Noble Warrior

by Alan Lawrence Sitomer

  They weren’t the only ones who could scheme, he figured.

  Unconscious on the floor, Night Train, in a pool of his own blood, spasmed. McCutcheon hadn’t wanted to hurt him. He didn’t want to hurt anybody on purpose. Not ever again. It went against his code. But seeing the guy not named Timmy get his head kicked in would have been like driving past a car accident with a pregnant lady trapped inside a burning vehicle, without stopping to help. He simply had to stop it.

  McCutcheon reflected on the fact that his entire identity now revolved around helping those who could not help themselves. It had become his life’s mission. This is why he knew that despite Stanzer’s words, he felt the colonel would never completely abandon him, no matter what happened with Puwolsky. McCutcheon wasn’t stupid enough to fully trust a man who could not be trusted. Yet he knew in his heart he could trust Stanzer.

  There was just no way, M.D. told himself, that Stanzer would simply forget about his prize young soldier and cut him loose. M.D. had done too much good work, proved himself too talented, shown too much of his deep value as an asset to the program. Sure, Stanzer may have been a salty prick at times, but the guy was loyal.

  McCutcheon felt confident that if push came to shove, and things went sideways with Puwolsky, he always could count on his colonel. Even if his colonel had led him to believe otherwise.

  “Don’t get too comfy, sugar pies,” Krewls said as two guards wearing rubber gloves to protect themselves from blood hoisted Night Train up, lifting him by his Smith and Wessons. “A few more minutes and then it’s off to your new home.”

  A few more minutes, M.D. thought, and the mission inside the mission would begin.

  “Strip!”

  McCutcheon yanked his shirt over his head, removed his shoes, and took off his pants. After stepping out of his underwear he waited for his next directive.

  “Bend and lift your sack.” The correctional officer’s direct, impersonal tone communicated two different messages at the same time. Message one: Do what I say and we will not have a problem. Message two: If you do not do what I say I will use force to resolve our problem.

  McCutcheon knew there was no point in fighting with the guards, so he complied and bent over. Entirely naked, his bare feet pressed against a cool floor, the officer probed M.D.’s rectum with a cold, gloved hand. At most state penitentiaries, a visual inspection was more than enough for inmates just entering lockup, but at the D.T. the guards always probed. Not for extra security but in order to flex their power. The D.T. operated on a “no negotiation” policy, which meant that if an officer was ever taken hostage in a riot situation, the institution would refuse to bargain with the prisoners in order to secure an officer’s release.

  No negotiation. One hundred percent of the time. All the guards who worked at Jentles knew this stood as an absolute. This meant that all of the guards who worked at Jentles also knew that each and every convict who crossed through their front gate might be the man who one day takes his life.

  Establishing an upper hand right from the very start became a psychological tool to help ensure compliance.

  As the guard searched McCutcheon’s anus for contraband that he knew didn’t exist, M.D. reminded himself once again that his greatest enemy from this point forward would be his own mind. The system would seek to dehumanize him, mentally break him down in order to get him to submit like a tamed animal to the will of their sick, deranged culture. No matter what, M.D. vowed to himself, I cannot let this happen. As an institution the D.T. turned men into beasts and beasts into savages.

  McCutcheon would determine who McCutcheon would become. No one else.

  “Spray.”

  M.D. straightened up tall, lifted his arms and the guard blasted him with a stream of delousing vapors.

  “Turn,” the guard ordered. M.D. did as instructed, spun, and closed his eyes. The second blast of disinfectant sent fumes into his nostrils that caused his eyes to water and his cheeks to burn, while leaving the taste of stale copper pennies in his mouth.

  “Dress.” The guard ripped his blue rubber gloves off of his hands and tossed them in the trash. Though the state employee felt no sympathy for McCutcheon, McCutcheon felt a moment of sympathy for the guard. This officer was a man whose career consisted of looking into the anal cavities of society’s lawbreakers. And he acted as such. His compassion for prisoners had vanished long ago. To M.D., an ass search felt personal; to the staff member, it was just another day at the office.

  Life had beaten him down.

