by Kieran Shea
Cellblock Thirteen was full of men who had made lives out of doing all those things decent folk would call "unspeakable." The lowest body count down here is twenty-seven, the number of children consumed by Father Steven Bird, prisoner number 00132-446. With the priest's sole exception, all of our numbers had doubled or even tripled since incarceration. It was the El Paso Post that called us "The Rogues Gallery of Sanchez Penitentiary," describing its residents as "culled from the very scum of the Earth." It didn't win them any Pulitzers, but one thing was clear to everyone except Officer Daniels—Cellblock Thirteen was not a place you wanted to go. We had killed for survival, love, money and fame, sometimes all of the above. But the really scary ones, the guys that keep convicted mass-murderers up sweating all alone in the dark, were those of us who needed no reason at all. It was fun.
"Why not?" was the ethos of Andrew "Psychoman" Ravage, prisoner number 05571-673. He was a patient of my father's until he stabbed him in the kneecap with a ballpoint pen and was transferred to Cellblock Thirteen. Father would never talk about him, but he was one of the Post's favorite villains. A quiet, unremarkable man who had worked as a custodian at several schools, he was the last person you would expect to have a three-digit body count. But Ravage had been killing with impunity all over Texas for over twenty years, for no discernible motive other than his own morbid amusement. He was finally caught when a teacher stumbled onto his cache of human trophies in the janitor's closet. When the authorities demanded to know why he would do such things, Ravage simply scratched his head and shrugged. "I didn't have anything else to do."
The papers branded him Psychoman and he was cast into the depths of Cellblock Thirteen, out of sight and out of mind, so that decent citizens might sleep easier. But he was still there. There we all were, trapped and brooding as the law strove to put a tourniquet on chaos.
About once a month Warden Burke would come down to rally the troops. The COs were told to always handle us with the utmost care and vigilance, not only for their own safety, but the safety of the community at large. It was their sworn duty to keep us in there, and the warden wanted them to take it as seriously as a heart attack every single day. Guards died in Cellblock Thirteen. Fine, they knew the risks. But if just one of us got out, people died. Innocent people. "That's on us," Warden Burke would growl. "We let them out, then everything thing they do is our fault, because we failed in our duty. And I'll be goddamned if I'm gonna lose any sleep because one of you fucked up."
These speeches always concluded with a cautionary tale; there were plenty to choose from in the ignominious history of Sanchez Penitentiary. One of my favorites (and I suppose it must have been the warden's as well, for he told it often) was the tragedy of Sergeant Coolidge, formerly the head guard on the cellblock.
Coolidge had a very corporal, hands-on approach to discipline. He was a fan of random acts of shame and violence, order through intimidation. The guards were in charge of this block, he declared—it was the prisoners who should fear them. To drive this point home, he would often toss a prisoner's cell and then deliver a savage beating upon the occupant regardless of what was found. I was one of Coolidge's favorite targets for these demonstrations, as I was not big, strong, or well-connected. I did my best to take my lumps in dignified silence, but there's really no dignity to be found when you're getting stomped by five men built like refrigerators.
Then one day Coolidge was either feeling lucky or stupid, because he decided at the last minute to raid Cell 4, Dok Phu, prisoner number 09766-883. Dok the Dragon was a skinny one-eyed Thai pirate who had been captured in the Louisiana swamplands. He was incarcerated at Dixon Correctional, where he left a pile of bodies before being transferred to Sanchez and condemned to Cellblock Thirteen. The rest of the inmates knew Dok was harder than Chinese algebra and not to be fucked with.
"Coolidge made a mistake," the warden would say, glaring at his troops through a fog of cigar smoke. "He assumed that because his prisoner was in his cell he was helpless. Then he opened that door and found out just how helpless he was." Not very. Coolidge didn't see Dok rush the bars, didn't see the bony hands reaching through until they grabbed the sides of his squarish head and squeezed. Then he saw that Dok's long thumbnails had been filed down to razor sharp points. For just a moment, he saw them plunge into his eyes. He screamed, and then he never saw anything again. Coolidge was on disability less than a month before he fed himself a load of buckshot.
