by Ryan Schow
“You have your own cell until the next guy comes in,” the C/O said.
He stepped inside and said, “Still not full?”
“We’ll be at capacity by the end of the year,” he said, shutting the door and locking it, “so for now enjoy the peace. Oh, and one thing.”
“What’s that?” Atlas asked.
“Do the time, don’t let the time do you.”
“What does that mean?”
“You have your entire life to figure that out, but I’m sure you’ll get it sooner than later.”
He stretched out on his bed and thought to himself, This is the rest of my miserable life, right here, in this stupid blue suit, on this hard bed, trapped inside these four bare walls. Then Ronnie Beckett’s image flashed through his mind. Just thinking about that monster pumped his stomach full of acid.
On Atlas’s first full day in general population (gen pop), he was told he was in the first meal rotation until he got a cellmate, or a cellie. After that, he’d be switched to the second rotation.
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” he asked.
“It’s just a thing,” answered the guy in the cell next to him. He couldn’t see the man, but apparently he felt the need to insert his opinion.
“Look at all the breaks you’re getting,” the guard said, opening his door. “Your own cell, and the first crack at food. Let’s hope your celebrity status doesn’t mean you’re first into a bag today too.”
The minute he saw Ronnie Beckett, everything changed. The blond nightmare was tracking Atlas like prey, a sly grin on that disgusting white-trash face. With that one abhorrent look, Atlas knew this vile beast was going to be a problem. Then again, what if Ronnie was thinking the same thing about him? Atlas wasn’t a resident because he was some kind of a boy scout. He was a convicted murderer. A remorseless brute. And the media? They had no problem portraying him as a shotgun-toting, kid-killing rogue cop who’d gone straight up Looney Tunes. If he was smart, he would use that to his advantage. If he was smart, he’d let the animals in this pen continue to think he was crazy, violent, without an ounce of mercy. But would it work? He found out right away that it wouldn’t.
He was in the chow line when someone he didn’t know slapped his tray and sent his food flying. Atlas turned and drilled the guy so hard, it was a one-punch knockout. Two more inmates rushed him. He dropped them, too. The three more that got him put him down fast, then kicked him relentlessly as a group. He turtled up and took the shots, his only option.
Breaking through the kicking-circle surrounding Atlas, Ronnie Beckett walked into his line of sight. That wicked son of a bitch stood over him like a demon that had crawled out of hell. Immediately he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up straight. Beckett’s beard had been a five o’clock shadow when he’d been sent to prison for slaughtering an innocent family. Now that same beard was thick and unruly, halfway down his chest. And his hair? It was a ragged gentleman’s cut, the sides shaved tight the way it was done in Nazi Germany.
“Look at you, psycho killer,” Ronnie said, a snicker on his face. “A pig in the wrong pen.”
He had stippled skin, ass-nasty breath, hateful eyes and an inbreeder’s mouth. Because he could, he stepped on the side of Atlas’s face, grounding a heel into his cheek. Atlas struck the outside of his shin with a right fist, hoping to strike the nerves and wiggle free. Ronnie’s guys fixed that problem. Four of them pinned him down tight.
“You’re just a PIG IN THE WRONG PEN!” Ronnie roared. The inmates started to get loud, cheering, yelling at him, spitting on him. The serial killer broke into a grin.
The C/Os intervened like they had all the time in the world. They pushed Ronnie back by the chest, but not the way Atlas would push him if given a shot at the man. Ronnie defended his innocence in the matter by spouting off some nonsense about prisoner’s rights. No one bought the act. Not when he wore that sadistic grin like a threat, or a promise.
“Get up,” one of the guards said to Atlas. “Now that you’ve met the Welcome Wagon, you can go back to your breakfast.”
Atlas stood and brushed himself off. He then picked up his tray and started back to the food line.
“That ain’t the way it works,” the C/O said, physically stopping him.
“How’s that?” Atlas asked, eyes wild.
