U.S. racism is nowhere more inescapable than in the brute facts and figures of our criminal justice system. In the general population, African-Americans constitute less than 13 percent, yet 51 percent of all prisoners nationwide are black. Thirty-two percent of black men in their twenties are under some form of criminal justice supervision. While blacks and whites are murder victims in roughly equal numbers, 82 percent of prisoners executed since 1977 were convicted of the murder of a white person.
How does racism operate behind the walls? “I’ve heard some men say prison made them much more racist than they were when they went in. The opposite was true for me. I never thought of myself as a racist, yet we all have our fears,” writes Richard Stratton, who is white. “Unless we have the courage to break through the carefully structured fear that works so well in prison, we merely reinforce old biases.”
“First Day on the Job,” Henry Johnson’s dramatic monologue here, shows that guards face the same choices about handling their fears as prisoners. An old white guard at Attica is breaking in a new one. Reminiscing about the time before the 1971 uprising, repression, and ensuing reform, the speaker conjures up a time when leaders like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Jomo Kenyatta, first president of Kenya, stirred the pride of African-American male inmates and the fear of their white keepers. We see how racism may be fostered to bolster the confidence of the keepers.
While some guards like Sam in Michael Wayne Hunter’s story here overcome racial fears, others, like those who urge inmates to make “hits” in the same story, manipulate racial strife between inmates. Jesse Lopez reported in “Arrival at McNeil Island” (1978)* that some prisons even put into solitary confinement those “guilty of interracial association.” Some prisoners report on having been encouraged to practice racism openly inside. Others assert that the administraton causes more racial tension, for example, by exaggerating the extent of gang activity, keeping the races at each other’s throats, and thus deflecting anger from the administration.
In Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville in 1993, the administration forced members of different races — often from areas foreign to racial intermingling — to cell together, according to Paul Mulryan, author of “Eleven Days Under Siege.” This often resulted in one or both parties being sent to the hole, labeled a racist and hence a gang member. Black and white prisoners, knowing that forced interracial celling caused more hatred than it prevented, organized an uprising to demand, among other things, that the practice cease. Relying on the public’s assumption of racial strife and disregarding its interracial leadership, corrections officials told the press the uprising was a race riot. Of the several hundred riots in U.S. prisons since 1970, Lucasville was one of the most catastrophic: prisoners killed one guard and nine prisoners.
Trapped with hundreds of others in L Corridor with no way to exit during the riot, Mulryan was transferred to Mansfield Prison and held in the hole until he was cleared of any participation in it. There he wrote “Eleven Days,” seeking to “describe the experience as candidly as possible” without inviting repercussions. The “very real possibility” of his “narrative being used by the state as supporting evidence to prosecute someone” prevented him from using names. Later, with others cleared of responsibility for the not, Mulryan joined a class action that ended double celling.
Prison has become that rare place where, through pure demographics, African- American men clearly seem to wield power. Their real or perceived threat can fire the animosity of white gangs. Although many new prisoners feel virtually forced into gangs for pro* tection, this survival strategy can backfire. In Lance Fleming’s play Lockdown (1995)* an Aryan gang buys drugs from a black gang and deliberately refuses to pay for them. By thus violating the code, they “force” the black gang to save face by killing two white gang members, Though the white protagonist knows the Aryans are planning a retaliative strike, he feels powerless to avert it. because snitches end in the morgue.
“Lee’s Time” by Susan Rosenberg narrates a variant on this kind of moral crisis, with the difference that the prisoners are women and the issue is the highly charged one of interracial sexual contact between a prisoner and a corrections officer. Rosenberg reports that the case on which her story was loosely based was used with others to pass the federal law that makes it a felony for a C.O. to have even consensual sex with an inmate. No such law existed at the time of the event, Rosenberg says, but the extraordinary twenty-year sentence of the C.O. was actually imposed.
Chance — his being in the path of a riot — causes Paul Mulryan to be doubly punished, yet also impels him to bear his careful witness and to join a suit to redress some of the underlying wrong. Chance — her overhearing a sexual encounter — obliges Lee to decide to change the way she does time. Similar chance contacts change the odds for interracial friendships in Charles Norman’s memoir and Michael Wayne Hunter’s story, “Sam.” Sam and the narrator also share opposition to the death penalty and grieve for Bobby Harris, the first man to be executed after California’s five-year moratorium on the death penalty. It’s surprising to find such triumphs over prejudice in such a violent environment. It would be profoundly ironic if the supposed dregs of our society can produce a higher standard of human responsibility than its “respectable” citizens.
I have learned this: it is not what one does that is wrong, but what one becomes as a consequence of it.
— Oscar Wilde
“Twenty years ago when I was young, kid,
we kept a special room in the basement at Attica —
ripe as any butcher shop, soundproofed.
Wild Bill, your squad commander,
shackled nigger convicts to the wall
and we beat hell out of them
with rubber hoses ‘n such.
Lord, the screams in that place,
the heat and smell of blood.
Don’t step on that junebug near your foot.
Had that same look in my eyes
my first day on the job,
like a child separated from his mother in a department stote.
The Sergeant assigned me to work in D Block,
had to feed the cons waitin’ to appear
before the adjustment committee.
It was like feedin’ hogs. I watched
the trustee pour hot coffee for each of ‘em
from a three-gallon tin can.
One of the cons in lockup begged me for a match,
dashed a mug of scaldin’ hot coffee
in my face. The doctors saved my eyes,
but the skin on my face never healed right.
Friends told me they found the bugger hangin’
in his cell, one Sunday. One of his friends
must’ve slipped him some rope, God bless’m.
This here’s your locker,
used to belong to old Deke Miller —
he shriveled up like a burnt piece of bacon
before he passed. Heard it was cancer.
When my wife ran off with a mechanic
from the next town, I staggered around for a while
like I was dazed from a blow to the heart.
Look here. See the girl with the blond pigtail?
that’s Ellen, my daughter. Put her through
one of them fancy nursin’ schools myself.
She’s in Denver now, don’t see her much
except for Christmas. Old Deke and his wife
clothed and fed her while I drank.
I was proud, hard.
But how hard is a man? —
pushed around against his will,
that King boy
tootin’ his communist ass in our faces,
and singin’ his heathen songs
in our streets.
And in anger, kid, in anger he swears
that no door in America will be closed to them
even if it means breakin’ us
law by law.
So you see, you have to treat these bastards right.
See the con moppin’ the rotunda floor?
Used to wear one of them afro haircuts
almost a foot high, and cobra-quick with a knife.
He’d call you cracker so often you’d answer
as though it was your Christian name.
But look at him now: bald, shaky in the knees.
Wild Bill pounded his head like a T-bone steak
with the south corridor keys,
slipped him back into his cell before mornin’.
Go on, ask him who Malcolm X is, or
Jomo Kenyatta. He’ll shit all over himself.
You look pale, but you’ll be just fine.
Cain’t use the room no more, dammit.
So you gotta be smart.
They need to know the discipline of a guard’s club,
the keys jangle like death bells ringin’.
We got to control their words, break ‘em
and fling ‘em into the mud like we did that King boy.
And we have to feed ‘em right always
if not pork
then with an education that will send ’em marchin’
into the fire. Know what I mean, kid?
Here, bite a chew of this tobacco —
it keeps you calm.
Don’t think it’s over, kid, believe me, it ain’t.
There’ll be another one of ‘em
screamin’ and preachin’ and scramblin’
for the mountaintop one of these days.
Heh heh. We should have a prison or two up there
by then, kid; maximum security.
Jobs for us all, and maybe
a special room somewhere.”
1988, Sing Sing Correctional Facility Ossining, New York
“Hey, Paul!” I heard my road dog calling me from the other side of the fence dividing the blocks from the yard. “I just heard that some rollers got downed outside L Corridor! Keep your eyes open, rap, some strange shit is going down.”
I didn’t give much thought to what he had said. Fights between convicts and guards weren’t exactly uncommon here. But I told him I’d keep my eyes open.
Then I heard the two guards in charge of my block yell, their voices full of panic and urgency, for the porter: “Lock up! Lock up now, damn it!”
Someone in the cells called out, “The guards are locking themselves in the bathroom! What the hell’s happening?”
“They’ve got control of L Corridor! There are guys running around with masks on! They’ve got the keys! They’ve got the fucking keys!”
The rumble from the corridor began to grow like a rolling thunderstorm: muffled screams, the pounding of feet running through the halls, glass shattering and showering the floor, and echoes of loud ramming sounds as though heavy steel bars were battering down the walls. There was a louder crash, and then orders were yelled. “Open these cells! Let’s get these doors open, and get these people out!”
By now I knew that the block I was in had been taken over, but I didn’t know by whom. An icy dread swept through me. My first thought was that there must be a racial war.
Keys that the block officers had abandoned were thrown to the prisoner now manning the control panel. The eighty cells in the L Corridor were instantly opened. I grabbed a metal tray for a weapon and headed out of my cell. Down the range I could see several teams of masked convicts converging on the block. Each man was armed to the teeth: baseball bats, chains, and shanks of stainless steel, two foot long and honed to a point as fine as an icepick. These men meant business.
“Everyone out! Get the fuck out of your cell!” they yelled as they moved from cell to cell. “If anyone is caught trying to hide in their cell, kill the motherfucker! Let’s go! Let’s go!” I watched each man closely, trying to read his intentions from his eyes and body signals. If they tried to move in on me I’d go over the range to the first floor. The jump was nothing, and there were too many of them to even think about dealing with them head-on. My adrenaline shot to flight mode. I put my foot on the edge of the range, ready to go over. They came closer checking me out, and clearly not rattled by my metal tray. Then I saw both black and white skin showing through their masks. I was relieved. Blacks and whites wouldn’t be working together if this was a race riot. “Everything’s cool, brother,” one said. “But we still want everyone out in the hall, so if you need to get some of your things together get them now and leave the block.” I didn’t recognize any of them, nor did I want to. Still I inched closer to the edge of the range.
