There was a mad scramble to the front of the tank and the sound of unlocking locks could be heard throughout. I asked a con, “How long do it take?”
“Long as dey wants it ta take,” adding, “it give da bosses sump’n ta do when we lays in.”
Big George did a follow-up, “Don’t y’all take nuthin outta dis tank to dat messhall, ‘ceptin yo ass, da clothes on yo back, an yo brogues.”
As we filed out of the tank, I saw that “everybody” was there. All the field bosses, the captain, lieutenant, and dog sergeant were standing underneath the picket waiting for us to empty out. The captain split the bosses up into two groups. One group took the westside tanks and the other took the eastside. The captain and lieutenant went upstairs to “check out” the auditorium where the white cons lived and the dog sergeant took the trusty tank.
The 300-plus of us lower tank inhabitants filed into the messhall and took our seats at the tables. All the cons were there, except the trusties still out working and the whites. We sat quietly as the banging of lockers and bosses’ voices filled the messhall like hollow sounds coming from an empty barn. The bosses carried on a lot of bullshit with one another and seemed to enjoy ransacking the tanks.
Two bosses remained in the messhall with us, walking up and down the small aisles that separated the tables. Watching. Every so often, a con was called out and wouldn’t return. Instead, he stood underneath the inside picket until the shakedown was completed. After a good three hours, the order came from the captain for us to reenter the tanks. By this time, at least twenty cons were standing under the picket.
We stripped in the messhall, and slowly filed into the area underneath the picket where the bosses waited to squeeze search our shirt and pants, and inspect our brogans before we went back into the tanks. After the clothes search, it was the “bend over and spread yore cheeks” part. Some of the comments those bosses made were rib splitters and I could hardly keep from laughing as I waited my turn.
“Hey Boss, take a look at this un. This ol’ nigguh’s asshole looks lak a burnt-out stump.”
Another said, “Looks lak this heah nigguh had a complete overhaul, cawse all his bushins, rangs, an inserts is a-missin. Big as this nigguh’s asshole is, I wager he couldn’ shit in a number three washtub ‘thout hittin the sides.”
My turn came. “Well, looka heah, heah’s one a them white nigguhs!” one said looking at one of the older bosses. “Boss Harper, is this heah one a them nigguh babies uv yourn?” He kept on, “Say, has Boss Harper evah tole y’all bout how many nigguh gals he’s dun screwed? An how many uv ‘em he knocked up?”
Another said, “As a matter uv fact, if I recollect it wuz fifteen uv ‘em.” Seems this old boss told the same bragging lie to each of them. By all appearances, he was so old he’d probably even stopped dreaming about fucking. They were all laughing and teasing him so much that little attention was given to me as I bent over.
We filed past the two cardboard boxes filled with contraband sitting under the inside picket. While we were busy dressing back inside the tanks, the warden, “Big Devil” as he was called by the cons, held court in the hallway. He made each con reach into the boxes of confiscated items and pick out what belonged to him. Sometimes it was crude-looking knives made out of spoons and forks, clubs, chains, lengths of iron pipe, hand-drawn fuck books, or a scrapbook of female mannequins from mail-order catalogs.
Each was sentenced according to the importance Big Devil placed on the contraband item. Those with the weapons received the lighter punishment and were made to stand on the soda water boxes (wooden cases) for several hours. Those with the forbidden jack-off materials were sentenced to hang on the cuffs all night long.
Cotch Tom was one of those who got the cuffs. They found a photograph of a white woman in his locker. I later learned that it was a picture of his wife and that he was doing a life sentence for killing a white bus driver in Houston. The way I heard it was he had boarded a bus in Fifth Ward, a predominately black ghetto, with his German wife whom he met and married while in the Army overseas. The bus driver allegedly stopped the bus and demanded that he not sit in the seat next to the white woman. When Cotch Tom told him she was his wife and refused to move to another seat, the bus driver slapped him and a fight ensued. Cotch Tom pulled out a pocketknife and stabbed him to death. That incident set the stage for future demonstrations against segregated busing in Houston.
