On the Yard

by Malcolm Braly

  —Well done, he said crisply.

  He strode down the aisle, his irons and cuffs magically vanished, his coverall transformed into a uniform tailored entirely from black leather trimmed with silver. He gestured at the driver and the gun bull both hunched in entreaty.

  —Kill these defectives, he ordered, and watched impassively as the Sten gun coughed rhythmically. He turned to stand at the head of the aisle, legs spread, arms akimbo.

  —I’m freeing you, he told the other prisoners, and offering you this chance to join our movement. Because you were with me during these my darkest times, it is my intention to form you into an Elite Corps, to be known as the Death’s Head Corps, and you shall henceforth act as Standard Bearers for all ceremonies attendant upon my own person, in addition to serving as my private bodyguard. This honor to continue in your lines. This honor to continue in your lines. This honor ...

  The dream faltered. Reality rushed on Stick like a wave of thick white dust, sifting into his mouth, into his eyes. The illusion of dust was so strong he leaned over to clear his mouth and spit on the floor. Both Generals were asleep, the youngest with his mouth open. Stick realized on reflection that it would be a mistake to escape from the bus in transit. Such an escape would be routine, but to escape from the prison itself would be a legendary act. Stick closed his eyes again and began to stage this new myth.

  “They couldn’t prove I’d stolen the suit,” Nunn was saying, “but they could prove I had it and that I knew it was stolen, which is all they need for Receiving Stolen Property. The Narcos set me up. First they send the guy to sell me the suit. I give him a lightweight fix for a two-hundred-dollar set of skins, and he tells me I’m doing him a favor, then when they bust me he takes the stand and hangs me. But it was the fuzz’s action from the door. They wanted me gone.”

  “But why?” Manning asked. “I mean what did they have against you?”

  “They thought I was a major connection. Hell, I had to hustle like a one-armed paperhanger to keep myself straightened, but the fuzz sometimes get sold on their own fantasies. For some reason they gave me star billing on their hit parade. I got jacked up and shook down so many times it seemed like my pockets were always inside out and my sleeves at half-mast, and the more I came up clean the surer they were I was dirty in some big way. Then some little junior flip bitch oh-deed, and—”

  “What?”

  “She overdosed and died in a car at one of the drive-ins, and that fired up the dope-in-the-playpen hysteria, even though the girl had quit school a year before and for six months had been making it with Spades. Jesus, I don’t know anyone who has stuff to waste on high-school cunt. That’s probably another of their fantasies. Like the sex-crazed dope fiend, which is about like a sex-crazed vegetable. The average dope fiend is nothing but a poor, sick, sad cocksucker, who wants nothing except to be left alone and on the nod. No chance. There’s no material there for a big pop fantasy, produced and directed by J. Edgar Hoover.”

  Nunn paused and shrugged, smiling wryly. “Anyway, that’s my sad story.” He began to roll a cigarette with the deftness of long practice. The handcuffs didn’t seem to hamper him. “You want one of these?” he offered.

  “I couldn’t get it together,” Manning said.

  “I’ll build you one.”

  Manning hesitated as he recalled Nunn’s thin bluish tongue darting out to wet the seam. “No thanks, I’m trying to quit.”

  “More power. You’ll be better off if you can. Half the joint is usually trying to figure some way to keep smoking, and a few packs of cigarettes will buy things you wouldn’t imagine. I’ve a good buddy who loans cigarettes and collects interest just like a bank—”

  Nunn broke off to lean across Manning as he read a mileage sign posted at the side of the highway. “They’re making fair time,” he said. “We’ll eat mainline tonight.”

  Manning nodded mechanically. He sensed the threat of the prison swelling ahead, and it seemed to him he was being swiftly carried into a savage and violent past, to which his own savagery justly condemned him. Briefly he saw Debbie spread on the ground, gasping with pain and terror, no blood, not even any pain. His shame yielded to a numbing sense of loss, and the knowledge of how cruelly he had been cheated.

  He raised his hands to rub his eyes, glancing at his seatmate to see if Nunn had observed his distress, but Nunn was resting with his eyes closed, his head swaying slightly with the motion of the bus.

