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

by T. J. Parsell

  "How're you doing?" Sharon asked. Her voice was kind, and there were tears in her eyes. "You look awful."

  "I'm all right," I lied.

  "What the hell was that all about?" Sharon asked. "I thought you were supposed to get two and half years?"

  "That's what I thought." I was too embarrassed to tell her what happened with the probation officer, and she probably wouldn't have believed me either.

  "Where's that other attorney? The one who told you to plead guilty?"

  "He couldn't make it. So the public defender sent this one." My handcuffs clinked as I motioned toward the courtroom.

  "That's a crock of shit," she said.

  Up the hallway, outside the heavy doors that led to the courtroom, was a high-backed wooden bench. A man in a suit talked softly to a family waiting to go inside.

  "How're you?" I asked Dad. As usual he was starring off into space.

  "Huh?" His blue eyes were clear but glistening with tears. "I need a cigarette," he said.

  "I'm gonna go down and wait on that lawyer," Sharon said. She walked toward the people sitting on the bench.

  It was the first time I'd noticed how short they both were. Though Dad was slightly taller than Sharon, neither of them came up past my chin.

  "So what does this mean?" he asked.

  "It means I have four and half years."

  "Jesus Christ!" He almost shouted.

  The deputies glanced up from across the hall.

  "With good time, IT be out in three."

  "Jesus Chrr-rist." He repeated, giving Christ an extra syllable.

  He seemed more upset than I was, and I felt like I needed to comfort him.

  "I'll get through it, Dad."

  He kept looking at me, but the glaze returned to his eyes-that far off look that told me he'd disappeared into himself again. I was sorry I'd hurt him.

  I didn't have to worry about Sharon. For all my complaints about her growing up, she was as tough and mean as any of those judges. She paced the courtroom doors, waiting to see that attorney. I remembered the third grade nun, that took a belt to her son, and then Sharon went up and took her own belt off and used it on the benevolent sister. She had that same look in her eye, now, and she did back then.

  "She don't take shit from nobody," her son Bobby would say. But even with all her might, she wasn't strong enough to take me home and out of this mess I'd gotten myself into.

  As the sheriff deputies led me away, I heard Sharon attack the lawyer.

  "What the hell was that all about? He was supposed to only get two and half years!"

  The lawyer spoke in a hushed tone, so I couldn't hear what he said, but then Sharon screamed; "Now that's a crock of shit! I know what he said, God damn it. I was there!"

  Later that day, Dad came back to visit me at the county jail. He was alone and looked as forlorn as he did earlier, yet he did his best to hide it behind a smile. His black hair was slicked back, like he'd worn it in the fifties, though his sideburns were shorter and starting to gray. He never was much for showing emotion, especially if he wasn't drinking.

  "Where's Sharon?" I asked.

  "She's at home."

  We stared at each other uncomfortably, neither of us knowing what to say.

  "Well, tell her I said thanks for going after that lawyer for me."

  Dad nodded. "There wasn't much she could do. That lawyer said the judge could give you whatever he wanted, since armed robbery carries up to life."

  I didn't want to think about it anymore.

  "Still not drinking?" I asked.

  "Nope." He shook his head with a half smile, but there was lack of pride in it. "Quit last year."

  My brother Rick said he had stopped right after I got into trouble, though we doubted that had anything to do with it.

  "Just got tired ofit," Dad said. "And anyway, Sharon's pretty happy about it."

  "I'm sure she is," I said, dryly. Sharon had a long history of battling alcoholism, but not her own. Both her parents died from it, and her first husband had been a drunk. We she first started dating my dad, she worked in a hospital for alcoholics as a nurse's aide.

  Dad knew how I felt about Sharon, almost from the beginning. Dad also had a stepmother who hated him. It was amazing to me that he'd allow the same situation to happen between his wife and his kids that Grandpa let happen to him.

