Last Week in Lockup aka The Convict Codes, Vol 11

Last week.

I imagine this is how people feel during their last week in the military, with a new life baiting them. Packing their things, awaiting a transport out, saying goodbye to their comrades in arms.

The last week in prison mocks that. Here, you’re not looking ahead, you’re looking behind. Hoping you won’t catch a new case or a violation. Hoping for no write ups from guards or conflicts with other convicts to add to your time. Hoping you won’t get caught in the crossfire before you escape the war zone.

I’ve seen it before—guys provoked into fights that extended their stay. Guys who get into it with a guard over something petty, thinking it’s their last chance to get in the last word. Self-sabotage, the shrinks call it. Can’t stand prosperity is how I’d phrase it.

I eyeball my 8x10, taking in the bunk beds, the magazine pictures taped to the walls, the stack of ramen noodles in one corner, the vent overhead that blows cold air year-round, the toilet that always smells of piss even after I rinse it in shampoo. I don’t want to extend my stay in this minimal motel. After five years inside, one more week is all I can abide.

Which is why I won’t tell anybody I’m short to the house.

Instead, I resolve to stay in my cell. No yard time or pod time. I may even quit showering. Any place where conflict can occur, I’ll avoid. Because in prison trouble can lurk in any corner, even for an old head like me who’s skilled at dodging it. I could be standing in line for commissary when a dispute flares up or occupying a corner of the yard when an intruder forces me to defend the spot. Even in the library, trouble could erupt over a book or a look, as unpredictable as an earthquake.

Which is why I write to the teacher who runs the tutoring program where I work, saying I’m sick and don’t want to infect anybody. I give my kite to Revere, the mailman, when he passes my cell. Revere only nods. He’s an old head, too, and knows better than to pry into another man’s business.

However, my cellie, Bump, as I call him, is an impulsive youngster, eager to know what everybody is up to, thinking prison is like the outs where it pays to stay informed. He hasn’t learned that you earn more respect inside by keeping quiet than by raising your voice. Instead, he comes off as young as he looks, with an adolescent’s doughy body, blotchy face, and high-pitched voice.

“You ain’t fixing to work today?” he says. I’d like to think he’s smarter than he speaks, that his slurs and slang are an adaptation to his surroundings, where it’s safer not to sound too educated. However, I’ve never heard him talk otherwise, nor seen him read a book.

“Not today.”

“How come?”

“Don’t feel good,” I say.

Usually, I wouldn’t bed down with somebody half my age, but the guards paired us a few months back after my last cellie got transferred. I accepted, knowing I had only a little time left.

“Keep off’a me,” he says and jumps down from his top bunk to exit the cell. “I ain’t want what you got.”

It’s tough to keep anything to myself in an 8x10, but I resolve to be as terse as the worst guard for the rest of the week.

#

I pass the morning on my bunk reading, but I have trouble focusing on the story, which is a typical mystery about murderous English aristocrats—ridiculous to any true criminal. I don’t usually go for such lowbrow entertainment, not since I discovered real books in my college correspondence courses, but I want distraction more than stimulation, so I force my eyes to skim the words. Once or thrice, an image forms: of me sitting on a soft bed, looking out a window without bars, but I push it down.

For lunch, I skip the mess hall and boil one of my ramen noodles on a hot plate. Ordinarily, I conserve those soups as if they’re my life savings. Ever since the prison outlawed cigarettes, they’re the best currency inside, tradable for almost anything: shampoo, sugar, even sex. But there’s no sense in bogarting them now when I won’t have time to eat them. As they say about death, you can’t take it with you. So I wrap those noodles in a tortilla, sprinkle some cheese puffs inside, dab Tabasco on top, and make a gringo burrito. It’s salty and crunchy and spicy, all the things prison food isn’t—way better than choking on dry oranges and baloney sandwiches from the mess, where all manner of inmate madness awaits.

That afternoon, I do a few sit ups, pushups, and step ups, which is all an 8x10 allows. Truth is, there’s barely space to stand between the bed and toilet let alone flail around doing burpees, but I’ve adapted to a confined life. Then at night I push replay on my reading and ramen routine. Day one down with no drama.

#

The next morning, my cellie acts suspicious.

“Still puking?” he asks.

“Don’t worry, I can make it to the toilet.”

