You ought to come on the river in nineteen-four, You find a dead man on ever’ turn row. You ought to been on the river in nineteen-ten, They’s rollin’ the women, like they drive the men. “Ain’t No More Cane on This Brazis”
In the wake of the American Revolution, Quaker reformers repudiated the colonial practice of public and corporal punishment, creating in Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Jail the first institution to combine isolated confinement with labor. The idea of extracting labor from prisoners took deeper hold than the notion of penance, especially after the abolition of slavery. Some historians argue that prisons have sustained slavery by other means. In his essay, “From the Plantation to Prison” (1990),* Easy Waters noted that the New York legislature considered bills on the emancipation of slaves and the creation of the first state prison on the same date in 1796. In “Chronicling Sing Sing Prison” here, Waters narrates the shipping of convicts, virtual “galley slaves,” to build their own prison in the early nineteenth century.
In the South, too, the link between prison and slavery was more obvious. After the Civil “War, the labor-lease system (whereby prisoners were leased to private contractors) sprang up. Leasing gave way to prison farms, some like Angola in Louisiana built on the former Angola slave plantation (named for the African origin of the slaves who worked it). As late as 1933, songs like “Ain’t No More Cane on This Brazis,” cited above, sung in a South Texas prison farm on the Brazos River, followed the pattern of slave work-gang songs. In Avoyelles Correctional Center, in Cottonport, Louisiana, the hard work, tension, and hair-trigger responses of keepers described in Michael Saucier’s poems here evoke slave labor. Under these conditions, although the exercise of skill and concentration of mind can be steadying, the solace is short-lived and the aftertaste bitter.
Contract labor performed inside prison, initiated in the South, was taken up in the North around 1900 to help make prisons self-sustaining. But the labor movement’s protests resulted in legislation containing industry in state prisons. UNICOR, the trade name for the Federal Prison Industries Corporation run by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, whose employ is so desired by “Big Bird” and Colombian immigrants in Richard Stratton’s story, is highly controversial. Founded in 1934, it now employs about 27 percent of all federal inmates and produces about $200 million in goods annually. Since 1990, thirty-eight states have legalized the contracting out of prison labor to private companies. This development has come just in time to help states dealing out more and longer sentences meet escalating costs of the new and expanding prisons. In a 1998 essay*, Larry Bratt writes that he has learned marketable skills and takes pride in his performance in his prison job in Maryland. Others, considering a larger context, criticize private prison industry and suggest that imprisonment is becoming a facile “solution” to the grave problems of poverty, poor education, unemployment, and racism.
Most inmates are assigned prison maintenance jobs, and it is not easy to find a prison job that is neither dehumanizing not dangerous, let alone useful to the worker. But it is not impossible. In “Death of a Duke” (Players, Games}, the protagonist has to exercise diplomacy to finagle a job that uses his skills and enables him to help his fellows. In Robert Kelsey’s story here, the protagonist finds a niche that proves fulfilling to himself and others. Therapeutic programs can provide niches, as can academic or creative programs, which are described in the next section.
First on a canal boat
Later on freighter steamers
One hundred men made an historic trip
Down the Hudson River in 1825
They weren’t called galley slaves
But they were weighed down with chains
They arrived in Sing Sing
The village named after the
Indigenous Sint Sincks
Popular history says they sold
Their land in 1685
The name, which has been interpreted
As “stone upon stone”
Is all that remains of those Algonquins
And the prison, of course
An awesome mausoleum
Peopled with 614 tombstones
Monuments to the Chair
But all of that was later
After the foundation stone was laid
The prisoners labored
To build their own cells
7 feet deep, 3 feet 3 inches wide
And 6 feet 7 inches high
What could be crueler
To dig their own graves
Or to suffer the added indignity
Of having the graveyard called
Mount Pleasant State Prison
Stone upon stone
Granite known as Sing Sing marble
Prisoners
Cutting stones for public corporations
Stones for a courthouse in Troy
Stones for the statehouse in New Haven
Stones for the city hall in Albany
Stones for Fort Adams in Rhode Island
Convict labor
Offered at a premium price
Working
From dawn to dusk
Cutting stone
Stone upon stone
Granite known as Sing Sing marble
Poor production severely punished
Shower baths
Hair cropped close
Darkened cells
Ball and chains
Yokes — long iron bars
Four inches wide
Weights up to 40 pounds
Strapped around the outstretched arms
Of the prisoners
With staples for neck and arm
An awesome burden
For crime — and punishment
Cutting stone
Stone upon stone
Granite known as Sing Sing marble
In 1926 more stone upon stone
Two more cellblocks
A capacity of 1,366
More than 2,000 total
In 1994, the gutted remains
Of the old Sing Sing stands
A monument to a time
The Stone Age
When prisoners were sent
Up and down the Hudson River
If you get close enough to the shore
To the granite known as Sing Sing marble
You can hear the ghosts of prisoners’ past
Chronicling the history of Sint Sinck
Stone upon stone
Granite known as Sing Sing marble
The building hasn’t stopped yet
Million-dollar contractors
Replace convict labor
Slowly dismantling the stone upon stone
Replacing it with fences
Triple-layered razor wire
Heat sensors around the perimeter
Perhaps a mine or two
Floodlights have it on center stage
Sing Sing on the Hudson
What an eyesore
An eerie monument
Boats on the river
No longer freighter steamers
No longer carrying prisoners
Galley slaves
But the memory remains
Shackled prisoners still call the buses that transport
Them to Sing Sing —
And all the other stone monuments —
Boats
Boats
Up and down the Hudson River
In early spring and throughout the summer
And on into fall
Boats
No longer peopled with convicts
But pleasure-seeking passersby
Boating
And water-skiing
And wind surfing
Beautiful women
Weighted down with two-piece bathing suits
Smile and wave and sometimes flash
As they dare to come close to the shore
Defying the guard towers
And the awesome history of the place
A punishment perhaps as cruel as the yoke
Watching their bare-back retreat
The waves lapping against
The stone upon stone
Granite known as Sing Sing marble
If you listen closely
You can hear the howls
Of the 614 people
Who walked the last mile
Step by step
Stone by stone
To eternity
If you listen even closer
Over the waves lapping against
The stone upon stone
You can hear the other howls
The howls of men enduring different punishments
Punishments nonetheless
Severe in their own way
In keeping with contemporary standards
Still
Some bang their heads against the stones
Stone upon stone
Granite known as Sing Sing marble
Still standing
A monument for the chronicler
To pull apart stone by stone
1994, Sing Sing Correctional Faci1ity Ossining, New York
Mis eyes search among the hundreds of men
crowding the fence
for someone he’s worked with before
or someone whose work he knows
who isn’t afraid to catch his cut
You got a work partner this morning? Yeah. Where’s your boy? Medical call-out. Trying to get hisself a doody static , huh? Yeah, the sell-out. Go ask homes there. I hear his boy got blocked last night.
