After breakfast, as the compound cleared and we began our workday, two lieutenants strolled casually to the base of the water tower to see if they could convince Big Bird to come down and join the rest of us.
By lunchtime the Bird still had not flown. The Old Con, a prison archetype who had mysterious sources of information and knew everything that was happening not only in this prison but throughout the system, told us Big Bird sent word to the warden that he did not intend to jump. Groups of prisoners had been standing around the water tower heckling Big Bird and yelling at him to take off. But he had his radio (presumably the reception was good up there), he had some food, and he had his overcoat and his cap and a blanket or two, even though it was early September and the temperature was in the high eighties. He toid the lieutenants he was j ust there and come count time at four o’clock they could count him on the water tower. We wondered how that might sound when the count was called in to Washington: “One thousand eighty-one in their cells and one on the water tower.”
“He wants somethin’,” said the Old Con at lunch as we sat watching the distant aerie. “He ain’t up there for the view.”
The water tower stood behind the vocational training shops and looked over the rec yard and weight pile on one side and, on the other, the complex of buildings that made up UNICOR, the prison’s cable factory, printing plant, and warehouses where most of the prisoners worked. We walked to and from the factories, past the water tower, day in, day out without a second thought. Only today it was significant.
The workers labor for pennies per hour; the highest-paid make a dollar an hour. Still, with overtime, some of them earn two or three hundred doilars a month, which to the Colombian and other Third Worlders might be as much as they could make in a year in their homeland. They can send enough money to their wives each month to support a family of twelve and still have plenty left over for their allotment at the commissary. Upon arrest, these men flock to the factories. Some say when the wind is in the right direction you can stand on the beach in south Florida and hear the Colombians out there on the motherships calling: “A bottom bunk, a pair of Reeboks, and a job in UNICOR.”
UNICOR is the backbone of the system. Without the factories, which do government contract work and bring in untold millions each year, the system might buckle and collapse under the strain on taxpayers of having to clothe, feed, and amuse the tens of thousands of new prisoners, many of them foreigners, coming into the American gulag each year. But the bureaucrats in Washington know how to deal with social phenomena: They turn them into businesses. In the words of Chief Justice Warren Burger, let the prisons of America become “factories behind walls.” And it works. Men and women are coming to prison in droves, as though some well-kept secret about how good life is in here leaked out. Though shunned as slave labor by many long-term, old-school convicts and the wealthier criminals who come to prison to relax, there are long waiting lists for jobs in the UNICOR factories.
As usual, the Old Con was right; Big Bird wanted something. By three forty-five when the whistle blew to end the workday and the compound was cleared for the afternoon count, Big Bird had sent a list of his demands. The list consisted of one item: a job at UNICOR.
They’ll never go for it,” said.the Old Con out on the rec yard. From where we sat we could hear tunes from Big Bird’s radio carried on the evening breeze. He was still up there, like some brooding god pondering life from above the fray, his thick legs like logs dangling over the edge of the catwalk, his cap pulled down over his forehead, his arms folded across his barrel chest.
“His name’s been on the list for over a year,” Red said and lit another generic cigarette. “I guess he finally wised up to the fact that guys been comin’ in after him and gettin’ hired there an’ his name jus’ don’t seem to move up the list.”
“Damn, that’s pitiful.” The Old Con shook his bald, wrinkled head. “Imagine bein’ too crazy to work in UNICOR.”
“Well, they got a lotta tools down there,” Red said, his watery blue eyes watching Big Bird. “The Bird’s all right, but sometimes he gets his ass in an uproar for no reason. They’re probably worried he might club somebody over the head with one a them tools.”
“Whatever happens, I can tell ya one thing,” the Old Con said. He looked up at the Bird and stroked the gray stubble on his chin. “No way they gonna let him spend the night up there. Somethin’s gotta give. He may be a nut job, but I can guarantee ya, these people’ll come up with somethin’. They’ll have that turkey off the skyline by the nine o’clock count if they have to shoot him.”
Red chortled and waved a hand toward the gun towers looming at each corner of the prison, “Talk about a sitting duck!”
