The Sport of Kings (83 page)

Six years in a cage is six lifetimes.

Your body is eighteen years old

you say when your grizzled old cellie asks. Shakes his head ruefully, doesn't say nothing, ignores you thank you god thank you god thank you god thank you

because you don't even know what it means to look tough anymore. You don't know what it means to act hard on the inside. Up is down and hell is on earth in this inverted world. For the first time you are thankful for your naturally unfriendly face—a tough face only a mother could love—but it's small change next to these dudes six-five and up, cannon arms, cockstrong terrifying motherfucking extraterrestrial power in barely human form. You force yourself to look right at them, show them you're not scared, but you've never been so scared in your life. Your time back in Northside when you ran with small-time thugs, that was just playacting. This is the worst, realest life.

That first night, you can't sleep, think you'll never sleep again, you're just staring out in the dark and trying to stay alert. It's not long before you hear some wicked sound across the way, across the open space on the opposing tier, scuffling or sobbing, gagging and retching, you have some idea and it's making you sick, you're sitting up on your mattress when a guard runs down the tier and shines his flashlight directly into the cell opposite yours and burned into your retina you see a big white monster fucking some skinny white dude up the ass, and there's blood on this big man's yanked-down drawers and his fat hand is wrenching open the mouth of the bottom, saliva glistening to the concrete floor, the man's terrorized eyes looking like they're going to fall out of their sockets. And now the animal cries are rising up the floors again, the jackals, the dogs, the crows. These two men—or one man and one animal—get hauled out by five guards, one sent to the hole, one sent limp as a rag to the infirmary. You think you're gonna throw up, but you don't, because you can't.

You make a decision right there: That's not gonna be you. You're gonna survive. Whatever it takes. You'll cut someone's throat if you have to. So first thing, you make a shank out of a soda can by folding it and wrapping it around itself and stomping on it. You keep it in your trembling hand. Until the first shakedown, which is when they inevitably find it. They give you a pass this first time, seeing as you're young and fresh, and they don't send you to the hole. They're barely out of the cell when you're busy making another.

You do it right there in front of your bemused cellie, who says, “Ain't got to worry about me, I ain't gonna fuck with you.” It takes a few more days of unrelenting terror before you actually believe him, because he does in fact—thank you thank you thank you god—leave you alone. All he ever does is sit on his mattress and drink hooch. He works in the cafeteria and somehow manages to make potato wine without any actual potatoes. But he never seems drunk, just deflated as an old balloon. His cheeks sag down to his neck.

“How come that shit don't make you sick?” you ask him.

“Been drinking it for years. Till I get out.”

“When you getting out? Where you gonna go to?”

“Heaven, dawg,” the man says. “Or hell. Either one better than this place.”

Yes. The forty-foot walls, cell blocks running the length of a football field, gun towers, razor wire, guards with their twelve-gauge shotguns who bang their flashlights on the bars all hours of the night, waking everybody up, plus the motion sensors and the shakedowns, the mad labyrinth of gangs and allegiances you can't navigate because you're nothing but a scrub fish. But none of that's the worst of it.

You're so used to thinking it's the white man who fucks you that it's just instinct to get under the wing of these black dudes. What your naïve ass doesn't realize is they fuck down color lines here; mad-dog Aryans on scrawny white boys and blue-black brothers on black. How the hell were you supposed to know? So the first black dude who's decent, who nods and says what up from a respectful distance in the cafeteria, is somebody you acknowledge once. Smile with one corner of your mouth while trying to look hard. Like that's possible.

But no, Allmon, you're an idiot, a fucking idiot a motherfucking idiot idiot IDIOT!!! That's the same man who just grabs you two days later and throws you against a wall like you don't weigh a thing—six feet and 185 pounds but you're nothing, there's always somebody bigger than you—and as your head cracks against the tile, he says, “Your cunt.” Doesn't even have to finish the sentence. “Fuck you,” automatic out of your mouth. But just as quick he punches your windpipe with one hand, slams your temple with the other. And walks away as you sprawl down the wall. And people are just standing there watching it happen, watching you ragdoll. Which is worse than the insult, you know that instantly.

