Sleepers (31 page)

“What?” John said.

“Running under an open johnny pump late at night,” Tommy said. “Water cold as winter. Stoops filled with people eatin’ pretzels and drinkin’ beers outta paper bags. Music coming out of open windows and parked cars. Girls smilin’ at us from inside their doorways. Shit, it was like heaven.”

“Two slices of hot pizza and an Italian ice at Mimi’s is heaven,” I said.

“Walkin’ with Carol down by the piers,” Michael said. “Holdin’ her hand. Kissing her on a corner. That’s hard to beat.”

“What about you, John?” I asked.

“I don’t want to be afraid of the dark again,” John said in a voice coated with despair. “Or hear an open door in the middle of the night. And I don’t wanna be touched, don’t wanna feel anybody’s hands on me. Wanna be able to sleep, not worry about what’s gonna happen or who’s comin’ in. If I can get that, I’d be happy. I’d be in heaven. Or close to it.”

“Someday, John,” Michael said. “I promise that.”

“We
all
promise that,” I said.

In the short distance behind us, a guard’s whistle blew. Overhead, rain clouds gathered, darkening the skies, hiding the sun in their mist.

14

T
HE PRISON CAFETERIA
was crowded, long rows of wooden tables filled with tin trays and inmates elbowing their way through a macaroni and cheese dinner. Each inmate had twenty minutes to eat a meal, which included time spent on the serving line, finding a seat, and dropping an empty tray on the assembly wheel in the back of the large room. Talking was not permitted during mealtime and we were never allowed to question either what we were given to eat or the amount doled out.

The food was usually at the low end of the frozen food chain, heavy on processed meat, eggs, cheese, and potatoes, weak on vegetables and fruit. Each table sat sixteen inmates, eight to a bench. One guard was assigned to every three tables.

As with every other social situation at Wilkinson, the dining area offered limited opportunities to make friends. The guards were always wary of cliques forming or expanding and moved quickly to split up any such attempts. This left the inmates with no choice but to stick to their original alliances. Living in an atmosphere that stressed survival above all else, random friendships posed too great a risk, for they required a level of trust that no one was willing to concede. It was safer to stay within your own group.

I was fourth on the serving line, standing a few feet behind Michael, empty trays held in our hands. A blank-faced counterman dropped an empty plate on each of our trays, his head rocking up and down, rolling to its own private rhythm. Farther down the line, I grabbed for two spoons and an empty tin cup.

“Can you see what we’re having?” I asked Michael.

“Whatever it is, it’s covered with brown gravy.”

“
All
our meals are covered with brown gravy.”

“They must think we like it,” Michael said. Then he turned off the line and moved to his left, his tray filled with dark meat, gray potatoes, a small hard roll, and a cup of water, looking for a place for us to sit. He headed for the back of the room, where there were two spots. I followed, right behind him.

The spaces between the tables were narrow, wide enough for only one person at a time to make his way through. The guards stood to the sides, their eyes focused on the tables assigned them. They controlled who left his seat and who sat in his place, all accomplished with hand gestures, nods, and shoulder taps. It was a system that functioned through precision and obedience, guards and inmates merged in an assembly line of human movement. There was no room for error, no space for accidents, no place for a mental lapse.

No time to bring the assembly line to a halt.

Michael was halfway down the row of tables, his eyes focused on two seats in the rear of the room. I was
directly behind him, followed by a short teenager with a limp. None of us saw the inmate on Michael’s left stand and begin to move out of his row.

Michael moved three steps forward, the edge of his tray barely grazing the arm of the inmate walking toward him on his left. The inmate shot his arm against the tray and sent it skyward, out of Michael’s hands and crashing to the floor in full view of a guard.

Michael whirled to face the inmate who called himself K.C. and who was now standing with a smile on his face and his hands balled into fists. “What the fuck you do that for?”

“You brushed me,” K.C. said.

“So?”

“Nobody
touches me,” K.C. said. “I ain’t like you and the rest of your fag friends.”

Michael swung a hard right at K.C., landing it flush against the much taller boy’s jaw. The blow, one of the hardest I’d seen Michael land, barely caused a flinch. Michael looked at me in disbelief and, for a moment, it was almost funny, like something out of a James Bond movie. But K.C. wasn’t in on the joke and, as we knew all too well, this was no movie.

