The Animal Factory

by Bunker, Edward

  “Naw … just that he kicked off.”

  Earl was silent, face in the toilet, wondering how he should feel, worrying about T.J. and Paul.

  “Did you get that?” Rube called

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  “Bad Eye wants to know if you need anything.”

  “Some narcotics.”

  “Naw, that’s dead.”

  “Some coffee and something to heat water in … a metal cup.”

  “We’ll get it down at chow.”

  The rattle of the key in the lock brought him spinning away from the toilet. Before the door fully opened, silhouetting Lieutenant Seeman in the spilled light, Earl was on the mattress and acting as if he was just getting up. Seeman began extracting packages of cigarettes from various pockets and threw them on the mattress. “If they catch you with them, forget where they came from.”

  “You don’t have to say that.”

  “I’d have been here half an hour ago, but they found that Rowan guy dead in the hospital.”

  “Not from the stabbing,” Earl said, thinking that the signed statement might be admissible under that circumstance; it might be considered a dying statement, hence an exception to the hearsay rule.

  “Not from the looks of him. They won’t know for sure until the autopsy, but he had an I.V. tube in his arm, and the bottle smelled like a mix of embalming fluid, cleaning solvent, and God knows what else. He was supposed to be getting saline. Somebody must’ve made a mistake.” Seeman’s weatherworn face was so masked with naïveté that it expressed a knowing smirk. “The mortician might have trouble. The body is nearly black.”

  “Jesus,” Earl said, truly shocked by the image.

  “I’m the investigator on both the stabbing and the murder. My reports say the word is that he was hit by some blacks … and there’s no suspects for the radiator flush he got. It won’t convince the disciplinary committee, and it isn’t admissible in court, but it’ll be in your file and might help at some future time. The parole board members change every few years. It’s a speck of doubt for you to argue about.”

  “Thanks, boss.” But inside himself Earl knew the help was nearly meaningless.

  “Off the record,” Seeman said, “I know what happened. I’ve never committed a crime and I’m a law-and-order man all the way. But I know the rules of society aren’t the rules in here, and only an idiot would try to apply them.”

  “You know I ain’t copping to anything … not even spitting on the sidewalk.”

  “I just wanted to tell you.”

  “Can you do anything about getting me out of this boxcar … and moving Decker over here?”

  “Not right now. Wait until the front office won’t notice it. There’ll be another killing in a few days to get their attention.”

  “What about going to see my friend in the Adjustment Center. Tell him that his mother might have to cough up some bucks for a lawyer. See how he is.”

  “That’s no problem.”

  “Cleaning solvent and embalming fluid! Stoneface is gonna be mad at that.”

  “He is already. He was at home when they called him. He was ready to bite anybody in his way when he came in … I’ve got to go supervise the mess hall.” He banged the heel of his hand on the crossbar as a gesture of farewell.

  “When’ll you be back?”

  “Maybe this evening … tomorrow for sure. You’re going to be locked up for a year or two at least. I’ll need another clerk until you get out. Take it easy.”

  “A choice I’ve got?”

  “You were going to get a parole, too.”

  “Parole! Fuck parole! I like it here. No work, no taxes …”

  When Seeman was gone, Earl tore open a pack of Camels and lay down. The geyser of lostness came suddenly, and with it his eyes turned wet, not really tears but the expression of an ache to the marrow of his being. What a total waste his life was. Yet he felt—no matter what others or intellect said—that there had never been any real alternative, that each terrible step of his life had grown inevitably from what had proceeded, so that it had never been a matter of real choice. As for this, what else could he have done? Let Ron go alone? Let the late Buck Rowan shit on him, on both of them?

  Fuck the post-mortems. Now what?

  And he knew the answer was escape, and it was the only answer. Now that had to be his goal. How to do it was another matter, but he’d have months to plan. It had been done half a dozen times during his era—and twice that many had tried and failed. At least he knew what wouldn’t work and could formulate principles to examine possibilities. Nobody knew San Quentin any better. One worry was a possible transfer to Folsom. Nobody escaped from the main security area there. The new idea, whether or not it became a reality, was a raft buoying his spirits. Hope may spring eternal, but it needs an idea to feed upon.

