by Trick Daddy
“You gotta problem, bruh?”
Slam. I’d hit him in the face with my tray. Then I choked the living hell out of him. I’d try to stomp his head into the floor before the guards came and hauled me off.
“My name’s Trick, motherfucker!”
I wanted rivals to hear me. I didn’t plan on spending my prison years as somebody’s bitch. In the pen, violence was necessary. I couldn’t run from a man trying to drive a shank in my neck. A guard with a grudge was on the other side of the cell.
The only break I took from fighting was phoning home on the weekend. Tater stayed home so he could accept my calls. He usually rounded up a couple of my girlfriends for me, but I was more interested in what was happening on the block. It was the same old same old. My crew was trying to maintain, but the life was definitely catching up to us.
Soon after I got jammed, Dante caught a drug charge. He was sentenced to two years at Brevard in Cocoa. I was determined to get back out there as soon as I finished my bid. However, my frequent fights on the Tenth Floor weren’t helping to speed up my release.
When the time finally came for me to leave for Indian River, the guards and other inmates were well aware of my reputation. The camp sat up in Vero Beach. It’s funny how a lot of Florida’s prisons sit a stone’s throw away from retirees and vacation spots. When I got there, I was surprised at the respect inmates showed me. The place wasn’t as bad as the Tenth Floor. It housed inmates from ages fourteen to eighteen of all classifications. I started taking classes to get my GED and even picked up a trade. I had always been pretty crafty outside from my days raking grass so I took up landscaping. It got my mind off those prison bars for the time being.
My release was right around the corner when my roommate got me hauled to the box. Inmates actually go to jail in jail. That’s what the box is. My roommate knew I had a side hustle besides going to my GED and landscaping classes. I sold sweets: cookies, chocolate bars, wafers. The sugary treats you pass in the grocery store are like diamonds to a man locked down. We used to sneak in boxes upon boxes of the stuff. At Indian River I was a one-stop shop for the goodies. I used the proceeds to gamble. Toonk was our favorite card game. On the evening I got sent to the hole, I was playing toonk with another inmate before he accused me of cheating. I wasn’t having it. We began fighting. I’m sure he knew I wasn’t cheating. He probably just wanted to vent some frustration. Guys on the inside were live wires ready to explode at any minute. My roommate never paid attention to any fights on the hall, but this time he intervened. He called the guard to break it up. We were sent downstairs while the guard searched the cell. When I came back, I opened the hole in the wall where I kept the money I won from gambling. It wasn’t there.
My roommate had been eyeing my piggy bank for months. He waited until I stacked enough bread before he found a reason to steal it. He showed the guard the boxes of strawberry cream cookies I had hidden. The guard and I struck a deal. If I ate the hundreds of cookies within a half hour, I wouldn’t have the incident added to my record. Soon, the whole prison was a sea of cookies. I was literally shitting pink. Trouble just lengthened my stay and messed up my parole chances. I had to keep my head low so I could finally get the hell out of there. I did.
32
Thug Life Again
I DON’T REMEMBER THE MORNING I WAS RELEASED A year later, but I can still feel the breeze and smell the fresh air. An inmate never thinks he’ll actually leave prison. Imagine the steel door closing behind you. In that moment the noises, stench, and cold stares are whisked away by freedom breeze. Just like that, you’re on the other side of that wall. You tell yourself you’re never going back to that hell. It all seems like a bad dream that you just woke from. In reality it was a bad dream that lasted one year. I was dressed in a black Nike windbreaker jumpsuit with matching hot-pink-and-black sneakers that Hollywood bought me. I looked around. Wood was sitting in his Benz, waving me over. His right-hand man, Fatso, was parked behind in Wood’s Nissan Maxima.
“Back home, bruh! You cool?” Wood asked.
“Yeah, I’m straight, bruh. I tell you this much. That shit ain’t the place to be.”
Wood gazed at me. He didn’t have to say it. I knew he was proud of me. I didn’t make any excuses for my fall. I took it in stride. He always wanted better for me. He thought I was the one that could actually make it out without being a slave to the powder. He believed in me when I didn’t. We cruised the strip. It was the same old shit out there. Fiends were on the corners and the dope boys served them. I wasn’t sure if it was time for me to make that left at the crossroads or just get back on the corner.
We pulled up to Wood’s mother’s house. My house was still off-limits. I wasn’t surprised that no one threw some welcome-home party for me. That stuff only happens in the movies. I laugh when I see those scenes.
Most guys I was locked up with had nowhere to go upon release. They most likely ended up at a halfway house or homeless shelter. In many cases their girlfriend had already run off with the partner the ex-con broke bread with in the street. His family had moved on. Some dudes couldn’t be released until they confirmed an address to be released to. Considering that reality, I was lucky that I still had Wood.
After hanging out for some time, he asked me to go pick Keba up from school. I took the Maxima and headed out. When I’d dropped her off, there was a brawl outside the school. Things definitely hadn’t changed. Later that day I ran into one of Wood’s friends who was showing off his newest BMW convertible. It was cold as ice. I wanted to take it for a spin. It had been a while since I was behind the wheel of such a dope ride.
