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Vilano Prison by Rudy Young
Copyright, Rudy Young, 2008

Vilano Prison sat on a large pier in the middle of a bay, a widening in a river, actually, that flowed through the rain forest to the Amazon. With the prison situated over water, the only visitor was a guard who came in a motorboat every day to dole out food and drag out the dead. The river was a fishing waterway, so there were other boats on the water, but no one ever stopped at the prison. It was considered bad luck to even look at the prison when passing it. A larger boat brought new prisoners the first day of each month.

Vilano Prison was constructed before the turn of the Century to house South America’s most sadistic criminals. Men were sent here because their crime warranted a punishment much worse than death. For what they did they needed to suffer as much as it was possible for a human being to suffer, and with each passing day, decry the day they were born. To be sentenced to Vilano Prison was to be thrown to the scorpions and rats and the vampire bats at night. You learned to sleep with your shoes on, and only in your hammock, for to be lax in self-discipline at Vilano Prison was to die many more times than was required. Should a prisoner find a Vampire Bat sucking blood from their foot at night, they ate it raw, garnishing thereby the only protein their body was ever going to see.

A prisoner’s clothing was simple sackcloth pants and pullover shirt, but most prisoners wore clothing only during the chill of the night.
The walls of the prison were made from blocks of granite, slapped together with concrete and absolutely no esthetics whatsoever. Consisting of two cellblocks, one above the other, the floors and ceilings throughout the prison, like the inside walls and doors, were made from iron bars. Bath time for the entire population was every time it rained. Each cell had a window in the outside concrete wall, less than a foot square, that allowed the inmate to watch the crocodiles on the river during the day, and a stagnate, green, ghostly fog of hideous foulness drift in from the swamp at night.

After six months in the upper cells, a prisoner was sent downstairs to what were called the “dying cells”. However, in every prisoner’s progression from the upper cellblock to lower, they had to endure a week in the Tower. The Tower was a tall, square building built onto the back of the prison; about eight foot square, extending upward some twenty feet above the wall. A stairway inside led to a single cell at the top, which had no windows, but one round hole in the side facing the water. Since the hole was just big enough for a prisoner to squeeze through, and there was water directly below, it was natural for a prisoner to consider jumping. The problem with this was the crocodiles sunning on the banks, waiting patiently for another splash on the water. Bones were strewn for miles into the surrounding swamp, each distance a tribute to the strength and fortitude of the prisoner to whom they belonged. But no one ever made it as far as civilization, for if they escaped the crocodiles they faced thirty miles of mud, venomous snakes, insects, and quicksand, until finally they reached the rain forest and danger from Jaguars and headhunters.

If a prisoner did not jump during their week in the Tower, they were sent to the dying cells for the next six months. If a prisoner survived six months in the dying cells, which some did only by developing a palate for bats and rats and snails, they were again sent to the Tower. The second time a prisoner was put in the Tower, they always jumped.
Words to describe the dying cells would be too morose for print, indecent to any but the most uncivilized ear. Better to just say that the lower cellblock at Vilano Prison was Satan’s sewer, and let the reader’s imagination take it from there. For example, the prisoners in the upper cells were supposed to gently dump their slop buckets through the bars of their floor, down through the bars of the floor below, and into the river below. This etiquette, however, seldom fit the psyche of the psychotic rapist-mass-murderers living in the upper cells, most of whom considered it more amusing to dump their waste on the man sleeping in their hammock below.
It was a struggle just to breathe the air in the lower cellblock, especially in the summer when droppings through the bars crusted like clay in the heat, and even filled in most of the floor bars to form a nearly solid surface. This crust of filth would grow until the rains came in late summer, and then it would wash away into the river. If the prisoner in the lower cell did not have Leprosy by then, they would have to endure the chilling cold of the rainy season. Rising waters brought water snakes to the lower cells, and even Piranha, if the flood was high enough. More than one prisoner remembers clinging to their barred window for days, while cannibal fish swam below their feet.

Relationships were rare between prisoners. These men were anti-social to begin with, and no one ever lived long enough to become someone’s friend. However, there were two men who had been arrested together, and their friendship was well founded by the time they entered Vilano Prison. Memphis and Samson were housed across the corridor from each other in the lower cellblock. Each had survived their six months upstairs and their week in the Tower, mainly because neither knew how to swim, and were nearing the end of their six months in the dying cells.
Memphis Slim was a hustler. He was smaller than his friend in the cell across the hall. But Memphis Slim was wiry, a man at home in the back alleys and passion shops of New Orleans. He was short, with skin the color of a walnut, and orange hair that made him shine like a star against the drab colors surrounding him. His face was mapped with scars, with wrinkles around the eyes from a life of squinting at billiard balls in dusty, smoke-filled rooms where he grew up. Being a Mulatto, Memphis enjoyed the more attractive characteristics of both races, but when his temper was short, his dark eyes could nail an antagonist to the wall.

