by Sean Black
When the three other prisoners didn’t move, he barreled his way down the bus, sighed and hauled them upright, one by one. Standing behind them, he gave the man closest to him a hard shove in the back. They moved along the bus, down the steps and towards the doorway.
Byron decided to save the guy the trouble. He got to his feet and shuffled, as fast as the leg shackles allowed, towards the front. He had to concentrate hard as he took the steps. The chain linking the cuffs around his ankles had barely enough length to allow him to navigate them. With his hands cuffed, he knew that if he lost his footing, he would fall face first, with no way to save himself.
The door opened and he followed the other prisoners through it in single file. A short stretch of corridor opened up into a reception area. A prison guard sat behind a Perspex screen. He was in his late forties, with washed-out grey-white skin and a drooping grey mustache that gave him the appearance of a refugee from the set of some 1970s San Fernando Valley porn movie.
The prisoners were directed towards a bench. They sat down, awaiting their next instructions. The guard behind the screen didn’t look up from the book he was reading. From time to time he would reach over and dip his hand into a bag of candy, take a fistful of multi-colored button-shaped chocolates and pop them into his mouth. Byron figured that if he wasn’t already diabetic then he was likely well on the way.
A door at the other end of the waiting room-processing area opened. Two prison guards walked through it. Standing in between them was a middle-aged Hispanic man wearing a suit and a bad hairpiece that looked like it belonged halfway up a eucalyptus tree in a zoo’s small-marsupials exhibit. From the way he carried himself, chest puffed out, hands dug into his pants pockets, it was clear that he thought himself pretty special.
Byron noticed that the desk-jockey pushed his family-sized bag of candy to one side. He picked up a clipboard and slid it through a slot at the bottom of the Perspex barrier. One of the guards picked it up and handed it to the man in the suit, who studied it with some degree of intensity. He looked at each of the prisoners in turn. Finally his gaze settled on Byron.
Byron looked down at the floor, avoiding eye contact. His general rule for dealing with people who thought they were pretty special was not to disabuse them of the notion until he absolutely had to. There was rarely anything to be gained from a pissing contest. That went double when you were in handcuffs and leg irons, with a belly chain setting off the ensemble.
‘Couldn’t come up with ten grand?’ the guy in the suit said to the guard on his right.
The guard’s reply came in the form of a shrug.
The man in the suit drew himself up to his full five feet six inches. ‘My name is Warden Castro.’ He paused for a moment to allow the guard on his left to translate what he had just said into Spanish. ‘Let no one be in any doubt that I am in charge of this facility.’ Another pause for the translation. The other three prisoners were also staring at the grey-tiled floor. They were probably hoping, like Byron, that the speech would be short.
‘My word is law,’ said Warden Castro. ‘If it makes it any easier for you men, you can just assume that, when it comes to this facility, my word is the same as the word of God Himself.’
The head of one of the prisoners, a man wearing a small brass cross on a chain around his neck, snapped up.
The warden didn’t miss the man’s reaction. He jabbed a stubby finger at the prisoner. ‘Start him off in secure housing. Three days. If he gives anyone any trouble he can stay there.’
The guard glared at the offender as the man’s eyes slid slowly back to the floor. Some things obviously didn’t need an accompanying translation to be understood.
‘As for the rest of you,’ Warden Castro said, ‘while you’re here, you’ll be expected to pay your way. You’ll work. Work hard. From sun-up until sun-down and then some. That’s how we do things in Kelsen County. Don’t like it? Well, that’s too bad. You should have thought about that before you broke the law.’ He whipped round and disappeared back through the door, leaving his translator to deliver the good news in Spanish. When the translation of Warden Castro’s welcome speech was completed, the prisoners’ processing began.
One by one, they were uncuffed and unshackled. They were ordered to strip off their clothes in front of the other prisoners and guards. The man with the crucifix on a chain around his neck was reluctant to take it off. It took one of the guards pulling his baton to ensure compliance. The message was clear: do as you were told or they’d do it for you.
