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| Photo by Brad Gibson |
When her husband (technically her ex-husband) told her that he had arranged a private tour of Alcatraz for their son, all she thought about is how much Kevin, Jr. would love it. After all, any seven-year old kid was bound to be super excited to take a ferry ride out to an old, abandoned prison where infamous “bad guys” from the past had been locked away, and then to have a private tour of the facility with an old friend of his father’s, who as a ranger would be able to give answers to all of the burning questions he would surely have.
Luckily the day of their trip turns out to be one of the rare warm and sunny days during San Francisco’s typically cold summer so she can spend the entire boat ride out on the open deck (the ferry is very crowded, but she’s with her husband so wearing a mask is out of the question). And the journey out to the island is exhilarating—the sky and the sea are vivid blues, the salty white foam of the choppy waves sprays into the air, and when someone calls out that they spot a seal, she is able to spot it, too, and when she points it out to KJ, the seal turns its head in their direction and seems to be looking right at him. She had forgotten how wonderful it was to be out on a boat.
But when she walks onto the island, the reality of being on “The Rock” hits her hard. The small island looks barren, gray, and desolate, and despite the summer sun beaming down, the wind is harsh and chilly. The ranger shows them the smaller buildings alongside the prison and explains that about 300 other people besides the inmates lived on Alcatraz, including the warden, correctional officers, administrators, medical staff, and clerks, along with their wives and children. As she wonders what kind of people raised their children out on this rock, she does her best to keep smiling as she walks behind KJ, who is holding onto his father’s hand as he chats with the ranger.
Then the ranger leads them inside the dark walls of the massive prison, and when she sees the small, window-less cells where the inmates were held (the ranger explains that the cells were so small because they were for individual prisoners, not for two bunkmates as in regular prisons), memories of her solitary nights in an empty apartment come flooding back.
That was just after Kevin had divorced her because she had taken KJ to get a Covid vaccine after he explicitly told her not to. (With the immunosuppressant drugs she was taking for her rheumatoid arthritis, she was going to be particularly vulnerable to Covid, and with KJ in day care while she was at work, she was scared that the child would get sick and bring the virus home to her). As part of the divorce, Kevin had demanded joint physical custody, and she no choice but to agree a 50/50 arrangement, with KJ staying only every other week with her. Her cousin had reassured her that she would enjoy the “me time,” when she was on her own, but it didn’t work out that way. She just couldn’t bring herself to fix up the apartment much less meet up with friends for a girls night, and all she could think about when she sat alone on her living room couch was KJ—longing to hear the sound of his childish voice chattering on about his adventures at “school,” to feel his small, warm body relaxing against hers as he sat on her lap during reading time, to smell the slightly musky scent of his skin as she kissed him goodnight and tucked him into bed.
“Did any of the bad guys ever escape from this place?” KJ asks.
His father says, “Alcatraz was famous for being the ultimate, maximum-security prison, buddy—it was almost impossible to break out of here.”
The ranger then patiently explains that the reasons the prison on Alcatraz was very hard place to escape from was its location in the middle of the San Francisco Bay (it was a very long swim to the shore through strong currents, cold temperatures, and choppy waters). And the prison was intentionally designed to be almost impossible to escape, with guard towers, thick steel bars, and concrete walls. But, he says, there actually had been several escape attempts, and he went on to tell a few stories about failed attempts, including the one about the prisoner who actually made it to San Francisco but who then was picked up on the shore suffering from hypothermia.
In the end, her escape attempt had failed, too. The first time her husband had invited her to join him and KJ for dinner when she was dropping KJ off, she had been unable to resist. Soon she was spending more and more time at the house, an eventually Kevin asked if she wanted to spend the night because that seemed “easier” for her than going home just to sleep and then coming back then next day. After she was spending more time at Kevin’s house than at her own apartment, Kevin proposed that if was willing to pay him rent—after all he had had to buy her out of the house with family money when he got the divorce—she could give up her apartment and return to being KJ’s mom full-time. These days, she never spoke of the year she had spent living apart from her husband—technically her ex-husband—and sharing custody of their child because she was hoping that KJ, who was only three at the time, had forgotten all of that ever happened.
The ranger concludes by telling KJ about the most famous escape of all, when three men painstakingly dug their way through of the walls of their cells using kitchen equipment and made paper mâché heads of themselves that they left in their beds on the night of their escape to fool the guards into thinking that they were asleep as usual. Then he walks them over to a cell that actually contains one of the original heads the prisoners had created, which is now shown resting on a pillow along with something that mimics the shape of a body under the covers. And he points to the opening on the back wall that illustrates how the prisoners dug their tunnels behind the ventilation grilles.
“Whoa,” KJ says. “Did those guys make it off the island?
I’ll tell you about that later,” the ranger answers. “But first, we’re going up on the roof! That’s someplace the regular visitors never get to see.”
The three of them follow the ranger into a dark stairwell and up a few stories on a metal stairway. Then they walk out into the bright daylight to find a flat rooftop covered with solar panels. She’s confused by this for a moment—is this what they came to see?—but then she realizes that the view from up there is extraordinary. She can see everything, with a 360-degree, bird’s eye view of the entire north bay. There’s the Golden Gate bridge leading out to the Pacific Ocean to the west, Marin County, with the Tiburon peninsula and Angel Island to the north, and the green hills of the Berkeley and Oakland to the east. And on this mist-free day, it’s all so clear that even subtle gradations of color are visible from a distance.
“Here’s what I wanted to show you,” the ranger says. “See that “X” over there? That’s the spot on the roof where the three prisoners escaped out of the prison through an air vent. Before the solar panels were installed, the rangers marked the spot so the installers would be sure to leave it uncovered. Then he goes onto explain that after crawling through the tunnels they’d made at the backs of their cells into a corridor, the three men had climbed up the pipes to the ceiling and then crawled into the air vent that led up to this roof.
“Cool!” KJ says. “Did they get away?
“They were never seen again,” the ranger says, “so we don't know anything for sure. But we also know the prisoners made a raft out of 50 stolen raincoats—the raft was found later washed up on the shore. Their plans were very careful and very clever, so while it’s unlikely they survived the waters of the bay, there is a small possibility that they did make it out of here alive.”
When she hears that, she quickly turns away from the others and pretends to look out at the view again so they won’t be able to see her face.
What were those numbers again that the ranger had quoted while they were inside the prison? Seven were shot and killed, fifteen were caught, and eight simply gave themselves up.
by Nina Zolotow
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