You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish

by Jimmy A. Lerner

  This time it sounds more like an egg meeting a hammer in midswing as C-Note's front teeth shatter and are swept away by the bleached water and down the drain. I am reminded of my grandpa George's reflection: "Whether the hammer hits the egg or the egg hits the hammer, it's always bad for the egg."

  We all race down the corridor to the locked crash gates.

  "Man down! Man down!" we scream at the pimply young cop in the office, who eventually puts down his Soldier of Fortune and coffee and comes to investigate this latest affront to his correctional routine.

  C-Note returns from the infirmary three days later after explaining to a skeptical nurse how a Clorox bottle tripped him in the shower, thereby knocking out his front teeth and bleaching his Rasta locks peckerwood white.

  'Cause C-Note ain't no snitch, he ain't no punk, and he sure ain't fittin' to catch nothin' but parole!

  * * *

  The D-word.

  Ask any convict who has been down a few days for his definition of a "man" and the concept of "disrespect" will surface quicker than stank on shit. Let's use Kansas's definition of a man, since it's illustrative of the prison's general population.

  "A man," Kansas might say, "is someone who tolerates no disrespect! A real man, a stand-up man, seeks out disrespect and destroys it!" Not surprisingly, this Manly Mission Statement keeps all the Real Men in prison very busy, prison being such a fertile incubator for disrespect.

  It also keeps them coming back here. Until the parole system succeeds in obliterating all traces, all minute suggestions, of disrespect on the outside, I suspect the recidivism rate here will remain at over 80 percent.

  What makes the Big D such a formidable foe for the nearly extinct forces of rehabilitation is not so much its pervasiveness as its utter absence of gradation.

  There is no little disrespect. There is no "somewhat" or "mildly" disrespectful, no inadvertent slights, no concept of being accidentally jostled by some dawg in the chow line.

  Many of the dawgs here do not make a distinction between an enemy who tries to "bitch-slap" him and a friend who simply forgets to say "What's up, dawg?" as a yard greeting. It's all disrespect.

  When necessary, the Real Man, the Stand-up Righteous Con, will offer a distinction should someone be foolish enough (never happens) to suggest that "sinking a dick in Timmy's tight little ass" could be construed as "faggot" behavior. The Righteous Dawg would simply laugh at such ignorance because he is a "pitcher," y'unnerstan', not a "catcher."

  And every Righteous Con in the joint knows a catcher ain't nothin' but a punk-ass bitch!

  Of course, these manly assertions require a temporary suspension of belief in other convict adages: "Today's pitcher, tomorrow's catcher," or "Today's punk, tomorrow's rapist."

  But as Emerson explained: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…"

  So when some wood suggests I stop bird-dogging his conversation (eavesdropping— one of my many character flaws) or Mr. Toad advises me not to be "getting up in mines" ("mines" in this instance referring to mines bidness— y'unnerstan'?), I respect their wishes.

  Do your own time… or someone will make you do theirs.

  —OLD HEAD SAYING

  The Old Heads are lifers and other convicts who have been down for decades. Sometimes I stop counting my steps in the yard to sit down in the dirt and play chess with them.

  The Old Heads like to talk about the good old days in the joint— the late sixties and the seventies— when the guards ("the pigs!") were the true enemy instead of fellow convicts. When a Convict Code of Honor prevailed because back then, a Real Convict was a "Straight-up, Stand-up Con!"

  The Old Heads have seen everything. Done everything. Just ask them.

  "Attica? Fucking A, dawg! I was doing a double nickel in that fucking joint back in '71 when the Shit Jumped Off— and I'm talkin' about some serious shit, you know what I'm saying? Some serious fucking shit! None of this punk-ass bullshit you see today with faggots and J-Cats and wanna-be gangsta boys getting in the Car and rolling up to some snitch's crib to slock and cock 'im, know what I'm sayin'?"

