by Gene Gant
“Take off everything!” another guard shouted at us. He went around smacking the head of any boy who apparently wasn’t undressing fast enough for him. We were forced to shower with foul-smelling soap to delouse and decontaminate ourselves. That was followed by a body cavity search, after which we were issued an orange Escanaba jumpsuit and white boxers. I never saw the clothes I arrived in again. That was painful because the jeans and shirt I was wearing were two of the last three things I got from my dad. But I lucked out when it came to my sneakers. The other guys were given prison-issue shoes, but there were none in my size at the time of intake. My sneakers had Velcro fasteners, which meant I wouldn’t have laces that could be used for strangling, so I was allowed to keep them until they got shoes in my size.
Next we were sent to the infirmary for physicals and psych evaluations. After all that time suffered together, I was beginning to grow a little fond of my six travel mates, although they still seemed wary of me. But after processing, we were separated and sent off to the various cell blocks to which we’d been assigned. The CO who escorted me to E block never said a word to me. It was well before lights out and the cell doors were open. The cells I passed were empty, the inmates off to the rec room or the courtyard—I’d spotted a large group playing basketball in the rain—or wherever. Then we reached the cell that was to be my new home and it, much to my surprise, was occupied.
“Here’s your new friend, guys,” the guard said, and he shoved me into the cell.
There were no introductions. My cellies, whom I would later come to know as Deshaun, Ross, and Malcolm, were waiting as if I’d made an appointment with them. They were African American and, as if by design, all three outclassed me in size and weight. Deshaun’s skin was close to the color of sand, and he had the kind of build that would do a rhinoceros proud. He looked fat, but his body was solid and powerful. Ross’s skin was a medium brown, like mine, and he was the tallest of the three, somewhere around six four. He kept his head shaved, which, together with his narrow, sharp eyes, gave him the look of a hooded cobra. Malcolm was a shade or two darker than me, with wide shoulders and muscular arms that seemed cartoonish over his long, skinny legs. The way they looked at me sent a spasm of fear down into my stomach.
“So, Gavin, huh?” Deshaun sauntered right up and got in my face.
I didn’t move or say a word. Malcolm casually walked behind me, putting himself between me and the open cell entrance.
Deshaun was so close I could smell his sour breath. My entire body went rigid with nervous tension. Deshaun sniffed, a sound of dismissal, as if I wasn’t worthy of breathing the same air as him. Slowly, he let his gaze travel down to my feet.
“Well, aren’t you special? You got to keep your Air Jordans. Nice,” he said. “Let me see how they look on my feet.”
Even a half-blind guy couldn’t mistake my no-name-brand sneakers from Kmart for Air Jordans. This was a ruse to start a fight with me, and it pissed me off enough that I momentarily forgot my fear.
“Man, fuck you,” I spat.
For such a big dude, Deshaun moved pretty fast. He slammed his fist into my gut before I even saw the blow coming. It felt as if my heart stopped, a thick, cold feeling like a block of ice invading my chest. I doubled over and stumbled back into Malcolm, who gave me a shove that sent me sprawling forward on the floor. I lay there in an agonized pause, waiting for breath to return to my lungs. In that pause, Deshaun yanked the sneakers off my feet. Somewhere out of sight, I heard Malcolm and Ross laughing.
I knew I was going to get my ass kicked for it, but I was determined to get back my shoes. Dad bought me a new shirt, jeans, and sneakers to wear in court. My public defender wanted me to look as much like a kid as possible, so he suggested that I avoid wearing a suit. I’d already had the jeans and shirt taken from me. I wasn’t going to lose the shoes too, at least not to this asshole.
Still out of breath, I struggled to my feet and threw myself on Deshaun. He grinned as if he’d just won the lottery. Malcolm and Ross jumped in instantly and started pounding away at me. Somebody’s fist hit me between the eyes, making my vision blur. Then something hard slammed into the back of my head, and as I flopped facedown on the floor, my brain seemed to spin around like the drum in a washing machine.
