He would never get his one phone call.
Entering The “House of Dracula”
They came for me after midnight on the tenth day following the sentence. I heard the rattling chains down the tier, and three deputies appeared. A fourth remained at the front to throw the lever that unlocked the cell gate. When they reached the cell, I was already waiting, my meager possessions in a shoe box tucked under my arm.
It was the darkness before dawn when the two-vehicle caravan exited the rear loading area. It was where the buses, trucks and garbage cans were kept. The stench was gross. I was in the screened off rear of a black and white station wagon. Two uniformed deputies rode in front. They followed the sedan through the predawn streets to the freeway ramp. Traffic was beginning to build, the gigantic Mack trucks and Kenilworth’s hitting the northbound highway. They would be in Sacramento by noon. When the sun was a faint orange line in the east, we departed out of Bakersfield to pass between endless green fields of cotton and strawberries filled with Mexican laborers bent to pluck the bolls and berries from the bushes. In the scorching sun, what terrible back breaking labor that was. I would rather be in a prison cell than picking cotton like a nigger slave, although that preference did not include the fate to which I was destined. I was lazy, not crazy.
Despite the leg irons cutting into my ankles and the handcuffs pressing dents in my wrists, and the awareness of my destination lurking constantly in my thoughts, the ride was not totally miserable. It had been almost nine months since I’d looked upon the free world. By most standards, it was a dreary length of highway, bordered by small stands selling whatever produce grew nearby, predominantly walnuts, strawberries and melons, but it was better than staring at a cell wall, or dwelling on whatever was in my brain.
When we passed truck stops or tiny communities, a local police or highway patrol cruiser was waiting and escorted us for ten or twenty miles before pulling to the side. The deputies were not related to Lewis Carroll for, though they talked of many things, none were of sailing ships, sealing wax or cabbages and kings. Their idea of a cogent intellectual comment was that all liberals were anti-American. One said it; the other concurred with a strenuous nod.
It was mid-morning when we went through Oakland and crossed the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge and could see the shit-colored masonry of the California State Prison at San Quentin. “There it is, Cameron,” said the driver. “Your last home.”
“Uh huh… the House of Dracula.”
We followed the sedan off the freeway to a Stop sign, then went through the underpass to San Quentin road. On the right were old frame houses on a slope overlooking the bay and Richmond’s low green hills on the other side. The outlying gate was half a mile from the walls. An old black Lifer stood at the gateway on the signal from a gate-house watched over by a guard in the arsenal gun tower fifteen feet off shore. A female guard who looked like a truck driver and was probably a lesbian came from the gate-house to the sedan and looked at the papers the guards carried. She made a hand signal and the gate swung open. We pulled up outside the East Sallyport where we sat for fifteen minutes until the Watch Lieutenant appeared. Campbell! A miserable sonofabitch if there ever was one. This was the first time he’d been seen anywhere except behind his desk, where it was safe. There were a few inmate clerks in his office, but he’d never been on the yard or alone in a cell-house with the numbered men. And he particularly hated and feared me. Long ago he’d seen in my file that I assaulted a custodian in juvenile hall, a counselor in reform school, a correctional officer in a youth prison. He was Watch Lieutenant; the main man is running things. Above him were decision makers. They didn’t have a hands-on job. He had the responsibility for running the disciplinary court. Early on, I’d come before him, charged with messing up a count and cursing the guard. The reality – which doesn’t matter in this world – is that my bedsprings had broken, and were jamming me in the back, so I threw my mattress on the floor next to the gate. The cell was four feet wide. Lying lengthwise beside the bunk, how could they miss me? They found me on the third count, when they go cell by cell with a tablet, and cursed me for causing problems. I told the guard I didn’t want to hear the orations of Cicero -and he wrote that I called him a motherfucker. So I stood before Campbell so charged. I thought it was humorous, and at worst should cost me thirty days’ loss of privileges. But Campbell turned crimson and looked as if he was about to start foaming at the mouth, when he cut me off and said “take him to the hole”.
