Bunch o’ samboes. Damn shame. Nothin’ but Black men in this senseless situation. Where did that thought come from?
Whatever the case, they picked the wrong sheep.
No tools this morning. The line pusher sets them in line and they walk for about 30 minutes. They walk so far and for so long that an ice truck has to drive up with the water coolers. They move over flat ground down dusty roads, their dragging, exhausted steps, whether in work boots or wet boots, kickin’ up fine clouds that envelop them. Between that and their sweat, it looks like they’ve been playin’ in a sandpit.
When they finally approach the worksite, they’re met by an old rusty trailer left beside a dry ditch on the roadside. Piled high with dirty five-gallon paint buckets. Beyond, what looks like endless rows of okra bushes that stand as tall as the line pusher mounted on horseback.
“Say, say, mayne. Check,” C-Boy chuckles. He and Lil Chris exchange a look. “Not cool,” he drags on. “We go in that stuff, we go’n be itchin’ fo’ days.”
Both of ’em only slept in spells through the night. The growth. The green. The mass. The smell of it is vaguely invigorating.
“Mayne, they shoulda told us to wear long sleeves,” someone else complains.
“We ain’t just gotta put up with this shit. Nigga need to buck,” another voice urges.
A lot of people start talkin’ at once. The line pusher doesn’t look worried in the least. Some cats sit down, take off their boots, and start to rip open the bottom seam of their socks. Makin’ sleeves. The vast majority of them simply move to the trailer, grab their buckets, and wait for the headline to count out what row they’ll be working. They’re catchin’ they cut.
Lil Chris uses the cover of confusion to pull Wayne deep into the okra patch. Once they’re duly isolated, he wheels around and confronts his friend. “Mayne, what’s hap’nin’ wit’ you?”
“What are you asking me?”
“On’t ac’ like you crazy, you ain’t even that lame!”
“Wait a sec—”
“—You stupid muthafucka,” Lil Chris cuts him off. His voice is high pitched. “You slept in that cell wit’ that dude after I sent and told you he probably had a knife in there. Tell me you didn’t get that kite!”
“Hold your voice down!” Wayne looks around to see if anyone’s close.
“Enough for that pussy-ass nigga to jump on yo’ back and put that blade to yo’ throat,” Lil Chris finishes, incredulous. “That’s what you want?! You sleepin’ on yo’ stomach in that muthafucka?!”
Wayne’s whole body is shaking. His mouth is clamped shut.
Lil Chris pushes him. Hard. “Fuck is wrong wit’ you?” He shoves him again. This time with so much force Wayne stumbles back and almost falls down.
Wayne gathers himself and pushes him back.
Lil Chris shoves him again. Wayne grabs two fistfuls of Lil Chris’s shirt.
C-Boy comes out of nowhere. “Say, mayne, both o’ y’all trippin. Lil Chris, you act like you lovin’ this nigga.”
“What you go’n do, mayne?” Lil Chris asks, again. Breathing hard. “Wayne?”
“I just wanna be left alone,” Wayne answers, his voice hoarse. Tears stream down his face.
In the distance, they can all hear the line pusher’s horse movin’ through the okra bushes.
“There it is,” C-Boy says. “You cain’t make him be something he ain’t,” he tells Lil Chris. “Leave ’im alone.”
“Man, I don’t bother anyone,” Wayne speaks up. “I stay to myself. I mind my business. None of this makes sense.”
“Check,” C-Boy says. Talkin’ breezy. “You from Houghton, first of all. You a young nigga. You ain’t got no homeboys down here. You ain’t got no money. And, worst of all, you too civilized.”
C-Boy bends down to pick up his bucket. “I forgot one. You ain’t my problem. Say, Lil Chris. You see this nigga weak. Let’s go. This okra not go’n pick itself.”
Lil Chris stands there, red-eyed. Looks at Wayne. “What you go’n do, Wayne?” he asks again.
Wayne shakes his head. “Go pick ya okra.” He turns and stalks off by himself.
