A Courtroom Massacre

by Mark Porto

  When the offending guard tried to take a swing at him, another guard stops him as a third officer warns Johnny that challenging the guards could be a risk to his health.

  This fracas continues until guards with loaded shotguns arrive. Luckily one of the guards said the situation was under control and they weren’t needed. Johnny, however, was ordered to his cell under lockdown.

  When Manny returned after working, he warned Johnny it wasn’t wise to challenge these guards. He admitted that some of them get abusive, but he continued to defy them, there would be just more trouble.

  The next day, Johnny wanted to visit the prison chaplain. The guard asked why he wanted to see him; Johnny said it was a personal matter.

  The guard snarls. “Listen, nothing here is personal.” He lets out a laugh.

  The chaplain was Father Maurice Duval; he was originally from Massena, New York. Before becoming a prison chaplain he had his own perish until he decided to try to change the lives of those in prison.

  Johnny told about his prison experience, the judicial system and he didn’t understand why the guards act so savagely for no reason.

  Father Duval breathes a heavy sigh. “My son, I’ve been a chaplain of this prison for twelve years. Believe me, I’ve heard a lot. You’ve said it was a bizarre coincidence many of your fellow inmates were convicted, because of a defense attorney or judge. I’ve been trying to intercede for many victimized prisoners. But, this system will do everything to thwart you; my advice to you is to keep your nose clean. You must try through your lawyer to get out of here.”

  “Doesn’t the truth matter?”

  Father explains when he first entered this facility; he had the same feeling, but as time wore on, he found out if you buck the system, they’ll make it hard for you to stay. “I feel a duty to stay to help these prisoners. I am not going to stop speaking out despite the rough edges; you must do what you think is right.”

  Johnny was carrying his tray to a table in the cafeteria at dinnertime, when he walks past a table where “Wild Willy” and his ilk congregated. At first, they threw food at him. During the jaunt, Johnny felt a sharp sting in his left arm. He turns around to notice a curly haired guy with a long mustache with tattoos all over his arms and legs. He displays a demonic smirk while they stare at each other. He then notices blood dripping from his elbow.

  He took his seat, suddenly Johnny notices two men sharpening down their spoons with a small stone. Johnny drops his tray, takes a spoonful of mush, threw it in the stabber’s face and they rose spontaneously.

  All of a sudden, the man threw a chair at him, while Johnny grabs a hold of the table to capsize it. The thug lunges at him along with several of the man’s comrades. Manny urges Chang and Kim to join him in the brawl. Johnny uses a karate maneuver against the thug.

  During this time as Johnny challenges the thug to battle each other, several guards came on the scene tried to seize him. However, Johnny gave them a few karate kicks after the guards struck him with the baton. The fight continues until the entire guard detail of the cellblock was dispatched. The sound of sirens permeated the room while the guards tried to reestablish control by arresting Johnny.

  While the guards return the area to order, Johnny is taken into solitary confinement for the time being, one guard snarls. “You’re seeing the warden when you cool off!”

  For the longest time, Johnny had to hold his nose from the smell of cigarettes in combination of coffee, throat lozenges with dried fish, while sitting statuesque in the cell.

  Suddenly, he hears a sound from the other cell, the voice appears friendly, but doesn’t know it until he hears the deep voice. “Hey, what’ya in for man?”

  Johnny’s head cocks to the sound of the voice saying he was kicking butt.

  The voice advises him to better watch out whose butt and how much butt he kicks. When Johnny wanted to know why, the voice says the warden is a crook. “For any price, he’ll sell you to anybody.”

  “How did you wind up in solitary?”

  The voice explains one night about four years ago, he was in a bar, minding his own business when a drunken jerk claimed he was his girlfriend’s former beau. “I said I didn’t have any problem with him, when suddenly, he pulls a switchblade on me. I took a beer bottle and smashed it across his head killing the guy.” He explains getting there by not moving fast enough.

  “I don’t understand you were defending yourself, that’s how much I know.”

