You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish

by Jimmy A. Lerner

  My job as food server pays nothing. I do it for love.

  "Ya gotta wear gloves and a hair net when you're working near food," Scud says, yanking these items out of a large cardboard box labeled CHICKEN BREASTS— UNFIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION.

  "It's a sanitation thing," Scud explains, turning his head in a well-practiced maneuver to blow his nose. His nose-blowing technique is crude but effective. It involves placing one nicotine-stained thumb over his left nostril while vigorously expelling a tsunami of snot out the right nostril.

  It ain't nothin' nice.

  Splat! A green projectile explodes against the wall and hovers indecisively above a steaming vat of vegetable soup. Scud then completes the process, thumbing his right nostril and turning his head away from us and toward the salad, which rests limply in a metal canister the size of Cuba.

  Ping! The missile impacts the side of the metal container. My fellow servers, woods and toads alike, blaze hotly with righteous indignation.

  "That's outta line, dawg!"

  "Way the fuck outta line!"

  And it's pandemonium in the serving area! Moral outrage! Righteous fucking resentment!

  "Muthafuckin' nasty-ass white boy!" screams our salad server, a chubby black teenager called Tooshay. Tooshay tells anyone who cares that "you best be pronouncing it Two-Shay!" It must be a Francophile thing.

  "That's some fucked-up shit, Scud!" contributes C-Note, whose role on the team is to put two pats of butter on each tray— when he's not busy fussing with the tight cornrows under the hair net.

  Snake and the other dawgs down the serving line are also howling in rage at Scud, who just looks confused.

  T-Bone, who is on the cleanup crew out in the chow hall, pokes his shower cap through the small opening in the window. To our relief, we are sealed off from the chow hall and our customers by a railroad car metal partition. When we see hands through the window, we push out the trays. The back of the serving area is open to the grills, ovens, and bakery of the main kitchen.

  "Cain't a muthafucka get nothin' but a rollie?" The Bone wants a real cigarette, a tailor. C-Note taps a long ash off his half-smoked tailor— into a vat of mashed potatoes— offers it to the Bone.

  "Here be a short, bro."

  The Bone studies the "short" with clinical interest. He has the melancholy suspicion of a man who senses disease and disaster everywhere. The Bone declines the short.

  "I ain't lookin' to catch nothin' but pa-role!" And the shower cap disappears back into the chow hall.

  All eyes are again on the moist green creature pulsing ominously above the vegetable soup. The freeman boss walks into the serving area.

  "What the fuck are you convicts doing?" Freeman Marshall is a beer-gutted, fiftyish wood with faded sleeves. He's been working in the prison system, in the kitchen, for twenty-seven years. The years have not been kind to him, but in an alternate universe he could have been an unemployed short-order cook in here, with us. Everybody likes Marshall because he wears a "house arrest" electronic bracelet around his ankle, courtesy of his second domestic battery offense. He's sort of a wood role model.

  "What the fuck are you dickwads looking at! We got three hundred cocksucking cons to feed tonight!"

  Tooshay, who's doing a dime behind a crack sale gone bad, extends a chubby black finger, pointing to a spot on the wall above the vat of soup.

  Where, like some hideous extraterrestrial spider, the green body of Scud's booger is slowly detaching itself, one slick strand at a time, from the wall. Next stop— Vegetable Soup World.

  We all just stand there— frozen. A group of hardened cons, one cubicle refugee, and a serial wife-batterer paralyzed by the spectacle of a Living, Moving, Sentient Booger from Beyond as it slides inexorably down the wall.

  And into the soup. It says plop!

  Outside the metal partition, starving convicts beat their fists against the railroad car walls. The Bone sticks his head through the slot.

  "Cain't a muthafucka get some nasty-ass chow trays out here? People's be trippin'!"