Samson was a fat man when he entered Vilano Prison, but the regimented starvation had done its work. Even so, Samson was still a big man with much strength, whose half-closed, sleepy brown eyes hid a keen mind, and a soul that had known hard times long before coming to Vilano Prison. His skin was very black, and he was almost invisible in the darkness of his cell.
“Samson,” Memphis whispered across the hall. “You awake?” He could see the big man standing in a corner, looking down at the bars of his floor.
Samson did a little skip and a jump, and landed barefooted on a spider. “How did a Tarantula get in here?” he asked. “We’re in the middle of a lake!”
Memphis knew the answer. “Some bird shit a seed and it grew in here. Hell, we got no roof; any of them birds coulda done it.”
Samson informed his friend, “Spiders don’t come from a seed; they screw and have kids like everybody else.”
“Then why did you ask?”

“I don’t know, Memphis; I guess I just wanted to hear somebody talk.”
Life went on like this, passing time in senseless but essential conversation. Escaping a screaming wife in Miami, Memphis hopped a freighter out of Miami where he met Samson, smoking a cigarette on the back deck. Only then did Memphis learn the freighter was on its way to South America. The two became friends by the time the ship docked in Guayaquill, and Memphis followed when Samson hired on to carry supplies for a scientific expedition going into the Interior. An airplane took them west of the Andes, to an old Shell Oil landing strip, long deserted and overgrown, and from there, the two men joined their employers and humped supplies into the hill country. Primitive tribes abounded throughout this rain forest region, and the Anthropologists hoped to find some authentic tsantsas; shrunken heads.
Both of our heroes were mesmerized by a beautiful Indian girl the scientists hired to translate, and one night they followed her home. Their misfortunes began when the maiden’s jealous boyfriend arrived with a machete to kill the snake-in-the-grass who had been seeing his girlfriend behind his back. In the ensuing ruckus, Samson killed the boy with one punch from his huge fist.

Witnesses were all relatives of the deceased, and they screamed murder. Since the village had no jail, nor even a court system, the villagers turned them over to a column of prisoners coming through on their way to Vilano Prison. The guards slapped Memphis and Samson into chains, and for two days they followed the line of prisoners until they arrived at a river, where a boat took them to the Prison.
It was Memphis Slim and Samson’s companionship, and their being able to talk to each other that allowed them to endure their lives thus far. The first thing they noticed was that if the guard thought two prisoners were becoming friendly, and their conversation possibly a comfort to each other, one was immediately moved to the opposite side of the prison. To prevent this from happening to them, Memphis and Samson always pretended to be fighting and arguing whenever the guard came through.

“You crumb-sucking sonofabitch!” Memphis would yell out across the corridor at Samson, whenever he heard the guard unlock the outer door.
And Samson would answer with something like, “Your mother eats shit, orange man.”
Fatso, the guard, took much pleasure in the fighting between these two. The last thing he intended to do was separate them.
But, there was little compassion among men without honor, and one prisoner in the cell above Memphis had taken special notice of the friendship developing between the two. His name was Pickins, and he was moved into the upper cells at the same time the black man were moved down into the lower.
From Perkin’s cell came the sickening splash of a shit bucket being emptied down through Memphis’ cell. Memphis jumped to his door and hung on the bars with his feet off the floor. “Goddamn you, Pickins,” he yelled up through the dripping bars. “One of these days I’ll get your ass!”
The man called Pickins laughed. “Did I miss you? Next time I’ll empty my bucket when you’re in your hammock.”

“Been to the Tower, Pickins?” Memphis asked him. “If you don’t die in the Tower, you’ll end up down here! And I’ll be waiting. All you gotta do is get too close to the bars one time. Did you know you sleep-walk at night, Pickins?”
“I ain’t worried,” the prisoner in the upper cell scoffed back at Memphis. “You sonsabitches will be dead by then. Nobody lives down there more than six months. And besides, I’m a good swimmer. They put me in that Tower I’ll be long-gone. When I was young I won every trophy they can give a swimmer. I’ll hit the water and be through the swamp before them crocodiles know what happened. And it won’t matter anyway; after I tell Fatso you two are friends, he’ll move one of you to the other side. So you and your girlfriend can make all the threats you want.”

