Straight Life

by Art Pepper; Laurie Pepper

  I guess the blacks were good to their people, but I started forming a dislike for them in jail because I thought, "Here I am, a guy that played jazz, had black friends. Why wouldn't they talk to me, help me out? Because I'm white? I'm not a Mexican. The Mexicans help me." They liked me, and anybody that likes you, man, you like them. People that don't like you, pretty soon you don't like them.

  As it turned out, they woke us up before it was even light, and we left too soon to get loaded. And as we left I saw this guy. He made a motion. He spread his hands: "It's too early. There's nothing I can do." And then he gave me a sign, a fist movement going down from his chest. "Hora le pues." It means, "You're a friend. Don't worry about anything." Not like the blacks' sign-that raised fist that excluded me.

  We rode to the town of Richmond and then across the Richmond-San Rafael bridge. As you start across the bridge you see San Quentin on your left with water all around it. Soledad looks like a big trade school or a college. San Quentin looks like a prison. It was a greyish cement color, beaten by the winds and the sea and the fog. Doom emanated from it. I've always been a fan of Sherlock Holmes; it had that feel, like it should be on the moors. I got nervous, so I looked around at the guys. I figured these cats had really been around. They were cool. I figured I'd draw strength from their reactions. I looked, and everyone was the same. They were all quiet, and they had the weirdest looks in their eyes, guys that had been there. I saw fear in their eyes. I'd heard a lot of stories I'd tried to dismiss from my mind, but I saw these guys and they weren't joking and kidding as they had when we left the county jail and when we approached Soledad. All that had changed, and everything was stripped to just the realization of where we were going, where we would soon be.

  We turned off the highway and into the litle town where the prison employees lived. We pulled up to the prison, and a couple of guys on the bus called out, "Hey!" to the trustee at the gate, but he just shook his head. We went through the gate. We went through another gate. We got out of the bus. There were a few trustees who were working outside the prison, gardeners, things like that, and a few of the guys from the bus knew them and called out, "Hey! Hello!" But it was real quiet and dead.

  It was late afternoon. We gave our names; they checked us off. We went through a little interrogation, and finally they took us through the last gate into the prison itself. I looked to my right and saw a chapel, and on my left I saw the prison within the prison. San Quentin is like a city. People who can't make it in the city get put in jail. The guys were talking, "That's the adjustment center. If you really fuck up that's where you go"

  We walked straight ahead, past the clothing room, an ancient place that looked like it was from the 1800s. Instead of stopping us there, they said, "We'd better give them dinner. It's getting late." We walked into the upper yard, "the big yard" it's called; it's world famous. I'd heard about it when I was a kid, seen movies of it, and I said, "My God, here I am in this yard." As we walked into the yard, a guy said, "Look to the right." I saw a little, red light bulb. "That goes on when someone's getting gassed."

  A few of us had to go to the bathroom. They walked us into a huge bathroom right off the upper yard. It was next to the north dining section. I went in there to take a piss; I happened to look up and I saw a walkway and a guard on it holding a .30-06 rifle. He's got his finger on the trigger, and the rifle is pointed at us. And I noticed that everywhere I looked, indoors and out, there was a walkway a storey above us. The guards get their ammunition and guns from the tower and then they walk around the entire prison on these walkways-mess hall, cell blocks, everything. And there's no way you can get to them, but anywhere you're at, they can be there in a moment a storey above you with a gun. I had to marvel at whoever planned the prison. It was perfect.

  We walked out into this huge yard and saw all the people in line waiting to eat. We're in these white jumpsuits. Everybody else was in blue. When I was there, there were six thousand people in a prison that was made to hold fifteen hundred. Can you imagine looking into this mass of people? And everybody's watching us. The most evil-looking people I'd ever seen. Some guys are looking us over to see who they can get for a punk-who they're going to drive on with a shank to tell them they're going to fuck them in the ass, or if some guy's a rat, they're going to kill him, or who they're going to rob.