  And it's on! A classic assembly-line process (with none of the efficiencies) unfolds, each server adding his small increment of value as we slide, spin, and spill trays along the long metal counter. The trays come at me so fast that half the time I end up scooping the Jell-O on top of the mashed potatoes, which in turn have been hastily scooped on top of the peas and carrots instead of the soybean patties. A few Jell-O slabs find their way into the bowls of vegetable soup, perhaps seeking a union with their lone, green extraterrestrial brother.

  Scud and Freeman Marshall take turns shoving the trays through the slot, where they disappear instantly. All I can see are grasping hands. We can all hear the shouts, the wolf tickets being sold outside.

  "Fucking fish servers be puttin' Jell-O on the muthafuckin' mashed!"

  "C-Note! I know that's you back there— you best not be giving us no melted-ass butter!"

  "Who the fuck be slammin' Jell-O upside the bowl!"

  To drown out the shouts and threats, Tooshay leads us in a group sing-along. We warm up with "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," hit a solid harmonious stride with Little Anthony and the Imperials' "Tears on My Pillow," and as the last tray is snatched away, an absolutely rousing rendition of that old prison standard "Working on the Chain Gang."

  "Servers fucking rule!" yells Scud, politely averting his head as he violently dispels yet another alien from his nose.

  "Break it down!" screams the Freeman, the signal to start cleaning up. We all grab an assortment of soiled black rags and swipe energetically and ineffectually at the mess on the counter, basically just pushing the detritus around until we have sculpted one huge soggy mountain of gravy, Jell-O, and mashed potatoes.

  Scud puts on his plastic gloves and shoves the monstrosity, or most of it, onto the cement floor, turns on a spigot, and floods most of the mess down a metal drainage grate in the cement. Some of it even goes down. The rest will harden nicely overnight so T-Bone and the cleanup crew can sweep it away in the morning.

  Freeman Marshall leads us out back through the bakery area. The bakery smells like a brewery. That's because it is a brewery. In addition to making bread, rolls, and cakes, the bakers also mass-produce "pruno," a potent alcoholic brew available in such fruity flavors as orange, apple, and peach.

  The bakers simply appropriate some spare fifty-gallon soup drums, fill them with the fruit of the day, add water, sugar, and yeast, and voilà! In a few days the concoction has fermented sufficiently to permit pruno product launch and associated marketing activities to ensue.

  The pruno is surreptitiously bottled under the brand name Pert Plus (available at the local store), since the green plastic bottles hold a convenient 15.2 ounces and retail on the yard for the equivalent of eight dollars a bottle.

  Of course, the thrifty (read "indigent"), self-sufficient inmate simply brews his own, using a Ziploc bag and oranges, adding sugar and substituting bread for yeast.

  Freeman Marshall herds us to the locked exit doors in the back of the kitchen where an elderly C.O. waits with the keys. The C.O.'s white hair smells like it has just been shampooed in pruno. He fishes a key off the ring attached to his webbed belt and tells us to line up for the pat-down.

  C.O. Pert ignores the small bulges in our pants pockets. Stealing food is practically a built-in job perk. Stealing butcher knives or metal objects is a no-no.

  The servers never steal knives. They don't have to. They design and make their own shanks with metal obtained from the cons in the auto and welding shops.

  Outside, the sun is setting behind the vast desert wasteland. With winter not long off, temperatures drop sharply in the evenings and the air is brisk and cool. A strong breeze brushes my face as I look up, past the fences, over the razor wire and the guntowers.

  I am glad— no, I am enormously grateful at this moment to be alive. The Bone stands beside me, fretting over the wind and the possibility of another sandstorm.

  "Cain't a muthafu
cka get nothin' but a dirt storm? Shit!" The Bone clutches the shower cap tighter over his head.

  The Bone knows you can never be too prepared in prison for a shitstorm.

  * * *

  We all take turns sweeping and mopping the Inferno. T-Bone, generally acknowledged to be the mop master (and rumored candidate for cleanup crew leadman), gives me some one-on-one tutoring.

  "White boys cain't do nothin' but push a muthafuckin' mop! The blap man, he be glidin' wiff da mop, blap man be styling!" So I adjust my awkward task-oriented focus to incorporate the Bone's suggestions about rhythm, fluidity, and grace. Under the Bone's tutelage I gradually surrender to the process until one evening the Bone confers the ultimate accolade on my sorry white ass.

