“You ready?” the first black asked.
“Jack ready, homeboy.”
The door opened once more; a third black came out, followed by five chicanos, one after another. The blacks gravitated to the half basketball court, the chicanos to a building wall that served for handball. Usually, they would have started warming up. They had only two hours and they liked to get all the exercise possible. Not this afternoon.
Finally, a white came out. He had stringy black hair that hung down his shoulders, and hair that grew from his shoulders and back. The hair was mixed with a vegetable gallery of blue tattoos, the kind that are handmade in juvenile hall or reform school. Among them were double lightning bolts on his neck and an especially dark and vivid swastika on his chest. Actually, he didn’t know Nazi from numbskull; to him, they meant only that he was white in a world where whites were often a minority. He crossed the red line quickly and put on the pants of the jumpsuit and tied the sleeves around his waist.
The door opened and another white came out. He was slender, soft, fair-skinned, and he, too, was defaced by a few tattoos. “Jerry, come over here,” said the biggest black; he was the one who had come out first.
The slender white, Jerry, ignored the summons. He went to where the white was pulling on the cloth slippers. Fighting barefoot on the rough asphalt was hard on the feet.
“We gonna have trouble, white boy?”
“That’s up to you. But you ain’t muscle nuthin’.”
The black looked to the other blacks, and they indicated that they were ready. They walked toward the two whites, and the fight was on.
In the gun tower, the guard had noted the tension down below. When it erupted, however, he was not prepared. He was also pouring steaming coffee from a thermos into the cap that was a cup. He tried to screw the cap back on the thermos, forgetting it was full of steaming coffee. The hot liquid spilled over his hands, and he dropped the lid cup on himself.
Still in pain, he looked down. The skinny white and one black were swinging punches, while the other two had the big white boy down and were kicking and stomping him. The gun-tower guard snatched up the carbine. The procedure manual said he should blow the whistle, followed by a warning shot -and after that he could aim at the fighters. Flustered by the burning coffee and the suddenness of the disruption below, he neglected the whistle, although he did fire a warning shot, quickly followed by three more. The sound was a flat, loud crack that sent a concussion through the air, causing a flock of blackbirds to explode from the roof and swoop away.
When the rifle echo died, two blacks were down, and the white was sitting up with blood pouring from his face. A piece of bullet had ricocheted from the pavement and cut his cheek, and the face always bleeds excessively. One black was writhing, the other lay prone, arms spread, while around him was a big pool of thick blood. It was pouring from the femoral artery. The other had broken ribs and scuttled away. With shaking hands the guards picked up the telephone, “Trouble in the ‘O’ Wing yard. Need stretchers and backup.”
The prison was designed with everything in wings jutting out on each side of the long, wide main corridor. Convicts were not supposed to hang out in the corridor, and there were always a couple of guards to keep them moving. When the shooting occurred and the stretchers went past at a run, only a handful of convicts were in the corridor, but others joined them as the procession returned – now carrying the two blacks, one with a blanket pulled up over his face. The burly white, his torso caked with blood, walked between two guards while he held a damp towel pressed against his cheek. It was soaked with blood, some dripping onto the corridor floor. The retinue turned through the door into the hospital wing. A minute later, a convict hospital worker came out and said Toussant was dead from loss of blood.
The prison grapevine is as swift as Western Union. In twenty minutes, every black face was grim, and many fought tears of fury. Toussant had been looked up to by most black convicts. One of the few inmates who failed to get the news in the first quarter hour was Eddie Johnson. He had the afternoon off duty from his job in the kitchen scullery where he scraped garbage from the stainless steel trays before feeding them into the washing machine. He started for the main yard but, when he stepped out into a gust of windblown dust, “Fuck this,” he thought, he could miss one day’s workout. He had a book by Regis Debray he needed to finish, plus letters to write. He wanted to convince his bourgeois sister that socialism was the best thing for black folks. He would stay in the cell for the afternoon until the main count lockup was finished. He’d come out for the evening meal and socialize in the TV room afterward. A few minutes before the afternoon lockup he heard the cell’s lock open. It gave the inmates a chance to go in and out for a couple of minutes – to trade magazines, make a bet on the NCAA Final Four or buy something to keep them high during the night in the cage.
