The Best of Lucius Shepard

by The Best of Lucius Shepard (v5. 5) (epub)

  “How the hell else can you view it?”

  “Some might see incarceration as an opportunity to learn criminal skills. To network. Perhaps they’d rather be elsewhere, but they’re inside, so they take advantage. But they only take partial advantage. They don’t understand the true nature of the opportunity.”

  I was about to ask for an explanation of this last statement, but Pork chose the moment to ask Ristelli if he needed any canvases stretched.

  Ristelli said, “Why don’t you call it a day. I’ll see you next week.”

  Aiming a bleak look in my direction, Pork said, “Yeah…all right,” and shambled out into the corridor.

  “The criminal and what he emblematizes,” Ristelli went on. “The beast. Madness. The unpredictable. He’s the reason society exists. Thus the prison system is the central element of society. Its defining constituency. Its model.” He tapped a cigarette out of his pack and made a twirling gesture with it. “Who runs this place?”

  “Vacaville? Fucking warden.”

  “The warden!” Ristelli scoffed at the notion. “He and the guards are there to handle emergencies. To maintain order. They’re like the government. Except they have much less control than the President and the Congress. No taxes, no regulations. None that matter, anyway. They don’t care what you do, so long as you keep it quiet. Day to day it’s cons who run the prisons. There are those who think a man’s freer inside than out in the world.”

  “You sound like an old lifer.”

  Bemused, Ristelli hung the cigarette from his lower lip, lit up and let smoke flow out from his mouth and nostrils.

  “Fuck you know about it, anyway?” I said. “You’re a free man.”

  “You haven’t been listening.”

  “I know I should be hanging on your every goddamn word. Just sometimes it gets a little deep, y’know.” I pinched the coal off the tip of the Camel and pocketed the butt. “What about the death penalty, man? If we’re running things, how come we let ’em do that shit?”

  “Murderers and the innocent,” Ristelli said. “The system tolerates neither.”

  It seemed I understood these words, but I could not abide the thought that Ristelli’s bullshit was getting to me, and instead of pursuing the matter, I told him I had things to do and returned to my cell.

  I had been working on a series of portraits in charcoal and pastel that depicted my fellow students in contemplative poses, their brutish faces transfigured by the consideration of some painterly problem, and the next week after class, when Ristelli reviewed my progress, he made mention of the fact that I had neglected to include their tattoos. Arms and necks inscribed with barbed wire bracelets, lightning bolts, swastikas, dragons, madonnas, skulls; faces etched with Old English script and dripping with black tears—in my drawings they were unadorned, the muscles cleanly rendered so as not to detract from the fraudulent saintliness I was attempting to convey. Ristelli asked what I was trying for, and I said, “It’s a joke, man. I’m turning these mutts into philosopher-kings.”

  “Royalty have been known to wear tattoos. The kings of Samoa, for instance.”

  “Whatever.”

  “You don’t like tattoos?”

  “I’d sooner put a bone through my nose.”

  Ristelli began unbuttoning his shirt. “See what you think of this one.”

  “That’s okay,” I said, suspecting now Ristelli’s interest in my talent had been prelude to a homosexual seduction; but he was already laying bare his bony chest. Just above his right nipple, a bit off-center, was a glowing valentine heart, pale rose, with a gold banner entangling its pointy base, and on the banner were words etched in dark blue: The Heart Of The Law. The colors were so soft and pure, the design so simple, it seemed—despite its contrast to Ristelli’s pallid skin—a natural thing, as if chance had arranged certain inborn discolorations into a comprehensible pattern; but at the moment, I was less aware of its artistic virtues than of the message it bore, words that brought to mind what Ristelli had told me a few days before.

  “The heart of the law,” I said. “This mean you done crime? You’re a criminal?”

  “You might say I do nothing else.”

  “Oh, yeah! You’re one of the evil masters. Where’d you get the tattoo?”

  “A place called Diamond Bar.”

  The only Diamond Bar I’d heard of was a section of LA populated mainly by Asians, but Ristelli told me it was also the name of a prison in northern California where he had spent a number of years. He claimed to be among the few ever to leave the place.

  “It’s unlikely you’ve met anyone who’s done time there,” he said. “Until now, that is. Not many are aware of its existence.”

