You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish

by Jimmy A. Lerner

I take the mini-14 and M-16 as distinct cues and rush to the Fish Tank doors. We wait on our front porches for Bubblecop to open the doors. Kansas, invigorated from bench-pressing four-hundred-plus pounds for an hour, pulls the slider open.

  "Fucking toads got us locked down, O.G. But ain't no big thing, dawg. Ain't no real hard time in this punk-ass prison. Fuck, today's like a day on the beach, you know what I'm sayin'?"

  "LOCK IT DOWN!"

  Eighty steel doors slam shut at the same time.

  Thwunk!!!

  It does not sound like beach music.

  * * *

  I think I may not be conveying the softer, artistic side of some of the woods here. My neighbor, Big Bear, for example, writes poetry. Otherwise he has impeccable wood credentials: unemployed short-order cook, needle tracks on his arms hidden by tattoos, three domestic battery convictions, and five teeth.

  A pounding on the cell wall. Bear's signal to go stand by the vent for an urgent communication. Kansas doesn't stir, so I get down and put my ear to the vent.

  "Yo, Kansas! O.G.!"

  "What's up, Bear?"

  "That you, O.G.?"

  "All day, Bear— what's up?"

  "Wanna hear my poem?"

  "Sure."

  "Aiight— hold on, I'm getting it."

  This time Big Bear is back in prison for rape. A rapist is a scandalous jacket to have in the joint, but the woods here make allowances for Bear because the victim was his ex-wife. The Conventional Wood Wisdom is that "the bitch had it coming."

  Bear bangs on the wall with his percussion instruments— a coffee cup and spork— and begins rapping:

  "Big-titted blond bitch

  A slut and a tease

  So I took her out to dinner

  She called me a fucking sleaze.

  Bitch drank down high-price wine

  Sucking glass after glass

  'Til I dragged her to my house

  Rammed my cock up her ass."

  Kansas is now sitting up on his tray. Bear pounds out a bizarre, atavistic bass line with the cup and spork.

  "When she started to scream

  I stuffed a rag in her hole,

  Whispered in her ear— 'Bitch,

  here comes a foot-long pole.'

  I fucked her all night

  Did exactly as I pleased.

  In the morning I untied her,

  Whispered, 'Now who's the fucking sleaze.' "

  Kansas loves it! Pounds on the wall. "Right on, dawg! That's the shit, bro!"

  "Yogee, whatchu think?"

  I think Big Bear has some serious issues. I try to think of something to say.

  "Well, Bear… it has a certain rhythmic jauntiness… it's unique."

  "You neek? That's good?"

  "Ah, unique can be good."

  "Aiight then— thanks, O.G."

  "Always glad to lend an ear, Bear."

  I remember now. It was Sartre who said "Hell is other people."

  * * *

  The Shit Jumps Off early in the morning of day 59. It starts off just as Kansas is announcing he needs "to drop a dookie." Before he can get over to the toilet, gunfire erupts somewhere in the main yard.

  His dookie drop momentarily stalled, Kansas leaps up on my tray and tries to hog my window view. Far away, a crowd of tiny figures in state blue are battling in front of the chow hall.

  More shotgun and rifle blasts from the guntowers, and now there are tiny blue and red figures sprawling in the dirt. Dozens of convicts are racing across the yard dodging bullets and birdshot, trying to make it back to the relative safety of their cellblocks.

  Our toilet suddenly comes alive bubbling and gurgling. There is a giant sucking sound as the water in the bowl just vanishes. The sink hisses and groans.

  The cops have shut off all the water.

  We're both in our underwear, crouched on knees on the upper tray. Our domes clang together as we contest the window view.

  "Fuck! It's on, O.G. It's coming down, dawg!" Kansas is thrilled. This is the happiest I have seen him.

  "What's on, Kansas? You forget to pay the water bill this month?"

  "That's a good one, O.G. Very fucking funny. Let's see if you're still cracking sideways when the cops got you all strained up. Yo! Check it out! Here come the motherfucking Dirt!"

