The Dirt Chronicles

by Kristyn Dunnion

“When you don’t communicate it’s really difficult to know what if anything is going on in your head, Edward.” Her consonants were stinging face slaps.

  I sat for another minute or two in silence. Those words burned the pit of my stomach. They were everywhere. And none of them were mine. Papers spilled off my lap, off the desk. They piled up on the floor around my feet.

  She opened her office door. I turned my head and could read the large poster that made her office stand out from all the others in this hallway: “You can’t pimp this ride: Say no to gangs.” It was a picture of a black hearse with a shiny casket sticking out the back.

  “This session is over. Good luck, Edward.”

  That blonde would love to see me now, not even a year later, snorting H with a macho gang leader, locked in the Don, framed for murder. On the street, gangbangers die young; in jail it’s the opposite. Here, you need buddies if you want to get through each day. Leroy tells me what’s what: don’t reach past a man’s food tray, don’t let no one eat off your plate, no cutting in line, don’t drum your fingers on the table. Watch where you’re going, don’t ever fucking bump into a man. Politics. Then there’s the shower room, yard time, chores. If you want to use the goddamn pay phone, even, you got to be somebody or know somebody. I still fuck up, being hyper, being new. Sometimes Leroy smoothes it over for me. Sometimes I get a hauling.

  Leroy signals one of his boys down the hall—he wants more dirt. He knows all fifty guys on the range, knows the corner man real good, and he’s the one who runs shit. He knows folks on the other ranges, too. Little foil packages make their way, pocket to hand, cell to cell, all the way down to us. Even some of the bulls are in on it. Leroy been keeping me up for days now, says I don’t owe. Not yet. He’s pretty much bringing me in, but I stall.

  “You got yourself a better offer?” he asked the other day, eyebrow up.

  “Naw. Just, I’m not from here. I get it, but I never had that kind of thing, right? Colours.”

  “They not just colours, Eddie. They brothas.”

  And that made me think on all those other “brothers” I had, houses full of them, boys who hate the new kid, hate the whole world, boys looking to fight, boys looking to fuck. Always watching your back and still never seeing it coming. Thinking you got a buddy but instead you just get messed again. I got real weak, thinking on all that.

  Now Leroy’s chopping the powder on top of a hard cover Don Jail library book with the crisp edge of his lawyer’s card. He’s teaching me the trade proper, and also all about the In-Justice system. Way better than a GED diploma.

  “Eddie,” he says. “Remand mean you here now ’til you good and done with the judge, ’til you either sentenced or you set free, charges dropped. But they courts behind schedule, so we stuck waitin’. Sometimes months just sitting here, not even convicted of nothing. You feel me?” He makes two stubby lines on the book. “Judge give you two years or less, you likely finish it out here. You get more than two years, they probably send you to the Feds. Plus they shorten your time on account of this hole being fucked. One day in the Don equals three regular jail days, feel me?”

  Leroy snorts the first line and inhales deeply a few times, shaking his head. “Or like, if that dead kid was special, maybe he got rich parents? Court might bump you up a bit, time-wise. Speaking of bump, here you go.”

  I snuffle the other line. It blazes up my sinus cavity and hits the back of my throat. I sniff, rub my nose, and swallow the chemical drip. I feel the rush immediately.

  “Probably, though, you here for the long haul,” he says.

  That depresses the hell right out of me.

  “See, if they gots the murder weapon, if they gots evidence, then that’s something. Or an eyeball, a witness, what seen the deed. But if all they gots is bitches hypothisaying shit, then that don’t mean fuck-all.”

  I nod. It makes sense. Mostly, it just makes me feel better.

  “That’s what you need this fag suit for. He may be homo, but he good in court. This fagmother hate the pigs. I say you call him. We work it out after, what the bill cost, feel me? You pull some jobs, work my crew, you be out even sooner than you know.” He taps the book cover with the card again.

  I slump back on my mattress and let the drugs course through. The lights and noise dim; it’s like a giant spider spins a downy web and I’m tucked safely inside. Lately it’s harder to remember Ray-Ray unless I’m high. He comes to me quick on the H; I can hear him, I can smell his skin and feel the tickly ends of his hair brush against my face when we kiss.

