What some people considered his only vice, Champ considered reparations: The Native-American and the arsonist who lived in the cells on either side of him had both been feminized long before Champ laid on their backs. On alternating days these pretty boys pulled Champ's curtain shut and struck a salacious pose, angling the hips just so, poking out their narrow behinds. He grudge-fucked them and took care of their material needs. The ambience they created gave Champ's life a new semblance of domesticity.
chapter thirteen
THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-TWO prisoners poured into the dining hall to attend an emergency meeting of the Pennsylvania Lifers Association. Those who called themselves the walking dead-baby, cop and serial killers, murderers by arson and the one who strangled a nun with her own rosary beads-were the first to arrive. Though the walking dead didn't have a hope or prayer of ever receiving a pardon due to their heinous crimes, they nevertheless participated in life. They filed grievances, pressed license plates, fed the birds, watched movies, jerked off, demanded sheets without blood stains, completed Bible correspondence courses and showed up at every function of the only organization left in the world they could rightly call their own. To show his appreciation for their solidarity, Champ had given these men the title of official custodians of the association shortly after becoming their new president. No matter what the occasion was, the walking dead showed up ahead of time to clean the restroom, mop the floors, wipe the tables and set up the refreshments.
The hall was noisier than a train station before Champ called the meeting to order. Some men were calling out numbers. A Christian at one table shouted 6-6-6 to a Christian two tables over. A bookie hollered the daily number 3-6-9 up and down the aisle. A drug dealer called out his prices, three for ten, seven for twenty. And one man who had been crossed by another told him he had his number.
The rookie guard thought he was sitting on a powder keg the way those black, white and red faces smiled and frowned at one another while they drank mugs of black coffee and ate sugar cookies by the handful. When he saw two stamping and pawing at the ground, he called for backup.
The roly-poly guard, Sergeant Mervis Dewey, entered the hall. “What's the problem? We got a problem here?”
“Sir, I believe there may be too many men in this room for one officer to handle.”
“You do? Well, let me school you about these lifers, officer. You let them be. They are the best-behaved men we have. Let them have their meeting. Can we do that?”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“Good. You need a break? You want me to stay?”
“Sir, no sir.”
“OK. Call me at 2-9-5 if you need me.”
Champ's fist was as good as a gavel and when he brought it down, the hall hushed like a congregation. He pointed to Bell who was sitting in the front row wearing a burgundy and grey custom jacket embroidered with the words 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry, Phong Dien Vietnam, 1969-1970, across the front. “That's a fly-ass jacket you're wearing, Bell,” Champ said in earnest. “It's a shame they're going to take it from you any day now.”
Bell looked confused.
Champ held up a sheet of paper and said, “Yo! Listen up! We just got this memo, Brothers! The same one that'll be posted on the bulletin boards next week. The administration is taking all our personal clothes from us! Starting next month every man in this joint will be wearing prison browns 24-7. Brown pants, brown shirts and brown sweat clothes.”
“Get outta here!” one man said. “They can't do that!”
“Yeah! I just bought a new Philadelphia 76ers warm-up suit. Cost me seventy-five dollars! They gonna reimburse me?” asked a second man.
“This is unconstitutional!” said the first man.
“What are we supposed to do with the clothes we got?” asked a third man.
Champ made his voice empathetic. “Ain't nobody more heated about this than I am, Brothers! I got a whole cell full of clothes. They say we got to mail this stuff home or donate it to Goodwill or have it destroyed-”
“Mr. President! Champ! I've got something to say about that!” Oyster Bey interrupted.
“Come on up,” Champ said. Oyster had bounded halfway up the aisle before Champ said come.