  “So it’s a supermax? Like Pelican Bay? The hell you do to get put someplace like that?”

  “I was a fool. Like you, stupidity was my crime. But I was no longer a fool when I left Diamond Bar.”

  There was in his voice an evangelical tremor, as if he were hearkening back to the memory of god and not a prison cell. I’d come to realize he was a strange sort, and I wondered if the reason he had been released might be due to some instability developed during his sentence. He started to button his shirt, and I studied the tattoo again.

  “Doesn’t look like a jailhouse tat…’least none I ever saw,” I said. “Doesn’t even look like ink, the colors are so clean.”

  “The colors come from within,” Ristelli said with the pious aplomb of a preacher quoting a soothing text. “There are no jails.”

  That conversation stayed with me. If Ristelli was not certifiably a wacko, I assumed he was well along the road; yet while he had given me no concrete information about Diamond Bar, the commingling of passion and firmness in his voice when he spoke of the place seemed evidence not of an unbalanced mind but of profound calm, as if it arose from a pivotal certainty bred in a quieter emotional climate than were most prison-bred fanaticisms. I believed everything he said was intended to produce an effect, but his motives did not concern me. The idea that he was trying to manipulate me for whatever purpose implied that he needed something from me, and this being the case, I thought it might be an opportune time to make my needs known to him.

  I assumed that Pork understood how the relationship between Ristelli and me was developing. To discourage him from lashing out at me, I hired a large and scarily violent felon by the name of Rudy Wismer to watch my back in the yard, at meals, and on the block, paying for his services with a supply of the X-rated Japanese comics that were his sexual candy. I felt confident that Wismer’s reputation would give Pork pause—my bodyguard’s most recent victim, a bouncer in a Sacramento night club, had testified at trial wearing a mask that disguised the ongoing reconstruction of his facial features; but on the Wednesday following our discussion of tattoos, Ristelli took sick midway through class and was forced to seek medical attention, leaving Pork and me alone in the art room, the one place where Wismer could not accompany me. We went about our cleaning chores in different quarters of the room; we did not speak, but I was aware of his growing anger, and when finally, without overt warning, he assaulted me, I eluded his initial rush and made for the door, only to find it locked and two guards grinning at me through the safety glass.

  Pork caught hold of my collar, but I twisted away, and for a minute or so I darted and ducked and feinted as he lumbered after me, splintering easels, scattering palettes and brushes, tromping tubes of paint, overturning file cabinets. Before long, every obstacle in the room had been flattened and, winded, I allowed myself to be cornered against the sink. Pork advanced on me, his arms outspread, swollen cheeks reddened by exertion, huffing like a hog in heat. I prepared for a last and likely ineffective resistance, certain that I was about to take a significant beating. Then, as Pork lunged, his front foot skidded in the paint oozing from a crushed tube of cadmium orange, sending him pitching forward, coming in too low; at the same time, I brought my knee up, intending to strike his groin but landing squarely on his face. I felt his teeth
go and heard the cartilage in his nose snap. Moaning, he rolled onto his back. Blood bubbled from his nostrils and mouth, matted his beard. I ignored the guards, who now were shouting and fumbling for their keys, and, acting out of a cold, pragmatic fury, I stood over Pork and smashed his kneecaps with my heel, ensuring that for the remainder of his prison life he would occupy a substantially diminished rank in the food chain. When the guards burst into the room, feeling charmed, blessed by chance, immune to fate, I said, “You assholes betting on this? Did I cost you money? I fucking hope so!” Then I dropped to the floor and curled into a ball and waited for their sticks to come singing through the air.

  Six days later, against all regulation, Frank Ristelli visited me in the isolation block. I asked how he had managed this, and dropping into his yardbird Zen mode, he said, “I knew the way.” He inquired after my health—the guards had rapped me around more than was usual—and after I assured him nothing was broken, he said, “I have good news. You’re being transferred to Diamond Bar.”

  This hardly struck me as good news. I understood how to survive in Vacaville, and the prospect of having to learn the ropes of a new and probably harsher prison was not appealing. I said as much to Ristelli. He was standing beneath the ceiling fixture in my cell, isolated from the shadows—thanks to the metal cage in which the bulb was secured—in a cone of pale light, making it appear that he had just beamed in from a higher plane, a gray saint sent to illumine my solitary darkness.