When Pickins turned away, Memphis whispered to Samson. “Did you hear that? I think it’s time you and me did something about getting the hell outa here.”
Samson replied, “I’ve been working on a plan.”
But Memphis explained his own thoughts, “When Fatso comes here today to dish out the gruel, I’m going to stick him in the eye with a sharp stick and grab his keys.”
“You got a sharp stick?”

“I was hopin you had one, what with the storms and all.”
“Not got no sharp stick, but I got a plan a lot better than that one. What’s Pickins doing?”
“He’s in his hammock; he’s not listening.”
Samson spoke quietly. “When Fatso comes along this corridor tomorrow-“
“He’ll be here today,” Memphis interrupted, “why not today?”
“Because the big Prison Boat comes today, bringing new prisoners. The only way we’re going to get to the Amazon is in Fatso’s little boat, and we don’t need to be passing the Prison Boat on the way out.”
“Okay, okay, what’s your plan?” Memphis Slim agreed.
“When Fatso enters the corridor, I want you to be standing there at your door, just like you’re doing now. When he comes to your door, I’ll get his attention by saying something to him, something to make him turn and look at me. While his back is turned to you, you take your bowl and get ready to fling it in his face real hard.”

“That should piss him off enough to shoot both of us.”
“While Fatso’s talkin to me, you yell his name out loud, real sudden-like, and when he turns around to look at you, you flip that bowl in his face, hard; you got to do it hard.”
“That’s not gonna hurt him, Samson,” Memphis pointed out.
“No, but it’ll probably make him take a step back. If he steps back, I’ll have his throat and the keys.”
Memphis suggested, “Make sure you get the gun; we might have to shoot somebody.”
Samson cautioned Memphis, “If at any time the plan looks like it’s not going to work, we’ll wait another day. We survived the Tower once; we’ll survive it again. If it takes a month of waiting for the right moment, we’ll wait. We’re only going to get one chance at this; it’s either escape, or Vilano Prison until we die.”
The guard’s name was probably not Fatso, but that’s what everyone called him. He was a short man, and so fat his stomach completely hid the buckle of his belt, and his brown skin was so greasy that flies stuck to it. His hair was long and thick, never combed, looking much like a filthy bird’s nest beneath his prison hat. A faded, unwashed brown uniform wore the stains of many meals, while a large revolver pistol hung loose from his belt and swung around his stubby leg as he walked.

Typically, Fatso sold the prison allotment food to his neighbors, while what was leftover after he slopped his hogs was brought for the prisoners. But no matter how foul the contents of the food buckets, the prisoners always ate it. They knew that refusing to eat the rancid food would only serve to cut their odds even more.
Fatso had a badge at one time, years before, but a prisoner ripped it off from his shirt when Fatso got too close to the bars. Fatso shot the man, but before he could unlock the door and retrieve the badge, it had slipped from the dead man’s fingers into the river beneath the cell floor.
Fatso arrived each day around noon. He would stop the outboard motorboat next to the landing below the pier, place four five-gallon buckets of garbage on the deck, then carry the buckets up the steps to the front door of the prison. He could easily have forced a prisoner at gunpoint to carry the buckets, but there were too many among them who would welcome an honorable death, such as taking the guard with them over the railing into the crocodile infested waters. Fatso was supposed to come at night as well, but he never did. There were too many ghosts roaming the hallways at night, too many lost souls searching for their tormentor.

Before handing out the food, Fatso first removed the prisoners who had died during the night. This was a distasteful job, and as such, was usually postponed until the smell became more than he could stand. Dragging the bodies out to the pier, he would push them over the side, and the crocodiles would consume another meal.
With the same hands he used to remove the rotting corpses, Fatso scooped out food from the dirty buckets. A small, square opening in the bars of their door allowed each prisoner to reach through with their bowl, as Fatso moved along the corridor dipping out the gruel with a gourd dipper. Since the badge episode Fatso made it his business to stay well to the middle of the corridor, out of reach of the cells on either side. His caution these days bordered on fanatical.