“Damn, bruh. Let me hold the ’vert for a minute,” I told him.
He obliged. I picked up a couple of my friends and cruised the strip. We were high-rolling for the minute. Then one of my friends jumped out and raced toward a kid he had been beefing with. A fight ensued.
Damn, here we go again.
Trouble followed me everywhere. I couldn’t shake her. I contemplated telling him to calm down because my friend was getting the best of the kid, whose uncle had now popped the trunk of his car. I thought he was reaching for a gun so I grabbed the pistol I had under the seat and unloaded. I fired a couple shots in the air to defuse the situation.
My friend jumped in and we sped off, but the kid’s uncle wasn’t finished. He came to Wood’s house later that day and confronted me.
“Oh, you think you’re a man! All right, we’ll see. I’ma treat you like a man!” he yelled.
I thought I was going to have to kill him, but he left. The next two months I just drifted. I was trying to find myself, but something strange was happening when I went to visit my probation officer. She was never there.
I was soon called into a mandatory probation hearing. Before I could even enter the room, the officer was in there burying me to the judge:
“Your Honor, he’s never showed up to my office, and he doesn’t comply with any of the requirements. He also failed his urine test.”
I tried to defend myself. “Your Honor, how can I fail a urine test if she says she’s never seen me?”
Then the district attorney dropped the bombshell. “He’s also been charged with attempted murder,” she said.
I couldn’t believe it. The kid’s uncle who came by to confront me had pressed charges that same day and I didn’t know it. The judge looked at me like I was crazy. I couldn’t blame him. I had only myself to blame. Who the hell violates their probation a couple hours after they’re released? I wish I had the good sense back then to use my mistakes as a tool to keep my anger in check. I didn’t.
I was sentenced to two and a half more years. This time around I was scarred and I didn’t give a damn. This was the last stop. I was now a twice-convicted felon, and the place I was headed made Indian River look like summer camp. The longest sentences served there was around nine years. At my new home to be, many of the inmates were serving life sentences. Picture a thousand condemned men all hemmed inside rotti
ng walls, bursting at the seams. In state prison the older inmates with the longest sentences never caused the most trouble. The younger ones with the shortest sentences, who had the most to lose, caused all the mayhem. They usually got messed up by the ones with all the time who had nothing to lose. I was that young hothead.
33
N-word
THE BUS RIDE THAT AUGUST DAY IN 1992, TO Apalachee Correctional Institution West, was the longest of my life. With Hurricane Andrew soon approaching, prison officials wanted to get us processed as soon as possible. It gave me hours to reflect on where I had been, but I had no clue where I was going. I was sure I’d be just another sorry brother forever locked in the chain gang. The prison was in Sneads.
This wasteland of a town had a population of about one thousand. The prison was the town’s main attraction of sorts. Prisons usually generate the most revenue for the town the prison is located in. Sneads sat twenty-five miles from the Alabama border. I was officially in the Deep South. The horror stories of the racial tensions in those towns where Alabama meets Florida are well documented. I would have to get used to being called a nigger by redneck COs. Some donned tattoos of black babies hung by nooses.
The living quarters were similar to those of the Tenth Floor; we were packed in one large room with bunk beds scattered throughout. At Apalachee the bloodshed was horrific. Inmates simply walked up to foes and shanked them.
I didn’t carry many weapons during my last bid. It wasn’t necessary. In here I had to adapt. Inmates got creative with the tools they made to cut rivals. We carved toothbrushes into shanks, others were molded from melted plastic. Fights usually went down in the yard. One inmate would just run up behind another one and cut him. It wasn’t out of the ordinary to see an inmate running across the yard with blood streaking down his neck. At night the screams kept me awake. I’d wake up to an inmate lying on the floor, coughing up his life. The place was a nightmare.
But once again God sent me a guide. I hadn’t listened to Booner and Junior when they tried. Fudge did his best. It seemed the only person that could reach me at this point was someone I thought was more street-certified. It had to be somebody who I thought I couldn’t beat down, someone I respected.
His name was Papa Stick. He was seventy-eight years old, the oldest in Apalachee and the oldest inmate I’ve ever met. When I first got to Apalachee, I was upset that they put me in the cot next to his. I didn’t want to spend my time next to a guy that could have been my grandfather. At night, Stick mumbled some mumbo jumbo while he read one of the hundred books he always kept. I wanted to holler at him to shut his trap, but something told me otherwise.
Although he hobbled around the prison, no one disrespected Stick. During lunch, inmates served him extra food. He was given extended library visits. Most of us at Apalachee could have been his grandsons. Oddly enough, Stick was in prison for killing a twelve-year-old boy. I didn’t know the particulars of the case, but I knew he wished he could take it back. He was an old-timer from Tampa. I noticed something else about Stick. I was the only inmate he conversed with. Well, not exactly conversed.
“An eagle lost among crows gets stuck in the cornfields,” he would tell me. Stick spoke in riddles. It was up to you to figure out the point he was making. “I can’t be bothered with these jitterbugs. If you like being stuck in a dog’s butt hole, go run with the fleas, just don’t bring the itching round me.”