"There are worse things than death, gentlemen" the warden would state ominously. "And these bastards in here know how to do all of them. Don't forget that. Not one of these prisoners is leaving Sanchez unless it's in a bodybag. If you're not careful, if you're cocky like Sergeant Coolidge was," emphasis on the was, "you'll be leaving the same way."
When the warden made his dramatic exit, I was always tempted to shout BOO! at the nearest guard, but I never thought it worth a kick in the teeth.
Once a day they took us for a walk in a concrete yard rimmed with barbed wire under the watchful eye of rooftop snipers. Ten unlucky guards would armor up and then painstakingly apply all the restraints necessary to remove us from our cells. I merited only an ordinary pair of handcuffs, but a big bruiser like Snake Jones got the full treatment: arm shackles and leg irons, even a metal collar attached to a long steel pole manned by two of the biggest guards. Only half of us still retained our outdoor privileges—the ones that could still be controlled, like Father Bird, who only wanted to be left alone to pray for God's forgiveness. Luther Grady had finally gotten his privileges back by turning ninety-five. He walked like a hunchback bent over his lightweight plastic cane, coughing wretchedly as he smoked the unfiltered Pall Malls smuggled to him by loyal young Klansmen serving time up above us. The guards ignored him almost entirely—he was a harmless, irrelevant old man and hardly worth incurring the wrath of the KKK. I would often walk with him, as it was the only time I was spared the pestering and ridicule of the guards, as I was the easiest and safest target available.
Ideology aside, we had a lot in common. I would talk shop with Luther as he shuffled around the perimeter. We compared notes on blasting caps, trigger mechanisms, and recipes for dynamite. His bombs were simple contraptions, but very effective. His knowledge of primers, timers, and old-fashioned tampers dwarfed my own, and he had forgotten more about booby-trapping than I would ever know. He had not only blown up his share of buildings, but had assassinated men with explosives concealed in clocks, coffee cans, doorknobs and even a Bible.
He was fascinated when I explained the properties and applications of explosive gels, and I must admit to being impressed by his ballpoint pen bomb. Luther couldn't comprehend the end of the Civil War, but he understood a bomb as a work of art, the meticulous layering of chemicals and mechanics to craft an explosion, the hateful poetry of war, verses that survived only in the traumas of the witness. We both knew the sweet agony of the seconds between pulling the trigger and witnessing the moment of ultimate conclusion, and the ecstasy of detonation. The brilliant flash and deafening thunder banging in your head just before the shockwave hits you in the chest like a jackboot, clouds of dust and shrapnel flying past you as a fireball of your own handmade fury wipes a place off the map. You feel like God getting a blowjob.
Our talks always stopped short of actual war stories. We shared the pains of having things literally blow up in our faces, but we were casualties of different wars, separated by miles of scar tissue. Luther continued to fight even though his side had lost a long time ago, while my fight would never end.
We were discussing our favorite methods of sabotage on that fateful day when there was a commotion at the weight bench. There were three workout junkies in our group—Dodge Hardin, Snake Jones, and Iceberg Rawlins. Hardin was known as the Last Gunfighter, notorious for killing seven Texas Rangers with a six-gun, but he wasn't quite as scary without a weapon in his hand. After a scuffle with Snake over the free-weights, a black-eyed Hardin had avoided the equipment.
Snake Jones w
as the biggest thug in Sanchez, a wall of muscle that stood just over six-and-a-half feet tall. He was ugly as sin, with skin like old leather stretched across his shaved box head and lantern jaw. A film of gray stubble covered his dome, which gave way to a brow that sloped over dark, deep-set eyes. Snake was meaner than Hitler and the best damn fighter I'd ever seen. He was in prison less than twenty minutes before he killed a guard with his bare hands.
In the illegal bareknuckle brawls the officers of Cellblock Five arranged for their inmates, he was unstoppable, soaking up punishment like a sponge until he unloaded all that hurt right back in the unlucky bastard's face, smashing and pounding like a rampaging beast. Crates of cigarettes and more than a few paychecks were won and lost over his fights, and soon the inmates had a hero, of sorts.