  The voice laughs, he tells Johnny not to lose that enthusiasm. He explains how District Attorney Courtney got to his position. “It was the late sixties and there, as you know, were riots. The present prosecutor at the time was retiring after over twenty years in office. Courtney runs on a law and order platform, which everyone loved, but here’s the kicker, he had a protégé by the name of Ron Croydon, who served as mayor of Black Meadows.”

  “Didn’t he serve as city attorney somewhere along the line?”

  The voice continues to laugh. “Hey, you know your city’s history.” He says that is where he developed his ruthlessness. He tells Johnny of all the people who were convicted of violations; some were misdemeanors and sent to jail, despite not having a record.

  “Was your attorney named Fredrick Menden? He was mine attorney. Unfortunately, he still is.”

  The voice says he was his attorney as well. He advises Johnny to dump him. “He’s bad news, buddy.” He tells Johnny he’s been in prison for four years, because his attorney took a “dive” in getting conviction. When Johnny asks why, the voice says he believes Menden may be being blackmailed for a vigorous defense of one man during Croydon’s tenure as city attorney. “Unfortunately, I don’t know all the details.” He has advice for Johnny saying if he’s not careful, he’ll be spending more time in the hole.

  “Thanks a lot, what’s your name, man?”

  The voice says. “No, I won’t give my name to anybody. People will sell’ya down the river, if you give’m half a chance. Besides, I have about two years left in my sentence and I don’t want to rock the boat. It’s bad enough, I’m in trouble now.”

  One morning, several days later, the door to Johnny’s cell opens. He has to cover his eyes with his hand, due to a bright light shining in his face. When three silhouetted images appear, the middle one steps forward with a whip in his hands, he speaks in a hegemonic voice perforates the walls. “Get up, Bellow!”

  Johnny rises and stands straight to stare at the image, but didn’t say anything. Another image was a guard trying to suspend his arms in the air, in an effort to thrash him. When he doesn’t comply, one of guards attempts to pistol whip him, but Johnny grabs it from the guard’s right arm and knocks it out of his hand. However, the other guard takes a baton to strike Johnny to the ground.

  An assistant warden orders a guard to check up on him, since he doesn’t offer any resistance; a nurse was brought in to take his vital signs. Upon leaving, Johnny moans in an effort to get up from the floor. He experiences double vision causing him to return to the floor in the hope it will go away.

  The next day, the assistant warden returns to the cell to take Johnny, who was shackled, who was escorted by armed guards to the warden’s office.

  The office is located in a secluded part of the prison; it consists of a desk, couch plus two chairs facing a metal desk. There were two armed guards stationed in the corridor.

  As Johnny walks in, he notices the numerous diplomas, awards, accommodations in addition to family pictures that were spread around the room. He is seated in one of the chairs facing the warden; there is one guard behind him with another to his side.

  There is a wait of twenty minutes, because he is in a “meeting”. When he arrives, a scowl is ever present upon setting eyes on Johnny. The warden’s middle overlaps his belt which doesn’t complement his large face and hands. He, then orders the young inmate to stand. “You’re Bellow, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” Johnny responds in a respectful tone. All of sudden, one of the gu
ards whacks him across the back legs with a baton snarling, ordering him to show better respect.

  Johnny winces while his legs crumple uttering, “Yes, sir.”

  The warden places his hands on the arms of his chair. “That’s more like it.” He doodles on a piece of legal pad and never looks Johnny in the eye. “I hear you’ve been causing a lot of trouble since you arrived here about a month ago.”

  Johnny tries to clutch his throbbing leg. “No, sir,”

  The warden barks. “Oh, really, the guards tell me you’ve been beating up on guards and inmates. You like a lot of mayhem, boy!”

  Johnny ignores his hurting leg. “You don’t understand, Warden! Wild – "

  The warden interrupts him while moving closer. "We don’t name names here, boy!”