Four inmates exit the toolshed
arms loaded with hoes
to chop clean a summer
of dirt, weeds, and trees;
dropped in a tangled heap on the roadside
his eyes run along the stout and steel,
trying to see the good ones
Free man spits a long red stream,
his signal… First five, pick ‘em up.
He races with the others across the road
a flurry of black and brown, sun-peeled white hands
examine, choose, discard, choose another
This one got a good, long handle, but
the head be swiv’lin
Handle here already split.
Best drop that one, homes. Hit it wrong
against one of those palmettos
you’ll be stuck out eight dollars, sure
If tt ain’t my fault!
Shi’, free man don’t care —
figure nigger trying to get out o’ work
It’ll cost yon eight dollars, homeboy,
or ten days on the rock… believe that.
In the second he has
he grabs the besr two he can find
and returns to the line; cut partner looks worried
so he hands him his choice
Cut partner runs his thumb along the edge
Dull, he says … bur not as bad as that thing I bad yesterday… bitch killed me.
† Doody statik: “duty status” is a medical exemption from hard work, good for a day week, or longer. (MES)
They take bites and slices at the earth,
testing for sharpness
amount of energy that’ll be required
then he remembers: today is file day
twice a week Sarge sends the file man around.
Hours pass. Finally he comes, lays a few, deep strokes
with the heavy rasp
the weeds, grass, palmettos, and thin willow trees
give easier, and it angers him —
the small joys he has had to settle for;
throughout the long, burned-up day
he mutters … what a waste … what a goddamned waste.
1991, Avoyelles Correctional Center Cottonport, Louisiana
The gun guard sits
squarely in the saddle
broiling in the Louisiana sun
silent atop his big red horse.
His eyes squint
through salt and sweat;
carefully maintains the proper distance
should he have to run us down
or shoot.
Meanwhile,
we chop chop chop
our hoeing has a rhythm
our mouths dry and dirty
the water cooler, empty
fewer words are spoken;
we’re looking for the headland.
With his shotgun firm
against his hip
and Big Red hanging a droolin’ lip
they’re looking for it, too.
The gun guard’s eyes sweep the line
alert to any disturbance;
carelessly, I take an extra step
his 12 gauge
pumps up — KA KLAK
steel-barreled voice, blue and hot
“Get off my guard line, NOW!”
Cut partner jerks me
back into the safety zone,
off the gun guard’s holy ground
who
rubs Big Red
gently with a sweaty
palm “Whoa, boy … whoa, now.”
1991, Avoyelles Correctional Center Cottonport, Louisiana
No one saw the actual ascension. Big Bird — a huge black, well in his fifties — just appeared there one morning, roosting on the catwalk atop the lofty water tower in the middle of the compound. He made a nest of blankets and parcels and, like a bag lady, settled in for a long siege with magazines and his portable radio, perched in his rookery like some daft old crow who suddenly moves into the neighborhood.
“Reminds me a when I was in Texas,” said the Old Con at breakfast.
We sat at our usual table in the front of the chow hall. In the limpid early-morning sky the water tower was silhouetted high above the buildings of the prison complex; we could sit sipping coffee and watching Big Bird through the window. It was an event, something to distinguish this day from hundreds upon hundreds just like it.
“Texas? When was you ever in Texas?” asked Red, who’d done almost as much time as the Old Con. They’d been together at Marion back in the sixties before that joint was locked down. They’d been together at Lompoc in California when that institution became a maximum-security penitentiary. Red had been in so long his full torso and arms were covered with intricate tattoowork that had faded and was sagging like a wrinkled old paisley shirt.
“They had them turkeys out there,” the Old Con went on. “Big ol’ turkey buzzards they called ‘em.”
“You was never in Texas,” Red insisted. “Old fool’s been in jail all his life.”
“So? They got jails in Texas, don’t they? An’ prisons, too. Lots of’em. You never heard of Huntsville? Rough stop. An’ federal joints. La Tuna. Bastrop. Seagoville. I got out one time in Texas. Went to work out there in a place near San Antone. Yessir, turkey ranch, they called it. Had all these turkeys runnin’ around a big fenced-in area, jus’ like us. All day they’d hang out in flocks like waitin’ for food. Then at night, I never saw ‘em, but somehow they must a hopped up in the trees. Them scrubby little trees, live oaks, they call ‘em, an’ mesquite. ‘Cause in the morning when the sun come up, that’s where I’d see them turkeys. Sittin’ in the trees all along that big ol’ skyline. Jus’ like that there fellah.”
