Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison (31 page)

He was in his mid-twenties or so, and older than most of us there. I was in my cell, making my bed, as he watched from the doorway. "Are you back on a writ?" he asked.

A writ of'habeas corpus was the legal term for bringing an inmate from prison back to Court. In Latin, it means "you are to have the body."

I guessed he could tell by my state shoes, that I was coming from the prison system. "Riverside," I said.

"They got a lot of fags there?"

"I wouldn't know." I shrugged, trying to sound indifferent. He was making me nervous, especially the way he glared at me with his steady gaze. There was scar just below his right eye that extended diagonally across his cheek, and another on the left of his neck. My bed was almost finished, but I continued messing with it nervously. "You?"

He reached in the cell and handed me his prisoner ID card.

I looked at it and handed it back. It was from the Michigan Reformatory. His name was Nate.

"Did you notice where it's from?"

"Yeah." I looked at him. I wasn't' sure what he expected me to do. He thought I should be impressed because he was at Gladiator School. Or perhaps intimidated.

"You back on writ too?"

"Yeah, I've got a murder charge pending," he said. "And you?"

"Armed robbery," I said. My voice cracked, and I cleared my throat, pretending like I had something stuck in it. "I go for sentencing tomorrow."

"You had your PSI done yet?"

"PSI?"

"Pre-sentence Investigation," he said. "The Probation Department has to do the PSI before the judge can sentence you."

"They did one the first time," I said, "when I was sentenced on my other case."

"I don't think so." He shook his head. "They need to do one for each case."

For a second, I felt a little dizzy. "How long does that take?"

"It depends, the motherfuckers are all backed up. But then there's the hundred and eighty day rule. How long has it been since you got busted?"

The hundred and eighty day rule was a well-known law. It referred to your right for a fair and speedy trial. In Michigan, it meant they had to have you to court by 180 days. If not, theoretically, your case could be thrown out. "But if you cop a plea," he said, "they'll rarely do that. So chances arc, what will happen to you tomorrow is they'll go for a postponement until your PSI is complete." I wondered why he was being so talkative, and I started to notice a few more nicks and scars on his body. He seemed to enjoy the uncomfortable look on my face. He looked as if he'd been through quite a few fights. He was muscular, so I doubt he lost very many. "I've been here for three and half weeks," he said, "and I'm still waiting."

Three weeks! I'd go mad. There was no fucking way I could stay in there for that long. "Why don't they send you back to M-R?"

"Because probation officers can't travel outside of the county. And so it looks like you're stuck here with me, pretty boy, until they get off their asses and do it."

I hoped he was wrong, but he wasn't. The next day, the judge postponed my sentencing until the Probation Department could complete a PSI. My lawyer agreed to the continuance, and the judge ordered the Probation Department to move post-haste. My sentencing was rescheduled for three weeks time.

When I got back up to the cellblock, Nate was waiting with a smile and a sneer. "What'd I tell ya?Your ass is up here with me baby boy."

I didn't like how he said it, but I ignored him and went into my cell. My cigarettes were gone.

"Who took my cigarettes?" I yelled out. No one answered.

I stuck my head out. "Who took them?" A couple of guys looked up from a card game, but no one said anything. I looked the other way. Nate came out of his cell.

"Somebody took your shit?"

"Yeah!"

"That's tucked up. Just now?"

"That's right. And it's pretty fucked up too. I'd been sharing with these motherhickers, and they turn around and take my shit!"

"I got your back," he said.

I looked at him, not liking the sound of that.

"Don't worry. I'll get 'em back." But I was more afraid of what that would cost me. He cut me off before I could say anything. "Don't worry. You'll get your shit."

Maybe I could split them with him.

The guys at the card game were grinning. I didn't like the looks of that either.

Sure enough, about an hour later, Nate came into my cell with four of the six missing packs. I'd gone through four already, giving them away or lending them out to guys who would pay me back on Tuesday.

"Where'd you find them?"

"Don't worry about it." He sat down on my bed. "I run things around here."

I handed him two packs. "Here, I really appreciate it."

"Nah, that's all right. I've got some."

I thought he said he didn't have any cigarettes, but I was happy to have gotten some of them back. I opened the pack and lit one. He leaned back and watched me.

"So who took them?"

He waved his hand, dismissing me. "I don't snitch."

"Snitch? I thought that only applied to the police."

"You don't snitch, do you?"

"No."

"Good." He tapped the inside of his thigh with his thumb. "That's good."

"It depends," I said quickly.

"On what?"

"Exactly," I said.