“Must be all them soups you eat.” He sounds jealous.

“Could be.” I lay back on my bunk, book in hand.

“You should share a few.”

I ignore the ask and wait till he leaves to restart my new routine: reading until feeding, exercise thereafter. Only I switch stories: to a bio of a man who travels to Tibet looking for enlightenment. It’s good escapism—except all the monastic self-denial reminds me of prison. Every day wearing the same uniform, eating the same food, sitting in the same room. He even calls them cells. By midday I’m searching my cell for other books.

I don’t get why I’m having such trouble filling my time. I’ve been locked down plenty often before—sometimes for weeks after a major insurrection or when guards contracted the blue flu—and never felt half so stir crazy. Truth is, I’ve spent half my adult life in and out of lockups. Cops call me a career criminal, judges a serial offender, guards a lifer.

They don’t understand: the only way to survive the institution is to adapt to it. Most days I spend in the library, reading and teaching. It’s been my program since I arrived five years ago, my way of staying safe and sane. It also provides my sustenance. Officially, I tutor guys for their GEDs, but the nineteen cents an hour the prison pays won’t cover even soap and shampoo, so on the side I sell other services: writing legal briefs, letters to loved ones, appeals to guards. It’s how I got my prison name, Cyrano, pen man to the masses.

Which reminds me: I need to tell the teacher I’ll be absent again. Can’t believe I forgot to write in sick. I pen another kite saying I caught something wicked that’ll detain me all week. I hate to deceive my boss, who’s one of the only staff to treat me with any dignity, but every excursion brings risk.

Instead of teaching, I try meditating, like the guy in my book. Only I doubt he had to contend with four radios playing different music all at once—a medley of hip hop, Motown, Tejano, and death metal—or guys shouting to be heard over the clamor. Prison is the loudest place I’ve been. Even the toilet flushes create an echoey vacuum like a passing subway. Focusing on it as my monastic mentor advises only increases the effect. Since there’s more relief in distraction than concentration, I clap on headphones and watch sitcoms from the seventies, which at least cut up the time into thirty-minute increments.

#

Day three, and my cellie is definitely suspicious.

“You oughta see a doctor,” he says.

“I don’t need pill call.”

“Maybe they put you in the clinic ....”

“So you can have a single cell?”

“If I wanted to sleep solo, I’d just kill you.”

I fake a laugh and wait for him to leave. I’ve heard he’s violent when drunk, but I’ve never seen it. Still, I’m not fool enough to square off against a man locked up for barroom brawls. Instead, I write it off as more motivation to stay circumspect.

Like I said, I’ve witnessed other guys stressing about getting out. They lose their composure anticipating their new freedom. Will they find some better hustle, with fast money and women, or will they fall back into their old ways, reunite with their old friends, associates, and enemies—the same people who landed them inside. For a lot of guys, freedom is like a video game, a test of how long they can stretch out their play, how many levels they can climb, how many points they can score, before the Pac-Man of prison gobbles them up again.

Against my will, my mind flashes to a different life. I imagine myself wearing a tie and wingtips, working in an office, chatting with young women around a coffee pot. Squared off.

Before, when I got out, I always knew I’d go back to my old hustle, forging fake IDs, but this time I want to try on the clothes of a citizen. Only change isn’t as easy or quick as they say. It’s not a matter of willpower. Otherwise, everybody would be thin, rich, and sober.

How can I adapt my prison ways to new circumstances? In lockup, my literacy makes me valuable to anybody needing legal advice or a scribe who can spell, but on the outs everybody can read and write. Is there a place in the free society anything like what I hold in here?

I quash the thought. No sense projecting too far ahead.

In the meantime, I can’t stand any more of this 8x10, nor any more noodles, so I decide to take feeding with the fellas. I’ve eaten plenty of meals in the mess before. What’s one more.

The scene is as always: a lineup of convicts in overalls holding tin trays, surrounded by dozens of cold, steel picnic tables. The cacophony of conversation is even louder than on the tier—five hundred hard men all striving to assert dominance. Voices ricochet off the high ceilings and cement walls, every surface solid and reflective. Even a busy street on the outs sounds quiet by comparison. Between their shouts and the smell of burnt onions and simmering beans, it’s tough to isolate any sensation besides disgust, yet its familiarity is comforting.

