playing games with me like I was some joint punk, available to anyone. On numerous occasions, depending on his mood, he would tell me, “Pull your pants down, Manson, I want to see if you’ve been getting fucked.” The first time I thought he was just kidding and I walked right on by him, but he grabbed me and yanked my pants down around my ankles and made me bend over while he looked at my ass. He always did this in the presence of several other inmates. To add insult, he would pick up a handful of raw silage from the dairy floor, spit tobacco juice on it and shove it up my ass. “I got him lubed,” he’d tell his pets, “so fuck him if you get a chance.” The tobacco juice and silage burned and I got an infection from it, but the humiliation was worse. Yeah, Fields was a real beauty, he really knew how to care for the wards of the state and earn his state paycheck. I worked in the dairy for five months and every day was some kind of unimaginable experience.
I never was able to even things up with Fields, but I did take some of the desire out of the first guy who put his dick in my ass. That was about the only thing I ever got away with at Plainfield. One night after the lights were out and everyone was asleep, I took one of the iron handles used for cranking the windows open or closed off a window. The crank was about twelve inches long and weighed two or three pounds. It wasn’t as large or as heavy as I would have liked, but it did the job. I crept down to where Mr. Stiff Dick was sleeping, eased his blanket up over his head and clubbed him several times as hard as I could. I left him there unconscious, and on the way back to my bed I slipped the crank under the covers of one of the other guys who had been in on the rape. The beaten inmate might have died, but he was lucky; security came through the cottage for a late-night count a few minutes later. In routinely lifting the blanket to make sure there was someone under the covers, the security man saw the blood and realized the guy was unconscious. He was taken to the hospital and treated for a severe concussion. Shaking down the cottage for the weapon, the guards found it in the other guy’s bed. All of us were questioned. No one was charged with the assault, although the other rapist was the prime suspect.
When his partner returned from the hospital, the two of them didn’t have much to do with each other. It was whispered that I had done the clubbing, and no matter how small I was, no one else at Plainfield tried to put his dick in my ass again.
I ran away constantly, not because I was such a rebel but because it was always me who was punished when someone had to be punished to illustrate a point. I didn’t have anyone on the outside to tell my troubles to. No one was visiting me and I got very little mail. I was just there, and nobody gave a fuck. The fear of getting caught wasn’t any worse than the fear of what the next breath might bring, so my head was looking toward the road every minute.
One of my escapes was planned so skillfully that I was sure I’d make it. About six guys were on early wake-up crew so that they could go out in the pastures, round up the milk cows, put them in the barn and feed them during milking time. Bed tags were used to identify them to the night attendant, who would wake them up around four-thirty. These inmates were trusted to work without supervision until Fields showed up at six o’clock. One night I stole a tag from a crew member’s bed and put it on my own. The night man woke me up and out I went with the others. One of the fellows on the crew was a friend and the two of us went to the far pasture to get the cows. I kept right on going and my friend herded the cows by himself to cover for me. I wasn’t missed until after Fields showed up. I had gotten off the institution grounds fast enough, but I wasted a lot of time sneaking around town trying to find a car that I could steal. Not finding one, I decided to hoof it and stay off the roads until I made it to the next town.
Plainfield is a small town bordered by a river on one side. Thinking I might be seen if I used the bridge, I decided to swim the river. When I was about halfway across, I could see people on the bank. I turned around and started swimming the other way, only to see more people on the other bank. They were guards and inmates from the school (trusted inmates helped catch other inmate runaways). My heart sunk—I didn’t know what to do. It seemed senseless at that point, but I turned downstream and tried to out-swim all the people on the riverbank. Finally a couple of them dove in the river and dragged me ashore. Grinning with his tobacco-stained teeth, Mr. Fields was there to pull me up the bank.
Back at the school, a guard gave me thirty lashes with the escape strap. The escape strap was longer and thinner than the strap used by Clark. It cut a lot more and brought blood instantly. That lashing put me in bed for several days, and it was a couple of weeks before I could walk without wanting to lie down and cry.
That escape attempt got me out of the dairy cottage and away from Fields. But, fuck, I’d already been pegged as a guy to watch and the move was almost like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. I was put in a cottage that was run by a Mr. Carr. Carr was an ex-marine, a big son-of-a-bitch whose favorite thing was to run a “jaw-line.” He had a couple different versions of his jaw-line. One was to make two lines out of all the inmates in the cottage. The lines were about four feet apart, good swinging distance. The sucker being punished ran between the lines, while the others swung at him with closed fists. If one of the blows knocked him off his feet, he had to get up and try to get through again. If Carr thought someone wasn’t putting enough force into his punches, that guy would have to run the line.
Carr’s other “jaw-line” held more personal satisfaction for him. He’d place you about twenty or twenty-five feet from him, double up his fist, hold his arm at your jaw level, and then say “run.” You had to charge into that fist. If he felt you hadn’t charged at full speed, he would make you do it again and again until he was satisfied. If the blows were severe enough to require medical attention—broken nose, cut lip or damaged eye—he would give you a pass to the infirmary listing the cause of injury as “slipped in the shower” or “fell while horse-playing.” Carr was another guy like Fields. He’d turn his back while some of his snitching pets would try to fuck someone.
I was at the Indiana School for Boys for over three years and the only good thing I can say about it is that it had an impressive front lawn. From town it looked like a small university. But while proud parents bragged of their child’s good behavior and scholastic accomplishments, I was busy watching my back and taking the shit those guards dished out. At an age when most kids are going to nice schools, living with their parents and learning all about the better things in life, I was cleaning silage and tobacco juice out of my ass, recuperating from the wounds of a leather strap and learning to hate the world and everyone in it.
When I was sixteen, I finally made a successful escape with two other inmates. The day we left, I had no more promise of going home through proper channels than I’d had three years earlier on the day I arrived. Release was obtained through merit or a court order. Mom never sought a court order, and my escape attempts and other infractions put me on the minus side of the merit system.
When my escape partners and I got away from the institution, we stole a car and headed toward California. Along the way we stole other vehicles and abandoned them, as we needed. For gas and food money, we burglarized grocery stores and service stations. We made it as far as Utah where we were arrested for being in a stolen car. Since the car had been driven across state lines, we were turned over to the federal authorities and prosecuted under the Dyer Act. In March 1951 I was sentenced to the National Training School for Boys in Washington, DC. I’d had two weeks of freedom. I knew the new offenses meant a lot more time in jail but I didn’t care. I was out of the Indiana School for Boys.
The difference between a federal reformatory and a state reformatory is about like the difference between night and day. On a federal level, there seems to be more concern about how you got there and what it will take to straighten out your life. At the state level—at least during my confinement—the idea was to punish the shit out of you and make you sorry you were ever born.
Even the federal inmates are of a higher caliber, a “class” group instead of the derelicts found in state joints. But guys being guys, immature, trying to prove their manhood, they still create problems for themselves. In retrospect, I have to say I have