  “Just a minute, Warden, my cousin was being attacked by a gang. What the hell was I supposed to do, let them mar him for life?! What the hell kind of a prison are you running, ‘Devil’s Island?”

  The warden’s face has a ferocious look; he warns him if he keeps this up, he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison. He remarks this is the way things are done here.

  Johnny’s arms are taut. “Well, what’s your excuse? Maybe it’s because being a bureaucrat, everyone feels the need to take a blind eye to your actions!”

  The warden retorts while sitting down. “Son, I don’t owe you anything. All I have to do is send out a bad report to the parole board and they’ll deny it to you, based on my say so alone.”

  Johnny sees venom in the warden’s eyes telling him to take his threat and pound it where the sun doesn’t shine. His words resonate while his teeth gleam with a hissing sound. His body though, was shaking being apprehensive of what will happen next.

  The scowling guard behind him tries to give Johnny another whack at his legs. However, this time he raises them in unison summarily striking the guard in the gut, thereby knocking him on up against an opposite wall.

  At the same time, another guard attempts to intervene, but is struck when Johnny cups his two shackled hands to form a greater fist; the guard was knocked onto another wall.

  The warden opens the drawer to get his revolver, but Johnny acrobatically maneuvers his legs to slam it, thereby smashing the warden’s hand. A loud, bloodcurdling scream is expelled from his lungs.

  Johnny gets the keys from one of the guards to unlock his shackles. It was then, two more guards came inside, but he used a few judo maneuvers to knock them out of the way.

  After he leaves, the warden notifies guards of an attempted escape.

  An air raid siren blared throughout the prison while Johnny manages to hide in a closet. He waits until the guards were scattered around the facility moving slowly from the closet to the main corridor.

  He now sees Jerry in one of the cells being beaten up by an unshaven behemoth of a man with hair which extended down to his hips.

  Johnny kicks the cell door open, pulls out the wrench he hid in one of his pockets proceeding to kick and strike the inmate until he falls to the floor. He grabs his cousin running desperately to find an exit, but when they find a gray metal door, Jerry had second thoughts about escaping remarking they could be shot by the guards. “True, but it’s a chance we have to take or spend more time in this hellhole.”

  Subsequently, they were both apprehended; Johnny is taken back to the hole, while Jerry is returned to the general population. He wasn’t charged with attempted escape, because they figured he was carted along in the process.

  A few days later, when Sal and Anita come to visit him, their access to him is denied. They were told about the solitary confinement, but when they inquired as to why he was put there, no one would offer a comment.

  Anita cries and yells to the point where Sal has to escort her from the prison. He puts his arm around her, taking her back to the car.

  Upon returning home, she called her doctor to tell him of her problems, he then prescribes Attivan to quell her nerves.

  She receives a call from Fred Menden regarding Johnny’s case. He tells her his case is before the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court saying a decision will be reached in the next two or three months.

  On one warm late spring morning, Johnny is sitting on the floor of his cell when his food is put through a flap in the metal door. He eats while sitting there. As soon as he was finished eating, he heard a deep, rich, but familiar voice and looks through the ventilator. “Manny?” He whispers several times before there was an answer.

  He answers despite his scratchy voice, explaining how he got into the hole, for getting into a fight with “Wild Willy”, a guard took a swing at him with his baton. “I smacked him in the puss. In the joint, sometimes you have to stand up for yourself!”

  Johnny remarks if Chang was there to stop him. They laugh as Manny tells him in despite of being there, he still has a sense of humor, urging him never to change. “How long have you been in here and how come he hadn’t heard from him?”

  Manny tells him he had been there for a couple of weeks, “They keep moving me around, because I got too friendly with the neighbors.”

  One day, Johnny’s cell door was open; his eyes were overpowered by the sunlight as an average height man with gray hair, a white coat, suit with wearing eye glasses. He is accompanied by two burly guards and a woman, who’s his assistant.