The Old Con lifted his coffee mug and pointed out the window and all our eyes went back to the water tower.
When the whistle blew at seven thirty and the prisoners came streaming out from the cellblocks and living units, Big Bird hadn’t moved. Groups of prisoners lingered on their way to work in the factories and stood around laughing and pointing up at the water tower.
Word circulated like an electric current. Big Bird, whose feet were so big his shoes had to be specially ordered, was an eccentric, wild-eyed man who wore trench coats or overcoats and a knit wool watch cap in the dog days of summer and carried on heated arguments with himself or sang and laughed lustily as he walked about flapping his arms. A refugee from the streets of Washington, D.C., he was forever in and out of prison, doing life on the installment plan. This was the kind of guy who, in your worst prison nightmare, ends up being assigned to bunk in your cell, and you live in fear not just because he’s so big his hands look like oars, but because you know at a glance he’s completely mad and you have no idea where he’s coming from or what it takes to set him off.
He had a whole slew of nicknames: Camel (because of his loping stride and a hump high on his back caused by bad posture), Lurch (after the TV show character), and the Strangler. But upon his occupation of the water tower none seemed to fit so well as Big Bird.
The staff knew all about him, as they knew about all of us, and treated him with a kind of amused indifference reserved for those whose names are on the “Pay Him No Mind” list with the rest of the malingerers, charlatans, and stir-crazy old jailbirds.
After breakfast, as the compound cleared and we began our workday, two lieutenants strolled casually to the base of the water tower to see if they could convince Big Bird to come down and join the rest of us.
By lunchtime the Bird still had not flown. The Old Con, a prison archetype who had mysterious sources of information and knew everything that was happening not only in this prison but throughout the system, told us Big Bird sent word to the warden that he did not intend to jump. Groups of prisoners had been standing around the water tower heckling Big Bird and yelling at him to take off. But he had his radio (presumably the reception was good up there), he had some food, and he had his overcoat and his cap and a blanket or two, even though it was early September and the temperature was in the high eighties. He toid the lieutenants he was j ust there and come count time at four o’clock they could count him on the water tower. We wondered how that might sound when the count was called in to Washington: “One thousand eighty-one in their cells and one on the water tower.”
“He wants somethin’,” said the Old Con at lunch as we sat watching the distant aerie. “He ain’t up there for the view.”
The water tower stood behind the vocational training shops and looked over the rec yard and weight pile on one side and, on the other, the complex of buildings that made up UNICOR, the prison’s cable factory, printing plant, and warehouses where most of the prisoners worked. We walked to and from the factories, past the water tower, day in, day out without a second thought. Only today it was significant.
The workers labor for pennies per hour; the highest-paid make a dollar an hour. Still, with overtime, some of them earn two or three hundred doilars a month, which to the Colombian and other Third Worlders might be as much as they could make in a year in their homeland. They can send enough money to their wives each month to support a family of twelve and still have plenty left over for their allotment at the commissary. Upon arrest, these men flock to the factories. Some say when the wind is in the right direction you can stand on the beach in south Florida and hear the Colombians out there on the motherships calling: “A bottom bunk, a pair of Reeboks, and a job in UNICOR.”
UNICOR is the backbone of the system. Without the factories, which do government contract work and bring in untold millions each year, the system might buckle and collapse under the strain on taxpayers of having to clothe, feed, and amuse the tens of thousands of new prisoners, many of them foreigners, coming into the American gulag each year. But the bureaucrats in Washington know how to deal with social phenomena: They turn them into businesses. In the words of Chief Justice Warren Burger, let the prisons of America become “factories behind walls.” And it works. Men and women are coming to prison in droves, as though some well-kept secret about how good life is in here leaked out. Though shunned as slave labor by many long-term, old-school convicts and the wealthier criminals who come to prison to relax, there are long waiting lists for jobs in the UNICOR factories.
As usual, the Old Con was right; Big Bird wanted something. By three forty-five when the whistle blew to end the workday and the compound was cleared for the afternoon count, Big Bird had sent a list of his demands. The list consisted of one item: a job at UNICOR.
They’ll never go for it,” said.the Old Con out on the rec yard. From where we sat we could hear tunes from Big Bird’s radio carried on the evening breeze. He was still up there, like some brooding god pondering life from above the fray, his thick legs like logs dangling over the edge of the catwalk, his cap pulled down over his forehead, his arms folded across his barrel chest.
“His name’s been on the list for over a year,” Red said and lit another generic cigarette. “I guess he finally wised up to the fact that guys been comin’ in after him and gettin’ hired there an’ his name jus’ don’t seem to move up the list.”
“Damn, that’s pitiful.” The Old Con shook his bald, wrinkled head. “Imagine bein’ too crazy to work in UNICOR.”
“Well, they got a lotta tools down there,” Red said, his watery blue eyes watching Big Bird. “The Bird’s all right, but sometimes he gets his ass in an uproar for no reason. They’re probably worried he might club somebody over the head with one a them tools.”
“Whatever happens, I can tell ya one thing,” the Old Con said. He looked up at the Bird and stroked the gray stubble on his chin. “No way they gonna let him spend the night up there. Somethin’s gotta give. He may be a nut job, but I can guarantee ya, these people’ll come up with somethin’. They’ll have that turkey off the skyline by the nine o’clock count if they have to shoot him.”
Red chortled and waved a hand toward the gun towers looming at each corner of the prison, “Talk about a sitting duck!”
