A Place to Stand

by Jimmy Santiago Baca

  “Take him down?” I asked, wanting to shift the conversation to something else.

  “Show him he’s messing with the wrong guy.”

  “I can do it with these,” I said, clenching my fists, hoping Macaron would agree.

  “He’s a four-time loser. You can fight with your fists, but you have to use a shank, too. He’ll have one. What you knew on the streets is over—this is a crazier world. When we come out tomorrow, strap down and ride. We’ll watch your back.” He glanced at homeboys with slicked black hair and black shades, chilling on the bleachers in starched jeans and white T-shirts.

  From the southeast corner of the field where we were sitting, the expanse of parched grass spread out with a dirt track around it; surrounding the field were three rows of security fences and razor wire; in each direction were huts on stilts with armed guards wearing aviator glasses. Cons were scattered out, separated by race: north of the handball courts was the iron pit filled with tattooed Aryan warriors muscling up; beyond that were boxers sparring and pounding the speed bags and body bags in a dirt ring; more Chicanos and blacks played baseball at the southwest corner; and at the northwest corner teams divided by race ran up and down the cement basketball courts.

  Macaron said, in a tired voice, “I know you’re scared, but this is the way it is. In the joint you live by the convict code, no gray areas: fight or get punked, step out or be turned out, cash in the wolf tickets or be eaten—it’s real. Don’t show fear, ‘cause you’ll give your enemy the advantage. Don’t intimidate or mad-dog him—take him out for disrespecting you. Respect is everything. It’s earned. You do what you gotta do.”

  “What if I kill him?” The thought of spending the rest of my life in prison scared me.

  “It depends how far he takes it, and you never know until you’re in it. Don’t stick him around the heart; you don’t have to kill him. Teach him a lesson; earn your rep as a vato not to mess with; attack first and show no mercy. Word’ll get out that you’re a stand-up dude, and you got no more problems. On the streets, you lose a fight you go home; that’s it. Here, you get fucked, you get sold, punked out; cons don’t respect you. Cons who went to Nam say it’s worse than jungle warfare. You live with your enemies here. There ain’t no going home. You live hour to hour with your enemy standing next to you, eating next to you, walking next to you. The only thing that keeps him from killing you is respect. Do what you gotta do and do it now.” Macaron got up and went to the bleachers. I wanted to keep talking but there was nothing more to say.

  I lay back and closed my eyes, inhaling the musty scent of hot grass, sensing my aloneness and how my life seemed to lead ineluctably to this moment. All the fights I’d won to prove I was a man didn’t matter; nothing mattered except what I was going to do now. The longer I postponed the inevitable showdown, the more it looked like I was afraid and the stronger it made him. The whistle sounded. We formed a single line and filed through the checkpoint back into the main yard. Tower guards with rifles paced the perimeters on top of the walls. Waiting in front of the granite wall, on the exercise field side, I glanced to my right through two fence gates where cons in pressed Levi’s and shirts, clean-shaven, confidently carried their books into the educational barracks. One day I’d be one of them, I thought. I just had to take care of my business.

  That evening, after showering, on my way back to my cell, Macaron called me to the bars and handed me a washcloth, warning, “Remember, wipe your prints off and toss it after you use it.” I unfolded the cloth to find a piece of sharpened plastic about six inches long. Shanks were weapons made from anything you could get your hands on: melted-down plastic molded to a blade, sharpened wood, filed steel, glass, stone, tin, whatever. I slid it under my mattress, hoping I wouldn’t have to use it. I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned, unable to put the confrontation out of my mind. What if I missed a punch and he stabbed me first? What if he moved just as I was going to stab him, and I caught him by accident in the heart? The more I imagined what I would do to him, the more confident I became. I’d grown up fighting, dealing with this kind of shit all my life. I was faster. I’d keep the shank tucked away in my sock, and if he pulled his, I’d pull mine. Street-fighting rules applied here too; the difference was that the weapons were more deadly. I had to set my mind on the job and do it without hesitation. I had to prove to everyone I was not going to be messed with. My mind reeled with anger at the fact that he was fucking with me when I hadn’t done anything to him. My plans for school would have to be delayed. The thoughts kept coming—how to get an advantage, what I’d counter with if he made certain moves—and after hours of rehearsing it, I finally dozed off. But before I fell asleep, I had decided that, until it was over, nothing was important to me except beating down this thug.