All four men were ordered to stand facing the wall, spread their legs and then their ass cheeks, while one of the guards checked their rectal cavity with a flashlight. When the guard reached Byron, his hand slid slowly up the inside of Byron’s thigh.
‘You’re not my type,’ Byron said.
The guard withdrew his hand without finishing the examination. ‘He’s clear,’ the guard said, his voice jumping a half-octave.
‘Eyes front,’ one of the other guards shouted at Byron.
His point made, Byron complied.
Next they were marched through a door at the far end of the room into an open shower area. There were six shower heads built into either side of the tiled wet room. The prisoners spread out. A guard came through and sprayed them down with what Byron guessed was some kind of disinfectant. Whatever it was it stung like hell.
The showers were turned on remotely. The water was hot to the point of scalding. Byron rubbed at his wrists and ankles as he rinsed off.
Without warning the water temperature went from boiling to freezing. The guards watching them smirked as the men jumped back, startled. Byron heard one make a lame crack about ‘Mexican jumping beaners’. He made a mental note of the wisecracking guard’s face for future reference. It was one thing to humiliate grown men who had no power to fight back, quite another to revel in their humiliation. Calling three Mexicans ‘beaners’ in a bar was one thing. You risked getting your ass kicked. Doing it here was the mark of a coward.
The guard, a skinny-fat white guy, who managed to be even shorter than the warden, caught Byron staring at him. ‘Got a problem, inmate?’
Byron didn’t say anything. But he didn’t look away either. If the guard wanted to make something of it, well, that was fine by him.
They were both in no man’s land. The guard had challenged Byron’s facing him down. Byron hadn’t escalated things by answering back, but neither had he backed off. It would come down, possibly literally, to who blinked first.
Staring at the guard’s face, Byron saw the red pulse of anger in the middle of the man’s head give way to the yellow shade of fear. The air seemed to clear from the room. Byron could feel the eyes of the other men on him and the guard.
Byron held the guard’s gaze. When the yellow had crowded out the red, Byron’s eyes snapped to the floor. He had made his point with no blood spilled. Only pride had been injured. Not that injured pride hurt some men any less than physical pain. If he didn’t catch up with the guard, whose nameplate read ‘Lieutenant Mills’, he had a feeling that Mills might just try to catch up with him. He hoped for Mills’s sake that neither came to pass. It could only end badly.
After drying off with towels that had the absorbent quality of industrial-strength sandpaper, they were given prison blues to wear, along with a welcome pack that consisted of a bar of grainy yellow soap, a toothbrush, a small tube of toothpaste, two towels, a fresh pair of prison blues for when the first set was in the laundry, a blanket, a foam pillow, and a pair of canvas shoes. Suitably attired, they were split up, with Byron separated from the other three. They were led out while he was told to stand where he was. He wondered if Mills was about to take his revenge: Byron had challenged his authority in front of other guards.
Mills snuck dirty looks at him as he stood in the reception area but made no move towards him. ‘You ready, Davis?’ the other guard asked him.
Byron nodded.
‘Come on,’ said the guard, walking back i
nto the shower room, then through a door and out into a large open dirt yard, Byron behind him.
The yard was one of four that Byron could see. Each was separated by the same type of chain-link, razor-wire-topped fencing that ran round the perimeter. The yards were empty. The only other inmate Byron could see was an older man who was busy sweeping dirt from a concrete walkway with a long wooden-handled broom.
‘You got lucky,’ the guard said to Byron, nodding in the direction of a low, white-washed single-story building at the far end of the yard. ‘D Block is probably the best of the bunch round here. It’s where we put the Anglos, Asians and assorted others. ’Less, of course, you’d rather mix it up with the Mexicans.’
Byron didn’t reply. The guard had obviously picked up on his earlier reaction and was probing a little further.
‘Silent type, huh?’ the guard said. ‘Fine by me. Just do your work, keep your head down and you’ll be out of here by Christmas. Of course, I can’t guarantee which Christmas. Not that it matters much to a guy like you. No family able to raise the money. You were up in front of Billy Kelsen, right? What’d he try and hit you for? Five grand?’
