“Fuck are you?” I asked. “The Art Fairy?”
“Frank Ristelli,” he said without resentment. “I teach a class in painting and sculpture every Wednesday.”
“Those who can’t, teach…huh?”
A patient look. “Why would you say that?”
“’Cause the perspective on your Titian’s totally fucked.”
“It’s good enough for you to recognize. How do you know Titian?”
“I studied painting in college. Two years. People in the department thought I was going to be a hot-shit artist.”
“Guess you fooled them, huh?”
He was mocking me, but I was too worn out to care. “All that college pussy,” I said. “I couldn’t stay focused.”
“And you had places to rob, people to shoot. Right?”
That kindled my anger, but I said nothing. I wondered why he was hanging around, what he wanted of me.
“Have you kept it up? You been drawing?”
“I mess around some.”
“If you’d like, I’d be glad to take a look. Why don’t you bring me what you’ve been doing next Wednesday?”
I shrugged. “Sure, yeah. I can do that.”
“I’ll need your name if I’m going to hook you up with a pass.”
“Tommy Penhaligon,” I said.
Ristelli wrote it down on a note pad. “Okay…Tommy. Catch you Wednesday.” With that, he put the van in gear and rattled off to the land of the free, his pluming exhaust obscuring my view of the detail from a Piero della Francesca painted on the rear.
Of course, I had done no drawing for years, but I sensed in Ristelli the potential for a sweet hustle. Nothing solid, but you develop a nose for these things. With this in mind, I spent the following week sketching a roach—likely it was several different roaches, but I preferred to think of it as a brother inmate with a felonious history similar to my own. I drew that roach to death, rendering him in a variety of styles ranging from realism to caricature. I ennobled him, imbued him with charisma, invoked his humble, self-abnegatory nature. I made him into an avatar among roaches, a roach with a mission. I crucified him and portrayed him distributing Oreo crumbs to the faithful. I gave him my face, the face of a guard to whom I had a particular aversion, the faces of several friends, including that of Carl Dimassio, who supplied the crank that kept me working straight through the nights. I taped the drawings on the wall and chuckled with delight, amazed by my cleverness. On the night before Ristelli’s class, so wasted that I saw myself as a tragic figure, a savage with the soul of an artist, I set about creating a violent self-portrait, a hunched figure half buried in blackness, illuminated by a spill of lamplight, curled around my sketch pad like a slug about a leaf, with a harrowed face full of weakness and delirium, a construction of crude strokes and charred, glaring eyes, like the face of a murderer who has just understood the consequences of his act. It bore only a slight resemblance to me, but it impressed Ristelli.
“This is very strong,” he said of the self-portrait. “The rest of them”—he gestured at the roach drawings—“they’re good cartoons. But this is the truth.”
Rather than affecting the heightened stoicism that convicts tend to assume when they wish to demonstrate that they have not been emotionally encouraged, I reacted as might a prisoner in one of the movies that had shaped my expectations of prison, and said with boyish wonderment, “Yeah…you think?” intending by this to ruffle the sensibilities of Ristelli’s inmate assistant, a fat, ponytailed biker named Marion Truesdale, aka Pork, whose arms were inked with blue, circusy designs, the most prominent being a voluptuous naked woman with the head of a demon, and whose class work, albeit competent, tended to mirror the derivative fantasy world of his body art. The look that passed between us then was all I needed to know about the situation: Pork was telling me that he had staked out Ristelli and I should back the fuck off. But rather than heeding the warning, I concentrated on becoming Ristelli’s star pupil, the golden apple in a barrel of rotten ones. Over the next months, devoting myself to the refinement of my gift, I succeeded to such a degree that he started keeping me after class to talk, while Pork—his anger fermenting—cleaned palette knives and brushes.
Much of what I said to Ristelli during that time was designed to persuade him of the deprivation I faced, the lack of stimulation that was neutering my artistic spirit, all with an eye toward convincing him to do a little smuggling for me. Though he sympathized with my complaints, he gave no sign that he was ripe to be conned. He would often maneuver our conversation into theoretical or philosophical directions, and not merely as related to art. It seemed he considered himself my mentor and was attempting to prepare me for a vague future in which I would live if not totally free, then at least unconstrained by spiritual fetters. One day when I described myself in passing as having lived outside the law, he said, “That’s simply not so. The criminal stands at the absolute heart of the law.”
He was perched on a corner of an old scarred desk jammed into the rear of the art room, nearly hidden by the folded easels leaning against it, and I was sitting with my legs stretched out in a folding chair against the opposite wall, smoking one of Ristelli’s Camels. Pork stood at the sink, rinsing brushes in linseed oil, shoulders hunched, radiating enmity, like a sullen child forbidden the company of his elders.
“’Cause we’re inside?” I asked. “That what you’re saying?”
“I’m talking about criminals, not just prisoners,” Ristelli said. “The criminal is the basis for the law. Its inspiration, its justification. And ultimately, of course, its victim. At least in the view of society.”
“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 paste
l 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 L.A. 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 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.”
Eternity and Other Stories Page 28