Still and all, as I study the collection of criminals around me, I remember what they did to land up in here. At the table to my right sits Moose, a mountainous slab who killed his wife with a hammer for flirting with another man. Behind him sits Skitcher, a skinny speed freak who stabbed three men during a week without sleep. Mack sits diagonal, a pimp who raped a thirteen-year-old girl trying to turn her out. Everybody in the room has a few felonies, and some a few dozen.

Next to them, the guys at my table are docile, mostly habitual thieves and addicts. Despite our proximity to so many menaces, only I’m tripping. Instead, my table mates are playing the dozens with the food.

“S.O.S,” says Dodger, poking his serving of beef and gravy over bread toasted to brittle wood. Usually, that’s short for shit on a shingle, but he claims he’ll need an emergency phone call if he eats it all. Based on the density, I agree.

“Only thing orange about this juice is the color,” says Slim, holding up a bottle of fluorescent liquid. As skinny as he is, he should eat more solids.

“I thought apples came from a tree, not a wax factory,” says Bobo, rolling around a small, mealy nut on his tray.

It’s a safe subject for midday, one unlikely to offend even the cooks. Everybody understands: the only right the prison can’t restrict is the right to complain.

Dodger switches to riffing on a foreign hair he found in his laundered boxers. Claims it was planted there, he’s just not sure by who. “That’s cruel and unusual—”

He pauses, mid-thought. Another convict has bumped his shoulder from behind, so he’s mugging the man, who’s big and menacing.

“You out of bounds,” Dodger says.

“My bad, brother,” says the offender, who I think is named Vice, though I can’t recall why.

“We’re no brothers,” Dodger says and stands. He’s a half foot shorter and fifty pounds lighter than his opponent, plus twice as old, but that doesn’t stop him going eyeball to eyeball.

“Dude bumped me,” Vice says, nodding to another convict who’s moved well past.

“Don’t excuse you.”

It’s not Dodger’s fault. Every convict knows the code: don’t let any slight pass. And even if he has no chance of winning a fight with Vice, Dodger has to show a willingness to throw down. That same code requires us all to back our man, even though we’re old guys more than original gangsters. Thus, as a reflex, I stand with the others at the table. Not that I’m much help in a fight, but there’s security in solidarity, even as another brotherhood collects behind Vice.

Suddenly, that noisy space goes quiet, and everybody stares, anticipating violence, some with eagerness, others with dread. I hear only the vents overhead blowing cold, reused air and the onions sizzling in the kitchen. Then I recall that Vise got his nickname due to his fondness for trapping other inmates in a headlock that can’t be broken. I examine his biceps, which are swollen with blood. Before any fists can fly, the guards sense the tension and order Vise to move along, which he does, but not without mean mugging us.

Once he’s out of punching range, we all take our seats and Dodger picks up his story where he left off, but I can tell by the way he and Vise are staring past each other they’re not finished. That’s how prison is—all it takes is one man sideswiping another and you’ve got a chain reaction of road rage. Thus, the same gang that protects you also endangers you.

Probably to break the tension, Slim asks me, “Why so quiet?”

“Just enjoying the food,” I say.

“Never heard the voluble Cyrano without a clever word.”

That’s a term I taught Slim, voluble, back when I was tutoring him for his GED. Now I regret the lesson since he’s turning it on me.

“Saving it for supper,” I say.

Even as the low roar of casual conversation returns to the room, my silence feels conspicuous, as if I’ve got an unexplained injury. Plus, I feel guilty for prevaricating to my crime partners. After five years together, I owe them some words in parting. Still, guilt is a rare emotion in prison, and I don’t know how to process it.

#

After the near miss at lunch, I renew my resolve to stay in my bunk and forsake all my comrades. Except plenty of men are attacked in their cells, where they can’t back up, and that stare from Vise meant we’re all targets—guilt by proximity. If he knows this is my last week, he’ll hear a ticking clock on settling grudges.

I’m even more twitchy than before, unable to concentrate on the simplest book or TV show. As a diversion, I debate how to parcel out my possessions. I’ve got a TV, two radios, three headphones, four rolls of TP, three tins of instant coffee, two half-used rolls of antacid, and a chess set, plus a stack of soups big enough to build a wall. The electronics I’ll give to Dodger, who has no one to fund his commissary. The games to Bobo, who uses chess as his side hustle. Each will get five soups so no one feels slighted. The rest of the food belongs to Slim, who needs the extra calories.