  All the Old Heads tell you how they did time at Attica when the Shit Jumped Off, making Attica prison the convict equivalent of Woodstock, which was attended by all 50 million or so of my fellow baby boomers.

  Just ask any boomer.

  If the Attica riot was the Old Heads' Woodstock, then they had to have traveled there not by some Day-Glo VW microbus, but by horseback. Because the dream they dwelled in back then, when the Code of the Stand-up Con held sway, when Convict Righteousness ruled, was nothing less than a bright and shining concrete and barbed-wire Camelot of the imagination.

  So I sit in the dirt playing chess with the Old Heads, listening to the stories. Respectfully. Listen as they continually reinvent and refresh the decades of hard time until the past glimmers, if only in their hearts.

  I listen. Because I, too, need a Camelot of the heart.

  * * *

  Big Hungry comes for me in broad daylight. Right in the center of the yard where every guntower cop can see us. He bears down on me like an enraged bull elephant, roaring.

  "O.G.! You been up in mines!" The Hunger is stylin' today, his black silk do-rag covering his tiny head and the gold teeth sparkling in the desert sun.

  Five yards away now. "O.G.! You been sweatin' my bitch! Been up on my Cassie!" Then a mountainous shadow falls over me as the Hunger reaches down to crush my dome. Or onion.

  But I'm not there.

  Smooth and slick as my mop gliding across the Inferno floor, I evade the black tree limb about to crash down on my head. The Hunger is crushing nothing but air.

  Knowing it is suicidal, hopeless, and probably even stupid, I drive my right fist into the Hunger's face, connecting with a gold tooth or two. Very bad for my hand. It has no more effect on Big Hungry than a bee sting on a grizzly. Except to make him even madder.

  The Hunger is lifting me right off my feet— by my neck. A massive right paw pulls back to center a killing shot to my domelights.

  There is a soft, wet, sucking sound. The sound of a muted rattle. It comes from the spot on the back of the Hunger's head where the Snake and Scud have just double-slocked him with a dozen or so C batteries.

  The Hunger melts in slow motion to the dirt, an incredibly poignant reenactment of King Kong toppling slo-mo from the Empire State Building.

  By the time the beast kisses the earth, the Snake is already shoving my petrified ass forward, Scud playing lookout. "Just move, O.G. Gotta get into the Inferno— don't look back!"

  "Fuck, Snake, you killed him! You killed Big Hungry!" Scud wails as we pass through the open gate of the Inferno.

  "You mean we fucking killed him," Snake answers. "You always fucking whine about the same shit, ya know that, Scud? Look at C-Note over here, kicking it with the Bone— wasn't he dead too?"

  The Bone, playing spades with C-Note, removes his shower cap. "Whassup, Snake, O.G.? Who be dead today?"

  In answer, the Inferno C.O. starts shouting "LOCK IT DOWN!" and pushes the button that slides the gate shut. We can hear the cop radios in the yard sputtering "MAN DOWN!"

  Because the Hunger is thoughtful enough not to die, we are only locked down for two days.

  * * *

  The Code of the Stand-up Con holds firm. So far, anyway. None of the dozen or so dawgs who witnessed the Hunger's meltdown have snitched. The guntower cops are too high up to identify anyone.

  The Dirt, led by Sergeant Stanger, once again revel in the opportunity to skin-search us, then tear apart our personal belongings. During the lockdown the Freemen and cops load bag lunches— peanut butter and jelly mostly— onto food carts, which are wheeled to every cellblock.

  The Inferno dawgs view it as a nice vacation from kitchen labor. They spend their free time watching Jerry, Ricki, Montel, and WWF. Convicts are required to wear their headphones when watching TV or listening to music. It is a "housing regulation" that is universally ignored. Headphones
would interfere with the communal bonding experience of dissecting the anatomies of the female talk show guests.

  A lot of heated debate takes place over whether a particular female guest "got ass" or don't got ass. Or if she's a "straight-up ho" or just a potential whore.

  "That bitch be all tore up!"