  McCutcheon deposited the civilian clothing he’d worn to Jentles into a clear plastic bag, and then slipped on a pair of white boxers and a T-shirt that smelled of cheap soap and bleach. Next he put on a navy-blue prison jumpsuit with a thick orange stripe running across the shoulders, which sported a patch that said INMATE on the back. Though the black letters had no significant mass, McCutcheon could feel their weight. A pair of starched white socks, a pair of laceless orange slip-on shoes, and the ensemble was complete. Once Motor Mouth, Banger, and the guy not named Timmy had gone through their cavity search and re-clothing process, the four men were fingerprinted, photographed, given a bagged lunch, and returned to the intake room to await transport.

  None of them had eaten in hours. M.D. opened his sack. A sandwich, an apple, and a cookie. McCutcheon loved apples. Crisp, crunchy ones. But the mealy, soft ones that had no snap grossed him out.

  As soon as his finger made contact with the fruit’s skin, M.D. knew he wouldn’t be eating it. The squashy, red lump of bruised mush didn’t even deserve to be called an apple. M.D. tossed the inedible red oval back in the bag, fumbled past a cookie he knew he wouldn’t touch, and hoped the sandwich might offer some protein that would prove chewable.

  The cellophane wrapper described it as TURKEY ON WHITE, but after McCutcheon opened it up he thought a better description would be FATTY RUBBER ON FOAM. Not starving due to the raw almonds he’d smartly snacked on before departing, he closed the bag.

  “Want my cookie?”

  M.D. raised his eyes. The guy not named Timmy was holding out his dessert.

  “Keep it,” M.D. said. “And keep your spirits up, too. Gonna be rough on all of us in there. Remember, your spirit is your strength.”

  “Thanks,” the guy not named Timmy said. McCutcheon set his bag down on the chair next to him, figuring if he got too hungry later on he’d suck down the mustard package for energy.

  “It’s go time, sugar pies!”

  M.D. took a deep breath and centered himself. Though already harrowing, his journey into the penitentiary was just at its beginning.

  A white metal door with blots of orange rust peppering the frame screeched open, and McCutcheon crossed into the main detention area of the D.T. He’d expected the prison to smell bad, serve horrible food, and host rats, roaches, and lice. What he hadn’t expected was the noise. Prisons were hard, tough places built with hard, tough materials designed to lock away hard, tough people, and Jentles sounded exactly that way.

  Whenever architects constructed a home, a school, or a library, they took acoustics into consideration. Whenever architects designed a lockup facility, their aim was containment. No one cared about the way sound bounced off the walls; preventing society’s scum from escaping was all that ever mattered, and when it came to keeping the rabbits corralled, no facility in the nation owned a better record than the D.T.

  Not a single inmate had escaped from Jentles in the last fifty-five years, the longest current streak in America. Trying to break out was virtually impossible, and it had even become a running joke among the cons.

  Only two ways out of the D.T.: front-door parole or back-door parole. Front-door parole means you get your walking papers. Back-door parole means the morgue truck. Ain’t no third option.

  Rabbits, the slang word prisoners use to describe jailbreak artists, had no chance once they arrived at the D.T. “Aw, look at the lil’ bit of sweetness we got right here,” a shirtless, tatted-up prisoner yelped out
as a guard escorted the four new fish down the central corridor. “Hey, honey bunch, you got plans later tonight?”

  McCutcheon ignored the catcalls and kept his eyes straight ahead, one foot in front of the other, alert, focused, and present. Behind him Motor Mouth waved hello and gave shoutouts to old friends, while Banger, forced to take two small steps to every one the guard took due to his leg chains, dragged his feet. As for the guy not named Timmy, M.D. hoped he could keep his eyes in his head, his face expressionless, and his ears tuned out to all the chatter on the cell block.

  He couldn’t. McCutcheon glanced over his shoulder and his insides melted. He could feel the guy not named Timmy’s fear from fifteen feet away.

  As could every other man in the institution.

  “Yo Bug, give that one to me.”

  “I see me some dinner.”

  “Somebody gonna split that boy like a wishbone.”

  “Keep it moving, keep it moving,” the guard ordered to the guy not named Timmy. But it was too late. Not five minutes in and he’d already shown his cards. All those weeks of preparation that his father paid so much money for were down the drain.

