GENGHIS
USED TO THINK that in prison I’d at least be in good company: broken heroes, twisted knights, and righteous kings of the damned—the keepers of dark underworlds, that sort. But no!
In prison it’s mostly just a bunch of fools who did foolish things, guarded by other fools with guns who ultimately will do foolish things. Can’t suffer fools. There’s no excuse for ’em.
Just want out—out of this plaster hand cast, out of this cell, this prison, this puke green hell hole where one glance, one wrong word, one secretive tug can release an alchemy of hell on earth. Alchemy. That’s a good word; something his God would say. Still, hell on earth because, like I said, they’re all fools, and a foolish man doesn’t know to just shut the hell up and do his time, or bide time until he can get out, unnoticed, real quiet-like.
Rain pelted against the tin shingles outside the unreachable window near the ceiling. That pinging sound and the absolute boredom got on my last nerve—needed a distraction. I squeezed my face between the corner bars to see the guard and shouted,“Rain, rain, rain! Frickin’ rain.”
“Shut up, Hansel.” The fat guard with the moral fortitude of a hedgehog shouted back from the end of the corridor. He sat feet propped up on the desk, clipping his fingernails. Another sound I couldn’t abide. He kept watch over me and the six empty cells in lockdown.
“Let my teachin’ fall like rain,” I called back. “Like my snake-wielding evangelical Baptist preacher father always said, man needs preachin’ whether he wants it or not.”
“That’s enough, Hansel.”
“Like showers on new grass. Like abundant rain on tender plants.”
“Shut the hell up!”
“Well, that’s a bit harsh,” I said backing away from the bars, away from his view. I raised my voice, “Don’t you know God’s law? Give and you shall receive; smile and others will smile back. It’s the law of reciprocity.” I sat down on my soft-as-cardboard cot.
“I mean it. Shut up, Hansel, nobody here cares about your preachin’.”
“Tisk, tisk, officer, I don’t sense you’re smilin’. Nope, not smilin’ at all. Haven’t got the Good News, have you. Well, just remember: Give kindly, and you’ll receive in like measure.”
“Hansel!” he shouted, then slapped his billy club on the desk.
“It’s that like measure part you gotta watch out for, sentry. But other than your downright shitty attitude, it’s a remarkable spiritual principle, don’t ya think?”
“Shut the fuck up, Hansel,” he said again. “Or I’ll break that other hand.”
I looked down at the cast on my hand. Who breaks a man’s hand just to take off a ring! These penitentiary grunts thought someone might bust me up to take my beautiful ring with the snake coiled around a precious ruby. It’s just plain rude to take a man’s ring from his crippled hand. Fools. Can’t stand fools. But, this is a place where foolish men end up. Well, and sometimes smart men who made one slight mistake.
Shoulda never tried to visit my little friend in that state hospital, Damashe; what a name for a container for the mentally disturbed. Do the government idiots who named it not realize it rhymes with damaged? What idiots. But it’s funny, and they’re still idiots, and she wasn’t worth a broken finger and all this monotony.
“Give me my charcoal so I can draw,” I requested.
“Pray for some!” The guard retorted.
“Ok,” I said. “Let me go to confession . . . I have things to confess.”
“No priest today, Hansel.”
“Well, that just don’t seem right,” I said. “Shouldn’t there be a priest in the house of sinners, on hand and at the ready, every day?”
“I’m tellin’ ya, Hansel, shut up!”
“What about our war hero friend?” I asked. “Now there’s a man who knows the heart of a sinner.” I pictured that war hero priest who denied me absolution and whose judgment seeped through the cement wall into my cell, crawling along the pee-stained floor, right up to me, rearing up, a judgment snake, coiled and ready to jab-jab-jab at my skin, bite, hiss, and extract that which it was sent to kill, from my body. That war hero dick sent that judgment snake after me just like my daddy did when I was a boy. When I poisoned his favorite pet, the one that crippled my hand, he told me in no uncertain words there ain’t no redemption for one like me. No prayers, not enough deeds to be done to get my rotten soul into heaven after killin’ one of God’s precious creatures.
“That priest,” I said, “he don’t realize he casts a shadow long, dark as his own judgments. Daddy use to say, ‘He who deceived them will be thrown into the lake a fire with the beast and the false prophet; tormented day and night forever, for what they done . . . for who they is.’”
“So does that make you the beast or the devil?” The guard asked.
“Oh you know who I am. It’s that priest, that false prophet that don’t know who or what he is. He don’t even know he’s mortal. Funny how similar we really are. Yes sir, I know that man. He’s the kind of man needs to be shown.”
“Hansel, I’m begging ya, shut up!”
“I’m hungry!” I called out to my fat friend. “I like Italian food . . . slippery sauces, noodles that wiggle and squirm . . . I like things that squirm. And wine, lots of red wine.”
“Shut the hell up, Hansel.”