No one knew exactly what Big Bird was in prison for, but we knew he was from D.C. That meant he could be in for anything from petty theft and cashing bogus welfare checks to rape or murder. The D.C. prisoners were the most despised element in the system. New York blacks, blacks from Baltimore and Philadelphia, were quick to point out they “ain’t no D.C. nigger.” Most of them were wild young men who’d been doing time since they were kids. Many banded together for protection and because they knew each other from the streets of the capital and from doing time together in other prisons. Like all prison gangs — the Colombians, the Mexican and Italian mafias, the bikers, the racists, the Puerto Rican street kids — in numbers they might make you tense with anger and fear; but individually, if you could ever break through their studied personae, they could sometimes amaze you with the complexity and depth of their characters. Some of them knew so much about the dog-eat-dog world of the street and little else. They were daring and enterprising and recognized only the scruples of survival. They came to prison not because they were failures at crimes, but because in their contempt for the law they were not trying to get away with anything.
But Big Bird was a loner. Whenever we saw him bounding around the compound with that lunging stride of his, as though his feet were so big and heavy he had to heave with his whole body to move them, his arms flapping winglike at his sides, he was nearly always alone and carrying on a discussion with unseen companions. Whites avoided his wide-eyed gaze and cleared out of his way. His own homeboys teased him unmercifully and tried to provoke him. Big Bird would laugh at them with a booming guffaw that was scarier than any threats. He grinned at them with a mouthful of huge gleaming teeth that looked strong enough to chew off an arm.
Only once did we see him buddy up, and that was with a kid we called Dirt Man or the Janitor because he ate dirt, dust balls, pieces of trash, with the voraciousness of a billy goat. We knew that Dirt Man understood what he was doing wasn’t right because he would do it on the sly. His favorites were the old mop strings that got caught and broke off beneath the legs of the tables in the chow hall. We used to watch him when he stood in line for his chow but really he was on the lookout for mop strings. When he’d spot one you could see a little quiver of excitement go through him as he sized up the situation. He’d leave the line and sidle up to the table, then in a swift series of moves he’d catch the piece of mop string with the toe of his boot, drag it out, reach down and snag it, roll it into a ball, and nonchalantly pop it into his mouth.
Big Bird took Dirt Man under his wing. Dirt Man also wore a lot of heavy clothes even during the hottest weather. We would see them out in the rec yard playing chess, the Bird with his radio, Dirt Man snacking on dust between moves. For a while they even celled together. The Old Con said Dirt Man was the ideal cellmate because he would lick the floor clean and eat all the rubbish. But really he was a sad case and finally a couple of us grabbed the shrink, who was also wacky, and asked him how they could let a young man walk around here all day eating cigarette butts and mop strings. Soon Dirt Man disappeared, which was also sad because then Big Bird was alone again.
And now Big Bird was bivouacked alone on the water tower, nesting like some giant swallow. We all knew the Old Con was right, somehow or other they would get him down by nightfall, even if they had to shoot him.
And sure enough, by morning Big Bird had flown. There was all sorts of speculation as to how they had enticed him to come down. But those of us who’ve been here a while knew only the Old Con would have rlie real story, and so we waited until he came shulfling into the chow hall for his morning coffee, sat down, and gazed out at the now curiously stark water tower.
“Well, ihey ncgoiiated a seirlcment,” said the Old Con, and he blew on his mug of steaming coltee. ‘LOl’ big bird, that fella’s got an appetite. He ate up all his food the fust twelve hours ol the sit-in. An1 sure ‘nough, come nine o’clock, the Bird was hungry. Lieutenant tol’ him if he’d come on down they’d send out and get hun any knida food he wanted, Bird wanted to know about the job in UNICOR. Lieutenant tol’ hint, ‘Don’t worry about dial job now, your name’s on the list.’ Well, Bird wasn’t goin’ (or that. I !e knows what list they got his name on. Still, the fella was hungry. He needed 10 eat. So finally he said he’d conic down if they promised to send out and gel him a Bit; Mac.”
“A Big Mac!” Red exclaimed in disbelief. “You’re serious? Tins idioi coulda asked tor anything he wanted an’ he tells ‘em to get bun a big Mac!”
“What can I tell ya?” the Old Con said. “That’s what ihe fella ordered, a Big Mac. He said if he couldn’t have Ins job in UNICOR, he’d settle for a Big Mac.”
Everyone at the lable was silent. We looked at the Old Con, who sat sipping his colfee and stroking his whiskers.
“Well?” said Red at last, bis curiosily getting, the betier ol him. “Did they get him a Big Mac?”
Now everyone was laughing.
“Well, Red, you know how thai goes, (live ‘em a Big Mac this week an’ next week you’ll have lellas up there demand in’ Kentucky fried Chicken. In no time the / talians’ll be up there savin’ they want Mama I .cone’s pizza. No, no Big Mac. I’ll tell ya what they did give him, though. They gave him a baloney an’ cheese sandwich when they come ‘n got his ass Iroin the hole this mornin’ an’ shipped him to that nut joini ihey got over there in North Carolina.”
1989, federal Correctional Institution Petersburg Petersburg, Virginia
“Suicide on the gate!”
I yelled it loud as hell and gave the gate a rattle, but it didn’t really matter; the C.O. would come and open it whenever he was good and ready to. I’d just rung the dootbell, sort of. But the sound of my voice was buried in the din of sixth-floor noise bouncing off steel walls: tinny TV speakers blaring, guys shouting from cell to cell to day-room — “ Yo, homeboy” — “ Vaya, Chino” — “Hey, dude” — I took a seat on my square Tupperware bucket stuffed with blanket, pillow, book, writing paper, coffee, and cup, and — I jumped back up, realizing I was squishing — a package of Oreo cookies, I smiled when I thought of how it resembled a kid’s pajama party: Bring your own sleeping gear, the cookies, the horseplay. I was going over to the M.O. tier. The Mental Observation Unit. The nuts, the bugs, the loony-tunes. My post for the night as a Q.H.D.M.-S.P.A. Queens House of Detention for Men — Suicide Prevention Aide, “Suicide” for short. That’s what they all called me — “Suicide.”
