Prison Noir

by Joyce Carol Oates

  * * *

  It seemed as if no time had passed before Al heard the keys in the chuck-hole again. Funny how time was so fluid in the SHU, he thought to himself. Time in the SHU could stretch into the thinnest of streams—tiny amounts seeping by at a snail’s pace. Then, big clumpy chunks seemed to squeeze together, hours passing all at once, no more noticed than a breath.

  “Trays!” called the guard unnecessarily. The moment the chuck-hole was opened a sickening stench wafted through the narrow slot and into the cell.

  “Meatloaf,” grumbled Al. To him, it smelled as if someone had taken a dog and boiled it in its own offal. He handed a tray to Martin and took the other and sat on his bunk.

  As he ate, Al realized the atmosphere inside the cell had changed since the psyche’s visit—a subtle shift in the dynamic. He was more wary of the situation—warier of Martin—and guarded in his conversations.

  Martin, on the other hand, had become more extroverted, almost gregarious. He licked some ketchup from his spork and then set it down on the tray. “You know,” he said to Al, “you can tell a lot about a person by how he eats his meatloaf. See, a man who eats it bottom to top, saving the part with the ketchup, the good part, for last—that automatically assumes there’s going to be time to eat it. What could possibly happen in the time it takes to eat a slice of meatloaf?”

  When Al chose not to respond, Martin answered his own question. “Something could happen. Like, maybe you’re sittin’ at home, watchin’ the tube after a long day at the shop. You got your beer. You got your meatloaf. You’re about to dig into the good part—the part with the ketchup—when your wife creeps up behind you with an iron skillet. Bam! It’s lights out, Charlie. You’re no longer, and you died missin’ out on the best part of your meatloaf.” Martin paused. “So, what kind of person are you, Al?”

  Al ran his fingers over his right brow, much like how a man would stroke his mustache. He couldn’t figure Martin out; didn’t know what to make of this strange intrusion. One minute, Al was barely aware of his presence. The next, he was unnerved by the creepy, implied menace that his new cellie exuded. Al had never been a good judge of character, but Martin had him totally off balance.

  Al replied quietly, “I never really thought about it.”

  “Well, let’s see.” Martin leaned over to look at Al’s tray. The largest compartment still held a crescent-shaped piece of charred meatloaf with a layer of ketchup on it.

  “Oh Al,” he tsked, “you’re gonna want to watch that.”

  * * *

  When the trays were returned and the range was quieting down from the daily routine of hollered conversations, the door at the end of the hall opened and footsteps approached, accompanied by the jangle of keys.

  “Lieutenant Rios,” said Al.

  A few seconds later there was the turning of a key and the chuck-hole popped open. “Hey, Webber.”

  Al got up went over to the hole and hunched down. “L.T., what’s up? How you doin’?”

  “I heard you’ve been having some problems down here. You all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay. It’s just that I got a cellie in here and I ain’t supposed to have one. I’ve been down twenty-three years, eleven of it in the SHU, and I deserve some respect.”

  “Let me ask you something,” said Rios. “Have I ever disrespected you?”

  “No.”

  “Have I ever talked greasy to you?”

  “No.”

  “Have I ever thrown you to crazy?”

  “No sir.”

  “Right. So—”

  “Yeah, but most of those other folks . . . they ain’t like you.”

  “I understand that you’re not going to get along with everyone, but when you treat people shitty, I have to hear it.”

  Al nodded, though he wasn’t sure if Rios was referring to the doctor, a guard, or Martin.

  “Just so we’re clear—”

  “We’re clear,” said Al.

  “All right. Now, what’s up?”

  He sighed. “I ain’t supposed to have no cellie. I need this guy out of here.”

  Rios hesitated. “Uh . . . the warden’s real busy.” The man’s head drooped and he scratched the day-old stubble along his jawline.

  “Then you handle it,” Al ordered.

  Rios’s head drooped further. He began to speak in a low tone, but stopped. Clearing his throat, he raised his voice. “I can’t handle it. Listen, I’ll put in another request with the warden.”

  “Thanks, L.T.”