Red fire flashed through my brain. I hunched my back, grabbed the bottom of Campbell’s desk and, oopsie daisy, over it went, drawers crashing, papers flying. The guards who stand as backup during disciplinary court were instantly administering a choke-hold and dragging me down on my back. I was nineteen and weighed a hundred and fifty.
Campbell wasn’t hurt, but he was screaming like a banshee. Of course it went to full committee and, although the Associate Warden did see a little humor in the incident, he had to back the lieutenant and he gave me the maximum twenty-nine days in the hole, and indefinite lockup in administrative segregation, which is different. There, you can have an amenity or two.
I did a year in administrative segregation. Campbell wanted me charged in outside court. Now he was greeting me on my journey to Condemned Row; out here with four deputies and half a dozen correctional officers.
Shit! Double Shit!
He went head-to-head with the deputy in charge of the caravan. The deputy handed him the court orders with the seals and warrants and produced a clipboard with a body receipt for him to sign.
Now he owned me. I was chained and unable to do anything to defend myself except spit on him, which I would do, futile as it would be.
But, mirabele dictum, he never once turned his eyes to me. Carrying the papers, he turned back to the sally port, “Okay, bring the asshole in!” With that, he gave the order and disappeared. Everything would now turn like silent machinery.
They hoisted me down because the step was too high for me to manage in leg-irons. I had to tiptoe in tiny steps, rather like a Chinese woman with bound feet. Any other way and the steel anklets would bang against the anklebone at each stride.
Into the doorway they hustled me. Ahead was a gate of steel straps from an earlier time. Beyond was a twenty-foot tunnel with a high, round ceiling and benches bolted along each wall. Near the other end was a solid steel door on each side. One went into the Visiting Room, the other to Receiving and Release. Next to the Receiving and Release door was a urinal and a tiny hand-rinse sink. Everyone walking in and out of San Quentin passed through the East Sally Port. At that point, I was the only convict inside the tunnel, although every convict who worked outside the walls went in and out through this tunnel.
“Hold it,” a guard said, putting his arm in front of me. The Sergeant opened the Receiving and Release door and stuck his head inside. A moment later he pulled back and motioned. “Siddown, Cameron,” he said. Then the other escort said, “There’s three dressouts in there. About halfway finished.”
So I sat down to wait – and thought of other times. Years ago a black revolutionary, who was also a cause celebre among the far left and young Blacks, George Jackson by name, came out here on a visit. He had many visitors, and many rumors swirled around him. He was awaiting trial for allegedly killing a guard. When he was returned to the adjustment center, he produced a gun, chaos ensued and, before it was over, two guards, two convicts and George were dead. The media outcry began, “How’d he get the gun?”
He must have gotten it on the visit, but how had he gotten it into the adjustment center? He was frisked when he came out of the visiting room, and was under a guard’s eyes until the escorts arrived to take him back. He sat where I was sitting now, on the bench. It was pretty much accepted, fantastic as it seemed, that the pistol was concealed in his Afro, fashionable at the time.
I don’t think so.
Earlier that day, it was said, a black convict who worked in the personnel snack bar
passed through and stopped to piss. He took the pistol wrapped in a bandanna, and pushed it up under the sink. He then continued on his business.
When George came out of the visiting room, he was told by an old, white-haired guard, to sit down while escorts were summoned by phone. George sat, then motioned that he had to piss. The old guard was five feet from the enclosed urinal, but he could see George’s head and, down below, his legs from the knees to his feet. He couldn’t see George’s hands or waist. George moved the bandanna and its contents into his waistband.
When the escorts arrived, George was seated on the bench and the old guard told them, “I frisked him already.”
So they motioned for him to come along, and walked him the fifty yards across the plaza to the adjustment center.
After all these years nobody has figured out how he got the pistol. I wish I knew the truth.
