Prison Noir

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Two people looked up to greet her, saw the sleep-grump lines etched in her cheeks, nodded, and looked away. Frankie circled the small room trailing her fingers along the wall. Counted her steps. Maybe the place shrunk. Maybe her steps were longer. Size and shape were relative things in jail—and why not? Something had to shift and change. Certainly wasn’t the people. Exact same ones were posted in their specific positions. God help a girl if she sat in someone else’s spot. Frankie kept circling, feeling the room slither around her, tightening. Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday. Would they come for her Monday morning? Or make her sweat through till Tuesday?

  Or shove her out Sunday, push her heathen ass out on the day of their Lord?

  She joined the dancers, her long body shifting through the steps with graceful curves. But she couldn’t lose herself in it. Couldn’t find herself in it either. Lost in a jailhouse limbo. She jerked to a stop. “We need more space. More air. Hey, let’s put all the stupid furniture outside and get something happening.”

  “Ladies. Ladies. Turn that music down right now. This isn’t a dance hall.”

  Frankie opened her mouth, shut it. Counting the days.

  The guard had her hands on her hips, staring at Frankie. Waiting. She turned away with a smug little grimace. “That’s right.” Her feet thudded away down the hall back to Control.

  Jaykey muttered, “Ooh, Frankie. Glad ya buttoned it, angel.”

  “I get real fuckin tired of her shit, yunno.”

  Charlene came over. “Frankie? Could you ask her what goin on wit Rodeo?”

  “Not me, Charlene. I don’t generally open conversation with them,” Frankie said. “It’s a waste of breath.”

  Charlene pulled herself up to her full four foot nine inches. “I gotta know. I’ma go ask her.” She walked slow, looking back over her shoulder.

  The guard stepped out of Control, her eyes slitty. “Yeah, Charlene? What they put you up to now?”

  Stuttering, “Um. They didn’t d-do nothing. I jus wanta know.” She closed her lips tight, watching the guard glower at her. “What’s gone happen to Rodeo?”

  The guard’s mouth did something odd, maybe a smile, maybe not—whatever it was it was buried by the delicious taste of her words. “What’s it to you?”

  Charlene stepped back. “What? What? She’s my friend!”

  The guard snorted. “Your friendship is unnatural.” The guard showed her teeth. “She’s gonna die. What you think?”

  Charlene backed away, down the hall, her eyes big with water pooling in the corners. She flung herself into Jaykey’s arms. “But she’s supposed to get out inna few months! She’s gotta date an everything.”

  Frankie saw the guard smile as she turned away. Bitch. Frankie folded up on the floor, put her arms around Charlene. Held her for a moment. “Who she is—what she done good in the world—that won’t die.”

  Frankie stood up stretching, long arms out to the side, angel wings, her short light halo of hair sticking every which way, her pale oval face serious. She dropped her arms, curled her hands into fists. “I pay that bitch’s salary.” She looked around the dingy common room with her eyebrows arched. “We all pay her salary.”

  “Hey then! Let’s fire her. She an arrogant bitch.”

  Frankie shrugged. “Ah. Now. That we can’t do. But we can rattle her cage now and then.” Her voice started out low, built word by word into a preaching reverb. “No cop or lawyer or prison guard has ever said thank you to me. But down in the pubic hairs of reality, the crabfact squats there: without you an me, these bastards would be out a job, on the street, suckin dogshit off their shoes.”

  There was a moment of quiet, a couple mumbles: “Maybe so,” “Nice ta think so.”

  Jaykey moved Charlene around to face Frankie. She said, “Stan back. Frankie’s onna roll.”

  “That’s right,” Frankie said, her voice going deep again with passion. “There’s a basic shape to what we do—what we can do. But we can make it better, more beautiful. Profound. Crime’s a simple art. Our clear dedication to this art—what some people might call crime—never gets the respect it deserves. Hell, we don’t get the respect we deserve.”

  “Uh, Frankie? We in here. You notice? We got caught.”

  “Durance vile.”

  “We maybe ain’t the artists you think we be.”

  Frankie didn’t even pause. “Oh yes we are. We are angels stuck in marble.” She nodded, “It’s true our enterprises are not always successful. But the labor and the ideas are all ours.”

  “Jeez, Frankie. I want some a what you been gettin into.”