  “You’ve blown your chance at parole,” he said. “You’ll have to do the whole stretch. But this is not a setback; it’s an opportunity. We need men like you at Diamond Bar. The day I met you, I knew you’d be a candidate. I recommended your transfer myself.”

  I could not have told you which of these statements most astonished me, which most aroused my anger. “‘We?’ ‘A candidate?’ What’re you talking about?”

  “Don’t be upset. There’s—”

  “You recommended me? Fuck does that mean? Who gives a shit what you recommend?”

  “It’s true, my recommendation bears little weight. These judgments are made by the board. Nevertheless, I feel I’m due some credit for bringing you to their attention.”

  Baffled by this and by his air of zoned sanctimony, I sat down on my bunk. “You made a recommendation to the Board of Prisons?”

  “No, no! A higher authority. The board of Diamond Bar. Men who have achieved an extraordinary liberty.”

  I leaned back against the wall, controlling my agitation. “That’s all you wanted to tell me? You could have written a letter.”

  Ristelli sat on the opposite end of the bunk, becoming a shadow beside me. “When you reach Diamond Bar, you won’t know what to do. There are no rules. No regulations of any sort. None but the rule of brotherhood, which is implicit to the place. At times the board is compelled to impose punishment, but their decisions are based not on written law, but upon a comprehension of specific acts and their effect upon the population. Your instincts have brought you this far along the path, so put your trust in them. They’ll be your only guide.”

  “Know what my instincts are right now? To bust your goddamn head.” Ristelli began to speak, but I cut him off. “No, man! You feed me this let-your-conscience-be-your-guide bullshit, and—”

  “Not your conscience. Your instincts.”

  “You feed me this total fucking bullshit, and all I can think is, based on your recommendation, I’m being sent to walls where you say hardly anybody ever gets out of ’em.” I prodded Ristelli’s chest with a forefinger. “You tell me something’ll do me some good up there!”

  “I can’t give you anything of the sort. Diamond Bar’s not like Vacaville. There’s no correlation between them.”

  “Are you psycho? That what this is? You’re fucking nuts? Or you’re blowing somebody lets your ass wander around in here and act like some kinda smacked-out Mother Teresa? Give me a name. Somebody can watch out for me when I get there.”

  “I wish I could help you more, but each man must find his own freedom.” Ristelli came to his feet. “I envy you.”

  “Yeah? So why not come with me? Guy with your pull should be able to wangle himself a ride-along.”

  “That is not my fate, though I return there every day and every night in spirit.” His eyes glistened. “Listen to me, Tommy. You’re going to a place few will ever experience. A place removed from the world yet bound to it by a subtle connectivity. The decisions made by those in charge for the benefit of the population enter the consciousness of the general culture and come to govern the decisions made by kings and presidents and despots. By influencing the rule of law, they manipulate the shape of history and redefine cultural possibility.”

  “They’re doing a hell of a job,” I said. “World’s in great goddamn shape these days.”

  “Diamond Bar has only recently come to primacy. The new millennium will prove the wisdom of the board. And you have an opportunity to become part of that wisdom, Tommy. You have an uncommon sensibility, one that can illustrate the process of the place, give it visual form, and this will permit those who follow in your path to have a clearer understanding of their purpose and their truth. Your work will save them from the missteps that you will surely make.” Ristelli’s voice trembled with emotion. “I realize you can’t accept what I’m saying. Perhaps you never will. I see in you a deep skepticism that prevents you from finding peace. But accomplishment…that you can aspire to, and through accomplishment you may gain a coin of greater worth. Devote yourself to whatever you choose to do. Through devotion all avenues become open to the soul. Serve your ambition in the way a priest serves his divinity, and you will break the chains that weigh down your spirit.”

