by Scott Pratt
“Which one of you is Darren Street?” he said through the bars.
I shuddered and raised my hand as he inserted a steel key and the door swung open.
“Walk in front of me. That way.”
He guided me to a room that was ten feet by ten feet. There were three steel stools. I knew immediately it was a visitor’s room.
“That one,” he said, pointing to the last stool.
I took three steps and looked down. On the other side of the Plexiglas was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen.
Her name was Grace.
“Oh, Darren,” she said. A slight smile crossed her lips, but I could tell immediately it was a smile of pity because a tear slipped down her right cheek. I must have looked terrible.
“Is it that bad?” I said. “I haven’t seen myself in a mirror in months.”
“You’re so thin,” she said.
“Not really by choice.”
“I’m so sorry,” Grace said. “It took me a few weeks of not being able to get in touch with you to realize what they were doing. Atlanta should have been a one-day trip, but I kept hearing you were ‘in transit, in transit.’ My boss was the one who suggested they probably had you in diesel. We started raising hell with anyone who would listen and finally got to someone in the Department of Justice who was high enough to put a stop to it, but by that time you were in Portland.”
“I spent Christmas on a bus,” I said. “I assume I have Clancy to thank for my tour of the United States.”
“He denies it, but I have absolutely no doubt he set it in motion.”
“And there’s nothing anyone can do about it?”
“I’m afraid not. Are you injured? Is there anything that might be permanent?”
I showed her the open wounds on my wrists and ankles.
“These will heal. It’s too early to tell about anything else,” I said.
“How are you . . . mentally?”
I felt tears well in my own eyes but was able to hold them back. “They tried to break me, Grace,” I said. “They tried to dehumanize me and wear me down and turn me into a malleable piece of clay that would do anything they said anytime they said it. And they did it, in a way. I’ll do anything they tell me to do when they tell me to do it. To them, from the outside, it appears they’ve taken me over. But I learned along the way that in here, in my heart and in my mind, I’m still strong. They can’t touch that.”
She smiled again, and I wished I could reach through the glass and stroke her lovely face. I’d barely said a word the last time I saw her.
“I’ve wanted to tell you I’m sorry,” I said.
“For what?”
“For not saying thank you. For not telling you what a good job you did during the trial. For being such a lousy client.”
“You don’t owe me an apology,” she said. “I’m just glad you’re safe and still in one piece.”
“What’s going on with the appeal?”
“I filed the notice, but I haven’t filed the brief yet. I still have a couple of weeks. We’ve been trying to find James Tipton.”
“Tipton? He’s gone?”
“Seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“Clancy probably killed him.”
“Don’t say that, Darren. Don’t even think it. We’re going to need James Tipton to recant to have a chance on appeal.”
“I know. The trial was pretty clean.”
“We’ll keep looking. In the meantime, would you like to know where you’re going to wind up in a few weeks?”
“Love to.”
“Rosewood. Ever heard of it?”
“No. Where is it?”
“About a hundred and twenty miles east of San Francisco.”
“It’s a max, right?”
Grace nodded.
“Anybody famous there?”
“Probably nobody you’ve ever heard of. A guard was killed there by two inmates a few years ago, though. Expect it to be tough.”
“I’m sure I’ll love it.”
“I’ve done a lot of asking around, Darren. I’ve talked to former clients who have been in and out of the system. You have something that will be of great value to you on the inside. You have a legal education. You’re a real lawyer. That’s going to help keep you safe until we can figure out a way to get you out.”
“I’ll hang a shingle outside my cell. Darren Street, Attorney at Jailhouse.”
“It’s good to know your sense of humor is still intact. Listen, there’s one other thing I need to tell you. Your mother finally got a hearing in front of a judge. She picks up Sean and keeps him overnight every other Saturday.”
My eyes filled with tears and I broke down. I was still crying when I felt a guard tug on my arm.
“Thank you, Grace,” I said as the guard pulled me away. “Thank you for everything.”
Late that night, I felt someone pushing on my shoulder. It was one of my cellmates, a white guy named Bobo who I’d talked with a little earlier in the evening.