“Yo, Kerry — give this to Big Chas,” Hunter, the guy in the cell next to mine, had said as he slipped a Penthouse mag in under the blanket in the bucket. His hand lingered in the folds of the blanket.
“Get outta my cookie stash, thief. I’ll have you thrown in jail!” I said and picked up the bucket, forcing him to retrieve his hand and laugh. The CO, came finally, unlocked the gate, and I stepped out into the gallery, where the noise became quadraphonkally balanced — A Side, B Side, C Side, D Side. Then I signed the sign-in sheet on the C.O.’s desk, indicating I had just left C Side to work the 10 P.M.-6 A.M. shift on B Side, and the C.O. led me to the B Side gate, M.O. land, where he opened it and I passed in. Clang.
I’d gotten up in the afternoon to wash my suit. I was the only guy on the whole floor who had a suit in his possession. It was a matching jacket and vest, with a pair of gray slacks I’d already had when my sister sent the jacket and vest from San Francisco. She’d found them in a thrift shop. It was like magic, the way they matched the pants. “You look like a fucking lawyer!” guys would say and laugh. They mostly went to court dressed in Guess jeans and high-dollar sneakers, a gold chain or two, except for the one or two guys who had relatives bring them a suit for court appearances — guys who were looking at fifteen or twenty-five to life. They got serious.
Washing the suit was an ordeal. I took it upstairs to the dorm and the big long utility sink there. I watched the water get darker and darker with the grunge of the many years of dirt embedded into the bars, the floor, the wire mesh, the elevator walls, the bus seats; everything that the suit touched on its journey of elevator-bullpen-bullpen-bullpen-courtroom.
I hung up the suit in my cell to dry on my clothesline: a ripped-off edge of sheet stretched from rear-wall vent to front bars. I had fashioned a coat hanger out of more sheet scrap and a rolled-up newspaper for the cross member, like one of the jailhouse veterans had shown me. The wet jacket and vest would hang heavy, bringing the clothesline low. It looked empty, like hollow company, the way it hung there. Somehow it reminded me of how I would feel the next day, wearing it, standing before a judge who would wrangle with the D.A. and my lawyer while the family — the family of the kid who ran in front of me and I killed while driving home drunk one night — jeered at my back. I never turned around.
I’d even ironed the pants because they dried pretty quick, and when I went up to the little barbershop room that looked down on the gallery, where they locked us in and let us iron, Fitzgerald was there, He was 15 Cell on the M.O. tier. He had killed his wife and was about to get sentenced after blowing trial — found guilty. He was ironing his pants too, but he didn’t have any jacket or tie or anything, just a nice shirt and a sweater his son had brought him. His son had testified against him. Fitzgerald looked like he was going to play golf — just a casual sweater and slacks, brown loafers, distinguished gray hair — whenever he went to court.
“Fold them like this, make sure the iron isn’t sticky, Kerry — doesn’t have anything burnt on it. These guys …” Fitz’s voice trailed off as he shook his head a little and showed me with his strong fireman’s hands how to iron: It was obvious I didn’t know how. “These guys don’t know how to care for anything.”
“Whadya think you’ll get, Fitz?” I asked him, trying to make conversation. He had to wait till I was done anyway — the C.O. wasn’t going to let us out one at a time.
“Fifteen-to-life, I guess — that’s what my lawyer, the D.A., everybody is sayin’.” He seemed disinterested in the topic, like it was about someone else, but he kept his eyes on the creases I was attempting. “Whadya think you’ll get?” Then he added, “Here,” reached out for the iron, and started fixing my botched ironing job.
“I don’t know, not a whole lot…” I knew the maximum I could get was five-to-fifteen. Seemed like nothing compared to what Fitz faced the following day. “Maybe a three-to-nine or somethin’. Not a whole !ot for a life.” It didn’t come out like I wanted it to, and I was worried how Fitz would take it.
“You didn’t mean to kill anyone; you were just drunk,” he told me as he ironed, not looking up. “Me, I shot my wife, and if I had it to do over again …I’d shoot her again.” His face skewed momentarily. When we were both done, Fitz walked to the front of the barbershop cage with his pants, crisp-edge and delicately folded over his outstretched arm, as I plucked mine from the board and held it the same way. He yelled for the CO, by his name, not shouting “see-oh” like all us young turkeys.
“Fuckin’ murderer!” It was said loud enough to be heard throughout the courtroom. I stood with my hands cuffed behind me, watching the judge who was emceeing “Let’s Make a Deal” with the D.A. and my attorney. My suit was still damp and felt cold and clingy, giving me the feeling of not being in my own body. I switched my concentration to the line of dirty masking tape at my feet, where the bailiff had pointed, telling me where to stand. After a while, I let my eyes wander the courtroom walls, giant mahogany panels that swallowed up the low-toned voices of the players before me so that I couldn’t make out what they were saying, just horrific tidbits that branded that night: eyewitness, direction, headlights, excessive… Postponed, Resumed in six weeks. The bailiff opened the twelve-foot-high doors and I exited as I heard quiet sobbing. The handcuffs were removed and I was sent back up two flights of narrow stairs to the bullpens full of people I didn’t know. A young Colombian kid was miming out a robbery for some others, showing what had happened. Before I had left the sixth floor back at Q.H.D.M., Fay, an M.O. from the dorm upstairs, told me, “Don’t worry, Kerry, that suit is good luck.” I’d loaned it to him for one court appearance and he had snapped up an offer of two-to-six for bank robbery. He’d used a bicycle for a getaway vehicle for the first few rush-hour robberies, then switched to a car and got caught. His wife was furious. And I was dubious of his superstitious predictions. I felt like every kind of luck was passing me by, except bad.