The bell rang and the security bar was raised so the cell gate could be pushed open. Eddie came out, shirtless. He was 6'1", weighed 200 pounds and did fingertip pushups and stomach crunches even when in the hole, which was more than half of the nine years he’d been in prison. He had to stay in shape to be ready for his troubles with pigs, bean bandits and rednecks.
He hurried down the third tier, forty feet above the cell-house floor, to get the Black Panther newspaper from Scott, who lived in the first cell. The tier was filling fast as men came up the stairs. Scott was outside his cell talking to Yogi Bear, whose name and appearance belied his being a borderline psychotic and psychopathic killer, “…got him in that fern… fern… that artery in the leg, man. They let him bleed to death.”
“What’s up?” asked Eddie. “Who bled to death?”
“You ain’ heard, man? Them pigs, man, they kill Toussant.”
“Say what?” asked Eddie, his brain reeling. Toussant was his ace partner. “What happened?”
“He was fightin’ with this white dude… one of dem bikers. They didn’t blow no whistle. They just started shootin’. What kinda shit is that, killin’ somebody over a fistfight?”
“Toussant?”
“Yeah, Toussant.”
Anguish and rage shot through Eddie. It was always the black man they killed. He stood immobile, fighting to breathe. The lockup bell rang and a loudspeaker crackled: “Lockup! Grab a hole! Clear the tiers!” The inmates scrambled for their cells. Eddie walked back to his own open door. He was the last one on the tier. He stepped inside and pulled it shut. The security bar dropped in place. He kept his face hard while listening to the officer’s hand counter grow louder, clicking for each body behind a steel door. When the guard’s face went past, Eddie smashed his fist into the concrete wall. “I’m gonna kill one of those lousy motherfuckers,” he either thought or muttered. Either way it was a vow as absolute as any he’d ever made. He looked at his hand. His knuckles were bleeding. He put them to his mouth and sucked off the blood. God, what a fucked up life a strong black man had in America – if he was poor, and the only ones who weren’t poor knew how to sing and dance for white folks, or handle the mail. What he needed was revolutionary comrades. You had to control the means of production if a revolution was to be judged successful.
His raging indignation was going to overcome the way he knew the game should be played if the goal was victory, not revenge. He just couldn’t let it go. Not Toussant. They’d broken bread together, shared canteen and books. Toussant knew more history, especially about Africa, than anyone Eddie ever met. It had to be deliberate. Toussy had punched one of them a year or so ago. That’s why he was in ‘O’ Wing, and this was their vengeance. “They’ll nail me, too,” Eddie muttered. “One of these days. But what else can I do except what I’m doing.”
There was still enough summer light to leave the main yard open for a half hour after the evening meal. Eddie, big Scott and Dupree, Toussant’s nephew, sat side-by-side on the bleachers, their backs to the gun tower. It was supposed to have a device that could hear conversation forty yards away if there was no interference. True
or not, they would keep their faces turned away.
“When, man?” Scott wanted to know. The most fired up of the group, he was ready to drink the bitter cup of vengeance.
Eddie held up a hand gesture of restraint. “Be cool. Be patient. We’ll come from the darkness without warning, like panthers.” he winked and nodded to certify his words. The others liked what he said. They grinned – Scott had bad teeth – and slapped palms in brotherhood and camaraderie.
Prison Shooting Justifiable was read below the fold caption of the Valley Courier. Dupree had brought the newspaper to Eddie and waited for a response. The short article said that the Grand Jury had found the shooting of Louis Toussant to be justifiable homicide. “We knew that was coming,” said Eddie. “Where’s the big man?”
“He was pumping iron in the gym.”
“Let’s go get him, work this shit out.”
As Eddie and Dupree walked the long corridor toward the gym door at the far entrance, many blacks gestured in one way or another. The raised, clenched fist was in vogue. The Black Muslims said, “Ah salaam aleekem.” Even though their thing was not his thing, Eddie respected them. They had pride in being black and conducted themselves with the dignity Eddie wished all black men would acquire. They could forget about God and Allah and all that, but he guessed that those things were the price for dignity and good manners.