  The mess hall was filled. There might have been two thousand people sitting there when we walked in. Everybody eats facing the same direction. We walked to the front of the mess hall and all the way through the serving line, and all those eyes were on us. I saw people with part of their chins blown away or an eye gone. Hideous people, little white sissies, spooks' punks, with all kinds of jackets on to protect them if they got shanked. It was a sea of faces and not one smile. Just looks. Evil, cold, penetrating looks. I thought, "Is this what I'm going to do for two to twenty years?"

  We walked to the mess line, and the guys serving food gave us the same cold looks. It was like a comedy. It reminded me of when I was a kid looking in the mirror practicing mean looks after a Frankenstein or Dracula movie. I would see a face. A guy would nod. And I'd see that the guy looked familiar, but there was no smile, and I felt that the whole world was against me. We got the food; I couldn't eat; I was too scared. Then they got us up and marched us to the South Block.

  The South Block is the biggest, longest, five-tiered cell block in the world. We waited. We heard names being called out. Now, I may not always have acted it, but I'm fairly intelligent. I can spell. And even though during those periods of time when I was dealing with criminals I tried to make myself sound like one of the guys by saying "ain't" and purposely making my English bad, I did speak well at one time. So when I heard these guards read off the lists of names, they sounded like complete morons to me. They'd mispronounce things and say things over and over to make sure they hadn't fucked up. If it were coming from my side it would have been alright. I would have thought they were hep, that that's the way to be, that they made up for it in other things. But coming from the guards it really seemed funny.

  They got us in our cells. As you face the cell, on the left are metal beds; small, steel-ribbed metal bunks, one on top of the other. You can pull them up against the wall, and they hook with a chain. On the right is a space just big enough for one person to stand and walk to the back of the cell. There was a toilet directly behind the bottom bunk. When you sat on the toilet your knees touched the bunk. The guy's laying there with his head right at your knees when you're trying to take a shit. When you piss your ass is at his head. The toilets had no seat over the top. They were white porcelain. They were square. They were set up on a block of cement, so when you sat on the toilet your feet didn't touch the ground and you had to hold your knees up with your hands to try to shit. Right next to the toilet was an old washbasin, discolored and rusty, and there was no hot water. If you know San Francisco, it gets cold there. You'd wake up in the morning, and the water would be so cold it hurt. The plumbing system is so ancient that at certain times of the year when the tide drops the toilets wouldn't flush for days at a time. In order to flush the toilet they gave you a five gallon tomato can, and you had to use it to pour water in the toilet. But the can didn't fit into the washbasin enough to fill it, so you might be an hour pouring until finally something happened, and a turd might go down. It always stank. All those toilets, cell after cell after cell. You'd get a wooden board to cover the toilet so it wouldn't smell so bad. There were two of us. Neither of us had ever been to this place before, and we just looked at each other, and we looked at this fucking thing.

  It was evening. We still had our flying suits on. I'd let this guy have the bottom bunk. He was scared, really sad. He was a Mexican kid, thin; he had all the tattoos. When I first saw him I thought he'd been in prison before, and I guess he had-Youth Authority or something-because in the crook of his right arm he had a black panther with red blood on its claws. Sometimes the eyes are red, too. That was the usual thing the young gunsels would have do
ne in places like Tracy and Preston. He reminded me of those kids that hang out on the corner in East L.A., real cocky and confident because they've got all their friends. Now here he was without his gang. All of a sudden he's alone with me in a cell in San Quentin. I wanted to say something to him, but I didn't know what to say. I felt as bad as he did.

  I got up on my bunk and just sat there. Then I happened to look out of the cell and I saw these hands coming up over the floor of the walkway in front of the cell! I see these arms, and I think, "How can anybody come up over the bottom?" As I watch, a guy climbs up. He looks all over. He's holding a can about three inches wide and a foot long, and it has a little handle on it. I see that it's something that would fit through the bars. Another hand appears over the side, and a second guy climbs up. They both look loaded to me but not loaded from stuff. They're giggling and all that. The first guy was a white guy with curly, sandy hair, freckle-faced, a nice-looking guy in a rugged sort of way. Blue eyes. He had the look of someone who'd just stolen a dime out of the church box. He had a little shit-eating grin on his face. The other guy had black, curly hair. He was one of those white, white Mexicans with milky skin, not a mark on him, not a blemish, doubly handsome. He looked like one of those old Spaniards. They were both wearing the prison blues. The first guy was clean but rumpled and relaxed looking. This other cat was all starched, his shirt collar; everything fit perfect. His pants were a different color than the ordinary blues. Later on I found out that these were blues made from the old material, which everybody wanted. They had been bleached out so they were very light and real pretty.