“Be cool, bro. You’ve got no problem here,” another said.
With that, I moved out, heading quickly down the range and out of the block. Something this big and unbridled could quickly get out of hand. My best bet was to get out to the rec yard where my road dog was. I knew what he was about and that we could look out for each other.
I stepped into L Corridor and into a world of chaos. Each of the 632 cells had been opened, and hundreds of convicts, some masked and armed, swarmed through the hallways like angry hornets. Faces were intense with fear. Eyes darted from face to face, face to hand, looking for weapons or any signs of danger. When eye contact was made, it was brief and concealed. No one wanted his concern to be misread as a threat or challenge.
“You men get something into your hands!” one guy kept shouting. “Let’s get busy tearing this fucking place down!” He ran from window to window swinging a steel bar and smashing glass. I moved closer to the gym, hoping to find the exit door open, then spotted my friend Val from one of the other blocks. “Val!” I hollered as I worked my way toward him. “What the hell is this shit?”
“I don’t know what’s up, Paul. I just got out of the shower and the place was crazy!”
I told him my plans to head to the rec yard and he fell in beside me. Down the hall we came upon a body lying in a puddle of blood. There were punctures all over the guy’s face and upper torso. Someone had pinned a guard’s badge through his skin, a sign this was a snitch and that snitches would find no peace in L Corridor this day.
“Who is it? Can you tell who it is?” I asked my homey as I stepped around the blood.
“No, rap. Too much blood.”
By the time Val and I made it through the hallway to the gym, it was too late. The exit door was already barricaded, wired shut, and guarded by several masked and armed convicts. Since this was the only available exit, it meant that Val and I were locked in for the long run.
We knew that the riot could erupt into a full-scale bloodbath at any time, and it was imperative that we arm ourselves as quickly as possible. We grabbed the first suitable thing we saw: pieces of heavy pipe. As we made our way back up the corridor, the heat and closeness of danger hung like a wet wool blanket.
“We’re stuck in this shit for however long it lasts,” I said to Val. “We’ve got to watch each other’s back.”
Val looked around, nodding his head. “Cool, rap. Let’s get our asses out of the mainstream,” This was too big to be safe.
“Listen up! Everyone shut the fuck up for a minute!” yelled one of the Masks as he marched through the hallway. “Everyone move against the wall! We gotta keep the middle of the corridor clear. Let’s get together on this!”
The crowd flanked the wall as two other Masks walked down the center and announced: “Lucasville is ours! This is not racial. I repeat, not racial. It’s us against the administration! We’re tired of these people fucking us over. Is everybody with us? Let’s hear ya!”
Hundreds of fists shot into the air as the prisoners roared their approval. I felt relief sweep over me. I was now a little clearer about what was happening. What I didn’t know was that we were locked into what was soon to be one of the nation’s longest and bloodiest riots.
Teams of men were assigned to barricade and guard each block. Two men were stationed in the day rooms to watch the rec yard; two were stationed in each of the range’s top cells to watch the roof. L-2 was the only block that hadn’t been opened. I overheard someone say that one of the prisoners had broken a key in the lock to keep the rioters from taking over. One of the Masks found pickaxes and busted the glass and the steel frame from the window casing. Twenty minutes later, L-2 was taken.
“Okay, get the bitch who broke the key in the lock! He wants to play police? We’ll show him what’s up!”
The prisoner had locked himself in the stairwell with the block officer, hoping that the brick-and-steel enclosure would keep him safe until help arrived. The Masks attacked the block wall with forty-five-pound weight bars and a heavy pickax, and within minutes the concrete wall gave way. The guard and the prisoner were dragged out. The guard was blindfolded, but the prisoner was hit with bats, weight bars, and shanks. A coroner’s report later revealed that not only was his skull crushed, and numerous other bones broken, he had also been cut from neck to belly and gutted. His body was dragged to the end of the corridor and dumped on a pile of wet blankets near another body, both of which would later be hauled out to the rec yard.
Meanwhile, guards were being grabbed wherever they could be found. Several managed to break away and make it to safety, but others weren’t so fortunate. Some were thrown onto the floor and hit so hard that they couldn’t get back up. I didn’t know if they were alive or dead as they were dragged into one of the cellblocks. During the first hour eleven were seized, blindfolded, and dressed in prison blues, inmate uniforms. The convicts beat some of the guards so badly they released them for fear that they might die. Of those seized, seven would be taken hostage for the duration of the riot; one would be killed.
The rioters covered all of the windows with blankets and then searched every cell for food. With more than four hundred prisoners and seven guards to feed, food would be essential. Everything we found was stored in an empty cell that became the kitchen. That first night cookies, chips, and cake were given to anyone who was hungry. Although I hadn’t eaten all day, I wasn’t hungry. I remember thinking that I’d get something to eat when it was all over. Little did I know it would last another ten days.
On the second day the prison authorities shut off the electricity and the water. Soon, all food was gone. The deprivation of food and water, coupled with the stress, began to take its toll. People lost weight at an alarming rate. Several men got so thirsty they drank from the fire extinguisher. Men began to divide into factions and surround themselves with their roads dogs for protection in case the unpredictable happened. It was impossible to get any sleep. I would lie on a mattress, my mind racing. Just as I was on the edge of sleep, my eyes would pop open and I’d sit up to make sure no one was creeping up on me. I’d go through this routine over and over.
By now, state highway patrolmen, SOCF (Southern Ohio Correctional Facility) security, and FBI agents had circled the prison, along with more than a thousand heavily armed National Guard personnel. Army helicopters flew overhead. Sharpshooters lined the roof.
“We were concerned that the troops would launch a full-scale assault as they’d done in the 1968 uprising at the old Ohio Penitentiary. If that happened many of us would be killed indiscriminately, bystanders shot dead with no distinction between them and the ringleaders. I also knew that somewhere inside L Corridor there were seven hostages, and they were the only thing that stood between life and death, bullets and negotiations.
A team of convicts set up a phone line and established contact with the prison staff and the SOCF negotiator, who got things off to a bad start by calling the convicts “a bunch of clowns.” The convict negotiators connected a tape recorder to the phone line so that those inside could be kept informed of the progress.
Eventually, however, the state woke up to the seriousness of the situation and flew in a special adviser from Georgia. He turned the talks around with a high degree of professionalism and won the guarded respect of the prisoners.
“We want every stage of these talks covered by the news media, sir,” said one of the convicts. “We know how the prison administration operates, and we don’t trust any of them. If this isn’t covered by the media, the state will do nothing but stall and renege on any progress made.”
News coverage would restrain the outside troops from either rushing the prison or killing the convicts once this was over. But the state wanted the situation kept under cover, with only select information reaching the outside through their own public relations office. Not surprisingly, the state released a story alleging that the riot was a racial war and that the prisoners refused to let the media talk to a convict spokesman. When they did allow one of the major Ohio newspapers to speak to a convict by phone, they quickly pulled the plug when he began to list the prisoners’ demands.
Inside the prison, the convicts rigged up a PA system using a tape player and two large speakers taken from the rec department. They set these up near the windows facing the large media camp in from of the SOCF. A tape recording was played: “The prison authorities want you to think that this is a racial war. It is not! Whites and blacks have united to protest the abuses of the SOCF staff and administration. We want the FBI and we want a peaceful ending to this …”
The tape played on, listing demands. A SWAT team was sent to remove the system, but the speakers of the battery-operated tape player were set up so that they could be reached only from inside. Every time the tape would start to play, officials sent up helicopters, hoping to drown out the sound of the message.
Another group of convicts began painting messages on bed sheets and hanging them out the windows. Prison authorities tried to move the media out of the area, but it was too late. The cameras of the local and national news caught all of it. The next day, the painted sheets made front-page news.
Meanwhile along the hallway inside the prison, several prisoners were laid out with broken bones or other serious injuries. A few of the convicts built a makeshift infirmary and went to every cell collecting any medication or medical supplies they could find. Using the stage area of the gym, they rolled out a dozen or so mattresses for those too f ucked-up to walk. That first night all of the mattresses were full. One of the wounded was bleeding so profusely that I didn’t think he’d last the night.
A self-appointed medic found a needle and thread and went to work stitching up the guy’s neck. In an hour he was stitched and laid out on a mattress. He was one of the lucky ones who would live to tell his story. The unlucky ones were piled on top of each other like a heap of dirty laundry. A few days later the bodies were wrapped in blankets and dragged out to the rec yard. Two of them thought to be dead jumped up as soon as they were laid on the grass. They ran straighr toward the National Guard, who didn’t know whether to shoot them or run from them. A guard thought to be dead lay in the yard for several hours while numerous convicts who had clustered there kicked and assailed him. When the coast seemed clear, he hobbled over toward the fences, where armed guards covered him as he made his way across the yard to the K-side gym. One of the prisoners who was running across the yard was the prisoner Val and 1 had seen earlier lying in the corridor with a badge pinned to his body. How he managed to lie perfectly still for all of those hours, including the painful moment while the badge was being stuck to his body, is still a mystery.
When the prison authorities saw all of the bodies dumped in the rec yard they began to realize that this was more serious than they’d thought. So, when negotiations continued, attitudes were more strained.
“We want food and water! You people think we’re playing games. We’ll bring this fucking place down!” the convicts demanded.
