The Animal Factory

by Bunker, Edward

  “Yeah, chump, do something for yourself,” Earl said.

  “I think I’ll go to night school … take a course in real estate.”

  That is what he did; also a class in Spanish. Three evenings a week he walked through twilight, in the lines of men, mostly black, to the education building. At the recess he often visited Jan the Actress in the queen’s glass-enclosed office. There he met Mr. Harrell, the chubby, soft-physiqued teacher who ran the “literacy training” program for illiterates. Clark Harrell also sponsored a group called Squires that he hoped would help keep delinquents from coming to prison by showing them their future. Every Saturday morning he brought in a dozen youths to talk to the convicts. He asked Ron to join and Ron did so. He wasn’t much older than most of the swaggering kids with their unkempt hair and bizarre garb. Most of them wanted to show how tough they thought they were, but Ron watched as their eyes flitted to the riflemen silhouetted on the walls, the skyline of cellhouses, the inevitable plaza loungers who ogled them as if they were young girls—and would have made them a facsimile if they had the chance.

  The group met in the literacy training classroom, which was in an annex to the education building. The annex was whitewashed brick, circa 1895, and originally had been the women’s prison, then the hospital, next a chapel, and finally a classroom and warehouse.

  Some of the delinquents were frightened about meeting San Quentin convicts, while others looked forward to it. They’d all heard stories that were horrifying object lessons. Bob Wells, a black man who’d spent forty-two out of his last forty-three years in prison, always told of serving ten years, and coming back for car theft in 1941. He’d gotten an additional sentence for having a knife, and then knocked out a guard’s eye with a spittoon and was sentenced to die. He’d spent eight years on Condemned Row, watching men take the elevator ride to the octagon chamber, waiting for the appeals to run out. Walter Winchell had saved his life by focusing publicity on his case, and finally the governor had commuted his sentence to life without possibility of parole. Now he was in his mid-sixties, suffering bad arthritis from so many years of sleeping on concrete in the hole. He was gray, gaunt, had ulcers in his stomach and circulatory problems in his legs. He smelled of age and death. Ron watched the young car thieves and burglars as they listened. Some saw what could happen to them, while others sneered.

  One morning as the group broke up, Clark Harrell asked Ron to wait while he escorted the youngsters to the gate. When Harrell came back, Ron was on the ledge of the fish pond, his face turned to the sun. Harrell spoke to get his attention.

  “Pretty good meeting today,” he said. He fidgeted with a brass button on his blazer, an immaculate if uninspired dresser.

  “Very little gets through,” Ron said. “They aren’t ready to learn anything.”

  “Yes, I know. Thomas Mann made that observation … that we never really learn anything, we just become aware of things when the time and the potential in us coincide. Or something to that effect. But now and then it reaches one or two. I’ve got a couple in my Sunday-school class.”

  Ron made a sound of mildly surprised approval.

  “Where do you work?” Harrell asked.

  “North block … tier tender.”

  “That’s a waste of your intelligence. It doesn’t take any brains to sweep a tier.”

  Ron shrugged.

  “My assistant is going and I need somebody … to tutor, check tests and things. It pays thirty dollars a month, more than industries, and you’d be doing something useful.”

  “When do I have to decide?”

  “Oh, in a few days.”

  Ron immediately wanted the job, knowing it would impress the judge more than sweeping tiers, and it had some prestige. Yet he wanted to consult with his mentor first.

  Earl had never heard of Harrell, which wasn’t unusual considering that the prison employed nearly a thousand people and the education department was not part of Earl’s usual interests. The next afternoon, however, Earl knew quite a bit, including Harrell’s address and the names of his wife and two children. “He’s also an ordained minister. The first word I got was that he’s a fruiter, but then I found out he isn’t, at least not overt. He’s just a boss sucker for pretty boys. Every assistant has been young and smooth, but he never makes a pass … And he’s a mule. He won’t bring dope or anything hot, but he’ll pack out letters and bring in money. We can always use that kind of thing. And he doesn’t have any heat because he only does it for whoever works for him. Finally, when the time comes, we can write the report for the judge and he’ll sign it.”