  Frankie held out her hands. “We the ones guarantee they job security.” Leaning forward she said, “They never thank me for my service. Every day I be walkin the circle, but do any of these douche bags say: Hey, Frankie, thanks. No, they do not.”

  “You be expectin too much,” Jaykey laughed.

  Frankie smiled back at her. “Gotta keep expectations high. We got ways. Sometimes, hey, sometimes we manage to get over. Lemme tellyas—one time I pulled off a good one.”

  Charlene checked the hallway, looked back at her. “Tell it.”

  “Long time ago a friend—not a crime partner although we did some trial by fire and jars of downsuppers coke and Mexican brown, bailed each other turn and turn about—he was doin a stretch in Deuel out by Tracy. Dead-zone flat. He let me know he was getting bored. I stumble onto a batch of vitamin cees with blue drops of LSD decoratin one face.”

  “You got someone out there to stumble now?”

  “Fuck no. Anyway,” Frankie continued, “clearly these tabs could be an agent for great creativity there in dusty Deuel. Potentially far more than on the streets, yunno.” She scratched her arm, meditating in memory. “So after an interesting session at the firing range south of the city, tryin out a friend’s Smith & Wesson, I had him drive me out to Tracy. It’s nasty there, so yeah, we got hammered.”

  Everyone remembered getting hammered.

  “I felt tremendous. Powerful. Movin LSD into that prison right past those shitheads who don’t know their ass from a hole—same thing t’them anyway.” Frankie looked at her friends to make sure they were still with her. “But you know that feelin—powerful? Well, that is maybe not always a good thing. This was back in the far starry past an I was very young. I think those feelins happened more back then. In. Vince. Able. Anyway, I stroll through the sallyport lookin fine—ass-tight leather jeans, my moto-cycle jacket with all the chains and snaps and my smiiiiile.”

  She gave everyone a moment to imagine, waving her hands down her long rangy body, spinning around to shake her ass. “Bingo bang, oh you all know we wasn’t born to hang, oh no oh no. I put my noisy jacket, keys, combs, rings, wallet, underwire bra—they loved to see me wiggle outta that slick-as-owl shit—into the wire basket and sashayed my fine clever self through the detectors. Hung a left at the bathrooms, plucked out several balloon-wrapped balls of vitamin cee from that easy place, headed into Visiting. Got two cups a coffee from the machine, mine black, his with cream and many many sugars. Tasted mine and went back and dumped sugar in.” She paused. “Bloody hell! Serious now. They can’t afford health care but day-yam, they oughta put decent coffee in the visiting room. These people are all just total bullshit.”

  She took a breath. “My friend strolls in, pressed jeans, white tee, yes now, a classic junkie Aztec warrior. Lookin good. We shook, formal—after all, we not lovers, just general crime friends. I push his muddy creamy coffee across the Formica. The balloons were bobbin around in there like weird-ass fish. Red green gold blue. His left eyebrow lifted and his deep brown eyes got big.” Frankie shrugged. “I dunno. Thought they’d sink or somethin.”

  A couple women snickered.

  “What’d I know? So he gives me that look and chugs the whole cup, eyes crossin. Says, Gimme another? I’ma need it. I totter over to the machine, tryin ta look cool but I’m waitin for the collar, ya know? He pounds it down and in hardly no time v
isiting is over and I zip on outta there.”

  “Sweat drippin, hey, Frankie?”

  “Not so much right then. Just wait. I grab up my shit and head to the parkin lot, and b’lieve me, I needa cigarette. But I’m feelin real good.”

  She stared at the linoleum squares on the floor, glanced up at the ceiling squares, noticed they were both the same size. Creepy, she could be standing on the ceiling if she wasn’t careful. She said, “Do you guys know that you can feel the blood drain from your face? It’s like whoosh, every single blood vessel just empties. I dunno where it goes but there’s no blood there. I’d put my hands in my pockets and there was the Marlboros, yeah, and the lighter, yeah.” Nodding. “But rattlin around in those big old pockets was a shitload of .38-caliber steel-jacket bullets I’d shoved in there as we left the range.”

  Nobody was breathing.

  “I looked around for my ride—nowhere in sight. I lit the cig with the lighter. My hands didn’t shake.”

  Jaykey said, “Did too.”

  “Fuck you. Did not. I just fuckin de-liver forty hits of LSD into a no-torious prison with a pocket fulla ammunition! And my hands were soooo not shakin.”

