Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison

by T. J. Parsell

  I handed him two packs. "Here, I really appreciate it."

  "Nah, that's all right. I've got some."

  I thought he said he didn't have any cigarettes, but I was happy to have gotten some of them back. I opened the pack and lit one. He leaned back and watched me.

  "So who took them?"

  He waved his hand, dismissing me. "I don't snitch."

  "Snitch? I thought that only applied to the police."

  "You don't snitch, do you?"

  "No."

  "Good." He tapped the inside of his thigh with his thumb. "That's good."

  "It depends," I said quickly.

  "On what?"

  "Exactly," I said.

  He smiled, and so did I, but I don't think he was amused. He looked at me silently for a moment. At first, I wasn't sure the conversation was going where I thought it was. And then, I wasn't sure if he was testing me, or serious-but now I didn't like the look in his eye or the way his scars were frozen.

  "You'd snitch?"

  "Yeah," I said slowly. I knew that snitches were killed, but I was afraid that if I told him no, he would take that as an invitation to make the next move. So I was bluffing, and hoped that he was, too.

  He shook his head. "You'd actually snitch?"

  "Yeah." My hand started to shake.

  He tensed up like he was going to hit me.

  I looked at him, not knowing what to say. He was sitting on the side of the bed closest to the doorway. I tried to get up, but he moved forward, so I sat back down.

  "You know what happens to snitches, right?"

  I didn't answer at first. "I'm not a fag."

  "Who's talkin' about fags?"

  "Well then what are you talkin' about?"

  "I'm talkin' about snitchin'."

  "Well then, no. I'm not a snitch."

  "But you'd snitch if I took that?" He looked down at my ass.

  "You're damn right."

  He got up and walked out, stopping in front of my cell. "You know where I'm from, right?"

  I nodded.

  "Boy, if we were at Gladiator School right now-I would have snatched that pussy from your ass two days ago, you snitch ass bitch."

  22

  What's Under the Covers?

  "It's only been a handful of years since the race riots left Detroit smoldering," the reporter from Eyewitness News said. "But in this overwhelmingly white high school of 1200 kids, they've elected a black class president from among their only twelve black students."

  Everyone in the auditorium had applauded when Kevin Pregister told the student body, "Don't vote for me because I'm black-Vote for me because I'm the best man for the job."

  My parents still had a sign in the living room window that read: THIS FAMILY WILL NOT BE BUSSED.

  Kevin was from Inkster, the town next to ours, where they had extended the school district by two blocks.

  Yet for all our talk about unity, inside the lunchroom, everyone stuck to their place. The jocks were in one corner, the nerds in another. The popular crowd, the socialites, formed an orbit around the varsity teams, with the club kids straddling the middle-Chess, Science, and Math on one side and Drama and Yearbook on the other. The burnouts were out back, behind the school, sneaking a cigarette or smoking pot. There were a few floaters, kids like me, who didn't seem to fit anywhere else, but we had to be careful, or we'd get lumped with the losers and labeled asgeeks. The only exceptions were the couples, but then everyone mostly dated their own: The jocks with The Socks and The Nerds with The Turds.

  I tried to blend wherever I could, slipping from onegroup to another. I rode the bus with the burnouts and ate lunch with the clubs. It seemed my whole destiny would be determined by whatever group accepted me. Myguidance counselor said it didn't matter, which was easy for him to say, since his life was practically over to my thinking.

  If a kid sat where he didn't belong; or if someone tried to climb too high-he kids at the top were never shy about smacking him back into place.

  The bars closed with a clang, sending vibrations through my body. The ring in the pipes seemed to grow louder as the sounds of shouting slowly decreased. My senses were on high alert, which made it difficult to sleep. I couldn't stop thinking about Nate.

  He wasn't that tall, but he was solid and, worse, mean. His anger scared me more than anything else about him. He was like Red, only quieter and more intense. I hoped he believed me when I said I would snitch and that the threat of it would be enough to keep him from hurting me. I hadn't been there long enough to tell what the others might do to back him up.

