13

Western Massachusetts had no federal penal facility, so the U.S. government housed defendants who were detained pending trial at the Hampden County Jail and House of Correction in Ludlow. As his days of confinement stretched out, Sid Cranmer tried a strategy of keeping to himself and staying unnoticed. It wasn’t working.

For one thing, the quarters were close. He shared an eight-by-ten-foot cell with a closemouthed white man, forty years his junior, who communicated mostly by scowling and pointing. The cell contained a bunk bed, with Sid allocated the less favorable lower deck, a small table and chair, and a totally exposed stainless-steel sink and toilet unit. At nine p.m. every night, the cell was locked and was not opened again until six a.m. Except for the times when a guard peeped through a six-by-four-inch window to check, what happened inside the cell would be unknown to anyone but Sid and his unfriendly “cellie.”

The late spring was growing warmer, and with unreliable air-conditioning, the cell became suffocating at night. Still, Sid’s situation wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Due to overcrowding, he learned, many cells the same size had a cot squeezed in to permit triple bunking. Screaming and shouts frequently echoed down the cell block. Brawls were common. Most nights, Sid was too frightened to get much sleep.

Mealtimes were a special challenge. To accommodate the crush, dinner started at four p.m. and unfolded in half-hour shifts up until eight p.m., with every table packed through each rotation. People quickly figured out who he was. On his very first day, a man sat down across the table from him and held out a grimy wad of papers that he said was a draft petition for habeas corpus. He asked if Sid would read the thing over and put it into good English. One look at the man’s face told Sid he’d better agree, but as he lay on his bunk later, he found the rambling, penciled paragraphs literally incomprehensible. The problem was compounded when his cellie, apparently accidentally, brushed the unnumbered pile onto the floor. It was impossible to reorder the pages in any way that approached sense. Sid couldn’t even make out what the man was charged with. Two days later, when the prisoner came up to him, Sid used the excuse that he was still working on the project. The guy did not look happy.

In the food line, big men, and even smaller men about his size, cut in front of him, eyeballing him and daring him to complain. He didn’t say anything. At his first breakfast, he got a bowl of Cheerios dumped into his lap. The guy’s “Sorry, man” did not sound very sincere.

The day after his court hearing, Sid was sitting at the end of a table in the corner, trying to get his creamed corn down as fast as he could, when a bald-headed black inmate about his age slid in across from him. The man settled himself, then folded his hands and closed his eyes, bowing over his tray. His scalp was so wrinkled it looked as though his skull had been partly deflated.

After finishing his prayer, the man raised his head. “Hey, little brother, what’s up?”

At first, Sid hadn’t known how to respond to this ritual question, which had never before been put to him. Once, he’d just said, “Fine, thanks,” and gotten a puzzled look. Later, he killed time lying in his bunk imagining witty responses, like “the Dow Jones,” “your cholesterol,” or “my anxiety level.”

Now, a couple of days later, he knew the drill. It didn’t pay to be clever. “Not much. What’s up with you?”

“Not much. Not much.”

Their rectangular table accommodated eight chairs, four to a side. The square of four seats on the far end was occupied, leaving the two adjoining Sid and the man across from him empty.

Two young Hispanic inmates, who looked like they might have been brothers or cousins, approached, and one of them slid into the seat next to Sid. The second man, taller and older, hesitated, holding his tray above the last vacant seat. He noticed Sid, and his eyes narrowed. Then he looked at his partner and gave a slight shake of his head. The seated man rose, and the two walked off in search of other spots.

The older black prisoner called after them. “Something we said?”

The retreating men either didn’t hear or pretended not to. After a couple bites of his meatloaf, the older black inmate looked up at Sid.

“You the professor dude, right?”

“Yes.”

“How long you gonna be in here for?”

“Supposed to be only two or three more days.”

“Putting you on the ankle bracelet?” The man jiggled his knees as he talked, keyed up.

“That’s what the judge said. Home detention with electronic monitoring.”

“Lucky boy.” The man stirred some gravy into his mashed potatoes. “Norcross?”

“Yes.”

“He’s all right. Better than some of them other motherfuckers. Got your own house and so forth you’re putting up, too, people saying.”

“Guess so.”

“Must be nice to have the hard.”

The two men ate in silence. Sid concentrated on his tray, hoping the conversation was over.

He’d learned that “hard” meant money. Linda Ames had warned him that prisoners sometimes threatened to beat up a vulnerable inmate unless he arranged regular protection payments to a girlfriend or buddy on the outside. If this happened, she said, Sid should stall as long as possible and get in touch with her right away.

Unfortunately, the man across from him soon resumed speaking. “People call me A.J.”

“Uh, Sid.”

A.J. raised his eyebrows and smiled almost shyly. “This here is a tough, tough game for old cockadoodlers like you and me, man.”

“I know.”

“Figured we might help each other out.”

Sid had no idea what to say. He had, even in his short time, acquired the instinct to know that if he allied himself with the wrong person, he could make his situation worse, not better. He responded with a shrug.

A.J. continued. “Staties caught me and my old lady body-packing up to Rutland.” He sniffed. “Took us in the ladies’ room and yanked the shit right out, man. It was ugly.” A.J.’s head was bobbing up constantly, scanning the room and then ducking down again. His knees kept jiggling.