  I noticed that both these guys had the same animated look about them, and their eyes were sort of red. Right away I thought, "Juice!" They each had a can. They whisper, "Art Pepper?" And I say, "That's me." The first guy says, "I'm Don Proffit, man." He says, "I've been a fan of yours for years. I'm an actor. I heard you were coming. This is my friend, Huero." Huero says, "I've known a lot of cats that have known you. They say you're good people. We figured since you just drove up it must be a little scary, so we brought you something to take the edge off." Huero puts his can through the bars and Don puts the other one through. It's pisco, a drink they make out of all kinds of things, fruit and yeast. It's home brew. It looked like a dull orange juice, kind of pissy looking, and it tasted like rotten beer. I looked at the other cat in the cell. They asked him, "Who are you?" Huero said, "I hope you realize that in a place like this if someone does you a favor you never say anything about it or get them in trouble. You're with our friend and we don't want to leave you out, so remember, if anything happens, you get too drunk or you get busted, you ride the beef." The guy was so sad. I said, "He'll be alright."

  We started drinking this stuff and talking. Don told me about his acting. Huero loved my music. All four of us got really loaded; we had a ball. We finished the two cans, so Huero climbed back over the walkway, and a few minutes later I saw his arm coming up again and this can, and here he comes after it. They went through this whole scene and never got busted. It was like the thing that happened in Soledad. I was afraid San Quentin would be different, that there was some other breed of people here. But I saw that it's just people, and there's groovy people everywhere. I drank so much I got sick. They left and they said, "We'll see you tomorrow." I vomited, and I got up in my bunk, and I thought, "Well, maybe it's not so bad after all." And I got that warm feeling of having friends, male friends, good people; I was liked and it made me feel good. I passed out.

  All of a sudden I heard this clanging of gates. It was a horrible sound, and I woke up and looked down and saw this toilet with vomit all over it. My cell mate was still asleep. I couldn't understand how he could still be sleeping with all the noise that was going on. I threw some ice water on my face, and they racked the gates and called us out, and we went to the mess hall.

  The coffee tasted good. After we ate they took us to the clothing room and we got our blues, a blue shirt and pants made out of a kind of denim, and brown shoes-"Santa Rosas"-old man type shoes with the line across the toe. I was very happy to be out of the jumpsuit; I felt less conspicuous. But I found out later it wasn't the clothes that made me conspicuous. I learned that even with six thousand people I couldn't just blend in with the crowd. Everyone knew we had just drove up. One of the guards told us some of the details. He told us what we should and should not do. He told us you get one to life for attempted escape. He pointed out the walkways and told us the guards were all expert shots. He said just do right and everything'll be okay.

  It so happened we got there on Friday, so my first day was a Saturday and we were more or less free until Monday. When I arrived I'd seen several people I'd known before, and when I walked out of the clothing room here was a real good friend, Little Ernie Flores. He was one of those prematurely grey people, his hair had turned almost completely. His bone structure was Indian, but he was very small and dapper. He saw me and he said, "Heeeey, Art!" I looked at my clothes. They were old, wrinkled blue denim. He was wearing the same thing but it was that slightly different color, and he was all pressed, real sharp. Instead of the Santa Rosas he had loafers; they were shined. He looked great. The last time I'd seen him on the streets he'd had a lung operation and he was really messed up. Now he was healthy and clean, and it made me feel good to see him like that. He said, "Come on, I'll show you around." He noticed me looking at his clothes and at my own and he said, "Oh, don't worry about that, man. I'll fix you up. Come on."