  "She be tore up, Tooshay, but she got some ass!"

  "But the bitch got a nasty ol' leather crotch!"

  "Yo, Scud, check it out! Yo momma be on the TV!"

  "Nah, ain't my momma, Bone— my momma works at the methadone clinic handing out drugs to your momma!"

  "Damn, that's some cold-ass shit, Scud!"

  I get out my little radio and headphones. The radios have clear plastic cases to deter their use as crank or crack stashes. The TVs are also transparent. The vinyl mattresses are not, however, and most convicts keep their drugs and Pert bottles tucked inside them. Shanks are taped under the beds.

  I find a station playing gold— James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, the Beach Boys, my kind of music. I crank the volume up, tighten the headphones, and go time-traveling while pushing my Bic against the lined paper.

  The Bone looks up for a moment from an examination of one of the ho's.

  "Yogee! Always be writing! You the writinest muthafucka I been knowin'… Why you always be writin'?"

  I remove the headphones.

  "Because Bone… because I can't fly."

  * * *

  Big Hungry recovers from the dent in his dome in the infirmary. He refuses to take his J-Cat medication— Haldol— which is supposed to diminish his delusion that everything he desires in life "be mines!" He is shackled and cuffed and shipped back to the Nevada Prison for the Criminally Insane— J wing.

  If tears were shed on the yard, I didn't hear about it.

  Stanger is waiting for me when I come out of the chow hall after a four-hundred green Jell-O scoop session. He's looking all stract in his black Darth Vader costume, although the jarhead crew cut ruins the Darth effect.

  "O.G.! Front and center, asshole!" Stanger growls this greeting in his best "command voice," which C.O.'s are trained to affect. An old infantry sergeant myself, albeit twenty years removed, I can recognize a fellow graduate of Command Voice 101.

  "Good morning, Sergeant," I say— pleasantly. My mother always said that "good manners cost nothing."

  Stanger is leaning with his back against the chow hall wall, methodically hand-rolling a cigarette from a Bugler can. His state trooper-style shades went out of fashion around the same time that Dragnet went off the air.

  "Just wondering if you got any extra batteries, O.G." Stanger's billy club steel flashlight is out and he's shaking it with exaggerated distress. "Yeah, I heard you sometimes carry a few extra batteries. Oh, but those would be size C, and this baby takes D." Stanger fires up his rollie and gives me that sweet, sadistic smile.

  "Sorry, Sarge, I'm fresh out. I didn't know you were going to have a light show so soon after lunch."

  The rollie is instantly ground out beneath a polished black jackboot. In the army I wouldn't have trusted this guy to carry my backpack. In the corporation he couldn't have carried my briefcase.

  "Still talking shit outta the side of your fucking neck!" The Inferno dawgs have all paused, ready to bear witness or take my back should Stanger go postal.

  "I'm watching you, asshole— nobody fronts me off with the assistant warden. Somebody's gonna roll on your lying ass. Now go roll it the fuck up!"

  This is a shock. "Roll it up?" This could mean going to the Hole, getting released, or just moving cellblocks. I'm voting for door number 2.

  "Are you fucking retarded?" Stanger screams, spraying me with flecks of spit-soaked Bugler. "Roll it the fuck up! Take your sorry-ass shit over to cellblock 4, then report to the law library— your little dick-licking, on-the-leg bullshit got over on the assistant warden."

  O happy day! Free from the kitchen, from the Inferno, from Jerry and Ricki and Montel and whores that may or may not have ass! Back to the sweet peace of a two-man cell.

  Stanger dismisses me on his usual ominous note. "Yeah, got a couple of witnesses, couple of punk-ass bitch dawgs who were kickin' it in front of the store when the Shit Jumped Off and bashed the Hunger's head in… oh yeah, just a matter of tracking the Energizer Bunny back to the slock. A little squeezing, a little pressure— y'unnerstan'?— and one of these punks will roll on you. You understand what I'm saying to you, convict?"

