A Moment of Silence: Midnight III (The Midnight Series Book 3) (66 page)

Bryan Jones, the Community Relations counselor who allowed DeQuan to plan events and host speakers, was gone. Word was he was fired, but no explanation was offered to the inmates he counseled or the community relations he formed. I believed he got fired for bringing that bomb into the jail and letting her detonate. Same as Teacher Karim Ali, mysteriously disappeared for teaching American history in a manner where students were actually interested and participating. Same as I was boxed for praying. It’s crazy once you realize that even when you are trying to do good and be true, even when you are walking within the legal limits, you are still being stalked and hunted and fired upon. A number of COs got transferred to different houses and had to start all over again. Inmates got shifted and shipped out and cells changed. It was a shake-up that no one admitted was happening. The unspoken truth: no one wanted us to learn or grow or change. They needed us to remain in physical stagnation and bondage and in a criminal state of mind.

31. THE UNKNOWN

“Pack your things,” an unfamiliar CO ordered me. Then he handed me a Department of Corrections–issued heavy coat, hat, and boots. So I knew I was going to a very cold place. It wasn’t charity or concern for me that caused them to make it possible for me to dress warmly. I knew by now that to them, I am just a body, a number in their cheap labor system, which they fronted off as a network of facilities where men are “corrected.” They need me to stay alive and healthy enough for them to capitalize off of me. The DOC uniform and winter wear was just a means to an end.

I was handed some folded paperwork. Just as I opened it to read, the unfamiliar CO said, “You have to move now. You will have plenty of time to read in the truck.” He stood in my cell as I got dressed in the outerwear items he gave me.

I was suspicious, though. The maximum amount of time an inmate could remain at Rikers was two years. I had served seventeen months, seven of which was no longer as an accused youth offender, but as a convict. I was told that I’d be shipped, flown, or trucked out as soon as there was a bed available for me in the prison system. I wasn’t in a hurry, but did notice that DeQuan and many of the men in his crew were moved out swiftly, immediately following their convictions.

Why were they moving me now, on New Year’s Eve in 1987? In less than twenty-four hours, it would be 1988,
Insha’Allah.
Everyone
in the world knows that New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day is a huge holiday. Even the COs I was used to seeing on a daily basis were not working their usual evening shift. They were replaced by unfamiliar faces, COs who probably signed up to grab that overtime holiday paper, and do a double or double triple like the she-officer used to do.

I checked myself. No need to get suddenly sentimental. No reason to say goodbye to CO Williams, who made an effort to treat us decently or the other COs who would normally be cuffing and uncuffing us, escorting us around, rationing out small items we needed like towels and toilet paper, or forcing us down to the floor, spraying us with mace and then placing a heavy boot on our backs.

As I packed my few items, my mind switched. Tomorrow is my first wife’s birthday. She will be eighteen years young. I began imagining and desiring and wondering. I shut it all down swiftly. I knew thoughts of the future are forbidden to me while incarcerated. For the sake of my sanity, I am only allowed memories, past or present tense. Thoughts of the future were a form of self-torture. I avoid it. I refuse it.

My few things were dropped into a cheap sack and tied at the top, including my heavy boots, I walked out wearing my Jordans, the same way I had arrived at Rikers at first. The fact that I still had them on my feet was a sign to every man locked and a sign to me also. I was cuffed and controlled, confined and commanded. However, no man could snatch me out of my kicks. In that Brooklyn way, I was undefeated.

My cell door slammed shut. The guy I shared the tiny space with said, “Fuck you, nigga. I hope your next cell mate is a six-hundred-pound faggot.” I smiled. It was the first time he had the audacity to speak directly to me. Coward knew I wasn’t ever coming back.

CO cuffed my wrists, cuffed my ankles, and dropped the chain that connected my hands to my feet. As I walked the tier, it felt like a trail of tears. Men who I was forced to know, who were forced to know me, men who I had made the prayer with before dawn and
before the count, and during the holy month of Ramadan. Men who I had pumped weights with, worked out and shot hoops with, read books with, taught or learned from, shared words with, were at their locked cell doors calling through the slot.

“A’ight Black, stay strong!”

“See you on the other side.”

“Respect.”

“
Mantente fuerte.
”

“Happy New Year.”

“Let us know where you at.”

“
No dejes que te vengas abajo.
”

“Drop a line.”

