Джойс Оутс - Prison Noir

This is what the turkeys at work must’ve felt like. They were unloaded off trucks and hung by their legs on a conveyor belt. His boss showed him where an electric spinning blade slit their throats. The turkeys coasted by in an endless waterfall of blood.

“No matter what,” his boss had said, “the line’s gotta keep moving. You have to pay attention. Every once in a while, one of the birds is too short for his neck to reach the cutter.” He had drawn out a long knife with a narrow blade and handed it to Celso. “For when that happens.”

At first, it had been easy. The knife was so sharp, the gullets so thin — if not for all the warbling and death throes, Celso would hardly have felt complicit in the deed. And there were maybe only one or two turkeys the machine didn’t catch for every dozen it did. But then, out of nowhere, there came a bevy of dwarf turkeys — each one of them flapped and squawked and put up a fight. It turned into a melee of blood and feathers, absolute carnage. Celso could do nothing but try and keep up, furiously slashing away. (They were so small, for a moment he thought maybe they’d switched to chickens.)

When he’d paused to catch his breath, he noticed one of the birds looking at him. Its black, beady eyes were impossible to read. Did it even understand what was happening? He could see them all, staring at him, accusing him. He’d lost track of time.

Then an alarm had gone off. The line came to a halt.

Celso panicked. How long had he zoned out?

Down the line, past a huge, long metal vat filled with water and a wall of steam, he could hear his boss yelling.

When he’d arrived at the commotion, everyone was watching. His boss was ripping bird after bird off the line and throwing them into a pile on the floor. Soaked from the water, their feathers came right off.

His coworkers were circled around the pile, their smocks still pristine and free of blood. Eleonel was standing among them. “What’d you do?” he asked his cousin.

Celso kept staring at the pile.

When his boss saw he was there, he picked up two of the birds to show Celso the difference: one’s skin was clear and white; the other was dark pink. The pile was mostly pink ones.

“Not bueno !” his boss had shouted at him. “This is not bueno .”

And for the most part, Celso had agreed with him.

When a letter came, Flores offered to read it to him. “It’s from Mexico,” he said. “Some girl named Marichuy.”

Celso smiled. But then he thought about it again and stopped smiling. “What does it say?”

“It says, Dear Celso, I can’t believe what has happened to you. I’ve tried speaking to your father, but he has been very sick since you left. Your cousin wrote him about everything. ” Flores paused to read ahead. He turned sullen.

“Keep reading,” Celso told him.

Flores hesitated. “ I’m not sure if I should tell you, but I lost the baby. My mother said I should just —”

The intercom cut him off. It was five minutes to count.

Flores handed the letter back. “I’ll finish it afterward.”

But he never got the chance. Before count was over, they announced a bunch of ride-outs. Flores was one of them.

As hard as he tried, Celso couldn’t make sense of the letter. The words were just an indecipherable mess of squiggles.

At some point his door opened and the CO told him to pack his things. “Cell transfer.”

Outside his cell, the transsexual porter stood by and waved hello again. But the cell wasn’t for him; he was pushing a decrepit old man in a wheelchair. As the porter wheeled the guy through the door, the chair got caught on one of the bars. The tranny rammed against the back of it, his breasts bouncing up and down, until, at last, he forced it through.

“To where I go?” Celso asked the CO.

The man pointed. “Top tier.”

Celso never knew he was afraid of heights. But as he stood on the narrow catwalk, four flights up from his previous cell, his legs trembled.

Just as the CO was about to open the door for Celso, he stopped. Something was happening on the base floor. The CO turned and ran back down the stairs, shouting something into his radio.

Celso worked up the courage to peek over the railing. Far below, an inmate was trying to shield himself and run as another inmate stabbed at him with a sharpened toothbrush. They all seemed so small from up high.

Slowly, Celso crept all the way to the ledge. It would be so quick, he thought, nobody could stop him. Two seconds versus two decades. A quick, merciful slice or a long, boiling dip.

He thought awhile about it. He thought about it for days and weeks and months and years.

It wasn’t until they were on the bus that the driver told everyone where they were going. He said something about the market.

The inmates all scoffed or rolled their eyes at what he said, disappointed.

Celso turned to the man next to him. “Is far, the market?”

The man was confused. “Huh? No. Not market — Marquette. That’s up north.”

Celso held up his manacled hand as far as the chain on his waist would permit and offered his palm as a map to chart on.

With one of his fingers, the man drew a line from the base of Celso’s palm far beyond his fingertips. “ Way up there,” he said. “Over the bridge, ’bout a twelve-hour drive, maybe twice that in this weather.”

Celso understood. He’d taken a long drive before. At least this time it wouldn’t be hidden in a trunk with three other Mexicans.

Then a thought occurred to him. “Is more, the snow up there?”

The other inmate looked at him like he had just asked for his hand in marriage.

He chuckled. “No, buddy. No, there’s no snow up there.”

San Quentin State Prison (San Quentin, California)

"They can’t write me up, my parole hearing’s next month.”

Rick and I headed down concrete stairs. We were on our way to San Quentin’s lower yard.

“Yeah, Jason, that’s fucked up.”

I felt like shit on what was otherwise a sunny Saturday morning. An ancient craggy wall towered on our left. Assorted old pipes hung there serving no purpose. An earthy smell came from the various mosses and small shrubs hanging off the wall. They’d been growing for decades longer than my arrival ten years ago.

We walked in a wide-open path. “I gotta do something!” It felt like the walls were closing in on me. The both of us wore shorts and tank tops; mesh bags slung over our shoulders held water bottles and towels. Rick had talked me into working out. “I am completely fucked.”

Our steps brought us down the first flight onto the flat middle walkway. On the right side stood a shiny chain-link fence; through it, our reflections showed on the end windows of the huge new hospital. Rick flexed his pecs while I spit at my image and watched the white blob catch on the thick wire. In another eight steps, we started down the second set of stairs.

Rick asked, his voice jittery, “How’d they bust you?”

My head rewound the visit. The rookie prison guard had stuck his face up close to the mesh over the door bars. This son of a bitch looked around the cell before his eyes landed on me. I’d held my breath, waiting for his next move. The staring contest was brief, and he then turned and left. I’d cut loose a loud gasping moan.

“The cop smelled it,” I said to Rick, recalling how he suddenly reappeared. His chin pressed against the mesh to get a good whiff of the lingering odor of fermentation. “Augh, shit,” I’d mumbled as he pulled the door open and ordered me to step out.