  On my first night in jail, at the age of fifteen, a Mexican kid came over to where I was standing by myself in the day room, trying to hide behind an arrogant pose, and asked if I was jailwise. Not wanting to appear inexperienced, I said that I was, but the Mexican, obviously convinced that I was not, proceeded to enlighten me. Among other things, he advised me to hang with my own kind (i.e., race) or else when trouble occurred no one would have my back, and he explained the diplomatic niceties of the racial divide, saying that whenever another white man offered to give me five, flesh-to-flesh contact was permitted, but should a Latino, an Asian, an Arab, an Afro-American, or any darkly-hued member of the human troupe offer a similar encouragement, I was to take out my prison ID card and with it tap the other man’s fingertips. In every jail and prison where I did time, I received a similar indoctrination lecture from a stranger with whom I would never interact again. It was as if the system itself urged someone forward, stimulating them by means of some improbable circuitry to volunteer the fundamentals of survival specific to the place. Ristelli’s version was by far the most unhelpful I had ever heard, yet I did not doubt that his addled sermonette was an incarnation of that very lecture. And because of this; because I had so little information about the prison apart from Ristelli’s prattle; because I believed it must be a new style of supermax whose powers of spiritual deprivation were so ferocious, it ate everything it swallowed except for a handful of indigestible and irretrievably damaged fragments like Ristelli; for these reasons and more I greatly feared what might happen when I was brought to Diamond Bar.

  The gray van that transported me from Vacaville seemed representative of the gray strangeness that I believed awaited me, and I constructed the mental image of a secret labyrinthine vastness, a Kafkaville of brick and steel, a partially subterranean complex like the supermax in Florence, Colorado where Timothy McVeigh, Carlos Escobar, and John Gotti had been held; but as we crested a hill on a blue highway south of Mount Shasta, a road that wound through a forest of old-growth spruce and fir, I caught sight of a sprawling granite structure saddling the ridge ahead, looking ominously medieval with its guard turrets and age-blackened stone and high, rough-hewn walls, and my mental image of the prison morphed into more Gothic lines—I pictured dungeons, archaic torments, a massive wa
rden with a bald head the size of a bucket, filed teeth, and a zero tattooed on his brow.

  The road angled to the left, and I saw an annex jutting from one side of the prison, a windowless construction almost as high as the main walls, also of weathered granite, that followed the slope of the ridge downward, its nether reach hidden by the forest. We passed in among the ranked trees, over a rattling bridge and along the banks of a fast-flowing river whose waters ran a mineral green through the calm stretches, cold and clouded as poison in a trough, then foamed and seethed over thumblike boulders. Soon the entrance to the annex became visible on the opposite shore: iron doors enclosed by a granite arch and guarded by grandfather firs. The van pulled up, the rear door swung open. When it became apparent that the driver did not intend to stir himself, I climbed out and stood on the bank, gazing toward my future. The ancient stones of the annex were such a bleak corruption of the natural, they seemed to presage an imponderable darkness within, like a gate that when opened would prove the threshold of a gloomy Druid enchantment, and this, in conjunction with the solitude and the deafening rush of the river, made me feel daunted and small. The engine of the van kicked over, and the amplified voice of the driver, a mystery behind smoked windows, issued from a speaker atop the roof: “You have ten minutes to cross the river!” Then the van rolled away, gathering speed, and was gone.

  At Vacaville I had been handcuffed but not shackled, not the normal procedure, and left alone now I had the urge to run; but I was certain that invisible weapons were trained on me and thought this must be a test or the initial stage in a psychological harrowing designed to reduce me to a Ristelli-like condition. Cautiously, I stepped onto a flat stone just out from the bank, the first of about forty such stones that together formed a perilous footbridge, and began the crossing. Several times, besieged by a surge of water, a damp gust of wind, I slipped and nearly fell—to this day I do not know if anyone would have come to my rescue. Teetering and wobbling, fighting for balance, to a casual observer I would have presented the image of a convict making a desperate break for freedom. Eventually, my legs trembling from the effort, I reached the shore and walked up the shingle toward the annex. The building terminated, as I’ve said, in an arch of pitted stone, its curve as simple as that of a sewer tunnel, and chiseled upon it was not, as might have been expected, Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here or some equally dispiriting legend, but a single word that seemed in context even more threatening: WELCOME. The iron doors were dappled with orange patches of corrosion, the separate plates stitched by rows of large rivets whose heads had the shape of nine-pointed stars. There was no sign of a knocker, a bell, or any alarm I might engage in order to announce myself. Once again I gave thought to running, but before I could act on the impulse, the doors swung silently inward, and, moved less by will than by the gravity of the dimness beyond, I stepped inside.