  Johnny is escorted into another room. He is placed on a stool; a bib is put around him while a man holding an electric razor says with a leer waiting to shave his head bald. While the man in the white coat stands reading a file introduces him to Johnny; “I’m Dr. Jordan Kimball, I work as a psychologist with the State Corrections system.”

  “Why do want to talk to me?” He says eyeballing the razor.

  The psychologist’s voice remains tepid, tapping a pencil against the palm of his hand. “I just want to talk.”

  Dr. Kimball’s head descends browsing the file dictating either he agrees to the interview or he will be sentenced to a year in confinement. The doctor’s face and hips stiffen posing as if he demanded a “satisfactory” response.

  When Johnny refuses to answer turning his hand away, Dr. Kimball nods to the man with the razor sheared off strands of his hair that bounce to the floor like a group of feathers.

  After the man finishes, Dr. Kimball asks Johnny once more, when he is given another glimpse of himself through a hand mirror, he agrees to be interviewed. He is escorted by the guards to an area adjacent to the warden’s office where Dr. Kimball was accompanied by his assistant, Dr. Allison Benjamin; she’s short with red hair accompanied by a sweet smile.

  Dr. Benjamin sits down beside him, asking about his childhood, job and home life. When she is finished with the first part of the interview, Allison sits down with her chin held by her hand asking him why he is so hostile to authority.

  Johnny’s eyes and mouth fly open. “Excuse me, I am not hostile to authority, per se, they’re hostile to me.”

  She holds his file when he demands to see it.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, these records are confidential.”

  He argues that wasn’t true, in the process, he makes several attempts to get it, but she moves it to her bosom, claiming she was trying to help him, while putting her hand on his face. Johnny feels stimulated by her touch pulling her toward him, but she, in turn, rebuffs his advance before their lips are able to touch. As he continues to pull her closer, she feels the need to ask him to stop. “This is so odd, I have a crush on you, are you married?”

  Allison blushes, cracking a smile trying to hold the file and hold him back. “No, but this isn’t about me, I want to know why those in authority brings out such hostility.”

  “You don’t.” Johnny says feeling more at ease. He proceeds to explain by clearing his throat before speaking; when he was in the fourth grade, he had a teacher, Mrs. Claudia Lonn. One day, he had to go to the bathroom, and as he was about to leave, this larger kid was picking on a classmate, who was leaning up against the wall near the door.

>   “Did you get involved?” Dr. Benjamin sits down next to him, glancing at his file, before long puts it down.

  He tells her he was minding his own business when he tried to pass the bigger kid, “I tried to explain to this moron, I only wanted to leave the room. The guy got miffed at me for I don’t know what reason, so when I tried to bypass him, he pinched my nose, and then he said something I don’t remember. I simply left for the classroom.”

  Allison asks him if he notified the teacher, when he said he did, she wondered what action was taken.

  Johnny tells her the teacher did nothing. “She wasn’t even shocker or outraged.”

  Dr. Benjamin took off her glasses as her mouth falls open. “Are you serious, she didn’t do anything?”

  He tells her Mrs. Lonn said these kids were nasty and to stop being oversensitive.

  Allison asks him to continue about any additional incidents.

  Johnny discusses about an incident where his mother was physically attacked. When he was in middle school, there were some kids who would harass him on his way home. “One day, my mother came out to yell at them for attacking me. Suddenly, one of them walked up to strike her with a thick tree branch. I saw it happen out of the corner of my eye. I charged at the guy, got into a wrestling match, after all was said and done, all the police said was they should’ve called first. They even chided me for striking the kid.”

  Dr. Benjamin shook her head while he was speaking, yet writes everything down, Johnny continues. “I don’t understand; whenever there was an incident against either me and/or my family, we’d go either to the school officials or the police where I signed a deposition with my mother’s consent. Yet, nothing seemed to be done.”

  “Did you ever feel like a coward, if you didn’t strike back?”

  Johnny says he did feel like a coward, but whenever he fought back, he’d be punished for it. “It was like a double edge sword.”