My attorney, Tom, arrived huffing and puffing from the stairs. His suit fit snugly around his portly body and his tie was loosened. The C.O. stuck him in the Plexiglas booth adjoining the bullpen, then put me opposite him so we were separated inside by a Plexiglas dividing wall with round holes in it.
“How ya doin’, Kerry. I filed for the Rosario Hearing , , .” he began.
“Tom — what’s with the D.A.? You got any offer from him yet? Something to cop out to?” I was sick of bus rides and bullpens, and the family’s screams echoed in my head a little longer after each court appearance. This had been my third one. “I’ll take anything, I just want to get this over with …”
He gave me a “Then why did you hire me?” look. There was a long pause. The Colombian kid mimicked a gun with his fingers, pointing them at another guy with a Mickey Mouse T-shirt and heavy acne scars. They both laughed. We looked at each other through the smudged Plexiglas.
“I’ll see what they say.” The Colombian kid genuflected as he left the bullpen to go down the stairs.
“See-oh! Ten-ta-six Suicide on the mutha-fuckin’ gate!” I shouted it loud and slow like the announcer at the beginning of a prizefight. This time the C.O. was nearby and led me quickly through the routine of sign-in and gates until I was secured on B Side. Clang.
First I went into the dayroom, where I set down my Tupperware bucket, which again contained cookies and whatnot. The M.O.’s were watching Penitentiary HI for maybe the fourth time that week. “No way anybody could jump that high …” Ernesto said in a slightly effeminate voice, looking at my face, hoping I would defend him in an argument about one of the characters: an animallike, nonspeak-ing, chained-up black dwarf with superhuman strength. Later on in the movie, he would be chained up in the penitentiary basement and made to watch violent movies while smoking crack. Some of the M.O.’s were dozing in their chairs, tranquilized on Thorazine, Prolixin, Sinequan…
“You’re right, Ernesto, no way — he ain’t smoked that crack yet,” I told him and some guys stirred in their seats and laughed. Ernesto stamped one foot in anger, and then turned away with a hurt look. He prided himself on being a cut above the others, with more vocabulary and suave mannerisms. He had been robbing cabbies while strung out on crack himself, using a cap pistol. It was a miracle he hadn’t got shot. He’d slit his wrists once while he’d been on the M.O. tier, but it hadn’t been a real deep wound, and they had simply bandaged him up and sent him back from the infirmary a few hours later. I warned him never to pull a stunt like that on my shift.
I couldn’t watch the damn movie — it was just too bizarre for me, so I took a walk down the tier, like it tells you to do in the S.P.A. manual. You come in, go take a simple test the first Monday. Guys help each other openly; if you can’t read, the C.O. reads it to you, you pass — everybody does — and presto! you’re an S.P.A, I stopped at Stymie’s cell. “Sm~cide\” he said cheerily. He was a young black kid, stringbean tall with one unbendable leg, the result of being hit by a car as a small child. He was afflicted with grand-mal epilepsy. He sold a lot of crack; this was his third time in, and he’d go upstate for sure. Standing up off his bed, he hopped up to the bars. “Suicide, tell the C.O. crack my cell, I’m gonna go watch the movie.” I told him I’d get it done on my return run.
Next I went by 8 Cell, with Lemar, a huge, lumbering southern black man who’d strangled his wife. Lemar was listening to his radio, monitoring the news. He suffered from Parkinson’s disease. He shook as he reached to remove his headphones. “H-h-how z-zit g-goin’?” he asked. I smiled at him.
“How ya doin’, Lemar? Any good news?” Lemar had once gotten fifty dollars from his lawyers for Christmas. It was a fifty-dollar bill stuck in an envelope with a card. The C.O. that did the mail that day — a boozy, red-nosed, balding nobody — watched Lemar as he shuffled up to the gate upon hearing his name called out.
“Wanna touch it, Harris — feel the money?” He handed Lemar the bill through the bars like a peanut to a monkey, and watched as Lemar grinned, clutching the bill and shaking it with his Parkinson’s tremble. “Feels good, huh? Might be the last money you ever touch.” The C.O. took it back to put in Lemar’s account, and went on with the mail call, unable to disturb Lemar’s peaceful smile. Fifty dollars is a lot of money in prison. Sometimes I let Lemar wear my vest off of my suit setup. He’d walk down the cell runway, feeling real dapper, though the vest was awful tight. It seemed to brighten up his day. Lemar had been at Q.H.D.M. for a hell of a long time.
“Lock it in!” the C.O. bellowed precisely at ten fifty-five. He unlocked the gate and entered the runway in front of the cells, walking along and slamming shut the cell’s gate if the occupant was inside. I grabbed my Tupperware bucket out of the dayroom and took a spot in front of 1 Cell, where a shaft of light hit so I could read. After everyone was locked in, I spread out my blanket on the grimy cement floor. The C.O. checked his cell-locking panel on the gallery — old Decateur cable-and-puiley hardware from the 1930s, controlled by levers and wheels. “Thirteen cell! Take that off back-lock and don’t do that shk again!” he yelled and was answered with a clang. “That’s better.”
A lot of yelling and kidding came cascading down from the dormitory upstairs, its wire-mesh wall shared with the cell runway downstairs, creating no audio resistance. You could hear everything. A couple of guys upstairs were teasing Shakey, a down-and-out street bum, who begged for cigarettes constantly and smoked the butts off the floor. “Hey, Shakey — do my laundry tomorrow, I’ll give you three cigarettes …”
“Five…” Shakey called back up, and the dorm broke into convulsive laughter. Ernesto called out from his cell, and I walked over. “Kerry, I wish they’d get rid of Shakey, ship him to Brooklyn General — he’s such a dirt bag,” he whined.