  The next morning, the windows along the wall of the catwalk were open. I heard the screeching cries of a lunatic from outside. Every morning, I was told, for the past several years, a woman stood in front of the jail and yelled obscenities because her husband had been killed inside. Yet nobody knew why or how he died.

  "The Goon Squad got him," an inmate said, referring to a group of large deputies who were called whenever there was a disturbance. No one fucked with the Goon Squad.

  Whatever it was that actually killed him didn't matter. There was genuine agony in her voice. Perhaps she was just crazy. The accusations she hurled at the jail sounded as delusional as the stories that were sometimes told in there.

  Even in the early morning, with the windows open, it was hot inside my cell. My sheets were soaked, and beads of sweat trickled down my neck. I vaguely remembered waking in the middle of the night, but I wasn't sure. I was on the floor, and halfway to my feet, moving toward the front of the cell-like I'd been sleepwalking. I remembered screaming something, but maybe it was just a dream.

  After breakfast, Nate stopped in front of my cell. "Who's Slide Step?" he asked.

  "Huh?" I stared at him in disbelief.

  "You called out his name last night."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  He stared back and nodded. There seemed to be tire in his eyes, which surprised Inc. His eyes had been deadpan since I arrived.

  At breakfast earlier, Nate stood behind one of the white guys and asked, "Will you buck for your food?"

  "What?" he said. The expression on his face looked as dumbfounded as his voice.

  "You heard me. Will you buck for your food?"

  "Buck?"

  "Buck, motherfucker," said the loud mouth sitting next to him. "It means fight!"

  The white guy didn't answer at first, as if pondering a choice, his face turned red. It was one of the few times I ever noticed silence in the cellblock. Even the noise outside had disappeared. "Well, yeah," he said slowly, "if I had to."

  "OK," Nate said, and nodded.

  The white boy sat down.

  Without a word, or the slightest hint of emotion, Nate whacked him with his metal tray, knocking him off the bench. Blood trickled from the side of his car and mouth as he lay on the floor.

  Nate reached over, picked up the guy's food and calmly walked to the other table.

  "Yo!" the loud one said, covering his mouth with a fist. "That shit's fucked up." He laughed as he said it. "My man here, says, `Will you buck for your food?' and then BOP! Hits the motherfucker on the head."

  Two more blacks joined in laugher, giving each other high fives. "Hey Nate! That's fucked up!" They continued to laugh.

  The white boys were silent. There were four of us, in total.

  The guy picked himself up from the floor and slowly walked back to his cell.

  I started to notice how most inmates, when something bad happened, would either get excited, as if entertained by it, or-like the white guystook this glazed expression, as if the situation were hopeless. But Nate was different. He was above it all. He was unruffled by whatever went on.

  Now he was in front of my cell, with that glint in his eyes, but then it seemed to dissolve as quickly as it had appeared. "Do you know Shorty?" he asked.

  "Who?"

  "His real name's Cromwell. He's my cousin, supposed to be at Riverside."

  I shook
my head. I didn't know him.

  "Then I'll have to call my auntie," he said. "See what I can find out about you."

  My heart fell when he said this, and Nate seemed to catch it in my face.

  "Yeah," he said. "I'm gonna have to do sonic checking on you."

  He went back to his cell.

  I wasn't sure if he was bluffing or not, but he acted like he knew something. I wanted to take a shower, because it had been so hot, but there was no way I was going to take a chance leaving my cell. Not with the threat Nate had just made. Instead, I'd take a birdbath in my sink that evening, after they closed us into our cells.

  "Hey deputy," the white boy who had been knocked to the ground shouted, when the guards came back for the tray.

  "Man, what's you want, honky," Loud Mouth said to him from the table. He was playing cards with the others who had been laughing that morning. "Hey, Dep! Hey, Dep!" he said mocking the inmate. "Hey is for horses Motherfucker. You better carry your snitch ass self back to your cell."

  "Can I-Can I make a phone call?" the white guy asked.

