Eddie Nash pushed out of his bunk and took three steps to the desk on the far side of his cell. He sat in the plastic chair, opened the drawer, and took out a notebook and pen. He held the prison-issue pen up in the dim light and laughed out loud. Prison. How fucking stupid. The pen was made of flexible rubber, so it couldn’t be weaponized.
Eddie opened the notebook and stared at the blank page. He wanted to unload his thoughts onto those pages—to express his excitement at the prospect of being cleared, to put the notion of being free into his own words.
But, words wouldn’t come. Instead, he just had questions. What was happening with his case? When was his cute lawyer coming back to fill him in? What did those federal judges think of the appeal? Eddie looked to the ceiling, invoked the spirit of his literary hero, Etheridge Knight, and asked himself, What would Etheridge write?
Not that he knew much about books, authors, or literature. He didn’t. How would a rebellious black kid from a shit-kicking upstate town know anything about literature? How would a kid who’d slept through high school know about prose and poetry? But, unschooled as he was, he understood the power of words, and he liked Etheridge Knight, a black man who’d begun writing poetry as an inmate at Indiana State Prison back in the ‘60s, and one of whose books had even been nominated for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
Eddie liked to lose himself in the cold, hard words and cutting references in Knight’s poems and stories. The writer’s comparison of modern prisons to slave plantations made him think. Eddie had read Knight’s meandering tale, A Fable, over and over, contemplating its meaning through his own plight:
Eddie puzzled for hours over the fictional conversation of seven wrongfully convicted black inmates.
Prisoner # 1 insists that the only viable route to freedom is through education. Learning to emulate the non-colored people, he tells the others, will persuade their jailers to set them free.
Prisoner # 2 responds to that idea with a definite, “Hell no.” He claims that only God can grant them freedom. If all seven adopt and adhere to Christianity, he proclaims, the Lord will lead them to the promised land.
Prisoner # 3 replies to the God-will-set-us-free argument with one word: “Bullshit.” Prisoner # 3 has been digging an escape tunnel. He urges the others to pick up shovels and join in the task. By working together, he asserts, they can all escape.
No. No. No. Prisoner # 4 warns that escaping through a tunnel is “too risky.” He suggests following the rules to please the white jailers. This will gain their trust and forgiveness. “So c’mon brothers and sisters and unite behind me.”
Prisoner # 5 responds to that with two words: “Fuck you!.” Prisoner # 5 has a different escape plan. He wants the inmates to secure guns and shoot their way out.
“No,” interjects Prisoner #6. All of the plans, he declares, are flawed. Doomed to failure. Dead on arrival. Prisoner 6 explains the political dynamics behind their incarceration as well as the historical inevitably that justice will prevail. In time, he tells his comrades, “the bars will bend from their own inner rot.”
Prisoner #7 dismisses all of the previous notions and turns against the other inmates. You see, Prisoner # 7 has his own plan. He will save himself by “ratting” out his fellow inmates to the non-colored jailers. “That is the one way!”
The inmates argue. Trust in God. Dig a tunnel. Take up arms. They continue to argue to this day, squabbling amongst themselves while caged like vicious animals.
After reading Knight, Eddie thought more and more about race. He began to doubt his belief that race—black, brown, white—didn’t matter. As a kid, he’d tried to be colorblind. “Growing up,” he often recalled, “I stopped seeing color and just saw people.” Eddie used to believe that. He used to live by it. Back when he was running with the wild kids in Eden. Now, he saw that race and racism explained so much. It was no mistake that the vast majority of cons were black and brown. Knight’s words were all about blackness. The beauty. The history. The pride. The challenge. The exploitation. The pain. Plus, Knight’s damned stories made sense, and his poems rhymed.
Eddie knew he was no Etheridge Knight. He was just a con with a pen and paper and time to kill. He loved to write, anyway. Writing was an excellent time killer and he plenty of it to kill. Like the old man in A-Block had told him. “You kill time or time kills you.” Eddie had taken two creative writing classes in the prison education wing, and the instructor had read out his stuff in class. Plus, the inmate-run Attica Grapevine had published one of his poems, as well as an essay he’d penned about the banning of the death penalty.
“The new death penalty is life without parole,” he’d written. “It is a long, slow form of lethal torture. Cruel and unusual punishment administered by cruel and unusual people.”