K.C. looked to be about three years older than Michael, perhaps eighteen, with broad shoulders, bulked arms, and a crew cut so close it showed little more than scalp. In the few months that he had been inside Wilkinson, K.C. had already razor-slashed another inmate, done time in the hole for his part in a gang rape, and spent a week in a straitjacket after he took a bite out of a guard’s neck.

He rushed Michael and they both fell to the floor, shirts and skin sliding against spilled food. K.C. threw two sharp right hands, both landing against Michael’s face, one flush to the eye. A circle of inmates formed around them, quietly watching the action, a few holding trays and eating the remains of their lunch. The guard,
less than a month on the job, stood off to the side, his face a blank screen.

I held my ground and scanned the circle for other members of K.C.’s crew, watching to see if any weapons were passed over, waiting for one of them to make a move and join their friend against Michael.

K.C. was rubbing a fistful of meat against Michael’s face, grinding it into his eyes. Michael shot a hard knee into K.C.’s groin and followed it with a short left to his kidney.

“Your fuckin’ life’s over,” K.C. said, putting his hands around Michael’s throat and tightening his grip. “You gonna die here today, punk. Right on this floor.”

I tossed my tray aside and jumped on K.C.’s back, punching at his neck and head, trying to loosen his hold. K.C. let one hand go and turned it to me, swinging his punches upward, brushing my shoulder and side. The reduced pressure allowed Michael to take in some fresh breath. K.C. swung his body at an angle, his open hand against my chin, trying to push me off his back. He rolled over with me still clinging to him, his strength taking Michael around with us. I landed on top of the spilled tray, my shirt wet and sticky from the gravy, meat, and potatoes spread across the floor. K.C. was now all flailing arms and legs, kicking and punching at us both with a wild, animal-like intensity. I covered my face with my hands and kept my elbows slapped against my sides, blocking as many of K.C.’s kicks and punches as I could.

Michael did the same.

The crowd inched in closer, sensing that what they wanted to see was about to take place—a bloody finish to the battle.

A sharp kick to the throat stripped me of wind and a wild punch to my jaw forced blood out of my nose. Voices in the crowd, fueled by the rush for the kill, cheered K.C. on.

“Finish him!” someone from behind me shouted.

“Kick him dead!” another said.

“One and two belong to you!” still another screamed. “Step back and just watch ’em die.”

The shrill sound of a police whistle brought the shouts to an end.

The crowd parted to let Nokes walk past, each inmate staring at him in silence. Nokes held a can of Mace in one hand and the thick end of his baton in the other. He was chewing a piece of gum and had a cigarette tucked behind one ear. The back of his shirt was streaked with sweat. His eyes moved from me to Michael to K.C. The three of us stood facing him, our bodies washed head to knee in food and blood.

Nokes stood in front of me and took the cigarette from behind his ear, put it to his mouth, and lit it with a closed matchbook. He took in a lung full of smoke and let it out slow, through his nose, his closed jaw still moving to the gum.

“All these months here, they haven’t taught you shit,” Nokes said. “You’re still the same fuckin’ clowns you were when you walked in.”

Nokes turned from us and faced the inmates behind him. He scanned their faces, running a hand through his hair, cigarette still hanging from his lower lip.

“Back to your seats and finish your lunch,” Nokes said to them. “There’s nothin’ more to see.”

“That go for me too?” K.C. said, rubbing his hands against the sides of his pants.

“No,” Nokes said, turning back to him. “No, it don’t go for you. I want you back in your cell. You’re done with lunch.”

“Me and you finish this some other time,” K.C. said, looking over at Michael. “Sometime real soon.”

“Maybe at dinner,” Michael said, watching K.C. walk out of the lunchroom.

“You two get any lunch?” Nokes asked, stubbing out the cigarette with the front end of his boot.

“I got to smell it,” Michael said. “That’s better than eating it.”

“How about you finish it now?” Nokes said.

“I’m not hungry,” Michael said.

“I don’t give a fuck you hungry or not,” Nokes said. “You eat ’cause I’m tellin’ you to eat.”