“Listen up!” the negotiator responded. “We’re working on food and water. We’ll get it together and I’ll call you back as soon as it’s ready. Just hang on for a couple of hours.”
Several hours later the supplies came and were left in the yard. A team of Masks brought food and water to the prisoners and rationed them, greatly reducing the tension inside. The downside was that prison authorities would now try to use food as a bargaining chip. Their mistake was in thinking that now they were in a position where they could call the shots.
The negotiations continued over the next several days like a Ping-Pong match, back and forth, neither side wanting to lose the first point. Prison authorities still wouldn’t agree to live media coverage.
“You either get the news media in here or else these talks will end!” the convicts yelled. “We don’t have to talk at all!”
But the officials acted like it was all just a game. “We can’t let a TV crew inside for security reasons. It can’t be done!”
Several more bodies were dumped into the rec yard. The phone began to ring.
“Okay. We’re working things out with an Ohio news network for a live TV interview. Can we get a hostage in return, as a show of good faith?”
“A hostage is no problem. We’ll bring one of your people out when we come to do the interview. Set it up and call when you’re ready.”
The following morning, before the interview was scheduled, a group of masked prisoners explained to those manning the phones that more food and water was needed.
The authorities saw this as a chance to show who was in control. “We can’t change the original deal. You said all you wanted was a TV interview and we got it for you. Now you’re playing games. We’ll give you the interview but nothing else. If you want the food and water you’ll have to give us two hostages.” A few minutes later another group of Masks, who called themselves the “hardliners,” came to the phone.
“Here’s what’s gonna happen,” said a spokesman for the hardliners. “You people are going to bring us more food and water with the TV interview for one hostage. This is not negotiable. If you play games, we’ll send you a hostage — but he won’t be walking out!”
The authorities denied the demand and asked to talk to the original negotiator. Returning to the phone, he said, “All we’re asking for is food and water. We know this won’t cost you a thing. If we don’t get it, the hardliners will take over! There’s nothing I can do. You could lose a hostage for something as bask as food and water!”
A local radio station, hearing of the exchange, expressed concern that the hostage might be killed, A spokesperson for the prison authorities released a statement to the media: “We don’t take this too seriously. We believe it’s a serious threat, but it’s a common ploy used during a hostage situation.”
Later that day a hostage was killed. His body was placed on a mattress and carried into the rec yard by six convicts. Everyone waited for the National Guard to hit the joint, guns blasting at anything that moved.
Suddenly, one of the convicts at the back window yelled out: “They’re crossing the yard! The state boys are in the rec yard heading this way!”
I ran to the window to see how much time I had before they reached the walls of L Corridor. Outside a light fog had begun to roll in, and from the center of the rec yard about thirty National Guardsmen marched forward in V formation.
“Get your motherfucking asses back across the yard, boys, or you’ll get one of these hostages hurt!” a rioter yelled at the police.
All movement came to a halt. The phone began to ring. Before the prison officials could say anything the prisoner manning it yelled, “Get those police off the yard now! What the fuck are you trying to do?”
They cleared the yard. It was later discovered that they were only on the yard to serve as security while the news media set up a conference table and moved their equipment into place. Though tragic, the murder of the hostage had served as a catalyst. From that moment on, things moved forward quickly. The special negotiator from Georgia was now supervising most of the talks. A horde of thirty-five “experts” swarmed the prison authorities who were manning the phone banks.
The state wanted the siege to end without further bloodshed. They wanted the prison back under their rule, the remaining hostages released unharmed, and themselves out of the national media. The takeover had been dragging on in a slow blur, and people on both sides wanted to get on with their lives. Live TV and radio coverage was soon arranged. To show good faith, two hostages were released. The remaining five would be held till the day of surrender. One of the rioters’ demands was that the 409 prisoners inside the L Corridor be represented by competent legal counsel to assure their safety and the protection of their rights. The authorities quickly agreed and flew in an attorney from Cleveland, who hammered out a contract with the convict negotiators. It was decided that they would surrender the following day.
Inside, the mood changed dramatically and activity shifted into high gear. Demolition crews were formed to destroy as much of SOCF as possible. Unit managers’ offices were gutted, files destroyed, and windows, walls, and ceilings bashed. Each cell was hit. Toilets, sinks, and windows were busted; cell doors were removed, plumbing destroyed, and cabinets ripped off the walls. The control panels in each block were dismantled, and all the wiring and electrical components were ripped out or set ablaze. The sounds of destruction could be heard by the troops surrounding the prison. They stared as though expecting the walls to fall and the prisoners to come pouring out into the rec yard.
The prisoners packed up their personal property, preparing to leave a bad memory behind. High fives, laughs, and jokes filled the air, and the last of the food was given out in generous portions. It wasn’t so much celebration of what had been accomplished as an expression of incredible relief that the thing was finally coming to an end.
The next afternoon, prisoner negotiators went through L Corridor collecting names of convicts who were willing to transfer to other prisons. As part of the agreement, the prison authorities had approved mass transfers, L Corridor would be closed for a couple of years or at least until all the damage had been repaired. This meant that hundreds of beds had to be found in a system already working at 185 percent over capacity. I didn’t care where I ended up. I just wanted to leave SOCF; Val felt the same way. Our names were added to the transfer list. We knew anyplace would beat the shit out of Lucasville.
Val and I walked into one of the opened blocks and sat next to a fire. Our property was packed into large plastic trash bags and we were ready to walk out.
Out in the rec yard, state officials, media, legal counsel, and prison negotiators sat facing each other at the conference table. Each was furiously signing copies of the twenty-one-point agreement that the lawyers and prisoners had prepared.
I watched everyone shake hands and laugh, a false show of fellowship. Hell, I knew they held each other in contempt, but it meant that the agreement had been reached. If the package was wrapped in blatant hypocrisy, so be it.
TV cameras were trained on the door that would release the surrendering prisoners. The sick and the wounded went first. Some were busted up so badly that they came out on stretchers. Bloodied T-shirts and dirty makeshift bandages hung off their bodies like rags off scarecrows. Those able to walk on their own limped or hobbled as fast as their feet could carry them, eager to put distance between them and their assailants. Convicts watched the process from behind covered windows. If anything happened to the first group, the exchange would no longer be honored.
The surrender went smoothly, and at 10:30 P.M. Val and I walked into the rec yard with a group of thirty other prisoners. The special negotiator from Georgia escorted us to the state patrolmen.
“All right, men, listen up! When I direct you to come forward, you are to walk over to that officer there,” said a state official pacing in front of us. Pointing at me and two other prisoners, he shouted, “You, you, and you. Move up!”
I walked forward.
“Listen carefully to every word I say! Put your hands on your head, interlock your fingers, look straight ahead, and don’t move!”
I stood there while one man held my hands on top of my head and another searched me for weapons. After tying my hands behind my back with a nylon rope, the officials escorted me to the K Corridor gym. My shoes swished through the wet grass as I walked away from the most bizarre eleven days of my life.
Two hours later over a hundred other convicts and 1 were put on three prison buses and shipped to the Mansfield Correctional Institution. The bus stopped at a red light in a small town, and through the steamed windows of the bus I could see a digital clock glowing a distorted 4:00 A.M. I looked over at Val. He was off in a world of his own, probably thinking of home and family. It seemed like the right thing to do, so I closed my eyes and went home too.
1995, Mansfield Correctional Institute Mansfield, Ohio
I needed a request slip, and as I walked out of my room on my way to the laundry I stopped by the officer’s station to ask for one. There’s a heavy metal drawer that slides in and out, where you can put your ID tag to get Tylenol, cold pills, envelopes, or requests. I was about to lean over and speak into the drawer, until I looked through the bulletproof glass window and realized that both guards were asleep sitting up, both their mouths hanging open. I could never sleep that way. I stood there for a minute or so. I hated to wake them up — they might cop an attitude and shine a flashlight in my eyes when they came around on midnight shift to get even — but I needed that request slip, and if I didn’t hurry, the laundry would be closed. 1 figured that if I just stood there one of them was bound to wake up soon on his own.
Just as I was about to tap on the glass, this sissy named Jerome came screaming down the stairs from the second floor, yelling at the top of his lungs, “Pearl got stabbed, Pearl got stabbed! My God, you gotta help her! PEARL’S BEEN STABBED… !” It was bloodcurdling, Jerome’s screeching, so panic-stricken and desperate that I thought for sure I’d see a butcher knife sticking out of Jerome’s back as he raced past me. Jerome screamed into the drawer to the sleeping guards, “PEARL GOT STABBED, PEARL GOT STABBED,” and the shock of those words caused the guards to almost jump out of their socks. They snapped awake like they’d been shot. Confused and befuddled, not knowing what to do, they stared at Jerome as he hammered on the impregnable glass with his fists, hollering over and over, “PEARL GOT STABBED, PEARL GOT STABBED.”
I knew this wasn’t a good time to ask for a request slip, so I stood there for a moment, frozen, tike everyone else. The guards were arguing over who would call it in on the telephone, and who would go back upstairs to see what happened. Neither one of the guards seemed to want to race up the stairs to investigate. Survival instincts are strong.
We all went back up the stairs together. As the guard came out of the control room, Kilgore, Pearl’s chain gang boyfriend, pushed past him and walked out of the building, the blood on his hands unnoticed. When I got up to the second floor, I saw a crowd of prisoners looking down the hallway. I didn’t need to see any more, I’d seen enough of death and dying in prison, and I didn’t want to see poor Pearl butchered up. I turned away, walked downstairs, and headed to the laundry to drop off my clothes before it was too late.
