PELICAN BAY
His skin told his history in tattoos and knife scars. He lived in a room with no night. And he was to his own mind a god.
Crazy Craig Hollington, Pelican Bay lifer, president of the prison gang known as Aryan Steel, which made him the president of all the dirty whiteboys in California, lived his life in a Supermax cell where the lights were on twenty-four hours a day. He couldn’t own anything firmer than a Q-tip. They rolled his shower stall to the door of his cell twice a week to keep him from the other prisoners. But he was a god made of other men.
He had men for a mouth. That’s how the death warrants left Supermax. A bent guard on Aryan Steel’s payroll brought the warrants from Crazy Craig to the plugged-in whiteboys in gen pop.
He had men for blood. They moved Crazy Craig’s death warrants around the prison on kites, pieces of paper swung on a string from cell to cell. “To all solid soldiers on the block or on the street,” the warrants began. They were signed with the motto “steel forever, forever steel.” The words in between described a vendetta. The warrants named the three condemned: A man. A woman. A child. The warrants spelled out specific acts of bloodshed. The warrants were Defcon Old Testament.
He had men for feet. The cons sent the warrants out into the world. They sent them out in pigpen ciphers worked into letters home. As thumbtack braille punched through deposition paperwork. As dried piss painted onto the backs of envelopes, invisible until the paper was held to fire. They sent them out in the visiting room, a featherwood passing her man a balloon of dope in a kiss, him passing her back the death warrants in a whisper. The warrants spread through California wherever peckerwood gangsters and white trash hustlers made camp. They read them in Slabtown and Sun Valley and Fontucky. The warrants went out through Aryan Steel associates and wannabes. They moved through the memberships of shitkicker gangs who paid allegiance to the Steel. Peckerwood Nation. The Nazi Dope Boys. The Blood Skins. Odin’s Bastards.
He had men for eyes. A couple of skinheads in Huntington Beach—three-day strangers from sleep on a crank binge—put together wanted posters. They put the pictures to the death warrants, made them official. They quoted the death warrants verbatim. They tacked on rumors. They pulled pictures off the Internet. The man’s mug shot. The woman and child, pictured together. The posters got passed around. People memorized the facts, the words, the faces.
He had men for hands. It only took a few days all told before the posters came to a man with a throat-cut tattoo and fuck-you-money ambitions. Addresses were compiled. Plans made. Weapons secured. Blood pacts sealed.
His will be done.