Hard Time (14 page)

‘C’mon, Shaun, white-boy meeting in my cell right now,’ Billy said just after the morning headcount.

‘About what?’ I asked, dropping off my bunk.

‘The guards rolled Outlaw up to a pod for sentenced prisoners, so we’ve got no head of the whites. The woods are voting on a new head.’

‘OK,’ I said, hoping Outlaw’s departure would stop the whites from trying to intimidate me into asking Claudia to smuggle drugs in.

We arrived at a cell packed with topless men adorned with tattoos. Swastikas. War eagles. Norse runes. Skulls. Swords. SS lightning bolts. Castles. Celtic crosses. Confederate flags. Tear drops. On one skinhead’s chest: Hitler admiring Jews dying in a gas chamber.

‘Look, woods,’ said George, a mountain of a hillbilly who shocked us all by never wearing sandals in the shower. ‘Carter’s been down the longest. He’s affiliated with the Aryan Brotherhood. He’s the most qualified to represent our race. I say Carter should be the head of the whites.’

Oh no, I thought. Anyone but Carter. I didn’t want to vote for him, but the mood was such that anyone who didn’t would have been drowned in the toilet. We elected Carter unanimously. As he’d suggested Claudia smuggle drugs in, I expected things to get worse for me.

‘Thanks, woods,’ Carter said. ‘I’ve got an announcement to make.’

The mood turned more serious. I expected him to command us to charge down the stairs and attack the blacks.

‘I’m about to get married, and you’re all invited to my wedding party,’ Carter said, breaking the tension. Our laughter echoed in the day room.

Scared of sounding naive, but curious, I asked, ‘How can you get married in jail?’

‘Over the phone,’ Carter said.

While Carter recited marriage vows on a three-way call to his wife and minister, I fetched cookies from my cell to contribute to the wedding buffet. From the balcony, we watched Carter give the thumbsup, signalling he now had a wife. Cheering erupted in the day room. Carter raised the phone so his wife could hear. The prisoner on the phone next to Carter pulled his hand out of the crotch of his pants and patted Carter on the back.

The whites were already helping themselves to the food by the time Carter returned to D14. He led the men in drinking hooch and snorting lines of crystal meth and crushed-up psychotropic medication. The food didn’t last long, and fights almost broke out over the crumbs.

Billy jumped on the tiny steel table in the middle of the cell. He undid his ponytail and let his hair down. He started dancing like a stripper, undressing himself while we sang. When he was down to his pink boxers, he gyrated his hips and lashed us with his hair. ‘Congratulations, dawg!’ he shrieked. He arched his back, stuck his tongue in Carter’s ear and pinched Carter’s nipples. ‘Take a Pac-Man,’ he said, putting seizure medication in Carter’s mouth.

The maximum occupancy of a Towers pod was 45 men. Turnover was high, and the racial balance kept changing. What never changed was that the race with the most members picked on the race with the least. In our pod, the whites were presently the majority, the blacks the minority. Something was brewing between the two.

The day after Carter’s wedding, the guards moved Gravedigger – a six-foot-four cage fighter – into our pod. Gravedigger wasn’t massive, but he had muscular thickness and definition in all of the right places. He had a narrow, ill-tempered face and beady brown eyes that shone with a hunger for violence. His body was adorned with skulls, demons and racist slogans. But the tattoo that stood out the most was on his chest: the devil as a puppet-master. He was in jail for kidnapping and torturing a man who had raped one of his female friends. His presence increased Carter’s smugness and the threatening behaviour of the whites towards the blacks.

Gravedigger strode into D10. ‘Who’s the English guy in here?’

He sounded so angry, I expected trouble. ‘I am,’ I said, rising on my bunk fast.

‘Here you go, dawg.’ He threw a small piece of carefully folded paper at me. ‘It’s a kite from the crazy English dude in Tower 2. I woulda sent it over from the hole, but I gave him my word I’d hand it to you personally.’

‘Thanks, bro,’ I said, opening it hastily.

La,

Gravedigger projected his gaze at Troll. ‘Hey, Troll, front me some cookies till store day, dawg.’ His tone left Troll no option.