He may have been a hero to some out there, but poor Cotch Tom was paying the price in here. Sometimes late at night the bosses would come to his bunk and wake him up, slap him around, take him out in the hall and hang him on the cuffs. They even tried to instigate fights between him and other cons in the field. They were usually successful, and Cotch Tom would fight his heart out. I guess if there was one single person I felt sorry for in this whole damn place other than me, it was him.
As count time neared, Crip and Big George gathered up their mops, brooms and buckets from the back, signaling that it was time to get on our bunks so they could clean up. They had soapsuds a foot deep all over the tank floor. One was spreading it with a mop while the other was following behind scrubbing with a scrub broom. In twenty minutes, they had water hosed the entire brick floor and herded all the suds down a six-inch drain in the center of the tank floor.
Each time the inside picket boss the cons nicknamed “Wise-em-up” paused to look down into the tanks, he’d holler down, “You ol’ wild-ass’d nigguhs betta git down on it! Suma you ol’ sorry-ass’d thangs gonna hafta talk ta that warden in the mornin.” He did that periodically with each tank, whether it was quiet or not. Two or three cons were in the back using the commodes, “Awright, suma you ol’ wild-ass’d nigguhs keep on millin roun back thar an yore gonna hafta talk ta that warden in the mornin.”
After count time I tried to go to sleep. I would soon discover that at any given time during any given hour on any given night, I could turn over in my bunk, open my eyes, look around and see some other con with his eyes open too. Sleep was hard to come by until I got accustomed to the night life in the tank. Eighty-five men compacted together for every offense conceivable including murder, so there were many troubled consciences. Cons having nightmares, screaming out, crying and moaning all through the night made sound sleep practically impossible.
I finally dozed off, only to be awakened by a bone-chilling scream. Earlier that day I had overheard Big George and one of the new cons who rode down on Black Betty with me having some words. I heard the new con tell him, “I don’t play that shit.”
Big George walked up on him while he was sitting on one of the commodes and hit him across the back with the piece of chain he wore on his belt. After the scream Big George shouted, “Git yo Gotdam ass up under one a dem bunks befo I kill you!”
Hearing the commotion, Boss Wise-em-up hollered down his customary threat. Big George yelled up to him, “Brangin one out, Boss. I got one a dem smart-ass nigguhs in heah.” Wise-em-up let the victim out of the tank and made him sit in the hall under the picket for the rest of the night. His groaning joined with the others who were being punished out in the hallway.
Shortly after wake-up time the doors under the picket, which led from the guards’ barbershop, were opened by the turnkey. The captain came through and walked over to the new con, who stood up and showed the chain marks on his back. The inside picket shifts had changed. Boss “Humpy” was on duty. He told Cap’n Smooth that he had been told this con created a disturbance on the tank and Big George had to put him out. Since it involved a building tender, no questions were asked.
Cap’n Smooth told the turnkey to get a soda water box and place it upright on the floor, then ordered the new con to get up on it. After a couple of tries and falling off, the captain told him he’d put him in the pisser if he didn’t get his “goat-smellin ass up on that soda water box an stay thar.” Finally, the con was able to maintain his balance on the upright box and began serving out his official punishment. Those hanging on the cuffs were let go
so they could eat and catch out.
I thought to hell with the new con, that was his problem. But Big George was a motherfucker I had already made up my mind about. If he ever fucked with me, I was going to kill him. I didn’t know how I would kill him since I hadn’t procured a weapon yet, but if he ever crossed the line, he was one bastard I would kill in a heartbeat. Building tenders had the power to whup you if you let them, kill you if you let them, or snitch on you and get you killed for another con.
Each passing month I was doing better and better keeping up with Road Runner on the turnrow and learning how to “wek.” When we weren’t cutting down trees, underbrushing in the woods and grubbing stumps, we were on the yard using wedges to bust logs for the furnaces. Then on to the muddy garden, crawling on our knees picking the half-frozen spinach. Road Runner could crawl damn near as fast as he could walk. His knees must have been made out of stone because he never complained like the rest of us.
