Straight Life - Art Pepper [155]
The coffee tasted good. After we ate they took us to the clothing room and we got our blues, a blue shirt and pants made out of a kind of denim, and brown shoes-"Santa Rosas"-old man type shoes with the line across the toe. I was very happy to be out of the jumpsuit; I felt less conspicuous. But I found out later it wasn't the clothes that made me conspicuous. I learned that even with six thousand people I couldn't just blend in with the crowd. Everyone knew we had just drove up. One of the guards told us some of the details. He told us what we should and should not do. He told us you get one to life for attempted escape. He pointed out the walkways and told us the guards were all expert shots. He said just do right and everything'll be okay.
It so happened we got there on Friday, so my first day was a Saturday and we were more or less free until Monday. When I arrived I'd seen several people I'd known before, and when I walked out of the clothing room here was a real good friend, Little Ernie Flores. He was one of those prematurely grey people, his hair had turned almost completely. His bone structure was Indian, but he was very small and dapper. He saw me and he said, "Heeeey, Art!" I looked at my clothes. They were old, wrinkled blue denim. He was wearing the same thing but it was that slightly different color, and he was all pressed, real sharp. Instead of the Santa Rosas he had loafers; they were shined. He looked great. The last time I'd seen him on the streets he'd had a lung operation and he was really messed up. Now he was healthy and clean, and it made me feel good to see him like that. He said, "Come on, I'll show you around." He noticed me looking at his clothes and at my own and he said, "Oh, don't worry about that, man. I'll fix you up. Come on."
Little Ernie was working in the employees' dry cleaning plant. He was the lead man there. We had some small talk and walked around, and he said, "It's not as bad as it seems. I know how you feel because I felt the same when I first drove up, drug and panicked, but you've got friends here, and everything'll be alright."
We walked around the big yard, and he showed me the canteen line. You can buy a book with duckets in it, coupons for however much money you draw, which you use to pay for things from the canteen. You get a new book each month, and no one can steal it from you because only you can cash your own duckets. You can buy these books if someone sends you money, or you can have someone that's in the jail put money on your books, or you can get a job and get paid. Eventually I got a job paying six dollars a month, but the prison deducted a dollar and eighty cents from that for the "inmate welfare fund," which they said was for movies and canteen, leaving me with four dollars and twenty cents a month, still a lot of money.
Little Ernie showed me the big yard. The cell blocks formed the walls of the yard and right in the middle was a tower with a shed on it and a walkway so the guards could walk out to it with rifles. I looked around this big area and everywhere I looked I saw groups of people and I could see that they were, like, cliques. A group of Mexicans, a group of blacks, a group. of whites. Each group talking, and all kinds of action going on. In the middle of the yard, to the left of the shed, was a bunch of picnic tables. I saw guys standing around them real intent. I walked over with Ernie and he said, "This is the domino tables." They played dominoes because cards weren't allowed. They made their own dominoes out of plastic and wood and glass, and they were beautiful. They played for cigarettes-that was money in prison. And I learned that many people were killed because of debts incurred at the domino tables. In San Quentin you could work or not work. If you chose not to work, you'd just wander around the yard. Those were