  The lieutenant closed the chuck-hole and turned the key. Al sensed that Rios had wanted to tell him something, something he wasn’t supposed to be sharing. A fearful creeping started up in his belly.

  * * *

  Al lay on his bunk, eyes closed. He allowed himself to drift back in time, long before his life in FCI Oxford. It was something he didn’t indulge in often—he had trouble discerning which memories were real and which were manufactured.

  In the shade of a tall tree a small child plays with a dog whose name is long forgotten. The boy’s father stands unsteadily in the doorway of a nearby shed, bottle in one hand and cigarette in the other. He silently beckons the boy (there’s never any sound here).

  Al watches as a miniature version of himself enters the darkened shed.

  A teenager with a buzz-cut sits at a scarred desk in reform school. He’s not sure why he’s there. He remembers a bottle and the magic oblivion it contained.

  The boy is no longer at his desk, but instead stands near a window in the chaplain’s office. He’s told his mother is dead. His eyes are dry; the boy becomes a man.

  Al feels tears prick the corners of his eyes.

  A young husband dressed in workingman’s clothes argues with his beautiful young wife about their future—about children. She wants them, he doesn’t. The scene shifts to the young husband clutching a precious bundle to his chest, terrified at the prospect of having to protect his son.

  Fear fills Al’s chest with water. He’s drowning.

  In a flash, the baby is no longer in his arms. Now divorced, the no-longer-young husband sits at a small table in a shabby apartment and waits for his ex-wife to drop off his boy for the weekend. Gazing out the window he sees an old rusted Ford LTD—his father’s car—roll to a stop. Unease sprouts in his gut. The unease turns to horror as the passenger door opens and his son dashes toward the apartment building, his tiny face a mask of shame and fear.

  Al feels himself stumbling toward a blackened pit—a pit of despair and darkness. He tries to wake himself, to end the nightmare, but he continues to free-fall into what seems to be a hole with no bottom.

  Thirty-five years old. In a rundown state prison for an assault he doesn’t remember committing. Aggravated, they tell him, with a broken bottle. Magic oblivion. He’ll be almost forty by the time he gets out.

  Al’s hands clench and unclench rapidly. His shoulders twitch and cords stand out in his neck. He watches as his father’s bedroom materializes out of the darkness and he sees his former self standing at the foot of the bed.

  This version of Al is covered in sweat and something else that tastes like copper. The room smells of rust and shit. His shoulders tremble and in one hand he grasps the splintered remains of an axe handle. Hair, blood, and bits of flesh are embedded in the tattered end that once held a blade. He drops the wood and reaches into his pocket. Removing a folded piece of paper, he rubs it between his bloody fingers. A suicide note.

  It’s the note Al had found next to his son’s lifeless body.

  * * *

  “Hey, you awake?” Martin asked, his voice snapping Al back to the present. “You were thrashing around a lot, calling out.” He gave Al a knowing look.

  Al, breathless and covered in sweat, could see that Martin was lighting a joint with a battery from Al’s radio and a small strip of foil. After inhaling he held the joint out to Al.

  Al inhaled, welcoming the erasure, and passed it back.

  After a f
ew trips the joint was done and both men lay on their bunks enjoying the pleasant lift from the marijuana.

  “You’ve been down here eleven years,” Martin said. It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yeah, eleven years.”

  “Man, that’s pretty hard.”

  Al shrugged. “You get used to it. You adapt. A man can get used to almost anything.”

  “You’re here permanently.” Another statement.

  “Yeah, I got a life sentence.”

  “No, I mean the SHU.”

  “I got in a fight and used a knife—one year, disciplinary seg. That was eleven years ago. The last ten I’ve been here cause I wanna be.”

  “You don’t want to go back to the compound?”

  Al was silent for a moment. “I think about it sometimes, but I’ve got everything I need here. Books, radio, an hour of rec if I want it, meals delivered, a shower every couple days.”

  Martin looked at him. “You don’t miss kickin’ it with the fellas once in a while?”