When it was too wet and cold for these jobs we got our aggies (hoes) and headed for Oyster Creek, which ran right through the middle of Retrieve, to flatweed along the creek banks. There was always some con in the squad who got out into the cold water to hoe all the weeds. Seeing this, Boss Deadeye would holler for the rest of us to do the same and start riding his horse all along the bank, crowding us up to make sure that we got knee-deep into the frigid water, “You mawdickers git yore asses off in that crik lak that nigguh’s a-doin!”
Soon as we finished the Oyster Creek banks, it was on to the shit ditches and all the shit they caused. It usually took a week to clean the two sewer ditches that snaked their way from one side of the prison unit to the other. Squads worked on both sides of a ditch, hoeing everything on the way down to the middle of the shit stream, and pulled the muddy grass and weeds back up the slope to spread it out on the turnrow to dry.
It never failed. When two squads met in the bottom of the ditch face to face and started splashing shit on each other, the battle began. After the fighting, everybody left the ditch covered. We’d get back in line beside one another and stink it through the day. The bosses drove and pushed us relentlessly to get finished. They hated to ride behind us, “Y’all’s goat-smellin asses is stagnatin these hosses.” True or not, the horses were their unruliest when we worked in the shit ditches; but, so were we.
After a day of battling in the shit ditches, I was so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open. I waited until some of the traffic cleared in the back so I could get to the sink and wash the shit off my brogans. Count time over, I was trying to doze off when I saw a head bob up at the end of a con’s bunk. The next minute I looked, he was way over at the other end of the tank. Then he darted closer to my bunk. I asked Beer Belly in the bunk across from me, “Who is that muthafucka?”
“Das Ol’ Toe Sucka, he loves to suck toes.” I immediately turned my feet up under my ass. “He ain’ got no teefs in th’ front. Sum nigguh in heah dun kicked dem teefs out. Waked up wit dat muthafucka slurpin on his toe.”
Even as grueling as the work was in the squad, I’d rather do it than work in the kitchen. They worked seven days a week, rain or shine. The kitchen flunkies were the first ones out in the mornings and the last ones to get back in the tanks at night. Between meals, they hosed down and scrubbed the messhall.
News quickly circulated in the tank one Sunday afternoon that Big Filet Mignon got busted. He could slip those pork chop and steak sandwiches off the guards’ stove and out of the kitchen right under the guard’s nose. He wrapped them in some dishrags and tied the bundle to his nutsack. No boss was going to feel underneath there when frisking the kitchen flunkies and cooks.
It happened right before the evening meal. We were having baked ham for supper, but the meal was held up because one of the hams was missing. Big Filet Mignon had swiped one from the oven, took it back to the vegetable room, and hid it in one of the vegetable bins to let it cool.
When it cooled to his liking, he deboned it, propped it up on a table and made love to it—pineapple rings and all! He got carried away and began calling it affectionate names out loud. “Oh! Bessie May, you sweet thang. Oh! Bessie May, tell me it’s good to you. Oh, baby-eeeee!”
The mess steward (Cap’n “Foots”) and some of the kitchen crew heard him and went to investigate. They said Cap’n Foots walked right up behind him while he was “humpin dat ham.”
Cap’n Foots brought him out of the kitchen and stood him under the inside picket to await Big Devil’s arrival for sentencing. After word filtered through the tanks why he was busted, we threw cups of hot water and even our brogans through the bars at him. Everybody was furious with him for making us potential secondhand dick suckers.
The inside picket boss hollered for the captain, “Cap’n, Cap’n, you betta cum move this rotten bastard away frum under this picket afore sum uv these ol’ nigguhs knock hell outta him.”
When Big Devil arrived, he and Cap’n Foots took Big Filet Mignon back through the kitchen, headed for the pisser. Big Devil cursed him every step of the way, “Why you Gotdam lowdown sonuvabitch! I’ll bet you been a-fuckin that meat ever since you been heah! Ain’cha?”
“Naw, suh, Warden. I swears thas th’ first time I ever dun it.”