“Or better yet, fried catfish, hush puppies, grits, greens, black-eyed peas and corn bread, fried okra, pork barbecue, sweet potato pie, and sweet tea, the dinner of the gods. Yes, sir-ee.”
“Shut the hell up, Hansel.”
“Do you just have that recorded?” I asked. “And you sit there and hit the button, shut up, Hansel . . . shut up, Hansel . . . shut up, Hansel?”
The thick metal door burst open. “New prisoner!” another guard shouted.
My fat friend dropped his fingernail clippers and jumped to his feet.
Pressed my face against the bars to see as far as I could see. A guard and another prisoner; his feet were chained. Young guy, shaved head. But then they shoved him to the left side where I couldn’t see anything. Heard the clank of keys, the sound of a heavy cell door sliding open; the bars clattered as they passed one another like a metal train on metal tracks. I heard keys again as they unchained the new guy’s bracelets. Then the door banged closed. Then more keys. The sound of keys in this place made me crazy. Keys. All the wrong people had keys.
The two guards whispered at the end of the hall, then both disappeared out the door.
It was quiet. I smelled the fresh scent of lice shampoo—this new guy just went through intake where they would have hosed him down before they threw his prison blues at him and told him to dress. That smell meant his skin burned from head to toe, that the water was still plugging up his ears, that his skin was stuck to the uniform because those rude shits don’t give you a towel—you just dress wet and air dry.
Intake was a process of disinfecting prisoners and protecting others from communicable diseases until the powers that be decided—for research’s sake—to then infect inmates with communicable diseases to see how fast and far they spread. I felt a kinship with those researchers. Fun job: looking at a crowded yard, a sea of blue, and seeing only a fertile field of human skin to corrupt beyond anything those prisoners’ crooked little minds could imagine. I felt a kinship, a real kinship with those researchers.
“You got a name, hombre?” I asked my quiet neighbor who smelled of chemical spray.
I heard movement from his cell, but nothing else.
“Okay,” I said. “No name, then.” I pressed my face against the bars, watching the door; the guards never stayed gone more than a few minutes. “So hombre, do you like Italian food?”
More movement; he stood up and walked to the bars. “Toreck,” he said. “Toreck Sealy.”
“Nice to meet you . . . where you from, Toreck, Toreck Sealy?”
“Who gives a shit where I’m from?”
“Oh . . . well . . . I guess nobody does.”
“Manzanita,” he said. “Down on the coast.”
“Ah, yes, I know the place well. Just spent some time fishin’ in Nehalem. So what brings you here today, Toreck, Toreck Sealy?”
“I beat up a dumb-shit know-it-all priest.”
“Well . . . now, that’s not a crime, is it?”
He let out a laugh and said, “No, not in my mind. But the judge saw different.”
“Why’d you tune him up, Toreck, Toreck Sealy?”
“He thinks he can tell me how to raise my son; thinks he’s smarter, better than everyone.”
“Why you hate this priest so much?”
“They’re all liars. Full of empty vows and more secrets than a city whore. When I was a boy they’d tell me to bow for my sins . . . after what they did? God damn them. Damn them all to hell! I hate priests. What do they know? They sure don’t know what it takes to be a real man. That’s for damn sure. And this one, he sure as hell can’t even put up a fight.”
“Sounds serious,” I said. “So are you a good father, Toreck, Toreck Sealy?”
“It’s just Toreck. And yes, a better father than that boy deserves.”
“All children deserve good fathers. When they don’t have good mothers and fathers they’s far better off bein’ sent back to the House a Souls.”
“The house of what?”
“How old’s your boy?”
“Seven.”
“He’s still pure in God’s eyes.”
“What?”
“At twelve the world just really comes after ya. He can still be saved.”
“Saved? He don’t need savin’, cept from his ugly-ass ma and that meddlin’ priest.”
“Will you be a better father when you’re freed, Toreck Sealy?”
“Sure . . . yeah, I probably will.” He sounded drained.
“Not having a good day, Toreck Sealy?”
“Good day? Shit no. No, not a good day,” he said.
“You need a good meal. When I’m havin’ a bad day I like to think ’bout real food.”
“Food is food. So why are you here?”
“Food is food? You’re missin’ out on life, boy. Food is not food till it’s cooked in lard: chicken, pork, beef, catfish, squirrel . . . cooked in lard, man. Now that there’s food.”
“I don’t give a shit ’bout your weird ideas ’bout food. What are ya in for?”
“Well . . . that’s a fun story . . . Did ya know the Oregon Trail started in Missouri?”
“Man, you don’t make any sense.”
“Well, let’s just say God sent me down that trail to lead his fallen children out of hell.”
“Ah, shit . . . ” Toreck dropped to his cot. “Another preacher.”
“Not exactly . . . So tell me about this meddlesome priest you hammered up who fancies hisself a savior of children. I think we could have some fun with him—show him the light.”