  I climbed out of my cot the next morning, dressed, and hid the shank inside my brogan. I took it because the shakedown crews usually inspected one or two cells while cons were out on the field or working. I was too agitated to eat breakfast, and after doing my chores, I headed back to the block to change clothes and check out for field. I needed to fight and get it over with. On the yard, after I left the block, a guard swept my body with a handheld scanner and moved me on. Macaron was at my side, his homeboys in front and back. As we marched past the Wheelhouse guards staring down on us, I thought how my jacket, neatly filed away in a cabinet, would never have the true information about me—that I wanted to do right but couldn’t. When the counselor read it all he saw was that I had no education and no family, and that a federal agent had been shot during a heroin sale. He didn’t know, no one knew who I was. He had told me that if I stayed out of trouble, I’d go to school and get a better job. Implicit in his encouragement was that it was up to me to decide my fate, but it wasn’t really like that. Others had a lot to do with whether you did good or bad.

  Cons were coming out of the small chapel next to the library, and I wished for God to take all this away. Among others, I saw Wedo at the property-room window arguing with a guard about his clothes. Other cons were lined up at the canteen. The whitewashed cinder-block infirmary looked quiet. I hoped I didn’t end up there. The yard was swept clean and hard. A line formed behind the checkpoint at the west end of the main yard, and another one at the gate where you entered the barracks area and then the field. I could see the distant gun towers at each corner of the field and the top ledge of the handball-court walls. As I neared the checkpoint leading to the gate to the field, I saw him on my left in the open-air welding sheds across from the school barracks. He was supposed to be in the field, not in the welding shop. Panic raced wildly through me. I went numb with the familiar sensation of anger. My mouth was dry. A graveled road for delivery trucks ran north and south between the barracks and welding shed. My brain boiled over with red mist, making me dizzy and weak. The hot sun and heat were choking me. Then something suddenly snapped, igniting in my heart, and I took off sprinting from the line.

  The air was opaque, as if I were observing things through a milky quartz, and in the dim consciousness, I heard whistles. Everything blurred around me—fences, gravel road, guards, and cons merged—the only thing I saw was the black dude bending over, wearing welding goggles and smoothing the end of a leg length of cot pipe at a grinding wheel. He was glistening sweat in the torch flame from the con welding next to him. Before he knew it, I was beside him. Startled by seeing me, he dropped the pipe he was shaving on the grinder. He crouched to pick it up but I quickly picked a piece of angle iron from the trash can between us and hit him on the head. Stunned, he staggered back and turned his face right into the whirring grinding wheel. The blade ripped his goggles in half and cut into his cheek and eye. Blood squirted across the air in thick sprays and he cried out. A part of his eye and a chunk of cut cheek flesh dangled as he tripped back, covering his face. I hit him again and he fell to his knees, his muscled arms, broad shoulders, and thick legs squirming to escape. I planted my feet firmly apart and hit him until he sprawled out on the concrete floo
r. A voice inside my head kept yelling the whole time I was hitting him that I was doing this for Theresa, whose father had raped her, and for my brother, who’d been raped by those two white guys.

  Guards in riot gear rushed in, knocking me to the floor, beating me down with boots and clubs from every direction. It was Mad Dog Madril, smashing my face in with his boot heel, and Five Hundred, clubbing my torso. I lay still, looking at the black dude groaning in a pool of blood a few feet from me. Two big goons lifted me and led me up the gravel road. For a few minutes, I was blinded by bright sunspots flashing in my eyes. I squinted and focused on the line of prisoners waiting to go into the field. I saw Macaron, who nodded his approval. I was proud and relieved it was over.