  But at least Sharon stuck up for me that day, and even if it hadn't done any good-she had tried. I wished she were there with Dad so I could thank her. It meant a lot to me.

  Dad went on to tell me that Rick and my stepbrother Bobby were now getting into trouble together. Bobby was seventeen and Sharon's oldest boy.

  "A detective came around wanting to talk to Bobby," he said.

  "What about?"

  "Well, he and the other one got mixed up in a robbery," Dad said.

  We had to be careful about what we said because the sheriff deputies sometimes monitored the speaker boxes we were forced to yell through.

  "Do they know about the `other one'?" I asked.

  Dad shook his head. We were talking about my brother Rick.

  "The police want Bobby to come down and do a line up."

  From what Dad was saying, I was able to piece together that Rick and Bobby had robbed an old couple, in their trailer, who'd advertised the sale of a diamond ring in Trading Times magazine.

  "So, whoever did this," Dad said. "Tied the couple up, using a bunch of duct tape and then took everything in sight that was valuable."

  "How'd they find out about Bobby?"

  "Some kid in the neighborhood got caught with a gun that came from the robbery," Dad said. He paused. "The other one told Bobby not to sell it to anyone, but he didn't listen. So when the kid got caught with it, he ratted on Bobby."

  "Who was it?"

  "I don't know," Dad said. "But the other one's taking care of it."

  I nodded.

  "You goddamn kids." He shook his head. "It's always something."

  If he only knew this side of it, I thought.

  "Your face looks good. Prison must be agreeing with you."

  "Fuck you," I said.

  We both smiled. Ricky probably put him up to saying that.

  "Will they be able to identify Bobby?"

  "I don't know," Dad said. "But the old man was a retired cop."

  "Uh-oh."

  "Exactly," Dad said. Whenever something happens to a cop, somebody goes to jail.

  So did this mean Bobby was on his way to prison? And Rick was behind it, no doubt. He wasted no time in finding another fall guy. I thought about how I'd been following Rick my whole life. And now he was working with Bobby, who might be headed to jail. I wondered what it'd be like for Bobby if he came here. He was tougher than me, but he was also smaller. Though by penitentiary standards, he wasn't that pretty-it wouldn't make much difference if they decided to rape him. I wished I could talk to him, and help him avoid what happened to me.

  "Sharon's pretty upset about it," Dad said.

  "I'm sure she is. It must've come as quite a shock that her precious little angel would be involved in something like this."

  Dad didn't say anything. He knew she thought her kids were special, and that Ricky and I were the bad ones. "She blames Rick for a lot of things," Dad said.

  "It's not like I needed his help in getting here, I did that on my own." There were other things we'd done together that could've sent me there a lot sooner.

  I thought about those times, when as a kid, I sat in the visiting rooms of juvenile detention centers and listened to Ricky's stories about what went on there. And how Dad jumped in, to tell us what it was like back when he and Uncle Ronnie were there. It seemed like those were the only times he and Rick ever really talked.

  I looked up and saw that Dad had zoned out again. Physically, he was still there, on the other side of the glass, but his sad blue eyes told the real story. Through the small steel frame in the concrete wall, I saw my dad's sorrowhis own lost childhood;
his longing and abandonment by his mother; his father's absence; and a stepmother who cared more about her own childrenand looked upon him and his brothers and sisters as nothing more than a nuisance. I could see the heartbreak of my mom's betrayal and now the slow,' steady downfall of each of his children. He checked out, because his life was too painful, and each time he tried to check back in again-he wasn't strong enough to bear it. I connected with his pain and longing for something better.

  "Time's up," the deputy said.

  Dad nodded and reached in his shirt pocket, where he kept his cigarettes and lighter. "I need a smoke," he said.

  "OK, Pop. Thanks for coming."

  "I'll try to get up to see you as soon as I can."

  "OK, Pop. Thanks again, for coming."

  "All right, then." He said. He backed away from the window, but kept looking at me. The sadness disappeared behind his smile. "I'll see you, then."