  "Who the hell is that?"

  "That's the Dirt, dawg— Disciplinary Intervention and Response Team, and they ain't nothin' nice."

  Marching across the yard is a phalanx of black-clad storm troopers, their visored helmets, shields, and shotguns glistening magnificently in the desert sun. If the shotguns don't kill you first, the glare from their spit-shined jackboots could blind a dawg.

  Strange, fragmentary visions flood my mind, their source either tales from my great-grandmother Goldie or that great underground stream of collective racial subconsciousness. Storefront windows in Berlin shattering like crystal in the night. Farther downstream the screams of shtetl mothers and children as the riders approach for pogrom season.

  "O.G.! Quit your tripping— more Dirt coming to the Fish Tank!"

  Another black phalanx is marching to the Fish Tank gates. Every third cop has a crazed German shepherd straining against a short leash.

  I've always been more of a cat person than a dog person, if you understand what I'm saying, so the arrival of these rabid-looking creatures is less than comforting to me.

  "Yo, Kansas, where the fuck do they find these guys— and who dresses them? Hermann Göring?"

  "Don't be dissin' Göring, dawg. I know everything about that dude and he was one righteous motherfucker. Hell, the Dirt here ain't shit. Buncha C.O. punk-ass wanna-be police, but too fucking dumb to pass the cop exam. They volunteer for this shit so they can dress up like Johnny Fucking Cash and get to carry guns. Motherfucking punks trying to act like they're about somethin'. In Kansas the Dirt there would have already dropped tear gas canisters in the vents and we'd be puking out our oatmeal."

  Maybe the Dirt here ain't shit, but Kansas is frantically tearing apart his mattress, tossing all kinds of contraband on the floor.

  "Watch my back, O.G."

  My old military training kicks in. In 1975 I played lookout for the M.P.s' for some army buddies who were vigorously defending democracy in a brothel of a small (but ungrateful) Central American dictatorship.

  I'm at the forward observer position before the cell door window, my glasses fogging from the heat. Kansas is still removing his verboten treasures from deep within the mattress. Downstairs the double doors hiss open, and the Dirt and the dogs pour through into the Fish Tank.

  The barbarians have breached the gates, and Kansas is leisurely studying his contraband. He flips open a Hustler magazine. Hustler is banned in prison, considered too raunchy, I guess. Playboy is permitted, though, probably due to the socially redeeming articles.

  Kansas places his latest implement of destruction on the cell floor. It is a toothbrush embedded with a razor blade on top. He fashioned it by stomping one of the Bic disposable razors they give out once a week. After liberating the blade he drove his Cadillac over to Bear's house and picked up a Bic disposable lighter. After heating up the end of the toothbrush he inserted the blade into the molten plastic. Kansas says it's called a "trazor."

  The trazor is bad enough. What truly disturbs me are the three New York Times-wrapped packages of drugs.

  "What the fuck is that! You told me you got rid of them all, that Skell picked them up!"

  The dogs are howling now from the lower tier, but Kansas is smiling. "Don't trip, O.G. All the shit is going out the door now."

  Using my tennis sneaker as a hockey stick, Kansas swats the trazor, the drugs, and the Hustler out under the cell door, across the front porch, and over the catwalk. Similar items are being launched from every cell on the upper tier.

  The Dirt and the Dirtdogs are assembling in front of Strunk's office awaiting a command from their sergeant, a lean, leathery whip of a man with a jarhead crew cut and a face li
ke a clenched fist.

  Big Bear is screaming under the cell door at the cops.

  "Punk-ass bitch Dirt faggots!"

  Kindred sentiments spill out from other cells.

  "Jo! Jo, pen-day-ho! Ju ain' shit, maricón muthafuck!" I recognize my yard acquaintance, La Raza Neck Tattoo.