‘Ten,’ Byron said, throwing the guard a bone.
The guard burst out laughing. ‘Ten big ones? What you do? Get caught trying to screw his wife?’
‘I was just passing through,’ Byron said.
The guard stopped to survey the yards and the cavernous prison buildings. ‘Yeah, we get a lot of that around here.’
They reached the entrance to D Block. A camera mounted high on the outside wall swiveled round. A second later there was a click and the door swung open. Byron followed the guard inside.
There was a rectangular waiting area with two doors off it. The guard motioned for Byron to step through the one on the right, then followed him into a long room crammed with what looked like green metal-framed military-issue bunk beds. Each was neatly made, the corners squared, any personal belongings stowed away in matching green-metal lockers. The room was around forty feet wide and 120 feet long. There must have been at least forty running along each side with another column down the middle.
Byron flashed back almost immediately to the many army camps he had spent time in over the years. Strangely, he felt more at home than he had in some time. It was a world he knew well, and with this rush of familiarity came a sense of comfort.
The guard pointed out a bunk near the door. ‘The top one there should be free.’ He walked over to it, and nudged open the top locker with the butt of his baton. It was empty. ‘Yup, it’s all yours. You can throw your shit in here.’
Byron carefully placed his gear on the two shelves and closed the locker door. The guard tilted his wrist, glancing at his watch. ‘Dinner’s in the mess hall at seven. Until then your time’s your own. Enjoy it while it lasts. Your little vacation finishes tomorrow.’
The guard turned on his heel and walked back towards the door. Byron watched him leave, listening as the sound of his boots on the bare concrete floor died away to a distant echo.
13
Since leaving New York for the last time, Byron had led a solitary existence. Now he stood in the middle of the bunkhouse and listened to the silence. From the rows of lockers filled with meagre belongings, he knew it wouldn’t last.
He climbed up onto his bunk, stretched out and closed his eyes. He ran through what he had gathered so far about the Kelsen County Jail.
Security was medium grade and focused almost exclusively on the perimeter. Two fences running parallel with coils of razor wire at the top. They didn’t look juiced. Electrifying one or both would have demanded warning notices and he hadn’t seen any. No doubt movement sensors were buried at the fence in case anyone tried to tunnel their way under it. Other than the fences and a few locked doors, that was it.
Once you were inside the unit you were free to move around at will. Two cameras, one mounted at each end of the bunkhouse, monitored the prisoners, but Byron would bet that the guards in the control room didn’t watch things closely. Unless there was a fight or some other disturbance.
Reassured that escape would be difficult but far from impossible, Byron slowed his breathing. Within five minutes he was asleep.
He was woken by the sound of inmates walking back into the unit. Peering down, he watched an exhausted procession of men in prison blues make their way wearily towards their bunks. Each man carried a pair of heavy work boots, dusted with red desert dirt.
Some flopped immediately onto their bunks. Others undressed, grabbed a towel from their locker and headed for the showers. A few of the men were Caucasian, the rest Hispanic. They were lean to the point of skeletal but with ridges of muscle on their arms and backs that suggested hours of heavy labor.
A white man with close-cropped ginger hair and a ragged red beard sat on the edge of the bunk directly beneath Byron. He looked to be in his early forties, although Byron might have been out by ten years either side. He let out a low groan as his head fell into his hands. ‘Goddamn, but it’s hotter than a son of a bitch out there,’ he said.
Byron didn’t offer a response. He wasn’t looking to make friends. He didn’t plan on being around much longer than a few days. If, as he suspected, the prisoners were sent out on a daily work detail, he figured that the razor wire and fences wouldn’t be a factor. He could simply pick his moment and slip quietly away.
His bunk mate stood up again. He dug his thumbs into his lower back. He looked up towards Byron. ‘Not much of a talker, huh?’ he said.
Byron swung his legs over the side of his bunk and jumped down. Instinctively the man took a couple of steps back. Byron towered over him.