As I walked down the back road, I thought of the last time I’d seen Pearl, the day before. I had been by the window of the upstairs TV room when 1 looked out and saw Pearl spreading his freshly washed underclothes out on the grass to dry. Pearl had on a bleached-white T-shirt and white cutoff shorts, stark contrast to his jet black skin. Pearl was small and slight, like a young boy physically, but toughened beyond his years by the time he’d spent in prison, playing a woman’s role in a little man’s body, trying to get along and live a normal life in an abnormal environment. I had known Pearl since we’d both been at “The Rock,” Raiford Prison, and I had signed him up for the GOLAB (Growth Orientation Laboratory) program, for which I was working at the time.
I knew him then by his given name, Emerson Jackson. In the GOLAB, prisoners spend eight days talking together without any free people observing them, going through a series of events that give them the chance to talk about their lives, to hear other people’s stories, and to gain insight into their own situations. I remembered Pearl talking about his early life. He was reticent, shy, unwilling to share his experiences at first, then finally opening up, talking and talking, about his childhood, how he came to prison, how he’d come to that point in his life. We listened with rapt attention. Pearl and I had virtually nothing in common, it seemed, besides being prisoners, and under normal circumstances in prison we’d not likely have even so much as spoken to one another, but in the GOLAB we developed a mutual respect and camaraderie that transcended racial, ethnic, cultural, and social boundaries. I came to know Emerson Jackson as a sensitive human being, a decent person, a man who had endured incredible hardships, who had survived and succeeded in the harsh prison environment, and as Pearl, who had pursued a lifestyle that was alien to me. It was Pearl’s life though, and I respected him. He was my friend.
Years went by. I left The Rock and went on a tour of Florida prisons after making the mistake of thinking that filing grievances would have any effect besides causing me to be bused from one prison to another until I wised up and shut up. I finally made it to central Florida, thirty-eight miles from my family in Tampa, and decided that for their sake I’d keep a low profile. My mother was getting too old to drive out to swamps in the middle of nowhere trying to find where they’d shipped her son this time.
When you’re serving a life sentence, and you’ve served a chunk of years, no matter where you go you find people you’ve done time with before. It was no different this time. When I got off the bus and hit the yard, it was like old home week at the reformatory, seeing men I’d known for years, when we’d all been younger, thinner, with more hair and fewer tattoos. We laughed, talked, compared notes, asked about mutual acquaintances, who’d gotten out, who’d come back, who’d died, who’d escaped.
A day or two later I saw Pearl standing in a line. He glanced at me as I walked by, averting his eyes, and we both continued on. There are barriers beyond the razor wire that surrounds us and keeps us in, racial barriers, gay versus straight barriers, homeboy barriers, among others, that constitute an etiquette of sorts in prison. I didn’t want to embarrass Pearl in front of his friends by letting it be known that some white person knew him, and perhaps Pearl didn’t want anyone to think the wrong thing if he spoke to me.
One day I was walking some laps on the back field when I saw Pearl running the opposite way, coming toward me. I remembered that at The Rock Pearl had logged many miles on the prison track. A lot of men jog in prison, some just barely shuffling along, others moving a little faster, not much more than walking speed, but not Pearl. Pearl was a runner. I used to wonder what demons were chasing Pearl to make him run so fast, and for so long. He was watching the ground ahead of him as he approached me, his face showing the exhaustion, rivulets of sweat running down his ebony cheeks, lost in his world, oblivious to any outsiders.
As he came abreast of me, I said, “Pearl,” in a sort of acknowledgment, like the “Howdy,” or “Good Morning,” that normal folks in society might say to an acquaintance on passing. People are on guard in prison — you never know where or when something might jump off — and my saying “Pearl” was just enough of a shock to cause Pearl’s eyes to dart upward from the ground to mine, a moment of panic, then a breathless “Hi,” as he registered “no threat,” and continued on. On the next lap Pearl was smiling as he came around, his glistening countenance completely different from the previous lap, recognition shining through as he ran past. It was amusing to me in a way, how we hadn’t spoken or acknowledged each other for a week or so, then when we did, every time Pearl made a lap past me he’d smile real big and say, “Hi.”
That episode broke the ice, and from then on, whenever we passed each other we’d speak, and Pearl would say to his companions, “That’s my friend, Norman, from Raiford.” Pearl was very courteous and polite to his old acquaintances and took pride in being friendly and gracious. Not everybody in prison is a Neanderthal.
Every now and then we’d be walking the same way and we’d talk. Pearl would remind me of the GOLAB, of someone I’d forgotten, and I’d tell him about someone we’d known then, where he was now. “I was so scared, at first, Norman, on that trust walk, with that blindfold on, I never liked to trust anybody.” I suppose we were being a bit maudlin, two prisoners trapped in the Twilight Zone time warp of prison, recalling a lost youth. Times had changed, we were all older, but the invisible bonds of that other time still linked us together.
I heard the whole story later, about the chain gang love triangle, how Pearl hadn’t been true to Kilgore, how Kilgore threatened to kill him if he caught him with a certain individual again, how Pearl had ignored the threats.
Kilgore had it all planned out. He got a knife somewhere and hid it outside our building. The day before, he’d gotten some paint thinner from the chair factory and hidden it in a trash drum. On the day of the killing the guards were asleep, catching a little rest before the midnight shift got off at 8 A.M. Kilgore sauntered right past them, loaded for bear, with murder on his mind.
He’d stabbed Pearl first, several times, as Jerome and other prisoners stood and watched. Pearl fell by the shower, and Kilgore poured the paint thinner over his face and body, intending to burn him up. He tried to light a book of matches, but his hands were so bloody that the matches got wet and he couldn’t light them. Another, larger, stronger prisoner took the matches away from him, perhaps thinking enough is enough, saving Pearl from flames. Kilgore walked out, leaving Pearl there on his back, dead.
It was 8:05 A.M. when they wheeled Pearl into medical on a stretcher. About the same time Kilgore turned himself in to the guards, they cuffed him and escorted him to confinement. Pearl went out for the last time in an ambulance, slow, no lights or sirens for a dead man. Kilgore went out in the back seat of a deputy’s car to the county jail and a first-degree-murder charge.
They did an autopsy on poor Emerson Jackson, the Black Pearl, violating his lifeless body one more time, verifying that he’d been murdered, intimating that the volatile liquid killed him before the stab wounds did. They said Pearl tested positive for AIDS, so he probably wouldn’t have lived long anyway. That institutional “oh well” justification didn’t minimize his death to me. Even after witnessing years of mind-numbing atrocities, after enduring incident after incident of dehumanizarion, after building up walls to hold back emotions, Pearl’s death had a profound effect on me. I was silent that day, lost in my own thoughts, facing my own mortality, grieving for a friend. I wondered if anyone would grieve for me when my turn came.
1992, Polk Correctional Institution Polk City, Florida
“While trudging from the exercise yard today, I saw in the distance a tall, thin, green-clad black man, and thought for a heartbeat or two that it might be Sam. But, if it is Sam, I chuckled, silently, grimly, I should just forget my legal appeals because I’m dead already. But then, if ghosts really exist, I reflected further, I suspect that they tend to hang out in places like the dungeons of the castle that I call home, San Quentin’s death row.
As I approached the black guard, I saw that it indeed wasn’t Sam. Passing by with a simple nod of my head, I jogged up the stairs to my cell. Once my body was locked inside, the handcuffs were removed from my wrists. Still standing by the rusty, pitted iron bars, I peered out the filthy windows of the cellblock and watched the wind whip white crests across the blue swells of the San Francisco Bay. As my eyes studied the scene, my mind spun back to the first time that I’d encountered Sam.
Leaning against the yellow cinderblock wall that separates the condemned men’s exercise yard from the world, I was contentedly puffing a rollie Bugler cancer-stick. As I pulled the smoke deep into my lungs, I felt real good about the kick-butt workout routine that I’d just put in on the weight pile. Stretching my arms out slowly, I hid behind my 187 sunglasses while feeling the sun’s rays softly massaging my sore muscles. I was waiting to be called by the guard conducting yard recall. When my name pierced the air, it would be my turn to move to the yard’s gate for handcuffs.
Penetrating my happy fatigue, I heard the murmuring of other dead men complaining: “Da canine’s fuckin’ it up! Jesus Christ, the damn five-oh can’t even get the muthuhfuckin’ list raht!”
Laughing at the curses, I watched the rookie canine struggle on and on with the yard recall lists. It didn’t flash in my head for even a half a beat to help the mutt out, wasn’t my day to babysit any infant coppers.
“Can’t ja read!” bellowed an irate, pot-bellied sergeant while stomping out of the condemned-men cellblock and advancing on the helpless puppy cop. “Whad da hell do dey teach yeh at da ah-cad-emy, ennyway?”
The baby-guard that I came to know as Sam answered quickly in a half-strangled voice, “Of course I know how to read. The inmates aren’t coming to the gate when I call their names.”
“Call ‘em twice!” snapped the sergeant. “Dey don’t show, write ‘em!” Spinning on his patent-leather heel, the top dog walked.
My amusement over Sam’s inexperienced fumbling changed to anger in a quarter beat the next day, when I found out that I was “Confined to Quarters.” Turned out Sam had claimed that I’d screwed up yard recall by not coming to the gate when he called me — a damned lie! Then, out of the kindness of his Kool-Aid pumping heart or to cover his butt, the mutt had written me a “Rule Violation Report.”
When Sam walked by my cell during yard release that day, I called to him in my most tactful, diplomatic manner. “Hey fuckhead! What’s your mothuh-fuckin’ problem? You blow the gig and you write me! For Christsakes, yard recall ain’t rocket science. What are ya, anyway? Another example of affirmative action gone wild?”