  Leroy mutters something. He does another line or two and eventually swings up onto his own mattress above. The springs creak and pop as he settles. Then there’s just the now-familiar lump of his body in the saggy bed, inches above me.

  I think back to the night of the party again, to the moment of seeing that cop, the King, coming right at me through the crowd. Being tall is good and bad. Good, cuz I see far; bad, cuz everyone sees me too. I remember my head swinging around, scanning exits, checking the cops making their way through the joint, kids oblivious: Oreo DJing, Ferret dancing at the edge of the crowd. Ferret! She saw me, before it all went fuzzy. Maybe that’s important, I think, maybe she saw something. And then I drift right off to that lush land of dreams.

  My turn. I spread. They pat me down all over. I’m clean. There’s at least ten of us down here, but only six places for visitors. The guy ahead of me gets a nod. He walks down the last bit of hallway toward the metal doors at the end. I follow him, but the bull puts his arm up right in front of me.

  “Wait.” He chews gum and smirks at me, his hairy arm like a toll bridge right in front of my neck, his beefy hand planted on the wall beside me.

  “No way, man,” I say. You only get forty minutes for a visit and this asshole took his own sweet time to bring me down. It’s half wasted already.

  “Afraid so. There’s always tomorrow.” He checks his flip chart and laughs. “Oh yeah, this is your second visit this week. No tomorrow for you.”

  “It’s my first. First ever, since I been in here.”

  “Nope. Your little friend came Monday—guess you didn’t hear your name. Still counts as a visit.” He shrugs and taps the edge of the clipboard with his pen.

  “Fuck.” I clench and unclench my fists.

  There’s a sharp whistle from the line behind me. One of Leroy’s friends. The screw looks up. He frowns. He swears, too. Leroy’s buddy shakes his fingers, some signal I haven’t learned yet, and nods at me. I nod back.

  My screw yells at the bull down by the metal doors. That bull grabs the collar of the man ahead of me, just going through to the visiting room. Brother gets yanked back. I’m pushed forward.

  “Your lucky day, punk,” says my screw.

  I look in his eyes and see so much. Surprise, anger, a little fear. Colours do mean something around here, it never fails.

  “Exactly,” I say. And I strut past the other growling brother.

  The visiting room is painted puke yellow, the first colour I’ve seen in days, other than our orange coveralls. I get pointed to the last empty chair. There’s a bullet-proof glass in the middle that separates the inmates from the visitors. On the other side there’s women with their kids, there’s a whole family, a couple lawyers. And Ray-Ray.

  I sit down and stare through the glass. It’s pretty smeary, so that fucks with being able to see him proper. He picks up a phone and holds it to the side of his head. It’s on a short wire, so he has to lean close to the cubicle wall. His mouth moves, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. Like that dream, I think. He waves his phone in the air and points to my side of the table.

  “Shit.”

  I pick up the phone on my side and there it is, the tinny echo, the click of some screw listening, and the small sound of Ray-Ray’s breath.

  “H-hi, Eddie.” He blinks. He smiles, but he’s unsettled. He jumps at every blast of the intercom. He looks nervously at the other inmates and their visitors, at the bulls paci
ng back and forth behind me.

  “Hey.” I slide my chair as close as I can. I hunch over my side of the table, closer to the glass. His eyelids roll down part way. His nostrils flare. He looks away.

  I push back in my chair and clear my throat. I stink.

  “It’s sh-sh-sure loud.” He smiles sadly.

  “You get used to it.” Actually, I was thinking how it’s way quieter than on the range where we’re locked in our cells all day.

  “I thought w-w-we’d b-be alone.”

  “Oh.” I swallow. I stare at his hands, his long fingers, slender wrists, and bare forearms. I can taste the salt from his skin, right at the base of his throat, if I try hard enough.

  “M-miss you.” He looks miserable.

  I nod. I bite my lip hard against the rush of emotion that burns my throat, threatening to escape and out me in front of the other men. I bury my face in my hands and press down on my eyelids. I can’t. Not here. I feel eyes on me, eyes of the dude sitting to my right.

  “Eddie?” He leans as close as he can.

  His voice whispers from the speaker part of the phone. Like it’s a million miles away. I spread my fingers wide and stare at him through the slats; I memorize his face. The small freckle beside his top lip. The pale skin stretched under his eyes, light purple, the tiny folds in his delicate eyelids, the long thick lashes brushing his cheek. The white fuzz that covers his skin. It hurts to not be able to feel the soft fluff of it and then to tease him. My little man peach.

