Chico brightens at the sight of Big Bird, who is a fellow resident of the Row and a Comrade-for-Life.
Bird is holding out a tattered color photograph of a young black man smiling in his high school cap and gown. "This here's my son, Albert. Figured maybe you could do one of them stipplin' drawings of him. Hey now, O.G.— you still got game?"
Chico nods sadly, accepts the photo with the grace and solemnity of a deity of old receiving a burnt offering. Belinda is purring down at Bird from her perch.
"It was on the wire, Pops," Chico says softly. "Fucking Crips capped him behind some bogus rocks. I'm sorry, Pops."
"Yeah, well, it weren't nothin' nice. Look… I got no store, but a Freeman I know can bring in some colored pencils, maybe some of that charcoal you used to get. Course, I ain't tryin' to put you in no trick bag."
Chico considers this offer from his bunk while I adjust my aching cheeks on the steel toilet, the chess set on the cardboard box between us forgotten for the moment.
"Thanks, Pops, good looking out. But they come down harder now on art than they do on crank or shanks. If you can just lawdog the Pardons Board for me this year, we'll be square."
"You know I be doing that for you anyway, Chico," Bird says, slightly affronted at the implied quid pro quo. Big Bird is a jailhouse lawyer who is also doing Life on the Installment Plan. He comes through the Fish Tank every few years, each time with a new two-to-five-year sentence.
"It's all good then, Pops— leave the photo with me and give me a few days."
" 'Preciate that. The Pardons Board be meeting again next month— your package be ready."
The Pardons Board is the sole remaining hope of the Life Withouts. They are essentially a clemency board, convening annually to dispense mercy to an infinitesimal number of supplicants. Unless you are over eighty and dying of cancer or the governor's brother, you got nothing coming. The odds don't stop the Life Withouts from submitting a package every year. It only takes some time to put together, and they got nothing but time.
Chico is fully aware that his chances of "action" by the board are even less than the chance of being struck in the ass by a meteor while piloting the Nautilus beneath the Arctic ice.
But the Pardons Board is all Chico has, so he dutifully dispatches his pleas every year, having progressed through all of the other phases of doing life. His first phase, two decades ago, was the dream of early release through some legal miracle— a new trial, a successful appeal, a writ, a petition, a pardon, something. This fantasy is common to all fish facing Without.
Till they learn they got nothing coming.
Chico spent his first five years trying, then discarding, other prison lifestyles: sleeping eighteen hours a day, doing drugs, trying religion, pumping iron with the eses, kicking it and jailing it with the homeboys, constant pruno consumption, a suicide attempt followed by a J-Cat stretch with psychotropics, and two horrendously botched escape attempts.
The painting, then the books and writing poetry, saved him.
Now he's determined to master chess, and his strategy seems to be to compile as many defeats as fast as possible in order to learn something from each game. So far, the first part of this strategy is enjoying a spectacular success.
Chico's upper bunk, in addition to nesting Belinda, houses a small library of grandfathered books sent in years ago by his large and still supportive family. Philosophy, religion, sociology, psychology, and anatomy texts rise to the ceiling along with mounds of novels. The library is the refreshingly eclectic selection of the self-educated. Chico has taught himself to read Latin, French, German, and Italian but refuses to help me refresh my fluency in Spanish. He claims he can't tolerate the sound of my fake Castilian "accent." Can I help it if my Spanish instructors at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey all had lisps? So what if I say "thita" instead of the Chicano-sanctioned "cita." It's all good— isn't it?
Chico says it's not all good. "Maricón shit" is what he says. "Why did the U.S. government train you guys in faggot Spanish? Were they planning to conquer Central America by sucking cock? Drain the guerrillas of resistance?" So I just keep my pleasant tour of duty in Panama and war stories to my maricón self, just another misunderstood veteran. Hey, I didn't give back the Panama Canal.
"Check!" Chico slams his queen down. My white bishop, lurking in the corner, just laying in the cut for this blunder, takes black queen.
"Fuck! Took my bitch!"
"Nah— your bitch committed suicide," I clarify. This leads to five minutes of talking shit and selling wolf tickets, the most entertaining part of prison chess games.
"Checkmate." I do not slam my piece down. It's a respect thing.
"Chingada!" But Chico is never discouraged, convinced his long-term strategy will inevitably yield dividends. Perhaps I will die of old age or just sink into premature senility.
Chico earned a B.A. degree in prison five years ago. That was the year the prison college program was terminated here. In 1995 the U.S. Congress voted to eliminate prisoner eligibility for Pell grants, which once enabled inmates to pursue a postsecondary education. When the Pell grants were repealed, no college or university had any economic incentive to continue inmate education programs.
This makes sense to my M.B.A. mentality. But I had harbored the naive notion that an A.A. or B.A. degree could reduce the recidivism rate. That this might be a public policy goal, in fact. I asked Ringer about this.
"Fuck no," Ringer explained. "The idea now is punishment— nobody can even spell 'rehabilitation' anymore. There's only one public policy now."