Sam hesitated for a beat and then looked like he was going to flee the scene, But to his credit, he stepped to my bars and said softly, “Wasn’t just you, I wrote Anderson, too.”
That’s when my fury jumped from a rolling, boiling three to a nine plus — pretty near nuclear-explosion ground-zero time. For you to comprehend the full depth and intensity of my emotion, you’d have to understand prison from the inside. I’ll do my best to lay it out for you, but describing doing all day long behind bars in a hard-core prison is a lot like explaining sex to a virgin. Words, pictures, diagrams just ain’t a real good substitute for the real thing.
Anyway, S.Q. had been rocking and rolling for months. Whistles, alarms going off all over the place, violence as common as the cockroaches crawling around on the peeling, faded walls. Almost daily you’d see a bleeding body lying on an orange stretcher en route to the hospital or morgue. So many guys have been going down stabbed, shot, that the entire prison had been locked tight one out of every two days for the past year.
Six weeks before, the prison officials assigned to my housing unit had called the leaders of different gangs together, allegedly to try to work out a truce. At the conference, a Mexican gangbanger pulled out a shank, and yanked and cranked it into the body of a black leader until he was dead while the badges ran for cover.
Rumors (rumors I believed) abounded around the prison that the killing had been engineered by a high-ranking Mexican-American prison official, and the state legislature was holding hearings to determine whether this was true. If you weren’t aware of racial tensions, you were too stupid to be walking around inside the walls of S.Q. without fuckin’ training wheels.
White guards had offered me weapons if I’d agree to hit black or Mexican gangbangers. The canine would offer to search me himself to make certain that I got the shank to the exercise yard, and even guarantee a warning shot from the mutt with the assault rifle on the catwalk. In theory the warning would give me a chance to drop the shank, go to the ground, and keep from getting my head caved in with a bullet. Didn’t really buy the warning-shot deal. Figured that once I made the hit, the canine with the assault rifle would bust open my skull with a .223 and laugh his ass off about the stupid dead man who believed in free passes and other such fairy tales.
A man would have to be a fool not to believe that black coppers weren’t making the same offer to black prisoners, and Mexican coppers to Mexican prisoners. The badges fill our heads with their personal brand of vitriol, supply the implements of destruction, and then we get locked down again and again and again while they pull down the lockdown overtime pay.
Now, amid all that craziness, I got a black canine telling me not to take it personally that he wrote me up on a bogus beef, cuz he wrote another white prisoner too. Shit! Ain’t that stupid, jus’ look this way, man!
After lasering the canine with hate-filled eyes for a moment, I said, “Whatta coincidence, yah bagged two white guys.”
“Probably won’t come as a news flash to you,” Sam mouthed quietly, “but I am brand new, fresh out of the academy. Didn’t know what I was doing with the yard lists, and when the sarge jumped on me for messing it up, I told him that you guys weren’t coming in when I called your names. When the sarge toP me to write the inmates who didn’t show right away at the gate, I panicked; then I just pointed to two names at random. You know I don’t know your names yet, or the color of the men behind the names. You got to believe me, it wasn’t a racial move.
“Yeah,” he said, “I should have come clean with the sarge, but I am still on probation, and I really need this job. Need the paycheck. If you want,” Sam sighed, “I’ll go tell the sarge right now that I screwed it up, and get you back on the yard list. But I’d really appreciate it if you let it slide for today. I’ll owe you one, okay?”
Funny thing about the truth, you don’t hear it often anywhere; in prison it’s pretty damn near extinct. But when truth rings out, it rings clear, rings true, and sounds so beautiful that it is real hard to disturb the melody with a bunch of petty static. “Okay, man,” I heard myself answering as if from a distance while I wondered where my voice was taking me. “I’ll get with Anderson and quash it with him, too. But you owe me. I don’t just want some extra raggedy lunch bag sometime.”
“Deal,” came from behind flashing teeth, and the canine was gone.
On the yard the next day, I told Anderson that Sam had blown it, but I didn’t think it was racial, just a new cop tripping all over himself. Even as I quashed it with Anderson, I wondered what the hell I was doing.
Guards on their nine-month probationary period are moved all around the prison, and just fill in wherever a badge is needed, so I didn’t see very much of Sam. When our paths did cross, we’d just nod in that ritualistic way that people do when they know each other’s faces, but aren’t close. Never did we speak of his debt to me.
A year later. On the exercise yard, a Mexican hit-man conjured a shank out of nowhere and tried to drive it through my sunglasses into my right eye. Luckily, I was wearing Ray-Ban Wayfarers. Instead of falling apart, the shades took the blow, deflected the blade upward, and it stuck into the bone above my right eye socket, just below the eyebrow. In the next few moments I was raining blood from my socket and blows filled with evil intent from my fists, when I heard the mechanical clack of a bullet slamming into the chamber of a canine’s assault rifle. Even in the fog of my pain and rage, I realized that if I didn’t stop fighting, in less than a beat a .223 would be tracking toward my skull. I raised my hands and backed off the assassin.
Later I wondered where in the hell were all my homeboys while I was getting blindsided and bleeding all over the concrete? I didn’t ask them, though; they’d have some damned excuse — prison’s full of them. My eye and vision returned to what they’d been before, but my view of my homeboys was changed forever. Oh, I still hit the iron with the fellas, but when the wotkout was done, I started double-tying my shoelaces and heading out to play basketball with the black guys. It blew the minds of the homies, but I didn’t give a damn. I wanted to find out who the hell were some of the other guys hanging out on the condemned yard with me for years. So I told my workout partners, “Don’t beat on my trip, and I won’t beat on yours.”
“Yah git in trouble out there, ya on your own!” snarled one of my putative buddies.
Think I been on my own for quite awhile but jus’ didn’t know it ‘til now, flashed through my brain. But I just nodded and went to hoop it up.
On the round-ball court, I’d hear some trash talk, but it was mostly directed at my two-inch vertical leap. So I got white man’s disease, but I can put the damned rock into the hoop at least one shot out of every ten.
One bright shiny day, I was having a monster day on the court. I was in the zone, everything I tossed toward the bucket was falling in! Mook Man, who was guarding me, couldn’t believe it, and seemed even more delighted about it than me. The man didn’t guard me too tough, probably just figured that I’d chill and start banging bricks off of the side of the rim — as usual.
Out of nowhere some psycho on the sidelines hollered, “Ay, Mookie! Don’t let that white boy tear you up! You’re making a muthahfuckin’ all-star outta the wood!”
Everyone laughed but the Mook Man. Thought about telling him it was just my turn for fifteen minutes of fame, but the game started up again before I had a chance.
Catching the ball in the lane, I felt Mook Man’s body on mine for the first time that day, crowding me for the ball. Flashing an up-fake at him, I showed him the ball. When he soared into the air, I spun the other way and softly laid it into the hoop.
Next play, Mook Man caught me in the forehead with his elbow. Wincing in pain, I rasped out, “Hey, Mookie, it’s only a game, man. No one’s makin’ a livin’ out here.”
“Men playing.” Mook glowered at me. “Can’t take it, get your punk ass to your end of the yard.” He bit off the words as he violently gestured toward the white boys against the far wall.
Flashing my eye around, I saw that all of a sudden I was alone. No one, not a single soul, was meeting my eyes. I’d seen these looks before in the county jail. The Deputy Dawgs would slam a score or more guys into a tank built for a dozen. Jammed in like rats, the pack would begin to form, all of a sudden someone would become a nonentity as the mob got ready to roll. If the victim fought back, he’d just get beaten. If he laid down, it was all about the gang bang rape scene. After awhile, I came to realize that this wasn’t about sex, it was about anger, evil, and most of all, power!
As my eyes continued to move to each of the black men around me, I found that my hand was involuntarily rubbing the scar above my right eye. I heard a voice and was startled to discover that it was
mine. “Forget it,” I said in an eerily normal tone of voice. “Let’s play ball.”
Next play when the ball went up, I got up as high as I could into the air and ripped my arm toward Mook’s skull. Realizing in midnight that I couldn’t soar high enough to tag him, I snatched his shoulder, and yanked him down to the concrete. Landing lightly next to him, I booted him in the side of the body while snarling, “You get the fuck offa da court, ASSHOLE!” Just stay down, man, I thought, as I stepped to the side.
Rolling with my kick, Mook Man bounced to his feet, fast, real fast! Throwing a right hand that barely missed my jaw, as I jerked my head in the other direction, his fist smacked hard into the side of my neck.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spied that Mook Man’s homeboy, J.T., six feet three inches, two hundred fifty pounds of weight-driving muscle, was pounding directly toward my body. Spinning away from Mook to face his homey, I knew that it was futile. J.T.’s just too damn big for me! Bracing myself for the avalanche, all of a sudden J.T.’s passed me and snatched up Mook Man like he was a two-year-old, and simply walked away with him.
My mind blown apart by J.T.’s move, my eyes looked over and immediately flicked up to the gun canine on the catwalk. As I watched, the badge swung the business end of his assault rifle toward the yard. Behind the mirrored sunglasses, I saw the canine’s face — it was Sam. Standing quietly, I waited to find out what he was going to do about what just went down.
Sam looked down at me, and then his eyes moved to Mook Man, who was walking the other way as J.T. intently packed words through his ears and into his head.
“Rough ball game,” Sam called from the catwalk. “I’m calling on the radio for escorts to take you and Mookie to your cells. Get your stories straight in case the sergeant interviews you. No punches, no fight, you were just playing a bit too rough. You with me or you want to spend the next six months in the hole?”