The R&R door opened and four parolees appeared. All wore khaki pants, sport shirt and windbreaker. Each windbreaker was a different color. I’d been in a cell adjacent to one of them. He looked at me and turned his head away as they passed by. He was afraid to speak to me. I said nothing and watched them step out of the Sally Port into the sunlight of freedom.
I was then out of the other Sally Port door and into San Quentin. Beyond the door was a moderately-good-sized plaza. On one side were the chapels, Catholic and Protestant, and on the other, the Adjustment Center, a newer three story building that held the troublemakers on its bottom two floors – and Condemned Row #2 on the third. A handful of convicts loitered by the fishpond outside the chapels. One or two I knew by sight but not by name.
They walked me down a road past the Quonset hut library across from the education building. One guard walked whilst waving convicts away with a hand signal and the admonishment: “Dead man walking.” A second guard followed me and, on a walkway along the North Cell-House, a rifleman looked down upon us. Ahead was the arch of the Big Yard gate, atop of which was yet another rifleman.
The Big Yard was enclosed by three cell-houses and the mess halls and kitchen. The high cell-houses closed out all but a patch of sunlight. Except for a few of the cleanup crew, the Big Yard was empty of convicts.
The entrance to Condemned Row #1 was through the North Cell-House rotunda. An open steel door on the left provided entrance into the cell-house. Another steel door, locked tight, was straight ahead. Beyond that door was an elevator and stairway to Condemned Row. A door next to the elevator was to the overnight condemned cells where those scheduled to die in the morning were moved the night before their execution.
One of the escorts pressed a buzzer to summon the elevator. As we rode it to the top, a bell rang to herald our arrival. At the top, a pair of eyes looked us over through a small observation window. Seconds later, the key turned and the door opened.
Three guards waited inside. Two were young, and one was a true rookie, still wearing khakis instead of the standard olive twill. The third was Sergeant Blair, and his presence surprised me. “Hey, Sarge, what’re you doin’ up here?”
“Just for a couple days. I work vacation relief. Sorry to see you here, Troy. Never would have thought it.”
“Things get away from you, Sarge.”
The escort sergeant handed Blair the paperwork and waited while Blair leaned on the shakedown table and signed them. I could look down the walkway in front of the cells. Perhaps a dozen men were out of their cells for exercise. At the far end a blanket was spread on the polished concrete floor for a card table. Four men sat cross-legged and played while two more kibitzed. Near the front was a heavy punching bag, and the only man familiar to me was slamming a gloved fist into it. He was muscular and handsome, with silky, ebony skin. The bag jumped when his fist landed. I think he was borderline retarded, or perhaps just very poorly educated. Out of Compton, someone had taken him to Santa Monica to rob a white kid who was peddling cocaine and marijuana. Richards, for that was his name, almost immediately shot the youth between the eyes. In the jail he looked up to me, and I felt sorry for him.
“All right in there, clear the tier,” a guard called out.
“Hey, exercise isn’t over.”
“You’ve got one coming in. So grab a hole.”
The inmates went into their cells and the guard dropped the security bar, then went inside and key-locked each cell. He could do it without breaking stride. When he was done, he waved and the security bar went back up.
“C’mon, Cameron,” said Sergeant Blair.
With the Sergeant beside me, we went through the gate onto the tier. I noticed that, on the other side of the bars and wire beside us, walked the guard with the pistol and tear-gas sap. The guard with the key waited, holding an open cell gate. It was three cells from the bars and gate to the rear. Beyond the gate were ten more cells. Each had an extension jutting out three feet. There was a solid oak door with a tiny window. With the door closed, anyone who screamed was welcome to do so until laryngitis silenced him.
Someone in a silent cell was aware of us out here. The outer door of his cell began to thud, and a muffled voice came through the cracks. “Sarge! Damn, Sarge, lemme talk to you.”
“Shit…” Blair muttered, simultaneously shaking his head and sticking the big key in the lock.