‘Sure, dawg.’ Troll slid one of his many brown paper commissary bags from under the bunk. ‘Heard you just got out of the hole.’ He extracted a rack of cookies.

Gravedigger snatched the cookies. ‘Yeah, dawg. I had to smash some toads in Tower 2.’

‘How come, dawg?’ Troll asked.

‘These two toads owed a white boy, my Russian buddy, Max. Max went in their cell to collect on store day, and they smashed him. You know the blacks ain’t getting away with disrespecting our race like that, dawg, not when I’m head of the fucking whites. So I just bombed in there myself. I don’t need torpedoes to fight my battles. I knocked the first one out with one punch. Motherfucker had a glass jaw. The other one shit bricks, ran into the day room like a little bitch.’

‘No shit,’ Troll said.

‘So I’m chasing him round and round the fucking stairs with everyone watching. I caught him, put him on the floor with a kung-fu takedown and pinned him in a wrestling lock. I’m slamming his face with my elbows like this.’ Gravedigger set his elbows in motion like two giant chisels. ‘Blood was coming out everywhere. The guy’s all fucked up, dawg. The blood around us was getting bigger and bigger. And Noble’s just watching it from the fishbowl, enjoying it, waiting for backup. It took a long time for the guards to respond, so I just kept pounding him. Blood splashing all over me. Everyone watching.’

‘You’re no joke, dawg,’ Troll said. ‘You ain’t nuthin’ nice.’

Gravedigger glowered at Troll and left. Yet another maniac for us to contend with.

Before breakfast the next morning, Billy took me to his cell. ‘I’m just giving you a heads-up, dawg. You’re in danger. Shit’s about to pop off in your cell.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, growing alarmed.

‘Some fucked-up shit’s going down with Troll. I don’t agree with it, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I suggest you stay out of it, too.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘Look, Shaun, Carter and Digger’s gonna smash Troll.’

I was shocked. ‘Why?’

‘For playing cards with the blacks and dealing too much with the other races.’

‘That’s crazy.’

‘That’s just their front so they can jack Troll. Carter and Digger owe Troll for store. So when Troll rolls up after they smash him, the debt will be squashed and they’ll just take whatever store Troll has left.’

‘Maybe I should try talking to Carter and Digger?’

‘It’s no use. They’ve made their minds up. If you try to get in the mix, they’ll just smash you too. Look, I’m gonna tell you more, but don’t tell anyone this.’

‘What?’ I asked, starting to panic.

‘Carter’s told Digger you and Troll are the two white boys least representing the white race.’

‘No shit. Do you think they’ll smash me too?’

‘No. At least not yet. Carter thinks you might be able to bring drugs in.’

The drug thing had been nagging away at me. ‘Look, there’s no way I’m bringing drugs in. What should I do?’

‘I really don’t know. Carter’s instigating all this shit. Digger just loves to fight.’

‘When’s this supposed to happen to Troll?’

‘After breakfast.’

I returned to my cell, preoccupied. The threat to Troll was imminent, and I couldn’t just look the other way and let Troll get smashed. During our time together, we’d bonded. I believed if I were in danger, Troll would at least forewarn me. I didn’t know that cellmates who got along usually agreed to ‘have each other’s backs’. I felt that way instinctively. But what could I do? I couldn’t go up against Carter, Gravedigger and their torpedoes. I would be annihilated. Our cellmate, OG, loved to fight, but prison rules prohibited him from interfering in a dispute among the white race. Wild Man was in Tower 2, at the opposite end of the jail, where he couldn’t help me on such short notice. I decided to tell Troll over breakfast, to advise him to roll up to Tower 2 where I hoped he’d be better off in the company of Wild Man. Having secured Troll’s safety in my mind, I was stressing about my own when Officer Mordhorst announced: ‘Chow’s in the house! Line up at the door with your IDs!’

In the day room, the friction between the blacks and whites was palpable. When Mordhorst left to serve the next pod, Carter yelled at SmackDown, a trained fighter and the head of the blacks, ‘You need to stop sweating the woods, dawg!’ SmackDown had been bullying members of every race out of commissary. Carter was telling SmackDown to stop bullying the whites or else. The day room hushed.