“You lost your breakfast because you caused problems. That’s how it works. Now go pick up what you dropped and eat that if you’re hungry. If not, we can take you back to your cell, or you can spend a few minutes in the yard. It’s your call.”
He scooped his food off the floor with a cupped hand, then wandered through the cafeteria and tried to sit with a group of guys from his own race.
“Can’t break bread with us, psycho cop,” a blonde-haired, blue-eyed brute said.
The “AB” collectively draped their arms across any openings at the table, effectively turning him away. AB stood for Aryan Brotherhood, although they called themselves “The Brand.” In that moment, Atlas hadn’t realized who they were. He only cared that they were white and he needed sanctuary. But incarcerated cops were a different breed. In there, he had no people. He had no race.
Out of options and hungry he found a corner where he stood and ate. If there was one benefit to having your own corner, it was that your back was covered and you had eyes on everyone. Safety wasn’t enough, though—not by itself. If Atlas hoped to survive, he would have to send a message. He wasn’t excited, but it was a necessary evil.
Atlas picked a hair out of his scrambled eggs, finished the last of his breakfast, then took a moment to study the chow hall. He waited for the right time, then he walked over to Ronnie Beckett casually, like there was nothing to it. When the serial killer glanced up, Atlas spat a juicy loogie right in his eye, waited the half-beat for him to blink, then punched him in the face so hard his entire body crumpled. The second Ronnie took that rock-solid shot to the kisser, one of the C/Os fired a canister of tear gas, hitting him right in the shoulder blade. Back arched, staggering forward, he tried to get away from the gas, the same as everyone else.
“You asshole!” someone yelled at Atlas as the guards rushed in, swinging their batons. Before they could reach him, two or three of Ronnie’s guys charged him, catching him with a few flying fists and a body slam. In the chaos, he managed to get in a few shots of his own, certainly enough to slow their roll. In the end, they overwhelmed him. And then they got the better of him. Fortunately the C/Os intervened. They quickly cleared the pack of mongrels, dragging Atlas’s bloody, beaten body out of danger. He was about to thank them when one of them thunked him on the skull with his baton.
“You think you know how things work around here, fish?” he growled as he dragged Atlas out of gen pop.
“Starting to see,” Atlas managed to say, feeling his head.
“In here, there ain’t squat to save you from your temper. Or your mistakes. Every day you’re in lockup, you take responsibility for your actions, good or bad. You clear? Because that’s what’s real. That’s what you’re gonna find out quick. And if you don’t get it, we’ve got live rounds and permission to accidentally kill you. Do you hear me?”
“Yeah, man, I hear you,” he said, shrugging off the guard’s hand.
When he was put back in his cell, he returned to the door and looked the guard in the eye. “You can’t turn the screws on me any more than you can on anyone else, screw.”
“I’m out here and you’re in there, so I beg to differ.”
“You think that makes you better than me?”
“I know it does.”
“I’ve got nothing to lose in here. Do you hear me, bro? You’re not better than me. Not even close! You’re just a Muppet in a uniform, forced to suck the state’s dick for crappy pay and a pension!”
“You’re barking up the wrong tree,” the guy in the cell next to him said. “They don’t care about you. Your dumb ass is just a paycheck.”
Out of breath and agitated, his heart wa
s like a fist clobbering the inner walls of his chest. The last thing he wanted to do when he was that wound up was make friends.
“So how long you in for?” the guy asked, as if small talk was the cure to everything.
“Three days and a night,” Atlas grumbled, tasting blood in his mouth. Three days and a night basically meant three life sentences with no possibility of parole. He spat out a glob of blood, ran his tongue over his front tooth to see if it was loose.
“A piece of advice?” he asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. “You’d best calm your tits or you’re gonna catch out quick.”
“Catch out?”
“Buckle under the pressure.”
Atlas Hargrove didn’t buckle. Then again, he’d gone 5150 and earned himself three life sentences, so maybe that wasn’t exactly true.
