Straight Life - Art Pepper [160]
That's when I started talking to Little Ernie and Woody Woodward, a huge guy, solid muscle, with fists like ham hocks, but a warm person who played tenor saxophone and painted pictures and loved me because I was a musician. He had committed so many armed robberies before he went to Quentin that they had him in the newspaper, the all-time winner of armed robberies with violence: he'd done about two hundred of them up and down the coast. I talked to Jerry Maher, a Richard Wid- mark type, slender, with steel-cold, blue eyes; I'd seen him in situations with guys that were ten times bigger than him and meaner, you would think, and he was always at ease, had no fear at all. I talked with these people and others. I knew so many-Frank Ortiz was there and Ruben-and I asked them, "Man, how do you stand it? What do I do? I don't want to die here. How do I survive?" And I think it was Jerry Maher who told me, "You have to loosen your cap." He was kind of joking. He said, "I got a cap wrench, man, if you want it." He meant you've got to get a little crazy and a little dingy when you get too uptight. He told me, "Act like you're crazy. It'll keep these idiots away from you. Make noises. Talk to yourself. Mumble. Sing to yourself and groan. Act weird."
That's what I'd done in Terminal Island, but it was nothing to the extent that I did it in San Quentin. I went completely out of it. When I went to the shower, I would stumble like the people in Forth Worth. I'd kick my feet and go, "Grrr- rghhuuughhh!" I'd look at people and go, "Uhhhooooohhhh!" I'd get in the shower and throw the soap up in the air, and I'd put the water in my mouth and scream, "Aaaeeeeeeeee!" They'd look at me and then they'd move away so I could shower. I would bad-rap people. It's a miracle I wasn't killed. I acted like a real maniac and the most violent person imaginable. I'd go to the mess hall with John Wallach-we were in Fort Worth together; we'd go to eat and instead of sticking the food in my mouth I'd stick it in my cheek or bury my head in the plate. We'd put our arms around the plates and eat like animals, slurping and slobbering. I took every kind of pill, every single thing I could get my hands on no matter what it was. There were some pills, they called them "black-andwhites," Dilantin and Phenobarbital; they were for epileptics. Most people were afraid to take them because they really messed you up, but they gave you a nice high so I took them all the time. I'd wake up early in my cell and get my can, and I'd take some wax paper or toilet paper and make a bomb-roll it up into a ball and light it to heat the water-and make some coffee, and I'd take the pills with my coffee and be wiped out when I staggered out of my cell. You lose your equilibrium. You can't walk. So I got a reputation for being really insane. People were afraid of me. And I found that the things I thought I wouldn't be able to live with I was able to play over. I'd mumble to myself and slobber, and that's how I survived. There's nothing like being locked up.
When I went to the guidance center at Chino in '60, we went by alphabetical order, and the name right before mine was Penn, William Penn. Penn was a nice guy, kinda sweet, slender. He had pretty skin. You know how a girl looks when she's young and she goes to