I started to walk past Nokes, back toward the lunch counter to get a new tray. Nokes put a hand against my chest and held it there.

“Where you think you’re goin’?” he asked, his voice louder, playing it up for the inmates watching.

“You said to get lunch,” I said, confused.

“You boys don’t need to go back on line for food. There’s plenty to eat right where you standing.”

I stared at Nokes and tried to imagine what had been done to him to make him this cruel, had driven him to the point that his only pleasure came from the humiliation of others. I more than just hated him. I had passed that state months ago. I was disgusted by him, his very presence symbolizing the ugliness and horror I felt each day at Wilkinson. I thought there wasn’t much more he could do to me, do to any of us, but I was wrong. There was no limit to Nokes’s evil, no end to his torment. And now we were about to take one more plunge into the hellish world he had forced on us.

Michael and I didn’t move.

The inmates were pointing and whispering among themselves. A few of them giggled. The guard in the center of the aisle held his position.

“Let’s go, boys,” Nokes said, smiling now, his anger having found an outlet. “There ain’t much more time in the lunch period.”

“I’m still not hungry,” Michael said.

Nokes immediately brought the back end of the baton down against the side of Michael’s head. He quickly followed it with a level blast across his face. The force of the shot sent blood from Michael’s nose and mouth spraying onto Nokes’s uniform shirt.

“
I
tell you when you’re hungry!” Nokes shouted, swinging the baton again, this time landing a sharp blow to Michael’s neck. “And I tell you when you’re not! Now, get on your fuckin’ knees and eat.”

Michael dropped to one knee, a shaky hand reaching for a fork, his eyes glassy, the front of his face dripping with blood. He picked up the fork and jabbed at a piece of meat near his leg, slowly bringing it to his mouth.

“What the fuck are
you
waitin’ for?” Nokes asked me. “Get down on your knees and finish your goddamn lunch.”

I looked beyond Nokes at the faces of the inmates staring back at me, their eyes a strange mixture of relief and pleasure. They had all been at the edge of Nokes’s baton, had all felt his fury, but none would ever move against him for the sake of two prisoners they barely knew. Nokes could have killed us on the floor of that lunchroom and no one would have said a word.

I went down on my knees, picked up a spoon, scooped up a potato slice, and put it in my mouth.

I looked up at Nokes, his shirt drenched and tinged red, his face splattered with Michael’s blood.

“Eat faster,” Nokes said, swinging his baton against the base of my spine. “Don’t think you got all fuckin’ day.”

Nokes walked between us as we ate, smiling and winking at the other inmates, stepping on the pieces of food we were about to put in our mouths.

“Let’s go,” he said, pulling the top of Michael’s hair and slapping his face. “Nobody leaves here until you clowns are finished with your meal.”

Nokes walked to the edge of one of the tables and rubbed his boot on top of a crushed slice of bread. He took a cigarette out of an open pack in the front of his shirt and put it in his mouth. He lit it and sat on the side of the table.

“There’s some bread over here,” Nokes said, blowing
two smoke rings toward the ceiling. “Can’t have a good lunch without a slice of bread.”

Nokes spread his legs, looked down at the bread, took in a deep breath, and spit on it. He took another drag of the cigarette and wiped at the sweat and blood on his face with the sleeve of his shirt.

“Now, how about you boys crawl over here and get yourself some?” Nokes said.

We were on our knees, chewing our food, our bodies trembling more out of shame than fear. Each humiliation plotted by Nokes and his crew was meant to be a breaking point, to make us crack and finally give in to Wilkinson. We were too young to know that the break line had been passed the minute we entered the prison walls and we were much too stubborn to understand that nothing we did or didn’t do would allow us to defeat Nokes while we were still behind those walls.

“I don’t see either of you scumbags crawlin’,” Nokes said, finishing the cigarette and dropping it down on top of the bread. “Don’t make me come drag you on over here.”

We went down on our elbows, rubbing against the gravy that was spread across the ground, our faces inches from the food and dirt. Michael’s nose was still bleeding and the swelling on his face had forced one eye to shut.

“That’s it, now you’re startin’ to listen,” Nokes said. “Show the boys here how to do a good crawl. Show them you know how to follow my rules.”