“Float a kite.”

“Watch your back.”

“Protect your neck.”

“
Allah uh Akbar.
”

“
Hasta que nos encontremos de nuevo, mi amigo.
”

“
A luta continua.
”

“Brooklyn all day, motherfucker!”

*  *  *

A blast of cold air rushed my face when the heavy doors drew open. There were only twelve steps in between where I stood and the DOC truck. Still I was able to steal a glance into the night sky, which I had not seen from outdoors since being jailed. In the darkness of the winter early sunsets and long nights, the razor wire raised up high on the fencing was the only thing shining. Instead of stars, there was only the momentary sweeping of the searchlight surveilling any unauthorized movement. Snipers were in their towers. It seemed even the moon was hiding out. After a series of baby steps, I got in. On a steel bench I was chained and seated in the dark. The truck door slammed shut and was bolted, no windows.
Yeah right, plenty of time to read my paperwork.
It was pitch-black. I couldn’t even see my own hand. I was the only man besides the
driver who was gated up front in the vehicle. On the bus that first brought me up to Rikers, we were like a herd of cattle beefed up for slaughter. There had been many men, and windows we could see out of so that we were clear what we were missing, leaving behind and losing. I didn’t trust the fact that now there was only me. If anything went wrong, there would be no witness. Or at least there would be no one to explain from my perspective. Whatever the driver alleged would be considered law.
It didn’t matter
, I told myself.
I’m not planning to assault him or to escape.
I had no interest in becoming a man permanently on the run, a fugitive. Someone they gunned down on some deserted highway or tracked through some wooded area or swamp. I’d serve my time and be done with it. Just then, I heard the passenger door of the truck open and then slam shut. When the guard slid the slot open to check on me, I checked also, and confirmed that a second DOC driver was now riding shotgun.
Two of them, one of me
, I noted.

Riding off of the Rikers jail complex property, I could feel the truck pull over the bridge and the truck engine moan. What lay ahead was unknown to me.

Butch Broadcast’s words began streaming through my mind. “They gon’ do what they do regardless. Once they ship you out of Rikers, you gon’ encounter some big, ugly, hateful white boys. They gone be everywhere, their arms as big as your legs. They Ku Klux Klan. They hate the black man. You gon’ feel that hatred instantly. So thick you can choke on it. They don’t only hate the blacks. They hate anybody with a drop of melanin, any kind of color in them. They shave your head with hatred. They’ll grab your balls, shove their fingers in your mouth, choking you with hatred. Say they looking for something they ain’t really looking for. They nasty. You gon’ find out. They’ll spread your cheeks and drill in your asshole with fingers, with mop sticks, with erect dicks ’cause they can, and ’cause they want to, and ’cause they hateful and jealous of you.”

In a one-on-one conversation with him once on the yard, I
asked him if he minded if I asked him a question. He replied, “Go ahead. You so quiet, I thought maybe you knew everything already.”

“Nah, that’s not it. But I see from your jail number that you first got knocked a long time ago. I’m not asking you what they accused you of or convicted you for. I’m just curious, if a man does time in all of the prisons you say you done time in, what makes that man keep coming back?” He just looked at me.

