Straight Life - Art Pepper [148]
While we were standing out on the freeway I said to David and Rudy, "Lookit man, lookit. This is what we're going to tell them. We found an oooold outfit that was made out of a toothbrush and a lightbulb." I'd never tried it but I'd heard about it and the police believe it. They've found things like that. I said, "We got ahold of some aspirin, and we were goofing around. We crushed it up. We were trying to shoot it." We had to cover for the marks. "That's our story, and just stick to it. We gotta have a story, and that's it." I was very proud of myself that I'd made it up like that.
They took us before the doctor. We closed our eyes and made our fingers meet in front of us. Touched our noses. He looked at our eyes, looked at our arms. The doctor said, "These men are loaded." We denied it. They interrogated us and we all told the same story. They said, "Who do you think you're kidding? How do you think we came there? We were told. We were told that you had stuff and that you've been getting loaded for the last three or four days." I said "Oh, that's great."
They took us to the hole. I'd never been there but I'd heard about it. They opened the door and took Rudy away. They made me and David go through a gate, and they took all our clothes off and gave us each a pair of longjohns. I couldn't button mine. They came to my knees and barely fit over my shoulders. David's were just as bad. They took David to his cell. They opened the door, a solid steel door, smashed it open, and I looked in and saw a pitchblack cell. They told him, "Whenever you hear us coming just crouch in that corner, and if you're anyplace else we'll kick your teeth out when we come in." They threw him in and threw an old, dirty blanket after him. No shoes. Nothing. They opened mine. They told me, "Whenever you hear this door open you be crouched in that far corner or we'll kick your teeth out!" They slammed the door and the reverberation was so loud it went through my head and through it and through it. I had half a blanket and that was it, that and the cold cement floor and a toilet. And there was a grating in the wall. You could hear water dripping. You could talk through the grating. I heard Rudy hollering for us. I thought, "Well, if I can hear him, and David can hear him, then the police must be listening." I said, "Rudy, cool it, man. We told them the truth. There's no use making up any false stories. They're listening to us now."
Time passed. The next day came. I could tell by the sound of the racking of the gates, and then I heard keys rattling and doors banging, and I crouched in the corner. A guard came to the door and slammed it open as hard as he could. I put my hands over my ears. The guard had a trustee with him who shoved in a little paper plate and a paper cup with a top on it. The cup had water in it, and the plate had some food slopped over it. He slammed the door shut again. I tried to eat a little of the food. They'd warned us, "Don't put the food down the toilet. If you stop up the toilet you'll be sorry."
The next day came. I heard the noise, and here they are. The door slams open. I'm crouched in the corner. The trustee reaches in, and he's got a board. He's pounding around the plate with it. I look and see hundreds of cockroaches running off the plate. He pulls it out, throws it into a pail, and puts in another water cup and another plate of food. I see the cockroaches running away and then, in the light from the open door, I see them turn around and head back to the new plate. The door slams shut again.
If I was scared before, when I saw that I was terrified. There's nothing more scary than cockroaches when you can't see them. I felt that they were crawling in my nose and in my asshole and in my ears and eyes and mouth. I didn't touch the food at all. I opened the cup a little bit and drank