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These menacing words were coming from the mouth of Duke Ferguson, the nominal cell leader of the small cell we shared with six others. I am in fact big, about six feet four inches tall, and at the time, in the autumn of 1974, I weighed in at about two twenty. Duke, on the other hand, at five eight and two hundred sixty pounds, was larger and a great deal tougher. The atmosphere in the cell had been tense all evening, ever since we had been locked down. Our cellmates knew that something was up, but like me, they weren't sure exactly what.

I had been in this cell only two weeks. During that time, I had been put through a large number of "tests," especially by the Duke. This wasn't unusual. Convicts are always wary of new people with whom they are housed. They try to find out, as unobtrusively as possible...after all, the person you are questioning might just take offense at it...and hit you upside the head...or worse...to find out as much as possible about you. This particular cell, in the northwest corner of the fifth tier of the maximum security prison on McNeil Island in Puget Sound off the coast of the state of Washington, had a reputation as housing the most dangerous and hostile inmates on the island. Duke, for example, was serving out the six year remainder of a sentence on a parole violation where, after being run down on his motorcycle during a high speed chase by a squad car and severely injured, he had cut the throat of one of the arresting officers. Afterward he was beaten nearly to death by an entire squad of policemen...perhaps explaining the shortness of his eventual sentence. Yes, Duke was tough.

"You think your pretty fucking big, don't you?" Duke continued. Everyone's eyes were glued to the two of us. We were standing, toe to toe at the front of the cell, near the entrance. The cell measured about twelve by twenty feet, with three concrete walls and thick bars across the front. Two sets of double bunk beds lined each side, a commode with a waste-high screen around it, a couple of lamps and two large bookshelves filled out the rear and a large round wooden table with several chairs occupied the center.

Why I had been put in this cell was a bit of a mystery, both to me and the others. Why I was even in a maximum security facility, was also not clear. I was only serving an eighteen month sentence for a relatively minor drug charge. So, for me, the initiation tests had been exhaustive. Duke, for example, had asked me to smuggle in some "whites"...small low grade amphetamine tablets...from the visiting room. The method was called "kiestering." That is, you shoved a small package of the drugs, wrapped in plastic, up your ass while taking a leak. The bathroom in the visiting room had a surveillance camera pointed right at you from above, so the method was to palm the package, wetting it first in your mouth to ease passage and then, while opening your fly to slip your penis out, reaching through your crotch under your balls and quickly poking it up your rectum just past the sphincter muscle. All convicts were put through a naked "bend over and spread your cheeks" examination when leaving the visiting room, but this seldom included an interior inspection. Or, so I was told. Duke and the others assured me that, if you were careful and quick enough...fumbling was a definite no-no...hardly anyone ever got caught. One of the men preparing me for the deed was Danny Duran, a Chicano heroin smuggler convicted of murdering a border guard in Mexico and transferred to the U.S. to finish his life sentence, who had earlier befriended me, so I was somewhat reassured...but this is another story...

Nevertheless, I was scared shitless when I actually was passed the package in the visiting room from a woman confederate of Duke's. My heart threatening to beat a hole in my chest as I entered the rest room. But, it was all over in a few seconds. I relieved myself, made it past the strip search and in no time I was taking a "squat on the pot" back in our cell to retrieve the smelly item from my behind.

Now, however, this same Duke was standing with his fists clenched at his side, muscles tensed. He stared up at me, eyes slitted coldly and repeated.

"I said, 'You think you're pretty fucking big, don't you?'"

Nothing in my previous thirty eight years of life had prepared me for this moment. Playing tackle on a high school football team just doesn't cut the mustard when it comes to preparing one for life threatening confrontations. Duke was nearing release and was eating about ten whites daily in an effort to take off some weight. Duke was dieting...for cosmetic purposes! He had already lost twenty pounds, when I smuggled his latest supplies into the prison, and was aiming for a "trim" two forty before he left the joint in a few months. I hadn't discovered just why he was doing this, but assumed it was for a woman...perhaps the same woman who had passed me the parcel in the visiting room. Unfortunately, one of the consistent side effects of heavy amphetamine usage is a tendency toward paranoia, often at clinically schizophrenic levels. Duke was clearly out of control, his face twitching convulsively as he threatened me.