  They marched me across the yard, and outside CB4 the goons stripped me down and found the shank. They ordered me to stand in an open concrete bay and blasted me against the wall with a fire hose. I tried to protect my testicles, going sideways as the velocity of the water turned me around and around. After hosing me down, they made me bend over, to check my asshole, and forward, to check my testicles, arms, ears, and mouth. I put on my boxer shorts, and four bulls escorted me down into CB4. We went through a series of old iron gates, down a long corridor. After each gate the air in each succeeding corridor grew darker. To my right there were cells, and the faces in them had an eerie, sickly paleness from lack of sunshine and fresh air. I didn’t know it was death row, or that the other cells we passed were for administrative segregation—cons accused of being in gangs and indefinitely locked down by the warden. At the back of the block we climbed three floors. The guards’ boots thundered on the old fire-escape steps made of mesh-wire steel. As we went up, I noticed each floor had two isolation cells off to the side in a small landing. On the third floor, the guards opened a solid-steel door, uncuffed me, and shoved me in. The cell was pitch black. They slammed the door and I listened in the darkness until their descending footsteps faded away.

  My body ached from being hit by the goons. I began to focus on my breathing and to pace the five-by-nine cell. I hadn’t slept much the previous night, and I was drained and exhausted but jittery and high-strung. I trailed my hand along the wall until my eyes adjusted to the pitch black. I had proven myself, I thought, and I was proud, but I also felt bad because instead of changing for the better, I was becoming more violent. It was the first time I ever beat a guy with an angle iron, and an ominous dread filled my heart as I prayed that I hadn’t killed him. If I did, I was only defending myself. I did what I had to. The only reason I used the iron was because he was going to use an iron pipe on me. After hours of pacing, trying to calm my mind and nerves down, I lay on the cot and closed my eyes, concentrating on trying to get some rest. I don’t know if it was days or hours, but I slept for the longest time. Days and nights blurred. The only times I remember waking up were from nightmares of the fight; each time I fell back to sleep, I prayed for the guy not to die.

  Over the next series of meals, I caught up on lost sleep, and then, to keep myself functioning in the same reality as before, I stayed awake from the time breakfast trays were delivered to when supper trays were picked up. As I was completely submerged in darkness for long periods, the sharp clack and loud jangling of keys at the swill slot frightened me every time meals came. As I tried to regain my composure, the guard never failed to yell, ‘Take the fucking tray!” Once or twice I was too slow and he let it drop, and I picked the food off the floor and ate it. I savored each morsel of whatever it was I was eating. When I managed to anticipate his coming, kneeling down, my face in the shaft of light the four-inch slot panel let in, I asked if the black guy was okay. The guard made a stupid remark I remembered from adolescence: ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out.” Then he slammed the lid over the porthole opening. I traced my fingers around the edges, hoping it might not have latched all the way, but it always did.

  There were frenzied periods of paranoia, when I thought I saw big rats on the floor and crouched on the cot, my back to the wall, until I realized it was just an illusion. My eyes weren’t alone in playing tricks on me: I scratched and slapped at insects crawling over my flesh, which turned out to be tiny bits of iron shavings that had been embedded in my flesh when I was smashed to the welding-floor ground by the guards. I washed and scrubbed with cold water at blood on my arms and legs until I realized they were bruises.

  But these physical delusions were trivial compared to the insanity I got lost in. Ominous, howling noises came through the walls. I was certain that black gang members were coming to kill me through the crawl spaces behind the cells where the wiring and plumbing was. Lying perfectly still in the dark for hours, I could hear them gathering outside the door. Stone chips were flaking off the wall because someone was on the other side chiseling to get in. Inch by inch I ran my fingers over walls, floor, ceiling, toilet, and bunk, searching every cranny to make sure they were not getting through. They had probably bribed a guard and were just waiting for the right time to enter the hole and stab me to death. Even as I became sure they were coming, I also kept insisting it was ridiculous. I panicked for long stretches at a time, sweating, my heart thumping loudly as I listened to the thuds and hammering closing in on me. I lost track of the days. The swill slot in the door would open and a guard would hand me a tray. That was all I knew of life beyond the darkness and my madness.

  To keep from going insane, I started to do sit-ups, push-ups, and jumping jacks. I’d splash cold water over my naked body and sleep on the cool concrete floor, with no blanket, mattress, or sheet. I was constantly clawing at itches in my growing beard. Here in my own dark world, I had control only over the cold button on the sink, and I pushed it a hundred times a day, gulping until I was bloated, bathing until I was drenched. To squeeze every last drop of restless energy from me I masturbated, sometimes six times a day. I tried anything to pass the time, but the moment finally came when I was tired of waiting. I was so depressed I couldn’t stand it anymore. I wanted to get out. I curled up naked on the cot and quit eating. I forgot about life, forgot about myself, and just let time pass.