Memphis and Samson heard the motorboat arrive, and they listened to the guard swearing as he struggled the buckets of food up the steps. Leaving the feeding of the men in the lower cells until last, Fatso carried two buckets up the stairway and doled out food to the prisoners on top. When he returned to the lower cells, he continued his ritual from door to door and from bowl to bowl. Pickins was also watching Fatso from his upper cell, and when the guard was near, he called out to him, trying to tell him about the friendship between the two black men below. “Hey, Fatso,” he called down. “Them two on the end are friends. They talk amongst themselves like long lost brothers when you not around. And somethin else, they’re planning a break!”
Being the only visitor the prisoners were going to see during the day, most of the inmates had something to say to Fatso, either a plea for mercy or a plea for death, or an insult that would help their spirits get through the day. The result was noise over which the guard could hear little else. Fatso usually ignored these pleas and insults, as he did Pickins’ outburst, but by the time he reached Memphis’s cell, the guard’s mind had deciphered one of the words he had heard: “Break.”

Again Pickins tried to warn Fatso, but now everyone in the prison was yelling, laughing, and screaming with anticipation. Fatso didn’t understand what Pickins had tried to tell him, but everybody else did. The prisoners were now clamoring for a jailbreak and some real entertainment.
Memphis Slim looked up through the bars to where Pickins was standing with his feet balanced each on a bar, bars wide enough apart that a careless foot could easily slip through. Memphis Slim leaped to the ceiling and caught Pickins by both ankles, and by pulling to the side, caused each to plummet down between the bars. The sound of bones scraping against metal could be heard along with Pickins’ unholy scream.
Memphis released the ankles and dropped to the floor, where he picked up his bowl and stepped quickly to his door. His body was visibly shaking from the adrenalin rushing through his veins. All precautions were off; they had to go with the plan now or never. Memphis yelled at the guard, “Yo, fat man; what you got in that bucket, your wife’s brains?”

Fatso had already sensed trouble, but with these words, he slowly put the bucket down and fumbled for his pistol.
Memphis reached through the hole in his bars and flung his bowl as hard as he could at Fatso’s face.
The guard saw the move and ducked, then laughed as the bowl clatter off the bars in back of him. “You idiot!” he laughed. “You think nobody ever try that trick before.”
Memphis reached back and took up his slop bucket, and bringing it around fast, slammed the top against the bars. The filth splashed clear across the hall onto Fatso, covering him from his face to his knees. By now the guard had been able to get the pistol out of its holster, but he could no longer see; and worst of all, in the excitement, he had taken a step back.
Samson had Fatso’s body off the ground, the guard kicking and screaming and fighting to get loose. His shirt ripped away, allowing him to fall to the floor, but not before Samson wrenched the pistol from his hand. Samson immediately fired several shots, one of which went into Fatso’s back. The guard slumped to the floor, dropping the keys. Fatso was not dead, but badly wounded, and in desperation he began crawling along the corridor toward the entrance, leaving the keys lying precariously just out of Samson’s reach.
Memphis yelled to Samson through the filth-dripping bars of his own door, “The keys; they’re about to fall in the water!”

Samson went to a corner of his cell and came back with a long, slender length of bamboo, which he inserted through the bars, sliding one end beneath the key ring.
Memphis took notice. “I thought you didn’t have no stick.”
“It’s not a stick, it’s my flute.”
“Flute? I though that was frogs.”
Samson lifted his flute, causing the keys to slide down its length and onto his hand. In seconds both doors were open and the two men were running to catch up with Fatso.
The guard had recovered enough from the shock to crawl out on the pier. He had lowered himself painfully down each of the steps to the landing, where Memphis Slim and Samson came upon him rolling himself over the edge into the boat. By the time Memphis remembered he was holding a pistol, Fatso had the motor started and the boat was pulling away from the landing. Samson aimed and fired the pistol, causing the back of Fatso’s head to splatter the boat in crimson all the way to the bow. His body fell forward with such force that it bounced back up again, falling sideways onto the motor, cutting it off. The boat now drifted in a slow spin about fifty feet from the pier.

“Good shot,” Memphis told Samson. “Now how are we going to get the boat?”
Both men though in silence, then looked at each other and spoke as one, “Pickins!” Back into the prison, now a roar of voices, up the stairs and down the corridor to Pickins’s cell. They found the man cowering in a corner with his slop bucket hugged to his chest for protection. But Samson took him by the shirt front and lifted him bodily out into the hall, where he dropped him heavily on the steel bars.
Both shins were scraped and bloody from the ankles to the knees, both legs quite possibly broken. Pickins took hold of the bars to pull himself to a standing position. “No! Please don’t!” he cried, but Samson lifted him under one arm and carried him out to the pier.
The little boat was floating in the water with Fatso’s body draped across the motor. The crocodiles had managed to get hold of a hand that had dropped over the side, and were slowly pulling the body into the water. The effect on the boat, however, was that this process was pulling it further from the pier.
“I’m glad you got all them swimming awards, Pickins,” Memphis told him, bringing him to the edge. “But I’m afraid today you’re gonna have to break your own records.”
“Please don’t do this,” Pickins begged. “My legs are broke; I can’s swim. And look at those crocodiles; how am I supposed to make it to the boat?”