‘Didn’t mean anything by it,’ the man said. ‘Just making conversation.’
Byron stared at him, holding his gaze, not blinking. He was aware of other prisoners throwing sideways glances, curious to see how this encounter would turn out. The man took one more step back.
Assured that he had established his dominance, Byron reached out his hand. ‘John Davis.’
Tentatively the man shook it. ‘Clayton Rice, but everyone calls me Red.’
Byron dropped the man’s calloused hand without saying anything further.
‘So, what they get you for?’ Red said. ‘No, wait, let me guess. Speeding?’
Speeding, thought Byron. Speeding was a ticket. It didn’t involve the county jail. Not unless you racked up a bunch of tickets and didn’t pay them. ‘People are in here for speeding?’ he asked Red, curiosity getting the better of him.
Red smiled. ‘Speeding. Dropping litter. Spitting on the sidewalk. Round here they have what they call a policy of zero tolerance. If you’re not from here, of course. The locals can pretty much do as they please but that’s a whole other story.’
‘I wasn’t caught speeding,’ Byron said. ‘You?’
‘Found me hitching a ride on a freight train. That was enough for ’em. It was five thousand bucks or thirty days in County. I didn’t have no five grand but I do have all the time in the world. Least, I figured so at the time. That was six months ago,’ Red said.
Red’s answer begged an obvious next question. Byron didn’t get to ask it before Red offered up the explanation.
‘Bet you’re wondering how come thirty days became six months,’ he said.
Byron nodded.
Red tugged at the corner of his blanket, pulling it out from where it had been tucked under the mattress. ‘That there,’ Red said, holding up the edge of the blanket, ‘that’s a violation. Three violations is an extra week. Half of the time guys don’t know they’ve broken a rule until they’re standing in front of Castro.’
Out of the corner of his eye, Byron saw another inmate heading towards them. He was naked bar a towel wrapped around his waist. The route from his bunk to the showers wouldn’t have taken him that way so Byron knew it had to be a deliberate detour. The guy was big, close to Byron’s height and almost as heavy.
As he walked through the bunkhouse the other men e
ither made sure to get out of his way or suddenly took an intense interest in something else.
‘Well, I’d better get a shower before all the hot water’s gone,’ said Red, hurriedly reaching into his locker.
He was already too late. The big guy stepped in front of him as Red tried to step away from their bunk area. ‘You got those smokes for me?’ the big guy said to Red.
Red’s body language shifted. His shoulders dropped. So did his head. He couldn’t bring himself to look at the guy. ‘Kinda light this week, Franco,’ Red said.
‘That’s too bad,’ Franco said. He glanced across to Byron. ‘Bunk rent is two smokes a day.’
Byron’s body tensed. He stared at Franco. There was no blush of yellow. No smear of red. Franco was neither scared nor angry. He was simply conducting business and obviously didn’t perceive Byron as a newcomer who presented any threat to him or his bunk-rental scheme.
Although he didn’t plan on an extended stay, Byron didn’t take well to being shaken down. Not by a judge, and certainly not by a convict whose neck measurement was larger than his IQ.
At the same time, Byron had already seen a fellow prisoner sent to the hole for a minor show of dissent. He guessed that beating a fellow prisoner within an inch of his life would earn him a stint there too. He could handle solitary but it would almost certainly make escape more difficult.
There was something else. If he got into it with the cell-block bully, Byron wasn’t sure how it would go. He wasn’t worried about beating the man in front of him. But it would take an effort that could easily get out of control. Murder was murder, whether it happened on the outside or inside prison walls. And while he doubted the guards caught everything on the live camera feed, they wouldn’t miss him beating another inmate to death.
‘Two smokes?’ Byron said. ‘Not a problem.’
Franco’s expression suggested he’d been hoping for more of a reaction from the newcomer but also that part of him was relieved it had gone so easily. ‘Okay. Good,’ he said. ‘Now, Red, you got until tomorrow. You don’t have what you owe by then, well, you and me are going to have a problem.’
