Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison (32 page)

"Buck, motherfucker," said the loud mouth sitting next to him. "It means fight!"

The white guy didn't answer at first, as if pondering a choice, his face turned red. It was one of the few times I ever noticed silence in the cellblock. Even the noise outside had disappeared. "Well, yeah," he said slowly, "if I had to."

"OK," Nate said, and nodded.

The white boy sat down.

Without a word, or the slightest hint of emotion, Nate whacked him with his metal tray, knocking him off the bench. Blood trickled from the side of his car and mouth as he lay on the floor.

Nate reached over, picked up the guy's food and calmly walked to the other table.

"Yo!" the loud one said, covering his mouth with a fist. "That shit's fucked up." He laughed as he said it. "My man here, says, `Will you buck for your food?' and then BOP! Hits the motherfucker on the head."

Two more blacks joined in laugher, giving each other high fives. "Hey Nate! That's fucked up!" They continued to laugh.

The white boys were silent. There were four of us, in total.

The guy picked himself up from the floor and slowly walked back to his cell.

I started to notice how most inmates, when something bad happened, would either get excited, as if entertained by it, or-like the white guystook this glazed expression, as if the situation were hopeless. But Nate was different. He was above it all. He was unruffled by whatever went on.

Now he was in front of my cell, with that glint in his eyes, but then it seemed to dissolve as quickly as it had appeared. "Do you know Shorty?" he asked.

"Who?"

"His real name's Cromwell. He's my cousin, supposed to be at Riverside."

I shook my head. I didn't know him.

"Then I'll have to call my auntie," he said. "See what I can find out about you."

My heart fell when he said this, and Nate seemed to catch it in my face.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm gonna have to do sonic checking on you."

He went back to his cell.

I wasn't sure if he was bluffing or not, but he acted like he knew something. I wanted to take a shower, because it had been so hot, but there was no way I was going to take a chance leaving my cell. Not with the threat Nate had just made. Instead, I'd take a birdbath in my sink that evening, after they closed us into our cells.

"Hey deputy," the white boy who had been knocked to the ground shouted, when the guards came back for the tray.

"Man, what's you want, honky," Loud Mouth said to him from the table. He was playing cards with the others who had been laughing that morning. "Hey, Dep! Hey, Dep!" he said mocking the inmate. "Hey is for horses Motherfucker. You better carry your snitch ass self back to your cell."

"Can I-Can I make a phone call?" the white guy asked.

I stood in the doorway of my cell, as I watched an inmate in an orange jumpsuit grabbed the trays and then the deputy shut the door.

"Can I make a phone call," Loud Mouth repeated. He slapped a card down on the table, before picking it up with the three others that were lying face up. "Go Big or Stay at Home!" he said, slamming down the Ace of Spades. "Trump, motherfucker!"

For the second time that day, the white guy slinked off to his cell.

I was hoping he'd snitch for me, and that Nate would be taken to the hole. But as I'd find out later, Nate and Loud Mouth were part of the same street gang, so even if the white guy had snitched and was moved to another cellblock, his life would be at risk by the other gang members. I went back inside nay cell and picked up The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer, which I had traded for a pack of cigarettes.

I didn't know what I'd do if Nate asked me the sane thing. Will you Buck? You're damned if you answered yes and you're fucked if you said no. I could see where things were going, and I wondered if that's what I needed to do? Perhaps I could compromise and avoid being beaten up.

It felt horrible not having Slide Step there to protect me. After my first day at Riverside, Slide Step's protection had been as steady as the drone of an electric fan, but now that it was silent-I was starting to sweat again.

Nate was standing outside my open cell, staring at me. His right hand was resting just inside his waistband. He caught me looking, so I raised my book quickly until he walked away.

Maybe I was getting nervous for nothing, but I was determined to protect myself from a repeat of what happened to me at Riverside. About two minutes later he came back and entered my cell. He came in, uninvited, and sat on the bed.

All of the doors in the cellblock were opened at the same time. It wasn't possible to lock one, and open another. When the guards pulled the lever at the end of the block, they either all opened or were all closed at the same time.

"What's up," I said, trying my best to sound calm.

"You."

I ignored him and tried to keep reading. Someone started past the cell but then stopped and retreated. I looked over at Nate. I wasn't sure, but he may have signaled them somehow, because the expression on his face changed suddenly. He looked at me with an embarrassed smile.

I got up from the bed, but he propped his foot against the doorway blocking my exit. "What?" he said. "I'm just sitting here."

"What do you want?"

"Nothing." His tone was reassuring, but his face suggested otherwise. "I just want to kick it with you." He nodded toward the bed. "Sit down, I'm not going to let nothing happen."

"That's all right," I said. "I'll stand."

I could see he had a hard-on inside his pants, and he caught me looking at it.

My throat felt dry, and my heart raced. My hands started to shake and my legs felt wobbly. I had flashbacks of Riverside, and I didn't want a repeat of what went on there. But it also felt hopeless, trying to resist.

He pulled down his waistband and released his dick.

