Invincible: A Novel (24 page)

MR. INVINCIBLE

Two days later

Jake wasn’t in the hospital for long. The cell block they threw him back into looked like it had been shut down since the seventies and was only used from time to time to teach inmates a lesson. He didn’t see or hear anyone but himself.

“See how you like it down here, motherfucker,” one of the COs told him.

The other one laughed. “Yeah, I bet this nigga don’t be so tough down here.” He smashed his elbow into Jake’s rib cage.

They brought Jake to the last cell in the ancient cell block, uncuffed him, and threw him in. Before they left him, the CO who had smashed him in the ribs said, “You don’t look so tough to me, punk.”

Jake knew better than to say anything stupid. He tried to
save his ass by telling the COs, “Yo, I don’t think I’m tough and I don’t want no problems. That was personal and I did what I had to so I can stay alive.”

“I don’t even give a fuck, punk,” the CO who had hit Jake replied. Then he smashed Jake in the ribs again. This time with five blows that curled Jake over. Then he elbowed Jake in the back, forcing him to hit the floor. “Come on and get up and try to break my neck! Come on, punk,” the CO yelled out.

“Yo, calm down,” the other CO told his partner. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You trying to get fired? Well I ain’t. So do that shit on your own time!” After he said that, they left Jake in the deserted, decrepit cell block by himself.

Jake knew he was fucked. Having beef with the police is one of the worst things that can happen to a man in jail. Jake had nothing and no one to talk to besides God.

“Father, I know I have done a lot of wrong and foul acts in my lifetime and I’m gonna have to pay for them one way or the other. I just ask that one day you see it fit to forgive me, Father, and let me get to heaven after I finish doing my time in hell. I also ask that you bless my child and her mother in abundance.”

Jake’s conversations with God were getting deeper and deeper as the weeks went by. He wasn’t sure how long he was down there because there was no way to tell time without a clock. There were no windows, so he didn’t know whether it was light or dark outside. What he did do is count how many times the police came in and whipped his ass. He was on his ninth beating. He thought he ate or attempted to eat around a total of fifteen times. He was assuming he had been down there for a month. He decided to stop worrying about time. He meditated to keep from going insane, remembering some of the
materials Old Nebbie taught him, trying to stay strong however he could. He repeated songs he loved and thought of movies he loved to entertain himself. Sometimes he stared at the one little lightbulb that was flickering in the hallway.

Before long, Jake was doing at least two thousand sit-ups and two thousand push-ups and dips per day. He told himself there were jails in other parts of the world ten times worse than what he was in. Those prisoners barely ever ate and if they didn’t break, why would he? He would make the best out of his situation and use the peace and quiet time to elevate his mind to a place it never reached before. He would live a whole different life in his mind. His body was just a shell sitting in jail, but his mind and soul could travel the world and the seven seas, even to the sun and moon if he wanted. So if they planned on breaking him down with a dark, decrepit room like a slave in a dungeon, they had another thing coming. He would rebuild himself to be something and someone too deep for them to understand. He would truly be Mr. Invincible.

There was a saying from the Good Book he liked to recite. “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?”

He had been in the dungeon for nine months, almost ten. The beatings had stopped a long time ago—due to prayer, Jake believed. They already gave him his slop for the day, so when Jake heard a guard approaching, he was curious as to what was happening.

“Today is your lucky day, you son of a bitch,” the guard stated as he stopped at his cell. “You know why? You got court today, that’s why! You get to go upstairs, use the real shower in a real cell block, and you even get to change your jail jumpsuit.
They might let you get a sip from the water fountain instead of your old nasty sink. Does real water even come out of that thing?” the guard asked without caring about the answer. “You might even get to eat a tray that ain’t been spit in!”

Jake didn’t bother to answer back or be bothered with what the clown CO was saying. He saw the spit in his food plenty of times. He either had to run his food under his nasty sink water, which was tinted green, or he would give it to his other cell mates, which were the rats and roaches.

“Come on, hurry up and move. You ain’t got all day,” the CO ordered.

Jake was brought to a cell block where everybody was asleep and locked in. The CO gave him a bar of soap, white boxers, a T-shirt and socks with some new oranges, a shaving kit, a toothbrush and toothpaste. Jake shaved, brushed and re-brushed his teeth, and took as long as he could in the shower.

After thirty minutes, the guard had to yell, “Get the fuck outta there. We gotta go.”

When Jake came out of the shower dressed, the C.O. shackled him. His legs and his arms were cuffed to his waist belt. They were doing him like they did all cop killers and mass murderers and anyone they considered a threat. Jake was supposed to be transported to court in a single squad car, but they were all out being used. So he had to get on the bus everyone else was using for court.

The bus was packed. Jake didn’t bother to scan the metal box on wheels to see who was who or what was what. He didn’t even care. His mind was in a totally different zone. The CO ordered Jake to sit in the first row, alone, then sat in the row behind him with his shotgun in his hand. Jake had not seen
daylight in almost a year. It felt good to look at the sun and the clouds.

He heard the whispers of, “Oh shit! That nigga’s still here.”

“I thought they killed him.”

“Told you he wasn’t in the feds, nigga!”

Jake ignored it all. Today he just wanted to appreciate looking out of the window and seeing something different. Jake got to court and was put in a separate holding cell from everyone else.

An unenthused court-appointed lawyer came in the back and told Jake, “Listen, we’re gonna try to get you life. The DA is gonna be talking the death penalty.”

Jake cut him off. “Just tell them you don’t want to drag this on. I’ll plead guilty today and I want to be sentenced as soon as possible.”

The lawyer told Jake: “It’s not going to go like that. We have procedures and certain protocols we have to follow.”

“Yeah, okay,” Jake said.