  The days passed and nobody came to see him. He wasn’t questioned. A guard opened the door to take him to the Disciplinary Committee but didn’t press the issue when he refused to go. He knew the committees were a charade. Later that afternoon he was given the result. He’d been found guilty in absentia of the assault and assigned to segregation. The committee would review the action in six months. That, too, would be a charade with equally foreseeable results.

  Word came from the yard via the toilet bowl that Ron had gone back to court. It removed a burden—and also increased his loneliness. He wished he’d been able to see his friend and wondered how long it would be until he heard something.

  Nobody was locked up for Buck Rowan’s death; it was another unsolved San Quentin murder, the investigation forgotten when two other murders, unconnected with each other, happened the same day. Baby Boy was a suspect in one, but there wasn’t even enough evidence to keep him locked up.

  Seeman brought word that a transfer to Folsom was being considered, and although it wasn’t yet a decision, it caused Earl’s mind to pound at the walls. The next day he realized how he could stop the possibility. Folsom had no psychiatrist. If he feigned a breakdown and got under the psych department it was unlikely the transfer would go through. He knew a way to attract attention and get to the hospital, and it might also provide a defense in the unlikely circumstance that he was indicted for the stabbing. He would play crazy—a friend had been acquitted of a robbery-murder with the same act, though he’d served twelve years in a mental hospital and was actually insane when it was over—but he had to make sure he wasn’t ignored. Breakdowns in “B” Section were too common to merit attention. He’d feign a suicide attempt, opening a vein at the elbow joint with a razor blade, putting the blood in a cup and mixing it with water, and splattering it everywhere. The frosting would be the “eating shit” routine: he’d take the morning oatmeal, mix it with instant coffee until it was the right shade of soggy brown, and have it on a magazine inside the toilet. The shocked guard would see shit because that’s what came from toilet bowls and was brown and wet.

  Earl looked at his arm. What difference did a scar make? Yet he hesitated to commit himself. Some convicts, like Leakey, who lacked mental agility and disliked him anyway, would see such behavior as weakness. They would backbite to others who believed in image and appearance rather than substance and reality. He hesitated another day, and then wrote Bad Eye a note in precise detail, asking him to send down a razor blade and tell Paul and T.J. what was going on. Rube delivered Bad Eye’s reply through the pipes: “Bad Eye says you’re a crazy old coot, but he loves you.” And that evening a magazine came under the door with the razor blade inside. The next morning he saved the oatmeal and a cup of coffee and mixed them together.

  As lunchtime approached, he frenzied his mind, for slicing one’s own veins open is not an easy thing to do. He was ready when he heard the food cart rattling down the tier several cells away. He wrapped a T-shirt around his bicep, grimaced, clenched the razor blade between thumb and forefinger, and cut hard and short where the vein rose at the inner pit of the elbow. The flesh fell apart like open lips, the inside whit
e for a moment until it welled with blood. He saw the vein encased in white fiber and chopped again. This time it squirted, a thin stream flashing up about eighteen inches. He filled a third of the cup, added water and poured it over himself from the top of his head. He filled the cup again and flung the mess onto the walls in a sweeping motion that coated them. A third cup went on the ceiling, where it immediately dripped. The floor was coated with the slippery liquid.

  Hearing the food cart right outside his door, he hunkered at the toilet, turning his head away because he wanted to laugh. He had his body between his arm and the door and pressed a thumb on the wound, which immediately stopped bleeding except for a trickle.

  The key turned, the door opened, light flooded in on the gore. It looked as if Earl had lost several pints—and might be drowning in it.

  “God-damn!” the guard muttered in shocked disbelief, slamming the door and yelling for someone to call the hospital and bring a stretcher. Then he opened the door again.

  “Copen, hold on! Jesus H. Christ!”

  By now Earl was on his knees, only half-feigning the wooziness, and he was beside the toilet where the magazine sat with the mound of oatmeal colored by coffee.

  “Fuckin’ radiation everywhere,” Earl said.

