Джойс Оутс - Prison Noir

Our crew planted thousands of flowers and shrubs in landscaped plots against backdrops of dark old buildings with rows of squawking black crows lined up along the gutters. Every day I could look around at what this place had become — more fences, more rows of razor wire. There used to be flowers everywhere, the old infirmary building on the hill was covered with ivy and trees towering overhead. There even used to be a greenhouse within the walls, where they planted seeds for the next spring.

There used to be a lot of things, but now we had to fight to hold onto the few spaces we had left. I did most of the planting. One of the guys I worked with was an enormous black man from Mississippi who said if it was up to him, he would just lay concrete over the top of the gardens so he wouldn’t have to water them every day. The other guy I worked with was a seventy-year-old, mostly unknown serial killer who didn’t like to plant because of a bad back he got from his days dressing up like a woman and murdering people. I was just trying to slow the coming of an inevitable concrete wasteland. I came to understand that once things left, they didn’t come back.

I dragged my untied boots through the gravel, kicking up pebbles and dust. The blisters on my heels had mostly healed in my time off. The flock of pigeons that lived here scattered toward the old, unused coal chutes they’d made their home. I always wondered how pigeons found prisons. I see pictures of prison yards everywhere with flocks of roof rats covering the ground. Beds of red and white roses blossomed right next to the large slab of concrete abstractly painted by their feces. I wondered if they knew they were in prison, or if they were just hiding from the hawk perched on the electrical lines outside the wall.

The shop was already alive when I got there, but the wall blocked the morning sun, so it still felt like winter inside. Sawdust from the table saw danced pirouettes in the air; the welder was at work, blue flame hissing. I tried to see everything. I tried because everything has edges and people are never ready for the poke or the slice that might change their minds. I’m not even talking about from other people, I mean the edges of everything here: the dirty corners, the heavy steel tables, the slag on unsanded metal, the black mold I knew hid on the other side of the old sheetrock. In an area full of edges and blunt corners, everything was either hard or sharp. I had nicks that turned to scars all over my body from missing something I should have seen coming.

The serial killer and the enormous black man from Mississippi were talking about something in the office when I came in. Eyes turned to me for a second and they went silent. I didn’t say anything to either of them, just dug around in my locker for gloves. My legs were still a bit wobbly, not used to walking on earth. And I was a little awkward starting to talk again. I was tired of explaining myself to people, and didn’t feel like starting in on the recurring dream I was having before I woke up, of the serial killer coming up behind me as a shadow and clubbing me in the head with a shovel.

They were already sipping coffee that usually tasted like hot water and stale cigarette butts. The serial killer had an unusually wry smile on his face. Normally this early it was all disgust and malice in his grill. It felt like he was smiling because he knew he had just been the shadow with the shovel in my dream. He wasn’t physically frightening in any way, just an older white-haired man with a hump on his back who should be someone’s grandpa, still slinging dirt and holding grudges. He was excited about a show he saw on combustible engines, which made sense because his secondary vocation (after killing people) was as an engineer.

The man from Mississippi didn’t talk much. He communicated mostly in nods and spooky, bloodshot stares from a face without wasted smiles. He was dark — get-lost-in-the-shadows dark — and enormous, like he could carry trucks on his back, with humongous hands that could choke a bear. He walked in patient, deliberate strides with a cup of coffee wherever he went. Even if he was chopping trees, or mowing, there was a Styrofoam cup by him collecting dust or small chips of wood. I knew, though, that his looks were probably mostly just wrinkled expressions of pain. Any real malice he had must’ve been locked in a tight chamber behind those stares.

“I hope the world does end,” Mississippi muttered.

Serial Killer chimed in: “I’ll tell you one thing: if you see me anywhere and I have another heart attack, or I’m slumped over somewhere — don’t you dare revive me. Don’t get help, just leave me.” It wasn’t the first time he’d told us this, and nobody in the room ever seemed to have a problem with his request.

I laughed a little. A simple chuckle came from Mississippi’s mouth, then the cup of coffee went right back to his lips.

Serial Killer turned in my direction and, without prompt, told me: “I would have done what you did, if I wasn’t such a pussy.”

I gave him a plain nod and we were good.

I finished planting a bed of petunias in a plot right next to the guard shack. This was my meditation time, when I could be alone in my mind under the last two trees in the joint. I thought about my friend Sonny, before the leukemia. She was always in the garden. We’d had to chop down all the other trees a few years earlier to make space for the new segregation unit. It left an open field for the sun to burn the grass to cinders.

After lunch, we returned to work in the same procession of guys, coming back out to the dark factories on the sunny day. Some walked silent, personalities covered by the clouds lingering above. A boot flew off onto the asphalt, and two men, one spraying beads of sweat and blood from his long hair, fell into the freshly watered bed, uprooting and smashing a whole section. I just hoped the mace wouldn’t taint the soil. I spent most of the afternoon with a hand shovel trying to bring the plants back to life.

I attended a group for guys trying to recover from traumatic events. The first time I went, a guard I’ve known for years raised an eyebrow when he saw the destination on my pass. There was another guard standing next to him in the rotunda with a German shepherd at his side, tail down, barking at anything. I think it was supposed to scare guys. I definitely wasn’t scared, I mostly just felt sorry for it.

I think all the guys in the group had “attempts” too, but most didn’t talk about them. Others wouldn’t stop talking about them.

“Basically, this is hell,” a mousy old heroin addict who only showed up every few months told the group as I came in. There were seven other guys and the therapist sitting down when I got there.

“If it ain’t, it’s certainly one of its dimensions.” There were always new guys. They would come once, dominate the conversation, and never return. Only the four of us came every month. There was Landon, who had spent twenty-two of his last twenty-six months in segregation before coming to the group. His dad played linebacker for the Vikings in the 1980s. It overshadowed his date-rape tendencies, and the fact that he was a blaster who would jack-off on the women staff. There was also Greg, a strangely overcomfortable man with a long, greasy ponytail and a mustache covering his harelip. He talked about himself as a Christlike figure, whose death was supposed to save the lives of the rest of us. His failure meant we were all doomed. He didn’t ever discuss how he had doomed the two sons he molested.

I usually sat next to Rudy, a bald little white kid in oversized, underironed T-shirts, tinted beige. He had slash marks all over both arms, but not the same kind as mine. They teased him because his voice slurred, his hands trembled, and his teeth chattered. It might’ve been because of the dosage of lithium he took, or because before he got here, he was locked up at a place where they strapped him down and gave him shock treatments. He lived in the same block as I did but we didn’t speak, though in group he was my ally. He had hung a sheet several times, but never followed through. I asked him why, and he told me: “I’m afraid of the noose, of suffocating.” (They abolished the death penalty in Minnesota in 1911 because they fucked up while hanging a man named William Williams. The rope was too long and it took fourteen minutes to strangle him to death.)