In his ears, he can hear the subtle murmurs of a small group of Muslim brothers up front in the game room who’ve already started their morning prayers.
He raises his arms straight back and stretches. Breathe. Then he slowly raises up from his pillow and doubles forward to reach for his feet. Stretch. Breathe. Next, he pulls his legs beneath him in the lotus before again laying forward, his arms reaching overhead. Stretch. Breathe …
On autopilot, his legs swing down to his slippers on the cold floor. With his toothbrush and other effects in hand he heads for the shower area. Mentally, however, he’s still picking through the different elements of the dream that just released him, to see if he can salvage any messages from his unconscious.
After washing up, Rise makes for the empty early-morning TV room. He flicks the channel to CNN. This done, he begins his Wu-style Tai Chi regimen.
Lil Chris is snatched from sleep by the sound of dusty metal foot-lockers sliding over creaking iron bedsprings. All around him there is movement. The floor beneath his cot rumbles with it. The dawn washes the resting area in new light from the dormitory’s glass façade.
The first thought that comes to him is, Damn, I missed breakfast, again!
He forces himself to roll out o’ bed to face the mornin’. His head feels stuffy. His throat is sore. His nose is stopped up. He’s already mad and frustrated. Though, he can’t blame nobody for not wakin’ him up. Like a fist to his gut, he realizes he’s alone.
He stands up to pull his locker box from under his cot. He fumbles with the lock before opening it up to grab his hygiene bag. He shuffles into the shower area, his anger mounting, his body aching and cold. Seven sinks and every one he stops to stand over is coated with unsightly slop and mucus, or full o’ stagnant murky water. The smell of stale toothpaste and bad breath all up his nose, almost causing him to retch.
Lil Chris turns on the hot water at the big cast-iron industrial and fights the thought of the germs risin’ toward him on the steam. I’m a gangsta, he reminds hisself as he begins to brush his teeth, glaring at his reflection in the polished metal mirror.
As he brushes his tongue, he leans over and gags until he coughs up yellow mucus. He cups water in one hand to flush it up his nose and blows it out loudly. He cleans his ears and throws his head back to gargle, then spit. He splashes water in his face a couple times before lookin’ at his reflection, again, in the mirror.
There.
Everything’s cool now.
He got it out of his system.
Rise gathers the last of his things as he prepares to leave the dorm. Once situated, he sips the last of his morning cup of coffee and watches the resting area come alive.
He assesses them as they wake up, compares what he knows of their past to the men they’ve become. Takes inventory of the effects of long-term incarceration. Watches men who were once cocky and athletic now struggle to sit up in bed, their bodies retaining the weight of their late-night snacks and comfort foods.
He sees the drug addicts who’ve always been drug addicts reach first for half-empty packs of cigarettes. In silence they puff in their covers and focus hard to devise a way to get that early morning high.
All about him are men in stationary transition. He acknowledges the changes in some who have found the love of a woman after years of challenging boys for their booty. The freakiest climb back into bed. While most others were gone to breakfast, they were peeking at the lady guard from some isolated corner and masturbating, imagining her participating in some twisted sexual rite.
Really, no harm done. For the most part, these snakes are now toothless. They tried everything they could think of. Nothing worked. They still woke up in this place. Ultimately, they learned to depend on their bossman and defer to the supervising officers. A balance of humility and humiliation that makes captivity somehow palatable.
Rise gathers his things and heads out of the dormitory. For now, he’s housed on the East Yard, in one of the four dorms of Spruce at the end of the walk. The pedestrian traffic he merges into is made up of skilled labor. Compound workers, clerics, and vocational students.
He passes by orderlies pushing pushbrooms. Some have gone out to the yard already. He only half-notices them with their five-gallon buckets, beyond the fenced-in walkway, grazing and picking up cigarette butts. Others jog the fence line. The ledges are dotted with prisoners as they see to their business. Shift workers enjoy time off.
He moves past Cypress and Magnolia, on up through Ash, the East Yard’s three other housing units. The scene over here is laid back, at least comparatively. A great many of these guys are the broken. Truth is ugly. Even the crafty and goal-oriented are in some ways invested in security’s interest. To a certain extent, this is the case all over the prison farm, but nowhere as much as it is on the East Yard.
