My Name Is River Blue (56 page)

Before he died,
Leroy introduced me to a group of his mostly middle-aged friends, who were of
various races. Most of them were career criminals doing longer stretches than I
was. One thing we had in common was that they were huge football fans, and they
respected me as what they called a "state legend" in high school
football. Every evening after dinner, they would take up two tables in the day
room to have two games of spades going while they talked football.

Several years before
I arrived, the men started calling their group, "the leatherheads"
and that was how everyone knew them. They were sort of like a football club
where each member shared his knowledge of the game, and you had to have played
organized football on a team to sit with the group. I was fascinated to learn that
football helmets were originally made of leather, and I enjoyed hearing all the
facts they gave me about the game I loved.

Even after
Leroy's death, Carney, a white guy in his fifties, still invited me to play
cards and talk football with them. All the guys looked up to him, so I was
grateful that he still included me. I wasn't surprised, but I was disappointed
when Carney explained that allowing me to sit with them didn't mean that they
would protect me, as Leroy would have. They were inmates with the kind of time
and reputation that allowed them to remain neutral and independent. They did
not belong to a gang, and they never got involved in a gang's business, which
meant that they would not defend me if they saw gang members assaulting me.
Carney assured me that it was nothing personal.

A few days after
Leroy's death, I was in my cell, as all inmates had to be for the afternoon
head count at four o'clock. Just prior to the count, CO Tisdale brought in my
new cellmate, who turned out to be Scott, the young guy, who sat next to me on
the bench my first day. The CO walked away without saying a word and left Scott
holding an armful of bedding and a bag of personal belongings. Scott acted as
scared as he did our first day, and it was hard to take my eyes off him. He had
scabs and fading bruises all over his face and arms. I guessed that the damage
had been done days ago.

"You got
the top bunk," I said. I sure as hell wasn't giving the bottom bunk to a
kid younger than I was.

"Okay,"
he mumbled.

Thinner and more
fragile than I remembered, Scott acted as if any movement hurt him, and it was
obvious that someone had beaten the total crap out of him. When he walked past me
to put his things away, I noticed that the back of his head had been stitched. It
occurred to me that trouble might follow him to his new cell, and that I might
be collateral damage. I didn't want whoever messed him up to come after me the
same way, and I worried about other things that could have happened to him that
were not so obvious.

Scott stood
looking at his shelf and then glancing at the plastic totes under the bottom
bunk. He looked at me. "Can I use a shelf and a tote?"

"Sure, the
bare shelf and empty tote are yours. Isn't that how you did it in your other
cell?"

"No. He
made me put my things on the floor in the corner by the toilet."

"He sounds
like a dick. Look, this is your cell as much as it is mine. Ask if you need to
borrow something, or if you need a favor, and I'll help you if I can."

"Thanks."
Scott put away his few belongings. He had trouble stretching and bending.

"Need any
help?"

"No,
thanks."

The four o'clock
count came and went with the CO checking us off his list from outside our cell.
When the CO left, Scott crawled up to his bunk. He was staring into space as if
he were a thousand miles away. I couldn't stand it any longer. For my own good,
I had to know who beat him and why.

"Scott,
what happened to you, dude?"

"What does
it look like happened?"

"Looks like
someone almost beat you to death."

"There's
your answer then."

"Listen,
I'm not trying to be nosey for the hell of it. I want to know who and what to
look out for. What happened?"

I wasn't sure
Scott would answer. When he did, he sounded weak. Like he surrendered. "Watch
out for the white dudes with the shaved heads and swastika tats. They don't
like black guys or Latinos, and they don't like whites mixing with either one
of them. My parents are black and white, so I paid for the crime."

"I guess
bigots don't change no matter where you put them. Was that all it took?"

"I refused to
hide my cellmate's weed in my stuff or do the other shit he ordered, but I paid
for it. Him and three of his friends taught me to do what I'm told."

"Looks like
the guards would have known better than to put you in there."

"They knew.
They did it on purpose."

I thought for a
second. It didn't make sense. "Then why did they put you with me
now?"

"Because after
what happened, they need to look like they put me with a safe cellmate."

"What are
they going to do with those guys who assaulted you?"

"After I
was in the infirmary a few days, the captain came by and told me that there was
nothing he could do to those guys I reported. It was my word against four of
them. They said it must have been some other guys, and a CO backed their story.
He said that he saw them on the yard at the time I said they attacked me. Now
they'll probably kill me for snitching on them. I asked CO Tisdale to place me
in protective housing, and he said they're full, and I'll have to wait for an
opening."

"That's
total bullshit." It sounded as if the gang and the COs had it in for
Scott. "Do you think those guys will come here?"

"Probably. Either
here or somewhere else. If they do, I'm not fighting anymore. It's not worth it,
and I can't win anyway."

"What was
it he wanted besides storing his stash?"

Scott waited
almost a minute before answering. "At first, my cellmate acted okay when I
refused him, and later, him and some other guys dragged me into a storage room.
They had a key to it."

"What's the
guy's name? Your old cellmate, I mean."

"I don't
know his real name, but everyone calls him 'Wink.'" Scott hesitated before
adding, "Wink talked about you. You're a target. They're going to get you
alone. Please don't say you heard that from me."

Listening to
Scott turned my stomach queasy. From that day on, I was even more paranoid of
everyone around me, and I did all that I could to minimize my risk. I stayed in
sight of the guards as much as possible, always hanging close to the CO
supervising inmate movements in the halls. I rarely showered and alternated
times. I chose a showerhead that lined me up with the doorway where a CO
normally stood guard, and I tried to position myself where I never had to turn my
back on anyone. I never closed my eyes when I washed my face or hair.