  Al was a long time in answering. “Yeah, sometimes I do, but I don’t run into too many people I get along with,” he lied, knowing his standard party line was nothing more than a cop-out, an excuse for his purposeful lack of interaction with others. Too often surface relationships led to close relationships and close relationships led to self-examination. He was better off just coasting along and not having to think or feel too much. Better to play the game, even if it was only with himself; to ask no questions and have none asked of him. Better to wait out the end alone.

  He’d used the party line for so many years, he’d begun to believe it. Tonight, though, with the added mellowness of the reefer, he was having difficulty holding on to the con he was playing on himself. Drifting, Al’s mind latched onto an idea that carried with it the benefit of a one-night stand—namely, that the second party would be gone the next day.

  “Hey, you play cribbage?”

  “I play everything.”

  Al reached beneath the mattress for a deck of cards.

  “Got anything to gamble?” Martin asked.

  The question cut through his mental fog like a razor and Al sobered instantly. “That’s not funny.”

  Martin smiled and took the deck from Al’s slack hand. “You’re right, it’s not.” The cards flashed and flew as he rifled them back and forth between his hands. “Besides, you can’t gamble what you’ve already lost, right?”

  Al felt an avalanche of misery and despair fall upon his shoulders. Was there no end to this? He was tired—so drained that he said nothing.

  “How about this?” Martin made a show of pretending to think. An expression that could almost pass for mercy settled on his face. “If you win, I go. If I win, I stay.”

  Al reached for the cards.

  The lights in cell 301 did not go out until well after three a.m.

  * * *

  The next morning, shortly after breakfast trays were returned, three sets of footsteps were heard moving down the range—two pairs of boots and one pair of dress shoes.

  “Warden,” said Al. He looked at Martin and their eyes held an unspoken message.

  From the hall came the warden’s voice: “Open it. Not the chuck-hole, the door.”

  “But we have to cuff him up.”

  “Never mind that, just open the door.”

  “Yes sir.” A key turned in the lock and the door slid open.

  “Webber!” called the warden. “What’s the problem here?” He was unusually short and made up for it by always speaking in a commanding voice.

  Al looked at Martin again and then walked to the door. The two flanking guards stepped forward, inflated and aggressive, but the warden lifted a hand to stay them.

  “Well?”

  Sheepishly, head bowed and shoulders lowered, Al spoke in a voice barely audible. “Well, I was—”

  “What?” barked the warden. “Speak up!”

  “It’s my cellie,” said Al.

  Amused expressions passed between the guards.

  Al continued: “I was gonna ask you to move him to another cell, but I changed my mind.” A bet was a bet, he thought bitterly.

  The warden looked at him without focusing, as if dealing with a math problem rather than a human being. “I don’t have time for this shit.” He grabbed Al by the shoulder and spun him to face the empty cell. Shoving the old man forward, he rasped, “There’s no one here but you!”

  But Al knew differently.

  The door slammed and Al collapsed on his bunk while Martin lay reclined on the other bunk, idly snapping the cards from hand to hand, fanning and fluttering with precision. He gathered the cards into a stack and held out the deck to Al.

  “Shuffle?”

  I SAW AN ANGEL

  BY SIN SORACCO

  California Institution for Women (Corona, California)

  I saw an angel imprisoned in marble,

  I carved until she was cut free.

  —A loose translation of something

  Michelangelo Buonarroti may have said

  Frankie lay on her top bunk listening to the boundaries of her world, the dream murmurs of her cellmates in the last hours of the night. Someone hollerin down the hall. The stomp and rattle of the changing of the guard. She wiggled her toes loose from the thin blankets, feeling the morning cold. Fuckers never put on enough heat in the winter, but in the summer the top bunk was a hundred twenty.

  She grumbled. Didn’t like all of her cellies, but she could deal with them. After a while inside people got slotted into categories: safe, ignore, avoid, and just-plain-nuts. Sometimes they became jailhouse friends, some maybe real friends. Never know until you got out. Everything shifted around.

  She tried to set the shape of the day—like one of her sculptures, curving, smooth, and simple, or even one of her infamous hidden-compartment stashes—but jagged edges kept intruding. She was hitting the streets in less than a week. Lotta people out there she didn’t like—obviously, given the conditions that put her into her present situation, there were a lotta people she couldn’t deal with so good out there. She had been trying to figure out what she’d do outside, without much success. Running all the stupid scenarios through her mind: People Out There Were Generally Fuckheads.