  Later that night, not long after I'd fallen asleep; I awoke suddenly from a nightmare. I was sweating heavily, and it took a few minutes for my breathing to settle. It was another flashback of my rape at Riverside.

  In the dream, I was on the bottom bunk in Chet's dorm, with the blankets draped on each side of the bed. But this time, when Chet finished raping me, it wasn't Red who pulled the blanket back to go next-it was my brother, Rick.

  The dream rattled me for several hours, not knowing what it meant. Rick had never molested me, nor had we ever had sex, so why would I picture him in that dream?

  I lay awake for a long time, thinking about how I had always worshipped him. The wool blanket I rested my head on was damp with perspiration. I remembered how he looked at me, that last night before I'd gone to prison, as we made the trip downtown in his van to buy me a hooker. He knew what I was facing; yet lie didn't want to scare me.

  I thought about the trouble he and Bobby had gotten into together and how Dad said he wouldn't get caught unless Bobby told on him, which we knew he Wouldn't do-so that meant Rick was probably safe. Everyone seemed to be going to jail but Rick. It was a trick he must've learned after going there so many times himself.

  When Rick had come to visit a few weeks earlier, he lied to me twice. He said he didn't have any money, and then told inc about his new truck. Then he said his phone got disconnected, but lie didn't mention the new number that was turned on under his wife's name. And now lie was taking Bobby down.

  It's not as if Rick was responsible for my going to prison. Between the hotel thing and the robbery of the Photo Mat, I blame myself. But there were other crimes we'd pulled that he could have left me out of. When someone had stolen something they wanted to sell, Rick was the guy who could fence it. But he often lied about how much lie got for these goods and would later brag about how he ripped people off. He could never just keep it to himself. He thought it was funny-and he had to brag about it. Like that time he went through the jewelry we'd stolen from a house, and he threw a diamond ring in the garbage-said it was worthless cubic zirconium. Only after I'd left, did he picked it out of the trash and hock it for nearly $1,500.

  That was a lot of money, especially if I'd thought about it in terms of Zoo Zoos and Wham Whams and cigarettes and shampoo and whatever else I could get from the inmate commissary. I could have lived on that money for a couple of years. But now he couldn't even send me ten bucks or allow me to call him collect.

  Truth be told, my fantasies had as much to do with my being incarcerated as anything else. Ever since I was a boy, sitting in visiting rooms of juvenile youth homes and later on in the prison waiting room, listening to his stories about what went on inside-I wondered what it was like. Would I live the same adventures that Rick seemed to lead? Could I make everyone laugh about it the same way? And later on, when he talked about the punks and the sissies, it was the first place where I knew they existed. Now that I was inside, it was nothing like I'd imagined. I was stuck here for another three years.

  I grabbed the scratchy blanket I'd been using as a pillow and curled up with it, sideways, on my bed. A cockroach scampered across the floor-pausing at the base of the metal toilet. A silhouette of bars crisscrossed the walls. So who was it that had really fucked me-Chet, Red, or my brother Rick?

  25

  When All Else Fails ...

  Mom had promised me that I was not getting a shot. She knew how much I hated them, because last time, it took several nurses to hold me down. So when the receptionist pointed us to He-ma-tology, I was hoping to meet Batman and Robin or maybe Superman, yet all I saw when we arrived there was a row of vampires.

  In 1965, the nurses drew blood by way of a tube that was attached to a mouthpiece. The air pressure from their tongue provided the suction.

  "Don't even look at them," Mom said, handing the paperwork to the nurse. But Igrew suspicious when they called my name.

  "What for?" I said. "You're notgoing to give me a shot."

  "You'll just feel a tiny pinch," she said. And with that, I bolted down the hall.

  Mom screamed after me as I ran through a set of double doors and out into the parking lot where the rain coming down in pelts. I was nearly soaked by the time I reached our car. And so was Mom, by the time she caught up to me.

