Джойс Оутс - Prison Noir

I remembered the smell, the sweet, sickly smell from when I first came to I-unit. It turned out that the smell was crack. Every day is a lesson in prison, just not the kind of lesson that folks want kids to learn.

The next morning, while I was taking a shower, Bean walked in and asked me what I thought about the crack. I told him it wasn’t for me and that the shit had me paranoid and trippin’ for real. I told him that while I was on it, everyone seemed to be acting like some straight creeps.

“Yeah, shit be like that sometimes.”

I told him I was cool with that, and as I was washing the soap out of my face, I thought I heard him say, “Mmmmmm.”

“What?”

Bean stepped back casually. “That’s cool.”

I thought I had been trippin’ again, so I let it go. I finished my shower and got dressed. When I returned to my bunk, Mac had some sandwiches and a couple of boiled eggs for me. They were right on time. I felt famished. I’d worked out that day with Vic, who had seen me looking real bug-eyed and suspicious the night before. He talked shit and joked about how I’d looked.

I finished my day by shooting a few hoops with Bean. Before we left the gym, he said, “After you get done showering, swing by and we’ll play some cards or something.”

“Cool.”

I was taking a dump a little later and had that odd sensation you get when you feel someone is watching, staring at you. I glanced up and saw Bean just standing there.

I said, “What’s up?”

“Nothing. Just checking to see if you was ready.”

“Nah, going to hit the shower after this and then I’ll holler at ya.” He said that was cool and then split. Couldn’t even shit in peace.

After my shower, I went to Bean’s bunk, and he was the only one there. I sat in a chair, and he told me that the dudes had backed out of the card game but that we could still chill. I said that was all right with me. We bullshitted for a bit and then this young mixed kid, probably my age, came and sat down next to Bean. The kid didn’t say a thing, just sat there, eyes cast downward with his hands in his lap. Bean turned toward the kid and said, “Put your leg over mine and give me a kiss.”

I thought my hearing stuttered! Can hearing stutter? The kid glanced nervously at me, and then Bean told him to quit acting “brand new” and said, “Silverfox don’t care.”

Let’s pause this for a second so I can catch you up. When I first went into prison, I didn’t like gays. I guess I was what they call “homophobic.” Extremely. I had never been around it, so I guess that’s where the phobia part came from. I no longer feel the same way, but back then, the idea of a man being with another man in that way was disgusting to me. So anyway, I shrugged like it was of no significance to me, like I’d seen it every day, even though my teeth were set on edge, for real. So the mixed kid kissed Bean square on the mouth, tongue and all. Wow! I was definitely speechless. I mumbled that I had something to take care of and split pretty soon.

A few days later, Bean asked me if I was down to play some cards. I tried to keep it cool, like none of what had happened the other day had bothered me, so I said, “Yeah.” We played spades for a few hours and smoked some cigs. After the game everyone left and Bean and I were chilling and listening to his radio.

“You know I’m in love with you, Little Daddy.” Now, I hoped my ears were just clumsy, ’cause my hearing sure seemed to be trippin’.

“What?”

And this fool said the same shit! Bean’s voice reminded me of the rapper Tone Loc, balding, missing a front tooth. I immediately flashed back to him walking in while I had been showering — while I had been shitting! The dude had been stalking me like a lion stalking a zebra, only with words and “friendship.”

“I’m in love with you, Little Daddy.”

I snapped back to reality and stuttered, “L-look, I got a wife, dawg.” Bean said that he had a wife too. I told him, “Look, I’m not gay!” He said he wasn’t either. He told me he was bisexual. I remembered what I had heard on a stand-up comedy routine by Andrew Dice Clay and I said, “You either suck dick or you don’t.”

Bean got a little salty over my joke (though I was hardly joking at the time) and began to tell me how he had been comforting a lot of these so-called straight dudes. He also told me to stay up late that night to watch all the guys who would sneak into his bunk. He told me about a white boy I knew, who always fronted like he was a hard-ass peckerwood — Willy Geegs. He told me how Willy would come and get dope from him and let Bean suck his dick and fuck him. Bean said that when they were done, Willy would go straight to the bathroom to shit out Bean’s “kids” and to wipe the grease off his ass. I started to feel a little queasy. Bean reached down and pulled a small bag of rocks out of his sock and counted out seven of them. He told me I could have them if I would just let him suck my dick.

“What the fuck!”

He then showed me a slip from the inmate trust office showing that he had a little over nine hundred dollars on his books. He was very persistent, bordering on desperate. I finally found my legs and got up to leave.

Bean said to my back as I was walking away, “Stay up tonight and watch. You’ll see.”

I took myself straight to Vic’s bunk, and told him what had gone down with Bean. Vic spat into a paper cup and nodded, seemingly unimpressed, unsurprised. “Yeah. Bean’s a buzzard.”

I had heard the term “buzzard” and knew it to mean a gay man who would prey on young kids when they came into prison.

“I thought you knew.”

“Hell no! How would I know?

“Seven stones and suck your dick? Pretty good deal.”

I looked at Vic all crazylike. He started to laugh. “Damn, dude.” And I laughed too.

That night I stayed awake and watched from my top bunk to Bean’s bottom bunk all the way across the dorm. I saw dudes going in and out, but none stayed very long. Then later in the night — early morning, I guess — I saw Willy G. creep over there. I couldn’t tell you exactly how much time Willy spent in there with Bean, but it was at least two to three times longer than anyone else. When Willy came out, I watched him walk directly to the toilets, where he disappeared behind the wall. I looked back toward Bean’s bunk. He was standing up and smiling at me as if to say, I told you. This is prison, Silverfox.

I avoided Bean after that. No more basketball. No more spades. Definitely no more kickin’ it. I spent more of my time with Vic. Sometimes I would chop it up with Mac. I was starting to get more drugs more often, and I had been doing a little business along those lines. I began to read a little. I never really got into books before, but I preferred them to the television. There was never anything on I wanted to watch. All these bad-ass dudes in here for violent crimes. Gangsters. And they all watched General Hospital .

One evening, I was headed back to my bunk after working out, and Vic rolled up on me. “Listen, Fox. I need to holler at you.”

“What’s up?”

“Not here. Let’s take a walk.” We strolled out toward the wall and Vic told me how he had heard that Bean had been running his mouth around the unit, talking about how he was gonna fuck me before I left the facility. I asked Vic what I should do about it. Vic paused, rubbed his chin, and said, “We gotta deal with this. You got no choice here. You gotta stab him. Do it while he’s in the shower. I’ll post up outside the area to make sure no one else comes in. You slip in and stab him. Just like that.”

Just like that. Just like that, I had found myself in what one could call a “situation.” Bean was from Red Mob. They were a Blood gang. Vic and I had to have our shit together or this little plan of ours would cause real trouble, probably not just for me, but also for the Warrior clique Vic ran with. It was clear from what I had learned in prison already that if I didn’t deal with Bean, I could find myself a target of all kinds of unpleasantness. (I would later learn that Warriors had beef with Red Mob. My situation was a convenient one for Vic and his clique. I guess I never questioned Vic’s motive in anything.)