No one knew exactly what Big Bird was in prison for, but we knew he was from D.C. That meant he could be in for anything from petty theft and cashing bogus welfare checks to rape or murder. The D.C. prisoners were the most despised element in the system. New York blacks, blacks from Baltimore and Philadelphia, were quick to point out they “ain’t no D.C. nigger.” Most of them were wild young men who’d been doing time since they were kids. Many banded together for protection and because they knew each other from the streets of the capital and from doing time together in other prisons. Like all prison gangs — the Colombians, the Mexican and Italian mafias, the bikers, the racists, the Puerto Rican street kids — in numbers they might make you tense with anger and fear; but individually, if you could ever break through their studied personae, they could sometimes amaze you with the complexity and depth of their characters. Some of them knew so much about the dog-eat-dog world of the street and little else. They were daring and enterprising and recognized only the scruples of survival. They came to prison not because they were failures at crimes, but because in their contempt for the law they were not trying to get away with anything.
But Big Bird was a loner. Whenever we saw him bounding around the compound with that lunging stride of his, as though his feet were so big and heavy he had to heave with his whole body to move them, his arms flapping winglike at his sides, he was nearly always alone and carrying on a discussion with unseen companions. Whites avoided his wide-eyed gaze and cleared out of his way. His own homeboys teased him unmercifully and tried to provoke him. Big Bird would laugh at them with a booming guffaw that was scarier than any threats. He grinned at them with a mouthful of huge gleaming teeth that looked strong enough to chew off an arm.
Only once did we see him buddy up, and that was with a kid we called Dirt Man or the Janitor because he ate dirt, dust balls, pieces of trash, with the voraciousness of a billy goat. We knew that Dirt Man understood what he was doing wasn’t right because he would do it on the sly. His favorites were the old mop strings that got caught and broke off beneath the legs of the tables in the chow hall. We used to watch him when he stood in line for his chow but really he was on the lookout for mop strings. When he’d spot one you could see a little quiver of excitement go through him as he sized up the situation. He’d leave the line and sidle up to the table, then in a swift series of moves he’d catch the piece of mop string with the toe of his boot, drag it out, reach down and snag it, roll it into a ball, and nonchalantly pop it into his mouth.
Big Bird took Dirt Man under his wing. Dirt Man also wore a lot of heavy clothes even during the hottest weather. We would see them out in the rec yard playing chess, the Bird with his radio, Dirt Man snacking on dust between moves. For a while they even celled together. The Old Con said Dirt Man was the ideal cellmate because he would lick the floor clean and eat all the rubbish. But really he was a sad case and finally a couple of us grabbed the shrink, who was also wacky, and asked him how they could let a young man walk around here all day eating cigarette butts and mop strings. Soon Dirt Man disappeared, which was also sad because then Big Bird was alone again.
And now Big Bird was bivouacked alone on the water tower, nesting like some giant swallow. We all knew the Old Con was right, somehow or other they would get him down by nigh
tfall, even if they had to shoot him.
And sure enough, by morning Big Bird had flown. There was all sorts of speculation as to how they had enticed him to come down. But those of us who’ve been here a while knew only the Old Con would have rlie real story, and so we waited until he came shulfling into the chow hall for his morning coffee, sat down, and gazed out at the now curiously stark water tower.
“Well, ihey ncgoiiated a seirlcment,” said the Old Con, and he blew on his mug of steaming coltee. ‘LOl’ big bird, that fella’s got an appetite. He ate up all his food the fust twelve hours ol the sit-in. An1 sure ‘nough, come nine o’clock, the Bird was hungry. Lieutenant tol’ him if he’d come on down they’d send out and get hun any knida food he wanted, Bird wanted to know about the job in UNICOR. Lieutenant tol’ hint, ‘Don’t worry about dial job now, your name’s on the list.’ Well, Bird wasn’t goin’ (or that. I !e knows what list they got his name on. Still, the fella was hungry. He needed 10 eat. So finally he said he’d conic down if they promised to send out and gel him a Bit; Mac.”
“A Big Mac!” Red exclaimed in disbelief. “You’re serious? Tins idioi coulda asked tor anything he wanted an’ he tells ‘em to get bun a big Mac!”
