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Authors: James Carlos Blake
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me.
I hooked him good on the jaw but he scrambled right back up and came at me like a bulldog and we went down snarling and punching. The bastard was tough, I have to give him that. He was skin and bone but he was strong and his fists were like rocks. The hacks pushed through the crowd and pried us apart and hauled us off to the solitary cells. A week later they made the mistake of taking us out at the same time. We shoved the guards aside and got into it again right there in the isolation block. While we were beating on each other the hacks were beating on us. Van Meter got another week in the hole and I got ten days.
John couldn’t understand why Van Meter and I disliked each other so much. I couldn’t understand how he could tolerate the dopey son of a bitch. He said Van Meter wasn’t as dopey as he made out, he just liked to clown around. John was sure the two of us would get along if we got to know each other. I told him Look, you want to be his friend, that’s your business, but he comes near me again I’ll break his scrawny neck.
He said okay, have it my way, but he stayed friends with both of us. From everything I’ve heard, Van Meter was loyal to him to the end, which is good to know. But it doesn’t change the fact that he was a goofy bastard and I couldn’t stand him.
For the rest of the time I was at Pendleton—only another few weeks—the scarecrow kept away from me, but we’d still see each other now and then, almost always at a distance. And every time we did, he’d make a stupid clown face and do his old-timey pugilist act, trying to get my goat. I was aching to kick the hell out of him. By then, however, I had something much more important than him on my mind and I didn’t want to jeopardize it by getting put in the hole for fighting.
I’d smuggled a six-inch piece of saw blade out of the shop, and every night after lights out I went to work on the bars of my cell door.I knew some of the other guys could hear the rasping, but it couldn’t be helped. Then Boss Miles ordered a shakedown and the hacks found the saw in the lining of my mattress and discovered where I’d cut almost all the way through two of the lower bars. Somebody had finked on me, but no telling who, the place was so full of finks. At any rate, it was all Miles needed to get me out of his hair. I was in solitary for the few days it took them to complete the paperwork, then I was taken to Miles’s office, where he was waiting for me with a smart-ass smile and the news of my transfer to the pen at Michigan City.
Pantano was being transferred too, and on the following morning the two of us were chained together and taken out to the prison van. A bunch of inmates were gathered at the fence to watch us. I spotted John among them, and he saluted me with a raised fist.
I wouldn’t see him again for four years.
I saw Van Meter a lot sooner than that. Not long after I got to M City, as it was known to everybody there, another few guys were transferred from Pendleton and he was one of them. He hadn’t been there a week when we crossed paths in the yard and got into it on the spot, rolling on the ground and trying to strangle each other. We both got a week in the hole. Then we were assigned to separate cell blocks and rarely saw each again. Whenever we did, we pretended not to.
S omebody once said that stone walls do not a prison make, but as Fat Charley pointed out, you throw in a few dozen armed guards and a general lack of the social amenities and by Jesus you’ve got something.
Most of the unpleasant things about imprisonment are fairly obvious, but, believe me, if you’ve never been inside the walls you can’t begin to imagine the boredom. The days plod one after the other like prisoners on a chain. You can see time going by on a calendar, you can see it in the change of seasons. You can feel the time passing. Butyou’re doing the same things day after day, and so there’s nothing to distinguish one day from
I hooked him good on the jaw but he scrambled right back up and came at me like a bulldog and we went down snarling and punching. The bastard was tough, I have to give him that. He was skin and bone but he was strong and his fists were like rocks. The hacks pushed through the crowd and pried us apart and hauled us off to the solitary cells. A week later they made the mistake of taking us out at the same time. We shoved the guards aside and got into it again right there in the isolation block. While we were beating on each other the hacks were beating on us. Van Meter got another week in the hole and I got ten days.
John couldn’t understand why Van Meter and I disliked each other so much. I couldn’t understand how he could tolerate the dopey son of a bitch. He said Van Meter wasn’t as dopey as he made out, he just liked to clown around. John was sure the two of us would get along if we got to know each other. I told him Look, you want to be his friend, that’s your business, but he comes near me again I’ll break his scrawny neck.
He said okay, have it my way, but he stayed friends with both of us. From everything I’ve heard, Van Meter was loyal to him to the end, which is good to know. But it doesn’t change the fact that he was a goofy bastard and I couldn’t stand him.
For the rest of the time I was at Pendleton—only another few weeks—the scarecrow kept away from me, but we’d still see each other now and then, almost always at a distance. And every time we did, he’d make a stupid clown face and do his old-timey pugilist act, trying to get my goat. I was aching to kick the hell out of him. By then, however, I had something much more important than him on my mind and I didn’t want to jeopardize it by getting put in the hole for fighting.
I’d smuggled a six-inch piece of saw blade out of the shop, and every night after lights out I went to work on the bars of my cell door.I knew some of the other guys could hear the rasping, but it couldn’t be helped. Then Boss Miles ordered a shakedown and the hacks found the saw in the lining of my mattress and discovered where I’d cut almost all the way through two of the lower bars. Somebody had finked on me, but no telling who, the place was so full of finks. At any rate, it was all Miles needed to get me out of his hair. I was in solitary for the few days it took them to complete the paperwork, then I was taken to Miles’s office, where he was waiting for me with a smart-ass smile and the news of my transfer to the pen at Michigan City.
Pantano was being transferred too, and on the following morning the two of us were chained together and taken out to the prison van. A bunch of inmates were gathered at the fence to watch us. I spotted John among them, and he saluted me with a raised fist.
I wouldn’t see him again for four years.
I saw Van Meter a lot sooner than that. Not long after I got to M City, as it was known to everybody there, another few guys were transferred from Pendleton and he was one of them. He hadn’t been there a week when we crossed paths in the yard and got into it on the spot, rolling on the ground and trying to strangle each other. We both got a week in the hole. Then we were assigned to separate cell blocks and rarely saw each again. Whenever we did, we pretended not to.
S omebody once said that stone walls do not a prison make, but as Fat Charley pointed out, you throw in a few dozen armed guards and a general lack of the social amenities and by Jesus you’ve got something.
Most of the unpleasant things about imprisonment are fairly obvious, but, believe me, if you’ve never been inside the walls you can’t begin to imagine the boredom. The days plod one after the other like prisoners on a chain. You can see time going by on a calendar, you can see it in the change of seasons. You can feel the time passing. Butyou’re doing the same things day after day, and so there’s nothing to distinguish one day from
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