Life inside the migraine. You can't go to the infirmary. You can't snitch. You can't confront him, he weighs like 275 pounds. You can't go anywhere but back to your cell, where your cellie knows, 'cause that's how it works here, everybody knows everything while it's still happening. He sighs like he's almost too tired to tell you anything, but finally says, “Talking shit ain't gonna cut it. Just feathers against bullets. He still gonna turn you out.” And he points to the combination lock on your cell locker. “Put it in a sock,” he says very quietly, and makes a swinging and slamming motion like he's bringing down a hammer.

You rear back. “That's murder one! They'll send me up for life.”

Your cellie shrugs. “You in the slaughterhouse now. Cut or get cut.”

So there it is. It's not a matter you need to consider deeply. Your body's going to go for the Hail Mary pass, and you know it, because to refuse to choose is also to choose. But here's the thing: You know if you do it in front of people, you're caught for sure. If you do it in private, that won't send the right blood message. In the end, you just pray a message you do send is loud enough. Like the loudspeakers that holler at the prisoners all day, every day.

So, you carry it on you, two socks tied together around your waist under your khaki shirt, lock just hanging there like a big, cold eye. You figure out quick you can't just go attack him in his cell while he's napping because someone will see you do it—plus, he sleeps on a top bunk. Your only option is to get him in the shower. He likes to be the first one in the showers in the morning. So, very next day, when the unit's still dark, he trundles down to the washroom, big, hulking beast in nothing but a snatch of towel, and you slip out of your cell as soon as you see him turn from the dayroom into the showers. You can't follow him in there—the cameras that point at the sink catch the silhouette and sometimes the face of anyone who enters. You need a blind spot. So you have to wait out in the dark dayroom by the trash can, praying no one else follows and catches sight of you. But you don't have to wait long, which is good because your terrifying reality is tightening like a noose around your neck, blocking air and blood and maybe your ability to act. You don't even know if you can feel your arms anymore, but, sure enough, the body does what's necessary. When that big motherfucker comes sauntering out of the shower, you step out of the shadows and bring a swift cracking blow to the back of his skull.

He drops straight down to the waxed floor, his cheekbone cracking audibly when he hits. You expect to feel an overwhelming urge to run, but you don't. You're steady and levelheaded, as if the first blow has strangely relaxed you. You raise your hand again. One more blow to the head would probably kill him. Hard blows to the body will put him out of commission and, if you're lucky, get him transferred. You land swift, sickening blows to his back, wracking that metal against his backbone, because you want to paralyze him, not out of revenge, just good sense. Five or six blows and your internal sensor says that's it—wrap it up. You fling the socks in a trash can and scoot back to your cell, draping the lock back on the locker. You slide right back in bed.

Your cellie is watching you, wide awake, just lying there. You can hear him breathing. You try to match your breath to his and pretty soon it's almost back to normal and then the uproar comes and it's crazy loud, so you run to the steel bars with him to peer out, and the two of you holler at the guards like everyone else, make all the mad animal sounds, and then you simmer down and act normal as can be all day, don't change your body language or any of your habits—except in the cafeteria. When you walk in there, you straighten up and stroll with a new confidence through that fraught gauntlet, looking every single one of those men in the eye—every single motherfucking one—and see how more than a few nod at you? Feel how the air is changed and silent? That's the sound of respect. Your ability to inspire fear is the only currency you will ever have in here.

And now you know how to survive.

Six years, six lifetimes.

You look around you sometimes at the living nightmare, at the blacks and the poor white trash so country they almost sound black, and you think somewhere out there it's not like this. There's black lawyers and professors and ambassadors and businessmen. Somewhere. But those are just words inside your mind and your mind is inside.

And even if those fancy blacks do exist, you fucking hate them anyway. You understand now why the Reverend used to rail against them. They don't give a fuck about you any more than white folks do. In fact, they're worse than white folks; they're traitors. The way you walk, talk, spend your cash, rent-a-center house you live in, tricked out car you drive, your whole life—it all embarrasses the shit out of them. You are their living, breathing shame. They're the ones who still call you nigger. The whites don't have to anymore, because the state does it for them.