  "The O.G. be stylin' now!" the Bone announces proudly to anyone in the barracks who cares.

  No one does. "Bone, why don't y'all style that muthafuckin' mop up yo ignorant nigger ass!" says C-Note. C-Note is sitting on his end bunk by the bathroom where Tooshay is styling C's cornrows into Rastafarian dreadlocks.

  I continue happily mopping while the Bone and C-Note begin their nightly jab, dance, jab, duck, and jab ritual without ever actually hitting each other. I glide with the mop between the beds recalling a Future Leaders Management Team-Building workshop. Our five-hundred-dollar-an-hour training consultant stressed the importance of focusing on the moment, on the task right in front of us. We were to clear our minds of aberrant thoughts about lunch and learn to just "be in the moment." To learn to be effective communicators, effective leaders, we had to first learn how to "be here now."

  We called it Be Here Now training. And now I finally have some use for it, melding with the mop, giving myself over to the awe and mystery of living in the moment. I finally lay the mop down and face the room. I am transformed, like an est novitiate who finally "gets it."

  "Bone… I be the mop!" I exult to anyone who cares.

  No one does. Except the Bone.

  "You be somethin', O.G., but I doan be knowin' zackly what."

  * * *

  The Inferno is the only "housing unit" in the prison where a parochial convict can experience the rich benefits of ethnically diverse living. The C.O.'s assign cellies to the two-man cells strictly on the basis of race, with a total disregard for any subtle geographic distinctions. This can lead to convict carping.

  "Yo, See-Oh! I'm Filipino— why the fuck you celling me up with some motherfucking punk-ass Micronesian that don't even know what fucking island he's from?"

  The C.O. tells him to shut the fuck up. "We got a shortage of flip cases this year," he explains.

  In the Inferno the woods and skinheads hang together, the toads "kick it with mines," Loco, our sole Hispanic, keeps to himself, and I usually isolate on my bunk with my headphones and radio, pen and writing tablet.

  After the 6 P.M. standing count, it is "mail call" in front of the C.O.'s office in the rotunda. The cop yells out a back number and tosses letters, magazines, and newspapers into the air. It reminds me of the time I took my then little girls to Marine World to watch the porpoises leap for those little doomed fish.

  The Bone is perched on his bunk, trying to read Lucindreth's latest letter. Some convicts view letter reading as a communal activity, so C-Note and Tooshay look over the Bone's shoulder.

  "Cain't a muthafucka get some privacy?" the Bone says as C-Note sits beside him. "C-Note, you're sweatin' my spot! I'm fittin' to read my bitch's letter here."

  "Da-yam, Bone! That be-yatch Lucindreth ain't nothin' but a crack ho!"

  "Doan be dissin' mines, C!" The Bone is removing his shower cap— always a danger signal.

  C-Note, untrained by the phone company in discerning "minimal environmental cues," snatches the letter from Bone's hand.

  "Ain't dissin' shit, Bone. I just be tellin' you Lucindreth suck a cock for a rock! All the brothers in Vegas be knowin' that."

  The Bone's fist moves so fast that by the time C-Note sees it he's flying backward off the Bone's tray, wondering what kind of freight train just crushed his once-lovely nose.

  C-Note's Rasta dreadlocks hit the concrete floor— hard.

  Kind of a crunching sound, like an egg meeting a baseball bat in midswing. "My bad," says the Bone.

  Very bad for C-Note, who is sprawled on his back unconscious, his nose pumping out a blood geyser that would have impressed the captain of the Exxon Valdez.

  We all scramble off our bunks, crowding around the fallen C-Note, careful not to get blood on our state-issue white tennis sneakers— bad for the sneakers.

  "Fucking Bone! Ya peeled his fucking onion!" exclaims the Snake, who is shaking his shaved head in admiration, the eyeballs in back of his head watching the door for the Man, his spiderwebbed eyeballs in front surveying the puddle of blood around C-Note's head.

