by Gary Mulgrew
Initially, no one hit him though. That will come later, Chief had told me morosely. At the moment everyone seemed required to show their outrage at his presence, but to me it looked like it was all posturing, just part of the façade that the inmates maintained. Kola and Chief held themselves apart from it too. Without ever being open or friendly as they had been with me, they were nevertheless respectful of John’s space, and basically courteous. Chief had told me he had learned many moons ago – he always spoke like that – that he was in no position to judge anyone. I liked that personal rule, and it was something I was trying to adhere to as well.
Everything about life in prison felt more intense – you got to know certain aspects of your fellow felons very well. But others were off-limits. Unless you were a shot-caller, for example, you never asked why someone was in prison. You could ask how many years they got, how many served and how many to go, but not why they were there – you waited until they told you, if they ever did. Anyway it was a mistake to define them by the crime they had been imprisoned for – nearly all of them had a much more developed criminal CV. What they had been caught doing was usually the tip of a very big iceberg. In darker moments, I would wonder what some of my roommates – the very ones I nodded to and joked and fist-bumped with – might have been up to on the outside, but in a strange way, with the exception of the hated chomos, that mattered a lot less than I’d imagined.
What mattered was what you saw every day on the inside, and there could be a lot more dignity and pride and care there than I’d seen in many other walks of life. The man who’d ironed my shirt and khakis this time for my first day in the library, for example, did all sorts of laundry tasks for a few stamps. When he had collected enough of them, he’d send them back to his family in Central America, where the meagre amount of dollars they fetched could make a real difference to their lives. I admired him for that – whatever he’d done in the past.
On my first day on the new job, I counted the steps from the Range to the library door and, thoroughly satisfied with my new commute, entered the small prefabricated building carrying some writing paper and a Spanish grammar book. There was no sign of Miss Reed or anyone else ‘official’ for that matter, so I went to the desk where I’d seen AJ sitting on the day of my interview and pulled up another chair beside what I assumed was his. The library already had five or six inmates milling around, three of whom I assessed as likely chomos, being white and middle-aged with beards. I didn’t care though; all I could think about was how blissfully, magically quiet it was in this place. It was extraordinary, a revelation; a real oasis of respite, soothing my senses after months of the constant din of the Big Room. I methodically placed my writing paper and pen down in front of me and then my Spanish grammar book, revelling in the space and silence. I’d never felt happier beginning a new job in my life before. This scene was swiftly brought to an end, however.
‘Awww, this is bullshit!’ These were the first words AJ ever uttered to me, followed by, ‘I told Miss Reed I ain’t working with no white boy. No sir, no way,’ he complained, to no one in particular, looking around him as if one of the child molesters might suddenly come to his aid and remove me from my chair.
‘I don’t think she’s in today,’ I replied, keeping my expression bland. I didn’t care if he didn’t want to work with me; I wasn’t budging from this little piece of heaven for anyone. ‘You must be AJ. I’m Scotland,’ I added, offering a fist bump. He looked at it then looked back at me and let it hang there.
‘Uh huh . . .’
My fist stayed out a few seconds longer before I withdrew it, unbumped.
AJ was a diminutive African-American with closely cropped dark hair, a pencil-thin moustache, and a pencil-thin regard for everyone. Following our introduction, he asserted his ‘space’ by pushing my chair further into the corner as he took the lion’s share of our joint working desk, all the time mumbling profanities about Miss Reed and white boys under his breath. I smiled weakly at him, feeling like an interloper, and awkwardly big beside him given he was so short. After a few seconds, he sighed loudly and looked at me again. ‘What d’you say your name was?’
‘Scotland. Scotland,’ I said, twice, thinking it might not have registered.
‘I got you, I got you,’ he snapped. ‘You don’t have to repeat yourself. I’m not stupid.’
