The Animal Factory

by Bunker, Edward

Most of Earl’s friends were on the third tier, some of them having been locked up for years, and during the first exercise period, a bright, cold morning, he was engulfed at the outset by a dozen men. There was laughter, embraces, handshakes, pats on the back. Bad Eye was the most effusive, squeezing Earl in a bear hug and lifting him off the ground. Bad Eye was going on the next bus to Folsom and was glad to be able to say goodbye in person. He was happy to leave, hoping that he could get a parole in a year or two. “I’ll never get out if I stay here. I need a new ballpark. I’ve been down so long a snake’s belly looks like up to me. My fuckin’ crime partner has been out for six years … and he was five years older’n me when we got busted.”

  While the rites of camaraderie were going on, Ron Decker stood aside from the throng, smiling softly. He liked watching Earl handle people, enjoyed the knowledge that Earl changed façades easily, being whatever his particular audience wanted. Nor was it merely to manipulate them; rather it was because Earl really liked them and wanted to make them at ease.

  Soon the group broke up, Bad Eye going to play handball on the small court where the winners kept playing challengers until beaten, the others of the crowd having nothing more of importance to say. Then Earl slapped one on the back and said that he had things to discuss with his partner, indicating Ron with a nod. It was understood and accepted.

  “Man, I’m sorry about Court,” Earl said as the two embraced. It was the first time Ron had used the gesture without embarrassment.

  “It’s a bummer,” Ron said, “but what the fuck …”

  “We didn’t handle that move the best way.”

  “Hindsight is always wise. I don’t feel bad about it.”

  “Naw, that asshole had a good killin’ comin’ to him. Still … you would’ve been on Broadway, and he wasn’t worth that.”

  Ron shrugged. The pain was gone, the wound turned into a scar that sometimes itched but didn’t hurt.

  “Let’s walk,” Earl said.

  Nearly all the two score convicts on the small yard were near the looming cellhouse where the handball court was. The fenced end was open to the wind, occasional gusts of which shivered it. The dark water of the Bay had tips of white. Ron had on a coat and turned up the collar, but Earl was in shirtsleeves and jammed his hands down inside his waistband and hunched his shoulders, jerking his head to indicate that they should walk the twenty yards along the fence.

  “What’d your mother say?” Earl asked.

  “She couldn’t believe it … and she’s ready to go broke if it’ll do any good.”

  “Been to the Disciplinary Committee?”

  “Uh-huh. They gave me a year in here. Jesus, it’s an insane asylum. Nobody would believe a place like this.”

  “If I found a way out of here, out of San Quentin, would you want to split?”

  Ron contemplated just a few seconds. “If you had a way out—I don’t really want to do five more years to the parole board … and then not even be sure they’ll let me out. Do you have a way?”

  “Naw, not right now, but I can find a hole somewhere. I know that. The secret of busting out of one of these garbage cans is to keep your mind on it all the time, keep thinking, watching. I do know what won’t work, and all the ways that’ve worked before. But even if we get out, that’s just part of it. It’s a bitch staying out. We’ll need somewhere to go, someone to help—and really a way out of the country. Everybody in this counry is in the computer. The only place a fugitive is safe here is herding sheep in Montana or something. Shit! That’s worse’n being on the yard.”

  “If you get us out, I can get us some help. My mother … and I know some people down in the mountains of Mexico—Sinaloa—who run things. They’ve got all the guns in the hills. The authorities don’t go in with less than a battalion. I know some people in Costa Rica, too. If you get us out …”

  They stopped at the corner of the fence and looked out to where cloud-mottled sunlight danced across the tops of Marin’s green hills. A highway came between two of them, angling in a slight grade, the myriad windshields sparkling like jewels. “Yes,” Ron said, “I like some of what this place has done for me, but I don’t like what a lot of years will do.”

  Earl slapped him on the back. “Yeah, you’ll start jackin’ off over fat-butted boys.” He laughed loudly as Ron made a wry face and shook his head.

  Their attention was attracted by Bad Eye calling for Earl; then waving for him to come play handball. They had the next tally. Earl held up a hand and gestured for him to wait. “I’d better go. You know how sensitive he is. Anyway, we damn sure can’t escape from in the hole—though a couple of game fools did it a few years ago.”

