Read Online Escape from Alcatraz by J. Campbell Bruce - Free Book Online Page B

ease the lonely solitude of their monastic cell life. They made pets of mice that crept timidly into their cells. (Rats also skulked the tiers at night, but they were less attractive as cellmates.) The prisoners made nests in their bathrobe pockets for the mice, even took them on journeys to the basement on shower days. They fed the pets bread snitched at meals at the risk of solitary confinement, some daring to take them along, under their shirts, to the dining room and feed them furtively at table. Once a guard-foreman of a shop saw a convict catch a fly and slip it in his pocket, then another fly, and another. Curious, he kept an eye on the convict as they went along the road after quitting time, saw him step lightly on a beetle, then pocket it. Later, he slipped up to the convict’s cell and saw him feeding the beetle and flies to a pet lizard. The guard, a sympathetic sort, quietly retreated, smiling.
    As in all prisons, the convicts of Alcatraz managed in the ingenious ways of imprisoned men to brew alcoholic beverages. In the federal penitentiaries intoxicants, whatever their nature, go by the generic name of pruno. The most exotic concoction of The Rock in the early days was a pruno cocktail: milk and gasoline. (Mention of this drink was made during a federal court trial, but its effects not discussed.) On occasion, whisky was smuggled in by kind-hearted guards, but generally the convicts had to make their own booze, and the best place for such an illicit operation was the bakery in the basement beneath the kitchen. Here the yeasty aroma of a fermenting brew was so akin to that of rising dough that the making of pruno went undetected for a long time. Until a couple of drunks spoiled things, the bake shop was perhaps the one spot on the island where the inmates were really happy at their work. The recipe was simple: put raisins and other dried fruit to soak in a crock, add yeast to speed up the fermentation, and cover the crock with flour sacks. The bakers, realizing they had a good thing going, drank in moderation, an aperitif before meals. One afternoon a couple of bakers dipped into the crock too early, and too often. They became spiflicated and, as drunks anywhere, fell to boasting, then to arguing, then to fighting. The guard on duty in the basement heard the commotion, came running, moved in to break it up. He seized the convict he thought was the aggressor—and then saw, too late, that the other had a knife. The guard held his breath as the other convict started to lunge. Luckily, the convict recognized the uniform in time to divert the blade. He meekly handed the knife over to the guard, one of the most respected officers of The Rock. Thereafter, bakers confined their art to bread, rolls, and pastries.
    The bakery was not the only place where brew-making went on. One day the foreman of the furniture shop reached into a barrel of grommets, used to make wooden mats for the Navy. His fingers struck something solid, and he pulled forth a gallon jug of raisin pruno. He dug into other barrels, found another jug of fermenting grog. The men had brought the raisins down in their pockets a few at a time, slipped to them by a pal in the kitchen crew as they moved along the mess hall steam table.
    Reading a letter was a more frequent diversion than writing one, for a convict could send out only two a week but receive seven. Writing was restricted to one side of the paper, and correspondents were warned not to refer to any person by nickname or initials, nor to make any cryptic remarks. At the beginning, a convict could correspond only with an immediate member of his family, the restriction later eased to include a fiancée or old friend—but not an ex-convict nor an inmate at another prison. Mail privileges began three months after the convict arrived on The Rock, to provide time for an FBI check on the listed pen pals. These investigations still occasionally turn up an old acquaintance who backs off upon hearing the