I could feel Deshaun, Malcolm, and Ross move away from me. I rolled slowly onto my back and sat up, clutching the aching portion of my noggin with both hands. The guard who’d shoved me into the cell stood over me, holding a black baton in his hand and glaring at me as if I’d robbed his mama.
“Gavin Goode, I’m putting you on report for fighting Deshaun and trying to take his shoes. That means you get to scrub toilets for the next five days. Now get your ass up.”
The guard grabbed me by the arm, hauled me to my feet, and pushed me onto one of the beds. He exchanged looks with Deshaun, and after he walked out of the cell, he slid the barred door in place and locked it.
“Have fun, guys.” He winked at me and disappeared down the corridor.
Deshaun threw my shoes one after the other, hitting me in the chest and stomach. His gaze was cold and hard. “Welcome to cell block E, Triple X.”
My fear came back and quickly blazed into terror. Triple X was the name given to me when I was drafted into the Cold Bloods.
Panicked, I tried to scramble off the bed. Ross shoved me down again. As I struggled against them, the three devils unzipped my jumpsuit and tugged it down to my ankles, along with my boxers.
“Guard! Help!” I screamed so hard it hurt my throat, although I knew my shouts were useless. Ross and Deshaun flipped me over. I yelled again for help as Malcolm reached under one of the other beds and pulled out three batons exactly like the ones the guards carried. In terror, I tried to fight them off, shouting and cursing, but it did me no good. One guy straddled my back and another straddled my legs to immobilize me.
I can tell you without a doubt there is no horror or agony like having three guys take turns shoving billy clubs up your ass.
THAT ESTABLISHED the pattern of my life at Escanaba. The next day, my cellies water-boarded me by dunking my head in the toilet. The night after that, they beat me unconscious. On my fourth night, after I fell asleep, they made ropes out of sheets, tied me to my bed, pissed all over me, and left me there until morning. The fifth day, they rounded up four guys from other cells in our block and, for the price of one smuggled joint each, gave them the privilege of raping me. The cycle of violence repeated itself night after night.
I didn’t just take that shit. I fought back, even though it meant I got hurt a lot worse than if I’d given in. I fought my cellies and all the different guys from the cell block they sent in to take pieces of me. At times I was so tired or so hurt from the previous fight that I was barely able to strike back, but I did what I could. My personal devils would often just wait until I inevitably fell asleep and jump me then. Because I was constantly on report for fighting, my phone and visitation privileges were suspended, and thus I couldn’t tell anyone on the outside what was happening to me. I filed complaints with the warden, demanded a transfer to protective custody, and tried to get letters to my dad, the prison board, and the mayor of Detroit. Nothing stopped the torture.
Except solitary.
There were several small rooms in the basement’s south wing that were used for solitary confinement. Each room was isolated; when you were in one of them, you were completely cut off from human contact, except when guards brought your meals. In the past, I’d deliberately committed infractions—making shivs out of plastic knives stolen from the cafeteria and then carrying them openly in front of COs—to get sent there, and I was actually grateful to now be under Dr. Burns’s medical isolation order.
The infirmary guard hauled me down the long, dim basement corridor. With nothing but my boxers on, a chill was sinking deep into my body. I was suddenly so exhausted I could barely keep my feet moving. We stopped upon reaching the isolation room where I would be spending at least the next week. Th
e guard unlocked the cell’s narrow, heavy door, pushed me inside, tossed my jumpsuit and sneakers on the floor, and locked me in.
The guard’s footsteps receded quickly, and silence settled around the room like a thick, muting fog. The basement was even colder than the infirmary, with the added bonus of being damp and smelling like rotting mushrooms. I pulled on my jumpsuit and sneakers, lay down on the narrow bare cot, and curled myself into a ball.
I was eight months into a twenty-five-year sentence with no possibility of parole. My nerves were shot, my spirit was close to broken, and I’d dropped almost thirty pounds that I couldn’t afford to lose. No matter how badly they hurt and humiliated me, I never cried, begged, or showed an ounce of despair in front of Deshaun, Malcolm, and Ross or any of the other guys who helped heap on the torment. I refused to give them that satisfaction.