  “The what … where?”

  “The motherfuckin’ radiation, chump. Gotta protect myself.” He reached into the toilet, scooped out the mush and slapped it on his face like a mud pack; then stuffed a handful in his mouth.

  “Oh my fuckin’ God,” the guard moaned. “Don’t … don’t eat shit.” Then he leaned out and yelled down the tier. “He’s eating shit!”

  Earl hurled a handful of mush at the door and the guard ducked away. Earl took the magazine and dropped it on the bloody floor.

  Then came the sound of jangling keys and running feet. The convicts on the upper tiers, aroused like monkeys by any excitement, began screaming and pounding the bars.

  An old sergeant who’d known Earl for many years came into the alcove. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s the radio in my brain … I warned ’em about Pearl Harbor in thirty-seven and they didn’t believe me.” He sang, “They didn’t believe me … they didn’t believe me …”

  “He’s off his bloomin’ rocker,” the sergeant said; then yelled, “Hurry up that goddamn gurney.”

  The medical technician used a tourniquet instead of a compress, and the blood squirted again. They puffed and bumped and got him on the gurney. Behind closed eyes Earl could hear someone say, “Looks bad.” He had his other arm flung over his face and grinned behind it, knowing he could get up and fight ten rounds. Also, he knew that they wouldn’t put him back in “B” Section until he regained his sanity.

  Three hours later he was watching television on the psych ward, his arm sutured and bandaged. The Valium and Demerol made him feel quite good.

  The next day when the psychiatrist made his rounds, Earl was forewarned. It was lunchtime. All psych patients were fed on paper plates. The psychiatrist found Earl with the plate on top of his head, spaghetti hanging and sauce dripping. Earl claimed it was his Chinese hat. The psychiatrist agreed that there was a resemblance and increased the medication.

  Earl settled down on the hospital’s psychiatric ward, an isolated sanctuary behind a barred gate on the third floor. Guards could enter only to count and if called on in an emergency. The freeman nurse came in to pass out medication, but otherwise convict attendants were in charge of the three or four patients. The attendants wrote on the medical chart whatever Earl wanted, an official hospital record that could be subpoenaed to court to prove that he was insane—if that became necessary.

  The other patients usually stayed in their rooms, turned into fidgety zombies by Prolixin. Earl was supposed to take Thorazine three times a day, but he held the pills under his tongue until the nurse turned away; then he flushed them down the toilet. He needed his wits about him.

  The steel doors of the rooms were unlocked until 11:00 p.m., but even then could be picked, so Earl usually watched television until the wee hours of morning and slept late. It was nearly impossible for him to be caught out of his room; the elevator could be heard when it left the bottom floor, and anyone coming up the stairs could be heard unlocking doors far away.

  The morning after the fake suicide attempt, Ivan McGee delivered a pillowcase bulging with cigarettes, coffee, pastries, and toiletries. T.J., Paul, and Vito had taken up a collection from the clique. That afternoon the trio sneaked into the hospital and up to the third floor. They couldn’t get through the gate, but called him to it. They shook hands through the bars, grinning and shaking their heads. Then he learned how Buck Rowan had been killed. It wasn’t Ivan McGee, as he’d thought, but someone he didn’t know. Ivan had told them who could get into Buck’s room, an anonymous convict in the West Honor Unit. Vito, Baby Boy, Bird, and T.J. had gone there with long knives. The convict was aware of the Brotherhood, but threats weren’t necessary. The attendant hated stool pigeons as much as anyone; it was even his idea to do the job with the I.V. bottles.

  Earl listened silently, surging with gratitude tinged with horror, though the latter was soon stifled by the former. Nevertheless, he simply nodded and smiled; thanking someone for committing murder seemed inappropriate.

  The sound of keys jangling as the hospital’s sergeant came up the stairs sent the trio scurrying down a right-angled corridor away from the psych ward grill gate.

  Several evenings later, Lieutenant Seeman came up to tell him that the district attorney wasn’t filing charges, and that Ron Decker had been picked up that afternoon by deputies from Los Angeles. “So why don’t you knock off the act, do your time in segregation, and come back to the yard?”

