Booker T: From Prison to Promise: Life Before the Squared Circle (13 page)

The guy in the car was scared out of his mind and sat there helplessly stunned.

His assailant was practically foaming at the mouth. His little wolf pack of friends looked on, waiting to see if anyone around might get involved.

I was perched on the back of a bench, watching all this unfold, wondering if this fool thought he would try that shit with me. My hands were firmly planted in my pockets and squeezing the twin .38s I was carrying. My gaze was glued to his back. Feeling as agitated as I had been and wanting to release some aggression, I wished he would approach me.

Z-Boy whispered, “Book, it’s cool, man.”

I took a breath and took my hands out of my pockets.

Nobody had a clue how much I wanted to squeeze those triggers. I had been violated so many different ways throughout the last twenty years that it was as if all my pent-up aggression had channeled into that moment. That guy had become an unwitting symbol of every person who had ever taken advantage of me or abandoned me and of every hardship I had endured.

“Are you okay?” Z-Boy said.

I wasn’t sure. I had never experienced anything like this before.

When I went back to my apartment, I almost vomited. When I looked at the mirror, I did not like what I saw. What was I becoming?

Later that night, I tried to sleep but stared at the ceiling until sunrise. I never returned to MacGregor Park, even avoiding driving by at all costs.

After a few weeks, I was cool again and tried to put the whole gun incident behind me. Soon enough, it was business as usual. I cut the boys in on my deal with Toffa. We were selling a shitload of weed and raking in the money. Still, it was never enough. Once again, it was time for a trip to Wendy’s for a Frosty and cash.

It had been about a month since our last robbery, and I decided it was time for me to get my feet wet and actually go into Wendy’s with Zach for the first time. Since our first job, I had always stayed on the fringe of all the madness by driving, which was probably a passive way of saying, “I’m too scared to go in and do that shit with you guys. I’ll be the designated getaway driver instead.” I’m sure the other guys saw it that way too but didn’t care. Everyone knew how important a dependable driver was, making sure those wheels were ready to go. When I told them what I wanted to do, they each gave me a quick fist bump and a hug.

Z-Boy was extra pumped for the night. Since day one, he had been telling me I should see what it was all about. “Hell fuckin’ yeah, Book. I knew it was only a matter of time before you’d get hungry for a taste of the action. It’s gonna get crazy in there, but you’re more than ready.”

He was right. I was curious what it would be like going inside, and by this time I was completely committed to the crew. So on a rainy night in 1987, I put on my Wendy’s outfit and joined Zach, Fran, and Wendell in a four-strong Wendy’s Bandits run-in at a franchise location in Northside.

Since no one was sitting out in the car as the designated driver, we decided to park on the other side of the gate of an apartment complex next to the restaurant. We knew it was a great spot to leave the car because it would make it a lot harder to chase us. Any pursuer would have to climb over or go around that gate.

After several deep breaths, we got out of the car, leapt over the fence, and calmly walked to the side entrance of the building. As we made our approach, two employees took out the garbage. We slipped in right behind them on their way back in.

Each of us had a certain position to get into so that all the entrances and counter area were covered. Once arranged and settled, we proceeded to pull out our guns and get down to business.

Zach took over and started screaming, “Get the fuck down, or I’ll kill somebody. You motherfuckers, get the fuck down.”

I wasn’t at all prepared for the chaos of the scene. A few trembling customers still sat in the restaurant. One of them had fries hanging out of his wide-open mouth.

For the first time, it hit me that I had stepped out of who I was and become something much different. My entire life, I had been the one getting bullied and pushed around, and here I was doing it to these people.

While I stood there, chaos was going down all around me. I snapped out of it just in time to see Fran jump over the counter and swipe all the cash from the registers as the rest of us nervously looked in every direction, waving our guns like madmen. It was almost too much to handle. It seemed we were in there forever, though it was only about three minutes in total.

