You Can Run but You Can't Hide (12 page)
Read You Can Run but You Can't Hide Online
Authors: Duane Dog Chapman
“I’d slaughter both of them right there.”
“See, now, that’s not the right answer. Remember, you’re Jesus.
He would forgive both of them right away. No killing.”
I totally understood what Bobby was saying. His advice saved
my ass. It got me shipped out to Jester Two, just like I had hoped.
Make no mistake about it—hard labor meant hard labor in
Texas. All the farms at Huntsville expected their inmates to be self-
supporting, and Jester Two was no exception. Inmates who didn’t
work didn’t eat.
We l c o m e t o H u n t s v i l l e
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As soon as I arrived at Jester Two, I got sent to my dormitory,
where I was given a hoe-squad number and a bunk assignment.
They stuck all of the complete screwups in Squad Number One and
then sorted the rest of us out to the other nine squads. I got put in
Hoe Squad Three.
Early in the morning, the lieutenant would bust in shouting,
“Three Hoe . . . in the hall!” When the squad was lined up, they
would march us out.
One of the other Hoe Squad Three inmates turned to me and
said, “You might think you know hard work, boy. But I know you
ain’t never seen nothing like this.”
I just laughed at him. The next two hours of grueling fieldwork
quickly changed my attitude. I found hell on earth chain-ganged in
the fields of Texas. Each given a long hoe, we were lined up side by
side. Then we cut grass. We called it “hoe and go.”
If you stopped working for a second, there were inmates called
Strikers who beat the hell out of you. When we were allowed our
first water break, a Mexican guy ran up and kicked me right in the
face while I was resting. The guards sat back and ignored what was
going down. He caught me off guard, and I was too damn tired to
hit him.
Later, a black guy pulled me aside and asked, “Are you gay?”
“What the . . . ? No.”
“You’re gonna be tonight unless you fight back.”
I didn’t want to lose my good time, so I told him that’s why I
didn’t retaliate.
He said, “It’s either that or your asshole.”
The Mexican guy continued messing with me all through din-
ner. At one point, he walked up and said, “You just wait, gringo.
Tomorrow in the fields, I’m gonna fuck you up.”
I knew I had to get him before he got me, so the next day during
our water break, as he put the metal cup up to his mouth to drink, I
kicked him
hard
in the face. I tried to take his head off. Each corner
of his mouth split back into his cheeks about two inches. Everyone
was standing there watching what I’d done. Nobody said a thing.
A big son of a bitch named Espinosa happened to be our field
boss that day. Boss Espinosa was a rugged man who could have
kicked the crap out of any inmate around, so everyone gave him
plenty of respect.
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He gathered all us inmates together and said, “All right, boys.
Now who’s the one who went and cut the Mexican in the face?” For
some stupid reason, I stepped forward.
“Congratulations, Chapman. You’ll be at the front of the line
tomorrow.”
The troublemakers got sent to the front of the line. They were
there to set the pace for everyone in the field. Any falling behind or
slacking off and the Strikers would step in and bust them up. After-
ward, they would toss what was left of the guy into an old wagon
and take him directly to the shitter. There was no stopping at the
infirmary for medical attention.
After only two days, I began physically breaking down. On the
first day, my hands were already horribly bleeding from gripping
the hoe. I tried wrapping them with rags, but it didn’t make much
of a difference. They bled straight through.
My survival instinct told me I’d best make friends with one of
the Strikers. If I didn’t, it would only be a matter of time before I
was going to be on the receiving end of a nasty beating.
I was able to use a combination of my talking skills and faith in
God to win them over. Right before lights out, I called one of the
Strikers over and said, “Listen, I’m gonna work as hard as I possibly
can tomorrow out in that field. But there ain’t no way I’m gonna be
as fast as everybody else.”
After thinking for a moment, he said, “We’re gonna give you
some slack, just a day or two, though. Don’t forget that Boss Es-
pinosa is going to be eyeballin’ you out there, so you better set a
pace or it ain’t gonna turn out so good.”
The next morning in the fields, I was a man on a mission. I knew
my ass was on the line, so I worked as hard as I could. At the end of
the day I could barely stand. As we came back into the yard, Boss
Espinoza pulled me aside, “You’re back with your regular hoe
squad tomorrow, Chapman.”
What a relief. Gradually, I was learning how to get on the good
side of the guards, but fitting in with the other inmates was still a
challenge.
When I got
to Huntsville in 1977, it was still a segregated
prison. The two-story cellblock had white inmates on one side and
blacks on the other. They painted the white section a pale lime green.
It was the kind of color you found at the hospital. It wasn’t a feel-
good green.
At night, you could hear the guards off in the darkness pa-
trolling along the tier. I had to angle a little mirror through the bars
of my cell to keep an eye on them. I didn’t want a guard sneaking
up on me if I was doing something I shouldn’t be, like reading or
jacking off.
There was no shortage of opportunities to fight. I felt like I had
to keep proving myself to the others, so I fought all the time. The
fights usually ended in a draw, which was good because then neither
of us was considered a punk.
I’d heard terrible stories about rape in prison. I was only ap-
proached one time in the joint. As far as I’m concerned, it was one
time too many. One evening while I was cleaning my cell after work,
four homies suddenly appeared. They were looking at me like I was
fresh meat.
The fattest, oldest one of the bunch said, “Now, you know what
we want, boy. We won’t beat ya too bad if you cooperate.”
I should’ve been freaked out by the fact that these guys were cor-
nering me, but I wasn’t. I knew something like this was going to
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happen at Huntsville sooner or later. I’d been preparing myself for
it since the day I arrived.