  “So I should take the job?”

  “Quick as a cat can lick milk.”

  So Ron went to work as a teacher’s aide. At first sight of the class he was dismayed, for more than half of them were black and he’d been inoculated with San Quentin’s racial attitudes. He expected the ubiquitous hatred to spill into the classroom. At the very least, he expected to be tested for weakness. He knew from Earl that black convicts were often masters of the bluff game. “Some got it so tight,” Earl said, “that you don’t know who’s faking and who’s righteously a bad motherfucker. But they don’t expect Whitey to game back.” Ron was ready, but it was unnecessary. Not even his youthful appearance caused trouble. The class was voluntary, and its members were dedicated, and they saw that he was interested. On the yard some of the young, usually militant blacks nodded at him or gave a modified clenched-fist salute. Some whites in the Brotherhood disliked this and he had to explain, resenting the necessity. He also got in an argument with Earl over it. “Fuck it!” Ron said. “I can’t go on with this insanity. We’re all locked up here, wearing the same clothes, eating the same garbage, locked in the same cages.”

  “Right, asshole,” Earl said, “but tell them. When I came here, a beef was a personal matter. It might involve a couple of friends, but even that was unusual. Then came the Black Muslims and the Nazis, and as long as they just fucked each other up, it still didn’t bother me. Then they started stabbing white convicts indiscriminately whenever one of them got stabbed, even if it was over dope or a sissy. A lot of dudes don’t know when it started, but I was here. I know. I don’t like it, but I like it a lot better than what would happen if we didn’t get down. You think it doesn’t involve you. It involves everybody, both sides. When the war starts, you’ll be as potential a victim as anyone … and the dudes who do the fighting on your side don’t dig fraternization. And the black warriors are even more racist. I’m not a racist … but it’s tribal warfare. Like the Hatfields and the McCoys. You can’t help being born one or the other. And if you get too friendly with the other side, your own side will disown you … and might kill you. And these are the dudes who will go all the way to murder for you because you’re my friend.”

  It was the one time that Earl got angry, and although Ron believed the anger was irrational, he saw that the situation was equally so, so he avoided talking to any blacks on the yard.

  After a week, Harrell began bringing double lunches, one for himself and one for Ron. The lunches consisted merely of what goes into brown paper bags, but the simplest things from the outside were delicacies in San Quentin—mayonnaise was unheard of, and so was soft bread from a store. Mess hall bread was kept for several days before being served. Convicts ate less that way. The tuna salad sandwiches Harrell brought were as rare as lobster thermidor on the prison menu. Ron thought that Earl might be jealous, for lunch had become the single time during the day that they always saw each other. Instead, Earl grinned and pinched Ron’s cheek, a “chubby” that made him blush. “Shit, that’s all right. I go grease in the kitchen every night. Now I ain’t gotta worry about you.”

  Thus Ron ate weekday lunches with “Clark” in the classroom. He was a prissy man, very schoolmarmish. At the end of the ten-minute recess he actually stepped into the corridor and jangled a tiny bell between thumb and forefinger to tell the convicts to return to the classroom. He was nicknamed “Mother,” yet he was
obsessed with helping people and could get away with scolding explosive men who couldn’t stand authority.

  Although Ron worked for Harrell because he could manipulate the man, he also liked him, and felt mildly guilty at using him. Earl gave him two letters for Harrell to smuggle out, one to a man named Dennis, whom Earl described as his “acey-deucey partner,” then hugged Ron and said, “But you’re my son.” The letter was a coded request for narcotics; they arrived in two weeks. The second letter was to Bobby Gardner in the Los Angeles County jail, asking him to subpoena Bad Eye to his trial if possible. The trip, even in chains, would break the grind of “B” Section, and it might give Bad Eye a chance to escape. Nothing came of it. Bobby bargained out of trial with a jail sentence. Ron addressed the envelopes in his own hand and Harrell carried them out without question.