  Charlene, who had gone back to the card game, whispered, “I be happy with the cigarette. Or the LSD. Or the bullets.” She looked at her cards, tossed them on the table in disgust. “I’m out . . . That what you’re in for this time, Frankie?”

  “Hell no. That’s not my beef. Jeez. I’m a artist. I got away with that caper. Nah—I’d say they framed me this time, but ya know what? Nobody wants to hear me whine how I’m innocent. Shit. I ain’t no kindsa innocent. I did it. An inna month or whenever—I’ma do it again. Sweet sweet he-ro-in. Heart’s ease. Hey, I’m not a addict—I’m a aficionado. Should that have a ‘a’? Aficionada? Nah, sounds like crap.”

  Stretching again, shuffling her feet like a dancer or a boxer. “Sometimes I take a fall. Sometimes, all unintentional, I keep the boys in blue busy. Do any of them ever say thank you? Fuck no. But I’m in charge of my own damn life.”

  Charlene asked, “What happened with your friend? He out now?” Not saying, Maybe he bring you some dope. You might share.

  Frankie sat down all of a sudden, cross-legged on the floor. “Yeah. He out. Out of all of it. OD’d within a couple months of release. Some damn release, huh? Sometimes. Yeah, sometimes I think, well, I think that nothin matters much.”

  Jaykey shook her head. “An how’s that work out fa ya?”

  Frankie stared at the floor. “Nobody gets out alive. This place just a big coffin. We don’t always see it but that’s what it is.”

  Charlene said, “But the good? The art? Like you said, that lives, don’t it?”

  Frankie didn’t look at her. “Fuck it.”

  “You suffrin the short-time blues, angel. Grit your teeth and look forward.”

  “What I look forward to, huh, Jaykey? Ain’t nothin out there for me any more than in here. It’s just a bigger graveyard. Soon or late we’re just bones inna hole.”

  “Ladies. COUNT TIME. Return to your cells for count.”

  Nobody moved.

  “Now.” The guard smirked again, watching Charlene. “And stop sniveling. Jeez.”

  No one moved.

  “Frankie?” The guard slapped her hands together like for a dog. “Get your ass in your cell.” She wanted Frankie to refuse. Delicate, delicate. Time was getting short. Her lips got thin. Her mouth stretched wide. She wanted to see Frankie crash and burn. She lifted her chin. Jerking the invisible leash.

  Jaykey held out her hand to Frankie. “Here, ya silly girl. Grab hold.” As Frankie sat there thinking, Jaykey said, “Sometimes ya jus gotta take what’s offered.”

  Frankie scowled at the big brown hand right there in front of her face. She reached out. “Bitch. You know how to make me feel stupid now, don’t you?”

  “Nah. You do that thing fine on ya own.” Standing, they were eye to eye. “Easy ta lose track in here. Ain’t no reason for you ta be like that. You got a lotta things goin for ya. Don’t let ya mind get coiled up too tight.” Grin. “Shit fa brains.”

  The guard’s greasy eyes glared at Jaykey. Another one, nothing but evil.

  Frankie whispered, “I could pop you one.”

  Jaykey laughed, her cheeks bunched up like winter apples. “Yeah, ya stupid skinny-ass white girl. You could.” She paused to take a breath. “You could! You could.” Her face tightened, shining with amusement, then she threw her big arm around Frankie’s shoulders, walking her past the guard as if they were alone, together, lovers strolling along the plaza. “Get yaself another six months here? In the safety of ya coffin? You crazy? Or just chickenshit?”

  The guard stomped to Control, a grim graveyard keeper; she popped the cells open bangbangbang up one hall, down the other. The noise proved her power. She was the gatekeeper: they belonged to her.

  Frankie peered around the hallway. Gonna dance or box or get the fuck outta the ring? “She pushin me, Jaykey.”

  Jaykey said, “Gotta make ya choice.”

  “No one gets out alive.” Frankie shot her eyes at the guard, measured the distance, counted the steps, one-two long roundhouse kick take her down, three-four stomp her throat. Done. Bones in a . . .

  Between the legs, in that sweet secret spot—it was either wild-sex wet or piddle-piss scared. Or maybe some stupid balloons of LSD? Frankie shook herself. Oh so not-goin-to-do-THAT-again. She gave Jaykey a long cold stare, not really seeing her. “Things ta do? Cages ta rattle?”

