San Quentin

CAN YOU KILL AND

STILL BE INNOCENT?

13

I ow you kill a person, he I is asking.

How a person die, he I is asking.

What it mean—kill, die—he is asking.

Enrolled in Intro Biology to seek why.

His name is unpronounceable— Quogh. He is five feet one inch tall. He can't weigh more than 100 pounds. He is not a scrappy featherweight with swift lethal child-fists like rock, he is a slight bald boy with a curved back. His face is a patina of scars and blem­ishes and his minnow-eyes are shy behind his black plastic glasses that fit his narrow head wrongly. Smil­ing eager in Intro Biology to show how serious he is, saying, How is a person die, how that happen. Is like an animal maybe but why.

He thinks of this all the time he says. Like wake or sleep or in-between. Some-kind voice saying to him How you did this thing, how this happen, you!

And she your old sister she be good to you.

SAN QUENTIN: where you never meant to do what you don't remember you were accused of doing so long ago it almost doesn't matter where you were when it was claimed you'd done what you were accused of doing which of course—you swear—you hadn't done, or not in exactly that way, and not at that time.

"Prisoners use the outdoor

urinals, against the facility walls. Do not look in their direction."

They wear long-sleeved white T-shirts beneath short-sleeved blue shirts with PRISONER in white letters on the back. They wear blue sweatpants and at the waist in white letters C D C R and on the left pant leg in vertical white letters

and all of their clothing loose-fitting as pajamas.

There is something in his mouth that causes his words to emerge contorted and bright with spittle. There is something in his throat that stammers like a small frog in spasm. The minnow-eyes glimmer and dart. He is a dili­gent student, he will read slowly and in silence pushing his stubby forefinger along lines of print. He will hunch his shoulders close to photocopied pages from LIFE: THE SCIENCE OF BIOLOGY which is a massive textbook too dangerous to bring into the facility.

There comes a squint into the ruined boy's-face. There comes a look of intense fear but determi­nation. With a plastic spoon he

HE WONDERS IF THE LIVE THING BE LIKE

FIRE THAT IT BE BLOWN OUT AND GONE OR IF

THE LIVE THING BE LIKE HOLINESS THAT IT

NOT BE KILLED BUT TAKEN UP TO HEAVEN.

"dissects" a sheep brain in the biology lab. Under the instructor's guidance, he and eight other inmate-students. The "dissection" is clumsy. The sheep brain resembles chewy leather. His lab partner has a dark face like erosion and dreadlock hair to his shoulders. He is explaining he is not sure he had ever seen a live sheep—maybe pictures, when he be boy in school in San Jose. He is saying why does a live thing stop being live—what makes a live thing be dead. One minute and then the other—and be dead.

He wonders if the live thing be like fire that it be blown out and gone or if the live thing be like Holiness that it not be killed but taken up to Heaven.

He has question is easier for a thing to live than to die—like weed? Like cockroach?

There are 10 inmate-students registered in Intro Biology but always each week one will fail to come to class. Yet never Quogh—he is the most eager student.

Never can you really understand what Quogh is saying. Yet you nod, smile and nod for you are weak in such ways.

You have learned Quogh has enrolled in Intro Biol­ogy before. Several times it may have been. For he is not so young as he appears, for he appears scarcely more than 16. So small, and his back curved so you feel sorry for him but also exasperation and impa­tience for he speaks slowly and with difficulty and with a look of wonderment—How is possible, a thing die? What is it mean, take a thing life from it—how?

He is a "lifer"—60 years to life.

Each class is three hours. Three hours!

In San Quentin, time passes slow as backed-up drains.

In San Quentin, murderers dressed like a Softball team.

San Quen-tin, voluptuous sound!

San Quen-tin, a hard caress.

Each class he is grimmer, broke-back like an upright snake and staring with minnow-eyes at the instructor. Shy and clumsy unless he is resentful and furious with the plastic spoon, that cracks between his stubby fin­gers with a startling little crack! that draws the other inmate-students' eyes to him.

Is a split plastic spoon now a weapon. You will wonder.

Your heart cringes. Such wonderment, you keep out of your eyes.

Wants badly to know, it is all the God damn fuckin wish he has to know, how you can kill a person living, how does a person die. For does the person who die say to herself it is all right now to die, she is sick tired fed up and to die, or is it the other way—it is the one

who kill who is the cause. Tryin to figure this out, there is some answer to this to be known.

Through the semester he stares at the lecturer, and at the blackboard where the lecturer scribbles words with colored chalk. At lab time the others in PRISONER clothing avoid little Quogh like you avoid a little mangy sick dog that might suddenly yip and bury ugly yellow teeth in your ankle. Wants so bad to fig­ure these facts but the weeks pass, the dry cold winter season is past and it is spring and the sun blinding just outside the Quonset-hut classroom where the prison­ers go singly to use the outdoor urinals glimpsed from behind the white horizontal bar PRISONER across the back of the blue shirt for nowhere is PRISONER to be avoided, you have made of yourself a ridiculous sight, no one dares laugh.

And now it is ending. And now, it is the last week. He has not passed Intro Biology—(again)—for he has not done most of the work and what work he has handed in is incomprehensible like a child's scribbling in pencil on sheets of torn and curiously soiled paper. Yet he is not angry with the instruc­tor, or does not give that impression. He is sad, he is anguished-seeming not angry, his blemished face contorted as if in the pain of actual thought saying he think about it all the time but don't know more than ever—what it is.

Still I am not given up. I have 60 year yet, tc figure out.

Why there be spiders there—these place I am put. They said, she is not a lit girl any longer & Mam say, she my lit girl.

She also my lit girl til I am deadandgone.

She be my old sister from before my daddy live with us.

They said, It is best thing for she, & for you to be a part. You are sugar-blood-dibetees. You are fat. For she be fat lady, in the family-court place we be wait­ing by the chairs, & some boy say nasty-like, Yo that lady so fat—man she is fat. So they laugh. & one say, Oh—her. & they look at me where I am waiting. I am face like head, too big face.

Like a faucet turned on—hot. & no one to turn it back. The thing that was in my hand, that came to hurt her, she too fat to take breath. I was shamed, my old sister so fat they laugh at us, and Mam like to say, they both my lit babies.

Finly when it was over, they came for me—the light was bright & their voices loud & they say What did you do! What did you do! & it was never explained to me either, all those years ago.