He smiled, and so did I, but I don't think he was amused. He looked at me silently for a moment. At first, I wasn't sure the conversation was going where I thought it was. And then, I wasn't sure if he was testing me, or serious-but now I didn't like the look in his eye or the way his scars were frozen.

"You'd snitch?"

"Yeah," I said slowly. I knew that snitches were killed, but I was afraid that if I told him no, he would take that as an invitation to make the next move. So I was bluffing, and hoped that he was, too.

He shook his head. "You'd actually snitch?"

"Yeah." My hand started to shake.

He tensed up like he was going to hit me.

I looked at him, not knowing what to say. He was sitting on the side of the bed closest to the doorway. I tried to get up, but he moved forward, so I sat back down.

"You know what happens to snitches, right?"

I didn't answer at first. "I'm not a fag."

"Who's talkin' about fags?"

"Well then what are you talkin' about?"

"I'm talkin' about snitchin'."

"Well then, no. I'm not a snitch."

"But you'd snitch if I took that?" He looked down at my ass.

"You're damn right."

He got up and walked out, stopping in front of my cell. "You know where I'm from, right?"

I nodded.

"Boy, if we were at Gladiator School right now-I would have snatched that pussy from your ass two days ago, you snitch ass bitch."

22

What's Under the Covers?

"It's only been a handful of years since the race riots left Detroit smoldering," the reporter from Eyewitness News said. "But in this overwhelmingly white high school of 1200 kids, they've elected a black class president from among their only twelve black students."

Everyone in the auditorium had applauded when Kevin Pregister told the student body, "Don't vote for me because I'm black-Vote for me because I'm the best man for the job."

My parents still had a sign in the living room window that read: THIS FAMILY WILL NOT BE BUSSED.

Kevin was from Inkster, the town next to ours, where they had extended the school district by two blocks.

Yet for all our talk about unity, inside the lunchroom, everyone stuck to their place. The jocks were in one corner, the nerds in another. The popular crowd, the socialites, formed an orbit around the varsity teams, with the club kids straddling the middle-Chess, Science, and Math on one side and Drama and Yearbook on the other. The burnouts were out back, behind the school, sneaking a cigarette or smoking pot. There were a few floaters, kids like me, who didn't seem to fit anywhere else, but we had to be careful, or we'd get lumped with the losers and labeled asgeeks. The only exceptions were the couples, but then everyone mostly dated their own: The jocks with The Socks and The Nerds with The Turds.

I tried to blend wherever I could, slipping from onegroup to another. I rode the bus with the burnouts and ate lunch with the clubs. It seemed my whole destiny would be determined by whatever group accepted me. Myguidance counselor said it didn't matter, which was easy for him to say, since his life was practically over to my thinking.

If a kid sat where he didn't belong; or if someone tried to climb too high-he kids at the top were never shy about smacking him back into place.

The bars closed with a clang, sending vibrations through my body. The ring in the pipes seemed to grow louder as the sounds of shouting slowly decreased. My senses were on high alert, which made it difficult to sleep. I couldn't stop thinking about Nate.

He wasn't that tall, but he was solid and, worse, mean. His anger scared me more than anything else about him. He was like Red, only quieter and more intense. I hoped he believed me when I said I would snitch and that the threat of it would be enough to keep him from hurting me. I hadn't been there long enough to tell what the others might do to back him up.

The next morning, the windows along the wall of the catwalk were open. I heard the screeching cries of a lunatic from outside. Every morning, I was told, for the past several years, a woman stood in front of the jail and yelled obscenities because her husband had been killed inside. Yet nobody knew why or how he died.

"The Goon Squad got him," an inmate said, referring to a group of large deputies who were called whenever there was a disturbance. No one fucked with the Goon Squad.

Whatever it was that actually killed him didn't matter. There was genuine agony in her voice. Perhaps she was just crazy. The accusations she hurled at the jail sounded as delusional as the stories that were sometimes told in there.

Even in the early morning, with the windows open, it was hot inside my cell. My sheets were soaked, and beads of sweat trickled down my neck. I vaguely remembered waking in the middle of the night, but I wasn't sure. I was on the floor, and halfway to my feet, moving toward the front of the cell-like I'd been sleepwalking. I remembered screaming something, but maybe it was just a dream.

After breakfast, Nate stopped in front of my cell. "Who's Slide Step?" he asked.

"Huh?" I stared at him in disbelief.

"You called out his name last night."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

He stared back and nodded. There seemed to be tire in his eyes, which surprised Inc. His eyes had been deadpan since I arrived.

At breakfast earlier, Nate stood behind one of the white guys and asked, "Will you buck for your food?"

"What?" he said. The expression on his face looked as dumbfounded as his voice.

"You heard me. Will you buck for your food?"

"Buck?"