When Oyster leaned toward the microphone, his voice was loud and defiant. “We heard this was coming! Nobody wanted to believe the sons a bitches would do it. Now that they are, I got one thing to say. I don't have many personal clothes. A couple of polo shirts, some jeans, a few sweaters and a wool jacket my Aunt Mercy got me a couple Christmases ago. If we have to give up our personal clothes, it doesn't take a genius to figure out where they're going to end up. It won't be the Goodwill Store, that's for sure. These guards will be like goddamned vultures picking through the piles and taking what they want. Bell's jacket and that man's warm-up suit will end up on the backs of their kids. You can bet your ass on that. If you guys are smart, those of you who don't have anywhere to mail your clothes to, you'll do what I'm going to do. Take a razor blade and shred the hell out of them before you turn them in. That's what I'm going to do. Fuck a Goodwill! That's all I got to say and thanks, Big Champ.”
As Oyster walked back to his seat, someone shouted, “Good idea, old head! I'm doing the same thing!”
Another man chimed in, “Me, too!”
Champ's voice grew louder as his words tumbled out. “Christian family gatherings. Cut! Varsity sports travel. Cut! Annual picnics. Cut to three hours! Then there's that noon count that's robbing us of a half hour, sometimes a whole hour, of yard every day. Last month they changed the rules for outside picnic visits. Now a lifer has to have ten years in instead of just five.” A moment of silence, and he added, “They fucking us every way they can. And they ain't done. Listen to this: Quote, 'Due to the continuing increase in the prison population across the Commonwealth, it has become necessary to place double bunk beds in every cell. The double bunks are currently being built by our corrections industries and installation will begin within ninety days of the date of this memo. Any inmate who refuses to double up will be placed in the behavioral adjustment unit until he agrees to comply.'”
A cacophony of curses rose in the room.
“Oh, hell no!”
“They crazy?”
“Put somebody in my cell, I'm fucking him!”
“You ain't the only one, buddy!”
“Brothers!” Secretary Anwar said. “These six by nine cells designed to hold one man are about to hold two! According to the new deputy warden, only out-of-the-closet homosexuals and the criminally insane will be exempt from this policy. So you can either put a limp in your wrist, go crazy or just plain refuse to live in a cell with another man.”
Champ waited until the members settled down and Anwar took his seat before he shook his head in disgust and then forced a smile. “This memo says the double celling may only be temporary because they're planning on building two new cell blocks in the middle of the yard.”
“Say that again?” two men shouted simultaneously.
“They're building two cell blocks in the middle of the yard,” Champ repeated evenly.
Half the men in the room gasped while the other half said that can't be right.
Everyone knew that building two cellblocks in the middle of the yard would mean an end to summer softball games and Sunday afternoon football games in the fall. The boxing program would have to go, too. To make way for the new buildings, the ball diamond, boxing gym, law library, prison chapel and the redbrick Home Block would all have to be demolished.
“This whole prison's nothing but a fucking cage!” Key-su, a Black Panther from Chicago stood and shouted. “Now they want to make the cage smaller! Brother Champ! May I address the membership?”
Champ motioned for Key-su to come forward. It was prudent, he thought, to let the members hear from someone whose physical presence itself was a warning sign. This black man with braids that glittered and clanged like machetes on his head might portend the future for them and wake them up.
Key-su hustled to the microphone and snarled without preamble. “Brothers, let me put you down with something! The prison system is fast finding its way into corporate Amerika! You see, if you follow the yellow brick road of cause and effect, you will see that the reason they need more cell blocks is because they are locking up our young black brothers faster than you can say there's no place like home.
“Just look what's going on in our cities. The crack cocaine infiltration is nothing but a mass conspiracy by the United Snakes of Amerika to up its racial oppression. Where are these drugs coming from? The last time I checked there weren't any cocoa fields in downtown Philly or Chicago or Baltimore or D.C. I'll tell you where they're coming from! South America via the CIA, my Brothers! And look who the victims are! Some of them are in this room! You young brothers-babies-coming to jail for life! The politicians are knee-deep in this shit, too. They're creating new laws so that a brother who gets arrested with a little crack cocaine gets three times as much time as a white man who gets arrested with three times the amount of the pure shit. It ain't no mystery why they want more cell blocks, Brothers!”