Lil Chris and C-Boy just stand there for a moment.
“Well,” C-Boy says. ”You heard him.”
Wayne works methodically up and down the rows like he has a homing device in his back. He finds them sitting in a clearing they’ve made. Whatever they were doing, when Wayne steps into the open, he heads intently for them.
His cellie stands up off his improvised bucket seat. “What you—ooaah!”
Wayne caught him right in his solar plexus. “Go ’head. Breathe,” Wayne urges him. “Soon as you catch your breath I got some mo’ for you.”
When it looks like he’s just about caught his breath, Wayne wails and catches him flush in the side of his neck. When he doubles over, Wayne drives his elbow down as hard as he can in the small of that boy’s back. Dead center.
He walks around the prone figure, looking for soft spots, like he’s picking okra. Finally, he falls on him and knees him in the kidney. Drives him hard into the ground. Pins his shoulders and head-butts him in the side of the face.
By the time Lil Chris and C-Boy step into the clearing, Wayne is biting that boy in his face. Gotdamn!
Every time one of dude’s homeboys tries to pull Wayne up, he shoves them off and falls back on that boy’s head with his elbow. His cellie ain’t even fighting back. He’s not even screaming for help. He don’t even fold up. He just grunts and takes it.
When they finally manage to pull Wayne off him, his cellmate just vomits and lays in it.
Lil Chris is so stunned by the scene, he doesn’t come to himself until Wayne walks over and whispers, “Where’s the line pusher?”
C-Boy starts to laugh.
Lil Chris just stares for a second. Realizes they’re so deep in the okra the line pusher doesn’t even know what’s going on. He looks over to where they’re tryna shake Wayne’s cellmate back to consciousness.
He grabs the wire handle of a bucket half-full of okra and runs over with the bucket cocked over his shoulder. Two of the dudes shuffle out of the way. Lil Chris catches the third ’vict, brings the bucket down hard on the guy’s head and back. Kicks him in his ass as he stumbles out of the clearing.
By the time the line pusher finds the inmate dry heaving in a puddle of his own vomit, C-Boy, Wayne, and Lil Chris all have buckets at least two-thirds full of okra. Gotta fill that quota.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Speak about this
In conspiratorial tongues
Look here!
Spiritual ones
Tote ya’ crosses
Ay yo! Sport ya’ choices
Note ya’ losses
Broken voices, whisper
Foolishness
I bear fruit
New to this?
No! Please
I got nothin’ to do with these thieves
I’m a go-getter
Thirty-first degree
Keep an ear
To the streets
Feed.
Speak what I see
Don’t doubt me, Sun.
THEY STAND AT THE BARS eyeing each other. Why is it that they can’t get along? Why the friction? Lil Chris has been waiting for him to come back around. He doesn’t respect the way Rise jetted out the last time.
Still, Lil Chris has been reading. So affected by Before the Mayflower, he read it twice. The funny thing is, he has never seen as clear and vivid a picture as he has gotten from this book. Not even when he took Black History in high school. He intends to speak on what he’s picked up from it all, but first, he and Rise have issues they need to be about.
“You got something to say, lil playa?”
“You know what? You too comfortable with me,” Lil Chris observes with menacing nonchalance. “You need to check that.”
Rise laughs. He really digs this brother’s spirit. Even now, he’s feeding off him. He’s also been walking
around and talking to different people. Trying to see what can be done to pull the lil brother out of the blocks.
“What your case look like?” Rise asks him.
“Huh?”
“Where you at in court?” Rise persists.
“I … ah, my lawyer ah …”
“He don’t know,” C-Boy puts in from the bottom bunk, with the covers over his head.
“Shut up. What I told you about gettin’ in’ my business when I’m at these bars?”
“Hold up!” C-Boy sits up a bit. “What you mean ‘what you told me?’ You don’t control what’s said down here, playa. You got the game fu—”
“—Wait a minute,” Rise interrupts. “I’m gettin’ at something far more important than them strength games y’all playin’ with each other in that cell.”