These ugly brothers didn’t scare me. I’d whooped the toughest
bikers around.
I yelled, “What makes any of you ugly motherfuckers think I’m
anyone’s bitch? I sure as shit ain’t! The only thing you’re going to be
fucking is my lifeless corpse, because I’ll fight you all to the death.
You might get me, but I’m going to kill at least one or two of you
before you do! So, who wants to die today?”
They didn’t make a move. They didn’t know what they were
getting themselves into. I stood with my fists clenched, waiting
for them to step up. But they never did.
I was a cocky twenty-four-year-old biker who thought he had all
the answers. Everything I did, I did the hard way. I had no idea what
the easy way meant. I was now six months into my sentence, and I
still hadn’t learned to pick my battles.
One day in the cafeteria, I heard a Muslim prisoner talking
about how he didn’t eat pork because it wasn’t clean.
I told him. “Listen, man, anything that is blessed can be eaten.
And it isn’t worse than any other kinds of food.”
To prove me wrong, he took a piece of bacon and sealed it in a
jar. A couple days later, the Muslims shoved the jar in my face. One
of them said, “What’s this look like to you. You see the worms?”
I pushed it away. I was unimpressed by their demonstration.
“That don’t mean crap,” I told him. “You put any kind of meat in a
jar and it’s gonna do the same thing.”
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was seriously pushing my luck.
What seemed like minor disagreements were of major importance
in the joint, because that was all you had on the inside—right and
wrong. Everything else was stripped away from you.
A few days passed, and the same Muslim came walking back up
to me with another little jar. It had a piece of beef in it, and there
weren’t any worms.
“Looks like I proved you wrong,” he said, smiling.
I should’ve been smart and told him he was right, but I couldn’t
help myself. I said, “Well, could be, but your Allah ain’t nothin’
compared to my almighty God, so go fuck yourself.”
By the look on his face, I don’t think it was the answer he ex-
pected to hear.
L i g h t i n t h e Da r k n e s s
71
Later that day, the Muslims sent a guy named Whitaker after
me. I felt confident going up against him, because we were about
the same size. We stared each other down. I always talked all kinds
of bull before my fights to try to psych out my opponent.
I’d yell, “I’m gonna throw a stiff left cross into your nose and a
straight jab to your right eye.” As they thought about what I was
telling ’em, I’d connect with a flurry of four or five quick punches.
Most of my fights stopped right there. Before I made my move,
Whitaker started doing the same thing to me. He told me, “Your
jaw’s gonna get smashed with an uppercut, then a left to your nose,
a big right to your eye.” All of a sudden
blam, blam, blam,
he landed
a few on me, but I never went down. I’ve taken a lot of punches, but
I’ve never felt anything like Whitaker’s when he connected. He was
the strongest man to ever hit me.
The few punches I landed had no effect on the guy. It was a one-
sided fight.
The typical scrap in the joint would go for a minute or two, but
the ass-whooping Whitaker put on me seemed to take forever. If
any of the guards saw you fighting, you got thrown into the shitter.
But this time the lieutenant of our cellblock, Boss Horn, stood off
to the side smiling as he watched it all go down.
Whitaker was kicking my ass, but I had to hang in for as long as
I could, because all the convicts considered him to be the best
fighter in the joint.
Because I didn’t back down, I earned the respect of the other in-
mates. Whitaker and I emerged as friends. I was so impressed by his
technique that I asked him to teach me how to be a better fighter.
Whenever inmates saw us walking together, they’d shout out, “There
goes Salt and Pepper.”
I had finally adjusted to prison life, when my world was turned
upside down yet again. A process server showed up at Huntsville to
serve me divorce papers. LaFonda had fallen in love with Jim Dar-
nell, one of my best friends.
I was heartbroken. How could that bitch do this to me? After
everything we’d been through, I didn’t expect her to abandon me,
especially for my friend. It was a good thing I was locked up, be-
cause I wanted to hurt both of them. And I would have, too. I was
filled with rage.
The long days out in the fields were taking whatever strength
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I had left. I was already an emotionally broken man, and my body
was physically breaking down from the stress. It got so bad I bit
my tongue so I could spit the blood in a cup and tell the boss I was
pissing blood, so I could be sent to the prison hospital. I met a guy
there who ate poison mushrooms and had a gut that looked like
he was about to give birth. He was slowly killing himself. I was dis-
gusted by the grotesque size of his belly. One day, he asked me to
sit with him by his bed. He was almost too sick to speak. He had
iodine all over his bed, sheets, and clothes. I didn’t want to go near
the guy, but the Lord told me to go over to him. He said the guy
needed me.
“Man, you think there’s really Anyone out there? You think God
is real?” he asked me.
His question made me reconsider my own faith, something I
had all but given up on before coming to Huntsville. I had drifted so
far away that I wasn’t sure if I would ever come back. Before I an-
swered the poor bastard, I asked myself, “How would the Lord an-
swer?” After a long pause, I said, “As long as you have faith that He
is up there, brother, He will forgive you for your sins.” I must have
given him the right answer because he told me he was talking to
God. He told Him he was on his way to see Him.
As I got up to go back to my bed, the thin guy in the next bed
over started yelling, “What you sayin’ that bullshit to him for? You
two stupid pricks! There ain’t no God up there! There ain’t nothing
up there!”
I told him, “Don’t say that. What else is there to believe in in a
place like this, the devil? If you believe in the devil, boy, he’ll surely
get you.”