But now, lying in the cold dark of a room that wasn’t much bigger than a closet, I crossed my arms over my head. The emotions I’d been bottling up for so long exploded suddenly, choking me.
“Daddy!” I cried, desperate for the arms of the man who’d comforted and protected me all my life. That man was two hundred miles away, and he couldn’t get to me in this cell even if he somehow heard my shout. I let the loud, gasping sobs boil out of my chest.
Thank God for solitary. No one could hear your anguish down there.
Chapter 2
TELEVISION AND radio were not allowed in solitary. Neither were books, magazines, nor games of any kind. You couldn’t bring in a pencil and pad to scribble out your thoughts or doodle away the long, blank hours. The rooms didn’t even have a window that would allow you to gaze at the outdoors or get a ray of sun on your face. It was all part of the punishment. You got three meals a day, an hour outside in the courtyard alone (except for a guard) to stretch your legs, and nothing else.
Most guys in solitary did push-ups and/or jacked off to pass the time. I no longer cared about pumping up my body, and I hadn’t gotten a hard-on in so long, I figured all sexual desire had been beaten out of me. I slept a lot, and the nightmares came.
The first nightmare was about me and my dad playing catch. The dream started out as part memory, because playing catch was something Dad and I actually did when I was younger. Our yard was small, so we’d play in the vacant lot next door, which Dad mowed once a week through the summer to keep snakes, both the two-legged and no-legged versions, at bay.
In the dream I was about nine years old, and the morning was sunny and warm. A shy breeze had the leafy branches of the tree at the back of the lot swaying gently. Dad and I didn’t talk. We just lobbed the scuffed baseball between us, a slow, easy back-and-forth, the slaps of the ball hitting the pockets of our thick brown gloves broadcasting the connection between us. I could feel my dad’s love from looking at his eyes and his smile. He wasn’t an imposing man, standing just under six feet tall with a slender body that looked kind of geeky except when he wore his security guard uniform. But to me, he was the strongest person in the world.
And then I was somewhere else. It was dark, dark inside some house. I couldn’t see anything except the vague outline of a bed several feet ahead of me. Something moved on that bed, jerking from one side to the other, a motion of such rabid desperation it repulsed me. The only sound I could hear was the thump thump thump of my heart pounding out my fear. I didn’t want to go forward, didn’t want to see what lay on the bed.
I walked toward the bed anyway, one slow step at a time. There was no other choice. As I got closer, I could see it wasn’t some thrashing monster ahead, just a person, a man. But the dimensions of the man’s body were off somehow, and I knew I still had reason to be afraid. I willed myself on, quaking with each step, until I was close enough to see who was on the bed.
It was my dad. He lay on his back with the bedsheets wet and twisted beneath him, staring up at me, his eyes shining with deeper fear than my own. He had no arms or legs, he was covered in sweat, and veins stood out in his neck, throbbing like thick worms washed out of the ground. His mouth worked, but no sound came out, and his eyes pleaded with me.
I reached out for him, to grab him off that bed and get him to safety. Then the house was gone, and I was miles away from him. I could still see the bed, with him wriggling helplessly upon it, tiny, distant shapes on a plain of darkness. The urge to save him became a blazing ache rushing through my body. I tried to run to him, but my legs were trapped, mired, and I couldn’t move no matter how hard I struggled….
I woke up on my narrow cot, choking back a sob in the dim, artificial morning light.
THERE WAS no clock or watch available to me, and no daylight to go by, but I could tell noon was closing in. Wired and worn out after a restless night, I drifted back to sleep. When I opened my eyes, I spotted the tray holding my breakfast on the small table by the cot. The oatmeal was cold and congealed in its bowl, looking more like wet cement than cereal. I closed my eyes again.
Distantly, metal clanked against metal, followed by the long, familiar creak of rusty hinges as the outer door to the solitary wing opened. The thump thump of footsteps grew louder as they got closer. So far as I knew, I was the only resident currently, so it was no surprise when the footsteps stopped outside my door.
I didn’t bother to see who it was.
“Wakey wakey, Gavin,” sang Nurse Name Forgotten. “It’s time for your booster.”