“Every time I got arrested and tried and convicted, then served my time and got released, I said to myself and to anybody who would listen, ‘I’m never coming back. Never gonna do time, never gonna get locked up again. But, turned out, everything I do is illegal. If I’m just sitting on my porch, cops roll by eyeballing me like there’s something wrong with that. I’m like damn, this is my mother’s house! Fuck it, if I stand up, they watching me ’cause according to them, I must be ’bout to do something wrong. If I walk down the street, the cruiser’s slowly rolling up behind me. They lower the window, ask me a stupid question like, ‘Butch, what you doing out here?’ I turns arounds slowly, knowing if I turn too quick they gon’ gun me down. I gives them the answer they already know: ‘I live right there.’ Seems my answer was illegal cause they calling me a smart-ass, jumping out the cop car telling me to spread my legs and put my hands on the car. Next thing I know, I’m in the back of the car with my hands cuffed behind my back for resisting arrest. I gets to the station, they booking and beating me. They release me after a while. I goes back home. My mother say, ‘Butch, where you been?’ She looking at me all suspicious. I calls my old lady, figure she’ll help me to relax. She starts giving me the third degree. I hangs up. I go to sit in the garage. My father’s already setting in there. He tells me, ‘Boy when you gon’ get a job?’ But he ain’t got no job and ain’t had one in years. I wants to get a job, but I figure soon as I walk outside, the whole story starts at the beginning again, and it does. Small town works that way. I gets a job at the car wash, or washing and buffing cars at the local car dealer or the gas station. Here comes the police rolling through asking my boss, ‘What you got Butch up here for?’
Boss starts looking at me sideways. I ain’t done nothing but been wiping down cars all day for little tips. Couple of days later he finds a reason to fire me. I’m walking back home. Cops rolling up behind me, asking, ‘What you got in your hand?’ I don’t say nothing. They could see it’s my beer. ‘You supposed to have that in a brown bag,’ they says. ‘It
is
in a brown bag,’ I tell ’em. ‘Then how come we can see it’s a Colt 45 that you drinking?’ Then I says, if you could see dat, why you ask me what I got in my hand?’ ” Butch threw his hands in the air. “That’s how I became Butch Broadcast. Now instead of me waiting to be questioned by my mother, questioned by my old lady, my pops, the police, the judge, the parole officer, I just always say out loud what I’m doing, what I see, where I’m going, where I been, what’s happening and what happened. People think I’m doing it for them. Really, I’m just reminding myself. I gotta remind myself. Otherwise, everybody will have me thinking and believing that I actually am a criminal, who did something wrong.”

“So you not a New Yorker,” I stated, but it wasn’t really a question.

“Don’t matter, son, it’s the same everywhere. I been locked up everywhere. That’s how I figured out that it’s not just me. It’s a conspiracy. Everything a black man say or do, even how we talk and walk or sit and chill, is considered a crime.”

I didn’t say anything in response to his story. I was thinking, though, that he had to be leaving something out. He couldn’t have been locked up in all these places for complete innocence. And no man is innocent. I wasn’t expecting a confession. At the same time, I’m young, but not slow or gullible.

“I know what you thinking. You thinking I had to have done something wrong to get locked up repeatedly.” He smiled. “Well, you right. After while, I figured out if I didn’t do crime, no one would respect me. Why should I live my life as a suspect for no reason? At least if I get out there and start making real moves and big money, I could live a little, feel a little freedom, before they do what they do, ’cause no matter what I do, they gon’ do what they do regardless.
Man, when I switched it up on ’em and actually turned to a life of crime, my mother stopped treating me like a retarded toddler. I gave her money. You should’ve seen her smile. It was all good then. My father respected me once I got my guns, and even moved his shit out the garage so I could park my 1966 Mustang coupe once I took him for a ride to the liquor store in it. Fuck my old lady—I had chicks lined up on the corner acting like they wasn’t lined up on the corner just waiting for me to drive up and choose one of them. Even the police showed me more respect for making them at least have to figure out my hustle, catch me red-handed, and get to take something from me of value once they finally caught up with me and made the arrest. ’Cause you know, they always steal something from the crime scene. You know that, right? All I can say, Young Black,” which is what he called me, “once I played the role they obviously had casted me as maybe from birth, everyone around me was more satisfied than they ever was when I was honest and struggling. So I just kept running the hustles, no matter the territory. They kept locking me up no matter the territory. It was better than a slow, unjust death as a good guy who gets no respect, whose life is all lows and no highs.”

I thanked him for his time and replayed his words. My take on it was that he believed based on his experiences in life that a black man, any black man, has no choice but to play a scripted inferior position as either the pauper or the gangster, nothing else. He saw the police and the government, their arms and their armies and their prisons and their prison keepers, as being all-powerful. So powerful that they could direct the destiny of men based on the complexion of a man’s skin. I didn’t take it lightly. I considered it. As a deadly martial artist whose hands and feet and mind are trained and powerful, in lockup I had been faced with some situations and had learned some things that as a free man I did not know, had not felt or even considered before. How does one man prevail in a physical battle when being inside of a wild mob or haphazard riot that is happening at the same time the mob itself is surrounded by men armed with shields, boots, and batons and chemical
weapons? Furthermore, how does a confined and cuffed man, locked in a room with unconfined and uncuffed authorities bent on not fighting, but fucking violating his manhood, prevail? I wondered if what Broadcast said would happen in prison was the absolute truth, an excuse, an exaggerated fear, or just the way he sees it.