  Tooshay is backing away in horror. "You cracked his dome, T! You kilt his ass, fo sho!"

  "Nah," drawls a highly relaxed Bone. "That nigger got hisself a hard haid— y'all know how he is."

  Scud comes over and prods C-Note in the grill with his foot. Actually it's more like a kick in the ribs. "Fuck— he ain't breathing, dawgs. Now we got the fucking heat coming down on all our asses."

  Loco takes a quick look at C-Note and pronounces him muerto.

  The Bone differs. "Nah, Loco, that nigger be too ignorant to even find his way to dead. Nigger got up in mines! I tol' C not to be gettin' up in mines when I gots a letter from my bitch."

  Every cellblock has a Shotcaller, and Snake is ours. We now all defer to his proven leadership skills and experience.

  Snake looks down at the flattened C-Note, who is starting to resemble a bloody black Gumby. Snake kicks C's grill. No response.

  "Fuck him!" decides our leader. "He was way outta line, dissin' the Bone's bitch. Motherfucker got nothing coming from us— it's C.O.P.!"

  The standard "convict operating procedure" for a fight inside the cellblock is to strip the loser, toss him in the shower, turn on the water, and then start yelling for C.O. assistance. Just an accident… motherfucker musta slipped in the shower— clumsy-ass fool!

  In a splendid display of interracial teamwork, C-Note is swiftly reduced to bare-butt essentials. Most of the dawgs here are not completely unfamiliar with this exercise, having stripped cars, homes, and bodies many times before.

  "Damn! Nasty-ass C-Note got no muthafuckin' shorts," observes Tooshay.

  "Motherfucker got no dick either," says Snake.

  "That's 'cause he's dead," says Scud as he half lifts C-Note under the arms and starts dragging him to the shower. "Your dick shrivels when you die— I saw that on Discovery once."

  "Then you be born dead, Scud," says the Bone, who is still sitting serenely on his bunk, refusing to go anywhere near all that potentially infectious blood.

  "C'mon, Bone, give us a hand— this is your lookout," Snake says.

  The Bone is unmoved and unmoving. "Nigger probably got the muthafuckin' AIDS! And I ain't lookin' to catch nothin' but pa-role, y'unnerstan' what I'm sayin'?"

  "Aiight, Bone. O.G., give me a hand here." Somehow we manage to drag C-Note into the shower. Snake turns on the cold water, directing the showerhead so C-Note receives a steady blast right on his busted nose.

  C-Note doesn't stir.

  Scud starts tripping. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! He's fuckin' dead and we're all going down!" Scud considerately tilts his head away from the body, does that disgusting thing with his thumb over one nostril, and expels a booger against the shower wall.

  "You nasty, Scud— you one real nasty white boy," Tooshay informs him, not for the first time. The jet stream is carrying C-Note's blood down the drain as we all crowd around the shower praying for the resurrection of C-Note.

  "Anybody know first aid? CPR? We gotta get him breathing." Scud also learned this from Discovery. T-Bone has finally decided to join us at the shower to admire his artwork: Still Life Taking Shower.

  "Scud," the Bone says, "you fittin' to put yo mouf on that nigger's nasty li
ps?" The prospect of this actually happening before his eyes so appalls the germ-crazy Bone that he rushes back to the safety of his bunk.

  Snake is unscrewing the lid off a bottle of bleach. He kneels just outside the jet spray, studying C-Note.

  Scud is intrigued. "What the fuck you gonna do, dawg? Gonna bleach him awake?"

  "The Snake fittin' to bleach him white back to life," puns Tooshay, and we all crack up as Snake pours the bleach (which he later insists was ammonia) directly onto C-Note's mashed face.

  C-Note twitches awake like Lazarus rising. "Muthafucka!" he screams. "You be burning my eyes!" C-Note is scuttling ass-backward away from the deluge of bleach, tries to stand, makes it halfway to his feet before falling facedown on the hard concrete of the shower floor.