Together, we chanted the mantra:
"Convicts got nothin' comin'!"
* * *
There is a mob in front of the bulletin board outside the caseworker's office in the rotunda. It happens every month when the Parole Board issues the following month's list of "applicants." My heart is pounding. I push through the crowd in what I would consider to be an assertive, rather than disrespectful, manner.
PAROLE BOARD HEARING AGENDA
I appreciate the big, 24-point bold title. Having an agenda is also a good thing. I learned this in a Quality Improvement workshop. "An agenda provides purposeful focus and direction to the value-added input stream." And this fish is now fittin' to upstream and outsource, having been refocused and restructured. Right-sized dawgs will understand what I'm saying.
THE FOLLOWING APPLICANTS WILL BE CONSIDERED FOR POSSIBLE RELEASE TO THE COMMUNITY OR TO A CONSECUTIVE SENTENCE
The crowd around me is young, black, and highly pissed off. They yell, threaten, push, pull, and slap each other while scanning the list. Just your Average Urban Nightmare struggling for ruh-lease to the community.
The Bone is inflaming the crowd by pointing out the absence of black inmates' names.
"Ain't nothin' but white boys on dis month's list— ain't no toads in the Wood Pile." The Bone is working the throng beautifully, playing the race card, the only card the Man has dealt him.
"Tooshay be on da lists." Little G, ever the captious Crip, challenges the Bone.
"Tooshay ain't fittin' ta catch nothin' but a dump!" says the Bone, who is wise beyond his years in the ways of the Man. The Parole Board can approve the applicant, can deny ("dump") parole for a year or more, and in the worst-case scenario they can dump a convict "to expiration." (See you again when your sentence is completely over— expired— 'cause you got nothin' comin' from the board!)
Eighteen names and numbers down: LERNER— 61634. My relief is physical, a five-hundred-pound boulder off my chest. I would weep with joy, weep like a bitch-slapped punk, if such a public display of unmanliness wasn't considered so unseemly.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. Just the wrong demographics at the moment.
With my county jail time "credits," I have been down almost a year now.
"The O.G. fittin' ta roll over to the wild leg!" The Bone, self-appointed interpreter of this madhouse, is correct. The board will approve me ("It's a slam-dunk," i
nsists Shapiro) for parole to my next sentence, a one-to-six, the last leg.
I will be free in twelve months!
In my cell I study the calendar, count the days. Aside from counting steps in the yard, this is my primary passion here. I deduct the jail credits and come up with 362 days! The same answer I have gotten two or three hundred times before, but it never hurts to check. My father, whose hobby was carpentry, used to say, "Measure twice— cut once."
I measure again— 361 days and four hours!
* * *
Spoony is tweaking behind Mandy's trailer phone being cut off. He now has no way to reach her and confirm his worst fears about Jody or Sancho. "Probably was a little late on the bill," Spoony surmises.
I have no sympathy for Spoony on this issue. I began my career in the phone company's Collection Services Division (later rechristened the Revenue Fulfillment Center). After talking to thousands of deadbeats with insulting excuses for late payments— "My mother died and forgot to go to the mailbox first"— I had concluded these late-or non-paying customers had nothing coming. You had money for Mom's funeral, didn't you? Better rethink your priorities— until then, enjoy dead dial tone!
Collection work can make an otherwise sensitive man a bit callous.
Sergeant Stanger decides to have some fun with Spoony on the yard.
"EAT DIRT, ASSHOLE!" This is Stanglish for "Drop to the ground, facedown, hands clasped behind your head."
Spoony, who has just finished making his crank deliveries for the Car, isn't holding. He drops, facedown, while Stanger approaches brandishing the cattle-prod-size flashlight. Six Dirt members fan out, forming a security perimeter around Stanger and Spoony as the Yard Rats scurry over to scope out the score on the latest installment of Cops versus Cons.
Last time I checked, the cops were leading by something like 5,000 to nothing.
Spoony's little shaved bean is bobbing up and down in fear. Stanger has to scream again. "I said eat dirt! Don't move your head!" And Spoony makes the mistake of looking up to see just who is screaming at him. And why.
Stanger knows the penal code, although he is rarely restrained by it. "Failure to immediately obey a correctional officer's order" can be construed as "resisting or threatening" behavior. So Stanger steps forward and slams the flashlight down, connecting with a sickening thud against the "M" in the "Mandy" neck tattoo. Very bad for Mandy.
The Wood Pile, led by Kansas, is racing over. "That's outta line!" Kansas yells at the Dirt. The Yard Rats and Wood Pile press forward, carrying me— a reluctant spectator— with them. The Shit is about to Jump Off.
I was wondering just which way it was going to roll when Guntower Cop starts blasting in the general direction of the surging crowd of convicts.
All of the convicts and a few of the more experienced Dirt hit the dirt. Kansas knocks me flat on my face, and my glasses shatter on the ground. Two of the Dirt, last men standing, catch shotgun pellets in their asses and legs.