  Then one day the guard delivered my tray, not through the swill slot but through the door. A stream of hazy late-morning light filled my squinting, sensitive eyes. “Put some fucking shorts on!” he snapped. A little later, I stood outside on the landing, shivering and skinny. I had to hold the handrail as I followed the guard down the stairs. And as we made our way down the corridors to the front of CB4, one of the guys in an administrative-segregation cell yelled, “You should’Ve killed that black sonofabitch!”

  So he was alive. Alive, and everything was new. Even the dingy green cell bars looked good. My eyes absorbed every face and cell; my ears took in all the harsh sounds and yelling; even the intercom crackling numbers wasn’t as repulsive as I remembered it. He hadn’t died. The slamming steel, screaming radios, and TVs were all welcome sights and sounds to me. I was led to the Reclassification Committee, where I pled guilty to assault and was given an extra six months. My new beginning had a real sweetness to it; I was eager to start doing my time from a whole different vantage point. I had respect now.

  I was back in CB2 again and on kitchen detail. In the days that followed I expected something to happen, if not from black gangs then from the black fag himself. But when Macaron and I sat down at our table, he said the guy had been transferred outside the walls. With respect came double servings on the chow line, guards let me stay out on the tier to porter, and when Chicanos came back from commissary runs they dropped off cigarettes and coffee at my cell. Though I secretly had mixed feelings about being rewarded for beating a man, that’s the way it had always been. I noticed when I came from the chow hall to the field, or when I was on the tier, young Chicanos stuck close by me. When I jogged around the field, they strolled in threes and fours, keeping an eye on me. I felt good to be part of them.

  One morning as I grabbed up empty containers from the serving line and carried full ones from the cooking area in the ba
ck to the chow line up front, I saw Carey in line with his tray. He poured a glass of milk at the machines and sat with two Aryan skinheads. They eyed me with contempt as I came up and greeted Carey. We sat at another table. He was gaunt and cautious; his disarming farm-boy mannerisms and rustic features were hardened with concern.

  “Galvan has a contract on Rick,” he stated.

  I was expecting to talk about Lonnie or where he was working, but I could see he was seriously worried.

  “Rick’s got to get out of the walls or he’s dead,” he went on. ‘The counselor in Yuma smuggled in Rick’s court transcripts on a client visit. Warn Rick, tell him to roll up and get out of the walls.” Carey rose and followed his Aryan brothers out. I never expected to see him join the Aryan clique, but prison makes us do strange things.

  Carey had done me right. Even if he fell in love with Lonnie, he had never ripped me off, and I owed him for saving my life the night that narc stepped out to blow me away. If Carey hadn’t shot him, I’d be dead. Carey got fifty years for pulling the trigger.

  The following day, on the field after playing handball, I asked Macaron if his homies clerking in the Wheelhouse could find where Rick was working. The next evening a kite came to my cell, informing me that Rick was in minimum security and attending school in the barracks. I flushed the note down the toilet. I knew the education cons ate lunch at eleven and the next day I hung around, instead of leaving as I usually did at nine. I finally saw him sitting by himself. I sat down and told him Carey said he had a price on his head. “Pack up and get out of the walls or you’re dead.”

  I put the whole thing out of my mind; I didn’t want to see or talk to Rick ever again. I figured the whole thing was done with until a few days later in the cell block. I was leaning on the bars looking around when I noticed a Chicano across the landing trying to stare me down. A coincidence, I thought, and looked away, but I glanced back and he was still staring. If a subtle glance became a riveting stare, it meant bad blood. Over the next few days on the field, Aryan and black bangers furtively glanced at me. On my way from work back to the block, Shorty, a dude built wider than he was tall, trailed me. I recognized the same Chicano in the block at a table near me in the dining room. Prison atmosphere, which only a week earlier seemed familiar and comforting, now filled me with tense trepidation. From my cell to work to field and back to my cell, I felt eyes at the back of my head.