A guard was at the gym door, collecting privilege cards from each convict wanting to enter. No privilege card, no privileges; including the gym. If anything happened in the gym, as it had before, the prison authorities would know it was someone whose card they had. It cut down on the number of suspects.
The gym was somewhat like a high-school gymnasium – with a hardwood basketball court, although only half was usable unless there was an outside game, which had stopped years earlier when the troubles came to the prison. The other half was a raised boxing ring, mirrors for shadow boxing, punching bags and so forth. Bleachers folded into the walls. There were three handball courts at one end. At the other was a mezzanine, half of it filled with workout machines, the other half with folding chairs and a large television set for sporting events. Everything in the gym was paid for by the Inmate Welfare Fund; profit from the hobby shop and the canteen.
As Eddie and Dupree crossed the gym floor, the klaxon blasted, followed by the announcement: “Cleanup! Cleanup! Gym closes in ten minutes.”
Scott worked in the gymnasium equipment room. There were baskets for boxers with handwraps and boxing shoes that they paid for by catalogue order. He passed out towels. He picked up weights and stacked them. His job let him converse with any convict without being noticed. Convicts of all hues came to his window to get their basket or ask for a towel. He saw Eddie and Dupree top the stairs and smiled – until he saw Eddie’s face, then his eyes narrowed and the smile disappeared. He knew what it was before it was said: the time had come to strike. As if Eddie read his mind, he nodded portentously. Scott looked at Dupree, who also nodded. “Here’s what I think we should do,” Eddie said. “After they slop us and make the unlock for evening activities, we hang back in the cell-house and wait. Watch TV; play dominos…”
The Inmate Dining Room was thinning as convicts finished eating and straggling out, stacking trays on a cart and tossing forks and spoons in a bucket. Eddie and Dupree came out into the hallway together. Scott was waiting. Eddie made a gesture asking for a cigarette and Scott produced a Bugler package with cigarettes already rolled.
Eddie lit the cigarette and dragged deeply. “Thanks, bro. You dudes ready?”
They both nodded and all three made their way down the hallway to the open cell-house doorway. It was crowded inside with men waiting for the corridor to clear and the cell-house doors to be locked. When that was done, the loudspeaker called out, “First period night unlock. Gym; Education; Choir practice. Reverend Graham’s Bible Class is canceled for tonight.”
“Look at that,” said Dupree.
At the door, two officers were handling the checkout. Actually it was one guard wearing the standard olive twill uniform, while watching what he was doing was another guard. Slight and young, his uniform was khaki, which marked him as a newcomer. He had worked in the prison for five weeks. Anyone could tell that he was intimidated by the convicts. He watched the clipboard and avoided raising his eyes to meet their gaze.
Eddie said, “When the pack is hunting, it can tell which among the herd is weak and easiest to kill.”
“I know how they feel when I see that skinny little fucker.”
“Me, too,” said Dupree.
“Are you ready?” Eddie asked. “You got your mind locked?”
They nodded.
The line going out on night unlocks was getting short. The floor area of the housing units had tables for chess and dominos. The TV room was off to the side. It had small windows with bars that looked like frames. They were designed to muffle the sound from the rest of the unit, but convicts had broken so many that they were finally left unrepaired, and the sound came out.
“C’mon,” he said. “Let’s go in the TV room.”
As they headed for the door it was evident that TV was popular tonight. The room was crowded. The chairs were full and there was standing room at the rear. The TV room was divided racially. When Eddie had just arrived the front center section was reserved for certain whites and chicanos. On his second night, he sat in the center section. When someone said, “Say, man, that’s reserved.” “Right on! Reserved for me!” Eddie stood up; ready to fight. Nobody did anything, not that night – but the next night they were waiting. There was a brawl in the TV room. After that, he had his seat in the front center section.
“What’s everybody waitin’ for?”
“NCAA Final Four. Duke and Michigan.”