Final score before they lock us down: convicts still nothing (with nothing coming), but the cops are minus two— O happy day!
Except I am minus my only pair of eyeglasses, which is going to be a problem (and not "an opportunity in disguise") unless they send me to Braille classes and require Two-Tears Tattoo to telegraph his visit with a bullhorn from across the yard: "You're dead! You disrespectful Lawdog motherfucker!"
The DOP's Department of Internal Affairs and Investigations concludes that the "unfortunate friendly fire" that cut down two of the Dirt's Finest "highlights a training and development opportunity." This is my kind of bureaucratic language. They also recommend a budgetary solution. I love these guys!
We are locked down for three days, which is how long it takes Spoony to stop croaking like a frog. Stanger and the boys drop by my house, tear it up and leave before I can even offer them a cup of instant coffee. C.O. Fallon gave us plenty of advance notice, so Skell's private stock was moved long before the Dirt arrived.
I'm still searching for some fish who will sell me his glasses for a bag or two of 4 Aces tobacco. There is no way I can survive the fourteen-month waiting list.
Besides watching out for Two-Tears, the Bone reminds me that some of the Hunger's gangster homeboys might still be seeking a little getback against me.
"Bone," I plead, "can't you just tell me who they are? I'm blind now and I'll never see it coming."
"Sorry, O.G., but I ain't tryin' to catch nothin' from snitch city, know what I'm sayin'?"
"All right, I understand. How about you just sort of sing out a name or two, like it's part of a rap song or something. That wouldn't be snitching."
The Bone adjusts his shower cap and considers the idea. After a few moments he shakes his head.
"Nah, O.G. That would be a dry snitch."
* * *
Caseworker Sykes ("Call me Wally") summons me to his office in the rotunda a few days before my Parole Board. As assistant director of inmate programming he is required to make sure I am appropriately programmed. Of course, all prison rehabilitative "programs" were eliminated years ago. Probably a budgetary issue. Somebody smoothing out the expense outliers.
Mr. Sykes is not deterred one whit by the almost total absence of "programming" in the prison. His job is to slot us into the proper (for our particular crimes) programs. The fact that these programs do not exist has not diminished his enthusiasm for his job.
Wally looks up from what I know to be my I-file. The same four gray hairs that were pasted across his shiny dome back when I made slocks of newspapers have not been disturbed. Wally is a very small man with some big ideas.
"Good morning, Mr. Lerner. Your back number, please?"
"Six-one-six-three-four."
Wally seems immensely pleased with my answer to the back number query and beams at me behind his black institutional horn-rims. No wonder there's more than a year wait for glasses. The employees are sucking up all the perks. I'm still hunting for that myopic fish.
"Let's talk programming!" he exclaims, a tiny hand snatching at something in the air. Possibly a memory of programming.
"Mr. Sykes—"
"Call me Wally."
"Well, Wally, it's my understanding that there is no longer any programming available in this prison."
Wally frowns. This is distasteful. He has heard this before.
"No programming? I think not. We have many programs, a diverse offering, solid programs. They are simply temporarily abeyed pending funding approval."
"Oh— thanks for clearing that up. I thought they were all canceled over five years ago."
"Canceled? Don't believe that. Abeyed, perhaps, even delayed, but hardly canceled." Wally wants some compassion on this issue. "Look, Mr. Lerner, I've read your I-file— you're an educated man. Surely you encountered these types of budgeting problems during your years with a corporation."
A former corporate spin doctor, I allow that I do.
"Good— we're on the same team, you know. Now let's proceed irregardless of the funding issues."
"Yes," I agree, anxious to get this charade over with. "Let's proceed, regardless."
Wally is turning the pages in my file. "Hmmm… let's see… voluntary manslaughter… use of a deadly weapon… oh yes, yes… good— this is very good." Wally is licking his upper lip with an unreasonably long tongue.
"Wally?"
"Just checking for appropriate programs."
I'm getting worried. "Wally— uh, why is voluntary manslaughter, uh, good? I mean from the Parole Board's perspective."
"From a parole perspective? Good? Oh no, I think not." Wally shakes his head sadly.
Now I'm totally confused. "You think not… not good? But you just said very good."
"Very good from a programming perspective, so to speak. You see, Mr. Lerner, you are a violent offender and we have a program for violent offenders— a wonderful Anger Management workshop called 'Cage Yo Rage.' The Parole Board, since you are so concerned with their perspective, looks very favorably
on applicants with Anger Management Certification. Oh yes, it's practically de rigueur these days."
"Well, that's good— so you'll sign me up for the next workshop?"
"I think not."
"But you just said—"
"I said we have Anger Management, so to speak, when it's being offered— it's temporarily abeyed, awaiting a fresh infusion of budget funding. And when it is offered again, you will be placed on the list— an abeyance list, so to speak."
"And when might that be, Wally? I'm scheduled to see the Parole Board in a few days, so to speak."
"I think not." I think if Wally says this again I will kill him, and his programming successor can program me for Extreme Rage Management.
You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish Page 24