Key-su paused while the members clapped and cheered. Champ smiled to himself and thought how this brother from Chicago reminded him of another brother he had heard speak years ago in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Somewhere in the room, standing in the corners or against the back wall, Champ saw the bright golden eyes of his first cousin Joanne and her college classmates half-circling a freedom fighter who was doing his best to educate them about the racist world in which they were trapped. He saw, too, the mothers of three dead college students crying from grief so sheer you knew they'd been condemned to die from it. And the men they now referred to as white devils, the pink-faced men who caused their grief, who produced it, built hi-rise projects to contain it, designed ways to study it, and then treated those who were sick to death of it so they could be well enough to endure more struggle and pain. Grief was the white man's tool for wearing away his people, Champ was sure.
Key-su went on. “And what about all the other shit that's going on around here? The recent deaths in the hospital! Three this month, two last month! And the mentally deranged Brothers they keep dumping into the population from the state hospital! They be shuffling around this joint day and night picking up cigarette butts off the sidewalk and chasing bogeymen. And what about the Klan beatings going on down in that Home Block? Brothers, there's a war going on right under our noses. You all better wake the fuck up!”
Key-su pumped a Black Power sign in the air and walked to his seat, his bright, angry brown eyes burning like two torches.
Every member in the hall stood up, stamped his feet and cheered wildly. While they went on, old man Willie Dew raised his hand and Champ waved him up to the podium. Arthritis and thirty-six years of penitentiary life had twisted Willie's lean six foot five inch frame into a pretzel, so it took him a minute to get there. His wide wet eyes blinked proudly as he smiled at the Brother who had just inspired and inflamed his heart.
Willie cleared his throat and smacked his lips together several times. “Now you know what …. You know what troubles me? Well, I'll tell you. All these damn pigeons fucking and flying all over this joint.” Laughter broke like a dam in the hall and Willie had to wait until it subsided before he went on.
“Everywhere you look around here, there's pigeon shit. Early Greer, listen, brother! I loves you, but you got to stop feeding them damn things.” More laughter, and then, “It's getting so it ain't safe to look up in the sky no more. The pigeons fly over the yard dropping bombs of shit all over a man's head and back. You can't hardly walk anywhere without stepping in pigeon shit. Then you walk in your cell with shit on the bottom of your shoe and now you got shit on your rugs and floor. Then later in the night you walk around your cell in your bare feet and now the shit's on the bottom of your feet. Then you crawl in bed and now you got pigeon shit in the bed with you.”
The laughter reached a riotous level before Willie raised his hands head high and brought his palms together, touching gracefully. “We had this problem back in '59, and what they did was they put poison in some day-old bread and fed it to 'em. It worked like a damn charm, too. But you have to be careful if they do that cause you know how they like to fly up on the big St. Regis roof and roost right on the edge? Well, when they die roosting up there they more often than not fall five stories down. I saw with my own eyes what it did to one ma'fucker that was standing too close to the building and got clocked. It wasn't a pretty sight, I'll tell you.” This time the laughter sounded like thunder. Willie stood there, hat in hand and drop-lipped, until the excitement died down, and then he shuffled to his seat.
Champ smiled compassionately at the old man. “Thank you, Willie. We'll address the pigeon problem with the rest of these issues the next time we meet with the administration. Now I want Omar Ali to come up here and tell you about a new bill the legislators just passed.”
“Thank you, Brother Minister. Good evening, Brothers. For those of you who don't know, the state legislators just signed a bill that could make every lifer in this state a walking dead man!”
“Say what?”
“I ain't heard about no new bill!”
“Yeah! What's it's all about?”