Damn! A free pass! The notion rocketed through my head as I collected my workout clothes getting ready to leave the yard, J.T. came at me, blotting out the sunlight with his huge ebony self. “Mook cheap-shotted you, and got his lumps to make it square. Now it’s over, man. No reason to start a war over a petty scuffle.”
“I hear that,” I answered as I nodded my agreement while starting to figure that this might work out.
Escorts made the scene. Handcuffed, I walked into the condemned housing unit. Kidnapped, I’m not taken to my cell. Instead, the escort canine took me to a black cage outside the sergeant’s office and locked my body inside.
I’ve been through this before, the sarge will keep us locked in the cages for a couple of hours to soften us up. The canines figure (correctly) that the wait will prey on our minds while we wonder what they’re getting ready to do to us. I always try to argue with myself that since I know and understand their tactics, they won’t affect me. That’s an argument that I always seem to lose. Sitting with my eyes hidden behind my sunglasses, I just kept telling myself, “Worry about what you can control, homeboy, forget about the rest.”
Sergeant Dana walked by me and strode into her office. I’ve known her for a couple of years. She was one of the first female guards at San Quentin, and she’s also openly lesbian. Sergeant Dana belongs to a leather-wearing, Harley-riding biker club called “Dykes on Bikes,” and she never misses a Gay Pride parade in San Francisco. For her to survive and make sergeant in the macho male environment of San Quentin that’s openly hostile to her is quite an accomplishment. She did it by being flat-out smarter and better at her job than anyone else.
My thoughts of the sergeant were interrupted by the sight of Sam marching toward Dana’s office. Evidently she’s called him down from the catwalk in order to make his report in person. Seemed like the female canine was her usual efficient self.
After minutes tick-tocked by, Sam emerged from the office with a grim look on his face. As he walked by he stole a glance at me, but kept right on motoring. I took the quick look as a good sign.
More minutes trudged by before Sergeant Dana sent a guard to escort Mook Man into her office, but Mook wasn’t having any. “Tell that bitch I ain’t got nuttin’ ta tell her, ‘cept to get herself fucked by a man!” Mook Man muttered angrily at the canine.
Deciding that he didn’t want to deliver the message, the escort canine called Sergeant Dana to the cage, and Mook Man repeated his words.
Tilting her head away from Mook Man, Sergeant Dana narrowed her eyes at me and snarled, “You refusing your interview too?”
Thanks a lot, Mookie, I thought, you really softened the chick up for me. Smiling, I answered, “Kind of bored hangin’ out here. Conversation sounds cool to me.”
“What exactly happened out there?” Sergeant Dana inquired.
Hesitating a beat or two, I looked at the clock on the gray office wall behind her head. The tactic of leaving me in the cage to sweat had its penalty for Sergeant Dana too. By 3 p.m. she’s hot to have me locked in my cell for count or write me a ticket for the hole. In the next thirty minutes, she’s got to make a decision, and if I can fill that time with nonsense, I’ll be home free.
“Can’t really call it, Sarge,” I answered in my most innocent manner. “Me and the fellas were jus’ playing a little ball, and the cop tossed us offa da yard.”
“Understand that there was a punch thrown,” Sergeant Dana bluffed, at least I hoped she was bluffing.
“Naw, just a lot of contact. You know we play twenty-five-to-life ball out there...”
Finally, the sarge questioned, “What’s that red mark on your neck? Looks to me like you got hit. Tell me the truth, was this a racial attack?”
“Yah know San Quentin’s policy is to pull all da fellas with racial problems from the yards.” I grinned at the sergeant. “Yah wouldn’t be savin’ the classification committee is blowin’ it, would you, Sarge? Letting gang members onto the integrated yard?”
For the first time Sergeant Dana smiled back at me because we both know that the classification committee is full of ugly, empty, acrylic suits that wouldn’t be able to identify a gangbanger if he had the information tattooed on his forehead. And many gangbangers do just that, tattoo their gang affiliation on their foreheads. But, somehow, the classification committee misses it and assigns them to the racially integrated yards anyway.
“You’re looking for what ain’t there,” I replied solemnly. “It was just a rough game, nuttin’ more.” With that last lie, the interview was over, and the sergeant decided that she didn’t have enough to beam my body directly into the hole, so she had me locked back in my cell.
That night I received a “Blue Violation Report,” written by Sergeant Dana. I’d been charged with “Involvement in a Physical Altercation,” whatever the hell that meant. After being locked in my cell for three days, an escort canine came and took me to a disciplinary hearing. The lieutenant found me not guilty, partly because Sam stuck to the story of rough ball game, and mostly because the lieutenant hated Sergeant Dana.
Next day I returned to the exercise yard. Strolling across the concrete, I was more than a little uptight while I wondered what I’d find,
Looking around, I saw that Mook Man hadn’t made it to the yard, and my nervousness jumped up and multiplied by ten. The lieutenant found him guilty of disrespecting Sergeant Dana.
Eventually, Sam fell by my cell and said, “We’re even.”
“Yeah, we are.” I smiled back at the sunglasses before he turned and walked.
After that day, Sam started dropping by my cell from time to time. Met his parents, his wife through the photos in his wallets, and his life through him. I learned how it was tough for him in the inner city of the flatlands of Oakland. Sam talked with pride about the first house that he’d just bought with his wife in the same neighborhood they’d grown up in.
“Now that you’re making money,” I remarked, “why don’t you get out of there? Move on out to the suburbs?”
“Wouldn’t want to do that,” Sam replied. “Our house is close to the church my family’s always attended, and besides, a lot of people in the community helped me when I was a kid. No one, and I mean no one, makes something out of himself in the ghetto — alone. You just don’t do it all alone.”
One day after one of our many conversations, I found to my surprise that I didn’t think of him as a cop or a black man anymore, just as Sam.
Sam once asked me, “What’re you doing in here ? You don’t seem to belong on death row.”
Real uncomfortable with the question, I finally answered, slowly, softly, “Guess no one was ever there to reach down and pull me out, Sam.”
Sam simply nodded his head and never brought up the subject again.
A couple of years ago, Sam asked me, “Do you think they will kill Bobby?” Bobby Harris had an execution date, the first one in California since the five-year moratorium on the death penalty.
“Don’t know,” I answered. “We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”
Shaking his head solemnly, “Don’t know about working here if they start killing you guys. Don’t want to support my family on thirty pieces of silver. My wife is praying for Bobby, don’t want to see anyone die.”
The next day, a canine dropped by my pad, banged on my bars with his baton, and then said in a serious tone that caught my attention and quickly drew my feet to the front of my cell, “Sam’s wife wanted me to talk to you.”
“His wife? You sure?” I wondered in surprise.
“Yeah, Sam’s dead,” the canine told me as he began to explain what had happened.
Sam had invited some guards to fall by his house for a get-together. Some young men crashed the party, but Sam and his wife didn’t care for the intrusion.
Sam didn’t make a big deal out of their drugs, but he did ask one young man to leave, and all of his buddies decided to fly away with him too.
When they had just left, a stone crashed through the front window of Sam’s home. Sam and his fellow guards went out to confront the young men. Shots were fired and Sam lay dead in the streets.
After hearing the story, I flipped on my television for the news. Sam’s death got thirty seconds on the local news while Bobby’s possible pending execution was analyzed in detail for five minutes on the national network news.
1995, California State Prison-San Quentin
San Quentin, California
I was almost asleep when I heard the keys turn the bolt next door. Highly unusual: Unless someone is dying and they can get the guard’s attention, the cells are locked and stay locked for the night, period.
Wilson was on duty. I heard his voice, smooth and enticing. “Okay, baby, there’s no way out, nowhere to go. I’m gonna fuck you right now.”
“What if I don’t want you to?” Jane, my next-door neighbor, said.
“You know you want it, I know you want it. You’ve been wavin’ that ass in my face for too long. I heard you like it black. I’m ready.”
“You have to come and get it then.” Even through the wall I could hear her voice getting husky.
“No problem,” His tone thickened with desire.
Jane was a strange one. She threw herself at any man who walked in the door, but night after night woke up screaming from some internal terror. Ain’t this a bitch, I thought. I did not want to hear her fucking Wilson. I did not want to be there. Somebody would peep it and the fallout would be heavy.
I closed my mind and drifted. After you do time for a while, you learn how to build your own wall. You learn to show nothing and hear nothing. After eight years I can shut out almost anything.
When Wilson came back at 6 A.M. to unlock the doors, it was business as usual. As everyone went to work, Jane passed me on the tier and nodded her normal hello. We weren’t friends, but once in a while we’d run the track together. She looked cool, more dressed than usual, with more makeup, and she’d rolled her hair. I had a bad feeling about this.
Night came again and we locked down. Not one hour later I heard it happening again: Wilson opening Jane’s door. I heard them laughing, then moaning. If I could hear, so could Maria on the other side. I thought about banging on the wall. I wanted to yell at them; “Don’t put me in your shit!” But I didn’t.
Wilson and Jane went at it for a few more nights and then stopped. I don’t know why. Maybe they got spooked, tired, or their thing just fizzled. There weren’t any rumors on the unit. I hoped it was all over. But a week later on my way to work in Mechanical Services, I saw Jane at the officers’ station leaning across the desk laughing with Wilson. He put his hand on top of hers in one sexy move. Keisha, my best friend here, walked by and saw it too. As soon as Wilson saw Keisha, he pulled his hand away, and Jane straightened up and walked out the door.