  “From ‘B’ Section?”

  “Yeah, just cut their way out of the cells; then cut their way out of the cellhouse—and nobody saw ’em. Not the gun bull in the cellblock, not the gun tower outside, nobody. Naturally they got busted in a hot minute when they started running amok outside. Anyway, we’ll just cool it in here, do the hole time, and get back on the yard. A sucker doin’ time has to be patient … but not too patient when it comes time to move.”

  “I’ve noticed that,” Ron said. “After a man gets a few years invested, he’s afraid to move, and even if he isn’t afraid, there’s a sort of inertia that’s hard to overcome.”

  Bad Eye had now moved fifteen feet from the spectators at the handball court and was calling and gesturing. “Better go,” Ron said. “But I don’t see why he wants you … bad as you play.”

  “Fuck you,” Earl said, wanting some horseplay but remembering the riflemen at each end of the yard. Horseplay was forbidden, and fights were broken up with bullets, and sometimes the guards couldn’t tell the difference. As Earl walked quickly—even playing the clown by skipping a few times—he thought about Ron’s words concerning the changes wrought by San Quentin. He himself was already permanently maimed, but Ron wasn’t. It was important that he not serve a long sentence.

  “We’re next,” Bad Eye said. “Wanna play the front or the back?”

  “Front. I can’t play the back.”

  Two Chicanos from the Mexican Brotherhood, both friends of Earl’s, had won the previous game; they stood waiting in sweat-dampened T-shirts. “C’mon, old motherfucker,” one called. “You can’t play either place.”

  Earl was taking off his shirt. “You might have to turn in your Mexican card when this old peckerwood runs you off the court.” He borrowed a red bandanna and wrapped his hand in it in lieu of a glove.

  Earl and Bad Eye lost, but the game was close and they would have won except that Earl was winded long before the last point. The stripped cell and the inactivity of the psych ward had taken its toll.

  While he was cooling off, the steel door opened and a guard banged a large key against it, signaling that it was time to go back to the cages. The convicts formed a ragged line and filed slowly inside. Within the door half a dozen guards waited in a row, frisking each convict to make sure no weapons had been tossed down from the hospital windows.

  * * *

  Earl and Ron settled into the routine of “B” Section. Bad Eye was in the cell adjacent to Ron’s, and when he was transferred (despite three guards he started at one end of the tier and stopped to shake hands with all his friends), Earl moved into the cell. They could talk without yelling most of the time. At exercise unlock they were closest to the stairs, hence first on the yard to get the handball court. Earl talked Ron into playing, and they invariably had the first game, invariably losing for the first month, but then beginning to win at least half the time. They’d play until they were beaten and then walk and talk until lockup was called. Though the method of escape was still unknown, they talked about what they would do. Despite Ron’s assurances that his mother would give them refuge and money and transportation out of the country, Earl wanted to make some robberies to be independent. He knew two banks ripe for heisting, and he had a simple type of armed robbery, one that didn’t require planning, that had been successful in
the past. “It’s as easy as stickin’ up a fuckin’ liquor store, and you’re a lot less likely to get blowed away by some asshole in the backroom with a shotgun. Just pick a high-class jeweler, not Kay’s or a junk place, but something like Tiffany or Van Cleef. Go in and ask to see some Patek Philippe’s or unset two-carat diamonds. When the clerk brings ’em, just open the coat and show ’em the butt of the pistol. Workin’ alone, without much planning, a dozen two-grand watches is a pretty sweet sting.”

  “We don’t have to do that,” Ron protested, voice rising in exasperation, wondering if Earl had an obsession with taking risks that would bring him right back.

  “You don’t have to. Maybe I don’t either. But I ain’t leanin’ on nobody. I carry my own weight, brother.”

  “Okay … okay. We’ll see what happens when we get out—if we get out.”

  “Have some confidence in me, kid.”

  “Then show me something.”