It was well known that heroin and cocaine flowed steadily up from Holyoke and Springfield into Vermont, where addicts would pay a 25 or 30 percent premium for their drugs. “Body-packing” was a new term for Sid, but it didn’t need much imagination to guess where A.J. and his girlfriend had been carrying their product.

“So now I picked up this trafficking charge, and I can’t do the time, you know? The game in here is just, like I say, too tough for me.” He slurped his milk and set the glass down with a clack. “So I started talking to them boys about this and that. They open me up and send me out, but I’m taking heat, you know. People in the hood, they think I’m dry snitching, and po-po thinks I’m half stepping, holding back on him. And the pressure, man, it’s killing me, so I start using—not too much, just to take the edge off, right? Then I’m pissing in the cup, and the motherfuckers catch me waterloading and throw me in here. Close me the fuck down.”

“Okay.” Sid understood about half of this.

“But you got the feds on you, I hear. That right?”

“That’s right.”

“I know shit those feds would just love to hear—good heavy shit, you know? And with the feds, man …” He reached over and prodded Sid’s shoulder. “You help them, and you get a solid gold credit card, right? Now, you just tell your lawyer— Oh-oh.” He was gazing across the room toward the doorway, where two prisoners were talking to one of the guards. “Don’t like that.” He leaned forward, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Listen up, Professor. One hand washes the other, you know? Lot of guys here have kids. Don’t like diddlers. They got plans for you. Soon. Thought it’d be the righteous thing to mention it. You remember A.J., okay?”

“What am I supposed to do? I’m …”

“Want my advice? Get in seg.”

“Seg?”

“Get yourself put in the hole.”

“But how do I …”

“Oh my Lord, here it comes. Quicker’n I thought. Get in the hole, friend, get in the hole and stay in the hole.”

With a fluid twist, A.J. slid out of his chair, slunk around the adjoining table, and disappeared. At the same time, Sid felt a gathering of shadows behind him, as though a clump of trees had suddenly grown up at his back. When he turned, he found a semicircle of large men creating a screen between him and the rest of the room. The guards who normally kept an eye on things had stepped away.

Sid said, “Hi,” but no one smiled.

The four men at the end of his table stood up with their trays.

“Time to bounce,” one of them said. All four moved off, not looking in Sid’s direction. One of the men, still chewing, wiped his hands on the back of his pants.

“Well, hello again to you, Professor!” It was his cellie. Other people at nearby tables were casually moving off. No guards anywhere. The gang, maybe five or six men of various colors, edged in closer, deepening the privacy and blocking out any witnesses to whatever was about to happen.

His cellie leaned over, put his hand on Sid’s shoulder. “These boys asked me to introduce you.” He dropped his voice, and his eyes danced back at the group gathered around him. “They thought, since the sheriff bunked us together, I must be in the kindergarten, too. Got to clear that up.” He stood and held out both hands. “So here he is, guys—the professor.”

Sid’s heart was racing. He twisted to the side, facing the men, gripping the edges of his tray. Were they going to kill him?

“Well,” he began. “What’s the … What’s the …” There really was no way to finish the sentence.

A voice said, “Time to give the perfessor his lesson.”

Sid started to get up, still holding his tray, and a heavy hand behind him shoved him down.

He knew then it was real. The normal uproar of voices in the room continued, maybe a little louder, as though nothing was happening, but around him, the pool of silence grew closer.

A ripple rolled over the group, some movement, and then his cellie was holding a steaming mug of coffee in each hand. The mist from the mugs was distorting the man’s face.

“Do it,” the voice ordered, and his cellie whispered hoarsely, “Coffee break, Teach!”

He stretched out his right hand and began to pour the scalding liquid onto Sid’s bald head.

Sid ducked out from under the hand on his shoulder and spun toward his attacker, thrusting up with the tray so it caught his cellie under the tip of his nose. The man’s head snapped back, coffee and creamed corn went flying, and a spout of blood shot down his chin. When the inmate beside him lunged forward, Sid jammed the broken remnant of the tray in his face and kicked him hard in the groin. A rush of bodies followed, the table went over with a heavy bang, and Sid saw stars as a punch or club landed on the side of his head and he went down. He could feel a hand grabbing at his testicles, and he crossed his legs and put his hands over the top of his head, pressing his elbows over his face. The initial thumping hurt, but not unbearably—then they rolled him over and began kicking him, which hurt a lot more.

The beating went on for what seemed like a long time until, just as he was losing consciousness, he heard the roar of the guards breaking through, shouting, “Don’t kill him! Don’t kill him!” There was a tremendous crash, which must have been several people going down over a table. He heard the crack of batons, people crying out in pain, and the voice of the same guard, shouting, very loud, “Goddammit! That’s enough!” And then, not so loud, “You’ll get us all fired, for Christ’s sake.” If the guards had stayed away for another couple of minutes, the mob probably would have finished him off right then and there, which, in Sid’s opinion, would have saved everyone, especially him, a lot of trouble.

PART TWO

MOTION PRACTICE