Turning his attention back to Lil Chris, Rise says, “You mean to tell me you been here, ah … how long?”
“I been here going on three years.”
“And you ain’t on top of your law work?” Rise says, as if he can’t believe it. However, he’s not at all surprised. He’s just feigning disbelief to add import to the notion that Lil Chris is major tripping, being in prison this long and not knowing law. The truth is it’s commonplace for youngsters much like Lil Chris to come to prison and slowly get involved in everything except the primary thing that will guide them back through the front gates.
Of course, it’s not hard for them to forget law. Most are struggling with the idea of walking these 18,000 acres of farmland for the rest of their lives. Most get into everything else to distract them from the painful thoughts associated with the front gates. Most are usually devoid of proper education, period. They lack the intellectual tools necessary to even consider the strategy of a legal angle to challenge their imprisonment.
That all comes later. After they have settled in. Acclimated. Once they can see the prison experience for what it is. That it’s not what they’re trying to make it.
When they first get to prison, at least for the first few years, most are content with leaving their law work to the indigent appellate project attorneys. These are appellate lawyers who more often than not will file a templated direct appeal, just to have the deal done. For appearance’s sake. These lawyers usually leave these young men hanging after direct appeal, without even a letter to notify them that they’ve received their final state court denial. That their limited time to file a critical post-conviction relief application is already ticking away. It is for this exact reason that most of these brothers are procedurally barred from pursuing appellate relief. All this before they can even get around to opening a law book. For once, they are finally following their parents’ advice, but still their time limit for filing an appeal usually runs out while they are on their knees praying to be released.
These truths weigh heavily on Rise’s mind as he leaves the tier. The sergeant working the unit, looking for a chance to relax, rushes Rise off. Understandable. Rise has trained himself to deal with what comes, however it comes.
He’s found out what he needs to know, anyway. For the next couple of weeks, Rise’s primary objective is to get the lil homie pulled out of the blocks and into the law library.
Even if it costs him a few boxes of cigarettes to get it done.
It’s 11:30 p.m. Showers just ended. The TV will go off in 20 minutes. C-Boy is already dead to the world. Lil Chris watches the last sitcom rerun of the night. He has another book. Roots by Alex Haley. He’ll get into it once the TV shuts off.
Really, he smells her before he sees her. The tripped-out thing about it is that, when she comes into view, she steps in front of the cell lookin’ as much like Elise Neal as the chick on the TV screen.
Beautiful. A smooth chocolate. Dime piece. But not as cultured as the actress. Nawl, she ratchet. This one is a real live wire.
She leans up against the bars and asks, “Yo’ name Lil Chris?” in a conspiratorial tone.
“Who wanna know?”
Silence. They size each other up.
“Ooh, my girl said you a smart ass,” she says, smiling.
He’s not. “What you want wit’ me?” The C’ster stares right into her hazel contacts.
“Roni says she miss you and she mad you ain’t never call that number she gave you.”
Lil Chris shuffles out of the top bunk. Jumps down to the floor with a thud. Steps eye to eye with her. Only the bars between them. “Oh, yeah! I know who you is!”
“Boy, be quiet—”
“You Ms. Roperson.”
“Cynthia.”
“How you get in here? Don’t you work on the day shift?”
“You know the sergeant working this unit?”
“The young dude?”
“Yeah. That’s my ole man.”
“Damn, you don’t look happy about that.”
“Get you some bizzness,” she says. Her words have a foreboding undercurrent.
“Yeah. I thought I told ya girl never to put people in hers. One o’ y’all weak broads’ll get caught up and tell God on Jesus,” Lil Chris puts in. Watches her closely.
“But anyways,” Cynthia rolls her eyes. “It’s obvious you don’t know who the hell you talkin’ to.”
“Man, come on wit’ the theatrics—”
“—Um, Roni wanna know if the inmate counsel filed a’ appeal after D.B. court downed you?”
“Ah, yeah, yeah. I guess he did,” Lil Chris says. Don’t sound too certain.