  Lil G is selling wolf tickets to the cops: "Yo, punk-ass Dirtboy! Put down yo gun and come on up my crib, muthafucka. We fittin' to have a par-tay. Up your butt!"

  The Hunger finishes it— "And all yo punk-ass Dirt friends is coming, muthafucka!"

  Sergeant Jarhead barks out a command to the troops— I count about thirty cops— and the German shepherds are released.

  The dogs, raging and frothing, explode throughout the rotunda followed by their Dirt masters.

  Big Bear begins barking— literally— under his cell door. He is quickly joined by dozens of other cells, and the Fish Tank, never exactly quiet, sounds like a dog pound in hell. Maybe louder.

  The German shepherds experience minimal difficulty in sniffing out the drugs. The drugs rain down like convict confetti on their howling heads. Trazors and shanks sail through the air off the upper tier, and Jarhead shouts out "Shields!" Up go the Plexiglas shields. Out from the lower-tier cells fly Bic pen shanks, Bic trazors, pieces of burned tinfoil, steel-wool pads, more Hustlers, and various tattoo gun components.

  Kansas is flat on his face, barking and screaming under the door, his face ablaze with a mad ecstasy. This must remind him of the good times in the Kansas pen.

  "Yogee, in Kansas the fucking police gas and handcuff you before you can kick your contraband to the curb— y'unnerstan' what I'm sayin'? Here the stupid fucks just kill the water pressure so you can't flush your shit down. Ignorant-ass Dirt motherfuckers!

  "Come on, O.G.! Bark! Come on, dawg— it gets the fucking dogs really mad."

  The Dirt and dogs are climbing the stairs to our tier. Jackboots thud, doggy toenails clatter on the metal steps.

  The Dirt are in front of cell 44, three down. I can hear the cell door popping open, handcuffs jangling, walkie-talkies squawking.

  "O.G.! Come on— bark now!"

  "Are you completely crazy, Kansas? Why do we want to get the dogs mad? They're already rabid. They'll fucking eat us!"

  I have just asked another of those "Why" questions that don't compute within Kansas's dome.

  " 'Cause… because…"

  " 'Cause why?"

  " 'Cause that's just… what we do!"

  Cell 45 is cracked open, and the guests are unceremoniously hauled out and flung facedown on the catwalk and cuffed behind their backs.

  "All right, Kansas. Why didn't you tell me you had such a good reason? Okay, I can't do a dog— I'm not a dog person— but I can do a hellacious cat, dawg." When my daughters were very little, I would amuse them by making cat noises and pretending there were cute little kitties hiding throughout the house. Probably under their beds and in their closets.

  Kansas makes enough room on the floor for me to squeeze in beside him in front of the door.

  "Aiight, O.G. A cat is cool— just do it."

  I'm pressing my mouth against the opening, swallowing air. I'm ready.

  "Breeoooooow!"

  Kansas is so impressed he is stunned speechless. The trick is to slowly bring air up from the diaphragm, gradually building up pressure, then controlling and sustaining the release. Much easier than sex. It's a small talent of mine but one that enabled me to belch louder and longer than any of my fourth-grade classmates— no small accomplishment in P.S. 92 in Brooklyn.

  I let go with another, even louder:

  "BREEEEOOOOOOOOOOW!"

  There is a sudden, complete stillness throughout the Fish Tank. For one brief shining moment— my personal convict Camelot— silence while the Dirt, the dawgs, and the dogs contemplate the meaning of this startling newcomer to the zoo.

  Then more chaos. The German shepherds are so confused and crazed they are snapping at dust motes in the air. Big Bear, no doubt emboldened and empowered by my innovation, does a cow.

  "Mooooo!"

  Little G down in cell 11 lets loose with a funky chicken. "Bwuck, bwuck, bwuck, yo punk-ass bitch po-lease fuck!"

  Big Hungry seems to think one of the shepherds is female. He hisses at the dog in front of his cell.

  "Clarice… Clarissssse… yo little bitch… I be smelling your pussy from in here!" Another case of life imitating art.