Although the conversation was starting badly, there was something instantly likeable about AJ, if I could just get beyond the prickliness. ‘Erm, Chief said to say hello,’ I threw in. Chief had told me more than that, actually. AJ, he’d explained, was a real character. A crack cocaine dealer from the age of fourteen, he’d lived all his life in Washington and had received a ten-year stretch for possession aged only twenty-five. He’d never been a user himself (‘He’s way too smart for that!’) but his mouth had got him into trouble in an East Coast prison and hence the dreaded transfer 2,000 miles away from home to sunny Big Spring. AJ had been pissed off ever since – ‘A small guy with a big attitude,’ quipped Chief – and he reserved most of that attitude for people with white skin. Then again, as Kola had chipped in, helpfully, AJ had probably never met a white guy quite like Scotland.
‘Chief said hi, did he?’ replied AJ, giving no indication of whether or not he was impressed by that association. He kept staring at me intently, which was very disconcerting, especially since he was sitting less than a foot away from me.
I smiled weakly again, feeling exposed and uncomfortable. I picked up my pen then put it back down, wondering what to say to keep this conversation going. I’d only seen characters like AJ on TV programmes like The Wire; none of my life’s experiences had really equipped me to be the Joint Assistant Librarian in the Big Spring Correctional Facility with a career crack cocaine dealer from the projects of inner Washington DC.
‘Do you get laid much with that accent?’ he suddenly asked – a complete change of tack.
‘Not in here.’ My quick response was rewarded with a slight grin from AJ.
‘I mean in the Free World,’ he qualified.
‘Sure, between the accent and my boyish good looks,’ I responded straight faced. AJ paused for a moment, then began to smile. Like a lot of the African-Americans I’d seen, he had a set of teeth a mother would be proud of, including the obligatory gold one.
‘You’re not a chomo, are you?’ he asked, suddenly looking much more serious.
‘I don’t have a beard.’
‘Or an AB?’
‘No. No to both.’
‘A’ight, a’ight,’ AJ said, stretching his arms out on the desk before laying his head down on top of them and going to sleep.
About an hour later, he lifted his head up and carried on. ‘Because if you is a chomo or an AB, then you and me will have a problem and I’ll have to tell Miss Reed you can’t work here.’
‘Well, I’m not either!’ I said. I’d been making some progress with my Spanish verbs in the meantime, and this was just irritating. AJ looked over at what I was writing.
‘You studyin’ Spanish?’ he asked. I resisted the temptation to be sarcastic and instead just offered a grumpy ‘Si.’
‘So am I,’ said AJ.
‘Well maybe we could test each other sometimes,’ I offered. AJ carried on staring at me intently. ‘Shouldn’t you be teaching me the ropes or something?’ I asked him, encouraged that he hadn’t immediately shot down the idea of doing some Spanish together.
AJ stared at me once more. ‘Shit!’ he mumbled under his breath as he shook his head. ‘Dude, do I look like a teacher!? A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. And this here is my work station. You figure out the rest!’ With that he lay his head back down and missed my smile.
I decided to push on.
‘Shouldn’t you at least explain to me how the library is organised?’ I asked the back of his head. I still hadn’t really come to terms with the laissez-faire attitude of both the cops and staff in Big Spring – no one really seemed to
care much about anything. Everyone was just waiting, doing their own time and counting the hours till they went home. Everyone.
Looking thoroughly fed up as he raised his head again, AJ sighed then turned away from me towards the books. ‘On this section over there, we have fiction,’ then turning towards the other side of the room he continued, ‘and over here we have the non-fiction.’
I had grabbed my pen and was writing this down. When I looked back up he was staring at me. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Ahm, um, taking notes.’
‘Notes?’ responded AJ incredulously. ‘You mean you can’t remember where the fiction and non-fiction sections are?’
‘Erm yes . . . no . . . I mean, of course I can,’ I stammered. ‘I just wanted to take notes for the rest of it.’