Snake Jones was the one man in Sanchez who never took shit from anybody—and soon, not only the guards, but Warden Burke began to worry about what would happen should they lose control of such a dangerous animal. So they drugged his food, trussed him up in five-point restraints and shipped him down to Cellblock Thirteen. Snake didn't have outside privileges his first year down here, because he crippled the first three guards that tried to take him out. Being walked in a metal dog collar had done nothing to improve his disposition. So when anybody asked Snake to move, it was a sure bet the answer was "Fuck off."
Maybe Iceberg didn't hear him. More likely, he didn't care. Iceberg Rawlins was a real Renaissance thug, a self-made crack kingpin from the streets of Houston. When he stood trial he was charged with trafficking in drugs, cars, weapons, women and murder. Iceberg believed in leading by example, and so put two hollow-points in the gut of a junkie that tried to roll one of his dealers. It was just tough luck that the junkie survived and, worse yet, had a badge. A dead cop, even a dirty one, was a heavy enough albatross to sink Iceberg to the bottom of Sanchez Penitentiary. Nobody cared if he used to be a somebody on the outside; in here he was just another inmate hustling dope. After he strangled a guard that tried to stiff him, the powers that be threw him to Cellblock Thirteen and forgot about him.
Ever since, Iceberg had delighted in asserting his dominance over me. He made a point of following my every misfortune, always racing to be the first to kick me when I was down, laughing with sadistic glee. There was no petty annoyance beneath him. Whenever the guards came in to clean the cells or feed us, Iceberg would engage them in long and repetitious debates about football, sitcoms, and rap music, tediously trying to bore me to death. If I tried to sleep or read he would just talk louder, whistle and sing songs he only half remembered, or worse, rap about what an ice-cool badass he was. Whenever there was a book in my hand, he slapped it to the ground. The guards even looked away in silent approval when he would throw me to the ground and deliver a few kidney punches, or maybe put me in a sleeper hold.
To him, I was just harmless entertainment. I was no one's favorite prisoner, but I was Iceberg's favorite joke. I suppose that day in the exercise yard he was determined to remind us all exactly who Iceberg Rawlins was—a stupid thug whose mouth was bigger than his brain.
Snake ignored him, like he does all who are smaller than him, but for whatever reason, Iceberg felt entitled to be first on the weight bench that day. He grabbed Snake's arm, or tried to, and told him he could spot him. The hulking brute shoved the little gangster aside and lifted the weight effortlessly with one hand and did a few arm curls.
"Spots are for girls and guys Luther's age," Snake said. "What's your excuse?"
Luther coughed a wheezy laugh as Iceberg squared off with Snake. "Ten packs says the big man kills him."
"No bet," I replied. That much was a foregone conclusion. None of the scenarios spinning through my head went well for the gangster, and I was intrigued to see just which nasty end he was about to meet. Just in case he was about to come to his senses, I gave Iceberg a little encouragement.
"You really gonna take that shit, Iceberg?" I hollered, loud enough for all to hear. "Big, bad gangster getting told by some redneck cracker? I thought you were hard, man. Guess I lost ten bucks."
Iceberg glared at Snake, his eyes narrowing into thin slits in his dark contorted face. He bolted toward the bench and howled with rage as he sprang off it and attacked Snake with the weight of his entire body. To my surprise, Snake actually reeled when Iceberg's shoulder connected with his chin. He took a few steps back and shook his head as Iceberg jumped up and tensed for another strike. The guards moved forward as if to intervene, but stopped as if they thought better of it. Perhaps they didn't want to miss this fight either. More likely they didn't want to get between Snake and his next victim.
The gangster spit at the giant. He declared that nobody told Iceberg Rawlins what to do. Snake just smiled and opened his arms wide.
"C'mon then, tough guy," he said. "Teach me a lesson."
Iceberg moved quickly, closing the distance between them and started raining punches on his opponent. Snake weathered it all with a contemptuous grin and didn't seem to be in any pain, even when Iceberg threw all his fury behind one last haymaker. He just rubbed his chin while Iceberg leaned on the bench, panting with effort.