  The “B” Section clerk went to the San Quentin main line and Earl got the job. From 7:00 a.m. until evening he was out of his cell, doing a little official typing and running the tiers. When drugs were smuggled in from the yard, he invariably got an issue no matter who received them. In another week he used his influence to get Ron assigned as “B” Section barber. It was shaky for a few days, Ron scarcely able to tell the difference between clipper blades and shears, but the solid convicts simply refused to get haircuts until he’d practiced on the fifth tier protective custody inmates. Necessity is a brilliant teacher; in a week he could give a passable haircut.

  As the months of winter passed, two events broke the basic routine. In February, Earl was near the door to the exercise yard when the second tier, filled with militant blacks, came out. His usual caution had lapsed, because there had been no race wars for nearly two years, and he was “all right” with several blacks on the tier. Suddenly one leaped from the crowd and stabbed him with a sharpened bedspring, a piece of wire similar to an icepick, though not so straight or sharp. Thrust into the stomach, it could have done considerable harm, but the blows were overhand and Earl got up an arm; the rude weapon punctured his bicep and then, as he ducked away and ran, sank into the flesh above his shoulder blade and was stopped by bone, causing superficial holes. The gun rail guard saw the flash of movement, blew his whistle, and loosed a shot that sounded like a cannon inside the building. The guards closed immediately on the black.

  As Earl sat on the hospital gurney while peroxide was poured into the holes, he told Captain Midnight that he had nothing to say about anything or anyone. He was told by other blacks that the assailant was deranged, and thought that whites were trying to put a radio in his brain. When word came from the yard that the White Brotherhood planned to retaliate by indiscriminately stabbing blacks, Earl sent T.J. a long note, telling him that such stupidity would make him want to stop talking to them; that it would start a race war needlessly; that just one crazy man was responsible, and Earl wouldn’t even take revenge on him because he was crazy. Though he didn’t add it, Earl had never approved of race war—and when he accepted that fighting was necessary for survival because the other side had declared war, he still disapproved of indiscriminately murdering people because they were available. Indeed, both sides did it, and the uninvolved were usually the casualties; the warriors watched themselves and stayed out of bad situations.

  For several days the blacks in “B” Section were wary, knowing who the riflemen would shoot if trouble started, disbelieving Earl—who went to the cell of the Muslim minister and told him there would be no repercussions—until the tension oozed away, leaving just the normal degree of paranoia. Then he had the respect of some of the leaders of the blacks, they knew that although he would “get down” in a war, he was not an agitator.

  The second important incident was Stoneface’s retirement and the arrival of “Tex” Waco from Soledad as the new associate warden. When Earl got the news, he began popping fingers and doing a dance. Ron, seated in the barber chair, asked him what was up.

  “Well, bro’,” he began in a heavy Southern accent, the kind where every phrase becomes a question, “this heah new ’sociate warden? He was a rookie heah? He was a-goin’ to University of California at Berkeley? Well, this ol’ convict heah did that ol’ boy’s term papers for him? In other words,” he dropped the accent, “I’ve got long juice with this dude.”

  “Think he’ll help us escape?”

  “No, smartass motherfucker! But I’ll bet that I—me—get outta the hole in the next couple of months. You better act right if you want out.”

  “No, you can’t give me no head and you can’t fuck me.”

  Earl leaped forward, put a one-arm headlock on Ron, and then rubbed his knuckles hard across the scalp. “What about beatin’ the shit outta you?”

  “C’mon,” Ron protested; he really disliked horseplay. “Quit fuckin’ around and find us a way out of here.”

  Earl was searching through his knowledge of San Quentin for exactly that, and in anticipation of the discovery he let his hair grow out. A shaved head would be conspicuous when they escaped. He discovered that he was gray at the temples.

  Lieutenant Seeman also had influence with Associate Warden Waco, having been a sergeant when Waco was just a guard. The new A.W. agreed to review both Earl and Ron as soon as he got settled.

  It was a month, and Ron was released to the general population one day ahead of Earl because of a paperwork mixup.

  Bedding under one arm, shoebox of personal possessions in the other hand, Earl Copen came out of the South cellhouse rotunda into the big yard. A dozen friends were waiting, though some of his closest were gone. Not only Bad Eye, but also Paul Adams, transferred to camp, and the Bird to another state where he had a detainer. But T. J. Wilkes was there, grinning like a Jack o’ Lantern (complete with missing tooth) and stretching a huge sweatshirt taut across his chest and arms. Vito was also on hand and took the bedding from Earl so T.J. could hug him and pat him on the back. “Ol’ thing,” T.J. said. “I was sho’ nuff worried they wasn’t ne’er gonna let you outta there.”