“Hey, Ernesto — he’s got a right to be in jail, just like you and me. Get arrested, get three hots and a cot, medication to boot — this is a great country, Ernesto.” This got him laughing, but suddenly he stopped.
“You know, Kerry, if they try to send me to a max when I get sentenced, I’ll kill myself, I swear I will…”
“Listen — nobody kills themself on my shift — besides, suicide is a C felony, they take you back downstairs and book you again, up your bail …” I heard Fitz laughing from 15 Cell. Then, from the middle of the tier I heard an ominous thud.
I ran down the line peering into each cell, but already I knew what was wrong. Stymie was having a seizure. I stood in front of 6 Cell holding both my hands over my head and pointing at the cell like a beach lifeguard, yelling “See-oh! Crack six cell! See-oh! Crack six cell!” The C.O. ran down the D Side catwalk and to his Decateur con-trot panel. I heard the cell door unlatch. Click.
I ran in and squatted down. The foot attached to Stymie’s stiff leg was beating a fast, chaotic rhythm on the stainless-steel toilet. I took his head in my hands, then grabbed a blue N.Y. Giants knit cap that was lying on his bed and stuffed it into his mouth to keep him from biting his tongue. Then I found a sweatshirt also within easy reach and fashioned it into a pillow, the whole time holding his chattering head in my lap. His legs twitched spastically. The C.O. stuck his head in the cell. “Good job, Suicide. I’ll call upstairs…” We’d all been through this before.
Stymie surfaced into groggy consciousness just before the nurse and captain came to take him to the infirmary. “Suicide — I dreamed you was playin’ cards…” he said in a soft, disoriented voice. “… You had jacks and queens. Did… did I have me a fit?” he asked, and I told him yes. They helped him into the wheelchair and took him upstairs for the night.
I talked with Fitz afterward, about fighting fires, marriage, raising kids, and sentencing, and shared some Oreos with him. Ernesto asked for some aspirin. Then Shakey asked if I would pick up a few butts off the floor for him — I refused and conned a cigarette out of 2 Cell instead. Finally everyone went to sleep, some calling to the C.O. to turn out their cell light from the control panel, some asking me to ask him.
I lay on my blanket, head propped against the bucket with a pillow, all butted up against the filthy bars. I stuck my book in the shaft of light — Bonfire of the Vanities. When the C.O.’s nighttime snack wagon came, he gave me an ice cream. I dozed off at one point, and woke up suddenly to a fluttering at my eyelid: a mouse was checking me out at close range. The mouse looked huge, larger than life, in the moment that I opened my eyes. It ran off quickly, more frightened than I was, and scrambled into each cell, then darted out, unhampered by bars and shopping for tidbits. Morning came with the noise of the nearby expressway’s traffic buildup, and I helped with the chow wagon and breakfast, ending off by cleaning trays. I went and locked myself in my cell, and lay down for sleep to come over me. Another day.
I sat with Chris one day, a young white kid who worked the upstairs M.O. while I worked the cells downstairs. The M.O.’s were lined up at the gate for meds. Each one would hand an I.D. card through the bars to an attractive Jamaican nurse, and in return receive a Dixie Cup with pills or liquid Thorazine or whatever, then maybe a cup of water to wash it down. The whole time the nurse would answer their remarks with varying responses, most distilling to “Just take your medicine, please.”
Chris sat glued to the TV, always making stupid comments like “I’d like to fuck her .. .” at the Excedrin commercial spokespersons. After saying something profound he looked up at me. “Hey, maybe someone’ll hang up tonight, we’ll save ‘em, split the fifty dollars .. .” His face beamed the bright shine of too many acid trips.
“There ain’t no fifty-dollar reward. That’s just a goddamn myth,” I told him, picturing him at a Grateful Dead concert — which was where he was busted at — talking about Jerry Garcia or inter-galactic travel plans. He was a real piece of work. I watched him refo-cus on the TV after I had squashed his attempt at conversation: It was a movie — Death Wish with Charles Bronson.
From downstairs came a thud. Not very loud in itself, but loud enough within the relative quiet that developed whenever the nurse’s wagon appeared. I didn’t like the sound of it. I dropped the newspaper and ran down the stairs. There was still a line for meds, and I saw Stymie in it. I walked briskly down the line of cells, one, two, three… I got to 12 Cell, and rushed it — luckily it was unlocked.
A young Arab guy lay with his head bleeding into his Puma sweatshirt and a long-sleeved shirt tied tight around his neck. I loosened it. He breathed. Chris looked over my shoulder. “Get the see-oh, tell him to call the infirmary,” I told him. It was a half-assed suicide attempt: Evidently the kid had tied the shirt around his neck so tight he passed out while standing up on his bed. The thud I had heard was his head cracking against the sink as he fell. He’d be all right. “TwentyTive each, right?” Chris said and vanished before I could curse him out. I was sick of hearing about the supposed reward for saving guys. I doubted the jail was giving fifty dollars to anybody for anything. I wiped the Arab’s temple with another shirt handy. “He all right?” came Fitz’s voice from 15 Cell, locked in, which he preferred.
“Yeah, he’ll be okay,” I said. I heard an M.O. complain that Chris was cutting in line as he sought to get to the gate and grab the C.O.’s attention among the thrusting hands clutching I.D. cards and raucous ribbing of the pretty Jamaican nurse. I stood up and looked out the window at some trees whose leaves were turning, and it occurred to me I’d been here, doing this, for ten months.