Clank, the key turned, the bolt shot across, and I was locked very securely in my death-row cage. Twelve-feet long, four-feet wide. On the rear wall was a cast metal fixture – a washbasin with a water faucet that drained internally into the toilet bowl on the bottom. It was prison architecture at its most ingenious. About five-feet high across the rear wall were two metal shelves for personal property.
Along the side wall was the sagging bunk with its blue and white striped mattress. I went to take a piss and saw the layers of crud on tope of the toilet water. I flushed it before I could piss in it. I’d have to scrub it with cleanser and a rag. I pushed the sink button. It worked. The cold water ran out of the drain in the bottom of the sink and seconds later ran down into the water in the toilet.
I hit the switch beneath the twin fluorescent tubes affixed to the wall. The light flickered and sputtered and finally came full on.
Finally, I turned around like a dog and lay down on the bunk. Here I was – home for at least a few years, maybe many. This little cell, that runway out there – and wherever my mind could travel in time and space.
“Hey, next door!” a voice to the right called out. There were only three more cells.
After due deliberation: “Am I next door?”
“Yeah, you just got here. Did you transfer from the adjustment center or come from a county jail?”
“A jail.”
“Whereabouts?”
“Bakersfield.”
“Yeah… yeah… you be the dude that iced the two cops. Right?”
From the voice and choice of words I thought he was black, but I would discern, when I saw him, that he was white, no doubt one who had grown up among blacks, as I had done among chicanos.
At the moment, however, I resented his easy familiarity. Just because we were in adjacent cells on Death Row didn’t imply that we were buddies. He might be a child molester, a short eyes, or a tree jumper rapist, or even a stool pigeon. I didn’t talk to everybody just because they were in jail.
“That’s what they say I did,” was my eventual answer. He felt my aloofness and didn’t press the conversation. I began to make up the bunk. I had come to my final resting place. I had entered the House of Dracula. It would be a long, slow death.
Vengeance is Mine
The prison was visible from the highway two miles away, primarily because the long valley was flat farmland with only a cluster of eucalyptus playing windbreak to farm buildings every couple of miles. The prison architecture was not the fortress variety of the nineteenth century, but rather the nondescript post-World War II design. What defined these structures was the tall smoke stack and the gun towers outside the double fences topped with rolled barbed wire.
Every afternoon a wi
nd rose. If it came east from the western mountains it was always cool, because it was drawn from the ocean beyond those mountains. If it came west from the eastern Sierras it was hot and dry, drawn from the vast deserts of the American southwest. The valley, when the fields were green, rippled like a lake under the wind. After the late summer harvest, until full winter hardened the ground, the wind blew endless dust. It kept the convicts off the main recreation yard, shaking the chain-link fences while the rolls of barbed wire on top danced and shivered, waiting for things to settle down.
In ‘O’ Wing, the segregation unit, a guard walked in front of the cells with a clipboard, stopping at each one. The convicts said “yes” or “no”, to the silent question if they wanted to go out to the tiny exercise yard between the two buildings. When the guard was finished, he went back to the front and handed the clipboard to a guard standing outside the barred gate. He worked the switch box that controlled the cell gates. In the lockdown units no two inmates were allowed on the tier at the same time. The guard inside the tier went to the other end, where a third guard let him out. “Okay, send ’em,” he called, and the guard at the other end unlocked a control box and threw a lever.
A cell gate opened. Out came a naked young black – the average age of all inmates was twenty-three – carrying his clothes in one hand and his cloth slippers in the other. He managed to swagger, muscles rippling as he walked to the rear gate and put his clothes on the bars. While one guard searched them, the other put the inmate through the ritual dance of a skin search: “Raise your arms, run ’em through your hair, turn around, bend over…” When it was done, he was let in and then out a second door to the small recreation yard. He carried his clothes over a painted red line fifteen feet from the door before putting them on. He was almost finished when the door opened and another young, muscular black came out. When not in segregation (the hole) they worked out on the weight pile and the boxing ring. The prison was called “gladiator school”, not without reason.
Death Row Breakout Page 6