  Convicted felons who’ve circulated through the penal system a few times knew that one of the worst things about entering a new facility was the cellmate lottery a prisoner faced upon arrival. Would your new cellie be a serial killer? An unpredictable psycho? A son-of-a-bitch suffering from some kind of untreated mental illness? Lockup saw all kinds. Self-mutilators who try to hurt themselves so that their physical pain drowned out their emotional devastation. Gassers who took shits in their own hands, and then smeared it across their own bodies or threw feces at the guards. Most feared, however, was the bull homosexual, the prison wolf on the prowl for fresh meat. Two grown men. One small cell. For the weak, things could get ugly fast.

  Of course, inmates didn’t come with warning labels stapled to their foreheads. Some had a short temper. Some loved pain. Some were just plain bad. Even an average size, average looking con, who appeared steady, calm, and rational could quickly turn out to be the most homicidal man on the cell block. The stress of incarceration ate psyches like termites ate wood, rapaciously and with no quarter. Everyone was damaged. Everyone was unpredictable. Everyone was a threat.

  None could be trusted. This was the first and last rule of survival for anyone who entered the Department of Corrections, and McCutcheon knew it well. To trust meant risking death.

  “This is you,” the guard said to M.D.

  Beyond the iron bars lay his new home, a six-foot by eight-foot cell with a steel sink, a steel toilet, two metal shelves, two metal bunks—one on top of the other—and one fellow prisoner, already inside lying on the bottom bed.

  The guard opened the cell’s door and M.D. stepped forward, unsure of what to expect. He imagined a snarl or some profanity. Maybe a whole bunch of rules about how and when he could use the toilet.

  Rules he might have to renegotiate with his fists.

  “Welcome. Been expectin’ you.”

  The cell door slammed behind McCutcheon and an involuntary shudder wormed up his spine. The sound of iron bars locking him into a cage felt more haunting than he ever expected.

  “Come on in. Make yourself comfortable. Plenty of space. Wanna cuppa coffee? Name’s Fixer.”

  He had hair the color of snow, a slender frame, and arms that flabbed even though he wasn’t overweight. Guy seemed seventy, at least.

  An old man? M.D. thought.

  Fixer held up two pieces of exposed wire from a snipped brown extension cord that had been plugged into an electrical socket at the back wall, and McCutcheon watched as his new cell mate dipped both ends of the shiny coil into a plastic bowl filled with water. By the time M.D. tossed his gear onto the top bunk, eyed the chipped paint on the ceiling, and spied the dismal spot where he’d now be brushing his teeth, tiny bubbles started to rise from the bottom of Fixer’s container.

  “They sell them hot pots in the commissary, but they don’t get hot enough for the water to boil,” Fixer said. “In a way, they’re kinda like my penis, supposed to do one thing but they don’t.” The old man reached for two packets of instant coffee and two cups. “Guy like me supposed to be able to get a stiff one, you know, raise the ol’ flagpole, but not anymore. Can you believe I ain’t been laid in forty-seven years? Hell, if I saw me a vagina right now, I’d have to trade that sucker in for something more practical, like a good pillow. You gotta a girl?”

  McCutcheon didn’t reply. Instead he stood in the middle of the cell, stretched out both of his arms, and extended his fingetips. Each brushed the opposing wall and M.D. realized that yes, he could indeed touch both sides of his new home at the same time.

  “Thing about them hot pots is, if you boil up some liquid that there could be used as a weapon. Throw it at a guard or an enemy or something. That’s why they sell hot pots that don’t get hot. Also why we gotta make ourselves these here stingers.” With the water furiously bubbling, Fixer reached for a paper cup. “You want sugar with your coffee?”

  “I don’t want coffee at all.”

  Fixer, about to pour a fresh cup of prison java for his new cell mate, froze, stung by McCutcheon’s ungrateful, blunt reply. To M.D. it seemed fairly obvious that a worn-out old timer who lacked muscles, speed, or strength did not own the skills to be any kind of threat to him.

  Then a second thought crossed McCutcheon’s mind as he watched the old guy remove the stinger’s wires from the boiling water.

