You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish

by Jimmy A. Lerner

  I was starting to believe that this was just part of the punishment.

  * * *

  Every day at 9 A.M. the nonfish residents of the Fish Tank were let out of their cells for one hour. As soon as Bubblecop could crack open the cells, convicts would race out to grab the phones or a seat at one of the tables. Cards, checkers, chess sets, domino games, and paperback novels would miraculously materialize.

  Other inmates rushed through the now-opened double sliders to play basketball or handball or lift weights in the tiny fenced-in Fish Yard. When Kansas wasn't monopolizing the cell door, I watched all these privileged activities with a painful envy.

  More than anything, I wanted to get my hands on a book— any book. An abandoned storeroom on the lower tier had been converted to a library of sorts— four shelves of torn-up paperbacks, ancient National Geographic magazines.

  The nonfish loved the old National Geographics, flipping furiously through the photos in search of bare-breasted native women. Pages of particular cultural interest were ripped out and shoved down underwear. Once safely back in their cells, the convicts would no doubt peruse the swollen breasts to the accompaniment of hand organ music.

  The prison used the lower tier of the Fish Tank to temporarily house convicts that were being "reclassified," or simply because of overcrowding in other cellblocks or institutions. The nonfish residents included inmates awaiting formal disciplinary hearings for lapses in judgment ranging from theft and extortion to rape and mayhem. If convicted on the charges, they would be transferred to the "Shoe," a mangled but user-friendly acronym for the Security Housing Unit, or SHU. Most cops and convicts just called it the Hole.

  The J-Cats, the criminally insane transfers from the nuthouse prison, were being warehoused while the state legislature debated funding construction of additional facilities. Even the J-Cats got their one hour out.

  "Yogee! Check out the baby-fucker!" Kansas slid onto his tray to permit me a peek out the window.

  "What baby-fucker?" All I saw was a group of nonfish in blue state shirts playing cards or reading at the tables.

  "The fucking Chomo in the wheelchair, dawg. The librarian."

  Wheeling his way out of the book storeroom was a frail elderly con whom I had heard Bubblecop call Lester. Of course the inmates called him Lester the Molester.

  Kansas, my self-appointed Guide to Hell and historian of sordid prison trivia, was only too happy to enlighten me.

  Lester Rheems arrived here about twenty-five years ago with a child molester "jacket" (reputation). He had been tried and convicted of raping his son starting when the child was three years old and continuing until the boy was fourteen.

  Lester was immediately inducted into the Peckerwood Test Pilot Program. He was tossed off the upper tier of the Fish Tank without benefit of wings, and his spinal cord was shattered on the concrete below. Lester has been the Tank librarian ever since, supervising his collection of paperbacks from a wheelchair. Lester, like many Chomos in this prison, has a "private" cell— in his case, a handicapped-accessible eight-by-six "house." (Convicts call their little cages here houses. For many of them, especially the lifers, it is home.)

  As soon as a Chomo checks into the Fish Tank, every convict knows about it. The paperwork of Chomos hits the yard before they do, leaked by either the guards or the convict clerks in intake processing.

  Sometimes the prison will place the Chomos in protective custody, a segregated maximum security cellblock which also houses snitches, J-Cats who won't take their medications, some HIV-positive homosexual prostitutes, and, incredibly, the victims of rape and violence in prison. The P.C. unit is home to the fastest-growing segment of the inmate market— teenagers terrified of general population.

  Every few days the county jail vans pulled up to discharge a fresh load of fish. Kansas enjoyed watching the shower-and-disinfectant ritual through the window. He would also mentally catalog the clothes and sneakers that Skell either stole or bartered for.

  "Check it out, O.G. Here come some more youngsters. P.C. meat— scandalous!" Kansas sat down on the toilet to make room for me at the cell door window.

  It was a scene I had lived through just two weeks before: naked fish lined up for their showers, trying to step around the cesspools that bubbled out beneath the lower-tier cell doors. Among the latest batch were the protective custody candidates: children, some barely in their teens, trying to act nonchalant beneath the avalanche of shouts, hoots, and whistles cascading down on them from every cell.

  Kansas, who loved nothing more than screaming out the cell door, was uncharacteristically silent, assessing the baby fish with the hard eyes of a born extortionist.

  "Looks like I'll be selling a lot of life insurance in here, O.G." Kansas smacked his lips and favored me with a wolf's grin.

  "Term or whole, Kansas?"

  "Better shut your sideways hole, O.G. If these youngsters don't P.C. up like punk-ass bitches, they can pay, say, a carton of tailor-mades a month. That is, if they want somebody to keep the Chomos and J-Cats off 'em— y'unnerstan' what I'm sayin', O.G.? Fuck, dawg, you know they got mommies and daddies that will be sending money every week."

  "I thought a lot of these kids were here for killing Mom and Dad." Every now and then I enjoyed raining on Kansas's parade.

  Kansas adjusted his giant haunches on the steel toilet. A sad expression flickered across his face, and I didn't attribute it to any sudden sympathy for orphans.