In some of the early robberies, the guys who had gone in had worn stockings over their heads, but they had since stopped and we all went totally visible. There were no security cameras, and no one in the restaurant knew us. Still, I kept my head down as much as possible. If there was one thing I always realized, it was that I had a distinct, memorable face. The last thing I wanted was to be recognized someday while out and about.

Another less-than-brainy move was the fact that we had girls around. I was seeing this black-Asian girl everyone called Red because of her bronze complexion. Red’s best friend, Robin, was Z-Boy’s girl. Aside from the boys in the crew, our girls were the only two people on the planet who knew what we had been up to as the Wendy’s Bandits. They watched in the wings as we planned and carried out our robberies and sold marijuana, and they became increasingly excited as the media frenzy surrounding the Bandits grew.

During shows like
Texas Outlaws,
Crime Stoppers ads constantly ran, reminding people to identify us for that five-thousand-dollar reward. One time when it came up, I could have sworn I saw a spark in Robin’s eyes.

The pressure was building. After this most recent escapade, we made our way back to the hideout at Park Village and divvied up the take, which was a thousand dollars total. To unwind after all the commotion, excitement, and stress, we took our shares and partied all night. We went to a bar to wash down double-tall glasses of Hennessy, Cognac, and Jack and Cokes until closing time, then headed to the apartment to smoke weed until dawn.

For weeks after that robbery, we took a break from the action. One evening Red and I made plans for a special little lunch date the next day. I would join Zach afterward to take care of some usual weed business—both selling and smoking. Then I would take it back home to crash for the night.

The events of April 9, 1987 came out of nowhere like a shot to the head, and they sent me straight from the streets to prison. When the long arm of the law took hold of me and smashed me down to the ground, I knew exactly what the score was.

Now here I was in prison, fulfilling Mom’s prophecy:
If you don’t stop, you’ll end up dead or in jail.

I alone had gotten myself into this, and it was time to make up my mind how I would handle it. I could let the system eat me alive, become a bitter institutionalized young black man, and blame my problems on everyone else. Or I could accept my time for what it was—my responsibility.

I was determined to pick myself up and rise above it all one way or another. I would do something special with my life—something my mother would have been proud of. I carried that philosophy with me, like Booker T’s Commandments, at all times. It was way beyond time to develop a productive approach to my stay on the inside. When I woke up my first morning in Pack 2, I would do so with a fresh perspective and a promise: I would use my life to make big things happen.

At six in the morning, my first wake-up call at Pack 2 came like an unwelcome slap to the face. As the lights kicked on and the guards loudly made their presence known, I just lay there in my rack staring at the ceiling, trying to clear my mind. My eyes stung with each blink, and when I heard the grumblings and yawns of the inmates, I knew I really was in prison. It wasn’t just a nightmare after all. Groggy from having slept no more than an hour or two, I got up to make my rack like everybody else.

The first order of business before finding out exactly what kind of work I would be doing at Pack 2 was to make my way to the chow hall for breakfast. Let there be no mistaking it: prison food is terrible. It is nothing but the cheapest run-of-the-mill, mass-produced slop the government can allow to be served up piping hot on a tray. My unceremonious inaugural meal was a serving-spoon-sized splatter of creamy chipped beef on two pieces of white toast, otherwise known as shit on a shingle. It looked like vomit and tasted even worse.

After choking down my breakfast, I wondered what was in store for me. The answer came quicker than I expected.

“All right, come on and get moving. Time to hit the field.”

The guards barked orders, and the other inmates grudgingly formed two single-file lines.

The field?
I thought.
What the fuck is that?

We were shackled together and loaded into the back of a big, covered work truck. A few miles from the prison, we stopped. Chain gang—style, we walked off the truck and practically fell into each other, igniting a falling line of domino inmates. As we steadied ourselves, I felt the hot sun focusing in overhead and broke into a sweat. Slowly, clumsily, we staggered into a giant field, where they unchained us. The scene was pretty close to ones from the movie
Cool Hand Luke.

Oh, this is the field,
I thought.

The guards, seated high on white horses with their rifles at the ready, directed us to a pile of axes, hatchets, and saws. “Get to it, boys. You know what to do.”