  Or maybe he did?

  “Fine, you don’t want coffee, no problem. But I’m sure you wanna eat. You gotta be starved by now.”

  Fixer crossed to his shelf and pulled down a package of instant ramen noodles.

  “I’ll cook us somethin’ dandy.”

  “They gave me something to eat right here,” M.D. said, referring to the brown bag he brought with him.

  “Oh, you don’t want to eat S.O.S.”

  “S.O.S.?”

  “Same ol’ shit,” Fixer said. “They been serving that rubber turkey since 1952. Don’t even know why they call it turkey. At best, there’s kitten meat in there.”

  Fixer tore open the package of dry food and searched his shelf for another bowl.

  Ramen noodles? How many nights had I been forced to eat those with my sister, M.D. thought.

  After putting the noodles in a plastic bowl and pouring the unused hot water from the coffee over the top of them, Fixer crossed back to his shelf and sifted through some personal items. Though hungry, the smell of bland ramen noodles boiling in prison water that had been heated by the tips of exposed metal wires, didn’t exactly rev M.D.’s taste bud engines.

  BAM! With the heel of his shoe Fixer stamped down on a package of peanuts and twisted his foot side-to-side grounding the contents of the packet into smithereens. Once satisfied with his efforts, Fixer took another plastic bowl and two spoons down from his shelf and began moving around his small space like an actual chef: nimble, fluid, and in total command of his kitchen.

  Fixer mixed the seasoning packet from the ramen noodles together with a squeeze of mayonnaise and then dropped a few fat plops of Furnell’s Furiously Flamin’ Hot Sauce into his evolving concoction. After a dash of something M.D. couldn’t quite make out, Fixer added the package of smashed peanuts to the bottom of the bowl and began blending all the ingredients together with a ladle that he’d obviously stolen at some point from the penitentiary’s commissary.

  “This one of my specialties right here. I call it Prison Pussy Pad Thai.” Fixer smiled wide.

  M.D., unimpressed, didn’t return the grin.

  “And now, for the highlight.” McCutcheon’s new cell mate crossed back to his supply shelf and pulled down a small silver tin. “White chicken meat. On a special occasion like this, nothing but the best.”

  M.D. wrinkled his brow. “Why a special occasion?”

  “A new cellie of your stature? This is practically a holiday for me.”

  “What d
o you mean, ‘my stature’? How do you know about me?”

  Fixer gazed at the ceiling as if it were a blue sky in a sunny meadow. “Little hummingbirds. They flutter everywhere in here. You just need to know where to listen.”

  Fixer waved his hands magically across the sky and then shuffled to the sink. After draining some water from the ramen noodles into the toilet he opened the can of white chicken meat and combined everything from the two bowls into one.

  A surge of steam, spiced and flavorful, exploded from the hard plastic dish as the hot water and noodles hit the mashup of Fixer’s ingredients.

  “Mmm-mmm, you gonna love this.”

  An involuntary swallow of saliva swelled in McCutcheon’s throat. “Why would I love what I’m not going to eat?”

  “And why ain’t you eating?”

  “I don’t want to owe anyone for anything.”

  “How can you owe for what’s already been paid for?”

  M.D. squinched his eyes. “Paid for by who?”

  Fixer shook his head, turned, and reached into a basket under his bed. “So many questions. I guess for young people”—Fixer held up a shiny red apple—“a piece of fruit like this is so much more than just a piece of fruit. But for a geezer like me, with a penis that doesn’t know how to sing the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ anymore”—Fixer bit into the luscious red fruit and a spritz of juice sprayed from his mouth—“an apple is just a fuckin’ apple.”

  Fixer extended his hand. “Wanna bite?”

  McCutcheon stared at the offering. The apple looked crisp and sweet, but M.D. didn’t reach out to accept the gift. In prison, free did not exist, and owing debts was a sure recipe for problems down the road. Convicts had been shanked over as little as the nonrepayment of a candy bar. Best to keep to his own, M.D. thought. Stay focused on the mission.

  “I’m good.”

  “Toss me your mustard.”

  “What?”

  “Your mustard? From the S.O.S. It’s the only thing worth a shit in there, anyway.”