Джойс Оутс - Prison Noir

In my early days, after Shyler, I was scared that I was going to get caught. But after a while the fear left me, and it was replaced by the calm assurance of one who is doing the right thing.

What other ways did I kill them? Besides the hangings, wrist-slittings, and throwing them off the tiers? It’s not easy to murder a prisoner, especially in the twenty-first century — too many outside bleeding heart agencies looking in. I had to get more creative. I remember one time there was a prisoner always going to medical to get injected with insulin to keep his diabetes under control. Each time he went, he would just grab a needle and insulin bottle, and inject himself. This was completely against the rules, and they let him get away with it. He kept doing it, so one day I grabbed a bottle of insulin when no one was looking and replaced it with battery acid from the maintenance shop. It was incredible to watch the guy strut in and grab the bottle, and inject himself. At first I thought he was going to be fine, but as the acid entered his bloodstream he looked like he had indigestion. Then an expression of terror came over his face as the acid ate his veins away and blood filled his organs. When he collapsed, I ran over to help the female nurse get him up, and in the process I pocketed the bottle and threw it away before they found it. Of course they figured out what killed him, but they couldn’t prove who did it. There was even a national recall from the company that produced the insulin. It’s still listed today as an accident and not a homicide.

Last month I killed another one. This time it was Angel “Southpaw” Granger, a forty-five-year-old degenerate construction worker who kept defrauding and fleecing his customers. He would get a down payment for supplies and start the job. Then, when he got another partial payment, he would take the supplies, sell them back to the same Home Depot he bought them from, and never return to the site. He had been back in prison at least three times for the same thing. I wanted it to be particularly degrading with this guy, for taking advantage of senior citizens. I waited until he got a work detail as a porter cleaning the nasty-ass showers where sexual juices flowed daily. I broke a mop handle in half and buried it through the back of his neck. He was dead before his body hit the cum- and piss-stained tile floor. It wouldn’t exactly be the first time a prisoner had a hit put out on him. Could have been some political dispute from before he came back to prison, a dope deal gone bad, or he simply bumped someone the wrong way.

Do I feel bad about it? Are you kidding me? For the first time in my life, I feel like I have done something for someone other than myself. I can look at myself in the mirror at night and not be appalled by the reflection that stares back at me. I believe God will understand what I did. After all, it’s in the Bible: An eye for an eye. I am giving these men two chances to get their lives right. The third time, I am taking things in my own hands. It’s not as if I’m forcing them to make their choices. They do everything of their own volition. It’s the consequences that I dole out.

The prison system has changed. I remember when I first came to Jackson in 1989. I was scared and unsure of what prison was going to be like. At first I had high expectations of the state. There were good programs to help prisoners. Prisoners were paid a good wage. But then, as the inmate population grew, the economy collapsed and the first things to go were the good programs. With each program cut, the recidivism rate grew. I got tired of seeing it happen every day. If ten thousand prisoners come into Michigan every year, at least 50 percent are repeat offenders. Of course I can’t get every single one of them. There are quite a few I’ve had to let slide through when the heat got turned on too high and investigators came asking questions, but there’s always a next time.

I remember when the state started to close these blocks one by one. What was once the greatest prison in Michigan, and possibly the whole United States, was slowly and bitterly made smaller. 11 and 12 blocks, 4, 5, and 6, and then even 7 block closed for good. Jackson Prison is but a shell of its former self. Now all that remains are the prison hospital and 1, 2, and 3 blocks. The rest sits there, looking out the windows, accusing every passing car of neglect and abandonment.

Get back to the story? This is the story! And if you want to hear it, you’ll listen to me tell it my way and on my own time. Now where was I? Ah yes, the poor empty blocks. Sometimes when the wind is just right, I swear I can hear the hinges crying for companionship. Do not take lightly what I’m telling you about the ghosts of this place. They are very real. Too many people have died here under suspicious circumstances. What about the guards? you ask. You know as well as I do that the guards, screws, turnkeys, officers, or whatever else you want to call them are just as guilty as prisoners, bringing in their dope, cell phones, and tobacco (after they banned smoking in prisons). They are sometimes worse than prisoners. You think so highly of these correctional employees, as if they are so much better. Look at the cops on the streets who take bribes or misplace evidence; you think the guards are any better in here?

Prison has become a joke, a business where money and head counts take precedence over making inmates better so they don’t victimize innocent people again. You are part of the problem! You close your eyes and turn your head even when you see something wrong, and for what? It’s all fun and games until it’s your family being victimized. Then you’re in Lansing campaigning for tougher prison sentences. But it’s not the sentences; it’s the lack of programming. You think these kids are going to get better by playing basketball or cards all damn day in prison? In here, they get to hang out with the same set or gang they did before they arrived. They are coming home worse than they were when they entered. March on the Capitol with that change!

Have I killed guards too? No, I never even touched a guard — until Richard Tracer. Tracer was the worst of the worst when it came to prison guards. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to make a buck from inmates. I watched him smuggle in drugs, vodka in water bottles, tobacco, porn magazines, even weapons. He gave protection to prisoners for a price, and that’s where our paths crossed the wrong way. I had my eye on a pedophile from Oakland County. It was his fourth time in prison for various crimes: child porn, using a computer to commit sex crimes, criminal sexual conduct, and then the big time on this trip — he was caught in a human smuggling sex ring. They would buy, sell, and trade kidnapped kids like baseball cards.

Harold Spivey was his name, and as soon as he arrived he began strutting around like he owned the joint. He immediately had his family send Tracer a Western Union moneygram. A thousand dollars for protection. Spivey knew he was going to have his prison number run on OTIS, and within a day or so someone would shank him or give him a beat down. I can’t say I blame Tracer for taking the grand, and if it had stopped at protection, then I would have let Spivey slide again. I didn’t need any beef with the guards.

One day, however, I was walking around and I saw Tracer pass Spivey a magazine. The cover looked innocent enough, like a Maxim or Playboy , but I knew it had to be a front. Spivey didn’t like girls or boys that old. So I followed him to his cell and saw him staring at the magazine. He was so engrossed that he didn’t even notice me walk up and glimpse the contents: ripped-out pictures of children from a J.C. Penney’s catalog and other computer-generated pictures of young kids. I threw up in my mouth just imagining him playing with himself to those pictures. I wondered how much he had to pay Tracer to bring those in.