"Is that it?" chuckled Snake. Iceberg lunged again, but this time Snake caught him by the wrist. "Now I know why they sent you down here, Snowflake." He gave the arm a hard twist downward and Iceberg wailed in agony as his carpals separated from his metacarpals with a series of pops and cracks. "It's because you hit like a ninety year old faggot."
Iceberg took another swing with his free arm, but the blow merely glanced off his shoulder. Snake yanked him close and slammed his forehead into the gangster's nose, shattering it with a wet crunch. Blood squirted from the sucking hole in the middle of his face as Snake swept his feet and elbowed him hard in the throat. Iceberg hit the bricks hard, bleeding and gurgling. Snake backed away and reflexively put his hands behind his head and started to assume the position.
The fight didn't even last a whole minute. Frankly, I was amazed Iceberg was still alive and more than a little disappointed the fun was over so soon. Before the guards could reach either combatant I saw one last opportunity to fan the flames.
"Damn, Iceberg," I hollered, "couldn't you even make it look like a fight?"
The guards shared a chuckle over that one while Iceberg fumed. Then Luther decided to join in the fun and add insult to injury. "He got fucked up worse than a nigger's checkbook." Then the guards laughed out loud and Iceberg lost it. He grabbed a thirty pound weight off the rack and hurled it at Snake. Guards dived out of the way as it flew straight for his face, but Snake reached out and plucked it from the air like it was no more than a metal Frisbee. As an enraged Iceberg made his final foolish charge, Snake backhanded him across the face with the weight and he flopped on the ground, his neck bent at a perfect ninety-degree angle. Two guards broke off for grave detail while the rest tasered Snake into submission.
"Damn, Isaac," Luther chuckled as we lined up to be shackled. "That's gotta be the most fun I had since they shipped me down here back in '87. You know I haven't killed anyone in almost twenty years?"
"Don't worry, Luther," I told him. "I doubt you've forgotten how. It's just like riding a bike."
Luther raised a wispy eyebrow and looked like he wanted to ask me something further, but once Snake was secured we were quickly separated and stuffed back in our cells. The less he knew the better. I wanted it to be a surprise for everyone.
There was an execution scheduled the next morning. After I fixed his TV, Daniels told me the word had finally come down to give Dok the Dragon the chair. Since Coolidge's widow had sued the state and the Thai government had declined to comment on his citizenship, the government had decided it would be prudent to go ahead and kill him. A decade had passed since they dusted off Old Sparky. A bunch of judges had ruled it cruel and unusual punishment, but they still made it available as an alternative to lethal injection. Believe it or not, there were still those who would rather ride the lightning than take a shot, and Dok was def
initely the former. I lay awake in my cell all night staring at the ceiling, giddy with anticipation like a five year old on Christmas morning.
They came for him at six in the morning, just like cops. Dok was getting a closed execution; only essential staff, the coroner, and Warden Burke would be present, just to insure he was killed properly in accordance with the law. I listened as four pairs of boots shuffled him out of his cell, past the checkpoint and up the stairs.
Only a matter of time now. I stretched, did a few pushups and paced my cell until I heard the muffled grunts and curses of a shift change. A fresh rotation of guards came in to take us for our morning stroll, with no clue what the day had in store for them. The gate eased open and shut on its electric track and guards took up positions outside our cells. Heavy locks clanged as they were turned by a jingling ring of keys passed up and down the block. Our steel doors swung open. We were ordered to turn around and back toward the bars so they could put us in restraints. I didn't move, just smiled back at Officer Bragg as he demanded to know if I wanted to go outside or not.
Oh, I was going outside all right, but I was done with restraint.
The lights flickered overhead as they sent Dok to Hell. As the sudden power surge coursed through the faulty circuit I had left in Daniels' TV, it shorted out. The spark ignited a capacitor I had packed with a homemade concoction I liked to call Bang Powder, and it lived up to the name. The small explosion kicked off a cascade failure in the checkpoint control systems. There was a loud bang from up the hall, the sizzle of sparks and the gasp of flames spreading. Then everything went dark. As the fire alarm clanged, the guards in the block began to yell at Daniels for a full lockdown as the bars popped open. If Daniels heard them, it was too late.
