C. Morgan - The Sport of Kings

You rear back. “That’s murder one! They’ll send me up for life.”

Your cellie shrugs. “You in the slaughterhouse now. Cut or get cut.”

So there it is. It’s not a matter you need to consider deeply. Your body’s going to go for the Hail Mary pass, and you know it, because to refuse to choose is also to choose. But here’s the thing: You know if you do it in front of people, you’re caught for sure. If you do it in private, that won’t send the right blood message. In the end, you just pray a message you do send is loud enough. Like the loudspeakers that holler at the prisoners all day, every day.

So, you carry it on you, two socks tied together around your waist under your khaki shirt, lock just hanging there like a big, cold eye. You figure out quick you can’t just go attack him in his cell while he’s napping because someone will see you do it — plus, he sleeps on a top bunk. Your only option is to get him in the shower. He likes to be the first one in the showers in the morning. So, very next day, when the unit’s still dark, he trundles down to the washroom, big, hulking beast in nothing but a snatch of towel, and you slip out of your cell as soon as you see him turn from the dayroom into the showers. You can’t follow him in there — the cameras that point at the sink catch the silhouette and sometimes the face of anyone who enters. You need a blind spot. So you have to wait out in the dark dayroom by the trash can, praying no one else follows and catches sight of you. But you don’t have to wait long, which is good because your terrifying reality is tightening like a noose around your neck, blocking air and blood and maybe your ability to act. You don’t even know if you can feel your arms anymore, but, sure enough, the body does what’s necessary. When that big motherfucker comes sauntering out of the shower, you step out of the shadows and bring a swift cracking blow to the back of his skull.

He drops straight down to the waxed floor, his cheekbone cracking audibly when he hits. You expect to feel an overwhelming urge to run, but you don’t. You’re steady and levelheaded, as if the first blow has strangely relaxed you. You raise your hand again. One more blow to the head would probably kill him. Hard blows to the body will put him out of commission and, if you’re lucky, get him transferred. You land swift, sickening blows to his back, wracking that metal against his backbone, because you want to paralyze him, not out of revenge, just good sense. Five or six blows and your internal sensor says that’s it — wrap it up. You fling the socks in a trash can and scoot back to your cell, draping the lock back on the locker. You slide right back in bed.

Your cellie is watching you, wide awake, just lying there. You can hear him breathing. You try to match your breath to his and pretty soon it’s almost back to normal and then the uproar comes and it’s crazy loud, so you run to the steel bars with him to peer out, and the two of you holler at the guards like everyone else, make all the mad animal sounds, and then you simmer down and act normal as can be all day, don’t change your body language or any of your habits — except in the cafeteria. When you walk in there, you straighten up and stroll with a new confidence through that fraught gauntlet, looking every single one of those men in the eye — every single motherfucking one — and see how more than a few nod at you? Feel how the air is changed and silent? That’s the sound of respect. Your ability to inspire fear is the only currency you will ever have in here.

And now you know how to survive.

Six years, six lifetimes.

You look around you sometimes at the living nightmare, at the blacks and the poor white trash so country they almost sound black, and you think somewhere out there it’s not like this. There’s black lawyers and professors and ambassadors and businessmen. Somewhere. But those are just words inside your mind and your mind is inside.

And even if those fancy blacks do exist, you fucking hate them anyway. You understand now why the Reverend used to rail against them. They don’t give a fuck about you any more than white folks do. In fact, they’re worse than white folks; they’re traitors. The way you walk, talk, spend your cash, rent-a-center house you live in, tricked out car you drive, your whole life — it all embarrasses the shit out of them. You are their living, breathing shame. They’re the ones who still call you nigger. The whites don’t have to anymore, because the state does it for them.

Who’s gonna change this world? Most of these inmates won’t ever get out. The ones that do, most of them will be back.

They grow failure here like flowers.

They say there’s gonna be a black president someday. Maybe. Or maybe just black skin. Either way, you won’t ever get to vote in Kentucky. Won’t have a place to live, ’cause you won’t qualify for Section Eight housing to get your feet on the ground, won’t ever serve on a jury to keep a brother out of jail, won’t ever get a good job once you X the little felony box, can’t legally carry a gun to keep some crazy racist from killing you, and there was never any protection against the cops to begin with.

Men like Forge can get away with anything. But you? It’s over — no money, no life, no hope. But that was always in the script, wasn’t it? That’s how they wrote it. If anyone has eyes, they can read it. It’s written in black blood on white paper.

No matter the crime, they sentence every single one of you to death.

* * *

There it is, the house. With its lower-story windows blazing, its upper stories loom like a grievous shadow on a foundation of pure light. Allmon abandons the Mercedes down at the foot of the drive near the road, the driver’s door wide and the alarm pinging softly. He moves across the lawn in the dark, but he isn’t headed for the house. His every move is deliberate and firm as he heads for the barns with his.45 in his hand — not just loaded but jacked with eight bullets at the ready. He’s come for his son, but he has other business first.

The night is as dark as the inside of a box, and the night watchman is nowhere to be seen; he must be with the other grooms at the Osbourne house on the far side of the bowl, raising silver mint julep cups in celebration. Half the state is either drunk on bourbon or sick on Derby pie. The rest are asleep in their beds, oblivious as ever.

With an unearthly strength born of determination, Allmon slides open the great door of the broodmare barn so that it bangs home with a deep, metallic sound. He passes inside, his breath whistling through his clenched teeth. Where is she? Where is the champion filly? He has come for Forge’s prized possession. They came for his long ago.

But my God, just look at this barn with its oaken stalls polished to a sheen, Forge’s purple silks like royal insignia painted on all the doors. The chaff drifts like confetti under ceiling fans, the very walls insulated with dollar bills. It’s sickening, a veritable temple of tack and flesh. Allmon stalks from one pristine stall to the next, but the filly is nowhere to be found. What he discovers: two prized breeders, Seconds Flat and Forge’s Fortune. The real moneymakers. They were separated from their foals months ago in the age-old game of Kentucky usage, the foals whinnying somewhere else, confused and alone in the dark.

Knowing what he now knows, the whole enterprise is as bold as sin.

Forge’s Fortune, nestled in her straw, is staring straight up at him with warm, curious eyes when he points the.45 at her forehead four inches above her eyes and with the simple draw of a finger delivers her. She droops without surprise or alarm or life onto the bed of hay on the stall floor, her beautiful skull perfectly intact, her limbs going gentle and limp beneath her.