  My breath stops up in my chest.

  “Eddie.”

  I drop one hand to the table top and hold the phone proper. I clear my throat.

  “They say you killed Digit. Shot him.”

  I snort. “With what? How’d I shoot someone without a gun?”

  “I know you d-didn’t.” He looks hurt.

  “So?” I hear the hardness in my voice.

  “S-s-so it looks bad.” He coughs. “Th-they’re saying he owed you money.”

  I suck my teeth. “He ain’t owed me. Even if, I don’t pack.”

  “The-they say you grabbed a cop gun, right off the man.”

  “I’m no killer.” Like I have to defend myself to him.

  “I’m j-just s-s-saying, is all.” Ray-Ray folds into himself a bit.

  “Who’s this ‘they’? Our friends? Who’s saying shit about me?” I grip the edge of the table. I’m shouting.

  Screw smacks the edge of my table with his stick.

  “Sorry, sir.” I exhale. I get my shit together and he walks away.

  “In the p-p-paper. The n-news. Say you were f-f-fucked up on d-dust and f-f-freaked out, like.” Ray-Ray is shrinking away from me; he looks tiny in that plastic chair.

  My eyes burn. Me, in the paper? My knuckles turn white. I’m still gripping the table top. There’s a balloon inside me, getting bigger, straining to pop my chest wide open. The thud of blood rushing through my temples is all I hear.

  “Did I?” My voice squeaks. All those typed words fly at me, piles of social-work papers filled with long words I don’t understand. Am I a murderer too?

  “No! I m-mean, I don’t think so. Y-you were messed up b-but—” Ray-Ray’s eyes shift one way, then the next. “It’s just, it d-d-don’t look so g-good, Eddie. And you know, the k-k-King. He’s hard.”

  My mouth runs dry.

  Ray-Ray won’t look at me. He lowers the phone.

  “What’s that fat fuck doing? Huh? What he doing?” I sound like Leroy.

  Ray-Ray’s head stays down. I look at his part; it goes straight most of the way to the centre of his head, just a small detour where the hair grows up in circular pattern. A tiny cyclone of white. His hair is greasy, I notice, hanging limply from the scalp. I see one splat of a tear on his side of the table.

  Shit.

  He lifts the receiver again. “The k-King is the one t-t-talking. Said it was his g-gun.”

  No shit, I think. And the picture starts to fall into place for me. I think about Leroy’s lawyer. About owing favours.

  “Listen, Ray-Ray. I think I got some help in here, but I don’t know how long it’ll take. You know, to straighten all this out. I don’t want to be worrying about you, too.”

  All this time I been feeling sorry for me, but I never thought how it could be on Ray-Ray. He’s soft. He couldn’t do a day inside, and maybe he can’t do it out in the city on his own, either.

  “I hate that you’re alone. How’s Big Fat Rat Cat? I miss our place.”

  Ray-Ray looks up, his eyes rimmed red. He sniffs loudly. “I ain’t there, Eddie. I d-d-didn’t have r-rent. Your b-boss called to say you’re f-f-fired, and the landlady k-kicked me out. F-f-fat Ratty’s gone. I lost him c-c-crossing t-town.” He inhales sharply, a terrible sound squeezing from his throat.

  My stomach cramps hard and tight. No job, no place, no stuff even? Big Fat Rat Catcher—gone? All the air rushes out of me, all of it gone at once.

  When I can talk, I say, “Where you staying? Shit, Ray-Ray.”

  He shrugs again. Now I notice the small things; pale bruises at the top of his forearms, where the sleeves of his Iron Maiden shirt end. The grimy white parts. The almost golden colour of his skin. It looks good on him, but it’s the sick coming up. He probably smells different, not that I’d notice, given the company I been keeping.

  “You hustling?”

  He nods, miserably.

  “Ray-Ray, listen to me, man.” I swallow hard, to keep the bile down where it belongs. “You get out of this town. Go home. Go to my ma’s, go wherever. Stay with Old Red if my ma’s too fucked. You listening? You got to get out of here.”

  I can hardly see him now, through the red flaring in my brain, through the water in my eyes. “Get out of town. I’ll come find you soon as I can.”