  “I was scared to come out. Hellfire, there’s tough guys out here.”

  “Boy, I ain’t gonna let nobody mo-lest you. ’Cept me.” He reached around and squeezed Earl’s rump. “Still firm.”

  “Easy on the hemorrhoids, chump … and show some respect. I’m the senior citizen since Paul split.”

  The gathered convicts laughed. Baby Boy shook hands and patted him on the back, as usual less effusive than the others. “Need anything?” Baby Boy asked. “I’ve got a full canteen draw.”

  “I’m all right. Thanks, bro’.”

  Next Vito gave a “brotherhood” handshake, interlocking thumbs so it was two clenched fists—and whispered, “I’ve got a paper of stuff for you.”

  “That sounds like a winner.”

  T.J. put his arm around a square-jawed, lean convict that Earl didn’t recognize. “This is my home boy,” T.J. said. “Name of Wayne.”

  “We talked through the shitter,” Earl said as he clenched hands with Wayne, knowing that he’d been convicted of killing a black with a roofing hatchet during a Soledad race war—and that he was in prison for a crime he hadn’t committed. A car was identified as being used in a robbery, and the car salesman identified Wayne as having bought it. Actually, it was Wayne’s brother who had purchased the car and committed the crime. So Wayne had parlayed a miscarriage of justice into murder and a life sentence.

  “Ronnie’s working,” Baby Boy said, reading Earl’s sweeping glance. “They assigned him to the textile mill.”

  “Aw, fuck!” Earl said in disgust; but he was confident that he could arrange a better job for his friend.

  “Where’d they put you to work?” Vito asked.

  “Sheeit! You know I don’t do nuthin’ but work for Big Daddy Seeman.”

  “He’s already got a clerk.”

  “Well, I’m the ex officio clerk.”

  “Ah don’t know what t
hat is,” T.J. piped in, “but it goddamn sure sounds good.”

  “When you goin’ back to the North block?” Vito asked; it was a sardonic question; the regulations called for a year of clean behavior.

  “It’ll take a couple of weeks,” Earl said, winking broadly. “But me, I’ve got a single cell … even if it is in the ghetto with the riffraff.”

  “Let’s get your shit into the ghet-to,” T.J. said, taking the bedding from Vito. “You can’t get in. You don’t live there.”

  As they crossed the yard, heading toward the barred gates to the East cellhouse, T.J. confided that the parole board had given him a release six months away, but he kept that fact hidden except from his closest partners. A man scheduled for parole was vulnerable; enemies would be all too happy if he did something to have the parole taken away—and others might figure they could take advantage of him in some manner because he wouldn’t want to lose the parole. He wanted to know if Ron would send him to people across the border so he could start trafficking in drugs at a good level. “I can make a lot of money in Fresno, believe it or not. And I’ve got to stop robbing people. The fuckin’ parole board told me that they’ll bury me if I bring back another robbery. They’re serious about robbery.”

  “About dealing dope, too.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’d go to work, ’cept you know how lazy I am. Fact is, they make you lazier in here. Hellfire, when I was a sprite I could pick cotton—”

  “Quit lyin’! Goddamnit, if someone listens to you for five minutes, you gotta start lyin’. You talked to Paul too much.”

  T.J. gaped his mouth and saucered his eyes in a parody of innocence; then became serious. “Why don’t you talk to him? If I could deal for six months, I’d buy me a cocktail lounge and retire.”

  “I’ll run it to him. Are you gonna have any bread to invest or do you want it fronted?”

  “I could pull one robbery.”

  They were on the fourth tier and the sound of the security bar being raised broke the conversation. A guard was coming down the tier with the spike key to unlock the cell gate. The floor was gritty with dirt and the fluorescent tubes had been torn out for some other cell. Otherwise it was in good shape. Earl’s gear was put behind the bunk where it couldn’t be fished out. The guard locked the gate and dropped the security bar behind them.