  “Asses ta kick.”

  “Later for you, Jaykey.” A small uptilt of the corners of her mouth.

  “Ya welcome ta try.”

  “One day. One day before we bones.”

  “Somethin ta look forward to. Yeah.” Apple cheeks grinning.

  Grinning back: “Fuck you, Jaykey. Fuck you.”

  “Keep dreamin, Frankie. See ya in tha mornin, angel.”

  Frankie moved toward her cell. “I be waitin for ya.”

  BARDOS

  BY SCOTT GUTCHES

  Fremont Correctional Facility (Cañon City, Colorado)

  Attention in the facility:

  work gangs in, fifteen thirty.

  The announcement is a throwback from the era of chain gangs when work details were divided up among inmates and driven with impunity by the correctional officers. Back then, convicts split rocks, worked the fields, and built roads, even the walls of their own prison. Sixteen-hour days they worked. No gloves. No protection from the high-desert sun. Water and piss breaks given at the whim of a guard’s discretion. Blisters got infected. Exposure turned to heatstroke. Death wasn’t an uncommon work hazard.

  Now, inmates work in front of computers in air-conditioned rooms for six hours, split in two by count time and lunch. We have unlimited bathroom breaks, time off to get a haircut, and even three excused absences a month. Not all inmates have every luxury. Some work in the correctional industries, kitchen, or maintenance. But we all automatically march to and from our assignments without really understanding their meaning.

  It’s been a long day and I am grateful for this announcement. I head back to my cell house. Back through the same cold, dark blue-gray air. Back into the parade of inmates trafficking apathy and discontent between one destination and another. Hostile, tired, and familiar faces greet me along the way until at last I am in cell house 6. It’s an odd place, the day halls looking more like a mine or a tomb—somewhere dug deep in the earth. A low ceiling and five cement columns supporting it give it all a claustrophobic, letter-box quality. The cell house is divided into four pods, each with fifty cells. At two men per cell, the day halls fill up rather quickly with disgruntled echoes and sighs. I take a seat in front of the flat-screen television. The volume is muted and the closed captioning is turned on. The New Jersey Devils won another game.

  The lieutenant comes in, announces showers will be open only to fiberglass workers, then turns to go to the next pod. Fifteen minutes later, he’s
back to pass out mail and announce that Mr. Jennings, an older inmate I’d seen not more than four hours earlier, had passed away. The lieutenant delivers this news in the same soft matter-of-factness as the shower availability.

  Attention in the facility:

  count time, count time, sixteen thirty.

  There have been men killed in their cells while their murderers have gone to yard, work, and chow. Some of these crimes have gone undiscovered for more than twenty-four hours. A few perpetrators have even successfully avoided justice. Now, we have to stand for count so the guards can see without question living, breathing flesh. Counts are done in two independent checks and when each guard is finished, they meet at the center of the day hall to check each other’s arithmetic.

  I look across the day hall as I wait to be counted, and I see cell 25, Jennings’s cell. His name tag is still on the door. I can’t read it from this distance, but the stainless steel plate remains hidden by the white of the tag. Through the small window I spot Jennings’s cellie, Rourke, who resembles Martin Mull. I expect Jennings to pop his head into view at any moment. The anticipation is so intense, I can see him clearly. Effeminate. Quiet. Fine white hair cut close and neat, conforming to the natural, Franciscanesque male-pattern baldness. Thick black plastic frames of those state-issue eyeglasses—the ones most inmates call Chomo-nator 5000s. Signature spectacles with subsequent magnification stereotypically attributed to chomos—child molesters. Perfectly round belly. A rubbery pouch of skin for a neck. Legs as thin as Pixy Stix. That was Jennings.

  The guards converge, discussing their numbers. I can’t hear them, but their inflections speak of confusion. One of them has obviously accused the other of a surplus, or a deficiency. They walk back to cell 25. One guard points to Jennings’s name tag while the other nods in agreement. They talk in monotonous tones, as though discussing physics equations or dismissing the superstition that counting a dead man will bring you a year of bad luck for every year of the deceased’s sentence. I make out only bits and pieces, but I distinctly hear one of them say, “Died this morning.” A guard strips Jennings’s name tag from the door like a bandage yanked from hair and skin. The zip of the peeling packing tape shocks me violently.