  “I’ll think about it, boss,” Earl said.

  The gust of joy about the district attorney, and the mixed feelings about Ron leaving, turned to melancholia that evening. Dutch Holland was the attendant on duty, and they were watching the first Monday night football game of the season, a dull game where the halftime score was outlandish.

  “Rams, my ass!” Earl said, getting up. “My prick is stronger than Gabriel’s arm. They oughta call ’em Lambs. Want something to eat?”

  “Naw,” Dutch said without moving his eyes from the screen. His massive arms were crossed on his chest, exaggerating their tattooed bulk.

  “What about coffee?”

  “Can’t sleep if I drink it this late.”

  Earl stretched and jiggled his shoulders to unkink the muscles, meanwhile looking at Dutch’s thick neck with its rolls of fat. Dutch was a legend even before Earl first came to prison. Many convicts thought he might be the greatest wrestler in the world; but he liked good booze and bad checks and in his sixth decade this was his sixth imprisonment. With his pancake face and cauliflower ear, Dutch epitomized the brutal convict in appearance, but in reality was a gentle man who needed intolerable provocation to become violent, provocation that seldom came because of his appearance. Nobody challenges a man who looks like a grizzly bear.

  The first room had been converted into a small kitchen with a refrigerator and hotplate—and stolen steaks were sent up to Earl from the butcher shop. He usually shared them with Dutch, who like most athletes was committed to the high protein of meat. Now Earl didn’t feel like eating, but put the water pitcher on the hotplate and stepped back into the hallway where big windows overlooked a fence and the blackness of the Bay. Lights of cities beyond the water sparkled brighter than the stars above them. The lights danced in the crystalline air, and the Oakland Bay Bridge was a bright arc disappearing in the brilliance of the Oakland skyline. Earl could see the flash of taillights and neon. The quiet psych ward was conducive to reflections and bittersweet aches. He looked out and wanted freedom; it was so close—and yet so fuckin’ far.

  He missed Ron, worried about him. It could go all right in court, or it could fall apart if some prison official sent a report about the stabbing and murder. But there was no use worrying, nothing coul
d be done. For himself, escape was all he had to hope for. He looked out at the dark silhouette of the gun tower on the edge of the water. Though he could see nothing inside it, he knew it was occupied. And the towering banks of vapor lights turned the perimeter into a surreal dayscape. Tower guards often fell asleep, and men in fenced prisons had sometimes managed to cut or climb the wire without being seen. More frequently, they were spotted and shot down. It was a pure gamble, a cast of the dice, and the odds were terrible. Even if he was willing to gamble, San Quentin’s walls were not vulnerable to that move. Earl thought of two successful escapes he knew about; ten years apart men had used dummies during the main count while hiding out in the industrial area. When the count cleared, the riflemen on the walls of the industrial area went home and it was easy to go over. It all hinged on the cellhouse guards counting the dummy. Fool the guard and it was a cinch. If not, it was the hole and new indictments. The guards tended to become lax every few years, ignoring the rule that everyone was to stand at the bars for count. Yet that was also a gamble.

  Hostages? Not worth thinking about. Nobody had made it out that way in forty years. It was against the law to open the gate for an inmate with hostages, no matter who they were. In Folsom, three of Earl’s friends had grabbed a visiting choir in the chapel, mostly teen-aged girls, killing a convict who tried to stop them. (He’d gotten a posthumous pardon.) They’d demanded a car. They were told they’d get a hearse. They surrendered and got life sentences. If the gates weren’t opened when a girls’ choir was the hostages, they wouldn’t be opened for anyone.

  Equally futile was the “hideout,” used by fish who didn’t know better. They planned to hide until the search was over and then climb over the wall. Hunger was all they got. The search continued until there was definite evidence the missing convicts were outside. Otherwise they were presumed to be within the walls. One search had gone on for two months—until a dog found the missing body buried in the lower yard. It wasn’t an escape but a murder. After a century the guards knew the prison better than the convicts. Records were kept of every possible hiding place.