“No use being modest, Pickins,” Memphis told him. “I can tell by the way you swing a crap-bucket you got championship written all over you.”
“I was lyin! I was lyin! I never won me no trophies! And about the bucket; you know, I was just making fun; something to pass the time.”
Samson lifted Pickins by the collar and dropped him over the side. The splash brought water to the height of the pier, and below they could hear the panicked sound of a desperate man trying to swim. But Pickins was right, his legs were broken, and the pathetic sound of splashing turned to mayhem as the crocodiles found him.
“Well, that worked good,” Memphis commented. “Now how we gonna get the boat?”
Samson told him, “There’s more where Pickins came from.”

Eight more prisoners were brought out and lined up along the edge of the pier. Not accustomed to walking on solid ground, the men staggered into place, viewing with horror the boat drifting on the red swirling water.
“Well, boys,” Memphis instructed them, “your job is to swim out there and get that boat. With eight of you in the water, one’s bound to make it. We’ve got enough swimmers inside there to feed every crocodile in this river until they’re not hungry any more, and if that’s what it takes, that’s what we’ll do.”
Brandishing the pistol, Memphis and Samson kicked and pushed the eight prisoners over the side. The water became a mass of flailing arms and legs, and the river reverberated with horrific screams of terror. The killing fields between the boat and the pier erupted with mad ferocity, as the eight men swam for the boat and their lives.

And, unbelievably, one of them made it. Two arms reached up out of the water, hands took hold of the side of the boat, and a man came up and over like he had been shot from a cannon. Memphis and Samson knew the man as Juarez; a young and handsome man, and new to the upper cells. Juarez pulled himself onto the middle seat, where he sat with his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands, breathing hard, listening in terror to the feeding frenzy around him.
There was a splash at the back of the boat and all expected to see a crocodile coming over the side; but instead, it was another swimmer. Memphis and Samson found it unbelievable that one should make it, but now there were two. The new man was tall and very slender, bald, and completely naked, having left his clothes with the crocodiles.

Samson lifted the pistol so all could see. He told the men, “Bring that boat to the landing.”
Juarez protested, “We swam through crocodiles to get this boat; we deserve to go with you.”
Samson told him, “I’ll leave you the keys and you can overpower the Prison Boat when it gets here; but nobody’s going with us.”
“You know,” Juarez said, “I’ve been counting the bullets you been shootin from that pistol, and I think that gun’s empty.”
Memphis took the pistol from Samson. “Well, there’s one way to find out.”
“I think you’re bluffing,” Juarez suggested. “So, my friend and I are heading for the mainland.”
The skinny man pulled the cord and started the outboard motor.
Memphis cocked the pistol.
Juarez grinned and took hold of both sides of the small boat, readying himself for the long ride upriver.
Memphis pulled the trigger and the pistol erupted in his hand, the shot leaving ripples on the water from the wind, and in the explosion Juarez’s head vanished in a mist of red that sprayed the water twenty feet behind him.

Instantly the naked man holding the outboard handle turned the boat back to the landing. “Please don’t kill me,” he cried.
Memphis and Samson took hold of the boat when it came within reach, and Samson lifted the man onto the landing. “Your name Black?” he asked.
The man was shaking as he nodded.
Samson tossed the keys on top of the pier. “I don’t recall you messin with anybody; go on up and get the keys, let out who you want and storm the Prison Boat next time it comes.”
The man called Black became serious. “That Prison Boat is supposed to be here today. It’s overdue. If you leave here now you’ll be running into them coming around the bend of the river somewhere. They got a machine gun on the front of that thing.”

Samson lowered himself into the motorboat, where he took Juarez’s headless body and threw it into the water away from the boat. Again the thrashing teeth and billows of blood, and the body disappeared beneath the surface. Samson sat down and took the steering handle, while Memphis stepped down onto the middle seat, the empty pistol dangling from his hand. Placing a foot against a piling he pushed the boat away from the pier. The motor puttered easily as Memphis turned the boat up the river toward open water.
“You’re not going to make it,” Black called after them. “And neither will we. Nobody escapes from Vilano Prison.”

Contact me: rudyyoung@bellsouth.net