The Difference between a Convict and an Inmate
Chapter 3: Big Tuna
This is Chapter 3 of my series Club 44, my true story of having the world’s craziest prison job.
Prologue | Chapter 1: Club 44 | Chapter 2: Mr. President | Chapter 3: Big Tuna | Chapter 4: Cheeseburger | Chapter 5: Blowing Off Your Arm
For federal inmates working on an Air Force base where families lived, two forces were in play that were sure to eventually clash — and clash they did.
One of these was that those of us wearing red suits with a scary FEDERAL INMATE sloppily stenciled on it were afforded no sun protection. We had to work outside all day every day, and California’s coast is often quite sunny. Combined with the fact that our power tools often churned up considerable dust, we were in the habit of covering our heads and faces — completely. Usually this meant taking a gnarly old T-shirt and tying it around our heads, Bedouin style. It was a little joke that we often observed that we looked like terrorists, and we did. We totally did look like terrorists, or at least guys who were about to rob a convenience store.
The other was that lots of young families lived in the neighborhoods on base. This included young mothers with baby strollers, who expected to feel safe on their own sidewalks. Whenever I’d pass someone on the street, carrying my weed whacker or blower, I’d amuse myself by nodding and and giving my best Texan “Howdy ma’am,” which probably seemed incongruous coming from an evident Bedouin with his criminal status literally stamped across his chest.
Consequently, complaints periodically came in. And whenever they did, Sammy was obliged to give us a safety briefing. We weren’t supposed to interact with any of the locals. Got it. Don’t cut your leg off. Got it. Don’t pick up rattlesnakes or bombs. Message received.
Attendant with the safety briefings that followed a citizen complaint was often a visit from prison personnel, basically just a Cover Your Ass visit to show that they were on top of us fearsome criminals. On this occasion, the Unit Manager himself personally showed up, along with a couple COs in tow. It was rare enough that anyone from the prison was allowed on the base, rarer still that the Unit Manager would personally be there for a routine CYA visit like this.
The Unit Manager was the top guy back at camp. He was in charge of all the COs, counselors, and case managers. He was the one with authority to throw any of us into the SHU. At a word from him, our lives could change drastically. So we took care to always avoid him.
He enjoyed this power inasmuch as he wanted everyone to call him The Shark. He had it on the license plate of his car, he had it on his little desktop nameplate, and he figured that if he made the suggestion often enough it would stick, and he’d have a badass nickname. Most people obliged and called him The Shark, though in self-interest, not in respect of any badassery.
Though he only ever wore black tactical clothing to look intimidating, he was only a shade over five feet tall and had the body proportions of a scoop of runny Jello. Given his shape, and his preference for a fishy nickname, he was known to the entire inmate population not as The Shark, but as Big Tuna.
The story of how Big Tuna became Unit Manager was, shall we say, unique. He actually used to be an Assistant Warden, a pretty good job with a six-figure salary. Like most of the other COs, he was someone who didn’t have the skills or the temperament for a better career, and working at a prison was at least a job where he could earn a pension. Like most of his colleagues, Big Tuna drank a lot. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that one day he pushed a baby stroller into a liquor store in town, filled it full of cheap-ass rotgut, and tried to walk out.
He didn’t get very far. The clerk caught him and held him until the cops arrived. He flashed his prison ID as if it was a license to shoplift, but the fact that he was carrying a concealed handgun — for which he had no permit — didn’t do him any favors. It was armed robbery. He was arrested and was likely to go down hard.
Somehow the political machinations of the small town ended up seeing the criminal charges dropped, and the affair was handled quietly, administratively, by the prison. For armed robbery, Big Tuna was busted from Assistant Warden at the big house to Unit Manager at the camp.
Of course, the great irony here is that for an inmate to be at the camp instead of one of the higher security level prisons, you can’t have any violence in your history at all. None. You sure as fuck couldn’t be an armed robber. Big Tuna was, literally, a worse criminal than every single inmate under his charge at the camp.
Most everything about that place I forgot the second I got out, but Big Tuna’s story was one I just had to check out. Sure enough, it was absolutely true as I heard it; the records are online. You can see his bust in the federal employees online database, and I even found a newspaper article about the armed robbery. Some things you just can’t make up.
So there we were, relaxing back at 44 after lunch, which we’d enjoyed with our plastic sporks. We were only allowed plastic sporks. In our work at Vandenberg we drove trucks and used chainsaws, but were apparently such an extreme security risk that we had to eat with plastic sporks. Anyway, there we were. I was reading a book. Another guy was napping in a hammock. Sammy and the airmen were gone on their lunch break. A couple guys were working out, and most everyone else was watching Orange Is the New Black on the TV, when all of a sudden Big Tuna walked in with his entourage.
Nobody reacted at all, as nobody wanted to draw any attention. I kept my eyes fixed on my book. Big Tuna’s entourage turned off the TV and swept our stack of DVDs onto the floor. Big Tuna himself walked from person to person, trying to look us each in the eye. Finally he got to Li, the little Vietnamese dude who was napping in the hammock. He woke him up and snatched him to his feet. There was some exchange of words we didn’t catch, but soon Big Tuna brought Li to the TV, holding Li’s ID card up, and faced the room to address us like some mythical figure displaying his conquered prey.
“There are two kinds of people in prison,” he said. “Inmates and convicts. A convict has been through it all before. He knows his place and shows respect. An inmate doesn’t know the rules of the world, and thinks everyone owes him a favor. A convict I can trust, I can deal with. An inmate still has a lot of growing up to do.”
And with that, he led Li by the arm and out of the building. He was taking him to the SHU, 30 days of solitary, for what violation we couldn’t guess. On their way out, each of the COs helped himself to one or two of Sammy’s DVDs. One eyed the yogurt, but only briefly.
One guy on the couch, Javi, looked incredulous. “Did you guys recognize that speech?”
“No. Should we?”
“It was from Chronicles of Riddick,” he said, rifling through the remaining DVDs. “Holy shit.”
A moment later Javi was was fast forwarding through the movie and all of us crowded around. Then the scene was playing. It was on some prison planet, and the warden was giving this exact speech to Vin Diesel. Big Tuna had fucked it up pretty bad, but the general idea was there. His big “FEAR ME” speech was lifted from Chronicles of Riddick.
When we got back from our afternoon shift, Sammy was just hanging up the phone and looked really tired. “We got a new rule from your camp. If you guys want to take a nap during your breaks, you can, but it can’t be a deep sleep.”
We looked at one another bemusedly. Poor Sammy looked at the floor and rubbed the back of his neck, obviously embarrassed at having to pass along such an instruction.
“Did he give a percentage?” I asked.
Sammy burst out laughing, a big, loud, thankful belly laugh, and was barely able to say “He did! 40 percent. You can be no more than 40 percent asleep. Maybe 45.”
Convicts must be the ones who already knew to keep it under 45. Now we did too.
Prologue | Chapter 1: Club 44 | Chapter 2: Mr. President | Chapter 3: Big Tuna | Chapter 4: Cheeseburger | Chapter 5: Blowing Off Your Arm