As for my cellie, who no doubt has inventoried my stash many times in mind if not in hand? I plan to gift him my spare blanket and extra pillow—until he shows up later that night, looking amused in the original sense of the word: staring stupidly.

“Heard you had some drama in the mess,” he says.

“All melodrama. Nothing to it but profiling.”

“Not what I hear. I hear there’s still static on the wire.”

“Better not to listen too close. You’ll start hearing things that aren’t there.”

“I need to know if somebody’s coming for you.”

“If somebody comes for me, it’s not you they’re after.”

“Either way, I get your stash.”

He smiles again, maliciously. I half think he’s taunting me on purpose—as if he knows I’m short to the house. Then, another vision intrudes: of me as one of those old heads dying inside, too weak and daft to defend himself.

Rather than spook myself, I think about all the guys I’ve tutored over the years—gang leaders and shot callers, predators and thieves—and how I coexisted with all of them. Will that M.O. translate to the outs, where more people have an education, and everybody uses theirs to compete? Again, I quash the thought as unproductive until I’m free.

#

For my last three days, I play possum, enduring a somnambulant routine of eating, exercising, and guarding. At night, I try to relax into the hard concrete beneath my mattress, yet I am hypervigilant, attending to every squeaky shoe on the tier, every clang of a cell door opening, every disrupted snore close by. I recall the look Vise gave us as we walked out of the mess hall, as if he was measuring us each for a submission hold. If I sleep at all, it’s only when I nod off from fatigue. If I move, it’s only to relieve my basic needs. I exist in suspended animation, waiting for someone to wake me from this coma.

Then, someone does. On my last night, a guard slows beside the cell door to inform me, “We’ll come for you after first feeding tomorrow. Be ready.”

I nod and let him pass, hoping my cellie wasn’t ear hustling. Of course, he was.

“Where you going?” he says, slurring his words, which suggests he’s been boozing.

“Court.”

“You catch a new case?”

“Civil. Restitution.”

“How much you owe?”

“More than I can pay.”

“You need to hide your stash, you can give it to me.”

“They don’t want my soups.”

“What I hear, a lot of people got eyes on them.”

“If I need to liquidate my assets, you’ll be first on the donor list.”

He grunts, but I can tell he doubts me.

Thus, I resolve not to nod off again.

The night passes as slow as any I recall. Every cough alerts me. Every breath from the vent chills me. Every toilet flush startles me.

By morning, I’m exhausted. Still, I rise, make my bed, and perform some homeless hygiene in the sink. I eat a small meal of bitter coffee and sweet pastries. Then, I wait. To distract myself, I rearrange my possessions into care package as if my associates were my children and my provisions their inheritance. My cellie studies these preparations as if I’m planning a hit.

“You say your case is civil.”

“More uncivil, but yeah, it is.”

“So why you prepping to roll up?”

“Just straightening.”

“Naw. You maxing out.”

“I’ll be back tonight, same as always.”

He stands and looms over me. Even hung over, he looks menacing. “Can’t take it with you.”

“Like I said, when I leave, you’ll get a share.”

“I’ll take my share now.”

I should let him have it all, but some inmate impulse compels me to defend what’s mine, an adherence to the convict code no matter how short my time. When he grabs a pile of my soups, I grasp his wrist to break his hold. He pushes back with his free arm, leaning in with greater weight, but I counter with a headlock, channelling Vise. We end up writhing on the floor like kids. Meanwhile, I kick the soups out of the cell and off the tier so he can’t have them. Which attracts a guard, who handcuffs us both and marches us toward the hole.

At the least, this skirmish will delay my release, maybe earn me more time and a trip to the hole. No freedom or fresh start. Only endlessly more of the same.

Why couldn’t I avoid trouble for one more morning? Is it institutionalization that makes me act on impulse? Or some other instinct toward self-sabotage, an inability to see myself as anything other than a convict? Even with all my education, I can’t overcome my conditioning.

Lucky for me, I’ll have time to ponder why.

BIO: David Hagerty has published more than 70 short stories online and in print, including two in Literary Garage. He also authored the Duncan Cochrane mystery series about crime and dirty politics in his home town of Chicago. Read more of his work at: https://davidhagerty.net/.

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