On the line at lunch, Keisha and Maria were talking. I picked up a tray and inched up behind them. “For sure, I hate that shit,” Keisha was saying. “Wilson is fine, and he don’t need to be with no white broad.”
“Fuck her, she’s crazy. That’s why she screams every night,” Maria said. We got our beige-colored slop and moved to the tables. Maria looked at me. “Lee, I know you can hear them every night, too. I get hot just listening.”
“What are you talking about?” I hoped I sounded casual.
“Yeah right,” Keisha shot me a look. “I remember how you can’t hear. When Sally Barnes lived next to you and had that seizure, you heard enough to bang and yell, even though Maria slept through it. Remember what’s-her-name, Miss, uh, Havers? She came a half hour later and Sally was blue ‘cause she’d swallowed her tongue, and you were screaming at her: ‘Where’s the med team?’ “
Yeah, I remembered. Havers had freaked out and let me out of my cell — very irregular — because she knew 1 could get Salty breathing. Then she’d turned around and locked me in the hole for being out of my cell after lockdown just to cover her simple-assed self.
Fortunately we couldn’t find an empty table, so we couldn’t continue the conversation. We had the “hate prison food talk” instead.
Every time I put on my khakis I think about my old life, my free life when I’d put on my whites, my nurse’s uniform. It’s always a passing thought, a second of longing. Then I do my crunches to get my blood flowing before I leave the cell.
I walked out and ran into the unit manager, Mr. Jason. He’s one sick guy. No decision is made without his personal approval. He’s king here and we’re his “girls.” Behind our backs, he calls us his “bitches.” That gives the guards a green light to treat us like dogs. Whenever a guard cops a feel on me doing a pat search I think, “Mr. Jason, one day there will be divine justice.” Jeffrey Jason, Bureau of Prisons, hack supreme: Mr. white suit, brown shirt, Brut-smelling, “family values man.” I hate him and usually I stay out of his way.
But this morning he stopped right in front of my cell. “Lee McMann, this your room?”
“I live in this cell, yes.”
“Get to work.”
I did, but I looked back and saw that Jason was in my cell. At lunch I went back to see what was missing or if he’d found my petty contraband (cinnamon and oregano from the kitchen, a little Comet for my sink) but everything was exactly as I’d left it. The man had looked but not touched. Something had been violated, but I didn’t know what.
I started back to work but bumped into Maria on the tier. “Los puercos were in my cell this morning,” she said. “The vent between mine and Jane’s was opened. That’s the only thing they touched. Big Daddy Jason was in yours, too.”
“Yeah, I hate that man.” I wasn’t going to discuss this with Maria. She talked a good line against the cops, but she was a government witness in her own case. As far as I was concerned, that meant she was a snitch.
Maria pushed it. “Do you think it’s about Wilson? How could they know so fast?”
I shrugged. Maybe ‘cause you told them, I thought. It was closing in on me, and I started to get mad. Fuck all this. Fuck Jane and her lying ass. Fuck the lieutenants. Fuck Wilson.
Well, maybe not Wilson. He’d always been all right with me, and everyone else too. When my coworker Cakes’s mom had a heart attack, he’d called the hospital and let her talk with her brother. Another time he’d found two women in bed so he just counted them right there and never said a word. He was a human being first — and that can be dangerous for a cop.
When I got to Mechanical Services, my boss was at lunch, as usual. All the work orders were filled, the tools locked up, and there was nothing to do. Keisha, Louise, and Cakes were sitting around having a loud argument.
“I don’t care,” Louise was yelling — very unusual for her. “All these men walking around, patting us down, walking in the cells when we’re on the toilet, pawing through our clothes. I hate it. I hate all of them. Talking to us any way they want, calling us bitches and whores. I believe her.”
“You’re one stupid, blind white girl. You just saying that ‘cause he’s black and she’s white.” Cakes heaved herself up from the chair and glowered. The sweat on her forehead glistened and her temper was about to blow.
“Lee can tell us. Right, Lee?” Keisha looked me straight in the eyes and smiled. “We all know you’re a space case — but only when you wanna be, right? Cakes heard that Jane said Wilson raped her. How about it? Yes? No? Is the white girls’ club gonna put on their robes, or what?”
I shot back: “I don’t know what the KKK’s gonna do. The white girls’ club can tar and feather themselves to death.”
Cakes was frowning, concentrating hard on a spot over Louise’s head, trying not to let her fury run wild. Keisha had stopped smiling, but the smirk was still in her eyes. Louise was almost crying. She had pulled her knees up to her chin and slid down in her chair, looking even thinner than usual. I looked at her and said, “Stop crying. He didn’t rape you, did he? He didn’t fuck you, right?”
“No. But these men around here make me think of Jerry, He beat me up every time it rained. He said I was his and there was nothing I could do about it. When I got arrested, the first thing I thought was ‘Jerry can’t do me no more,’ and I was happy.”
“Ain’t that some shit,” Cakes said. “You gotta go to prison to get away from your old man. I wouldn’t take that from any man. All you white girls are the same. Either you take it from your men, or you take ours.”
My boss walked in and everyone shut up.
“What’s going on, girls?”
“Nothing,” everyone said almost at once.
“There’s a special count. Everyone go back to your quarters. Come back at two P.M.”
I was relieved. I wanted to talk to Keisha. If there’s anyone I can talk to, it’s Keisha. She reminds me of Tina, a woman I went to nursing school with who was always telling me to touch my patients. Tina said I’d never be a real nurse if I was afraid to touch, roll up my sleeves, and dive into their illnesses. One day in the emergency room a black woman who had overdosed was brought in. She had open wounds all over her arms and was lying in her own vomit. We had to clear the vomit from her throat, then pack her in ice and clean her sores. I hesitated, and Tina caught it. The shame burned as I turned red. It wasn’t the vomit or the sores that made me hesitate. It was because she was black. I’d never touched anyone black. Tina never said anything about it, but she knew. After that I thought a lot about how fucked up I was, how I was a racist and didn’t even know it.
When I met Keisha, she asked me why I wasn’t in the white girls’ club. At first I would only say I didn’t want to be in any club, that I was a loner. But later I told her this story. She said at least I’d realized it. Most people would have let someone else treat the woman. I liked Keisha for saying that. But after that she told me about her life, and how white people didn’t know how racist they were, or they knew and enjoyed it. She told me about her father trying to organize the United Auto Workers union in Detroit, and how the whites fire-bombed her house. Keisha is really proud she’s black. She is BLACK, almost blue-black.
She called us “the odd team,” and we hung out because we worked together. We didn’t need to talk all the time. We were comfortable with each other on some level I can’t explain. It’s just one of those friendships that happen in prison and wouldn’t happen anywhere else.
We walked across the compound, past the rec field. Even though it was windy and the leaves were blowing, we walked slowly, because once we got inside it would be harder to talk.
“You know you’re going to be called by the lieutenant,” Keisha said. “Security is going to deal with this one. Jane said he raped her, and she’s gonna go for it. The white girls’ club has already started talking. They’re talking to all the white girls who will listen. They’re saying it’s cop violence.”
“Why me, damn it? I never talk to the police.”
“Lee, don’t be a jerk. You live next door to her. You and Maria are part of their investigation for sure.”
“I hate this shit. All I want to do is my time and get on.”
“What will you tell them?”
“It’s none of your business what I tell them.”
“Yes it is. If you tell them you don’t know anything, they’ll put you in the hole until it’s over, and I’ll have to send you stuff. If you tell them he raped her, then you’ll be the white girl of the month. If you say it wasn’t rape, then you’ll be called a cop lover and a snitch. Any way you do it I’ll have to decide where I stand with you. It is my business.”
“But it’s not my business. I don’t care about Jane or Wilson. They don’t care about me. They didn’t give a shit about me when they did it in her cell.”
“It may not be your fault, but now you’re in it. So you have a problem.”
The door to the unit was open and people were filing in. Half the unit was standing on the tiers or in the lobby. The count hadn’t been called yet. On the top tier there were two lieutenants and two other men in sports clothes standing at the rail, taking pictures of cells -— Jane’s, Maria’s, mine. Everyone was watching. I cursed Jane over and over.
At five the next morning I heard officers opening Jane’s cell, telling her to get dressed. They took her out of the unit. The investigation had begun.
I wanted time to think, bur I had to go to work. On my way, I saw Louise talking to Bonnie, this stone-cold racist. She and her bus-band had been part of some racist gang in Idaho that went on a terror rampage against Vietnamese immigrants. Now she’s “born again” and leads an all-white self-esteem group. Seeing her with Louise gave me the chills; I realized that Bonnie was trying to find out what I was going to do about Jane and Wilson. I was going to have to start watching my back if this was gonna be a gang thing. It could get physical and someone could get cut up.
I got to Mechanical Services — out of the air, into the dungeon. Work was an overheated, dark basement office where I spent my days jockeying for a seat on the best of the torn-up trashed chairs we collected from the garbage to furnish our office. One of our jobs is to pick up broken furniture and equipment, but since there’s no place to store it, and it takes months to get anything fixed, most of it sits in the basement hall rotting.
Keisha was going through work orders and pulling out the parts we’d need for each one. Louise came in right after me and walked to the desk in the middle of the room, looking more strung out than usual. I always thought all that whacking around and beating had made her dull. She was so skinny and she looked like she was scared to put food in her mouth.
Louise’s jaw popped. “Everyone’s saying that Wilson did it. Jane is really afraid the guards are gonna set her up. Unless we support her, she may have to go into protective custody. This woman in a state prison had the same thing happen to her. She got pushed off a tier and broke her back. Now she’s paralyzed, I mean, a guard raped her and tried to kill her.”