‘Rest of it? The rest of it?’ AJ echoed. ‘Ain’t no “rest of it”. Over there we have fiction, and over here we have non-fiction. If someone comes in and asks you, “Where’s the books at?” you say, “Over there we have fiction and over here we have non-fiction.” That’s it! If the book is fiction it goes there, and if its non-fiction it goes over here. And that’s all!’ That said, he theatrically placed his head back down onto the table and mimicked sleep.
I looked down at my scant notes, then looked up to the jumbled mess of books randomly scattered across the library. At first I felt bewildered but then suddenly elated – I had just found something to do. I was about to get up and start planning my assault on the books when AJ raised his head again.
‘What?’ I asked him.
‘Can I ask you something?’ he began in considered fashion. I had no idea where he was going this time, but had already realised he was the kind of guy that asked whatever was on his mind. That was why I liked him, I think, despite his rudeness.
‘Shoot,’ I said, unsure if that word sounded right coming from me, but thinking that’s the way you might speak to someone who has been a crack cocaine dealer since he was a teenager.
‘Does you like black people?’
‘Sure,’ I began confidently, without hesitation, ‘but I don’t like short people.’
AJ stared at me for a moment, contemplating that one before he broke out into a beautiful, face-filling smile, his gold tooth sparkling. ‘Shh-iiitt!!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s funny!’ he said, as he laughed and banged his hand on the table. ‘That’s good, Scotland! Don’t like short people. You’re funny!’ He carried on laughing and hitting the table. This little outburst had caught the attention of a few of the other inmates who were staring over until AJ remembered his librarian role. ‘What you motherfuckas looking at!?’ he barked. ‘You come here to read the motherfucking books or watch the motherfucking floor show, motherfuckas?’ The onlookers quickly recoiled into their books. Meanwhile, AJ’s fury vanished as swiftly as it had appeared and he chuckled in my direction. ‘We going be a’ight, Scotland, we going to be a’ight in the li-bra-ree!!’
Carried away a little, I made a reverse ‘L’ with the thumb and forefinger of my right hand.
‘What the fuck’s that?’ said AJ doubtfully. ‘That some kind of motherfucking Aryan Brotherhood sign you doin’ at me now, motherfucka, ’cos if you’re a . . .’
We both looked at my hand making a backwards ‘L’ sign. ‘AJ – relax, relax,’ I said, hastily. ‘I was just doing an L sign . . .’ It felt rather silly now. ‘You know – that’s the secret librarians’ sign, dude.’
‘Cool!’ said AJ, instantly becalmed again as he started playing around with making the sign himself. ‘Librarians!!’ he cried out.
AJ and I didn’t look back from that first day, and we spent a lot of time together even when we weren’t working mornings in the library. He was tremendously insightful about prison life and its strange workings, although his manner got him into a lot of trouble with other inmates and the cops. He was very bright and sarcastic and it amazed me that a man with such inner resources and potential had only ever had one job in his life – selling crack cocaine. My upbringing had taught me that plenty of people stayed poor however hard they worked, but over the years I’d been in banking I’d developed the idea that everything sort of found its natural level. Bright people, strong people, talented people rose up – those who were less so, stayed put. But meeting people like AJ turned that idea on its head. In spite of his brains and wit, there was little chance of him ‘working his way to the top’ – as the American Dream would have had it – because he had no concept of being entitled to another life, much less any idea what he needed to do to achieve it. His greatest attribute was his sense of humour and he seemed really pleased when I told him he reminded me of Eddie Murphy. ‘In Shrek,’ I added – much to his disappointment.
Friendships had different levels in prison, just like on the outside. AJ was a workmate – a joking and teasing partner, and later on, someone for whom I came to have immense fondness and respect. But there was something different in my relationship with Chief. He’d been a sort of mentor to me right at the start – and, I guess, like the relationships we form at the start of our lives, there was something more intense about the way we were with each other. A couple of times, I crossed the line with him – such as when I called out: ‘Afternoon, ladies,’ to him and Kola when they returned from their traditional native Indian sweat-up session in the exercise yard. The two men eyed me closely for a while, then left me alone, later on calling me over to advise me on yet another point of prison etiquette.
