticipation. I bumped into things, said stupid things, and forgot which end of a spoon you ate with in my happiness. And on weekends I walked the yard with my head in the clouds, grazing with the herd, wandering aimlessly here and there, this way and that. Short-time fever, that’s what I had.
First order of business when I got out was a girl of course, but after that, money. I talked to Courtney Taylor every time I got a chance to make sure I had everything straight in my mind about counterfeiting payroll checks. Anybody could cash them, it was making them that was hard. And you had to have good ID. I stretched my brain all out of shape trying to remembering it all.
Second order of business when I got out was a girl, of course, but after that, money. I had to have money to get started with, to live on and buy check paper and other things I’d need before I could cash my first check, little things that I hadn’t thought about until now, now that I was faced with the sudden reality of actually hitting the streets. Convicts build up fantasies in their heads when they walk the yard in prison, fantasies of big cars and beautiful women and tons of money, and I was no exception. We go to sleep in prison where everything is free, our food, our bed such as it is, everything such as it is but free. No responsibility, a bell for this, a bell for that, get up in the morning and do it all over again, the routine, the Rut—and you forget that on the streets you have to pay the rent. You forget.
Oh well, no big deal, just an inconvenience. I’d figure out a way. Maybe I’d borrow some money from a bank. That’s where people got money from, wasn’t it, they borrowed it from a bank. I wouldn’t have any identification yet but I could show them my discharge papers from Alcatraz, that would probably be enough, wouldn’t it? That and a thirty-eight Smith & Wesson revolver. Nope, just kidding.
I was getting out and I felt good, that’s all that mattered.
So with my head in the clouds I finished those two months grazing with the herd. Forgive me but I like that word, “grazing,” because that describes how so many of us did our time, wandering aimlessly, chomping grass here and there then moving on, grazing our pasture like contented cattle—or bored cattle, whatever, and now I was doing it, me. But I was a happy cow.
And it was while I was grazing with my head in outer space that I discovered the answer to the riddle of space and time. It was there all the time, so simple and elegant and logical. And one day I guess Mama Nature got tired of me stumbling around like an idiot looking for it, for she slapped me right in the face with it, smack, and suddenly I understood. And with the boldness of an idiot I present it to you, thus: THE FIRST LAW OF SPACETIME: Space and time are equivalent, and neither space nor time can exist independent of the other. I just thought I’d throw that in.
And on that joyful day I just had to share my great discovery with somebody. I spotted Benny Rayburn sitting in his favorite spot over on the bottom step of the bleachers so I grazed my way over there and shared it with him. About halfway through it he excused himself, saying he had to see a guy about a legal paper, and he took off. Oh well, I saw Forest Tucker and commenced to share it with him. He listened politely for a while but then his eyes blanked out. He finally reached over and felt my forehead with the palm of his hand. “You’ve got short-time fever,�
�� he said. And that really messed me up, so I looked around for somebody else. Jackrabbit was playing cards and Burgett was—gone.
I’d just have to bear my great burden alone.
And I remember that one day I was sitting up on the bleachers with Jackrabbit, just sitting and talking—well, not exactly talking out loud, but, you know, just sitting up there with our motors running but our mouths out of gear like you can do when you’re with a good friend, so I guess you could say we were talking without saying anything. And like I said even when Jackrabbit was silent you knew that something was always going on up there in his head; he was on idle but his motor was always running.
Me, I was thinking I hadn’t had a disciplinary report in over a year—yes, over a year. And that surprised me because I hadn’t thought about it before. And I figured that was a big enough deal that I needed to say it out loud, to Jackrabbit. And I did. “I haven’t had a write-up for over a year,” I said out loud.
Well, Jackrabbit didn’t say anything, so I figured he wasn’t too impressed. But after a while, when I’d already forgot about the whole thing, he said, “I used to be like you in a lot of ways, but it’s easier to do time if you don’t fight it.”
I nodded, waiting for him to go on, but that’s all he said about it. So I put my mouth back in neutral.
And, I thought, I’d started taking naps. I hadn’t thought about that either, until just then.
Fuck! I’d started taking naps! “I’ve started taking naps,” I said with my mouth back in gear.
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