  "O.G., I'm a righteous convict, y'unnerstan'? If the youngsters got no cash, then they can play lookout or even become soldiers for me. They P.C. up, they got nothin' comin'. P.C. in this joint is as bad as the Fish Tank or the fucking Hole— those dawgs sit in their fucking houses twenty-four-seven. Fuckers never see the light of day. Nevada Fucking Prisneyland, O.G.! Homos, snitches, Chomos, straight-up J-Cats, and children all P.C.'d up together, scandalous shit, dawg! Back in Kansas no stand-up con, no righteous dawg— not even the fucking snitches— would ever P.C. up, would never…"

  And on and on.

  In the Fish Tank the days curl like dying leaves.

  * * *

  Big Hungry was behind me as I carried my breakfast tray up the stairs. Kansas was already back in the house.

  "The banana be mines!" The Hunger simply reached up and snatched the banana off my tray.

  "KEEP MOVING! LOCK IT DOWN!" Bubblecop pointed the assault rifle right at me in case I was crazy enough to make an issue out of the stolen banana. The philosophy of most of the prison guards is that inmates should work out their internal disputes among themselves, but not in front of the cops.

  I turned away from the Hunger, continuing up the stairs to the catwalk. My tray felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, even without the banana. Big Hungry was dogging my steps like a hungry black bear.

  "Where yo daddy be now, O.G. punk-muthafucka? Ain't no Kansas to take yo back now— whatchu fittin' to do, O.G.? Goan busta grape?"

  "LOCK IT THE FUCK DOWN NOW!"

  I slammed the cell door shut on the Hunger's gold-tooth grin. Said nothing about it to Kansas. I was going to take care of Big Hungry myself. I had no idea how. I just knew it had to be done as sure as I had known way back in fifth grade that I had to stand up to the school yard bully, Gilbert, who had chosen me one horrible week as his object of torment.

  I took a beating that day from Gilbert, but he limped off minus two front teeth and an eye that would shine black and then blue for a week.

  And Gilbert never fucked with me again.

  As Kansas might have said: "It ain't about the banana, dawg."

  You understand what I'm saying?

  * * *

  There are no secrets in prison.

  An hour after the Great Banana Theft, Skell appeared outside our cell. As usual, he carried his favorite props to appear busy— a mop and a bucket, the faithful weapons of porters tasked with the endless assault against the steady stream of filthy toilet water spilling out from under the cell doors.

  Skell
hissed a few words out of the side of his mouth to Kansas while pretending to mop. Our cell was one of the blessed few with a properly working toilet and sink.

  A steel shank the size of a large bass slid across the cell floor, expertly drop-kicked by Skell. Kansas made it disappear inside his mattress.

  "This got nothin' to do with you, O.G.," Kansas warned before I could even register a protest. If the cops shook down our cell, we would both be charged with the shank. Prison policy is that any contraband or weapons found in a cell are considered to belong to both occupants.

  Unless or until one cellie or the other cops to ownership.

  "Great hiding place, Kansas. Gee, the police will never in a million years think to look inside a mattress. Why don't you just—"

  "O.G., why don't you just shut the fuck up! This ain't your business. I got me a little Christmas tree for self-defense is all."

  At the risk of sounding like a fish— again— I felt compelled to ask, "A Christmas tree?"

  "Check the window, O.G."

  I climbed down to play lookout. Magazine in hand, C.O. Strunk was reclining in his chair, smoking a tailor-made in the air-conditioned splendor of his office.

  "The coast is clear, Kansas."

  "The coast? What's up with that? We're fucking pirates or something? You're a trip, O.G."

  "It's just an expression."

  "Well, good lookin' out— this here's what we call a Christmas tree."

  The triangular shank's base and center had been filed into a series of jagged, serrated edges, tapering gradually into an ice-pick point. I flashed to the majestic Christmas tree in the Rockefeller Center of my youth. No comparison.

  Like a zealous salesman trained to stress product benefits, Kansas lovingly fondled the shank, proudly pointing out the killer applications. "See, normally when ya shove a shank deep into the gut, the motherfucker's gonna naturally try to pull it out. It's like a instinct, know what I'm sayin'? Unless the sorry-ass dawg is dead already or maybe trippin' real bad behind the pain. Now, with your Christmas tree, the punk-ass piece a shit pulls it out and big fucking chunks of intestine and stomach come out with it! It ain't nothin' nice, O.G. Fucking Skell makes 'em himself from the metal mop frames, know what I'm sayin'?"

  I felt sick. "Yeah, Kansas, Skell uses only the freshest and finest ingredients. I want it out of the house. The last thing I need is another weapons charge— you understand what I'm saying?"

  When Skell came by in the morning for the trays, Kansas gave him back the shank.

  "O.G. thinks he won't need it," Kansas told him.

  "That's righteous. Listen, you dawgs lookin' to buy yourselves a nice buzz? Your credit is good. I got some painkillers that are the fucking shit— some Vicodin. You interested, Kansas?"

