C. Morgan - The Sport of Kings

“You are hereby remanded by the Kentucky Department of Corrections for the term of twelve years. Because you are seventeen, you will spend four months in a residential facility, then you will be transferred to Bracken. You will serve six years before being considered eligible for parole. May you be an example to others.”

Take it away. Clasp its ankles in manacles to hobble it. Place a chain around its waist. Now weave cuffs through the chain and secure its wrists in the cuffs. And drive it away just like you’re driving now.

Ice is breaking on the surface of the river. Allmon wants to hold all the floes together, reassemble the solidity and stolidity secured by the dead cold, but he can’t, it’s coming apart under him as he’s trying to cross with his son in his arms; he can hear it whining and moaning as it cracks. It’s because he’s running too hot with this disease his mother gave him, the disease maybe he gave to his son, the disease Marie was cursed to bear because of her black burden of a body, black as river as grave as starless sky

Allmon’s mouth is filling with water, but there’s still room for words.

The youth offender facility is: nothing really. Not scary, just boring, trifling, you’ve done this before. It’s like being a senior in high school; nobody fucks with you anymore, and it’s not as intense as you think it’s gonna be.

But the penitentiary is: Anarchy. Your worst fucking nightmare, only all day every day, 24/7, no escape. It’s not where they house men, it’s where they make animals. After they wash you down, delouse you, spread your cheeks and root around in your anus, they walk you for the first time along the tier of the main line to your cell, and all those eyes, black eyes brown eyes blue eyes, from the dayroom up the four dizzying floors, turn to watch you, and suddenly the rooster crows, the dogs start their barking, there’s sheep and screaming birds and yowling cats, the sound rises, shriek piling on shriek until it crescendos to pure madness and you’re more than halfway to panic. The sound of wild animals is so horrifying, your body would run away out of pure instinct if you didn’t have a guard right at your back. That cacophony is worse than the sound of your cell door closing the very first time, which is a casket closing.

Six years in a cage is six lifetimes.

Your body is eighteen years old

you say when your grizzled old cellie asks. Shakes his head ruefully, doesn’t say nothing, ignores you thank you god thank you god thank you god thank you

because you don’t even know what it means to look tough anymore. You don’t know what it means to act hard on the inside. Up is down and hell is on earth in this inverted world. For the first time you are thankful for your naturally unfriendly face — a tough face only a mother could love — but it’s small change next to these dudes six-five and up, cannon arms, cockstrong terrifying motherfucking extraterrestrial power in barely human form. You force yourself to look right at them, show them you’re not scared, but you’ve never been so scared in your life. Your time back in Northside when you ran with small-time thugs, that was just playacting. This is the worst, realest life.

That first night, you can’t sleep, think you’ll never sleep again, you’re just staring out in the dark and trying to stay alert. It’s not long before you hear some wicked sound across the way, across the open space on the opposing tier, scuffling or sobbing, gagging and retching, you have some idea and it’s making you sick, you’re sitting up on your mattress when a guard runs down the tier and shines his flashlight directly into the cell opposite yours and burned into your retina you see a big white monster fucking some skinny white dude up the ass, and there’s blood on this big man’s yanked-down drawers and his fat hand is wrenching open the mouth of the bottom, saliva glistening to the concrete floor, the man’s terrorized eyes looking like they’re going to fall out of their sockets. And now the animal cries are rising up the floors again, the jackals, the dogs, the crows. These two men — or one man and one animal — get hauled out by five guards, one sent to the hole, one sent limp as a rag to the infirmary. You think you’re gonna throw up, but you don’t, because you can’t.

You make a decision right there: That’s not gonna be you. You’re gonna survive. Whatever it takes. You’ll cut someone’s throat if you have to. So first thing, you make a shank out of a soda can by folding it and wrapping it around itself and stomping on it. You keep it in your trembling hand. Until the first shakedown, which is when they inevitably find it. They give you a pass this first time, seeing as you’re young and fresh, and they don’t send you to the hole. They’re barely out of the cell when you’re busy making another.

You do it right there in front of your bemused cellie, who says, “Ain’t got to worry about me, I ain’t gonna fuck with you.” It takes a few more days of unrelenting terror before you actually believe him, because he does in fact — thank you thank you thank you god — leave you alone. All he ever does is sit on his mattress and drink hooch. He works in the cafeteria and somehow manages to make potato wine without any actual potatoes. But he never seems drunk, just deflated as an old balloon. His cheeks sag down to his neck.

“How come that shit don’t make you sick?” you ask him.

“Been drinking it for years. Till I get out.”

“When you getting out? Where you gonna go to?”

“Heaven, dawg,” the man says. “Or hell. Either one better than this place.”

Yes. The forty-foot walls, cell blocks running the length of a football field, gun towers, razor wire, guards with their twelve-gauge shotguns who bang their flashlights on the bars all hours of the night, waking everybody up, plus the motion sensors and the shakedowns, the mad labyrinth of gangs and allegiances you can’t navigate because you’re nothing but a scrub fish. But none of that’s the worst of it.

You’re so used to thinking it’s the white man who fucks you that it’s just instinct to get under the wing of these black dudes. What your naïve ass doesn’t realize is they fuck down color lines here; mad-dog Aryans on scrawny white boys and blue-black brothers on black. How the hell were you supposed to know? So the first black dude who’s decent, who nods and says what up from a respectful distance in the cafeteria, is somebody you acknowledge once. Smile with one corner of your mouth while trying to look hard. Like that’s possible.

But no, Allmon, you’re an idiot, a fucking idiot a motherfucking idiot idiot IDIOT!!! That’s the same man who just grabs you two days later and throws you against a wall like you don’t weigh a thing — six feet and 185 pounds but you’re nothing, there’s always somebody bigger than you — and as your head cracks against the tile, he says, “Your cunt.” Doesn’t even have to finish the sentence. “Fuck you,” automatic out of your mouth. But just as quick he punches your windpipe with one hand, slams your temple with the other. And walks away as you sprawl down the wall. And people are just standing there watching it happen, watching you ragdoll. Which is worse than the insult, you know that instantly.

Life inside the migraine. You can’t go to the infirmary. You can’t snitch. You can’t confront him, he weighs like 275 pounds. You can’t go anywhere but back to your cell, where your cellie knows, ’cause that’s how it works here, everybody knows everything while it’s still happening. He sighs like he’s almost too tired to tell you anything, but finally says, “Talking shit ain’t gonna cut it. Just feathers against bullets. He still gonna turn you out.” And he points to the combination lock on your cell locker. “Put it in a sock,” he says very quietly, and makes a swinging and slamming motion like he’s bringing down a hammer.