Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [102]
Clifford was dead in three hours, a sharpened spoon handle deep into his abdomen. Billy lasted almost five hours before dying. Clifford’s knife had a seven-inch blade, and all of it had been buried into Billy. A guard brought the word to Jack, who was celled on the shelf pending an investigation. The guard was a young man. He said, “Your buddy copped it.”
“When?” Jack said.
“Oh, about an hour, hour and a half ago. The shit’s gonna hit the fan around here again.” The guard passed on.
Jack wept that night, bitterly. He could find no thought to comfort himself. He could not even be enraged, only desolated, and more lonely than he had ever been in his life. There was nothing for him to do but weep, and he wept.
PART THREE
Meaningful Lives
1956–1960
Seventeen
Jack Levitt was 26 years old when he got out of San Quentin. He had finished high school and had even taken two courses by extension from the University of California; he had worked in both the kitchen and the bakery, and he had not gotten into one single fistfight. Custody felt he was a good risk, and Rehabilitation considered him to have taken great strides toward the goal of maturity. After the death of Billy Lancing, Jack broke down and cried only once more, when the news arrived that Claymore had escaped from Alcatraz.
According to the newspapers, Claymore had not escaped at all, but had been drowned in attempting escape. He must have drowned, the Federal authorities reasoned, because no one ever escaped. True, his body was never discovered, but, they reasoned, it had probably been washed out to sea. Jack did not believe this, and he didn’t think anybody else did, either. Claymore had escaped, and it made Jack cry in his cell, much to the amazement of his cellmate, an old safecracker. Billy had felt “connected” to Claymore, and this is what made Jack cry. He wished Billy were alive, to celebrate Claymore’s freedom. He wished there were a heaven, so Billy could look down and see it and rejoice.
Claymore’s escape plan had been very simple: He waited for a foggy day and for a moment when no one was looking at him, got outside, jumped into the bay, and started swimming. It is supposed to be beyond human endurance to swim from Alcatraz to shore without extensive training, thick grease on the body, etc., especially because of the strong currents; but if Claymore’s desire for freedom was strong enough, he could make it. Then, he would have to be able to wait, hidden, somewhere along the shore of San Francisco, for the early morning hours; and if he survived that, did not die of exposure or become so weak he could not move, he could begin to make his way through the police-watched streets toward the Fillmore District. If he could make it that far, he was probably safe. It would not be hard for him to find Negroes who would not turn him in. So it was not impossible, merely difficult—about as difficult as climbing Mount Everest. A few years later three more men escaped from The Rock, and after that the Federal authorities lost heart. The whole function of Alcatraz was its hopelessness, and if the convicts started leaving any time they felt like it, well.... So today it is closed, deserted, and remains a monument to man’s incredible stupidity on the one hand, and to his incredible courage and love of freedom on the other.
Jack’s escape from that other blot on the pride of the human soul, San Quentin, was much less dramatic. He was paroled at the end of eighteen months, in spite of his bad record and in spite of his even worse appearance before the Parole Board. He felt like punching them all right in the face. For so long now he had not permitted himself to think about getting out, and now, with this invitation to appear before the Board, he could