  Manning turned to look out the window. They were passing through open country. There were only occasional meandering rows of fence posts, sometimes broken by the X of a distant gate. They passed a wooden barn painted Mail Pouch Chewing Tobacco. Half a mile farther on a small billboard, lettered in bright red, blue, and yellow, said Jesus Died for You. Along the horizon a range of indigo mountains rose as if generated from the mists of distance, and the highest peaks were flecked with white.

  Manning felt a warning twinge of hunger. He had never been a sentimental outdoorsman, had seldom left the city, but now he stared out at the passing landscape with a sharp sense of imminent loss. Then they were coming into the outskirts of a town, the air brakes hissing as the bus slowed. They halted for a red light, and Manning stared down at the women crossing the street. Already they seemed remote.

  “Hey, Big Mama,” Henry Jackson called softly to a fat woman in shorts, pushing a market basket. “Bet I make you shake and holler.” He turned to inform his seatmate, “Them big old fat things’ll fool you.”

  “Jackson,” Nunn said without opening his eyes, “is it true your old lady wrestles main events?”

  “Rassles main events with me, that’s what she do.”

  “Jackson,” Nunn said dryly, “you’re full of petrified apple butter.”

  Jackson laughed and stretched. Manning was dozing. He drifted back and forth between waking and sleeping as the bus covered the remaining miles to San Francisco. He was asleep crossing the Golden Gate Bridge or he might have seen the prison first from a distance.

  “There it is,” Nunn said. “The asshole of creation.”

  The bus had followed the edge of the bay along a stretch of tidal flats, black mud rank with oil, and turned beneath the shoulder of a barren hill, deeply scarred by an open-pit quarry, and suddenly faced the massive concrete walls. A wide blacktop driveway led straight up towards a large steel gate. They passed a post office, a lunch stand, a curio shop, then entered a stretch like any residential district, houses half hidden in a wealth of shrubbery, while on the wide lawns several men in blue denims leaned against the handles of lawn mowers, staring up at the bus. A small boy in a red windbreaker and a little-league ball cap delivered papers on his bicycle.

  The actual prison bore little resemblance to Manning’s fearful preconception, a blurred projection formed in his mind from the hundred transparencies of fiction and legend which had somehow combined to form the illusion of substance. All the components of the motion picture prison were evident—armed guards, high walls, the cyclopean gaze of waiting searchlights—but they seemed diminished, without harmful vitality, sapped by the fresh green lawns, the numerous beds of bright flowers, even by the walls themselves, which were painted a pastel green trimmed in dusky pink.

  “All out for Disneyland,” someone in front cracked.

  “You’ll think Disneyland,” Nunn said quietly.

  The bus was parked on the blacktop beside the large arched gates, and the county officers began to remove the restraining gear. Unchained, the prisoners filed from the bus and passed through a sally port in the gate while both a deputy and a prison officer made a head count.

  Manning followed Nunn into a narrow concrete room, where wooden benches, painted forest green, stretched along the side walls. The far end was walled by a massive iron door, also provided with a smaller sally port at which a guard with a single large brass key stood on duty.

  “This is called between gates,” Nunn said. “One more and you’re in.”

  Manning recognized that t
he area served as a traffic control point. A dozen inmates sat scattered along the benches. They stared openly. One was a gaunt man with a raw humorous face and yellow, grinning eyes.

  “And there’s another sissy breaking back into jail,” he suddenly announced loudly.

  Nunn, glancing in his direction, exclaimed, “Red! Society Red! You still blowing smoke? No one yells ‘sissy’ faster’n an undercover fruiter.”

  Red clapped Nunn on the arm. “Buddy, what’re you doing back?”

  “Winter’s coming. It gets cold under those bridges.”

  “So you couldn’t hold your mud?”

  Nunn shrugged. “I had a nice ride.”

  “You look like you kicked an ass wiper.”

  “An oil burner.”

  “You get any good ass?”

  Nunn grinned. “You horny old fart. How’s Chilly?”

  “Cold as ever. Slipp’n, slid’n, easy rid’n. You know Chilly.”

  “Has he still got the book?”

  “Sure, he picked the series again.”

  “He’s good.”

  Red nodded. “He’s sharp, that’s all. While these other rumpkins are standing around picking their noses, Chilly’s thinking. What’d you bring back anyway?”

  “Receiving. One to five.”

  “Well, that’ll hold you. Might as well settle down and walk it off.”

  “I’ll have to make up some new lies.”

