Prison Time

by Shaun Attwood

  Alone, I worry how long the crisis will last. How many more attempts to smash me will there be with the green light still on? I can’t get injured while my parents are here and put them through the stress of seeing me hurt.

  Frazzled, jittery, I head to Visitation the next morning, resolved to shield my parents from the trouble I’m in, taking deep breaths to calm my nerves. The stress of the past few days seems to have stashed itself away in my shoulders, so I rotate them, hoping to loosen up a bit. Spotting my parents’ cheery faces, I smile naturally. I aim to bide my time before asking them to delete the ‘Rig Builders’ blog. After hugging, we sit down at an outdoor table.

  ‘How’s the plans for Karen’s wedding going?’ I ask, wishing I hadn’t let my sister down by putting myself in here.

  ‘She chose her dress, but what a fiasco!’ Mum says. ‘She loved the first dress she tried on, but I told her she couldn’t buy the first dress, so we went to Chester, Liverpool and Warrington. She didn’t find anything she liked better than the first dress and that’s the one she ordered …’

  In the distance, on the other side of a chain-link fence, are a group of prisoners heading to Medical, including Ken. Anticipating them walking past us, just several feet away and within earshot, my body starts to tighten. I hope Ken doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Her dress is beautiful. We’re all so excited. They’re getting married at St Bede’s church …’

  As Ken approaches the fence, my focus switches to him. He stops to make a throat-slitting gesture. I flick my gaze to my parents, hoping they don’t see Ken.

  ‘Keep walking!’ a guard yells at Ken.

  ‘Fuck you! Ken yells at the guard, attracting my parents’ attention.

  ‘That’s Ken,’ I say. My parents know my history with Ken from previous correspondence.

  ‘I bet you don’t like me,’ Ken says, grinning at my parents.

  ‘Ignore him. He’s crazy,’ I say.

  ‘Do you want me to write you up?’ a guard barks at Ken.

  Ken moves on.

  ‘So Karen’s getting married at St Bede’s, where I was going to marry Claudia,’ I say.

  ‘You’ll meet the right person when you’re not in prison,’ Mum says. ‘You can’t rationalise your feelings in here. Every emotion, every sensation is magnified.’

  ‘Karen met Jade,’ Dad says. ‘Her fiancé sounds dreadful.’

  ‘I’ve still not heard from her. The wedding must be real close now.’ The thought of Jade walking down the aisle – with someone else – hurts.

  Near the end of the visit, I say, ‘Oh yeah, I almost forgot. There’s a blog I need you to delete because I wrote about drugs in it and, with hindsight, it’s probably best I don’t put anything like that on the internet in case certain people read it.’ Phew! That sounded about right.

  ‘Which blog?’ Dad asks.

  ‘Rig Builders.’

  ‘I’ll delete it tonight.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, easing up a bit.

  After the visit, She-Ra recommends we go to Yard 1 to talk to Hammer and to find out if the green light is squashed. Desperate to get things back to normal, I agree. Walking the dirt track next to a field of Bermuda grass being mowed by inmates, with the sun burning my arms and the back of my neck, I’m so intimidated by Hammer I try to prepare what to say but my mind goes blank. If he wants me smashed or dead, I’m probably the last person he wants to see. Even if I present my case clearly, I mean nothing to him, so why bother? Maybe the right words will come out when we get there. As we approach the fence, I’m light-headed with fear and hyperventilating.

  She-Ra calls over a big man in his 50s, with a thick moustache on a lumpy face pockmarked like the moon, grey hair short on top and shaved at the sides. His tattoos include a swastika on the side of his neck and three teardrops below an eye. He stops at the chain-link, removes sunglasses, folds meaty tattooed arms behind his back like royalty and casts his dark, cold, dangerous eyes on me.

  ‘I read the blog,’ She-Ra says. ‘England never used real names.’

  ‘Is that right?’ he says in a gruff voice.

  ‘I apologise if that blog caused offence,’ I say. ‘My parents deleted it.’

  ‘We don’t want the guards knowing what we’re doing,’ he says.

  ‘I hear you,’ I say. ‘I started the blog to expose conditions and help prisoners not to get any prisoners in trouble. There are prisoners on Yard 4 who get pen pals and books sent to them from blog readers. She-Ra even gets fan mail.’

  ‘You get fan mail, She-Ra?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes. I now have international Cult of She-Ra members, thanks to Jon’s Jail Journal,’ She-Ra says.