For a split second, the sight of his dick excited me, but this was not sexand I didn't have a choice in the matter. I got down on my knees and took him inside my mouth, hoping it would be enough to keep him from raping me. But I could see quickly, he wasn't going to stop there.

"C'mon," Nate said. "Let me fuck you."

"No," I said. "I don't like it."

"C'mon, I'll go real slow."

"Just let one do this," I begged. At least sucking him oft didn't hurt physically.

"I'm keeping these motherfuckers off of you, boy. So you've gots to give that up."

"Please, Nate. I don't like it. I'll do this, but can't you just leave that alone?"

He reached over and felt my ass.

The others were on the far side of the cellblock, hanging out in the first cell or two, or playing cards at the front table. Nate said no one knew what was happening, but it didn't matter. "I run this," he said. "Now let me hit that ass."

He smacked me on the head.

It could have been meant as a playful tap, or maybe not. I wasn't sure. I was getting the impression that if I didn't go along with it, lie was going to take it anyway he liked.

"OK," I said, "but promise you'll go easy."

"Now that's what I'm talkin' about," he said. He pulled off his pants.

He started fucking me and the smell in the air was unmistakable. Vaseline mixed with shit. There was no way the others wouldn't pick up on it and know what was happening. Nate had said he would keep it a secret, but suddenly someone was standing outside the cell. And lie didn't keep his other promise either. He was fucking me hard, and it was hurting badly.

"Please Nate," I begged. "Go easy."

He didn't. He just kept fucking me. I put my head down into the mattress and tried to block out what was happening, but the pain was too intense for me to leave the moment. I could see stars and shades of red and white and black. I clenched any jaw and stared into the darkness of my soul. I never should have sucked his dick. What was I thinking?

Nate grabbed a clump of my hair and yanked my head back. Loud Mouth was standing in front of me with his pants down to his ankles.

"No," I screamed.

Nate slapped me hard in the face, and Loud Mouth laughed.

He stuffed his cock in my mouth, while one of them said, "Shut up, bitch," but I couldn't tell which of them said it. I thought about biting off Loud Mouth's dick, but I was too frightened to tight back. There were a dozen others in the rest of the cellblock who might join in.

"Parsell," a voice shouted from the end of the hall.

Nate and Loud Mouth stopped when they heard the bolt of the cellblock door slide open. "Parsell," the deputy repeated, "Let's go! You've got an attorney visit."

When Nate got off me, he had shit all over his lap, which made me glad. The fucker deserved it. I tugged at my pants that were under his feet. He scrambled to put on his own.

"He'll be right there," Loud Mouth shouted. "He just got out of the shower."

I wished I could've shit all over him as well. The smell was suffocating.

"Hey," Nate whispered. "Don't you fuckin' snitch on us, bitch. 'Cause we'll get your ass," he said.

"Isn't that what you just did?" I felt the rage boiling up from the bottom of my soul. "You ... You ... tuckin' nigger."

Nate looked at me for a second, and laughed. "You fucking nigger," he mocked. "Go ahead, hitch, and snitch. Then I'll kill your motherfuckin' ass." He started toward me and I ran from the cell.

He was part of a gang, and its members were spread out all over the jail, so I knew I couldn't snitch on him-not if I wanted to stay alive. I also knew I was wrong for calling him a nigger, but it was all I could think of that could possibly hurt him. I wanted to hit him with the only thing I knew I could hit him with. And that's what he was to me. A big, black ass, motherfuckin' nigger, and if I had a gun-I would have killed him.

23

Help Ain't Gonna Come Runnin'
No Time Soon

Mom said that in 1953, when she first went down to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to be with Dad in the army, there were separate bathrooms for blacks. 'I'd never seen nothin' like it," she said. "Your dad showed me separate drinking fountains and how they weren't allowed to eat in certain restaurants. No COLOREDS, the signs read, or WHITES ONLY. I just thought that was wrong. Now everybody knows there's a difference between blacks and nitgers."

Grandpa O'Rourke, who'd come for Sunday dinner, said, 'I ain't got nothin' against 'em. I just don't want to live with 'em, that's all."

Mom said, "Well, I know plenty of white people that are niggers, too."

Were it not for Slide Step, it would have been easy for me to lump all black prisoners in together, but Slide Step was different. And I knew that if he had been at the County Jail, he would have killed them both.

The deputy walked ahead briskly, without looking back. He pointed only once in the direction we were headed, as we entered a series of long corridors. There was an odd stillness in the hall-a quietness that seldom entered in the cellblocks-except when the deputies first pulled back the bolt on the heavy steel door.

The tinkling of keys, dangling from his belt, lingered in my ear, along with the thud of his heavy footsteps. I struggled to keep up. I felt dizzy, out of breath and ready to hurl. The fluorescent lights overhead gave off a halo as we passed under each one. A guard at the end of a hall flung his keys to the deputy who was escorting me.

The metallic jangling and clink-clank-rumble of tumblers turning opened the door with a loud screech. I winced at the sound. My senses were beyond overload. It was all I could do to grab hold of something to focus on. Yet, no matter what came to mind, I couldn't drown out the harsh sights and sounds around me.