“Work call!”
The supervisor, Lieutenant Corrick, passes by Lil Chris where he sits numb on his cot. Tall, wily, middle-aged, and white, Corrick walks along the rows, absentmindedly kicking the iron cots of those who are still asleep beneath their covers. It’s the same routine every weekday. At least on his shift. He pushes, they drag.
A young female cadet works her way up the opposite side o’ the dorm. She’s kickin’ each offender’s cot with relish and yellin’ for them to “Get they asses up!”
She kicks. Clang!
She stops at a cot about two rows up and to the left of where Lil Chris is sittin’. The guy beneath the cover, Monroe Black, doesn’t budge.
She boots the bed again, twice. “Hey, inmate,” she yells. “I ain’t got time for this! Y’all act like fuckin’ children!”
Clang! Clang! She kicks again.
“Bitch, I’m up! You ain’t gotta kick my bed like that!”
The cadet stumbles back a step, taken off guard. Monroe Black springs up, throws his covers aside.
Lieutenant Corrick rushes over to the commotion. Lil Chris stands in his aisle. He can see where this is headin’. As Lil Chris heads out, he hears Corrick attempt to handcuff Monroe Black. A percussive slap follows. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches a glimpse of Corrick staggerin’ back, arms flailin’, as he stumbles over a footlocker and crumples to the floor.
The concrete floor rumbles. When Lil Chris reaches the door several other supervising officers rattle past him. Clanging keys, squawkin’ radios, bootfalls. This is the West Yard. The fieldlines of Walnut and Hickory. And Oak and Pine, where a bunch of fuckups are housed. They have job assignments but have yet to convince security that they’re East Yard material.
Lil Chris steps out onto the walk. A number of other prisoners mill about, wit’out direction, though most eventually head for the gate and out onto the prison yard. Most are in white t-shirts, stained beige from dirt that refuses to come off in the wash, faded blue jeans, and noisy wetboots.
The sky overhead is still gray. Beyond the fences and guard towers, over the trees behind them, there is a riot in the eastern skies. Red and purple herald the sun’s arrival. A pink firmament and milky blue border the uprising. The blue cools as it trails out over where the field-workers have lined up on the ground below.
“Bitch ass nigga, you think Ms. Bailey lovin’ you, don’t you?”
“Hell, yeah, mayne. That’s my baby.”
Lil Chris stands stone-faced among them. Four lines side by side. Seems everyone is talkin’. Except him.
“Yeah, well you know what your baby did this morning, huh.” The other men jabber on.
“Yeah, he know what that bitch did,” someone else says. “She got Monroe Black jumped on.”
“Ah, man, I ’on’t wanna hear that shit. My bitch thorough.”
“All you niggas is fucked up,” a deep gravelly voice puts in from the line next over, to the right. “A bunch o’ you weak muthafuckas stood right there and watched the free folks whoop that man.”
“Bitch-ass niggas.”
Silence.
“Fuck Monroe Black,” someone mumbles grudgingly.
“That ain’t my homeboy.”
Having waited at the gate for security clearance, Rise has finally made it inside the Education Building, up the stairs, and into the adult basic education classroom he’s been assigned to teach in.
After writing the lesson plan on the blackboard and laying out the worksheets, he’s awarded a moment of contemplation before the day starts. As he often does in these instances, he turns off the lights and grabs the earth globe. Pulling up a seat behind his desk, he sets the model before him.
He studies the landmasses and oceans.
One of his childhood friends, Marlon, contacted him out of the blue a while back. He had to appreciate the thought. It meant more than he can express.
Rise places his finger on the globe. On top of the place where the two of them grew up. Shreveport, Louisiana. He traces a line down to Baton Rouge where Marlon went to school, at Southern University. Imagines a few short miles to the northwest where he’s been held since Marlon’s school days.
Angola.
This is where his travels have stopped.
Now, he slowly traces his finger from Baton Rouge to Philadelphia to London to Amsterdam and, finally, to Accra, Ghana, where Marlon said he was in his letter. Serving in the Peace Corps.