  "Timothy James Parsell! You unlock this door right now." Mom had her hands on her hips, which I knew meant she was serious.

  "No," I shouted. "You promised." When she tried her key in the door, I started to cry, putting all my weight on the lock. No matter what-I was notgetting a shot.

  The next morning, I was taken down to the bullpens for transfer to Jackson Prison. Now that I had been sentenced, I'd have to go through Quarantine and Classification again, though I hoped it wouldn't take as long as the first time. I couldn't wait to get out the county jail. I'd felt liked I'd been fucked multiple times since I got there, and they couldn't move me out soon enough. The first time was when Nate and Loud Mouth raped me. And the second time was with that fat fuck of a probation officer. But the final blow came from the judge, when he vacated my plea agreement and gave me almost twice as much time than I thought I was getting.

  The deputy who'd escorted us down, walked with a swagger that seemed to express his boredom. His hair was sticking up in the hack, like he'd been sleeping with his head resting against the wall.

  I was taken to the same bullpen as when I first arrived. It was beginning to feel all too familiar. The four identical cells, on the opposite wall, were dark and empty. At 5:00 in the morning, the reception area wasn't completely quiet, but it was probably as close to peaceful as it ever got. I sat on the bench and stared at the floor. My state shoes looked dull and needed a shine. No matter what these fuckheads did to me, I was not going to lose my sense of good appearance and pride.

  The inmates to my side had been talking a few minutes before I realized what they were saying. "You can just have him come over here," one of then said.

  I looked up, and he was squeezing his crotch and nodding toward the toilet. The guy next to him was Loud Mouth-the con from upstairs who had raped me.

  "Square Business," he said. "He sucked my dick while Nate fucked him in the ass."

  Two more approached so that four of them were now standing in front of me.

  "Hey white boy," one of them said. "Why don't you come with us."

  "Yeah," another said, who was standing by the toilet. "Come give us some face."

  A variety of things passed through my mind, but terror and rage were the dominant factors. "I ain't laying like that," I said.

  Just then, Loud Mouth walked up and slapped me, and the others laughed.

  "Hey!" I blurted out, and I bolted toward the front of the cell. I was not going to let it happen to me again! One of them grabbed my arm, and I screamed, "Deputy!"

  He let go and the other inmates scattered.

  They waited a moment for the deputy to appear, and when he didn't, they came at me again. "Come here, you little bitch. You know you want it."

  I called out to a deputy who was standing in front
of the cell next to ours, but he walked away.

  A moment passed, and one of the inmates came toward me again.

  "Deputy!" I screamed. The inmate backed off.

  "We'll get your ass, you little faggot."

  A couple of them laughed.

  I stayed by the door, calling out to a deputy whenever one passed by the cell. But none of the deputies would stop or listen. The inmates hesitated for a minute or two longer and then moved in on me again. The electric motor to the door suddenly kicked in, and the bars lurched open. I sprang from the cell.

  "Where are you going?" a deputy yelled.

  "I ain't going back in there," I said.

  "Oh you're not, huh?" He reached for me, and I skirted around him, breaking for the other side. He chased after me, while two others cut me off and tried to tackle me.

  "Those fuckers are trying to rape me," I screamed. I broke loose and ran to the other side of the control booth. One of them grabbed my shirt and ripped it. Two more rushed me, and I was pinned to the floor.

  "You're going back in that cell," the first deputy said.

  "No I'm not," I shouted.

  They picked me up and carried me to the bullpen, but I grabbed the bars to one of the empty cells. "I'll sue you motherfuckers! I'm not going back there!" With both hands I clenched hold of the bars. They lifted my legs off the floor while the others tried to wrench my hands free.

  The inmates laughed from the other side.

  One of the deputies elbowed me in the face, and my nose started to bleed. They dropped my feet, and one of them pushed me back against the bars.

  "Just stop it," he yelled at me. The other deputies let go.