  Briefly, he smirks.

  ‘There’s people on Yard 4 who want to kill me because they think I used real names.’ He probably views the blog as a threat to his drug business.

  ‘If you didn’t use real names, you should be all right.’ Someone yells over at Hammer and he marches away.

  Heading back to Yard 4, I ask She-Ra, ‘Do you think the green light is off?’

  ‘He said you should be OK. He’s wise enough to know that if you were gonna get run off the yard, you’d be gone by now. It doesn’t reflect well on him that you’ve not been smashed, but it shows you’ve got more support on Yard 4 than he calculated.’

  ‘I’m never writing about drugs again,’ I say, overwhelmed by relief, aware that I’d be in hospital and my parents’ trip would be ruined if it wasn’t for friends like She-Ra.

  ‘If you have a writing idea and you’re unsure what you can put on the internet, let me read it first.’

  ‘Thanks so much, She-Ra.’ We hug.

  In the evening, I receive a postcard from Jade. She apologises for not writing but says I’ll understand everything when she visits to disclose her ‘big news’. I imagine she wants to relate how great her wedding was. Pretending to be happy in her presence won’t be easy.

  52

  With the library – a small dusty room with books on trolleys and no librarians or guards – gaining a reputation for being an outpost for sex, I never know what to expect when I go there. During a previous visit, Booga asked if I wanted to see his belt buckle, yanked out his man parts, squeezed his scrotum at me and said, ‘Do you want to blow some money?’ while pointing at a penis tattooed with a dollar sign above the urethral opening, freshly tattooed, leaking blood.

  Approaching the library, I’m relieved it looks empty.

  When I walk in, someone yells, ‘Get out, England!’

  At the far end of the room is a young prisoner, Tom, on his knees, his glossy lips next to Cannonball’s erection. Cannonball has one hand pressed on Tom’s shoulder, the other holding his penis. I wonder whether the act is forced or consensual, or if Tom is prostituting himself for food, like so many others. If the act is involuntary, I want to help Tom, but he says, ‘Just leave, England,’ as if resigned to his fate. I depart with a sickly feeling.

  Hours later, T-Bone enters my cell. ‘Have the whites stopped sweating you?’ he says, stretching his fingers, as if itching to hurt someone.

  ‘It’s all died down,’ I say, sitting on the bottom bunk. ‘Two Tonys got the green light squashed.’

  ‘What about Ken?’ he asks.

  ‘I never know with him. He’s always so high and crazy.’

  ‘I’ve got a problem with his celly, Cannonball.’ T-Bone leans against the wall and folds his arms. ‘He’s stepped over the line. I don’t care that he bulldogs quite a few guys out of dope, but he’s going too far with Tom.’

  ‘How do you know about Tom?’ I ask.

  ‘’Cause I come out of my cell more often than you do,’ he says, smiling.

  ‘I walked in on them in the library.’

  ‘I know,’ T-Bone says. ‘Forcing Tom to give him blow jobs makes me sick, but he’s also making Tom give him store and threatening Tom’s family with a bunch of lies. I just cussed Cannonball out and he went on the rampage. He threatened me with a dirty nee
dle – he has hepatitis C. I’m gonna speak to a few people and take care of business with Cannonball.’

  Before I can respond, T-Bone strides out.

  Thirty minutes later, the speakers announce a lockdown. Medical staff arrive and file into Ken’s cell. They extract Cannonball on a stretcher, covered in blood, looking like a car-crash survivor. To get clean clothes, I join a crowd around the laundry porters, who are grabbing net bags from trolleys and yelling DOC numbers, hurling bags at the owners.

  ‘Ken’s gonna get a surprise today,’ Frankie says, grinning.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask.

  ‘Wait and see, homey.’

  ‘Shut up, bitch!’ Mochalicious shrieks at She-Ra, attracting everyone’s attention.

  ‘Mocha likes them so big,’ She-Ra says in a humorous tone, her hands at chest height about a foot apart, ‘that when her friends are playing basketball, she sits upside down on the loop so they can shoot it in her ass. And the great part about it is all she has to do is open her mouth to let the ball out!’ She-Ra points at Mochalicious and winks.

  We laugh.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Mochalicious says, head waggling. ‘I really do like them big, though.’

