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eighteen months at the most. Keep your nose clean.”
    Keep his nose clean! Sweet Jesus, help me keep my nose clean. It was his last thought before sleep in the ten days he waited after the sentence was passed. His time didn’t start until he got there. He wanted to go – despite a gnawing fear of the unknown.
    Twelve days after Judgment, Booker Johnson was one of two-dozen prisoners taken from the LA County Jail to the nearby train station, where they were put in a special coach. Its windows were covered with sheet metal, although some had a narrow crack between metal and window frame, so it was possible to peer out at the black night and an occasional farm-light. At one end was a mesh wire cage, within which sat an armed deputy sheriff. The other end had a toilet with a waist high partition.
    The prison car was hooked onto a milk-run train that departed at dusk and ran north through sunset into night. In Ventura, while the train made the pssshhhh, whang, pssshhh sound of a waiting train, two more prisoners came aboard, one white, one black. Next was Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, body receipts were signed and other men sentenced to San Quentin came aboard. Booker would always clearly remember two things about the trip. One was the cigarette smoke, especially when they boarded in LA. Almost everyone had to light up a Bull Durham or Lucky Strike the moment they sat down. The second thing Booker remembered was the man brought aboard at Salinas. A slight man, who looked even scrawnier with his skinny neck jutting from an oversized shirt collar, he was fish-white and wild-eyed, and from the waist-chains and leg-irons and the three deputies who accompanied him, it was obvious that he was sentenced to die. Booker was across the aisle from him; it was easy to study his face. Booker did so, although he had no idea what he expected to see. Who had the man killed? Booker asked the man beside him, and got in response a vacant look and a shrug. He knew nothing and wanted to know nothing. He was a drunk who had written some bad checks. Because it was his fourth offense, the judge had sent him to prison to get his attention. Now that he was sober, his attention was complete. A couple of times during the night, he sniffled and fought to hide his ‘woe is me’ tears. If he showed self-pity, he would earn the scorn of his peers.
    Booker closed his eyes and listened to the unchanging rhythm of steel wheels on steel tracks, clickety clack, clickety clack, clickety clickety clickety clack. Booker dozed off and slept until the railroad car was separated from the train and loaded on a ferry crossing from Richmond to the San Quentin peninsula. It was dawn.
    While the ferry carried the railroad car across the water, the lights came on and the convicts onboard began to stir, which meant that everyone had a cigarette to get the taste of pre-sleep cigarettes from their mouths.
    One man pressed an eye to the crack and called out that he could see the east block. Booker had to piss. No telling when he would get another chance. He stood up, the chain between his leg-irons was a foot long, so he took short steps and held onto seat backs. He had yet to learn the secret of walking in leg-irons, which is to stand on tiptoe and take short quick steps, shuffling like a Chinese woman with bound feet.
    As he reached the last seat and had to cross the space to the latrine entrance, the ferry hit the dock and sent him lurching toward the gun cage. He crashed hard into the mesh, surprising the deputy, who let out a cry and jumped up, his back against the wall.
    “Sorry, boss, sorry,” Booker said. “It done threw me, man. I didn’ mean nuttin’.”
    “Okay… yeah… Watch yourself.”
    Booker took his piss. Instead of returning to his previous seat, he took an empty space next to a young colored man who, at twenty-five, was returning to San Quentin as a second termer for robbery. Jeff Hawkins, called Hawk, was small-framed, but his muscles were like