“Since when do you talk to Bonnie so much, Louise?” Keisha asked.
Louise stuttered, surprised by Keisha’s challenge. “I, uh, that’s not it. It’s just that I believe Jane, and besides, he’s a cop and it’s her word against his. And we never win unless we stick together.”
“Well, I don’t think he raped her,” Keisha said. “I think they were lovers. She was into him. I want to know why she’s doing this. First she fucks him, then yells rape. Just ‘cause she says it, don’t make it so.”
I wanted to know why she was doing it too. I also wanted to jump out of my skin and run.
Cakes walked in. “They just took Maria in handcuffs to the captain’s office,” she announced. “Four of them. ‘Come with us,’ they said. They didn’t even wait ‘til she was outside to put the cuffs on her.”
When I got back to the unit, Jane was still gone and Maria was sitting on her bunk, staring at the wall. I knocked and went in. She didn’t look good. She’d been crying and her wrists were swollen from the cuffs. I asked her if she was okay.
A long line of Spanish curses came out: pendejo this, pendejo that. “That was worse than all my talks with the U.S. Attorney, that cabrón. They were screaming at me and threatening me. They said I could get a new case for perjury, and no matter what, I’d go to a grand jury. I don’t even know where the grand jury is. Chingada. They made me take a lie detector test. I kept asking to call my lawyer and they said, ‘Fuck your lawyer!’ They said I’d go to segregation and do the rest of my time there. Six of ‘em kept saying, ‘He raped her.’ They said it over and over.”
“Who was there?” I asked.
“I don’t know — some lieutenants, that pendejo Jason, the captain, and two other guys who said they were from Washington, some agency I never heard of. They were the ones with the lie detector. Shit man, I didn’t do anything.” She was breathing hard.
“How long were you in there?”
“Three hours.”
My heart dropped. Before I could stop myself, I said, “You were in there all that time? What did you say to them? I mean, that’s a long time.”
Maria cut her eyes at me and froze. Just that fast, I had stopped being someone to comfort her, someone she could confide in. Now I was an immediate threat. I’d blown it before I could find out anything she’d said. Spending three hours with the police meant she’d told them lots of things. I tried to save the conversation by asking if my name had come up, but other than tell me that they’d called her because she lived next door, Maria had had nothing else to say. She stood up, wanting me to leave.
I went to my cell. Since my cell will never be my home or “house,” as the police like to call it, I don’t keep a lot of things. But I do have a big, knitted blanket which I crawled under, trying to get warm and calm down so I could think. I was waking for the police to call me in for interrogation. I wasn’t going to say one word, but I knew they’d physically keep me there and threaten me with new charges and more time.
From what Maria had said, I knew there was an outside investigation. It wasn’t just the prison. Unlike all the other investigations I’d seen or heard about, this time they were going after the officer, not the prisoner. A few years ago, this other officer had been fucking every woman he could. Everyone knew it. He and a woman prisoner got busted in the shower by the night orderly. When the administration found out about it, the officer got transferred. A few months later we heard he’d gotten a promotion. All the women involved went to the hole for months. The difference: He was white.
“Chow line. Last call.” There was a rap on my door and Keisha barged in.
She stood over me, her arms crossed and her braid all messy. “No rest for the weary. GET UP!” she said. “I waited at dinner but I should’ve known you wouldn’t show. We have work to do. You can’t lie here like a vegetable. The whole compound is freaking out. Maria’s wrists are black and blue and she’s in the cafeteria crying. There are four extra cops on duty and the lieutenants are running around like there’s gonna be a riot, and you’re takin’ a goddamned nap.” Keisha was barely controlling her voice.
“Tough shit,” I said. “I’m thinking.”
“You’re not thinking,” Keisha said, her voice getting loud. “You’re catatonic. You can’t zone out now.”
“I’m trying to figure it out, okay? So leave it.” I could get loud too, if I wanted.
“No, I won’t,” she said.
“It’s none of your damn business. You’re the one always telling me to stay away from the crap.”
“Listen here, and listen good. This isn’t the same. One, this is about to become a lynching of one more black man, and two, you’ve been my friend and you’re in it. So, it’s a different case. Get it?” Keisha went on. “I know we always say you gotta do what you gotta do, but sometimes that just don’t work. This is about race. A lynching. They’re gonna take the word of that cracker Jane and screw Wilson to the wall. Don’t you know that anytime a white girl says ‘rape by a black man,’ the mob runs for a rope?”
“But he’s a cop, Keisha.” My voice was catching.
“Yeh, he’s a cop with a dick for brains. But he didn’t rape her, did he?”
No he didn’t, I thought. It got real silent. Then I said: “Look, I never told you about my case, and I don’t really want to now, ‘cause I don’t like to think about it. But I murdered this old guy. I pulled the plug on his life support because he begged me to. I did it because he was suffering and he couldn’t stand it and I couldn’t stand it either. He probably would’ve died in a couple of weeks, I don’t know. But I’m the one who ended his life. As soon as the monitors went flat and I plugged them back in, I knew I was in deep shit. The heart machine alarm started buzzing, and I thought I’d go to prison for this. But I didn’t. The hospital didn’t want a scandal, so I lost my job and my license instead. And then I started selling drugs, which got me busted. But I’m still glad the old guy didn’t have to keep suffering. So, I just get by in here. I just want to live through it and see the free light of day again. That’s it. I’m afraid of more time, of a new case, of having to get into some shit that isn’t mine, I’m in my own shit and I’ve fucked up my life and can barely manage that. You know I leave everyone alone, don’t bother anyone, don’t talk to the cops. I just do my time.”
Keisha sat down on the bed and put her arms around me. Sometime during that stream of words I’d started to cry.
“It’s cool, Lee, it’s okay. You’re okay. What I’m trying to say is that I can’t let it go down again. Every second of every day the shit I have to eat because I’m black . . . sometimes I just feel like choking someone. To me this whole thing is a black-white thing. And ‘cause I know you see it, even if you don’t feel it, I thought you’d understand.” Her braid had come undone and she had tears in the corners of her eyes. We sat there a while. Then she got up and said, “I’ll see you later, okay?” She walked out before I could say anything.
I cried until I couldn’t breathe and my chest hurt. Then something cracked. I felt light. I could catch my breath. A really deep breath. I hadn’t breathed that deep in years. I lay there feeling calm, looking at the early evening light coming into my cell. Keisha was right; I couldn’t ride this one out, I wasn’t going to be part of a lynch mob. Most of the time it’s all so twisted and sick, but sometimes there’s right and wrong, even in here.
Lucky for me they came before I lost my nerve. Four guards hustled me out of the cell, cuffed my hands behind my back, and almost carried me out of the unit. But I was ready. I was even sort of looking forward to it.
Segregation. The hole. There was very little light and the air was dank. The walls oozed. It had become cold outside, and the water pipes upstairs froze, then exploded, and when I put my hand to the wall it came away wet. I was trying to read the time away, holding my book open toward the light that came through the food slot in the door.
After they’d brought in the fifth Harlequin Romance, I’d thrown a fit. Then this cop came to the door with four thick paperbacks and tossed them through the slot. Now I was trying to read Hawaii, by James Michener, but all I kept thinking about was how much I wanted to be in Hawaii.
We call the hole “three hots and a cot.” Actually it’s three of everything: cold food, cold water, cold weather; three hours a week outside and three showers a week. What I hate the most is never being able to get hot coffee.
Every time they come for me to go outside for recreation, I’m ready. Segregation’s rec yard is the size of a basketball court, and it’s chopped up into six little cages, each with a basketball hoop at the end. Sometimes, there’s even a basketball. You walk into the cage one at a time, then the gate is locked. You put your hands through a slot and they take the cuffs off. Then you have sixty minutes. Beyond the cage is an open, grassy space, but it’s off limits except for prisoners on landscape detail.
Keisha and Cakes appeared in that grassy area pushing an old hand lawnmower. They were hoping they wouldn’t be stopped, but here it was forty degrees out and the snow was still on the ground. I could see my breath and had to jump up and down to stop my teeth from chattering. I had no coat. They came to about five yards from the fence.
“What’s happening, my non-Nubian sister?” Cakes asked.
I smiled. “I feel like a fucking corpse, but what else is new?” I hoped they knew what was happening. Cakes said something to Keisha, then started stamping her feet. She took a cigarette and tried to light it, but couldn’t because of the wind.
“I’d really like to get that whore,” Cakes said. “I really would. Lee, it’s all fucked up,”
“They lynched him, Lee. They lynched him.” Keisha sounded hoarse, “Jane got transferred to some cushy joint, Maria got parole, and your poor ass is lying down for a year. But Wilson, they gave him twenty years. It was on the news. We saw it on TV. His wife and kids were in the courtroom and they all came out crying.” Keisha kicked the ground.
Cakes hollered: “What really pisses me off is watching all those happy crackers running around here like they won a prize or something.”
Then Keisha said something, but I couldn’t hear her because the wind ate her words.
“What?” I yelled at her.
“Oh shit, I feel like I should be there instead of you. My advice sure didn’t help anyone.”
Keys. I heard keys rattling behind me.
“Time’s up, McMann,” the officer barked
“Damn,” I thought. “Okay,” I told the cop. “Just let me tie my shoes.” I turned back around.
“Keisha,” I yelled. “Cut it out. I’m all right with it. I really am. It’s cool. It’s Wilson who got destroyed.”
“Thank you,” Cakes said. “You hear that, Keisha? I told you she’d say that. She’s all right. Lee is all right.”
And I was.
1993, Federal Correctional Institution Marianna
Marianna, Florida