  ‘Mocha likes them so big that after she takes it in the ass,’ She-Ra says, leaning to slap Mochalicious’s behind, ‘two points have to be deducted from her IQ due to her brain getting poked.’

  ‘I don’t like them that big!’ Mochalicious yells, hands on hips. ‘She-Ra’s a big puta. Mucha grande. Taller than DOC lamp posts. I think I should grab her tits now.’

  She-Ra shields her chest and they play fight.

  A porter extracts a laundry bag with ‘DIE NIGGERS’ and a swastika in big black writing on the white patch in the middle. Prisoners fall silent, absorbed in shock. The comedy of She-Ra and Mochalicious stops. I pray the bag isn’t mine because the owner is going to have a lot of explaining to do – if given the chance.

  Voices erupt, the blacks demanding to know whose bag it is. A porter shouts the number.

  Ken steps forward. ‘Give me my fucking clothes!’ He snatches the bag and marches away, grinning at the words ‘DIE NIGGERS’, as if proud of them, leaving the blacks in uproar. T-Bone and another black powerhouse follow Ken to his cell.

  At Ken’s door, T-Bone yells, ‘Which one of us do you wanna fight?’

  ‘I didn’t write it, dude!’ Ken slams the door in their faces – putting the convict code into effect.

  Anyone challenged to fight must fight or else get smashed by their own race for not showing heart. The whites converge on Ken’s cell. A prisoner walks to the control room and asks a guard to unlock Ken’s door. After the door grinds open, Ken is marched to the rec room at the far end of the yard. With so many enemies, there’s no shortage of whites willing to smash Ken.

  Walking back to my cell with my laundry, I hear flesh getting pounded, sneakers sliding and squeaking on the concrete as kicks are launched, and moaning and groaning. After several minutes, the sounds stop. The whites march out, but not Ken.

  53

  ‘Dog 11, roll your shit up! You’re going to minimum!’ a guard announces at 6.30 a.m. on 16 August 2006.

  The stress of being moved to a minimum-security yard accelerates my thoughts. Although I’ll get additional privileges such as food visits, I’m nervous at having to start over on Yard 1, where Hammer resides. Most of my friends are here. I prefer having no cellmate. Who’ll I end up living with? Will Hammer start trouble? Calm down. What would Dr Owen say? Take deep breaths.

  Shannon appears in the doorway, his eyes sad.

  ‘I’m out of here. I can’t believe it.’ I hug him.

  ‘Say hi to Weird Al for me.’

  ‘I will. Keep the blogging up. I hope to see you on Yard 1 someday.’

  After Shannon leaves, T-Bone crushes me with a bear hug. ‘I’ll come to talk to you at the fence on Yard 1. We’ll keep the stories going.’

  ‘I hope so,’ I say. ‘The violence you’ve had puts my situation into perspective. I have nothing but respect for you. I’ve never met anyone before who’s risking his life for complete strangers to stop rape and for no reward whatsoever. The world needs to hear your story. No matter how long it takes, I’ll try my best to get it published.’

  I spot She-Ra outside, her expression agitated. Even though it’s not my fault I’m being moved, I’m overwhelmed by a feeling of letting my friends down. A tight community has formed around Jon’s Jail Journal and now I won’t be here for them.

  I step out. ‘We knew it was coming sooner or later.’

  She-Ra hugs me close, tears streaming. ‘I’m gonna miss you.’

  ‘I’m gonna miss you, too, but we’ll stay in touch by talking through the fence.’

  We head for breakfast.

  Outside the chow hall, Two Tonys hugs me and whispers, ‘I’ve got a guy on Yard 1, Jim Hogg, that’s gonna look out for you. If Hammer starts any shit – or anyone else, for that matter – let the Hogg know. I’m gonna miss you on this yard, little bro, but I’ll come and talk to you on Yard 1.’

  ‘I’m going to miss you, too. You’ve taught me so much. At least we got to finish your life story.’

  ‘I want De Niro to play me when the movie comes out,’ Two Tonys jests. ‘If I’ve got anything to add to my story, I’ll just mail it to your mom and pops.’

  By 7.15 a.m., I’m back in the cell. ‘Where’s George?’ I ask Shannon. ‘He said he was going to help move my stuff.’

  ‘He’s probably getting a last sniff of your boxers.’ Shannon steps onto the balcony. ‘Jeeves, the governor wants you!’

  ‘Yay, he wants me!’ George yells. ‘The day of his departure and the governor finally wants me!’