From the blacks’ table, SmackDown yelled, ‘Who’ve I been sweating?’ He spoke like an East Coast rapper.

‘I can’t name names, dawg,’ Carter said, ‘but as the head, people have been complaining about you bulldogging them.’

‘I ain’t bulldogged nobody!’

‘That’s not what people are saying.’

‘Well, if fools have got a problem with me, they need to come and tell me to my face.’

‘That’s what I’m talking about, dawg. The people you’ve been sweating are afraid of you.’

‘Fuck ’em then!’

‘You need to keep yourself in check! People are sick of your bulldogging!’

‘I ain’t putting myself in check, dawg. You can go fuck yourself, too!’

‘You calling me out, dawg?’

‘Hell, yeah, I’m calling you out! Ain’t no punk-ass white boy telling me how I’m s’posed to behave round here.’

One of the worst things you can call someone in jail is a punk. A punk is a sex slave who can be traded or rented out. Being called a punk left a head of a race no choice but to fight. If a head didn’t fight, he’d get smashed and moved out by his own race. I didn’t envy Carter’s position – SmackDown had never lost a fight in the jail. Troll told me that the guards had previously expelled SmackDown from our pod for fighting, but he’d smashed so many people in so many other pods he was right back where he’d started out.

Everyone stopped what they were doing and joined their races. Whites. Blacks. Mexicans. Mexican Americans. Four armies posted around their heads, poised for war.

‘You’ll see who’s a punk!’ Carter yelled, tilting his head back. ‘Let’s take this to cell 3!’ Cell 3 was under the stairs, making it less visible to the guards and the most popular spot for fights.

The residents of cell 3 rushed inside and shifted all of their property under the bottom bunk so it wouldn’t get damaged or bloodied.

‘What’re we waiting for?’ SmackDown swaggered into cell 3 and assumed a boxer’s stance. He had the word SMACKDOWN tattooed on his right forearm.

Carter charged in and spun SmackDown around. SmackDown almost lost his balance but steadied himself and delivered a hook to Carter’s head, sloughing the cockiness from Carter’s face. A flurry of desperate kicks from Carter got nowhere. SmackDown simply shifted slightly, frowning, remaining focused, biding his time. A jab struck Carter’s head and set him bouncing all over the place. Dodging punches, he looked as if he were doing some wild dance. Then he lost his footing and stumbled forward. Carter took another blow to the head. He crouched and lashed out with a kick aimed at SmackDown’s groin. As if anticipating the kick, SmackDown shifted out of the way. He moved into the perfect position to land an uppercut on Carter’s chin.
Bam!
The audience gasped. Carter’s knees buckled, but he didn’t fall. SmackDown moved in closer and threw more blows. Carter leapt away, dashed out of the cell and tottered back to the whites’ table. His face plastered in disbelief as he sat down.

Standing in the cell doorway, SmackDown yelled, ‘What the fuck was that? Get back in here! We ain’t through!’ He was panting and flaring his nostrils like a stallion in heat.

Voices rose from all of the tables: ‘Handle your business, Carter!’

‘Finish the fight, dawg!’

‘You can’t just run away from a fight like that!’

‘Yeah, Carter, get back in the cell!’

Carter’s face blushed. ‘I went in already.’ He could barely speak. It was all coming out in spurts. ‘We fought. He won. I handled my business.’

Yelling rose from all of the tables: ‘What the fuck?’

‘You’re supposed to be the head of the whites!’

‘You have to fight, dawg!’

Even his own torpedoes turned against him:

‘You’re our head!’

‘You’re making us look bad to the other races, dawg!’

‘You have to go back in!’

‘Go back in, Carter!’

‘I already fought,’ Carter said, his face crimson. ‘He fucking beat me!’

‘Fucking punk-ass bitch!’ SmackDown yelled. ‘Get back in here, motherfucker. I’m calling your punk-ass out, you fucking bitch!’

Gravedigger rose from his seat and put his hands on his hips. Glowering down at Carter from his great height, he shook his head. The jeering stopped. As much as I disliked violence, I was rooting for Gravedigger to smash Carter right then. I figured it would end the threat against Troll and me. Gravedigger shook his head, and said in a low voice, ‘Man up, wood.’ He intensified his gaze.