Who's gonna change this world? Most of these inmates won't ever get out. The ones that do, most of them will be back.

They grow failure here like flowers.

They say there's gonna be a black president someday. Maybe. Or maybe just black skin. Either way, you won't ever get to vote in Kentucky. Won't have a place to live, 'cause you won't qualify for Section Eight housing to get your feet on the ground, won't ever serve on a jury to keep a brother out of jail, won't ever get a good job once you X the little felony box, can't legally carry a gun to keep some crazy racist from killing you, and there was never any protection against the cops to begin with.

Men like Forge can get away with anything. But you? It's over—no money, no life, no hope. But that was always in the script, wasn't it? That's how they wrote it. If anyone has eyes, they can read it. It's written in black blood on white paper.

No matter the crime, they sentence every single one of you to death.

*   *   *

There it is, the house. With its lower-story windows blazing, its upper stories loom like a grievous shadow on a foundation of pure light. Allmon abandons the Mercedes down at the foot of the drive near the road, the driver's door wide and the alarm pinging softly. He moves across the lawn in the dark, but he isn't headed for the house. His every move is deliberate and firm as he heads for the barns with his .45 in his hand—not just loaded but jacked with eight bullets at the ready. He's come for his son, but he has other business first.

The night is as dark as the inside of a box, and the night watchman is nowhere to be seen; he must be with the other grooms at the Osbourne house on the far side of the bowl, raising silver mint julep cups in celebration. Half the state is either drunk on bourbon or sick on Derby pie. The rest are asleep in their beds, oblivious as ever.

With an unearthly strength born of determination, Allmon slides open the great door of the broodmare barn so that it bangs home with a deep, metallic sound. He passes inside, his breath whistling through his clenched teeth. Where is she? Where is the champion filly? He has come for Forge's prized possession. They came for his long ago.

But my God, just look at this barn with its oaken stalls polished to a sheen, Forge's purple silks like royal insignia painted on all the doors. The chaff drifts like confetti under ceiling fans, the very walls insulated with dollar bills. It's sickening, a veritable temple of tack and flesh. Allmon stalks from one pristine stall to the next, but the filly is nowhere to be found. What he discovers: two prized breeders, Seconds Flat and Forge's Fortune. The real moneymakers. They were separated from their foals months ago in the age-old game of Kentucky usage, the foals whinnying somewhere else, confused and alone in the dark.

Knowing what he now knows, the whole enterprise is as bold as sin.

Forge's Fortune, nestled in her straw, is staring straight up at him with warm, curious eyes when he points the .45 at her forehead four inches above her eyes and with the simple draw of a finger delivers her. She droops without surprise or alarm or life onto the bed of hay on the stall floor, her beautiful skull perfectly intact, her limbs going gentle and limp beneath her.

But now Seconds Flat is panicking, rising up on her rear legs in the neighboring stall, whining in alarm, and suddenly Allmon's hands begin to shake—he has always been the protector, that's who he is, right, Momma?—he can barely recover his aim, can't manage the target, especially with the mare rearing and her eyes rolling, but when she launches high for the third time with her forelegs cycling, he finds mercy and shoots through the soft velvet crook where her tongue rises against the soft palate, and then she's choking and already bleeding out as she crumples onto her heavy quarters, slumping to the right and crashing her beautiful head against the oak of the stall.

But where is Henrietta—no, Hellsmouth! Where is Hellsmouth? A strangled sound emerges from Allmon's chest, the sound of a distressed child, as he moves from the barn across the lane, but he presses it down until it disappears. Allmon doesn't find her in the stallion barn, of course, only three yearling colts who swing their heads nervously as he moves out the back of their barn with his dreadful purpose. There are more mares, but eye for an eye, mother for mother is done. Now he has to find Hell. Allmon doesn't want to kill her, only hurt her enough to free her. No one will use her again, not even him.