"Come on, ass hole! Say something! Do something!" he continued, now poking me in the chest with his index finger. With each jab, he knocked me back a little, but each time quickly closed the distance so that his face was constantly right in mine.

My mind raced through all sorts of scenarios. Unfortunately, each of them seemed to end with me lying in the hospital...or the morgue. I knew that nobody in the cell would "see anything," no matter what happened. I also had heard that Duke had hit a man in the head with a pipe the previous Saturday when we were emerging from the in house theater having been treated to our weekly movie. The guy had reportedly cheated Duke for a few bucks on a dope deal, selling him some fake whites, and Duke had exacted the only kind of revenge that made sense to him. The man's skull had been fractured and, while he recovered and was transferred to another prison, he lost the hearing in one of his ears.

But, what had I done? To the best of my ability, I had answered all questions truthfully, had dutifully listened as the other convicts informed me about prison rules. As far as I knew, I had broken none of them. What, in heaven's name, was happening...and why?

As calmly as I could, I started to speak, "Well, Duke, I don't know what is going on here. But, you seem to be threatening me...trying to get me to fight you..."

What I did not...could not...know at the time, was that the government, with its playful sense of humor, had not only sent me to a maximum security prison to serve a minor sentence, had not only put me in a cell with seven of the toughest and nastiest men in the facility, but had also, as a final little joke on me, had spread the word among the convicts that I was an undercover FBI agent, sent to spy on them. It was a plausible story, since I surely did not seem to fit in...to say the least. But, I didn't find this out until months later.

So I continued rambling on in a soft voice, "...and it must be obvious that you could kick my ass any time you wished...that I am no match for you..."

Now Duke puffed himself up to his maximum height, his nose almost touching mine as he tensed even further. He sensed that the climax was coming and was making sure that he was ready for anything this tall skinny punk threw at him.

"So..." I concluded, "...you may be ready to beat me to a pulp no matter what I do..."

Duke's fists clenched and unclenched spasmodically, he shuffled his feet, planting them more firmly.

"But, IF YOU DO..." I continued, now raising my voice to match the tone of his.

"YEAH! YEAH? IF I DO, THEN WHAT?" he shouted into my face, emphasizing each word with a discrete pause in between.

"IF YOU DO..." I repeated, trying to match his intensity, "I will never talk to you again," I finished in a soft tone.

"WHAT?" he screamed, "WHAT!?"

"What the fuck kind of threat is THAT?" He backed away from me, his eyes wide, his breath coming in short bursts. He couldn't believe his ears. He stomped his feet and brought his fists up to his chest and back down to his side, over and over. "What the fuck kind of threat IS that?" he repeated, this time emphasizing the word "IS."

Then he sat down. Hard. At the table. For the next half hour he just sat there and stared at me with a very puzzled expression on his face. Our other cell mates tried to act as though they hadn't noticed what was going on, but the expressions on their faces told a different story. Some looked like they couldn't believe their ears either. After a few minutes, I saw that a couple of them were smiling discretely, realizing they were witnessing something they could tell their friends for years to come...something unique. And, I knew that I had accomplished my purpose. That is, I had countered with something that Duke was not...could not be...prepared for. I knew I wasn't out of the woods, but as time rolled on, as I sat staring back at Duke not daring to look away for fear he would take it as disrespect, I began to feel ever more confident that I had passed the final test...I too was tough, but in a way Duke had never encountered before.

Finally, just before lights out, he came over to me. His body was now relaxed, his face calm. "You know," he said softly, "that WAS a good threat. I DO like talking to you. You ARE interesting and different than anyone I have ever met. You're OK."

With that, he turned and went to his bunk and stripped to his underwear (I was the only one in the whole prison who slept naked, never having got used to binding underwear...just another weirdness, I guess) to get ready for bed. When the lights went out that night, I slept more comfortably and soundly than I had in a long time.

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