Now, in his darkened cell, Eddie Nash tried to find words to sum up his feelings:
American justice.
A work of fiction
Bad arrest.
False conviction.
Eddie knew his poetry sucked. What the hell? Maybe his words would make better song lyrics. Maybe the brother with the guitar in B Block could put one of his poems to a blues tune. Maybe one of the young guys in A Block could turn one into a rap. Maybe. Eddie closed the notebook and shut his eyes. He bowed his head and prayed. “Please, God. Let this be real. Let me go home.”
Home. His current home was located in the heart of D-Block, with the prestigious address D-3-26. Cell Block D. Section 3. Cell 26. The dim space was lit by a cheap lamp he’d purchased in the prison commissary. A gray sweatshirt from one of his mother’s care packages hung on a hook at the head of the bunk. Family pictures were taped to the wall. Home, sweet home.
Eddie had no cellmate and savored the solitude; although, at times, the loneliness got to him. In the darkest of times, it seemed like loneliness was his one companion, and despair was his sole confidante.
Eddie held his homemade mirror, fashioned from a flattened Campbell’s soup can, beyond the bars of his cell door. He peered into the mirror and caught the reflection of men in the long row of cells. Murders, rapists, armed robbers, drug dealers, and a few innocent men. Sprawling on their bunks, pacing back and forth, or anticipating the next guard check.
Of course, Eddie hated prison, like all sane inmates. To him, prison was relentless boredom, interrupted by sudden terror. Prison was iron regimentation, exploding into total mayhem. Hope had left the building.
Eddie hated Attica. He called the grim citadel of New York’s most dangerous inmates “an efficient hate factory.”
Sitting at his desk, Eddie turned his notebook to a new page and picked up his rubber pen. He began to write in his journal, words flowing in a subconscious rant:
I want freedom from: The bars, buzzers, shanks, shivs, scars, skins, tats, Tasers, lifers, losers, posers, and perverts. The gangsters, gumps, dealers, dopers, Mexican Mafia, and Aryan Nation. Good riddance to choke sandwiches in the mess, chin checks in the yard, and shit shanks in the TV room.
I want freedom to: Hug my mom and hang with my friends. Chase hot women and down cold beer. Eat steak fresh off the grill and drink bourbon on the rocks. Getting it all back after losing it will make it all the sweeter. Taking it back after having it stolen will be my revenge.
Eddie had survived ten-and-a-half years of hell. Now, here he was, looking forward to the possibility of exoneration. His every move had to be calculated to keep himself alive—at least, until justice could be served. He had avoided the dry snitches, bad bugs, and shot callers who could fuck him up. He’d started each day doing two-hundred-and-fifty push-ups and four-hundred sit-ups on the concrete floor between his bunk and toilet. The workouts gave him the strength to fight off the bad jackets in the yard and the muscle-bound freaks in the weightlifting gym. The workouts gave his body the hard edge he needed to gain the respect of his fellow cons and hold his own in a fight. At the same time, his self-styled exercise regimen didn’t bulk him up into a strong man—the attention-seeking bulk would have made him a target for the real muscle, the prowlers seeking to add to their rep or just experience the thrill of inflicting pain on another human being.
Eddie took extra care in D-Yard, ever since a Latino gangster stabbed him with an “ice pick,” a long, metal rod sharpened to a point. His attacker—out to make a name for himself by murdering a murderer—had shoved the pick into his gut and angled it up toward his heart. It had taken Eddie two months in the infirmary to recover from that one. These days, Eddie spewed just the right amount of trash talk in the yard, aka “Central Park.” His shit shanks were sharp enough to let the other cons know he wasn’t afraid, and measured enough to never piss off the wrong shot caller. When working the slime line in the mess, he’d dole out larger servings of the decent food to keep certain inmates on his good side. It never hurt to have a little good karma coming back his way.
Eddie put the notebook back in the drawer and threw himself onto his bunk. He turned onto his side to face the cell door and scanned the grim confines. A cockroach crawled out from under the bed. Well, look at that. He resisted the urge to get up and stomp it into the concrete. He just watched. Truth be told, he envied its freedom. He craved that freedom. He smiled as it crawled across the floor and out of the cell.