Reed Coleman - They Don't Play Stickball in Milwaukee

Angel Hernandez’s skin was an elaborate puzzle of fire-breathing tattoos and Christ heads. Some of the body art was delicate, subtle like the flecks of bright red in the tar-black eyes of the dragon which stretched its scaly wings across Angel’s back. The ominous talons, raised at anyone who noticed the dragon-it was impossible not to notice-held a crucifix. The dying Christ seemed unfazed. The jagged tail ran the length of Angel’s spine, spiraling around a black dagger on his right buttock. The white face of Christ superimposed on a red cross covered his hairless chest. This was a skilled piece of work as well. The tattoos of blue chains around his neck and upper arms were sloppy, but had a certain flair.

There were others, amateurish gang markings that let the rest of the prison population know under whose protection Angel traveled. He had carved Madre into his right forearm over and over again until a blind man could read the raised scar tissue. He had carved another word, a name, into the skin of his upper left thigh near the crease between his leg and groin. The letters in the name were ragged and undetectable even to other men in the shower. Only the weaker prisoners Angel preyed upon and sodomized knew the name was there at all. He often beat his prey for asking about the name. After the first few years, only the uninitiated wondered aloud.

Christ and the painted dragon cried tears of Angel’s sweat as he strained to finish his third set of ten reps benching three hundred pounds. He was already souless and a murderer when he got to Attica, but rage and time had conspired with free weights to turn the rest of him into stone.

“Come on, Angel, two more,” the spotter yelled at Hernandez.

“ Nueve ,” Angel grunted, pushing the bar up and locking his elbows. “Did you get it out for me?”

“Come on, one more, we talk when you’re done.”

“Did you get the fucking thing out for me?” Angel screamed at his spotter, his arms beginning to shake from the strain.

“Yeah, man. Okay, okay. I got it out. I got it out.”

Angel let the bar drop slowly to his chest and he pushed it back up to complete his reps. He placed the bar in the Y-shaped rests on either side of the bench and sat up. He walked to where his shirt covered a pack of cigarettes. He flipped the pack to his spotter. Smiling broadly, the spotter shook the pack close by his ear.

“Don’t worry, pato ” Angel assured him, “there’s enough Dilaudid in dat pack to keep you and your beetch happy for de month.”

At mess that night, three guards surrounded Angel when he went to clear his tray. They herded him into a storage room off the kitchen. He was handcuffed, his legs shackled, and a sock was stuffed in his mouth. Angel didn’t resist, there was too much at stake.

“We hear you’re leavin’ us next week for the halfway house. And me and some of the boys were kinda hurt you didn’t tell us. But we’re not the type a people to hold a grudge, no sir. So we thought we’d throw ya this little bye-bye party.”

Angel tensed his muscles, waiting for the first fist or baton blow to crack his ribs. No blows came. Instead the guards just laughed at Angel. The guard who had done the talking motioned his two partners away from the prisoner. He stepped back from Angel and pulled out a Taser. He let Angel get a good look at the electro-shock gun. Now Angel tried to run, but even before he could trip over his shackled ankles, the tethered hook caught his shirt. His bones burned in pain as his skin crawled with a million unseen ants. His body convulsed wildly and he could smell his own filth as his muscles lost all control. He didn’t remember passing out.

He woke up with a start, unchained and in his cell. He’d been cleaned up, but he was sick to his stomach, his head on the edge of explosion. Angel staggered out of his bunk, straining to see the calendar in the dark. The dates hadn’t changed, just seven days more. He felt the wall for his brother’s picture. He kissed the snapshot, crossed himself, climbed back into his bunk. He slide his right hand under the waistband of his pants and felt for the name carved into his thigh. Angrily whispering the inscribed name, Angel cried himself to sleep.

County jail was not prison. It wasn’t her mother’s warm embrace, but it wasn’t prison. Prison was coming. She no longer viewed her trial with any remote sense of optimism. When she found herself entertaining even vaguely hopeful thoughts, she bit the inside of her lip until blood gushed across her tongue. The taste of blood reminded her not to hope. She saw her trial only as a rest stop on the way to prison, a bureaucratic hiccup, a way for the masses to avoid culpability. Never mind that she was innocent, she was going away for the better part of twenty years.

“Prison.” She liked to say the word. She liked to play with the word. “On. Sip. Son. No. Sin. In. Nip. Pin. Sir.”

But it wouldn’t be called a prison, not where she was headed. It would be called a correctional facility for women. She wondered what flaws in her character the facility would be correcting. She wondered what she would do with her days and how long it would be before she was raped by a guard or one of the other correctees.

Women had come on to her in county, but she’d been able to turn down the offers without much trouble. The state had a vested interest in keeping her protected at least until the charade of the trial was through. But she had decided to surrender to the next woman who approached her. Better to face it and get it over with, she thought. Maybe she could learn to like it. The dream was all tapped out of her, leaving numbness in its stead.

She wouldn’t be old when she got out, but that was somehow moot. She already felt old, ancient, tired. She just wanted to go to sleep and sleep until she turned to dust. Unfortunately the mechanisms which protected her from the other women in county also protected her from her dreams of sleep. In one sense, she couldn’t wait for the trial to be done with. She had even toyed with the idea of copping a plea. And then, in the dark of her cell, she could lay herself down to sleep.

Johnny MacClough had just finished pulling the stool down off the bar top when the Scupper’s front door opened. Marty Camp, dusting snow off his blue tunic, dropped a bound pile of mail on the bar.

“Anything for me?” Marty asked.

“Nothing,” MacClough answered, already skimming the bundle.

“Anything from Dylan?”

“Yeah, a postcard from the La Brea Tar Pits: ‘MacClough, These dumb dinosaurs had a better chance in the tar pits than I do of selling my mss. Miss the Scupper. Miss Sound Hill. Mississippi. See you soon. Klein.’ ”

“The eternal optimist,” Camp remarked. “How long’s he been out on the left coast?”

“Five whole days.”

Camp shook his head and went back out into the snow. MacClough poured himself a cup of coffee and finished weeding through the mail. Mostly, it was the usual tripe: bills, more bills, and solicitations. Everybody had something to sell you and unconvincing reasons why you just had to buy it. MacClough ripped up the direct mailings, though he would have much preferred to shred the bills. Late January wasn’t the high season for pubs on the east end of Long Island.

There was one letter in the bunch. It had no return address on the envelope. MacClough shook the envelope like a pack of sugar and tore off one edge. He took out the one sheet of paper and read it three or four times. He went behind the bar and picked up a bottle of Murphy’s Irish Whiskey. He noticed the bottle was shaking in his hand. Unsuccessfully, he tried willing his hand steady.