When Jake got called in front of the judge, he let the DA say his piece. Before Jake’s lawyer could get a word in, Jake said, “Excuse me, Your Honor. I would like to address the court with something.”

“I usually don’t do this, but go ahead Mr. Billings.”

“Well, Your Honor, I just want to say that I don’t want to waste the taxpayer’s money, your time, the District Attorney’s time, or my time. No disrespect to the process of the federal court, but I would like to plead guilty on every count today and be sentenced to whatever it is I’m going to be sentenced to as soon as possible, whether it’s life or death, Your Honor. And one other thing, Your Honor. The circumstances I’m being
held under are not humane. I’m aware I am locked in the only correctional facility that holds federal inmates in the area, but I’m being treated like an animal due to the fact I killed CO Frazier. But that doesn’t mean I should be subjected to eating food with spit in it and living in a cell with inadequate water. I am aware of the fact that even though it’s a local jail, you can be held there up to four years. I ask to please make sure that doesn’t happen to me. Please, Your Honor!”

The judge told Jake he heard him and would make sure things went as speedy as possible. Then he called the lawyers to approach the bench. Jake overheard the judge tell the DA that his living conditions better be fixed. Then the DA mentioned something about Jake killing Frazier. Then Jake’s lawyer mentioned something to the likes of CO Frazier was being investigated due to his criminal activity. Jake couldn’t hear anything else. The lawyers returned and court was adjourned.

Jake prayed that what he did would work and if it didn’t, he would just make the best of his situation. Jake rode back to the jail. When he got there he was unshackled and thrown in the bullpen with everyone else. He thanked God for taking care of his problem. He knew they weren’t going to put him back in the dungeon.

Jake was put in the bullpen with twenty-two other dudes. Now it was just him left. They was trying to hit him with a dose of bullpen therapy but that wasn’t shit to what he had just been through. He actually didn’t mind what they were doing.

Meanwhile, upstairs in the federal part of the jail, “That shit is true niggaz been saying all day. That nigga is still in here. I seen him with my own eyes,” one of Regg’s homies was telling him, as he stopped at the law library to kick it with Regg.

“When I was leaving the kitchen and walking by the bullpen I seen the nigga just sittin’ in there. Something looks different about him! I can’t explain it, though.”

Regg closed the book he was reading. “I heard they had that nigga in the dungeon, but I thought niggaz was bullshittin’. That shit been closed for years. You mean to tell me they held that man in a part of the jail nobody has been in for years? I bet we would look like there was something different about us, too, if that shit happened!”

“Yo, Regg, you think it’s going to pop off with Jake, Frankie, and Clips?” Regg’s man asked.

“How could it not, my man? How could it not?”

In another part of the jail, Clips walked to his homeboy’s cell. “Yo Frank, you know our friend Mr. Invincible is back, right?”

Frank laid in his bunk reading the paper. He answered his good friend without putting it down, “Yeah I know. Been hearing that since this morning. So it was true he has been in this jail the whole time, so what!”

Clips said, “The so what is that he will be upstairs tomorrow, or possibly even late tonight, and I wanna know what you want to do with him. I mean we did almost kill the man before. He might be a little upset over that, not that we give a fuck, but I like being on point and having my schedule right. So if killing him is on the schedule, let me know.”

“Clips, we ain’t killing him,” Frank said. “Unless he tries to kill us. Other than that, we’re chilling.”

A CO finally came over to Jake and said, “Come on.” He handed him a bedroll and a bullpen sandwich when he let him out of the bullpen.

“Where to?” Jake asked. “Back to the dungeon?”

“Nah, you headed to the federal side.”

“Okay, that’s a big step up from where I was at,” Jake said to himself.

“Now you look out for yourself in there,” the officer told him.

“You know something I should know?” Jake asked.

The guard looked at Jake with raised eyebrows. “You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?” Jake asked.

“Listen,” the guard said. “They’re sending you upstairs to the federal side. That’s where all your enemies are. The two dudes that put you in a coma are over there. Ike and Cory are over there and every other nigga you probably got into it with.”

Jake said, “Oh well, it is what it is.”

When Jake got to his cell block, it was 9:30, half an hour away from lock in. He looked around the house and didn’t spot any threats. He walked to his cell to put his bag down. Then he went and stood by his doorway and looked around. He decided to go hit the pull-up bar he saw when he walked into the block. It was the standard pull up/dip/push-up machine you saw in every jail. It had been a long time since Jake hit the bar. He couldn’t do that when he was down in the dungeon.

All eyes were on him. Some niggaz were curious on how he even made it back to population. Some of them were curious to how he was even alive. Some thought he was sent to another jail. Jake really didn’t give a fuck what any of them thought. His main concern was to keep his mind and body right. He had lost weight since he was in the dungeon, but he was still all muscle from the push-ups and sit-ups and dips off the bed he had
been doing. Jake made his first two sets of pull-ups fifty clips ’cause he knew niggaz was watching him. He had to let them know the strength was still there. Then he just did a few twenty clips after that.

Jake looked at the clock and saw that it was a few minutes from lock in, so he walked back to his cell and stood by his doorway to observe whose and what type of house he was dealing with. He took a deep breath to mentally prepare himself to deal with the nonsense of being surrounded by liars, dirty motherfuckers, gangsters, fake gangsters, drug addicts, homosexuals, undercover homosexuals, gamblers, COs, and all the other hustlers, killers, and strong-arm robbers.

Jake heard the five-minutes-to-lock-in bell and looked up at the clock. He couldn’t believe his eyes. It was Regg coming through the cell block door. Regg spotted Jake at the same time. A sudden nervousness came over Regg and he gave Jake a “what’s up” head nod that he instantly regretted when Jake just looked at him, turned around, and went in his cell. The door slammed shut behind him.