  Red grinned. “Make em about young skunks you scored on. Maybe you can ease from under the freak jacket you’ve been carrying.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Nunn said elaborately. “A freak jacket doesn’t seem to bother you much.”

  “Your mammy’s freak jacket don’t bother me.”

  “Only because your own mammy wore jockey shorts and kept her dildo on the mantel.”

  Red grinned delightedly, remembering this game with Nunn, and he almost shouted, “She kept it on the mantel when she wasn’t cramming it in your mammy’s prune.”

  An enormous guard with small metal sergeant’s chevrons attached to his collar stepped through a metal door in time to catch Red’s last cap. He smiled, showing small, very white teeth beneath a glossy black mustache.

  “Red,” he asked in a surprisingly light tenor voice, “how many rounds was it your mother went with Archie Moore?”

  Red turned quickly. “Sarge, you know I don’t play no dozens.”

  “I should hope not. A nice boy like you. Now, get the hell out of here and give me a chance at these fish.”

  Red said quickly to Nunn, “I’ll tell Chilly you just drove up.”

  “Okay. See you on the yard.”

  The sergeant studied them impassively for a moment, then he said, “We’ve a little processing to get through, but if you keep it moving it shouldn’t take long.” He pointed at the door he’d stepped from and Manning noticed it was lettered Receiving and Release. “Right in there,” the sergeant invited pleasantly.

  They entered a second room where five rows of wooden benches faced what seemed to be a booking counter. In a back corner an old view camera pointed into a raw plywood booth, bleached with floodlights. An inmate in neatly pressed blues was making some adjustment to the camera and he looked up briefly to examine them with remote green eyes. Automatically they took seats on the benches. The sergeant went behind the booking counter where he had a swivel chair padded with pillows. Before he sat down he explained that they were going to take mug shots, and anyone who needed a shave would find a razor and blades in the washroom. He studied them briefly to see if they understood, then lowered himself into the chair and swung his feet onto the counter.

  The inmate photographer had already started work, spinning a piano stool to lower it for Henry Jackson. In his turn, Manning stared soberly into the light, his head tilted in obedience to a sign which ordered Look HERE. The sign was stapled to the belly of a nude whose right breast had been inked into a target, so her rosette and nipple formed the bull’s-eye.

  When they had all been photographed, the sergeant ordered them to strip down and throw their coveralls into a canvas laundry basket, and their shoes, socks, and underwear into a cardboard box next to it. “You take nothing—nothing—inside the walls. Any personal valuables, rings, watches, pens, lighters, will be stored here and returned to you at the time of your release. Throw your smokes away. Now come up here one at a time for a skin shake.”

  The sergeant stepped in front of the counter and began to instruct the first of the now naked men. “Lift your arms.” He looked at the armpits. “Run your fingers through your hair. All right, open your mouth. Wider. Okay, skin it back. Lift your balls. Turn around and bend over. Spread your cheeks. Okay, lift your feet. The right. Now the left. Okay, get a blue coverall over there, and put on a pair of those cloth slippers.”

  One by one they fumbled awkwardly through the humiliating examination, except for a few, like Nunn, who ran the routine briskly as if it were an exercise they had performed often, and took a sort of pride in knowing well. Numbly, Manning took his turn, and gratefully slipped into a worn coverall, patched at both knees. He sat down and watched the Wilson boy, who had waited until last. His extreme thinness made him appear frail in spite of his height, and his skin was very pale. He stepped in front of the sergeant and stood with his eyes half closed, breathing through his mouth. His face seemed lumpy. He lifted his arms when he was told to, but he hesitated before opening his mouth, and then only parted his lips.

  “Much wider,” the sergeant said. “Show some tonsil.”

  Stick thrust his head forward and jerked his mouth open inches from the sergeant’s face, who swayed back and looked at Stick thoughtfully.

  “All right, lift your nuts.”

  Stick thrust his pelvis forward and exposed his scrotum.

  The sergeant’s eyes flickered. He spread his legs, and his hands, the backs nested in the fat swelling above his wide belt, closed into fists. “All right, son,” he said softly, “let’s have a look at your ass.”

  Stick stood rigid.

  “Don’t you hear well?”

  Still Stick didn’t move.

  “Don’t be modest. I see a lot of assholes. They all look the same.”