Keys rattled, and I knew the accompanying guard was unlocking the door to my little cell. I could feel their presence when they stepped inside with me.
“Stand up, take down your jumpsuit, and bend over,” ordered the nurse.
Yeah. My body felt as faded as the old sun-bleached portrait of my grandma that Dad had kept for years on the wall over the sofa in our living room. I really had no energy to move, so I didn’t.
“Ohh-kay, if that’s the way you want it,” said the nurse. “Guard….”
I snapped my eyes open as the guard stepped forward. “I’m getting up, I’m getting up,” I said quickly as I pushed myself off the cot. The last thing I needed was to get body-slammed against the wall. I climbed unsteadily to my feet and let down my jumpsuit. Then I turned and bent at the waist, bracing my hands against the wall.
The injection was every bit as fun as the first one. The nurse was considerate enough to use the left cheek this time instead of jabbing me in the right again.
“All right, Gavin,” said the nurse as I slowly got dressed. “Next time you get infected, do the rest of the world a favor and don’t bother coming in for treatment. Just hang yourself or jump out a fourth-floor window, either of which would solve a lot of problems in your case. Don’t you think?”
The nurse flicked a nasty smile my way as he walked out of the cell and disappeared up the corridor. I was too out of it to come up with a snappy send-off, but I wasn’t disinclined to agree with him either. Taking a four-story header seemed like a pretty good idea. The guard locked the door and walked back to his station. I lay down, curled up, and went into dead mode again.
A SHORT time later, my lunch arrived. I was awake but didn’t open my eyes. The lock clanked loudly as it disengaged, and the door scraped open. The guard’s footsteps scuffed across the concrete floor. I heard him pick up the tray with my untouched breakfast and replace it with the lunch tray. Without saying a word, the guard stepped out of the cell. The door clanged shut, and the guard’s footsteps receded, the sound of them fading away.
The scent of warm, spicy tomato sauce reached me, announcing spaghetti as the day’s lunch special. I love spaghetti, and even the version served up at Escanaba—which, unlike my dad’s made-from-scratch kind, came straight out of industrial-sized cans—had its appeal. My appetite stayed dormant, however, and I didn’t so much as raise my head.
Time moved on. I was content to just lie there, thinking nothing, feeling nothing, being nothing. Footsteps sounded again, softer than before. That was strange, because I hadn’t heard the door to the solitary wing open again, and these steps seeme
d to start right outside my cell. A moment later, I sensed a presence, felt it leaning toward the metal bars of my cell door and peering in at me.
“You should eat,” a voice said. It had an odd, vague accent that was hard to place.
The guard on day shift never spoke to me or seemed to give a shit whether I lived or died, so it definitely wasn’t him outside my cell. I didn’t care enough, however, to open my eyes and see who it was.
The presence lingered for a few seconds. Then there were three soft steps away from my door and after that… nothing.
Again, a sense of strangeness prickled at me. Something was wrong here. I opened my eyes, expecting to see the person who’d just backed away standing outside my cell.
The corridor was empty.
MY SLEEP was dreamless, a wonderful, welcome state of forgetfulness.
“Get up, Goode.”
That voice was rough and loud, the day guard speaking his first words to me as he stood over my bed, forcing me to waken. He kicked the side of my cot hard.
I didn’t want to be awake, and I sure as hell didn’t want to get up. The guard was impatient. He grabbed me by the arm and yanked me to my feet.
“Put your shoes on,” he said. “Hurry it up. You’ve got a phone call.”
What the hell? Inmates weren’t allowed to make or receive phone calls in solitary.
Suddenly on edge, I stuffed my feet into my sneakers. The guard nudged me between the shoulder blades with his baton. I stepped out of the cell and walked up the corridor with the guard following close behind me. As I passed through the door at the end of the hall and into the open basement beyond, the guard ordered me to stop. Keeping his eyes on me, he reached behind the desk beside the door and pulled out an old-fashioned black rotary phone. He picked up the receiver, pushed a blinking white button below the dial, and handed the receiver to me.