Every inmate had
to be in his cell four times a day for head counts, and the COs locked everyone
in their cells from eleven at night until six in the morning. Most inmates had
jobs that usually took only six hours a day and left a lot of free time. The
state prison was different from Stockwell in that there were large parts of the
day where the inmates were free to move around with little supervision. We
could hang out in the day room for activities like watching TV, shooting pool,
or playing cards, or we could spend time in the large prison yard where we
could walk, run, lift weights, and play basketball. The yard was where a lot of
business was conducted such as drug deals, but it was also a likely place for
fights and stabbings.

At night, from
fear that someone could cut my throat in my sleep, I never slept with my head
on the end of my bunk nearest the cell bars. When we had to leave the safety of
our cell, Scott and I would often follow each other at a distance, so one could
get help for the other, if needed, but we would not be close enough for a few
inmates to grab both of us. It was a stressful time. I worried every minute I
was awake and slept poorly when I slept at all.

The various
prison gangs claimed different sections of the yard, and nonmembers were not
welcome. Inmates who were not members of any gang, tended to hang with others
of his race, but just because a new inmate was Latino, did not mean that he
could walk into a yard meeting with a Latino gang. He had to be invited. In my
case, I preferred to be alone, and I made no effort to be part of any
particular gang no matter what race they were. I wasn't surprised that the only
racial gang who openly disliked me was the whites.

The gang of white
supremacists hated me for the same reason they hated Scott. According to them, it
was a crime for a white person to "breed" with a non-white, as my
parents did, and they decided people like me were only good for serving members
of their pure race.

Wink, Scott's
former cellmate, got his nickname because of a facial tic that often made his
eyes blink involuntarily. Similar to the rest of his gang, he was a large,
muscled guy with a shaved head. He obviously hit the weights hard and used
steroids.

I knew Wink when
I saw him, but I had no communication with him until a week or so after Scott
became my cellmate. That's when Wink used another young guy to tell me that he
wanted to see me on the yard. I ignored the request, and the young guy came
back with a message that Wink would take care of me the same as he did Scott. When
I was in Stockwell, I learned that threatening another inmate was a serious
mistake. It was warning him and giving up the advantage that comes with
surprise. In a way, it was disrespecting the other guy, and in prison, that was
dangerous. Wink obviously had no fear of me, and no worries about disrespecting
me.

One day at
lunchtime, I was in the cafeteria with Scott standing behind me. I was part of
the inside line of a double line of inmates waiting to move to one set of
servers while the outside line stepped around to the other set. Wink broke
through both lines and moved in front of Scott so that he was directly behind
me. Two other white men with shaved heads were blocking the view of me from my
shoulders down. Wink pressed tightly against me and repeated his threat. I had
been expecting one or more of his gang to make a move on me. I was ready for
him, but I was relieved when he began talking, which meant that it was not an
attack. Not yet.

"Hey,
half-breed, did your cellmate tell you he hung out with us?"

"No, but
he's probably embarrassed to tell it. I know I would be." I knew he wasn't
prepared to stick me, or he would have already done it and moved rapidly away. For
the moment, I could afford to antagonize him.

Wink was so
close to my ear that I could feel his hot breath. He moved his body against
mine and grabbed my butt in an effort to make me take a swing at him. I wanted
to fight him, but I couldn't. Since no one could see Wink's hand on me, if I
had reacted by punching him, the COs would have charged me with instigating a
fight, which would have landed me in the hole for a minimum of fourteen days.

From what Scott
told me, I knew the white supremacists owned at least two of the COs and that meant
I had to be careful. I thought I knew who one of them was, but I was not sure
about the other one. The hole, a miserable isolation cell used to punish an
inmate, was a bad deal, and I knew that it could be much worse for me if a
shady CO allowed the white gang access to me with no witnesses.

In the hole, an
inmate wore only his boxers and slept on a thin foam mattress on the concrete
floor. There was nothing else in the cell but a hole in the floor to use
instead of a toilet. There was no form of communication with others and nothing
to read. For twenty-three hours a day, there was nothing to do unless the inmate
enjoyed watching cockroach races. For an hour each day, the COs allowed him to
pace back and forth outside in a caged run, but there was still no
communication with another inmate. Once a week, a CO would take the inmate for
a five-minute cold shower. By the time a CO brought meals to one of the
solitary cells, the food was in smaller portions, it was cold, and it tasted
more like shit than usual. Maybe worst of all, the inmate lost visitor,
telephone, and mail privileges during his time in the hole.

I could smell
Wink's rotten breath when he spoke. "You just wait till we catch you alone.
We'll see if you can be funny then."

"We? Oh,
yeah. I forgot. You gotta have help from your fag sisters. That's why you got
no respect in here."

My needling was
getting to Wink, and there was no doubt that he wanted to hurt me right then, but
his game was to goad me into taking a swing at him, so he could jump back with
his hands in the air like he didn't know why I attacked him.

"I'm going
to fuck you up, boy."

I turned my head
to make sure he heard me. "You chicken shit. If you really got a pair,
meet me alone. No guards. No cons. If you ain't man enough for that, keep your
fag mouth shut."

We reached the
point where the two lines separated. Before splitting up, we stared at each
other for just a second. His eyes said that he was thinking only one thing. He wanted
to kill me.