Chewing on his anger, he stepped away from the cell door and lay back down on his lumpy bed. In spite of the footprint on his cheek and a mushed knuckle, not all was lost.
He’d just put Ronnie Beckett on notice.
He was hanging onto his life by a thread. It was exhausting—the fear, the need for constant awareness, the onslaught of verbal and mental abuse. Like a burrowing tick, the darkness of his new life gnawed its way into his brain, fouling his mood, stamping out whatever optimism he had left. Depression set in quickly. He refused to admit this out loud, but denying anything at that point was an exercise in futility.
Ostracized by most inmates, shunned by his own race, he had no protection, and a target on his back. Whatever plan he thought he had for dealing with this new reality was not good enough. He had to change his tactics, not be so worried, or scared. After an unexpected panic attack, things got really clear. To fully extinguish the flames of anxiety, he realized he’d have to pursue a new kind of fate: death. Brutal, violent death—his own. If he could transform his fear of dying into an unhealthy desire to die, he reasoned, would he no longer panic at the thought of leaving this earth? It was a curious shift in his thinking. Much to his dismay, it was a shift in the wrong direction.
The second attack was worse than the first. Like before, the fight was broken up and he was remanded to his cell, “for his own protection.” Of course. Bruised, beaten, and running his tongue over a split lip, he inventoried his many injuries. The side of his head throbbed where he’d been clobbered, blood crusted the insides of both nostrils, and the bones of his right hand had ached something fierce. But it wasn’t cuts or mushed knuckles that bothered him the most. His elbow was worse. He’d driven it straight into the bowling-ball-shaped head of the biggest con he’d ever seen and now it was sore. All this in his first three days.
If the correctional officers, a.k.a. the C/Os, a.k.a. the guards, a.k.a. the screws, hadn’t intervened again, he was pretty sure he’d be taking up space in the morgue. Standing up in his cell, he set his feet right, bent his knees, then straightened his back and turned his already battered hands into fists. Releasing his breath, he punched the wall, slowly at first, then faster. He sent in shot after shot until the hard-packed sounds of meat striking concrete became a steady rhythm he could lock in on and pace.
When he was done throwing punches, he did pushups, sit-ups, planks, and burpees. After that, he fired off a series of kicks. He whipped them out and snapped them back, did one hundred reps per leg, per kick. When his limbs burned with exhaustion, he went back to punching the wall. This was the drumbeat of war. A call for contenders. But it was also something more. This was the promise that you could come for him if you thought you had the stones to do so, but if you did, he was going to be more than ready for you.
“What’s your problem, Hargrove?” his next-door cellie asked.
“Got no problem,” he growled.
“Sounds like you’re nothing but problems.” When Atlas didn’t respond, he said, “These fools are gonna kill you.”
“Thanks for the heads-up, CNN.”
“Pigs in here don’t last so long.”
“That’s a shocker.”
Unimpeded, he continued his workout.
“Their endings are always ugly,” his neighbor added after a few minutes. “Really ugly.”
“Makes me think of your mother,” he replied, catching his breath. He wiped the sweat from his brow, and then from the back of his neck. “She was ugly too, and piggish.”
From the other side of the wall came a light chuckle. “Mother jokes don’t get no one down in here. My mom’s dead, by the way.”
This gave him pause. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“You’re the only one who’s sorry. Before she died, her skin was so thin you could see the veins and arteries at work. She was dirty, too. Body odor for days, breath like a donkey’s ass. She lied to me, you know. She said, ‘The water bill’s too high, Trigger’—that’s my name, by the way—‘and I can’t afford to shower.’ I knew it was BS. She just wanted the extra money to pay for crack.”
“Really?” he asked, now feeling terrible for having cut on her.
Trigger broke into a ruckus of laughter. “Naw, man. She’s still above ground, but you’re soft, bro. And vulnerable. They’re gonna gut the fuck outta you in here.”
“Is that a fact?”
“You can take it to the bank, sucka.”
Minutes later, it wasn’t the haters or the inmates who came for him. Rather, it was a pair of C/Os. “Time to go, Atlas.”