His seat was empty but, instead of taking it, he stayed near the door at the rear where he could watch the dayroom. Because of the televised basketball game, there were fewer chess and domino players at the tables, although Lawyer Wilson was there; spread around were his manila envelopes with legal papers and opinions. He refused to appear before the parole board because they had no jurisdiction according to his reading of the law. He would show the legal opinions at every opportunity. The law said he had to appear at the board to be paroled. Except for that, he would have been paroled nearly a decade earlier. The parole board wanted to let him go. He was no threat, no menace, and would cost less on welfare outside.
The trio waited in the TV room until the basketball game was down to three minutes and the Lakers were ahead by eleven and Jerry West hit a jump shot and was going to the foul line. The game was in the refrigerator, or so the announcer said. Eddie motioned and his companions followed him out the door. When the game was over and convicts streamed out, the trio was at a rear domino table, watching and waiting. Their eyes were on the front door. The inmates who had gone to the gym and chapel were streaming back, holding up their identification cards so they could be checked in. Many went up on the tiers, waiting to enter their cells. Others stayed down on the floor. It was still an hour and a half to the night lockup. Finally came what Eddie was waiting for: the senior officer called the switchboard and checked out to the officer snack bar and rest room. He unlocked the corridor door and was gone. Now there was one young guard surrounded by more than a hundred convicts.
“Here’s what we do. You –” he was speaking to Dupree, “go tell him that some guy on the top tier is in his cell crying about something. The pig is gonna go see. You’ll lead the way –”
Dupree nodded; he would do it, but he felt the butterflies of fear in his guts.
“You,” said Eddie to Scott, “get a cup of water. At the top of the stairs there’s a little blind spot next to the utilities door. The light bulb in the locked niche – splash some water and it’ll pop. You wait back in the shadows. I’ll be landing behind the guard. We don’t wanna throw rocks in the pond and scare the fish away.”
“What?” asked Dupree.
“Never
mind,” said Eddie; then to Scott, “You come out of the shadows if he goes by you. I hope I get there before that. We’re gonna stomp him and throw him over the tier. I heard a fool in San Quentin land on the concrete from the fifth tier. When he hit the bottom, it made a loud splat… like some immense egg. This is only three tiers, but they are about the same height. Go make your move. I’ll be coming up behind you – I’ll bet they showed him my mug shot and pointed me out.”
“Oh yeah, Eddie, no doubt they did that.”
“I’ll be a dirty motherfucker. They can’t leave me alone. Goddamn racist mother… Ahhh shit, man,” he stopped and grinned. “You know what, they treat us better than I’d treat them.”
“Let’s hear it for that, homes.”
He waited. He could see the dayroom and the desk protected by the overhead wire. Scott was going along the right wall, in front of the bottom tier cells, keeping convicts at the tables between himself and the guard. The guard turned just at the right moment, and Scott slipped behind him. He saw him every few seconds as he made the turn to the next tier, taking the stairs in a long stride three at a time. He was illuminated by the overhead light on the top landing. He splashed water upward and there was a little pop and the light went out. Scott stepped back into the shadows and waited.
Dupree approached the desk from the side, spoke to the guard and pointed up. The guard got up, gathered his keys and started toward the stairs. Eddie moved from the rear of the bottom floor toward the stairway at the front. He looked up, saw movement and began to climb on swift tiptoe, keeping far enough behind, and quiet enough, to remain unnoticed. As he made the last turn and looked up, he saw the guard’s flashlight beam peering into the alcove where Scott was hidden. The Guard challenged him, “What’re you doing up here?” Scott was in the light, looming because of his size, and the guard’s voice cracked with fear; he was definitely not in charge.
Eddie crouched and coiled his muscles. At first he had planned to throw his arm around the guard’s neck and pull him crashing backwards down a flight of stairs. But if he did that, it would be about thirty feet to the floor. So, as he took the last two fateful strides up the stairway, he lowered his shoulder and crashed into the slight figure in a blind side-tackle. The guard was driven across the landing into the wall, and let out a grunt. “What is this?” he demanded. “What’s wrong with you?”
Death Row Breakout Page 7