“Shet yore Gotdam lyin mouth, you rotten bastard!” Smack!
Big Filet Mignon stayed in solitary overnight and was shipped away on Black Betty the very next day. Nobody touched the ham that evening. He taught us a lesson—don’t eat the fuckin ham.
Chapter 10
Ol’ Doc Cateye, serving 460 years, had been running the hospital “forever.” However, recently he had inherited a medical officer who was hired on with the rank of lieutenant to take over the helm. Lieutenant Walden spent a few years in the Navy and supposedly worked in the ship’s sick bay. His experience and training must have been superb since he acted well prepared for the tremendous responsibility now resting upon his narrow shoulders.
The hospital upstairs at the rear of the trusty tank consisted of four bunks which were rarely occupied. It required near death to lie on one of those bunks. Besides Doc Cateye, Lieutenant Walden would also supervise the convict dentist, Ol’ Nolan. Now that he commanded his own hospital and medical staff, the lieutenant was finally in the upper echelons of medical practitioners.
Lieutenant Walden stood about five-foot-six, was forty-plus years old, had a fat beer belly, and wore his britches anchored down off the low part of his hips. There was so much slack in the seat that his pockets waved when he walked. When he listened to a con’s ailment, he was very cautious not to stand too close. He’d stare at the con through the bars in a trance-like state while smoking his pipe. Every so often, he’d kick out a puff of smoke and nod his head. When the con finished, the lieutenant would give his diagnosis in long, rambling medical terminology.
Regardless of the illness, the medication was always the same. If the problem was from the waist upward, Walden prescribed aspirins. If it was from the waist down, he prescribed Doc Cateye’s “jet juice”—a special concoction of castor oil, mineral oil, Epsom salt, a little sugar, a little dab of quinine, and either grape or strawberry food coloring.
Doc Cateye had convinced Lieutenant Walden, the warden, and half the convict population that his nostrum really worked, and could cure everything from the flu to epilepsy. After drinking a cupful, the con spent the rest of that day or night on the commode. We all knew not to drink it when going to the field because there’s no way the bosses would let anybody stop working ten times a day to “git on the job.”
Every night after we finished supper, the medical duet appeared at the tank doors and hollered out, “Medicine line!” It sounded like they were racing to see who could say it first. Cateye carried the little medicine tray and kept it neatly arranged with cotton balls, aspirins, methylate and mercurochrome bottles. He also had Whitfield ointment, which cons put on the calluses of their feet. They had to be careful because that ointment burned like acid.
Lieutenant Walden watched over
Doc Cateye like a resident physician as Cateye issued the medication through the bars. And did Cateye ever resent his new intern status! After all, he’d only been the “Doc” for a measly twenty-one years before he became the lieutenant’s assistant.
Occasionally when Cateye would be busily waiting on two or three patients at the same time, the lieutenant shook out a couple of aspirins or whatever and handed it out. He certainly didn’t want any of us to think he minded touching fingers with a black con as he handed out the medication. To him a “patient is a patient, regardless of race, creed, color, religion, or national origin.”
Only thing contradictory to his equality stand was the way he treated the fifteen white “hideaway” cons. They went directly to the hospital to receive their medication instead of having it poked through the bars to them. And they didn’t need a 102-degree temperature to get a lay-in either. All they had to do was say they were sick; their word was good enough for him.
The black cons didn’t want the lieutenant handing them medication from Doc Cateye’s little tray anymore, anyhow. He had scared most of them away. Unwittingly, Lieutenant Walden almost single-handedly broke up all the homosexual activities on the entire camp. Hospital business suddenly picked up, but even then, Doc Cateye came up with the prognosis for the epidemic.
The breakout occurred because of Walden’s inability to differentiate the Whitfield ointment from the petroleum jelly. Granted, they are both alike in clearness, but they certainly smell different. Of course, Lieutenant Walden wouldn’t smell the jars because it might appear that he didn’t know his medicine. Except for smelling, it is difficult to tell them apart, especially for the trained, infallible medical eye of Walden.
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