  "Nah, Skell, I'm good. How 'bout you, O.G.? Didn't you say you used to have some kind of pill jones?"

  "No thanks. I quit."

  Like an irrepressible salesman trying to make quota, Skell tries again.

  "How 'bout some kick-ass pruno? A righteous drunk that won't even show up on a UA test."

  Kansas declines and Skell shows me his black hole of a smile.

  "No thanks, Skell. I quit that too."

  As my mother might have said: Better late than never.

  * * *

  They lied about the thirty-day stay in the Fish Tank. As soon as our thirty days were up, we were told that it could be another thirty days until we received job assignments in the main yard.

  The real reason was simple math and some institutional caution. The general-population cellblocks were already at double occupancy with two men sharing a cell designed for one. From long harsh experience the prison administration knew that attempting to stuff a third body into an eight-by-six cell could result in an outbreak of unpleasantness.

  The good news was that while still confined to the Fish Tank we would ascend to nonfish status with all "limited privileges." One hour out of our cells a day for tier time or yard exercise, although it would be in the small segregated Fish Tank yard. We could now have visits once a week. If we turned in a store slip on Monday, goodies from the prison commissary would be brought into the Tank on Friday.

  The actual intake processing period could have been easily completed in three days. On my second morning we were marched out through the Fish Tank gates and across the main yard to the infirmary. With five correctional officers looking on, civilian workers in white smocks took down our medical histories and drew blood to screen for AIDS, hepatitis, and other diseases common to the convict community. They stuck us in the back of our hands to see if we would test positive for tuberculosis when they checked us again in a couple of days.

  An obese young medical assistant in a filthy lab coat gave us a very short speech about the unavailability of medical, dental, and vision services. Not unlike my old HMO.

  "You got a toothache, too fucking bad! You should have thought about your teeth before you committed your crimes. If the tooth starts swelling up, getting infected, then send us a kite and we'll see about getting you some penicillin. Then we'll schedule you to see the dentist for an extraction. Just don't send us a kite whining about your fucking pain."

  "Kite" is the term here for the official-looking Inmate Request Form which we were told we must fill out to obtain a medical appointment.

  "Right now the average waiting time to get a pair of glasses is seventeen months. Any questions?"

  One of the Group W bench dawgs from two days before raised a skinny tattooed arm. "Seventeen months? That's outta line! The cops busted my glasses when they arrested me— I can't wait no seventeen months!"

  The fat medic displayed a smug little smile. "You should of thought about not committing your crime— send us a kite."

  "Send a kite" is another prison version of "You got nothing coming." A written Inmate Request Form is called a kite for reasons that are clear to anyone who has ever been advised to "go fly a fucking kite."

  The other big intake processing event was a highly supervised field trip to the laundry, located a few paces from the main chow hall. There we were finally relieved of the ignominious orange fish coveralls and issued blue jeans and blue cotton shirts. Naturally the laundry trustees had their own hustle. Pledge them stamps, tobacco, or coffee from your next store or be prepared to walk around in a blue circus tent. For a promise of three stamps I received a shirt and pants without holes. Two more stamps ensured they would actually fit me.

  Over the first thirty-day period some fish were shipped off to other prisons. Inmates with very short sentences and no history of escape attempts or violence were sent to minimum security conservation camps. If Nevada had a robust summer fire season, these inmates would be paid minimum wage to help fight fires. Convicts pray for devastating fires harder than farmers pray for rain.

  A few lucky serial drunk drivers were released after agreeing to pay three hundred bucks a month for a "house arrest" electronic monitoring ankle bracelet. It does not comfort me to know that these guys will probably have some beer money left over after paying for the surveillance. Some of my best friends, including my daughters, are periodic pedestrians.

  Kansas applauds letting the drunk drivers out. "They ain't true convicts, O.G. Won't stand up for shit, won't watch your back. They don't belong here." Kansas is very particular about who should be let into the sacred circle of Righteous Convicts. Drunks, J-Cats, youngsters, even gang-bangers dilute what Kansas considers to be the purity of the Stand-Up Convict gene pool.

  It is to laugh.

  * * *

  A sample of Kansas's humor.

  "Yogee, what do you call a woman with two black eyes?"

  "I don't know. What?"

  "Nothin', dawg! You done told the bitch twice already!"

  Kansas has just returned from the visiting room with a balloon of speed, aka crank, nestled somewhere in his digestive track. He squats on the toilet, squeezing and grunting like he's in labor.

  Now thirty-two years old, and despite ha
ving spent eight of his last eleven years locked up, Kansas nevertheless considers himself an authority on women.

  "A bitch gives me any static, O.G.— tries to dis me in any way— I just kick her to the fucking curb, y'unnerstan' what I'm sayin'?"

  I face the wall above my favorite upper tray. Keep my eyes fixed on the window— another dirt storm raging outside— not wanting to witness this bizarre birth of a balloon out of Kansas's butt. However, my ever-inquiring mind must know something.

  "Kansas, how the hell did your girlfriend slip you drugs in visiting?"