At night, our conversations took my mind off the inmate across the room getting stabbed to death. Battles from the yard carried over far into the wee hours of the morning. The lower bunk left one vulnerable, but my stay on the Tenth Floor had me prepared. Inmates waited for rivals to go to sleep, then swooped in with a vengeance. I half slept most nights with my shank tucked underneath me.
Stick always shook his head at the mayhem. No one crossed him though.
“The inmates all respect you,” I told him.
“They respect you too,” he replied.
I began to see what he was trying to tell me. I was different from the other inmates. I could read and write really well. He lent me a lot of his books to read. I was pretty good at math also. Stick saw the light in me when I didn’t. Prison time forces a man to read between the lines. Other inmates studied me hard. No one understands human nature more than a convicted felon; not even a Harvard degree educates more about the inner workings of the human mind than prison halls.
Patience is a virtue learned in prison. In most cases one’s sanity and life depend on it. In the game of life, most times success depends on it. In the boardroom, a rash decision can cost big money. In prison it can cost your life.
When every minute of every day is spent trying to survive in a pound filled with condemned men, one learns to observe their habits. I learned what made other inmates tick. I listened more than I talked. I couldn’t survive my prison sentence without patience. Patience was my best friend. She was better to me than any lover could have been. I finally cracked Stick’s riddles. He had the rest of his life to mull over the past. He was going to die in prison. He tried to show me that my life was far from over. All I had to do was keep my head low and, like the cliché goes, “do the time and don’t let the time do me.” I could either live day by day and inch toward my freedom or race through in a rage-fueled, blood-soaked mania. I chose the latter.
“I didn’t know jitterbugs could read,” Stick would tell me. “Well, those crackers could always use another coon.”
Stick’s words hit me in the chest even if they were veiled in codes. Straight talk would only have put an already wounded young man on the defensive. If I was so special, why did God leave me stuck in here?
Oh, well. I began running with the crew from Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties. We fought the inmates from Tampa and St. Petersburg. Although we were all from Florida, we divided ourselves along geographic lines and were determined to gut each other before our bids were up. The feuding got so bad that on one occasion we started a full-scale riot. Guards blamed me and a couple others for starting it and sent me to the box.
After my time in the box was up, the folks at Apalachee cut me loose. They labeled me a danger to the facility and had me transferred. I didn’t mind because my days were filled with misery at that place. I boarded the bus for Okaloosa Correctional Institution in Crestview. Wars carried over from prison to prison, so some inmates in there were waiting to cut me up for stabbing their friends at Apalachee. At Okaloosa the guards seemed more preoccupied with causing trouble than the inmates themselves.
The night I got there I was lined up with the other transfers, shackled from head to toe, getting ready to be transported to my cell. I guess we looked like a bunch of Sambos because that’s what the guards started chanting as we walked to our cells. They taunted us for more than five minutes before the other inmates started banging their cell doors. The place erupted. Inmates threw toilet paper and overturned their mattresses. The guards were outnumbered. We took over the prison. The alarms went off. Then the riot squad rushed in and pepper-sprayed us all. Some inmates got tasered. Lockdown.
I was once again blamed for the melee and processed for transfer. I soon boarded a bus headed to Baker in Sanderson. My reputation throughout the state’s penitentiary system grew with every fight. Word on the cellblocks was that the inmate Trick had a screw loose. I didn’t take any particular value in the disposition. It just seemed like my whole life someone had to try me. I could be in the park and the damn resident wino would even test me. It’s like I had a sign on my my forehead that screamed DRAMA, I’M OVER HERE!
I found myself spending most of my time at Baker in the box. One night the brilliant powers that be decided to put an emergency transfer in there with me. I’m not sure if it was intentional or not, but the guards put my life at risk. Emergency transfers are inmates who are deemed mentally unstable and unfit to be with other prisoners. In other words, they’re insane. They have to be evaluated before being placed into the general population.
This inmate was cuckoo. He didn’t realize he was in prison or believe he should be in prison. I woke in the wee hours of the morning with this nut case staring down on me.
“Who you, nigga?” he asked.
This was just my luck. I was locked away with a lunatic. I didn’t think it was possible to have bad luck in prison. It’s where I ended up because I was at the bottom of my luck already.
“You’re from Miami, huh?”
Oh, boy. I knew what that meant. Hustlers from Miami had a reputation for making a lot of money. Miami dope boys had the cars and women; the combination birthed envy. It made us targets. The yelling ensued:
“I can’t stand you Miami motherfuckers! Y’all think y’all run shit! I’ll show you who run shit, motherfucker!”
He punched me square in the jaw. We began fighting. I thought the guards would let us maul each other to death down there, but they came running down the hall. They knew they could get into deep trouble because there had been recent outcries in the media about poor treatment of mentally ill inmates at Florida prisons. This is one time I was grateful for those academic types that visited the prisons.
When the guards finally had him handcuffed, I began whaling on him. There’s no such thing as a fair fight. Don’t believe the hype. In the melee I busted my head wide-open on the toilet and was sent to the infirmary. As a consolation prize for their mistake, prison officials let me choose the prison I wanted to be transferred to after my confinement. I chose Desoto.