  I stood in the doorway of my cell, as I watched an inmate in an orange jumpsuit grabbed the trays and then the deputy shut the door.

  "Can I make a phone call," Loud Mouth repeated. He slapped a card down on the table, before picking it up with the three others that were lying face up. "Go Big or Stay at Home!" he said, slamming down the Ace of Spades. "Trump, motherfucker!"

  For the second time that day, the white guy slinked off to his cell.

  I was hoping he'd snitch for me, and that Nate would be taken to the hole. But as I'd find out later, Nate and Loud Mouth were part of the same street gang, so even if the white guy had snitched and was moved to another cellblock, his life would be at risk by the other gang members. I went back inside nay cell and picked up The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer, which I had traded for a pack of cigarettes.

  I didn't know what I'd do if Nate asked me the sane thing. Will you Buck? You're damned if you answered yes and you're fucked if you said no. I could see where things were going, and I wondered if that's what I needed to do? Perhaps I could compromise and avoid being beaten up.

  It felt horrible not having Slide Step there to protect me. After my first day at Riverside, Slide Step's protection had been as steady as the drone of an electric fan, but now that it was silent-I was starting to sweat again.

  Nate was standing outside my open cell, staring at me. His right hand was resting just inside his waistband. He caught me looking, so I raised my book quickly until he walked away.

  Maybe I was getting nervous for nothing, but I was determined to protect myself from a repeat of what happened to me at Riverside. About two minutes later he came back and entered my cell. He came in, uninvited, and sat on the bed.

  All of the doors in the cellblock were opened at the same time. It wasn't possible to lock one, and open another. When the guards pulled the lever at the end of the block, they either all opened or were all closed at the same time.

  "What's up," I said, trying my best to sound calm.

  "You."

  I ignored him and tried to keep reading. Someone started past the cell but then stopped and retreated. I looked over at Nate. I wasn't sure, but he may have signaled them somehow, because the expression on his face changed suddenly. He looked at me with an embarrassed smile.

  I got up from the bed, but he propped his foot against the doorway blocking my exit. "What?" he said. "I'm just sitting here."

  "What do you want?"

  "Nothing." His tone was reassuring, but his face suggested otherwise. "I just want to kick it with you." He nodded toward the bed. "Sit down, I'm not going to let nothing happen."

  "That's all right," I said. "I'll stand."

  I could see he had a hard-on inside his pants, and he caught me looking at it.

  My throat felt dry, and my heart raced. My hands started to shake and my legs felt wobbly. I had flashbacks of Riverside, and I didn't want a repeat of what went on there. But it also felt hopeless, trying to resist.

  He pulled down his waistband and released his dick.

  For a split second, the sight of his dick excited me, but this was not sexand I didn't have a choice in the matter. I got down on my knees and took him inside my mouth, hoping it would be enough to keep him from raping me. But I could see quickly, he wasn't going to stop there.

  "C'mon," Nate said. "Let me fuck you."

  "No," I said. "I don't like it."

  "C'mon, I'll go real slow."

  "Just let one do this," I begged. At least sucking him oft didn't hurt physically.

  "I'm keeping these motherfuckers off of you, boy. So you've gots to give that up."

  "Please, Nate. I don't like it. I'll do this, but can't you just leave that alone?"

  He reached over and felt my ass.

  The others were on the far side of the cellblock, hanging out in the first cell or two, or playing cards at the front table. Nate said no one knew what was happening, but it didn't matter. "I run this," he said. "Now let me hit that ass."

  He smacked me on the head.

  It could have been meant as a playful tap, or maybe not. I wasn't sure. I was getting the impression that if I didn't go along with it, lie was going to take it anyway he liked.

  "OK," I said, "but promise you'll go easy."

  "Now that's what I'm talkin' about," he said. He pulled off his pants.