Omar Ali and Champ exchanged looks. The sign of rumble in their eyes was clear. “According to this new law, three out of five votes from the Pardons Board is no longer enough to get your sentence commuted. Now all five members of the Board have to agree. This might not be so bad if it wasn't for that crime victims advocate who now sits on the Board. That crazy woman votes no on every application they put in front of her.”
“So what you're saying is we're fucked!” shouted a man from the back corner of the room.
“Yeah! The whole thing's a bridge going nowhere now!” Another shouted from the opposite corner.
“Oh, no, Brothers!” Omar Ali protested. “They can't make something like this retroactive! They say it is, but we're planning to file a class action suit on they ass! This thing violates ex post facto protection in the United States Constitution! We going to fight this all the way to the United States Supreme Court! Don't lose hope!”
“Hope? I hope those lawmakers die of cancer!”
“Yeah! Those no-good cocksuckers!”
At that moment, Sergeant Dewey walked through the side door, raised his hand and whirled his finger around. Omar Ali walked away from the podium while the conversations swelled in the room. After Champ gestured with his own hand and announced they were out of time, Deacon Bob stood and said, “Brothers, losing all these amenities and rights is a difficult thing. But with the help of the Creator, we shall overcome. No doubt about it.”
Outside the dining hall Oliver and Early and the others stood around listening to a group of insurrectionists wielding conversations about ice picks, fire, and blood.
“I know what'll make 'em stop this shit!”
“Yeah! Tear this motherfucker down!”
“Hit 'em where it hurts!”
Another man was singing “Fire!” by the Ohio Players. The one beside him was chanting, “Attica!” over and over. Others mentioned a hunger strike. “Do I look like I'm ready to give up a meal, niggah?” Chinaman asked, squeezing one of the folds of fat around his waist. “How bout a work strike? Now I could go for that.”
Oliver cringed as he pictured the routine of his daily life going up in smoke-hostages, fires, torn bodies, bleeding rectums, blood on the sidewalks. Who needed it?
Who needed it? Here he was learning advanced calculus, the laws of metaphysics and theories of information processing, a year away from becoming the first member of his family and the first prisoner in the world to earn a PhD, and they wanted to burn down his classroom. It just didn't make sense. And even worse than the thought of losing his classroom was the thought of losing his lover, friend, mother, sister, and world class mentor. There was no way he could afford to lose her. Not her.
He cocked his
head when he saw Champ approaching, and then separated himself from the others to talk to him. They cleared their sinuses at the same time, and Oliver said, “I got something for you, Champ. Meet me at my hut.”
Five minutes later they were having a conversation that was better than Oliver imagined a conversation could be. In the middle of it, he removed the poster of Otis Redding at the Monterey Pop Festival from the back wall of his cell and peeled off the hundred dollar bill he had taped to the back of it. “Here's a brand new C-note Champ.” Champ smiled and looked at Oliver while he folded the bill five different ways and then stuck it down inside his sock.
Oliver continued, “Goddamn, I wish there was a way to make that bastard disappear.” What he meant was, name your price and make it happen! Champ said, “If you're serious that'll cost you five hundred.”
Oliver's voice was hollow with wonder. “Five hundred? Just to get him transferred?”
“You fucking right! That kind of move don't come cheap! What you think, I'm going to chop him up and flush him down the toilet for you? There's another man got to take care of this. And he don't come cheap.”
Oliver was startled into a smile. “How long would it take?”
“I don't know. I'll have to get back to you on that.”
“All right, let's do it. Put the order in, man.”
Phlegm and impatience mingled in Champ's voice. “Hold up. You talk to her first. Make sure she's down with it. Not unless you got five-hundred of your own money to spend.”
“Look, she wants him gone as much as I do, Champ. She'll pay the money as long as there's no violence. Five hundred's nothing to her. She's brought this thing up a hundred times, how she wished he would just disappear. If I tell her it's going to cost five hundred dollars to get him transferred, she'll bring five brand new C-notes in the next time she comes. I guarantee it. You want the money up front?”
Eureka Man: A Novel Page 18