  ‘Not like that, Jeeves!’ I smile.

  ‘OK, governor. I’ll go get a trolley to put the royal belongings in!’ George disappears to the front of the yard.

  My neighbour, Jack, steps in, laden with books. ‘I’ve brought these back. Do you mind if I keep Nature via Nurture and The Ancestral Mind? I’d like to use them to teach my classes with.’

  ‘Of course I don’t mind,’ I say.

  Jack shuffles forward to shake my hand, but I hug him.

  ‘I’m going to miss our intellectual conversations,’ I say.

  ‘You’re one of the few people on this yard I can relate to at that level,’ he says. ‘When I woke up this morning, I had a feeling something bad was going to happen. You being moved is a bad thing for me.’

  ‘I’m touched you’d say that.’

  ‘I’m also hoping that you’ll continue to edit my literary efforts like you’ve been doing.’

  ‘Of course,’ I say. ‘It’s the least I can do after all the help and encouragement you’ve given me.’

  ‘I’ll send them to you through someone I work with from Yard 1,’ Jack says.

  We wish each other well and Jack leaves.

  George shows up without a trolley. ‘The other guys moving to Yard 1 already took all the trolleys.’ Appraising the room, he says, ‘Good heavens, governor. You’re making a mess of moving your stuff. What would Mum say?’

  ‘Can you help wrap my clutter in sheets, then?’

  We shift everything onto the balcony.

  ‘Shannon, can you check the room and make sure the governor didn’t leave anything behind?’ George says.

  While George fetches a trolley, Shannon finds toothbrushes, Yoga Journals and a mirror.

  Outside of Building B, I ask Two Tonys, ‘Where’s Frankie?’

  ‘Frankie!’ Two Tonys yells. ‘Get your fucking ass out here! England wants to say goodbye!’

  Frankie struts out in white boxers with ‘DOC’ printed on them. ‘Englandman … so they’re splitting us up finally, are they?’

  We hug. ‘Yes, but I’ll see you on Yard 1 when you get re-classed to minimum.’

  ‘Nah. Not with all the tickets I’ve had. They just gave me another for a dirty piss test. They ain’t setting Frankie loose up there.’
>
  ‘I’ll keep in touch somehow.’

  ‘You’d better, Englandman. That’s what I like about you: you’re loyal. You’re a trustworthy motherfucker. Let’s make love one time real quick before you go,’ he says, waving me to come inside.

  ‘I don’t think so. You’re way too sexy for me.’

  ‘Let’s just kiss real quick right now. I won’t tell anybody.’

  ‘I’ll decide who I kiss and who I don’t kiss,’ I say, imitating how Frankie says it – deee-cide.

  ‘No! I’ll decide, Englandman.’ Frankie licks his lips.

  ‘You’re getting too frisky,’ I say. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  I find George pushing a trolley weighed down with books. ‘Well done, Jeeves!’ While I walk the yard, shaking hands, George sings ‘Rule Britannia’.

  Bud emerges onto a balcony. ‘Is 007 finally leaving us?’

  ‘Yes. Good luck, Bud,’ I say.

  ‘All right now,’ Bud says.

  I pass Ken looming down from Building A’s balcony, scowling, his face cut and bruised around a swollen eye from the beating by the whites. ‘Hey, England,’ Ken yells. ‘I’ve already sent word to Yard 1 that the guy putting drug stories on the internet and using real names is on his way. They’re gonna smash you as soon as you touch down.’

  ‘Goodbye, Ken,’ I say, hoping he’s joking.

  I exit the gate and turn back towards the chain-link. ‘Hey, Ken. I wish you all the luck in the world!’ In two minds as to whether to risk provoking Ken, I do anyway: I raise my middle finger. ‘By the way, you look real handsome. Did I say handsome? I mean fucking ridiculous!’

  Smiling, Ken nods as if to say he’ll still get me one of these days.

  54

  The blood splattered on the floor, ceiling, walls, bunks, windows, toilet, sink, door, table, shelves and corkboard in my new cell makes me stare in disbelief. What am I getting into? Can I catch hepatitis from this?

  A podgy prisoner appears in the doorway. ‘There was a fight. The cops half-ass cleaned the blood. A dude got his cheek bitten off by a guy trying to eat his face. It ripped wide open. The other dude has skills with his fists, elbows and head-butting.’