Rise pulls a drawer open under the desktop and takes out a pen and pad.
His hand remains poised over the paper for a timeless moment.
But then he places the pen down and closes his eyes. He lays his head back onto the headrest.
After he clears the roster at the work gate, gets counted, and marched out double-file to the tool room, Lil Chris waits in line to receive his long-handle ditchbank blade. He lays it over his shoulder like so many others before him. He returns to the line and waits to begin the long march to the day’s worksite.
The linepusher rides up on his horse and hands his work roster in a leather satchel to the prisoner headline. The headline takes his place at the front of the fieldline. One of his assignments is to set the pace for the nearly 200 inmates in line behind him.
The linepusher kicks his horse off and the headline begins the walk. A water cooler or two go’n be picked up somewhere on the way. The convicts on trash detail bring up the end of the line. They go’n be runnin’ here and there to pick up litter.
On two horses a lil ways behind the fieldline are the gunguards. Armed to the teeth with handguns and fully automatic assault rifles. Yet, even in the presence of all this firepower, a bunch of strangers, hardened criminals with sharp tools and shit, the scene ain’t even tense.
It’s just another day in prison. Just like the ones before it. Much like the ones to come.
CHAPTER FOUR
I got dibs on the next 16
I
Guarantee a classic.
Homie, watch this.
Got a thing for some hot hits,
86 this!
I’ma spit sick.
Ever heard a crook politic?
IT WAS ANOTHER HOT DAY.
They had walked for about a’ hour straight. Most o’ ’em were soaked wit’ sweat by the time the fieldline got to the worksite. The linepusher assigned a number to each prisoner goin’ by his spot on the roster. The headline marked the cuts out with a garden hoe. The workers fell in on the cuts.
Every 15 to 20 minutes, the linepusher yells, “Swing it down!” At this, the workers move on down the dirt road to another cut to be worked. It’s a process. Once the workers get their rhythm, it sets in.
It’s Wednesday. The middle of the week. Two days from the weekend. Two days from rest and free time. Close, but not close enough. The frustrated youth are restless.
Out of nowhere, a drumbeat. Listen. There’s an echo in the bass. A bass and a click. If you listen closer, you can make out that somebody is beating on his chest. And clicking their teeth. That’ll last for about five minutes, but then the linepusher will yell, “Swing it down!”
Damn.
Gotta catch another cut.
Once they get into their cut and get their rhythm going, it starts again. First the beat, then the click. This time, the worker is beat-boxing.
The rhythm plays in they chests while they work. Makes the work more tolerable at first. They’re movin’ to what the beat makes ’em feel. Yeah, the work is g’tting’ done, but they’re not workin’. They are coordinatin’, movin’ with a math that counts time and motion. A line-worker’s dance to shake off the strain o’ hard labor. One voice calls out,
“You ain’t heard of another like me,
Son get it ghuttah ‘awfly’
Ghetto sick, crack avenue
Keep ’em hollin’ ill street blues
Split fools, wit’ hollows that follow bad moves, huh
Heard of me?
Tell ’em, ’cause this could get ugly, huh…”
Damn, he fell off…
The natives entertain this thought for a while. Almost everybody in earshot is thinking the same thing: Come on with that, mayne!
Now, after every cut rotation, they’ve started to congregate. Eyes look-a-who’n. The voices start in.
“Say brah, don’t stunt.”
“Bring that on back, man.”
“Look! Help him finish his cut.”
“Don’t worry ’bout it, dawg. The chump go’n be yellin’ ‘swing it down’ in a minute. Wait till after the next cut.”
“Yeah. Hit it, get it up, and quit it.”
“I’ma break y’all off a lil somethin’ too!”
“Uh-oww! There they go!”
“Come on wit’ that, mayne!”
Before anyone notices it, nobody’s tripping off the work. The hiphop heads fall in and get out in rhythm. Most make it back to the cypher at the same time, and all you see is a bunch o’ beatniks standing in a loosely made circle bobbin’ their heads. One after another they take turns spittin’ mad flow. Crazy lyrics. Some 16-bar verses. Some wild out for like ten minutes. That’s a long time to be talkin’ nonstop, huh?
