During those early months at Diamond Bar I came to understand the gist of what Ristelli, Causey, and the baldheaded man had tried to tell me. Eventually one found what was suitable. Things came to you. Trust your instincts. These statements proved to be not the vague, useless pronouncements I had assumed, but cogent practicalities, the central verities of the prison. Initially I behaved as I had during my early days at Vacaville. In the dining hall, an appropriately cavernous room of cream-colored walls, with the image of a great flying bird upon the ceiling, dark and unfigured, yet cleanly rendered like an emblem on a flag… in the dining room, then, I guarded my tray with my free arm and glanced fiercely about as I ate, warning off potential food thieves. When I discovered that the commissary was, indeed, a free store, I took to hoarding cigarettes, candy, and soap. It was several days before I recognized the pointlessness of these behavioral twitches, several weeks before I grew comfortable enough to forego them. Though I was not a heavy drug user, on those occasions that I grew bored, prior to beginning my work, I had no difficulty in obtaining drugs—you only had to mention your requirements to one of several men and later that day the pills or the powder would appear in your cell. I have no idea what might have occurred if I had developed a habit, but I doubt this was a problem at the prison. It was clear that the men on my block were all either above average in intelligence or skilled in some craft or both, and that most had found a means of employing their gifts and skills that left no time for recreational excess. As to the men housed in the cellblocks below the eighth stairway and how they managed things—of them I knew little. The men of different blocks rarely mingled. But I was told that they had a less innate grasp of Diamond Bar’s nature than did we. Consequently their day-to-day existence was more of a struggle to adapt. In time, if they were not transferred, they—like us—would move into the old wings of the prison.
It did not seem likely that anyone could have less firm a grasp on the subject of Diamond Bar than I did, but I adapted quickly, learned my way around, and soon became conversant with a theory espoused by the majority of the men on my block, which held that the prison was the ultimate expression of the carceral system, a mutation, an evolutionary leap forward both in terms of the system and the culture that they believed was modeled upon it. They did not claim to understand the specifics of how this mutation had been produced, but generally believed that a mystical conjunction of event (likely a systemic glitch, an alchemy of botched paperwork and inept bureaucracy), natural law, and cosmic intent had permitted the establishment and maintenance of a prison independent of the carceral system or—so said the true believers—one that acted through subtle manipulation to control both the system and the greater society whose backbone the system formed. Though this smacked of Ristelli’s cant, it was not so easy to dismiss now that I saw Diamond Bar for myself. The absence of guards, of any traditional authority; the peculiar demeanor of the inmates; the comfortable beds, decent food and free commissary; the crossing of the river in lieu of ordinary official process; the man dressed as a guard whom everyone had seen and no one knew; the rapid fading of all tattoos; the disturbing dawn cry and the subsequent mutterings, a phenomenon repeated each and every morning—what could be responsible for all this if not some mystical agency? For my part, I thought the theory a fantasy and preferred another, less popular theory—that we were being subjected to an experimental form of mind control and that our keepers were hidden among us. Whenever these theories were discussed, and they were often discussed, Richard Causey, who had studied political science at Duke University prior to turning to a career of violent crime and was writing a history of the prison, would declare that though he had his own ideas, the answer to this apparently unresolvable opposition resided with the board, but that thus far their responses to his inquiries concerning the matter had been inadequate.
The board consisted of four inmates ranging in age from sixtyish to over seventy. Holmes, Ashford, Czerny, and LeGary. They met each day in the yard to, it was said, decide the important questions relating to our lives and—if you bought into the view that Diamond Bar was the purest expression of a carceral universe, the irreducible distillate of the essential human condition—the lives of everyone on the planet. To reach the yard it was necessary to pass through the old wing of the prison visible beyond the eighth stairway, and though in the beginning I did not enjoy the passage, made anxious by the gloomy nineteenth century atmosphere of the wing’s antiquated cells with their key locks and hand-forged bars, and the masses of rotting stone in which they were set, I grew accustomed to the sight and came to view the old sections of the prison as places of unguessable potential—it was there, after all, that I would someday live if I stayed at Diamond Bar. As I’ve noted, the prison straddled a ridge—the spine of the ridge ran straight down the middle of the yard. Most of the population would gather close to the walls or sit on the slopes, which had been worn barren by countless footsteps, but the members of the board met among the grass and shrubs that flourished atop the ridge, this narrow strip of vegetation giving the enclosed land the look of a giant’s scalp pushing up from beneath the earth, one whose green hair had been trimmed into a ragged Mohawk. Rising beyond the west wall, several iron girders were visible, evidence of the new wing that was under construction. The new wing was frequently referenced in conversation as being the panacea for whatever problems existed in our relatively problem—free environment—it seemed an article of faith that prison life would therein be perfected. Again, this struck me as fiction disseminated by whoever was manipulating our fates.
Late one afternoon some four months after my arrival, myself and Causey—toward whom I had succeeded in developing a neutral attitude—and Terry Berbick, a short, thickset bank robber with a gnomish look, his curly black hair and beard shot through with gray, were sitting against the east wall in the yard, discussing the newcomer on our block, Harry Colangelo: this happened to be the baldheaded man whom I had confronted on the day I came to the prison. His furtive air and incoherent verbal outbursts had made a poor impression, and Berbick was of the opinion that Colangelo’s move onto the block had been premature.
“Something confused the boy. Caught him at a crucial moment during his period of adjustment, and he’s never gotten squared away.” Berbick glanced at me. “Might be that dust-up with you did the trick.”
“It wasn’t that big a deal.”
“I don’t know. Way he stares at you, seems like you got under his skin. It might be why he moved up to eight—so he can come back at you easier.”