Robert Mason - Chickenhawk - Back in the World - Life After Vietnam

We walked out of the large dayroom and into the barred hallway. We checked out the cells, looking for a home. They were all filled with black men who just stared at us, not saying anything, not looking friendly. The third cell had three white guys in it, and we went in.

We stood there watching the men, waiting for something to happen. There were eight bunks—steel shelves hung out from the walls on chains with thin pads on them, four on each side. The space between the bunks was about four feet. At the back of the cell, between the two bottom bunks, the builders had crammed in a lidless and seatless commode. A white guy lying on the top bunk near the door reading a book said, “You got your choice of those two next to the shitter and the one over there,” pointing to the top bunk at the back. He turned a page and resumed reading.

We looked at each other and shrugged. Ireland collapsed onto a bottom bunk and hugged his blanket. I threw my blanket on the shelf across from Ireland. John threw his blanket on the top bunk. While Ireland groaned, John and I went back to the dayroom.

A dreamy-eyed, loopy young redneck told us that you just went to the bars and screamed out what you wanted when we asked him how you got to a phone or wanted medical attention.

“Who’s listening? When you yell?” I said.

“I dunno,” the loopy redneck said. “They hear you. Speaker talks back.”

John walked to the bars and yelled, “Hey. We want to make phone calls.”

Loopy came over to John and said, “They got one here.” He pointed to a phone on a table. “Local calls only, though.”

John nodded. “Thanks. I don’t know anybody around here.”

Loopy nodded and wandered off to sit with the guys watching the television through the bars.

“Hey!” John yelled into the hallway, his hands cupped to his mouth. “We want to make phone calls.”

“Who wants to make phone calls?” a metallic voice said.

“Tillerman and Mason.”

“Wait,” the voice said.

“And Bob Ireland needs to see a doctor,” John yelled.

No answer.

“Hey!” Loopy called. “This you guys?”

John and I looked over at Loopy. He was pointing to the television. You couldn’t see the picture unless you were nearly directly in front of the TV because you couldn’t see through the closely spaced bars at an angle. I walked over while John yelled, “Hey! Can you hear me? Ireland needs to see a doctor!”

I saw the Namaste on television. She was moored among a bunch of other yachts at some marina in Charleston. Men wearing blue jackets were wrestling big bales of marijuana out of her and loading them into a van. The announcer said this was one of the biggest marijuana hauls in local history, three thousand pounds worth over two million dollars. “Wow!” Loopy said. “You guys are big-time!”

The big black guy seemed to agree. “Motherfucker!” he said, grinning. “You boys are in some serious fucking trouble!” I could see the respect shining in his eyes.

The drug-bust story ended and the television cut to a picture of a skinny, eerie-looking blond guy wearing glasses thick enough to be paperweights. The picture switched, showing chalked outlines of where bodies had been, zooming in on puddles of sticky blood on the floor of some stockroom while a voice-over said that this guy had killed his boss and co-worker at the Piggly Wiggly food store somewhere in Charleston. He was the Piggly Wiggly murderer. He’d shot his boss and his friend for their paychecks. A seriously dangerous, but stupid, guy.

“Hey!” John yelled into the hallway. “Where the fuck is anybody?”

“What’s wrong with Ireland?” the voice from the speaker said.

“Something’s bad wrong with his stomach,” John yelled.

“Wait,” the voice said.

We waited, sitting on one of the tables. In a couple of minutes we heard the door down the hall open. Suddenly all the guys who were lurking in their cells swarmed into the dayroom. Everybody was chattering, looking happy. Something was up.

“Chow time,” Loopy said. Loopy had taken to hanging out around John and me, telling us what was what around here.

Two prisoners, trustees dressed in new blue uniforms, pushed a food cart up to the door. They began clanging down compartmented steel food trays on a shelf that stuck through the bars. The trays had stuff in them, sloppy, weird-looking kinds of stuff. I got one and looked at it: soupy rice sloshed around in a corner of the tray, a hot dog rolled around in the main compartment, and a dollop of turnip greens sat as an island in pale green juice next to a slice of wet white bread. When they’d delivered the trays, they began to ladle out Kool-Aid into plastic coffee cups you were supposed to have. Loopy, who was sitting across the table from me, said we could wash out one of the extra ones sitting back in the corner. I passed.

I made a sandwich of the hot dog and bread and ate. The hot dog was cold and rubbery. “This is terrible,” I said to Loopy.

“Yeah,” Loopy said, chewing eagerly while he nodded. “But they bring it regular.”

After dinner Porter took me out the big door and down the hall to a phone hung on the wall. He stood about ten feet away while I made a collect call home.

Jack answered.

“Dad?”

I swallowed. Hearing my son call me that was about as much as I could take. Tears started to well in my eyes and I got mad at myself and blinked them back. I looked up to see if Porter was watching, but he wasn’t.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s me, Jack. Mom around?” My question ended in such a high pitch, my voice cracked. I coughed.

“No, Dad, she went to the store. You want me to have her call you when she gets back? Where are you anyway?”

“I’m—” I had to compose myself again. “I’m in Charleston.”

“Charleston? You coming home?”

“Yes. I’m coming home in a few days. Listen, Jack. Tell Mom I’ll call back later, maybe an hour. She’ll be home in an hour?”

“Sure,” Jack said. “Wow. She’s sure going to be glad to know you’re back, Dad.”

“Yeah?” I said. “Well, okay. I’ll call back soon. See you soon, Jack.”

“Okay. Bye, Dad.”

I walked to Porter and said, “I couldn’t get who I wanted. Can I come back in an hour?”

“Sure,” Porter said. “Just let ‘em know in the wing.”

“You mean that fucking screaming and yelling communications system you have?”

“Yeah. Intercom system,” Porter said indignantly.

Back at the cell, I lay on my shelf and wished I could sleep. They’d finally come for Ireland and led him off bent over double. They said they’d take him to a hospital if they had to. I wanted to sleep to escape. But I couldn’t. I’d gone beyond the point of no return, and probably I’d never be able to sleep again. I got up and found John in the dayroom. He was smoking a cigarette. “Where’d you get that?” I said.

“Loopy,” John said.

“Hey, Loopy,” I said. Loopy, who’d accepted this name without complaint, looked over at me, grinning. He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb at two guys holding a long tube they’d made from rolled-up newspapers. They’d carved a two-pronged fork out of a bar of soap and fitted that on the end of their four-foot paper pole. They were now slipping it out through the bars toward the television. “Yeah?” Loopy said.

“Can I borrow a smoke?”

Loopy bent his neck side to side, a limpy, goofy gesture that didn’t mean yes or no. It meant maybe. “I dunno, I only got a couple left, Bob.”

“I’ll be getting some money, Loopy. I’ll buy you a whole pack if you give me a cigarette.”

Loopy nodded and I walked over beside him while he fished a pack of Winstons out of his shirt pocket. The guy with the paper stick fitted the soap bar over the tuner knob and twisted it. It had taken them a couple of hours to make this thing, and it was a pretty clever rig. The channel changed and everybody cheered. They flipped through the channels until they got to Love Boat , a show they all wanted to see. As the guy started pulling the stick back inside, it was suddenly yanked out of his hands.