Джойс Оутс - Prison Noir

I was once like the one or two young bucks of a batch that ain’t a cur. Oh, I ’member wings in my stomach flapping ’bout when I done my first stretch, was eighteen years old and ready for whatever.

I’d seen some wild ones come through that bit hard, like a piranha in a fishbowl. One stood out, I mean this boy gave a helluva first impression. Had the kind of face that drew you in: clean, forever young, an innocence begging you to corrupt, to violate him. Take it for yourself or ruin it for others if you couldn’t have his youth and ’thusiasm, good looks and ’telligent features. Oh no, a look that a certain type of convict— Henas , what I call ’em — took as feminine; they’d scavenger hunt for someone easy to slide up on, spit in their ear, isolate ’em, and later have the fish walking ’round with his finger latched onto his belt buckle. I could tell this kid’s ’pearance was deceptive, had the doo-doo chasers fooled from the get-go. He was medium height and build, barely legal, if not still in high school; probably living with Mama, baked chicken and potatoes fed, baby fat over muscles hungry for the weight pit, a rare treat for the Henas — so they thought. He had a piss-yellow ’plexion, like his mama laid him in her bladder spill for a while. It was his eyes, though, blue as a late Joplin sky, that had the Henas yapping over. It wasn’t normal for his skin and was something exotic, a prize. I could see that this boy had something else other than Massa’s genes behind those baby blues. Oh, it was vicious, nasty in a bad way, just waiting to come out.

Our eyes were different colors, but we saw the same old raggedy castle, Michigan Reformatory — Gladiator School! In Ionia—“I Own Ya” what it’s called — oh, need Harriet Tubman to get you out of that prison town. All was built on swampland, in the middle of the wilderness. A city boy won’t find his way out these dark woods; endless trees blocking the light, every way winding back to the starting spot, confusing you, and Billys riding around in pickup trucks with double-R sixes and year-round license to shoot a nigga on sight. Frustrating ’nuff to have you stay behind the wall and take your chances in the concrete jungle.

Didn’t recognize the building in front of the rotunda was the chow hall when I first got here. It was all bricks and a set of steel double doors. Seagulls lined the chow hall’s ledge, waiting, watching, and swooped down on anything put up in the air, swallowing it whole. They had no fear of people, shitting on convicts at will. I was given a bedroll and simple ’nuff directions. “J block, that way,” the guard said outside the rotunda, pointing at a building ’minding me of the abandoned ones I used to play in at the commercial district when I was a rascal. I had looked straight ahead, not at J block but what was in front of it: all the blue coats and black shoes, like I had on, all either standing or walking or working out or playing basketball inside the gated projects. Oh, it wasn’t like no projects I’d seen before! All of ’em, I mean every single one of ’em, stopped and stared at us come in carrying our bedrolls under our arms. These guys was big — swelled chests, pumped shoulders, muscles busting out their jaws — and was mean mugging us out of habit. Some of ’em stepped to the fence that separated the yard from the walkway, straddling it, and made remarks ’bout us being fish, trying to scare us the way vets do, picking out the weak ones.

I was forty years old then, far from a fish. Done twelve years already in Missouri State Penitentiary, five years in the fed joint. You couldn’t tell like most half-breeds — smooth skin, good hair, see, look good for seventy-eight, huh? Oh, still’ll give ’em a run for their money. Done the type of crimes that kept me in big ole houses, fancy apartments, with mighty pretty women, a crew of gorillas. Scared, oh no, I was dangerous! My eyes was charcoal, gasoline pumped through my heart, and I had three bodies under my belt. The sort of build that brought strength your way to check what you’re made of.

I came up out of Missouri earth, hard nuts and no give, the only way my manhood gone get took is cold and loose; they have to kill me first! I couldn’t wait to make an example out of anyone who tried. And I did: just six months in, a flabby nickel-and-dime prison loan shark had overcharged me the going rate. Oh no, I wasn’t paying extras for nothing! Him coming on strong meant or else to me; either blood on his knife or shit on his dick. I ain’t never ran from a fight — brought it to your doorsteps. I didn’t sneak up on him, I walked up with a bone-crusher, stabbed him twice in the neck and once in the heart, putting his dick to the dirt for all to see. And they had; watched all six foot four, 270 pounds of dead meat hit the ground jiggling. I spent five years in the graves, came out the wrong nigga to fuck with.

Oh, Henas was riding the fence too, always smoking over fresh fish and dropping lugs, hoping one would bite. A whole bunch of lugs was dropped on D.T., the blue-eyed lil’ brotha. Yeah, Henas was already trying to sink their hooks in him. J block connects to I block like a right-angle math symbol, the prison yard slap dead in the middle of them. So was the fence; Henas walked the length of it up to J block’s entrance, doo-doo chasing, howling through the gate, mostly at some white guys, particularly one they called Suzanne Somers, and also Angel Eyes (the name that D.T. became known as, oh, for a-whole-’nother reason).

Inside, J block looked as industrial as it gets: stripped concrete floors and walls — stained with bleach from half-ass blood-spill cleanups — and rusty iron rails and bars, shit brown, a decay that ate away your sight, eroding your emotions to a numbing oil base, with time drying out hope that’s brushed away like dandruff. Oh, a factory as any I’ve seen. But its finished product came out an assembly line of cells, in state blues and bloodshot eyes. Narrow steps and rails corkscrewed to each floor, five in all, and D.T. was assigned to cell 36 on J-5, the pen-house, better known as Predator’s Row, the same floor I was on, oh, would you believe he wound up my neighbor. The rock, long as a city block, had rows of barred cells, faced a depressing gray wall and dirt-shaded windows, tinting the already bleak forest. We was near the end of it. Guards would only make their rounds when we was locked in our cells or during chow — when everybody was gone — never when the cells was open for mass movement.

After the rock cleared, the guards could see the slain bodies on the floor. Sometimes during chow they’d make a round and find a body or two dead in their cells: some under their blankets with their wrists and heels slit, bleeding out, others butchered on the floor. Those near death usually was took to health care, got their cornholes sewed. Oh, you’d keep your eyes and mouth closed and keep moving ’cause you’ll know better than to do anything but. You didn’t have to be con-wise to know you was on your own on the rock. Guards gassing the meat wagon wouldn’t come and pick up the man down till it was over. They knew better. The first look down to the other end of the rock made your knees wobble and your johnson yank back: it was far, narrow — a long desolate tunnel to hell. No way out ’cept past a world of trouble, ever present like stink on shit.

It was quiet when Angel Eyes walked down the rock, passing each grim and grimmer mug popping out every cell. They watched to see if he’d look. Henas had their hawks stuck outside the cell bars, staring at his backside. The kid had done good not to look in anyone’s cell. He walked straight, head up, attitude in his shoulders, ’nuff not to come off too cocky. It would have been took as a front. Had that happened, had he done that, they’d thought he was looking for something, what else ’cept sausage and hard-boiled eggs. Oh, he was already in for rape. No reason was good ’nuff reason for ’em, it’d tickled their fancy, raping the rapist — a white girl! Daddy’s lil’ girl was the daughter of L. Booth Peterson, Oakland County’s top district attorney, I hear one racist son of a bitch. A blind man could see D.T. ain’t did that. He should have known better not to cross 8 Mile, fooling ’round with those devils.