  Now and then Earl came to the classroom door, stuck his bald head inside, and beckoned Ron. Whenever it happened, Harrell was peevish afterward, though his one comment was that Ron was in “fast” company. The symptoms were of jealousy, and Ron grimly smiled inside, thinking, What a fuckin’ life.

  It takes between one and two years for prison’s newness to wear off so its awful reality can seep in. Men who commit suicide either do it in the first geyser of shame, within days or weeks, or else after a couple of years, when all has been discovered hopeless. During the interim, no matter how much agony the man may feel, he also experiences excitement, the excitement of learning how to cope with a closed society that reflects free society as a funhouse mirror reflects the human form: everything is there, but distorted. Prison has two sets of laws, Ron learned, those of the administration and those of the convicts. In order to regain freedom, one must not get caught breaking those of the administration, which faintly resemble society’s strictures. But to survive, one must follow the codes of the underworld. It is not difficult to do both if one remains inconspicuous and uninvolved. But the man who wishes to prevail wherever he is, including prison, takes to the tightrope and runs the danger. In that regard, Ron, except for his good looks, would have had it easy, for his vanities, great as they were, had nothing to do with prison values. He had decided that he was, indeed, committed to crime, but not in prison. He found nothing worth the trouble, but he understood that Earl was compelled to play whatever game was available and accept the coin of the realm—and Ron saw that his friend walked the tightrope as well as anyone. Earl was not a friend he would have chosen in other circumstances—but the friendship was nonetheless deeper than any he’d ever felt.

  Spring turned to crisp early summer and Ron was settled and working on his program to utilize the remaining sixteen months when Earl brought him a tiny newspaper clipping. The legislature had passed a bill that would restrict to one hundred twenty days the authority of a judge to call back and modify a sentence under 1168 of the Penal Code.

  “What should I do?” Ron asked. “The judge wanted two years and I’ve only got in eight months.”

  “You’d better do something. Fire a kite to that mouthpiece and see what he says. He has to make the motion to the judge. If he doesn’t, we will. You can’t lose anything.”

  “The judge already issued the order. Maybe it doesn’t affect me.”

  “No, he didn’t issue an order. If you wait, he won’t have the power.”

  “Maybe he won’t even call for the reports.”

  “Maybe not—and then you wait five more years to see the parole board. If you can’t do time, don’t fuck with crime … But we’ll crank out some letters and see what’s happening. You might get lucky.”

  That night Earl typed letters to the judge and Ron’s attorney, putting a carbon of each with the other. A week later Jacob Horvath wrote that the Court was calling for reports within provisions of the proper code—work report, summary of adjustment, recommendations above the warden’s signature (though a counselor would prepare it), other pertinent information, and finally, a psychological evaluation.

  Earl went to work immediately. A convict clerk falsified records to show that Ron regularly attended group counseling and Alcoholics Anonymous. “But I don’t drink,” Ron said. “Fuck it,” Earl replied. “It costs the same and it can’t hurt.” Mr. Harrell wrote a glowing letter about how much Ron contributed to the Squires and how good a worker he was. The psychological report worried Earl. “The shrink has been here thirty-five years and he’s fuckin’ schizoid himself. He’s lost some cards from the deck lately.”

  “Man, I should get a good psych report. I mean … I’m the most normal person in this madhouse.”

  “Yeah, you should … but should and will are different things. But maybe we can make sure.” And Earl did make sure. A clerk in the hospital stole the request for the report and Ron’s thin medical file, which contained the graph reports of some psychological tests. These were normal. He also provided the chief psychiatrist’s stationery. Earl wrote the report, concluding: “This young man represents a minimal threat to the community. I recommend a short jail confinement as part of a probation program.”

  “Say, I don’t want to do any time in that shitty jail.”

  “Who’s handling this? That’s the clincher. It makes it look good and gives the judge another option to think about.”

  “But that’s the world’s most fucked-up jail.”