  He started fucking me and the smell in the air was unmistakable. Vaseline mixed with shit. There was no way the others wouldn't pick up on it and know what was happening. Nate had said he would keep it a secret, but suddenly someone was standing outside the cell. And lie didn't keep his other promise either. He was fucking me hard, and it was hurting badly.

  "Please Nate," I begged. "Go easy."

  He didn't. He just kept fucking me. I put my head down into the mattress and tried to block out what was happening, but the pain was too intense for me to leave the moment. I could see stars and shades of red and white and black. I clenched any jaw and stared into the darkness of my soul. I never should have sucked his dick. What was I thinking?

  Nate grabbed a clump of my hair and yanked my head back. Loud Mouth was standing in front of me with his pants down to his ankles.

  "No," I screamed.

  Nate slapped me hard in the face, and Loud Mouth laughed.

  He stuffed his cock in my mouth, while one of them said, "Shut up, bitch," but I couldn't tell which of them said it. I thought about biting off Loud Mouth's dick, but I was too frightened to tight back. There were a dozen others in the rest of the cellblock who might join in.

  "Parsell," a voice shouted from the end of the hall.

  Nate and Loud Mouth stopped when they heard the bolt of the cellblock door slide open. "Parsell," the deputy repeated, "Let's go! You've got an attorney visit."

  When Nate got off me, he had shit all over his lap, which made me glad. The fucker deserved it. I tugged at my pants that were under his feet. He scrambled to put on his own.

  "He'll be right there," Loud Mouth shouted. "He just got out of the shower."

  I wished I could've shit all over him as well. The smell was suffocating.

  "Hey," Nate whispered. "Don't you fuckin' snitch on us, bitch. 'Cause we'll get your ass," he said.

  "Isn't that what you just did?" I felt the rage boiling up from the bottom of my soul. "You ... You ... tuckin' nigger."

  Nate looked at me for a second, and laughed. "You fucking nigger," he mocked. "Go ahead, hitch, and snitch. Then I'll kill your motherfuckin' ass." He started toward me and I ran from the cell.

  He was part of a gang, and its members were spread out all over the jail, so I knew I couldn't snitch on him-not if I wanted to stay alive. I also knew I was wrong for calling him a nigger, but it was all I could think of that could possibly hurt him. I wanted to hit him with the only thing I knew I could hit him with. And that's what he was to me. A big, black ass, motherfuckin' nigger, and if I had a gun-I would
have killed him.

  23

  Help Ain't Gonna Come Runnin'

  No Time Soon

  Mom said that in 1953, when she first went down to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to be with Dad in the army, there were separate bathrooms for blacks. 'I'd never seen nothin' like it," she said. "Your dad showed me separate drinking fountains and how they weren't allowed to eat in certain restaurants. No COLOREDS, the signs read, or WHITES ONLY. I just thought that was wrong. Now everybody knows there's a difference between blacks and nitgers."

  Grandpa O'Rourke, who'd come for Sunday dinner, said, 'I ain't got nothin' against 'em. I just don't want to live with 'em, that's all."

  Mom said, "Well, I know plenty of white people that are niggers, too."

  Were it not for Slide Step, it would have been easy for me to lump all black prisoners in together, but Slide Step was different. And I knew that if he had been at the County Jail, he would have killed them both.

  The deputy walked ahead briskly, without looking back. He pointed only once in the direction we were headed, as we entered a series of long corridors. There was an odd stillness in the hall-a quietness that seldom entered in the cellblocks-except when the deputies first pulled back the bolt on the heavy steel door.

  The tinkling of keys, dangling from his belt, lingered in my ear, along with the thud of his heavy footsteps. I struggled to keep up. I felt dizzy, out of breath and ready to hurl. The fluorescent lights overhead gave off a halo as we passed under each one. A guard at the end of a hall flung his keys to the deputy who was escorting me.

  The metallic jangling and clink-clank-rumble of tumblers turning opened the door with a loud screech. I winced at the sound. My senses were beyond overload. It was all I could do to grab hold of something to focus on. Yet, no matter what came to mind, I couldn't drown out the harsh sights and sounds around me.