You Got Nothing Coming Page 7

  Strunk used a small hand counter to ensure that the number of trays handed out matched the latest fish head count. From high above, Bubblecop discouraged anyone from cutting ahead in line by occasional screams and brandishing a mini-14 through the horizontal slots in the glass bubble. Bubblecop preferred the mini-14 for mealtimes, since the magazine could hold forty rounds, any one of which would destroy a man's appetite. Permanently.

  We filled our Hard Time cups with milk for breakfast (coffee is a "privilege" reserved for general population inmates, who eat in the main chow hall), purple Kool-Aid for lunch, and orange Kool-Aid at dinner.

  After the culinary delights of the Las Vegas county jail served SW3 style, the breakfasts seemed wonderful to me: biscuits and gravy, hot oatmeal (served cold), sometimes a hard-boiled or scrambled egg, and always a piece of fruit, usually an apple or an orange (and no white mold).

  About a dozen five-sided steel tables were bolted to the floor of the lower tier, each small side extruding its own metal stool. These tables were reserved for the porters and other nonfish inmates who were temporarily housed in the Tank.

  New fish eat in their cells. We were given ten minutes.

  Using our sporks and our bunks as dining room tables, Kansas and I devoured every morsel on our trays that wasn't made of Styrofoam. I sat cross-legged on the upper tray listening to Kansas bitch from the bottom bunk.

  "This shit is outta line, O.G. In Kansas we got fucking sausage! We got bacon. Y'unnerstan' what I'm sayin' to you?"

  I was absurdly pleased by the utility of the spork, having just spooned in a mouthful of oatmeal and a chunk of egg at the same time. Talk about multitasking.

  "I understand, Kansas. Back in Kansas you were served steak and eggs every morning followed by lime sherbet to clear your palate before the lobster bisque—"

  "Keep up with that sideways shit, O.G., and I'll just reach up and snatch your old ass down here and peel your fucking onion."

  "My onion? Would that be Kansas-speak for my head?"

  "You pick shit up fast, O.G. All I'm sayin', dawg, is that you can't get no fucking pork in this punk-ass prison. The fucking Muslims, motherfucking sand niggers, raised so much shit about it being against their so-called religion that nobody can get ham. No bacon, no sausage— nobody got nothin' comin' because of these freaks." Kansas was working himself up into one of his psychotic rages. I automatically went into my Mirroring and Echoing mode.

  "That's outta line, Kansas."

  "O.G. This shit is so outta line it's off the hook, know what I'm sayin'?"

  "It's fuckin' scandalous, dawg!"

  "That's what I'm talking about, O.G."

  "I'm down wid that, bro."

  "O.G.?"

  "What's up, dawg?"

  "If you don't stop trying to talk like me, I will kill you, unnerstan' what I'm sayin'?"

  I had clearly reached the limitations of Mirroring and Echoing.

  "All right, Kansas. Sorry— I get carried away sometimes."

  "That's cool, dawg, I ain't sweatin' you."

  "Aiight then."

  Our ten minutes of quality time over, the cell door cracked open and we put the empty trays outside it (on the "front porch") for the porters to pick up.

  Kansas timed this routine perfectly, not closing the door until Skell had dumped our trays into a plastic garbage bag and handed Kansas another tray. Skell expertly positioned his cadaverous body to block Bubblecop's view. A fresh trickle of blood leaked from a scab on Skell's shaved head.

  Kansas put the tray— heaped generously with biscuits and eggs (no sausage, though)— under his bunk, then slow-played sliding the door shut.

  "Good looking out, Skell. Make sure you don't get crossed out behind this."

  "Ain't no thing, Kansas— got the fucking tray count wired, dawg, y'unnerstan' what I'm sayin'? The kitchen dawgs owe me. Fuck, I could getchu some—"

  "CELL 47! LOCK IT THE FUCK DOWN NOW!" Skell took a quick peek behind him at Bubblecop's mini-14 before slithering off to the next cell. Kansas locked us down.

  "Yogee, want some eggs? Biscuits?"

  "Thanks, Kansas, but I'm full."

  "Full? Straight-up business, dawg? 'Cause I take care of my cellies, know what I'm sayin'? It ain't no big thing, ain't even a chicken wing."

  "Okay, I'll take a chicken wing."

  "There you go again, leaking outta the side of your neck." Then Kansas was sporking away with a savage concentration.

  "Aiight, O.G. I'm hungry as a hostage."

  Kansas had to have at least two trays per meal and he got them. By the 6 P.M. head count he would have pumped out eight hundred sit-ups and five hundred push-ups. Between exercise sets he would fart out the aroma of rotten eggs.

  Leaving me to watch the sandstorms out the window and try to remember who said "hell is other people."

  * * *

  When Kansas wasn't bragging about being the "Shotcaller" back in the Kansas pen, he was yelling out the door to his wood dawgs in the other cells. When he just wanted to chat with our neighbor in cell 46, a sunken-cheeked crankhead called Big Bear, he'd scream through the air vent in the cell wall.

  "Yo, Bear, Big Bear! What's up, dawg?" Since the air ventilation system hadn't been burdened with any actual air in decades, Big Bear's response came through the metal grille clearer than an advertised Sprint call.

  "Yo, Kansas! Just kickin' it. What's up, dawg?"

  "Same old same old." Which Kansas rendered as sameol' same-o.

  "Aiight then, Kansas."

  "Aiight, Bear." End of conversation.

  Big Bear looked more like a longhaired tattooed squirrel than a bear, but prison nicknames are funny that way. These vent exchanges with Big Bear were usually initiated by Kansas, who would first pound his fist against the common wall to get Bear's attention. The pounded-wall response signaled that the jailhouse dial tone was activated.

  It took Kansas and Big Bear mere seconds to unearth such newsworthy nuggets as both dawgs were kicking it, or things were sameol' same-o. Both of them would return compulsively to this exhausted verbal terrain dozens of times a day.

  Kansas had two techniques for yelling through the door. If he didn't want the cops to spot his face at the wire-reinforced cell window, he would drop to the floor and shout under the door. There was about an inch of space between the concrete floor and the bottom of the steel slider. When especially bored, Kansas enjoyed lying on his stomach and making animal noises through the opening. He did a great dog imitation, a passable cow, and a lousy cat.

  Usually, not caring who saw him (the "no yelling out the door" rule was rarely enforced), Kansas would just stand in front of the door and scream. Sometimes all day long.

  About that time I became an expert in constructing earplugs from wet toilet paper. I could still detect some zoo noises, but the plugs muffled the shrillest of the screams.

  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 swo
llen 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.