“Early lunch?” he asked.
“There’s been a credible threat on your life.”
“Did you expect there not to be?” he asked in an almost mocking tone. Then, sarcastically, he added, “Quick, get me to safety.”
“If you’d prefer, we can just let them kill you,” one of the guards said. “It won’t be so funny then will it wise guy?”
“I can live with that,” he said.
“Yeah, screw,” Trigger said. “He’s good with that.”
“Shut up,” the smaller of the two men turned and hissed. “Unless you’d like to join him.”
“I’ll have to check my schedule.”
“You do that.”
“I love solitary,” Trigger mocked. “That kind of darkness holds you like a lover. Never talks back, never lets you go.”
“Last time you went to solitary feeling excited,” one of the C/Os said, “but then you came out looking like a starved bird. You remember that? All crying and walking funny in your own crap? It took a power washer to clean your inner thighs that time.”
“Give me your hands,” the C/O said to Atlas.
“How long will I be there for?”
The guard shook his head and said, “I don’t pretend to know what the warden thinks unless he tells me himself. And you know what?”
“He didn’t tell you?” Atlas said.
“Correct. It’s for your own good. Your stay’s probably going to run short considering the problems you’ve caused, but it’ll be long enough for everyone to take a breath.”
“If you insist.”
“We need to settle a bit too,” the smaller of the C/Os said with a surprising amount of honesty. “Someone like you makes us all look bad.”
“I wasn’t law enforcement when I did those degenerates,” Atlas said. “So it’s not on you.”
“You were blue.”
The guard opened the door, motioned for Atlas to follow him.
Atlas went without issue.
“Once you’re blue,” the man escorting him said, “it’s always in your blood, whether you’re on the job or not.”
Atlas didn’t blame them. Not really. He was blue through and through, but now he couldn’t be blue. He couldn’t even say he was blue because he’d doubled down on everything law enforcement stood against when he’d killed the trio of meth heads.
Atlas lost track of time in solitary. He also lost that soft edge he’d been trying to harden since he first arrived. Sitting in the dark, pissed off and alone, he realized he couldn’t live his life caught in the squeeze of fear. He had to fight, to protect himself,
to never give up ground. He’d already given up so much of himself that it was time to take a little back. And why shouldn’t he? He truly had nothing left to lose. That was why he decided that if there was one thing he’d do while in the joint, it was not get pushed around and not be afraid. To do this, he’d have to turn himself into a weapon.
If he pushed back, became the menace he needed to be, what could the C/Os really do? Kill him? Put him in solitary again? Tack on extra life sentences? Whatever anyone decided to do to him—the guards, the inmates, even the warden—wouldn’t be enough. Until his dead body was put on ice then rolled through the incinerator, it wouldn’t be enough.
That was precisely why, in the dark of isolation, he gritted his teeth and told himself it was time to let loose the dogs of war.
Chapter Eight
ATLAS HARGROVE
Three weeks into his incarceration. Fresh out of solitary, Atlas had just finished his first of several intended workouts for the day when he lay down and closed his eyes. The sweat stung his cut knuckles, but it felt good. Or maybe he was just happy to be out of solitary. Eventually, the perspiration dried, leaving a sticky film behind. He’d just managed to get his heart rate back down and nod off when someone rattled his cage door.
“What do you want?” he grumbled.
“You have a visitor.”
“Sure I do,” Atlas said, turning his back to the guard.
“I’m serious.” The guard’s voice changed and he said, “Now, if you’d like me to spend time with the lady up front, I’d love to. What is your wife, Russian? Ukrainian?”
Atlas rolled back over, sat up and looked at the correctional officer.
“You’re putting me on,” he said, his interest piqued.
“If you say so.”
“You have to notify me ahead of time.”
“We don’t have to do squat but keep you alive,” he said. “We don’t even have to keep you well, just breathing.”
He sat up and said, “You’re not kidding about my wife?”