Straight Life - Art Pepper [83]
There were a lot of people in there who'd been getting stuff for ages. These were people who came in off the streets to kick. They'd sign themselves in and stay sixty or ninety days and then they'd leave. We called them "winders." We talked a couple of these guys into giving us a taste of their medicine. They had to drink it in front of somebody, but they'd put it in their mouths and act like they'd swallowed it and then come back and spit into a cup, and we'd drink it. It was kind of nasty, but when you want dope it really doesn't seem to be very nasty.
We stayed a while getting physical examinations, and then they assigned us to the place where we were going to do our time. It was like a dormitory. It had a big dayroom and another room with rows of bunkbeds separated by little, five-foot boards, making cubicles, two guys to a cubicle.
In the morning a bell would ring and we'd get up, go to the bathroom, wash and dress, and walk down to breakfast. The mess hall was in another building, quite a ways from where I was staying, so I'd walk through the tunnels with the nut patients. They'd be shuffling along with their hands in their pockets and their heads hanging down, and every now and then I'd see one of them standing in a corner, peeing against the wall. I'd walk into the mess hall, and we, the fiends, would eat on one side, and they, the nuts, would eat on the other. The food was very good.
I was lucky in Fort Worth. When I got there, there were very few musicians and eventually they appointed me head of the music department. It really wasn't a department, but they had to have somebody to order things, so every now and then I'd make up an order for reeds and drumsticks and things like that. Then I started doing a little teaching and it was good because instead of cleaning the tunnels or working in the kitchen I got to work in the music room. I'd go to the band room in the morning, sweep the floor, clean the place, and make sure everything was locked up, and then I'd get out my horn. I'd close the door in this little room and just sit there and practice. I did that every day, and it was the first time I'd ever practiced, and I really got down with music. Then I formed a little group. I got a drummer and a bass player, who weren't very good, and a piano-the piano player was very good, a guy named Abdullah Kenne- brew, who was black and short, and we argued all the time. The piano had wheels on it so we could roll it. We had a little cart to carry the drums and bass and we'd go around and play for different wards. We'd play in the closed wards for the mental patients. We'd walk in and set up in a corner and just start playing, no announcement or anything. We were a regular jazz group, and we played bebop, and the patients had no idea what we were doing.
Each patient had his own little thing. There was one guy who just walked around making the sign of the cross. He'd bow down on one knee as if he was praying and mumble. They had a bench that extended all around the dayroom, and one guy would sit there and count money all the time; every now and then he'd put his fingers to his mouth and wet them as if he was counting bills. Then there were catatonics, who would just stand in one position and never move, and there were people who'd sit or lie on the floor and play with their toes. Now and then, there would be one that would look at you, but as soon as you looked back, he'd turn away and giggle and hide behind a table or something.
We played, and while we played I noticed that almost all of them showed some signs of hearing the music, moving their feet or some part of their bodies in a semblance of the rhythm we were playing in. Some of them would even smile-a silly smile. And that showed us that what we were doing was getting through to them. I talked to the aides and the nurses and asked them if they thought