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Leavenworth Kansas was unholy hot in August of ’61. The white-hot summer sun blazed across the open plains and baked the stone prison. Inside C cellhouse, Royce Culhane was finding out first hand why they called Leavenworth Penitentiary the “Hot House”. There was no air conditioning, and the sluggish brown fans only swept the burning air against his boiled flesh. Wearing only prison issue boxer shorts, he sat on the top bunk of his five-and-a-half-by-nine-foot concrete cell surrounded by gray walls, dirty floors, and the putrid stench of bitter men. Defiant convict banter, and cold steel slamming against reinforced concrete, echoed throughout the cellhouse.
“The name’s Chauncey Logan in case you’re interested,” called out the old con from the bottom bunk. Chauncey was a hard looking forty doing life on the installment plan. He’d spent most of his adult life in some kind of county, state, or federal lockup. Although he preferred armed robbery, he was not by nature a violent man. He wasn’t psychotic, prone to fits of uncontrolled rage, and he wasn’t some kind of pervert. As things go, Royce could of done worse.
Two men wearing only shackles, escorted by two pasty faced overweight guards, stopped on the gangway in front of his cell. The lead prisoner, a white man, had the guard’s attention. He was covered in tattoos, all done in prison issue blue and green ink, and across his back in three-inch gothic letters he had inked “Hate is Purity”. His gnarled muscles strained against the restraints, and when the guards released him from his shackles, he had to turn sideways and duck to get inside the cell. The second prisoner, a pintsized colored kid, kept his head down until the two guards started to unchain him. When the guards forced him into the cell, the colored kid looked like he was going to the gallows.
“You see that?” Chauncey said. He swung out of his bunk and took a piss. “I knew if that faggot Kennedy got elected President we’d be in deep dog shit.” Chauncey took one last hard hit off his roll your own, flipped the butt through the bars, then zipped up his pants. “Looks like he’s going to try and integrate the federal joints right away. Can you imagine? A white man having to live with a nigger?”
He’d heard the same kind of talk from the guard who’d fingerprinted him that morning. The tired old guard, a rail of a man whose uniform hung out of kilter, and whose bad teeth gave him road kill breath, told Royce his version of why Leavenworth was under twenty-four-hour lockdown. ‘Some dumb nigger tried to stab a white man. They ought to hang all them niggers’. Growing up in Jackson Mississippi, he’d heard it all before. Outside, it was a lot easier to ignore. In Leavenworth, you didn’t get to choose.
Chauncey spit in the toilet and then looked back at Royce. “You got a name kid?”
“Names Culhane…Royce Culhane,” he replied, looking at his pale white skin.
Chauncey sat hunched on the side of his bunk, rolled a smoke, and filled Royce in on the current situation. “The hillbilly in the next cell, the one screaming ‘Get this nigger out of here’, that’s Big Bill Jaco. Watch yourself around Jaco. Smart cons make it a point not to piss him off. If he gets his mitts on you, you’re in trouble. I’ve seen what Jaco can do to a man; that son of a bitch is a sadist. He had himself an Indian girlfriend. Asshole got drunk and beat her to death. He did it while her four-year-old son watched. Jaco’s a stone killer. And he hates niggers. There’s going to be a race riot for sure when he kills that little pickaninny.” Chauncey stretched out on his bunk and asked, “What you in for kid?”
Royce told his story, and when he mentioned to Chauncey he’d been convicted of stealing a Cadillac, Chauncey genuinely perked up.
“I started stealing cars when I was ten,” he said. “I switched to armed robbery because the money’s better and there’s no middle man, but my first love is grand theft auto.”
They talked about cars for a while then Royce told the old con that he hadn’t seen Velma since he’d been arrested.
“What did you expect? You’re lucky that girl dumped you. I see guys in here with families. It rips their guts out. No room for love in Leavenworth.”
The lights went out, and Chauncey gave Royce one last thought for the day. “The golden rule—Don’t trust anyone. If someone does something for you in this place, it’s because they want something. Don’t be fooled; there are no nice people in Leavenworth.”
