Джойс Оутс - Prison Noir

Many of the men pressed their faces against the dirty plexiglass, watching for movement of any kind. Some of them looked at the people in the cells next to us, which were outtake processing, the guys who were leaving the jail. Others watched for women. Most watched for guards.

“Fuck, man,” one said, “did anyone else have Housser in the showers?”

A bunch of people nodded. I nodded.

“He made me squat down and cough. I can’t stand that! He only does that to people he hates. I’ve been to the ACJ seven times, saw Housser five of ’em, and he still makes me do that shit! I’ve never just had to spread my cheeks and do the How’s your ass taste? thing; I’d rather do that than squat like a bitch.”

“He made me do both,” I chimed in, not thinking before I said it.

“Um. Wow. He must have really not liked you.”

Everyone laughed.

After intake processing, I went to the fourth level of the jail, the “Shoo,” where everyone went before being classified for different levels. I waited out my time, never leaving the cell I was in. I slept most of the day.

“Boy, you’d better start eatin’,” Chauncey, my cellmate, said while scribbling on the walls, “or ’least come out and take your tray so yous can give it to me.”

“I’ll see how I feel at dinner,” I replied.

Chauncey looked at me through soda-bottle glasses, huffed, and continued drawing on the walls. Then he dropped his pencil, began screaming and rubbing at his chest. Chauncey was a lunatic. He had been arrested for accidentally stealing someone’s wallet; the only reason he didn’t return it right away was because he was afraid the lawyer he had stolen it from might sue him. It was clearly a misunderstanding. Because Chauncey was insane, he always appeared in mental health court, in front of the same judge. This thing with the wallet was the fifth time the judge had seen him that year. Chauncey was gonna get knocked.

“Ahbubba cah! Cah!” Chauncey shouted while still tearing at his chest. I quickly got used to it. Laying in my bunk, I turned around toward the wall. The guards didn’t run over anymore because Chauncey screamed so much. Not even the suicide watchers bothered checking in.

After about ten minutes he was done. “I need a cigarette,” he said. He quietly left the cell and came back a few moments later with two other men. Our cell was the smoking cell; Chauncey allowed people to smoke there in exchange for a few hits of the cigarettes. If a guard saw smoke, it would ultimately come down on whoever’s cell it was. Chauncey was willing to take that risk, with me along for the ride even though I didn’t smoke their toilet-paper cigarettes.

“Yo, man, what’s up?” one of the men asked me. He was a tall, thin, black gang-star boy with tattoos on his face and neck. Chauncey had told me he wouldn’t be staying in the jail; he was going to be sent upstate in a few weeks. Triple homicide.

“Nothing much,” I responded, laying in my bunk as usual. Above my head, on the wall, someone had written, KILL ALL WHITES , with what looked like blood. The tattooed gang-star looked at me, then at the message on the wall.

“Shit, man,” he said. “That’s really rude .”

Low-risk inmates went to level one, which had three cellblocks, and higher-risk inmates went anywhere from level seven, which were murderers waiting to be transported to the state prison, down to level two, which was small-time repeat offenders. I was sent to level one, cellblock B. I was told that was the best cellblock because you could become a worker.

A few days on the block, I got the best job in the jail, “street gang.” For some reason this upset a lot of people. Street gang was a highly sought-after job. Instead of red uniforms, we wore dark green, working from a warehouse on the bottom level of the jail, next to the outtake area. We got to go outside, eat what the guards ate, and, at night, leave the cellblock to empty garbage. I spent all of my time sitting by the trash compactor, the “beast.” Everyone else sat in the warehouse, eating chips and watching TV. I liked being by myself, in the trash compactor room. It stank in there but nobody bothered me, which was nice; I even got used to the stink after a while. All of the other street gang workers thought I was insane.

“Hey, Fredrick,” one worker, Luther, said, holding a glue trap in his hand.

“Yeah?”

Luther grimaced. “Man, how the hell do you sit back here by the beast all day? Anyway, will you throw this in for me?”

I noticed the glue trap had a mouse stuck to it, still alive, struggling. “Sure, I’ll take care of it.”

“Thanks.”

Luther set the trap down on the ground and tried to hold his breath. I picked it up and pet the mouse; it calmed down slightly. The trash compactor room was also where county cars were parked to be washed. Every day I cleaned one or two of them, using the various soaps and sprays lined up in fifty-five-gallon drums. Some of the soaps were very harsh, could be used as floor stripper, and some weren’t as bad.

I went to the drum of yellow soap, which was very mild, and pumped it onto the mouse. Rubbing the little animal, massaging the soap all over it, the glue began to loosen. The mouse started to tear away from the trap; I helped, peeling it off gently, letting it bite into my glove to pull itself further.

“Hey, did you kill that mou— Whoa, whoa!” Luther yelled. “What are you doing?”

“I’m loosening the trap.”

“What? Why?”

“So he can get free,” I said, looking down at the mouse.

“The fuck is wrong with you? Those things have the fucking plague!”

“ We’re the plague, Luther.”

“What?”

“We are the mice.”

“You’re as fucking crazy as everyone says!” Luther shouted.

“That’s fine.”

“Even if you let it go, that thing’ll die after a day.”

“What do you mean?”

“They get caught in traps and become frightened to death.” He laughed. “Their poor widdle hearts can’t take it,” he mocked.

“That’s fine too.”

Luther headed out, shaking his head.

The mouse pulled off of the trap completely. As it hung from my glove, I took it to the hose for washing the cars and dripped some water on it, rinsing it off. There was a small bend in the garage door and, on my hands and knees, I guided the mouse through. I watched it scurry away.

Despite what Luther or the workers may have thought, the guards who ran street gang liked me. I never kissed anyone’s ass, and for whatever reason, I didn’t have to. I kept to myself and worked as hard as I could. Nothing more. I had cut myself on used razors while emptying trash, helped clean out a flood in the jail for twenty-three straight hours, and went on road trips, hauling any usable scrap metal from the old county buildings that were being remodeled or destroyed. The county’s budget must have been tight or something.

It would usually be me and one other worker, plus a guard to escort us. Once we went to an unused forensics lab; there were bullets everywhere, and a big steel water tank. Another time we went to the old morgue. We had to scrap the remaining desks, lockers, operating tables, and scalpels, and try not to get hurt. The morgue was almost empty when we got there; the halls echoed with my steps. It felt as if eyes were always on me, hiding behind the walls. I would pick up a cleaver and throw it into a box, then toss a full box into a dumpster outside. It was tedious. There were four professional scrappers, hired by the county, who were helping us; they listened to the radio a lot and ate pizza. Only one of them, Vic, actually worked. He and I were together, ripping copper wire from the walls. I tried to talk to the guy, but he didn’t seem interested. Under his breath, between grunts, pulling at the wires, I heard him complain that he didn’t like working with gutter trash.