  She sat up, she was a fuckhead her own self. Not a clue. Jeez.

  Inside, survival wasn’t difficult, she could shut down any hostility with her clever words­—if not, well, she was taller than most, stronger than most. She grinned, she was more evil-crazy than most of them. Had some backup. Had a decent rep. Worked for her.

  All that would be gone when she hit the bricks. She had a couple notebooks full of designs for sculptures she couldn’t do inside. She clenched her fist, felt her bicep. Meh. So she’d start with the easy shit, knock off some scary creatures. Yeah. Fangs and claws always seemed to sell. Might work out.

  Or not. Most likely not.

  The lights came on, the doors popped open up and down the halls. New day. Her nerves were jangled. Same day as yesterday only there were all of a sudden less tomorrows.

  Besides making metal sculptures again, what would she do for money? Score a job in a drugstore maybe? Heh.

  Into the dark fucking freezing cold, lips going dry, she muttered about ripped edges and hollow centers. Her kitchen crew didn’t seem to mind, even when they couldn’t quite understand what she was saying. Politics. Religion. Art. “The outer reaches of criminal endeavors. Where no man dares to go. Shape the world the way I want it? What a loada crap.”

  “What you goin on about now?” Jaykey was a large Pomo woman with a big voice. She teased Frankie, “Ya know it ain’t even light out?”

  “We should be in bed! But nooo, we got places to go. Things to do.”

  “More trouble for you ta get yourself into, angel mine.”

  Smiling, “There’s that. Yeah.”

  Their feet crunched across the dead frozen grass until Charlene spoke, tiny voice, tiny girl, hesitating, “You hear bout Rodeo
’s diagnosis?”

  They stopped. Their breath made little clouds.

  “Cancer?”

  “She gonna die?”

  The guard grumbled at them, “Move it, ladeez. Move it along here.”

  Their feet stumbled forward.

  Diagnosis. Never a good thing inside. On the other hand, doctors on the street, for people like her, weren’t so good either. But these prison ones—these were a whole nother buncha sadists. Frankie squared her shoulders, the kitchen lights were just up ahead. She said, “Nobody gets out alive.”

  Charlene shivered, moved closer to Jaykey. She was in on a murder beef—killed her pimp, oh yes—getting out in months now rather than years. Fragile, timid, how the hell she ever killed him no one knew. But kill the bastard, oh yes she did.

  Everyone had edges that would suddenly just cut open. Cut wide open.

  And then, what? Flying free? Flying free?

  Frankie said, “Fuck all. Come in onna three-year beef for dope and it’s a life sentence now.” She spit, watching it freeze on the side of the path. “No justice in this world.” Head down, silent, plowing forward through her day. Through her life. Six days. Maybe less. Depending.

  The hours shuddered forward in ritual motions, the diagnosis filtering through the air: Was it TB? Or AIDS? Lung cancer? The standard prison killer roundelay. Circle dance of the dead. Frankie thought it would be nice to smoke a cigarette, watch the glowing tip, the smoke curl up. Up and away. One day she’d learn to blow smoke rings, have a pipe with Gandalf, show him how it’s done where she come from. Wherever that was, where she came from.

  The kitchen shift ended with some poor broad up against the wall. A block of cheese? A missing spoon? The day was built on broken trivialities. Stupid fuckers smashed their heads against the walls. Every fuckin day it was something. Frankie returned to her cot, thinking, thinking, but to no real purpose, just mind beeps puddling up in the swamp.

  She wanted to hit someone.

  Curled up, face to the cement wall, fists pushed tight into her stomach. Her cellies came and went, rattling chatting swearing, incantations to push the day away. Frankie groaned. No one paid her any attention.

  After deciding she wouldn’t leave the damn cell until they told her to rollemup and move out, Frankie got off the bunk anyway, splashed water on her face, tottered into the common room. Couple serious card games, yapping TV, three knitting women staring at nothing, and in the corner some kinda maybe dance steps. Whee. Nonstop Good Times.