  The Bone just whines through his door— "Cain't a muthafucka just do his own time in his house?"

  The Dirt has had enough. The dogs are out of control. Jarhead screams into his bullhorn:

  "ON THE FLOOR IN YOUR CELLS— FACEDOWN AND HANDS ON TOP OF YOUR FUCKING HEADS. NO TALKING!"

  Already facedown and in our cell, Kansas and I clasp our hands to our domes. Kansas can't stop giggling over the cat.

  "Yo, O.G. One time in Kansas—"

  "Will you please shut up about Kansas? They're right outside the door!"

  The cell door is yanked violently open and a snarling German shepherd leaps over our prostrate bodies and lands on Kansas's tray. A Dirtcop handcuffs us behind our backs— tight. Way too tight. Kansas, of course, starts protesting in that patented convict whine he likes to use on the police.

  "Excuse me, Officer, but could you loosen them cuffs a bit? I got circulation problems and a medical paper that says I got—"

  The sergeant steps into the cell.

  "You got nothin' coming, convict. That's all you got. Now shut the fuck up before I bust your dome!"

  "This is outta line, C.O. These cuffs are—"

  The sergeant brings a foot-long steel flashlight down on Kansas's head. Not hard enough to put out his lights but enough to momentarily shut him up. Blood spills down from his forehead and over the Nazi tattoo on his neck.

  "Now get out of the fucking cell! Move! Move! Move!"

  Standing up unassisted with hands cuffed behind one's back is impossible. Sergeant Jarhead yanks us to our feet by the cuffs, pulls us out to the catwalk, then slams us back down on the ground. All along the upper tier I see dawgs squirming in pain on their bellies, the cuffs cutting into flesh.

  The Dirt storm into our house, tearing it up. This is what's known as a shakedown. And it ain't nothing nice. Mattresses, sheets, towels, toilet paper, state soap, and our legal paperwork are dumped on the floor then stepped on. A letter I just received from my daughters is tossed to the ground and shredded beneath the jackboots. A photograph of my girls, Alana and Rachel, taken at Disneyland when they were eleven and ten, is ripped off the wall. The sergeant examines it briefly before tearing it in half and tossing the pieces in the air.

  Ten-year-old Rachel, smiling up at Goofy, lands a few inches from my face. I smile at her.

  A photo of Kansas's girlfriend, Star— she of the balloon-laden mouth— receives identical treatment from Jarhead. Kansas is trying to struggle to his feet, enraged beyond anything I have yet seen.

  "Yo! That's a picture of my wife you're ripping up and stomping on. Howja like it if I step on your bitches?"

  The sergeant emerges from our house. His little metal nameplate identifies him as SGT. STANGER. "You got another fucking problem, convict? Facedown on the ground now or I'll throw your ass in the fucking Shoe for ninety days!"

  Kansas knows there are no visiting privileges in the Hole. He clenches his teeth and presses his face to the ground. "O.G.— payback's gonna be a motherfucker. Stanger gonna find out the getback from Kansas is a bitch, know what I'm sayin'?"

  I'm still looking for my other daughter, Alana, who was grinning up at Mickey in the picture. I hope she is not lost to me forever.

  The Dirt, disgusted at finding no contraband inside any of the cells, uncuff us and shove us back inside. We are on our trays, Kansas pressing a wad of toilet paper to his cut, clearly disappointed by the absence of any real mayhem. Still talking about Kansas.

  "Yogee, in Kansas the cops pulled this shit, things would have jumped off big-
time, know what I'm sayin'? C.O. there knows better than to fuck with a man's pictures. Kansas woods don't take that shit—"

  "Kansas, will you shut the fuck up!" I'm drifting somewhere in Disneyland, two small hands holding mine. I don't want to come back. Not to this.

  The toilet starts gurgling and the sink gushes out brown water. Kansas mounts the steel throne for his long-delayed dookie, still talking.