The first view of the prison is awesome. After a long climb you come upon a valley in the hills. The land used to be the summer estate of a millionaire called Spreckles. The fields around the county jail are like the grounds of a French castle. That day there were a hundred Japanese plum trees in bloom. Flowering quince. Later on there were fields of daffodils, then iris.
In front of the jail is a meadow where there is a herd of buffalo. About sixty buffalo. Already there were six new calves. For some reason all the sick buffalo in the U.S. get sent here. Veterinarians treat them and study them. You can tell when dudes on the bus are doing their first time because they all freak out. “Whoa! What the fuck! Do they feed us buffalo? Check them mothers out.”
The prison and the women’s jail, the auto shop and the greenhouses. No people, no other houses, so it seems as if you’re suddenly in an ancient prairie lit by sunbeams in the mist. The Bluebird bus always frightens the buffalo even though it comes once a week. They break into a gallop, stampede off toward the green hills. Like a tourist on safari I was hoping I’d get a view of the fields.
The bus unloaded us into the basement holding cell where we waited to get processed. A long wait and still another butt search. “Chaz, don’t be laughin’ now,” Karate Kid said. He told me CD was here, had been violated. Jail talk is like Spanish. The cup breaks itself. You don’t violate your parole. The police violate you.
Sunnyvale gang shot the Chink. I hadn’t heard that. I knew CD loved his brother Chink, a big-time dealer in the Mission. “Heavy,” I said.
“No shit. Everybody gone by the time the police come except CD be sittin’ there holding the Chink’s head. All they had on him was violation. Six months. He’ll do three maybe. Then he’ll get the motherfuckers.”
I lucked out and got the third tier (but no view), a cell with only two surly kids and Karate, who I know from the street. Only three other white guys on the tier, so I was glad Karate was with me. The cells were meant for two people. Usually there are six men in them; we’d get two more in a week. The Kid would spend his time lifting weights and practicing kicks and lunges, whatever he does.
When we got here Mac was the deputy in charge. He’s always laying AA rap on me. He knows I like to write though, brought me a yellow pad and a pen. Said he saw I was in for B and E and burglary, would be staying awhile. “Maybe this time you’ll do a fourth step, Chaz.” That’s when you admit all your wrongs.
“Better bring me about ten more tablets,” I told him.
Anything you can say about prison is a cliché. Humiliation. The waiting, the brutality, the stench, the food, the endlessness. No way to describe the incessant earsplitting noise.
* * *
For two days I had bad shakes. One night I must have had a seizure, or else fifty guys beat me up in my sleep. Split my lip, broke some teeth, black and blue all over. Tried to make sick bay but none of the guards would go for it.
“You don’t ever have to go through this again,” Mac said.
At least they let me stay on my bunk. CD was on another tier but during exercise I could see him down in the yard, smoking with other dudes, listening while they laughed. Most of the time he walked around alone.
Weird how some people have power. Meanest mothers out there deferred to him, just by how they stood back when he passed by. He’s not huge like his brother, but has the same strength and cool. They had a Chinese mother and black father. CD has one long pigtail down his back. He is an unworldly color, like an old sepia photograph, black tea with milk.
Sometimes he reminds me of a Masai warrior, other times a Buddha or a Mayan god. He’d stand there not moving, not blinking an eye, for half an hour. He has the calm indifference of a god. I probably sound like a nut or a fag. Anyway, he has this effect on everybody.
I met him in County when he’d just turned eighteen. It was our first time in jail. I turned CD on to books. The first time he fell in love with words was Stephen Crane’s The Open Boat. Every week the guy from the library would come and we’d give him back our books and get more. Latinos have an elaborate sign language they use in here. Me and CD started speaking in book. Crime and Punishment, The Stranger, Elmore Leonard. I was in one other time when he was and by then he was turning me on to different writers.
Out on the street I’d run into him sometimes. He’d always give me money, which was awkward, but I was out there panhandling, so I never said no. We’d sit on a bus stop bench and talk. CD’s read more than I have by now. He’s twenty-two. I’m thirty-two but people always figure I’m a lot older. I feel around sixteen. I’ve been drunk since then, so a lot has passed me by. I missed Watergate, thank God. I still talk like a hippy, say things like “groovy” and “what a trip.”
Willie Clampton woke me by banging on my bars when the tier got back from the yard. “Yo, Chaz, what’s happening? CD says welcome home.”
“Say, how you been, Willie?”
“Cool. Couple more Soul Trains I’m gone. You dudes got to sign up for writing class. They got righteous classes now. Music, pottery, drama, painting. They even let them over from the women’s jail. Say, Kid, Dixie’s in the class. Word.”
“No way. What’s Dixie doing in County?”
Karate Kid used to pimp Dixie. She ran her own feminist operation now, girls and coke to big-time lawyers, county supervisors. Whatever she was in for she’d be out soon. She was about forty but still looked fine. On the street you’d take her for a Neiman Marcus buyer. She never copped to knowing me but always gave me five or ten bucks and a big grin. “Now, young man, you use this to get a nice nourishing breakfast.”
“So what you write?”
“Stories, rap, poems. Check out my poem:
Police cars rolling back to back
They don’t care
’cause it’s black on black
and
Two wet sugars
for one cigarette
Big score.”
Karate and I laughed. “Go ahead on, motherfuckers, laugh. Dig this.”
Damned if he didn’t recite a sonnet by Shakespeare. Willie. His deep voice above the insanity of jail noise.
“‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate…’
“Teacher’s white, old. Old as my gramma, but she’s cool. Ferragamo boots. First day she came in wearing Coco perfume. She couldn’t believe I knew it. Now she wears different ones. I know them all. Opium, Ysatis, Joy. Only one I missed was Fleurs de Rocaille.”
Sounded like he said it perfectly. Karate and me laughed our heads off about him and his Fleurs de Rocaille.
Actually one sound you hear a lot in jail is laughter.
This is not your normal jail. I’ve been in normal jails, Santa Rita, Vacaville. A miracle I’m still alive. County #3 has been on 60 Minutes for how progressive it is. Computer training, mechanics, printing. A famous horticulture school. We supply the greens for Chez Panisse, Stars, other restaurants. This is where I got my G.E.D.
The head of the jail, Bingham, is something else. He’s an ex-con, for one thing. Murdered his father. Did serious time for it. When he got out he went to law school, decided to change the prison system. He understands jail.