  The intercom blasts louder, longer. Bulls hit the tables, yelling at all us sad sacks to get up, up, line up, back to the wing, chaos breaking out all over with chairs scraping back and last-minute goodbyes getting louder across the room.

  Ferret!

  “Hey,” I’m yelling loud enough to be heard. “Find Ferret!” Screw grabs my shoulder, yanks me out of the chair in front of Ray-Ray’s surprised face. I’m still holding the phone. “She’s my eyeball. My witness.”

  Ray-Ray shakes his head. “She’s g-gone, Eddie.”

  The guard grabs the phone from me and hangs it up.

  Ray-Ray’s mouth drops open, like some terrible thought has just occurred to him. “What?” I yell, through the glass partition.

  But I’m dragged into line with a thump on the shoulder blade, I’m shoved along with the others, and Ray-Ray’s white hair, his tiny pale self grows smaller in my side vision until I duck past the metal door frame, and he disappears completely.

  That night I pace the cell until Leroy yells at me. “Chill, motherfuck.”

  I punch the air a few times, kick the cement wall beside the urinal.

  “Eddie. You got to settle yourself. A man needs quiet in here. You got to respect that.”

  I need out of this shit hole is what I think. Need to get out where I can breathe and think and fix things, but that is not going to happen. I feel the weight of this place, the metal and concrete and the stink of it, the hate of it, the constant watching and listening, and it tears me right up inside.

  Leroy passes me two tablets.

  I pop them in my mouth. I don’t even ask what they are.

  “Talk,” he says, his big arms crossed.

  “I want your suit.”

  Leroy smiles wide. “Good choice, Eddie.” He chuckles and the low rumble of that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “That mean you ready to play?”

  I nod, but don’t even look when I hear the zipper on his jumpsuit come all the way down, and the sound of the fabric as it drops in a pile to the cement floor.

  Piggy Goes to Market

  “How’re we supposed to get any money for you? State you’re in.” An old hard-faced woman barks at me. She holds a ba
sin in her wrinkly hands. When she leans forward, I hear the sloosh, sloosh of water. She sets the basin on the cement floor.

  We’re in a cellar. There are no windows. Three lit bulbs hang from sockets around the room. Cobwebs waft from rafters. The floor and walls are cold. There’s a staircase, narrow and mean, that goes upstairs. On the other side is a metal door, which I now know is bolted from the outside. I have no idea what time of day it is, not even what day it might be.

  The Factory birthday party, the last day of my real life, was so long ago.

  The woman wrings out a puffy sponge, and the falling water sounds like skin ripping. Her hands are old, big-knuckled. Like they’ve wrung out a lot of hot cloths, wiped up a lot of mess over the years. The loose skin under her arms shakes when she cleans me. The yellowed pit of her arm shows through the faded housedress she’s wearing. It stinks a sharp, sour warmth into my face when she moves closer to remove my scraps of clothes.

  I can’t talk, not that I want to. My jaw is popped; my mouth hangs open, and saliva pools and spills in long trails, down to my lap. Sometimes it goes on her cloth, her arm. She wipes it away, annoyed. She soaps and rinses me, but the parts she touches don’t belong to me anymore. She pushes my head back and I start to choke on my own spit. I can’t swallow or spit, can’t get my lips to work. My mouth feels broken. Ugly sounds choke out until she finally sets me back right. Even she’s disgusted.

  “You must-a seen something. Done something. You’re not like the others, not one bit.” She stands over me, hands on her wide hips, head cocked to one side. Then she shuffles over to the stairs and heaves herself onto the bottom step. “Earl? What the hell am I s’posed to do with this sack a shit? You leaving her down here or what?”

  There are bellows from above, thunder. Like Elvis but louder.

  My leg shakes. I whimper. Hot piss runs down my thighs.

  She shuffles back and sees my new mess. “Now look what you done.”

  She carries the basin to the centre of the room where there’s a drain. She dumps the dirty water down and then refills it from the tap of an old sink. It takes the woman a long time and lots of fresh basins to clean me, but she keeps trucking over to dump out the old, pour in the new. As much as she tries, she can’t get the stink of his body, his bad breath, off me. It’s inside my head permanently: his animal scent, that boozy sweat, his piss-stinking uniform.