  “Oi vay, a sniveler I raised already. I suppose you wanna stay here … go to the parole board in five more years. By then I’ll be long gone to Broadway.”

  The report with a reasonable facsimile of the chief psychiatrist’s signature went out via Mr. Harrell.

  “Now we wait,” Earl said. “I’d say in about six weeks you’ll be on the sheriff ’s bus back to sunny Southern California.”

  They were on benches against the cellhouse wall, sitting in the evening sun. It was after supper and most men were going indoors while the hungry sea gulls dove to inhale pieces of bread.

  “If I get out,” Ron said, “I’ll be so fuckin’ in debt to you …”

  “Oh, fool, you’ll forget me the first time you see some neon. That’s standard shit. There’s a curtain between here and out there.”

  The younger man’s eyes turned wet. “Don’t think that, bro’. You’re my friend. I’ve never had a real friend before. When I get out, you can have whatever you want. You can shoot dope every day, or drive a Cadillac around the yard if they’ll let you have it.”

  “The main thing I want is for you not to get busted. If you do, I’m fuckin’ you when you get back. Remember that.” He feinted a playful punch and then clenched Ron’s hand. “I know you won’t forget me. Just send the dope so I can suppress the pain.”

  The last stragglers were entering the cellhouse. Earl got up to go back to the yard office. “I’ll bring some burritos in tonight.”

  “Fuck, we’re doing so good I might not want to go to the pad.”

  “I’ll bet you ain’t late for the bus, what you bet?”

  Earl went across the shadowed, empty yard toward the gate.

  On a crystalline afternoon, while Mr. Harrell had individual members of the class reading aloud, Ron sat in reverie at his desk next to an open window overlooking the plaza. He’d finished marking papers from a spelling test, and while the stumbling voices droned on in the background, he looked out at the flowers, fountain, and convicts feeding the fish. Soon he’d be going back to court, and he had no doubt that he would go free. Although he was overjoyed, that joy was not unalloyed. He felt that he could still learn things here, that in the ten months of San Quentin he’d aged ten years, had become stronger. He smiled to himself, privately anticipating what he would do for his friend if the judge acted right. Just the forged letter from the psychiatrist was a huge debt—and it was one of so many. In this ugly place Earl had become his father—and T.J., Paul, and the still segregated Bad Eye his cousins and friends.

  Mr. Harrell finished the reading lesson and it was time for two hours of educational films. Ron brought the wheeled projector from the hallway closet and set up
the film. He pulled the curtains and Harrell turned off the lights. Then Ron started up the aisle toward the rear where he always sat. He felt a hand stroke his ass and a voice hissed, “You’re sure fine, baby.” He slapped at the hand reflexively and whirled, too stunned for immediate anger. In the darkness he could see a pale face, and he knew who it was from the location. Buck Rowan, the hulking newcomer. He’d been in the class a week, and Ron had noticed him staring, but had not given it any importance until now. He’d become accustomed to stares. Ron recalled the hillbilly twang and could smell the fetid breath.

  “Are you crazy, you asshole?” Ron snapped.

  “Watch it, bitch! Ah’ll whup yo’ ass. You’re a girl an’ Ah’m gonna put my dick in your ass.”

  Ron was paralyzed for a moment. It was too sudden, too insane. He suddenly remembered Earl’s advice about not arguing with fools until things were right. He spun and walked to the rear of the room, oblivious to the images on the screen. He trembled and his face was afire. He nearly wanted to laugh. A year earlier and he would have been quaking like a rabbit without a way to run. Now the fear was tiny, and that was reined in. Everyone is mortal; everyone bleeds. As the minutes ticked away, his stunned bewilderment became a controlled rage.

  When the second film started, he went down a side aisle and through the door to take a piss. He was still trying to decide what to do. In the toilet he couldn’t empty his bladder. He was too tight. He rinsed his hands, splashed water on his fevered face. “A man does whatever he has to,” he muttered, and accepted the possibility of killing the fool. It dismayed him, but there was no indecision. He would try for reason, but if that failed …