‘Never joke with someone you don’t know, and never, ever, ever,’ Chief said slowing down for emphasis, ‘insinuate someone is a homo or feminine, or you’ll get your Scottish face mashed up real bad.’ I took the point.
And it was hammered home even harder by the fact that, later on that day, Chief told me casually, almost as if in passing, that he’d been praying for me out in the Yard. He and Kola would go to a sweat usually once a week, with the other ‘Injuns’. They’d burn a fire and sit in a small wigwam that was permanently in place up to the side of the main yard, sweating away as they chanted, prayed or sang through the afternoon. I sat watching them a few times, envious perhaps of the brotherhood they had, and feeling more alone as a result. Given it was always over 90 degrees outside, I shuddered to think how much sweating they actually did in these meets, but Chief had told me he regularly would get to the point of passing out and hallucinating which, I surmised from the way he smiled as he said it, was the effect he was aiming for. I was taken aback at the idea that he’d put me in his prayers, and deeply touched.
I discovered his story later on, from Kola, on a day Chief had declined to go to the chow hall because he had taco exhaustion. He had served with pride, Kola told me, in Iran and Iraq, and he had also seen action in Afghanistan and Sierra Leone. Eventually, after eight years of service, his luck ran out and a night jump over Afghanistan went badly wrong for him when his parachute wouldn’t properly open. Sure he was going to die, he said he stopped struggling and was prepared to meet the Big Chief in the sky, but some trees broke his descent and he survived. Unfortunately they also broke his back and crushed his skull. ‘You don’t actually need a working parachute to skydive,’ Chief told me later. ‘You only need a working one if you want to skydive twice.’
He would never skydive again. Fourteen months later, with an honourable discharge and a veteran’s pension, he walked, stiffly and painfully, out of the life he’d loved, and into nothing. He had a broken body, and excruciating headaches that led in time to epilepsy. After the initial few hurrahs and welcomes-back on the Reservation, he hit the bottle – his fortunes taking a further dramatic downturn one night when partying with some friends around a camp fire.
They were joined in their revels by a couple of guys whom Chief didn’t know, and one who soon started to taunt him about his strained walking style. Things deteriorated rapidly between the two of them, until the interloper foolishly pulled Chief’s gun out from his trouser belt and started taunting him about his inability to use it. According to Kola, Chief imm
ediately disarmed the man, ‘pistol-whipped his ass’, tied him up and dunked him in and out of the lake for a few minutes at a time for good measure. He then began to fire his gun over the wretched guy’s head while performing a Zuni war dance around him. When the cops arrived, Chief was sitting calmly waiting for them at the fireplace, his captive still tied up and warming himself by the fire. As well as kidnapping and assault, he was charged with the further Federal offence of ‘discharging a weapon in a reservation’ – a big no-no which, combined with his other no-nos, got him fifteen years in the slammer. I couldn’t help feeling his country would be better served if they’d given him fifteen weeks with a psychiatrist instead, but Chief was less easy on himself. ‘There’s no excuse for what I did,’ he eventually told me. ‘I got what I deserved. If it hadn’t been that guy it would have been someone else – I was a wreck.’
Chief was a good example of one of the myths that lawyers and judges perpetrate about prison – that it’s full of people claiming to be innocent. In my time in Big Spring, I met only three people who made that claim – the rest just ‘fronted up’ and accepted they were guilty. Chief was even sceptical of those three. ‘In here, a clear conscience is usually the sign of a fuzzy memory,’ he would say. They nearly all had complaints about how they were caught, or the details of the charge (even Chief claimed that he hadn’t actually discharged his weapon), but most were serial offenders, and took the view that they were going to be caught sooner or later for something.