“What can I tell ya?” the Old Con said. “That’s what ihe fella ordered, a Big Mac. He said if he couldn’t have Ins job in UNICOR, he’d settle for a Big Mac.”
Everyone at the lable was silent. We looked at the Old Con, who sat sipping his colfee and stroking his whiskers.
“Well?” said Red at last, bis curiosily getting, the betier ol him. “Did they get him a Big Mac?”
Now everyone was laughing.
“Well, Red, you know how thai goes, (live ‘em a Big Mac this week an’ next week you’ll have lellas up there demand in’ Kentucky fried Chicken. In no time the / talians’ll be up there savin’ they want Mama I .cone’s pizza. No, no Big Mac. I’ll tell ya what they did give him, though. They gave him a baloney an’ cheese sandwich when they come ‘n got his ass Iroin the hole this mornin’ an’ shipped him to that nut joini ihey got over there in North Carolina.”
1989, federal Correctional Institution Petersburg Petersburg, Virginia
Suicide!
Robert Kelsey
“Suicide on the gate!”
I yelled it loud as hell and gave the gate a rattle, but it didn’t really matter; the C.O. would come and open it whenever he was good and ready to. I’d just rung the dootbell, sort of. But the sound of my voice was buried in the din of sixth-floor noise bouncing off steel walls: tinny TV speakers blaring, guys shouting from cell to cell to day-room — “ Yo, homeboy” — “ Vaya, Chino” — “Hey, dude” — I took a seat on my square Tupperware bucket stuffed with blanket, pillow, book, writing paper, coffee, and cup, and — I jumped back up, realizing I was squishing — a package of Oreo cookies, I smiled when I thought of how it resembled a kid’s pajama party: Bring your own sleeping gear, the cookies, the horseplay. I was going over to the M.O. tier. The Mental Observation Unit. The nuts, the bugs, the loony-tunes. My post for the night as a Q.H.D.M.-S.P.A. Queens House of Detention for Men — Suicide Prevention Aide, “Suicide” for short. That’s what they all called me — “Suicide.”
“Yo, Kerry — give this to Big Chas,” Hunter, the guy in the cell next to mine, had said as he slipped a Penthouse mag in under the blanket in the bucket. His hand lingered in the folds of the blanket.
“Get outta my cookie stash, thief. I’ll have you thrown in jail!” I said and picked up the bucket, forcing him to retrieve his hand and laugh. The CO, came finally, unlocked the gate, and I stepped out into the gallery, where the noise became quadraphonkally balanced — A Side, B Side, C Side, D Side. Then I signed the sign-in sheet on the C.O.’s desk, indicating I had just left C Side to work the 10 P.M.-6 A.M. shift on B Side, and the C.O. led me to the B Side gate, M.O. land, where he opened it and I passed in. Clang.
I’d gotten up in the afternoon to wash my suit. I was the only guy on the whole floor who had a suit in his possession. It was a matching jacket and vest, with a pair of gray slacks I’d already had when my sister sent the jacket and vest from San Francisco. She’d found them in a thrift shop. It was like magic, the way they matched the pants. “You look like a fucking lawyer!” guys would say and laugh. They mostly went to court dressed in Guess jeans and high-dollar sneakers, a gold chain or two, except for the one or two guys who had relatives bring them a suit for court appearances — guys who were looking at fifteen or twenty-five to life. They got serious.
Washing the suit was an ordeal. I took it upstairs to the dorm and the big long utility sink there. I watched the water get darker and darker with the grunge of the many years of dirt embedded into the bars, the floor, the wire mesh, the elevator walls, the bus seats; everything that the suit touched on its journey of elevator-bullpen-bullpen-bullpen-courtroom.
I hung up the suit in my cell to dry on my clothesline: a ripped-off edge of sheet stretched from rear-wall vent to front bars. I had fashioned a coat hanger out of more sheet scrap and a rolled-up newspaper for the cross member, like one of the jailhouse veterans had shown me. The wet jacket and vest would hang heavy, bringing the clothesline low. It looked empty, like hollow company, the way it hung there. Somehow it reminded me of how I would feel the next day, wearing it, standing before a judge who would wrangle with the D.A. and my lawyer while the family — the family of the kid who ran in front of me and I killed while driving home drunk one night — jeered at my back. I never turned around.
