On the Yard (6 page)

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.

As the fish were led in through three-post they were greeted with a gale of whistling and catcalls, and as they were walked down the edge of the yard a number of inmates ran alongside them yelling, “You and me, baby. You and me.” Or, “Put that pretty thing in my cell.” The comments were broad, the invitations facetious, but the real content was hostility, as if the whistles and calls were fists and bricks. Manning sensed the hatred even though he couldn't as quickly determine the motive, but the thought that disturbed him was that he might be changed as these men must have been changed, shaped and molded to fit the habits and passions of this thousand-legged animal that was greeting them with such savage and contemptuous mockery.

“Don't let it bug you,” Nunn said. “This is sort of a tradition.”

It seemed to Manning that every prisoner in the big yard had joined in the shivaree, just as it seemed to him they were all identical—jeering mouths wrenched open under the round stiff-billed hats. Actually less than a third of the yard was engaged in active hazing. Many stood and stared for no better reason than that it was something different to look at, and almost everyone searched the new faces for a friend, a buddy fresh from the streets. Still others noted hopefully the large number of fish, because they saw the prison as if it were a giant bin, and if busload after busload of fish were stuffed into the bottom of the bin it only stood to reason that the pressure of the growing population would shove them out the top a few months earlier. It was true, facilities through-out the state were dangerously overcrowded, but the cynics maintained they would be housed three to a cell before a single man was released a day early.

Now they were moving along a row of wooden tables, constructed like picnic benches and painted the same forest green, where a dozen domino games were in progress. Each table was the center of a crowd, players and their audience, and the games were being conducted with great animation and a running scrimmage of loud talk, insults, depreciation, and repeated invitations to “get fucked.” Scattered through the domino crowd like tortoises somehow abandoned in the monkey house were a few chess players. They hunched over their boards in fierce concentration, and seemed oblivious to the bedlam around them.

“Chilly,” Nunn was shouting. “Hey, Chilly.”

Manning followed the direction of Nunn's eyes and noticed Society Red playing dominos with three other men. He was partnered with a slender young man who was bent forward studying the pattern of the game, and when he made his own play he didn't just place the domino on the table—he swung his hand over so hard and fast centrifugal force fixed the tile to his fingers until it slapped against the table, and was then deftly flicked into play. The whole action was performed with the vigor and style of a tennis smash.

“Five-four, hit the door,” he chanted, then turned to look at Nunn. His eyes were bleak.

“Goddam, Chilly,” Nunn said.

“Sucker, just what the hell are you doing back?”

“The wheels came off.”

“They always do, don't they. On the first hard bump. All right, you're back. We'll rap tomorrow after breakfast.”

“Same office?”

“Now what do you think.”

As they were moving away, Chilly took a partial pack of cigarettes from his pocket and threw them to Nunn. He shook his head, and turned back to the game.

“If Chilly wasn't doing the big bitch,” Nunn told Manning, “he'd own half this state.”

“The big bitch?”

“Forty to life and that's as hard as they come.”

“But he seems so young.”

“Chilly's twenty-five, maybe twenty-six, but he was born old. They've got him made, that's why they tied him down with so much time. He'll walk someday, but it's going to be awhile.”

They were entering the rotunda of the south block—skid row, Nunn called it—where all new men were automatically celled. A block officer read their cell assignments from an onionskin flimsy. Manning drew A-3-64.

“Where's that?” he asked Nunn.

“Third tier, A-section, cell sixty-four. Come on, I'll take you halfway.”

A case of wide metal stairs led up through the center of the block, and through the open metal door on each landing Manning received an impression of shadowed space and somehow dampness. On each landing they also passed a utility tunnel, crowded with pipes and wiring, and they seemed to stretch for a mile before they terminated in small rectangles of light. They were closed by barred doors and behind one of these doors an inmate, wearing a leather belt clustered with tools, stood waiting to be released.

“Just drive up?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Nunn answered.

“Where'd you come in from?”

“Delano.”

The floors were concrete and had once been painted a deep maroon that had now worn away to a pale tint, except in the corners where the original paint was still clinging in shrinking islands. All light was fluorescent, the fixtures clung to the wall like phosphorescent fungus, and did little to brighten the natural light that filtered through the paint, dust, and bird droppings that coated the outside windows.

Nunn paused on the third landing and pointed out a door with a large A painted on it. “Right through there—and take it slow. Keep dummied up until you learn your way around.”

Manning started down the tier. The cells were numbered from one. He could see more of the building now, and the outer shell was similar to an enormous hangar, while the actual block of cells occupied the center as if it were a separate and smaller structure stored in the larger one. There was a steady and undifferentiated drone, a thousand conversations muffled in the concrete walls, broken by an occasional shout, and through this was threaded an intimation of music that seemed to be coming from everywhere at once as if it were a property of the air. Later Manning was to realize that this impression was created by the earphones, two in every cell, no one audible in itself, but together they created a subliminal murmur. It was
Tales from the Vienna Woods
he heard as he walked along the third tier for the first time.

The cells reminded him vaguely of exhibits, their uniform size—yes, they were like the window displays in the museum of natural history, where stuffed animals had stood each in a static splinter of its particular habitat. The cells in similar fashion reflected the men who lived in them, though the variation was naturally limited. Some were elaborately decorated with curtained shelves, set solid with family photos and Christmas, Easter, and birthday cards grouped like shrines. Other cells were filthy—a shambles of peeling paint, floors furred with dust, the space under the bunk packed with old newspapers and magazines. Some displayed the Virgin, others were decorated with the calendars distributed by various religious organizations. Manning saw models of hot-rods, original oil paintings, hand-tooled copper plaques.

As he passed each cell he was aware of heads swiveling to stare at him, heads as meaningless as flesh-colored balloons with features painted on them.

“Hey, pop, where'd you fall from?”

“Did you just come in from Bakersfield? Did a stud called Jingles come in with you?”

“Hey, mac ...”

“Hey, buddy ...”

“Hey, man ...”

“... what's happening out in that free world?”

Manning hurried on, his face half hidden in his blanket roll. When he reached the cell assigned him he was shocked to find another man already inside. He had been hungering for solitude. Now he had to step into this tiny room and share it with a stranger.

The inmate was sitting in the top bunk, his back against one wall and his feet propped on the other. The cell was so narrow his knees were still as high as his head. He was reading. He glanced sideways, saw Manning, and closed the book on his finger. He took in the pillowcase of cell supplies and the blanket roll and for a moment his face betrayed disappointment—then he smiled.

Manning received an impression of dense black hair, a white eroded complexion, and light blue eyes sunken under heavy brows. Then a guard far down the tier was manipulating the automatic controls, causing a sound like muffled but rapidly approaching gunfire as the stops in the lever box were tried and discarded one by one until the door of cell 63 jerked and rolled open. Manning stepped in, holding his gear in front of him, and the door slammed at his back.

“Just come in?”

“Yes, an hour or so ago.”

“Just an hour ago ... oh, my name's Juleson. Paul Juleson.” He held out his hand.

“Will Manning.”

They shook hands solemnly.

“I'm afraid,” Juleson said pleasantly, “that you're stuck with the bottom bunk. Not that there's any big difference. The light's a little better up here.”

Now that he was inside, Manning realized that the cell was much too small to hold two men. It was no more than four by ten feet in floor space, and around eight feet high. The double bunk filled half the cell, the sink and toilet bowl protruded into what was left. Above the sink two warped wooden shelves teetered on L-braces. One shelf was stacked with books, the other was empty.