Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade by Edward Bunker Read Free Book Online

mornings a week, we ate in
our cells than marched forth with picks and shovels on our shoulders. We
cleared weeds from irrigation ditches or shoveled pig shit, which must smell
more foul than anything in the world. Sometimes we poured concrete for new pig
pens. At noon we marched back, ate in our own little mess hall, showered and
went to our cells until the next morning. Most others chafed in torment over so
much cell time, but I much preferred the cell because there, I could read.
    Some nameless benefactor had donated a personal
library of several hundred books. Most of them seemed like they were from the
Book of the Month club, but others had once been gifts, if the inscriptions
were any indicator. After the hard covers had been removed, they were stored in
disorder in a closet. We showered three at a time and could trade two or three
books then. The Man would turn on the closet light and let us search through
the books until we finished with our showers. I always hurried to be first out
of the water and dry so I could get an extra minute or two trying to find a
book I might like better than another. I had no critical faculty. A book was a
book and a path to distant places and wonderful adventures. I did develop an
early preference for the historical novel, which was extremely popular
throughout the '40s. I looked for authors and I soon recognized some names of
the bestselling writers like Frank Yerby, Rafael Sabatini, Thomas Costain,
Taylor Caldwell and Mika Waltari. I remember Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, Richard Wright's Native Son and a single volume with several tales
by Jack London, The Sea- Wolf, Call of the Wild and The Iron Heel. One novel was in the form
of a memoir about a revolution in America. For several chapters I thought I was
reading a true story, but when it narrated a civil war in 1920,1 knew that had
never happened. Still, much of what the author wrote about society resonates
with truth today. It was in "G" Company that I realized that novels
could be more than stories that entertained and excited. They could also carry
wisdom and look into the deepest recesses of human behavior.
    By code or administrative policy or some rule they
were not allowed to keep a youth under sixteen in a lockup cell for more than
twenty-nine days at a time. They really liked having me in "G"
Company. I wasn't causing them any trouble: no fights, no assaults on
personnel. I wasn't spitting on them, or stuffing the toilet and flooding the
cell house, agitating insurrection or planning an escape. So on the thirtieth
morning they took me out of "G" Company after breakfast. I checked
into the regular company and went to lunch. After lunch they took me back to
"G" Company. I was glad to return to the half-read book: The Seventh Cross by Anya Seghers.
    After being incarcerated for three out of four years —
I'd spent the other year in a series of escapes — the Youth Authority paroled
me to my aunt. She would have preferred that I parole elsewhere, but there was
no elsewhere. My mother, whom I hadn't seen since my first trip to juvenile
hall, was remarried and had a daughter. Neither my mother nor her husband
wanted me around, and I felt the same. My father, now sixty-two, had a bad
heart and was prematurely senile. He was in a rest home. He didn't recognize me
when I went to see him.
    My aunt met me with love, but she and I saw the world
differently. She saw a fifteen-year-old boy who had gotten into trouble but who
should have learned his lesson by now. She thought I should behave as a
fifteen-year-old boy is supposed to.
    I, on the other hand, saw myself as a grown man, at
least with the rights of an eighteen-year-old. I'd lived on the streets on my
own since I was thirteen. I wasn't going to be home at 10 p.m. if I didn't want
to, nor at midnight either for that matter. As for school, when I went to check
in, my records came up. The registrar looked them over and told me to return on
Monday.
    On Monday, the woman behind