“Boy, you don’t know?”
“Look, you go’n have to kill that ‘boy’ shit. You know a man when you see one?”
“When I see one I’ll holla,” she caps back with a knowing smile.
Lil Chris frowns. Then mugs. The boot starts to come in. He ’bout to say something ugly.
“Man, I was just playin’. Damn. That girl know you to a T.”
“Look o’ there. You can’t even keep y’all business to ya’self. So y’all been talkin’ about me, huh?”
“Man, look!” She’s frustrated. He’s satisfied.
“Tell her I wasn’t even trippin’ off all that. Why?”
“Don’t worry about it. You got anything else you want me to tell her for you?” An irritated scowl takes up her pretty face. Good.
“She know all that,” Lil Chris says, smiling.
“Wi’ cho’ smart azz. I’ll see you later.”
She leaves as suddenly as she came. As she walks away, the TV flicks off. Only the sweet smell of her perfume lingers.
C-Boy never so much as even stirs. Of course, he was up ear-hustlin’ the whole time.
About two weeks later, Lil Chris gets farm mail from Legal Services. His disciplinary appeal has been granted. He will be returned back to population housing and given a job as an education building orderly.
He and C-Boy spend their last night in the cell together eating a tuna fish hookup with oysters. Fish steaks, honey, and all them shits. They even send some down to Wayne and his new cellie. A penitentiary feast. They wash it all down with concentrated iced tea mix and stay up all night running eps about the hood. They’ve really come to be as close as brothers in this lil cell.
The next morning, while C-Boy is gone out in the field for work call, the people call Lil Chris to pack his things. Push out. As he leaves, he turns around and looks at the cell as the door eases shut behind him. He was on the floor praying for wisdom and knowledge like Solomon’s when the call came down. He leaves all of the food products he had in his box on C-Boy’s bunk.
He’ll never forget the time he spent in these blocks.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Do everything you can
Then stand
Give it all you got
Then stand, Mr. Man
Come before me
I’ll make you ill, again
Listen to me
I’ll make you feel again
Stand before me
I’ll make you real, again
… Just what you can
<
br /> Then stand!
THIS IS NOTHING.
No sound. No movement. No feeling or sensitivity. No conscious thought. All is black. Black is the bosom of creation. All that is comes through black. Is from black. Black is the bosom of creation. And black is nothing. Ain’t that something?
Blome, blome, blome … Clank, blome, blome, clank … Clank, clank…
The bed is sha—no, the bunk is—no, this is a cot, the cot is jerkin’ under me. Damn, I’m in jail, man…
Clank, clank … Blome!
Man, what the— Lil Chris pops up on his elbows. He was lying on his stomach. He shakes the thin white sheet off his head. Looks around trying to see what’s happening.
Blome, blome!
He jerks back and swings around, scowls, ready to—What! Damn! Boy, that’s cold-blooded! He frowns, gets a menacing look in his eyes. Focuses on his unlikely tormentor.
“Boy, is you go’n get up an go to work or what?” she says with a smart smirk across her pursed lips. Squinting her eyes.
“Oh, you wanna play, huh, lil girl,” Lil Chris says. He thinks, Damn, what’s this gal name again?
“This ain’t no game. It’s almost 8:30. You need to get up.”
“Cynth—Sergeant,” he stammers. Sitting up, but still in no rush. “A’ight, you got that.”
He watches her as she walks away. So fine. Damn.
Prison is an exercise in crime against nature. Simple and plain. Lil Chris has gotten used to the likes of C-Boy’s ugly mug being the first thing he sees when he wakes up, hollerin’ ’bout, “Say, man you need to get yo’self up. You go’n eat that bacon?”
Now, to wake up and see Cynthia Roperson standing over him in them skin-tight ass-grippers. Damn, she pimpin’ that uniform, he thinks to himself. Aggravated.
As Lil Chris swings the corner coming into the education building, Rise approaches him.
“I’m glad you decided to join us.”
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