Going back to court later that month, I wound up being shackled to one of the M.O.’s from the upstairs dorm. He kept singing the refrain from a currently popular song: “The girls, the girls they love me, the girls the girls they love me.” I stared out the bus window at morning traffic I used to detest.
Back in the courthouse bullpen, I felt the dread of the appearance pulling my stomach apart. The suit jacket felt like a straitjacket. I’d gotten my vest back from Lemar the night before, working my shift even though I didn’t have to the night preceding court. I always did — it kept my mind off of it all. “Are y-y-y-you g-g-going t-to trial?” he asked. “I don’t want to,” I’d told him.
I didn’t get taken to the courtroom by lunchtime, and lunch was highlighted by my bus partner setting on fire the little Styrofoam cups our tea came in. The black smoke pissed off a few guys, and the mood in the bullpen grew ugly and tense.
My attorney came up just before I was to go down. He told me nothing, really, just shook his head and complained about the unwavering D.A., who “wouldn’t play ball,” I felt homesick for the sixth floor, that’s how bad it was.
I went down finally to face more screaming, more crying, more nothing. Postponed. I wanted all this to come to an end. Bad.
There was someone new in the bullpen when I got back up there, and he stood looking out of one of the windows to the street below, the sun radiating through his dirty long blond hair and darker beard. He turned around and looked at me as the C.O. shut the gate. “How’d it go?” he said, real polite-like, not bullpen jaded or tough. Two black guys were beating out a rap rhythm on the bench — “You, you got what I needed …” The long-haired freak almost seemed to know me. “Not good,” I told him. His eyes were clear blue like mine.
“What happened?” he asked. He wasn’t asking about the preceding courtroom drama, but my crime.
“I got drunk, driving on the wrong side of the road, and this poor kid ran out in front of me …” I said.
“You’ll be okay. I can tell you never meant to hurt anybody,” he told me matter-of-factly. We stood quietly while the pounding continued, both now gazing out the window. He lifted his arm and pointed to a mother with a baby carriage, fussing with the infant’s little blue hat as they sat in the courthouse square among the park benches and drunks. The rappers came to their chorus and sang, “…say he’s just a friend, say he’s just a friend …”
I moved off to a corner and took off the suit jacket, spread it out on the dirty bullpen floor and lay down. I’d been up a long, long time, what with working the nighttime suicide shift. I shed my vest and used it as a pillow, and dozed off for what must have been a couple of hours. When I woke up, the C.O. was jangling his keys and opening the gate. It was time for the bus ride back. The long-haired freak was gone. I asked the rappers. “Went back to Brooklyn General.” He’d come from the hospital, evidently. Probably a “bug,”
“What are you, crazy?” Ernesto was playing chess with Lemar. But he was speaking to a guy named Checkers. He was called Checkers because he was always picking up a checker piece off the playing board, putting it in his mouth, and grinning. Now he deviated a little from his regular modus operandi, and had the black queen peeking out from his grin. He could screw with the checker pieces all day, and guys would just replace the piece with whatever was handy, a scrap of paper, a matchbook, or whatever.
“M-m-m-my q-q-q-quwween!” Lemar yelled, furious. His big arms trembled as he stood up and grabbed the slightly built Checkers by the throat real hard, and lifted him up in the air, feet dangling. Left alone, Lemar would kill Checkers. The black queen became a projectile that hit Lemar squarely in the chest and clattered to the floor. Checker’s face tried to form a scream but couldn’t, and saliva tan down his chin while his face turned beet red. I bumped Lemar real hard with my shoulder and distracted his murderous choking. “C’mon, it’s your move — you’re holdin’ up the game.” He let go, still trembling, and Checkers hit the floor and took off like a cat out of a bathtub, out of the room and up the stairs to the dotm. Most of the time, Checkers never spoke, except for once in a while he’d be clinging to the bars like a koala bear, arms and legs wrapped through and up off the ground, and he’d scream, “Where’s Petey?” followed by a Hollywood madhouse laugh. He was on a lot of medication.
The chess game resumed and soon Lemar was content to lose, moving foolishly as Ernesto proceeded to checkmate him. Ron returned to his cell and put on his headphones to listen to the news. Ernesto scouted the dayroom for more challengers. Everybody was absorbed watching The Price Is Right or dozing after meds. I was over there during the day because the regular daytime S.P.A. had court and I had decided I just plain liked it over on the M.O. tier better. I’d become state property soon, get transferred into the State Correctional System. I was sentenced, packed, waiting for the call any day. I’d given my vest to Lemar because he would probably go to a hospital for the criminally insane where he might still wear street clothes. I wanted to move on — it felt like I’d been on the sixth floor forever.
Stymie limped in and sat down. “Nineteen thousand five hundred twenty-nine dollars for the Chevy Blazer/’ I heard from the TV; I had always wanted a Blazer.
“Who’s gonna watch me after you go, Kerry?” The look on Stymie’s face was one I’d never seen before. He was dead serious.
Ernesto chimed in. ‘‘Yeah — who’s gonna take the night shift, bring us cookies?”
I almost started to cry, but I caught myself. I think it was because, just at that moment, 1 remembered Stymie, one of the first nights 1 was there, saying to me, after listening to me tell the story of the night of my crime, “You the one needs a soo-cide watch on yo’ ass.” The words, spoken in that downhome ghetto accent, slashed through me then, and I swore I’d never appear to be anything but …strong.
“Don’t worry, gang, they’ll find somebody. It ain’t like you clowns are that crazy,” I said, reached out and grabbed the white knight, stuck it in my mouth, and spit it out at Ernesto.
“That’s dis-gusting,” he said with a flourish and a foot-stomp, and we all laughed loud as hell as bells went off, announcing that somebody had won the Blazer.
1994, Mid-State Correctional Facility Marcy, New York