  Little Ernie was working in the employees' dry cleaning plant. He was the lead man there. We had some small talk and walked around, and he said, "It's not as bad as it seems. I know how you feel because I felt the same when I first drove up, drug and panicked, but you've got friends here, and everything'll be alright."

  We walked around the big yard, and he showed me the canteen line. You can buy a book with duckets in it, coupons for however much money you draw, which you use to pay for things from the canteen. You get a new book each month, and no one can steal it from you because only you can cash your own duckets. You can buy these books if someone sends you money, or you can have someone that's in the jail put money on your books, or you can get a job and get paid. Eventually I got a job paying six dollars a month, but the prison deducted a dollar and eighty cents from that for the "inmate welfare fund," which they said was for movies and canteen, leaving me with four dollars and twenty cents a month, still a lot of money.

  Little Ernie showed me the big yard. The cell blocks formed the walls of the yard and right in the middle was a tower with a shed on it and a walkway so the guards could walk out to it with rifles. I looked around this big area and everywhere I looked I saw groups of people and I could see that they were, like, cliques. A group of Mexicans, a group of blacks, a group. of whites. Each group talking, and all kinds of action going on. In the middle of the yard, to the left of the shed, was a bunch of picnic tables. I saw guys standing around them real intent. I walked over with Ernie and he said, "This is the domino tables." They played dominoes because cards weren't allowed. They made their own dominoes out of plastic and wood and glass, and they were beautiful. They played for cigarettes-that was money in prison. And I learned that many people were killed because of debts incurred at the domino tables. In San Quentin you could work or not work. If you chose not to work, you'd just wander around the yard. Those were the guys that played dominoes. Those were the guys that if any dope came in they had some action. They were living just like on the streets, hustling and scuffling.

  Ernie said, "Let me show you the lower yard." The lower yard has a football field, a baseball diamond, and handball and basketball courts. We started down the stairs and as we went down I saw a guy coming up, and he looked really strange; he looked like a ghost. He had his hands on his stomach, and I saw that there was blood running out all over his hands. As we got close to him he let go of his stomach to grab the rail because he was starting to fall, and he was just covered with blood. I said to Ernie, "Oh, man!" And I
started to go to the guy's aid, but Ernie grabbed me and said, "Come on, come on, come on! Hurry!" He was frantic. We got down the stairs, and as we reached the bottom I looked back, and here was the guard on the walkway above the stairs with his rifle pointed at the guy. Ernie said, "Now, if we had stayed there to try to help him we would have been right in the middle of this shit. There's no telling what might have happened. I know it's cold. We haven't been brought up that way. But you have to mind your own business and keep walkin'." I said, "What happened?" He said, "Oh, those things happen here all the time. Somebody shanked the guy. They get a piece of metal from the machine shop and sharpen it into a dagger, and they put tape over the handle part."

  The only photograph of my mother, my father, and me together.

  My father who, more than any other person, molded my personality and way of thinking. Photo courtesy of Thelma Pepper.

  Me at about age one. "There was another time when they were separated for nine months and junior lived with Grandpa Joe and Grandma in Watts. Grandma took care of him then, and that's when he made the most progress physically." Photo courtesy of Thelma Pepper.

  (Left) Thelma, later my stepmother, in 1932; one of the nicest, most sincere and honest persons I've ever known. Photo courtesy of Thelma Pepper. (Right) Me (on the left) with Thelma's children-Bud, John, and the little one, Edna. Photo courtesy of Thelma Pepper.

  My mother and I in downtown Los Angeles. I was about 13.

  My grandmother and my father. Photo courtesy of Thelma Pepper.

  Me in the uniform of the Cleveland Boys Band, San Pedro, California, under the direction of James E. Son. This was my first exposure to a musical group.

  Benny Carter and his band at Billy Berg's Swing Club, Hollywood, about 1944. From left to right: Sonny White (piano), Benny, Jimmy Cannady (behind Benny), Harold Clark, Tommy Moultrie (bass), Bob Graettinger, Joe Epps, Willard Brown, Candy Ross. Second row: Percy Brice, Charles Johnson, Bumps Meyers, Al Gray, Calvin Strickland, John Morris. Photo courtesy of Benny Carter.