  “Fuck you,” Stick said.

  The sergeant nodded with the appearance of satisfaction, and pressed a button set in the base of his phone. “This is a place,” he told Stick, “where you can buy a great deal of trouble very cheaply.” He lit a cigarette. In less than a minute the door flew open and three guards entered on the double.

  “The goon squad,” Nunn whispered to Manning. “The tall one is called the Farmer.” Manning saw a man close to six and a half feet tall, with a brown face, weathered as old leather, and steady tobacco-colored eyes. His wrists were large and red.

  “The fat one’s the Indian.”

  Only a few inches shorter than the Farmer, the Indian carried three hundred pounds of dense flesh. His head, the size and shape of a basketball, rested on a triple chin. His eyes were small, bright, and good-humored.

  The third member of the goon squad was a small Negro, five-six, almost dainty, with a smooth, shapely otter’s head. He moved with conspicuous grace, and his lips were creased in a dreaming smile.

  “And the Spook,” Nunn continued. “He’s smart and very bad news.”

  The sergeant nodded at Stick, who hadn’t moved, and told the Spook he had refused to bend over. The Spook’s smile deepened. The Farmer and the Indian closed on Stick like fingers of the same hand as they armlocked him from either side. They raised him straining to his tiptoes. The Spook looked up at him. “You see, you’ve aroused our curiosity.”

  The Indian and the Farmer bent Stick as easily as they would break a shotgun. The Spook pried open his clamped rump. Stick jerked wildly and made a hissing noise. “My, my,” the Spoke murmured, “not a feather on him. Some jocker’s due to score.” He looked up at the sergeant. “You think he might have something keister-stashed? We can X-ray.”

 
; “No,” the sergeant said. “He’s just some kind of nut.”

  The Spook studied Stick knowingly. “Yes, he’s some kind of nut.”

  “The psych doctors can classify him, that’s what they’re paid for.”

  “Yes,” the Spook said softly, “they tell everyone what kind of nut they are, which helps a great deal.”

  The sergeant smiled and nodded.

  “The shelf?” the Spook asked, indicating Stick.

  “Yes, put him in a holding cell. I’ll think up some charge before I go off duty.”

  Stick was toe-walked, still naked, from the room, but the Spook stopped to pick up one of the denim coveralls before he followed. He paused in the doorway to make a brief inspection of the other new arrivals. He smiled faintly when he recognized Nunn. “Your boss know you’re back?” he asked.

  “Probably.”

  “Take care,” the Spook said, and left.

  “What will they do to him?” Manning asked Nunn.

  Nunn smiled. “Nothing. A few days isolation. They get nutty kids like that all the time. They make them feel foolish, and they quiet down.”

  “I think that boy’s sick.”

  “He’s subject to be considerably sicker before he gets out.”

  The skin shake continued without further incident, and when the last of the new arrivals had been passed, they were taken through the final gate into the actual prison. Manning was surprised to step out into a garden, similar to the block-square parks in downtown areas, crisscrossed with walks and dominated by a central fountain. The fountain appeared to be dry. Manning turned to find Nunn smiling at him.

  “They call it the Garden Beautiful.”

  They were conducted to a building designated “distribution,” where they were outfitted with cell supplies: two sheets of unbleached muslin, a pillowcase, three woolen army blankets stenciled State of California, a set of earphones, a small metal mirror, a teaspoon, a comb, a paper sack of unflavored tooth powder, a toothbrush, a bar of soap in a plain white wrapper, a razor, a package of razor blades, and a book of rules and regulations. Next they were outfitted in blue denim uniforms, underwear and heavy brown shoes. Then they were led across the big yard towards the south block. The big yard, the true center of the prison, was a blacktop enclosure the size of a football field, bounded on three sides by the inner walls of the cellblocks, and on the fourth by the mess hall and kitchens. These structures formed walls forty feet high, painted the same pastel green, and made of the sky a long narrow rectangle. A sea smell was in the air, mixed with the stronger odor of the tidal flats and the hundreds of pounds of fish frying in the kitchens. Manning was reminded of an amusement park. The impression was bizarre, but it was there in the sun-softened asphalt, the roar of thousands of men gathered in a small space, the smells of salt, decay, and fried fish. Triple loudspeakers mounted high in each corner of the yard blasted rock and roll.