Even though I did not have a clue what to do, I learned pretty quickly. A few yards in the distance were trees, stumps, wood chips, and sawdust everywhere. It was time for some good old-fashioned, backbreaking labor. Great.

For hours, I chopped, hacked, and pulled stuff apart and hauled it away until blisters the size of quarters had formed on every inch of my gloveless hands. The only break came at noon, when we were loaded into the truck, taken all the way back to Pack 2, and served these awful soybean patties along with some greens and corn, which were all grown on the premises by the inmates. The second we finished that miserable crap, we headed straight back to the grind of the field for four more hours.

Needless to say, after getting my first taste of the brutal work detail, I was not thrilled at the long-term prospect of this new routine. The whole time I was out there swinging my axe, I was obsessed with finding a solution to this dismal new dilemma known as labor.

All right, Booker, you’re in a shit situation,
I thought.
You can get out of it. How are you going to do it?
That became a mantra in my head from the time I woke up each day until I lay down sixteen hours later.

One saving grace during my time on the chain gang was encountering Butler, a black guy from Dallas who was in for a drug beef. He was willing to laugh at his situation and take everything in stride, which reminded me of myself. After just a few days of being out in the field together, we became friends.

One particular day, Butler invited me to one of the counter-tops in the dorm and offered to share one of his spreads of chili, cheese, and crackers. “Book,” he said, “we’re definitely brothers from another mother.”

I wondered how a smart and charismatic dude like Butler had landed in prison, but I was sure glad he had. Without his carefree attitude making me laugh every step and chop of the way out there in the sun and under the watchful eyes of those guards, I might have cracked.

I especially loved watching Butler play ball. Pack 2 had recreation time after dinner in a decent little gym, where we shot around and played pickup basketball games to let off some steam. Those courts were where Butler really came alive, and I was amazed by the display he would put on.

Butler schooled everyone, and the trash talk he spewed the whole time made me die laughing. “Come on, boy, what you gonna do, huh? I’m about to pass your ass with a 360 spin to your right, and you still won’t stop it. I’m the motherfuckin’ soul train.”

Then he would do exactly what he’d said, dumbfounding everyone.

Butler was something else. Everyone in the prison knew when it came to ballin’ he was the dude you wanted on your team. If you didn’t have him, you were going to lose.

I was happy I’d made a solid friend, but I was still constantly plotting to remove myself from the daily grind in the field. Butler helped me out by explaining some of the various ins and outs of Pack 2. Most notably, I learned that one of the privileges inside those walls was to get a job. It could have been anything from cultivating the prison vegetable garden, to doing general custodial duties, to working on the kitchen team. A job not only could get me out of working in the field but also would come with many perks. An inmate with a job of value could barter his services with other prisoners for commissary items, cigarettes, and even social status. It also helped curry favor with the guards, who generally respected and got along better with the guys who worked hard at their jobs. In some cases, it helped guys move up the ladder to even better, more important positions.

Sometimes, though, it was not even necessary to earn your job through hard work. If the guards and the inmates simply liked you, you could get one. It was all about being cool, fitting in, and knowing how to work the social element of the system. If you didn’t conduct yourself the right way around people from the start, rest assured you would be trying to dig yourself out of a hole halfway down to China for the remainder of your bid.

Of course, I decided to work the social angle. The guards had noticed the difference in me compared to some of the other dudes. They saw my even-tempered disposition and the manners my mother had instilled in me. My steady stream of “yes, sir,” “no, sir,” “please,” and “thank you” was more than enough to bring the right attention my way, just as I had planned. For the first time in my life, I felt as if I was in the accelerated program in school and all the teachers supported me.

Even though I was in prison, I focused on the positives one by one to keep my mind together until an eventual parole date came my way. When I soon landed a job, I knew I was definitely on the right path. I was happy as hell to get into the laundry room and work with linens and wool as opposed to laboring in that unbearable field, swinging those blister-producing axes.