  But I'm already moving, moving fast, back to the Inferno for what I pray is the last time. Things are definitely looking up.

  'Cause I'm rolling it up!

  * * *

  On my way back to the Inferno to roll up my stuff, I stop to watch the latest county jail van disgorge a new batch of fish. This being a great prison spectator sport, I am soon surrounded by a crowd of convicts checking out "the meat." The fish are being marched across the yard by three Security and Escort cops to the Fish Tank.

  The new fish, yet to experience the delights of Luis's laundry service, are dressed in street clothes. They pass through the gauntlet of hard cases who are already taking inventory. Shoes, shirts, pants, rings— all are instantly and expertly appraised by the Yard Rats, who live for these moments.

  Representatives from the various social and fraternal organizations are also here, scouting for new gang members— or fresh victims, potential "renters" of cells or a seat in the chow hall. Or just punks crying out for a "daddy."

  Some fish are warmly greeted. Fish with full sleeves (the badge of the recidivist) or acceptable gang tattoos are hailed like returning war heroes. These dawgs are not true fish. These dawgs have all been down before, and most of them are known quantities on the yard. The Yard Rats award big points to the fish with swastika tattoos, and the teardrop tattoos— said to denote a cop-killer— always win the grand prize of Respect.

  "Yo, dawg! Whatchu down for?"

  "Life Without!" says Teardrop Tattoo to an admiring audience. Life With the possibility of parole is considered a sentence worthy of respect, but Life Without demands adulation.

  The real interest of the Yard Rats is in the fresh fish, the first-time guest, untainted, untarnished, and uninitiated into How Things Really Work Around Here. Today's special focus is on a very young fish whose case has been in the newspapers and on television for the past few months.

  He is thirteen years old and could easily pass for eleven. Food-stamp thin, barely five feet tall with a baby face bursting with freckles, topped by an unruly shock of red hair. The kid's ears stick out from his head at an almost right angle.

  I find myself staring at this child in his Nike sneakers (kiss them good-bye) and 'N Sync T-shirt. He does his best to walk with dignity, despite the shackles and waist chains. He is holding himself straight, head up, ears flaring out, not flinching from the catcalls of the Yard Rats. He keeps his moist brown eyes— just drying now from county?— fixed on Teardrop Tattoo's back. If he's alarmed by all the par-tay invitations, he does not show it.

  "Yo, Bob, come to Daddy! Your daddy's been waiting on you!" Back in the world, "Bob" is the nickname for "Robert." In here it's an acronym for "bend over backwards."

  "Hey! His name ain't Bob— look at them fucking ears! It's Dumbo!" The Yard Rats squeal with laughter— Dumbo! That's a good one— until the next convict tops it.

  "Nah, he ain't Dumbo— Dumbo would fly over the fucking fences! With them fuckin' ears he's a teacup head!" Teacup! That one hits an 8.0 on the Rat Richter scale.

  And "Teacup" will be his name for at least the next forty years because this kid, this meat, is looking at two Life Withs, running wild.

  His trial was covered in lurid detail. At the age of twelve, weary beyond reason of his stepfather's nightly visits to his bed (and emboldened by a six-pack of beer stolen from a neighbor's garage), Teacup decided to pay Stepdad a visit one night.

  With a twelve-inch kitchen carving knife.

  The county medical examiner testified at the trial to fort
y-seven stab wounds. Had Teacup just called it a night at that point, just gone back to his room, maybe called 911 before booting up a computer game and an 'N Sync CD, he might have been all right. A jury might have looked at the "mitigating factors."

  But, as Stanger is fond of saying, Nooooooo! After dispatching the evil stepdad, Teacup decides his sixteen-year-old sister, Trisha, also has something coming. Because she knew about Stepdad. Knew about the rapes, the beatings, 'cause Teacup had told her, begged her for help when Mom, too drugged and drunk, did nothing, telling Teacup to "just work it out with him."