I’d even ironed the pants because they dried pretty quick, and when I went up to the little barbershop room that looked down on the gallery, where they locked us in and let us iron, Fitzgerald was there, He was 15 Cell on the M.O. tier. He had killed his wife and was about to get sentenced after blowing trial — found guilty. He was ironing his pants too, but he didn’t have any jacket or tie or anything, just a nice shirt and a sweater his son had brought him. His son had testified against him. Fitzgerald looked like he was going to play golf — just a casual sweater and slacks, brown loafers, distinguished gray hair — whenever he went to court.
“Fold them like this, make sure the iron isn’t sticky, Kerry — doesn’t have anything burnt on it. These guys …” Fitz’s voice trailed off as he shook his head a little and showed me with his strong fireman’s hands how to iron: It was obvious I didn’t know how. “These guys don’t know how to care for anything.”
“Whadya think you’ll get, Fitz?” I asked him, trying to make conversation. He had to wait till I was done anyway — the C.O. wasn’t going to let us out one at a time.
“Fifteen-to-life, I guess — that’s what my lawyer, the D.A., everybody is sayin’.” He seemed disinterested in the topic, like it was about someone else, but he kept his eyes on the creases I was attempting. “Whadya think you’ll get?” Then he added, “Here,” reached out for the iron, and started fixing my botched ironing job.
“I don’t know, not a whole lot…” I knew the maximum I could get was five-to-fifteen. Seemed like nothing compared to what Fitz faced the following day. “Maybe a three-to-nine or somethin’. Not a whole !ot for a life.” It didn’t come out like I wanted it to, and I was worried how Fitz would take it.
“You didn’t mean to kill anyone; you were just drunk,” he told me as he ironed, not looking up. “Me, I shot my wife, and if I had it to do over again …I’d shoot her again.” His face skewed momentarily. When we were both done, Fitz walked to the front of the barbershop cage with his pants, crisp-edge and delicately folded over his outstretched arm, as I plucked mine from the board and held it the same way. He yelled for the CO, by his name, not shouting “see-oh” like all us young turkeys.
“Fuckin’ murderer!” It was said loud enough to be heard throughout the courtroom. I stood with my hands cuffed behind me, watching the judge who was emceeing “Let’s Make a Deal” with the D.A. and my attorney. My suit was still damp and felt cold and clingy, giving me the feeling of not being in my own body. I sw
itched my concentration to the line of dirty masking tape at my feet, where the bailiff had pointed, telling me where to stand. After a while, I let my eyes wander the courtroom walls, giant mahogany panels that swallowed up the low-toned voices of the players before me so that I couldn’t make out what they were saying, just horrific tidbits that branded that night: eyewitness, direction, headlights, excessive… Postponed, Resumed in six weeks. The bailiff opened the twelve-foot-high doors and I exited as I heard quiet sobbing. The handcuffs were removed and I was sent back up two flights of narrow stairs to the bullpens full of people I didn’t know. A young Colombian kid was miming out a robbery for some others, showing what had happened. Before I had left the sixth floor back at Q.H.D.M., Fay, an M.O. from the dorm upstairs, told me, “Don’t worry, Kerry, that suit is good luck.” I’d loaned it to him for one court appearance and he had snapped up an offer of two-to-six for bank robbery. He’d used a bicycle for a getaway vehicle for the first few rush-hour robberies, then switched to a car and got caught. His wife was furious. And I was dubious of his superstitious predictions. I felt like every kind of luck was passing me by, except bad.
My attorney, Tom, arrived huffing and puffing from the stairs. His suit fit snugly around his portly body and his tie was loosened. The C.O. stuck him in the Plexiglas booth adjoining the bullpen, then put me opposite him so we were separated inside by a Plexiglas dividing wall with round holes in it.
“How ya doin’, Kerry. I filed for the Rosario Hearing , , .” he began.
“Tom — what’s with the D.A.? You got any offer from him yet? Something to cop out to?” I was sick of bus rides and bullpens, and the family’s screams echoed in my head a little longer after each court appearance. This had been my third one. “I’ll take anything, I just want to get this over with …”
Doing Time Page 12