The next morning after chow, prison officials called off the lockdown, and Royce got his first visitor. He arrived at the visiting room late, and while he scanned the overcrowded room looking for a friendly face, he could feel the unspoken fear of the broken families that filled the tables. His eyes went side-to-side, front-to-back, until he spotted a colorless young woman seated alone in the back of the room. Her face was obscured by the shadow of her scarf, and with her eyes hidden behind some oversized Havana sunglasses, she looked like one of those movie stars trying desperately to hide from their fans. Until she stood up, he didn’t even realize it was Velma. He hadn’t seen her in court during the trail. She hadn’t visited during the three months he was in the County Jail in Jackson. She hadn’t returned his letters. After three months in county jail, and two days in Leavenworth, he didn’t even know what love was anymore—all he felt was hate.
“Nice of you to show up now,” Royce said, taking a seat. “Where were you during my trial? You were my only witness. They gave me eight years!”
“I know how you must feel, what you must think of me,” Velma said. She lowered her sunglasses. “I couldn’t come to the trial; I couldn’t leave the house. As long as I was a minor my father had complete control over me.” Velma pulled a new Mississippi Drivers License out of her purse and pointed to the birth date, “I turned eighteen five days ago. I’ve moved out of my father’s house, and I’m staying with my Aunt Birdie in Tupelo. I’ve retained counsel, and our lawyer has already petitioned the court for a new trial. He says he should be able to get you out of here in a couple of days. Chances are—there won’t even be a new trial. Our lawyer thinks the appeals court will dismiss the charges.”
“What about your father? He’s not a man who likes to be challenged. And he’s not just going to let me go free without a fight.”
“Yes he will. If he ever wants to see me again.” Velma took his hand. “Please understand. My father was trying to protect me. He just went too far.”
Royce smiled that day for the first time in three months. And after the visit, as he walked back to his cell, he thanked God that he wouldn’t have to end up like the hardened-convict Chauncey, or have to spend the next eight years living in constant fear of men like Big Bill Jaco. When Royce got back to his cell, Chauncey was his usual pleasant self.
“What you smiling about?”
Royce told him about Velma.
Chauncey only scoffed. “Don’t bring that pie in the sky bullshit in here. You’re in Leavenworth youngster. No one gets out that easy.”
Royce stepped out onto the gangway and lit a smoke. Someone yelled, “They’ve got control of C cellhouse.” The cellhouse rumbled, and a guard screamed, “Lock down, lockdown now.” Light bulbs, toilet paper, magazines, and anything else that wasn’t tied down started flying out of the cells. Royce ducked back in his cell.
Chauncey pulled a metal shank from under his mattress and slipped it behind his back. Pushing Royce aside, he stepped to the cell door and said, “Be cool Jaco, you got no problem here.”
Big Bill Jaco stood just outside the cell; his primitive eyes boiled with rage. Clamped in his claw-like hand was the beaten and bloody shell of the young colored kid. Jaco held him effortlessly by the neck with one hand, and the kid looked like a dead rabbit hanging in the jaws of a wolf. Jaco dropped the kid on the concrete gangway, and the battered young man sobbed. Jaco kicked him in the ribs, and the kid rolled down the gangway.
Royce grabbed Chauncey by the shirt. “He’s going to kill that kid.”
“Better him than me,” Chauncey said, pushing Royce away.
“Give me the shank.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
>
“Give me the shank damn it.”
Royce grabbed Chauncey in a bear hug, and yanked the crude weapon from his waistband. Bolting out of the cell, he slipped on the concrete gangway, and crashed to the floor. Jaco’s foot was close enough that the smell made Royce gag. Jaco was crushing the colored kid’s windpipe with his foot. Royce drove the steel shank; the jagged blade pierced Jaco’s heal. Royce rolled back, and his adrenalin-fueled grip pulled the steel blade, ripping through Jaco’s Achilles tendon. Crippled, Jaco dropped to the floor. Royce jumped up and swung out over the railing. As he dropped to the next tier, a shotgun blast shattered the frenzied air, and tear gas canisters exploded throughout the cellhouse.
Leavenworth was under strict lockdown after the riot, and for a few days, Royce sweated it out in his cell. No one talked, and without fanfare, he was released five days later. Jaco was in the infirmary for a week, and Royce slipped out without him even knowing about it. Royce heard the colored kid made it. He was in Intensive Care for two days, but he’d been downgraded to critical, and by the time Royce was released, the prison odds makers had stopped taking bets on whether or not the kid was going to live.