Now, after every cut there are about 20 brothers in the crowd. Rappers, beatmakers, and spectators. They wide open.
Lil Chris tries to ignore the pull of the cypher. He’s stayed to hisself for the first three weeks in the field. The only reason he eventually said something to his cut partner is ’cause he was nicking hard one day and the dude offered him a cigarette.
Kid is an alright looking dude. Kinda fly with his, to tell the truth. He’s the type you have to allow to open up. The majority of them are like that. They play their hands close to they chests until they can learn their surroundings.
Dude’s name is PowwWoww. High-yellow cat. He’s Black, but claims he has Native American relatives that still live close to the soil. The C’ster feels like he’s lying about that part. Although, he does have that tall, slender build, with high cheekbones. That in-between hair. But he can’t tell Lil Chris nothin’ about In’jun tradition? Survey says? Lame!
Anyway, PowwWoww has the gift of gab. He keeps his hands in something. Today, he has a couple o’ sugar bags of that sticky-icky. And he’s determined to get Lil Chris “out there.” Pull him out o’ his shell. He don’t know he’s messing wit’ a real smoke dragon.
“Say, big boy.”
Nothin’.
“Say, man. Ah … Lil Chris.”
Still nothin’.
“Come on, kid. I know you hear me.”
Nothin’. PowwWoww just stands in the cut, staring at him. After a minute, the C’ster says in an agitated, high-pitched voice, “What you want me to say? I’m standin’ right here next to you. Of course, I hear you! Talk, nigga!”
“Oh, my bad, ma—”
“What you want?” Lil Chris interrupts him. He hates when these cats come at him sideways. Try to start a conversation. Unlike most dudes, Lil Chris doesn’t seem to be holding any punches. He speaks his mind. At least, he does whenever he decides to speak. This is what PowwWoww digs about him.
PowwWoww smiles. Goes on. “You get down?”
“What
you mean?”
“On the bud side.”
“What? … Oh, you mean, ah … Hell yeah!” Lil Chris comes all the way out the bag on him.
PowwWoww is tripping off him. This cat Lil Chris is a real live wire. Gotta feel him.
“Chill out, man,” PowwWoww says.
“Don’t play no games wit’ me.”
“I ain’t pl—”
“Well, roll it up then.”
“Damn, nigga!” PowwWoww laughs. He’s really tripping off this dude. “Alright, come on, you got papers?”
Lil Chris goes in his pocket and pulls out his pack of Bugler tobacco. He fishes the rolling papers out of the pouch and hands them to PowwWoww. All the C’ster can think of is that he hasn’t been in that zone since he caught this case. Almost two years ago. As far as he’s concerned, PowwWoww can’t roll the shit fast enough.
Lil Chris checks him out. PowwWoww must have stuck two of the papers together. What he rolls is longer than the regular Bugler paper. He purses his lips and chomps down on the paper. This holds it snug while he rolls the rest of it up with his fingers.
“Damn … That’s a—c’mon, mayne. Quit playin’ wit’ me.” Lil Chris is about to bug up on him.
“Hold up, big boy.”
“That ain’t no square! That’s a toothpick. Is you serious?”
“Don’t trip. This is how we doin’ it down here.” PowwWoww takes the cigarette tobacco from Lil Chris and rolls a cigarette. Then he stops to think.
No, since he kinda feelin’ the C’ster, he decides to keep it real and give him the “OG homie loc” treatment. PowwWoww goes in his pocket and pulls out a box of Black & Milds. He gives Lil Chris one of the individually wrapped brown bombers.
Lil Chris takes the cigar out of the wrapper and goes to licking on it.
“Man, why you spittin’ all over it?”
“You …? I’m wettin’ it. You go’n roll a blunt, huh?”
“Hell, no. You know how much money you can get for the amount of bud it takes to roll a blunt? $200.”
“Oh, I thought that’s what you gave me the cigar for,” Lil Chris says, perplexed.
“Nooo. Be cool. It’s enough in this right here to get yo’ head straight.”
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