“Listen up,” he whispered. “Macho man’s about to start up.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“See that clock over there?”
A clock on the wall above a guards’ station said 2:59 a.m. I nodded.
“Three o’clock on the dot. He’s done it the last three nights. The guards got really pissed off last night. Something’s gonna happen.”
As soon as the clock hit three, a voice in a cell across the hall and two doors down began to sing The Village People’s “Macho Man” at the top of his lungs.
Two guards, both of them black and both of them large, strode by our cell and stopped in front of the macho man’s.
“Shut the fuck up!”
He kept singing.
Within seconds, five more guards in cell extraction gear—Kevlar vests, knee pads, helmets, thick gloves—and carrying electronic stun shields, pepper spray, and Tasers, came running down the hall. They’d obviously geared up earlier and had been waiting for him to start singing.
“Last chance, boy. Shut your mouth, now!”
He went into the first chorus, full bore.
They opened the cell door and ordered the other two inmates who were in the cell to get out and lie facedown in the hall. As soon as the inmates were out, the guards went in. Macho man kept singing until the stun shield hit him. I saw him go down and could see the guards kicking and stomping, but I could no longer see the macho man. They dragged him out a couple of minutes later with his hands cuffed behind his back. Three guards pulled him along the floor right in front of me. Blood was bubbling from his lips, but I could hear him mumbling, “I’m the macho man, I’m the macho man.” Dozens of inmates up and down the hall started yelling at them to let him go, to leave him alone, but the resistance wasn’t as forceful as it might have been, and I thought I knew why. Had they become too vocal, or had someone thrown something through the bars at a guard—urine, for instance—the entire place would go on lockdown. Nobody would go to the rec room the next day. Nobody would get to use the phone or take a shower or get any commissary delivered.
There was a laundry room that I’d noticed earlier in the day about fifty feet down the hall from my cell. It was encased by Plexiglas instead of bars so the guards could see what was going on in there during the day when some of the inmates were allowed to use it. They dragged the macho man into the laundry room and turned off the lights, and for the next ten minutes, we sat there and listened to the sounds of the guards taking turns beating him. I found it so ironic—black guards beating a black man for singing a song that was written and performed originally by a black man. Eventually, they dragged him out of the laundry room and off the block, leaving a wide swath of blood in their wake.
Silence came over the cellblock then, the kind of s
ilence caused by fear and disbelief and shock. I lied back on the concrete platform that was serving as my bed and stared through the bars. The last thing I saw that night before I dozed off was a rat scurrying down the hallway, dragging a bag of stolen potato chips.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The macho man died two days after the vicious beating the guards inflicted upon him. I overheard a group of inmates talking about it during my first trip into the yard at Atlanta. It was five days after I’d arrived, and suddenly, without announcement or fanfare of any kind, the cell doors popped and we were able to wander around freely within the confines of our unit and the yard. The yard was about the size of two football fields, rectangular in shape, covered in asphalt, and surrounded by an electrified chain link fence topped with concertina wire. There were towers at the corners of the fence with stretches of catwalks between them. In the towers and on the catwalks were men who carried weapons of various sorts, from rubber grenade launchers to rifles that fired rubber bullets to shotguns to deer rifles to assault rifles. There were a couple of basketball courts on the asphalt, a weightlifting area, a track around the outside, and several areas where picnic tables served as mini casinos.
The first thing that struck me in the yard—the first place I’d been where there was actually some freedom of choice—was that the inmates separated themselves by race. Hillbilly had told me that race was important, that I shouldn’t hang around with members of other races, but as I watched and listened and spoke with more and more inmates, I learned that what I was seeing was a less-than-subtle return to tribalism. Races separated into groups based on geographic commonalities. Southerners tended to gather with southerners, northerners with northerners, East Coasters with East Coasters, West Coasters with West Coasters, etc. There were further breakdowns by state and city, but race was paramount. The question that was commonly asked was: “Who you ride with?” If you were a black guy from Chicago but not a Blood or a Crip, you probably rode in the Illinois car, but that wasn’t the only car from Illinois. There was a white Illinois car, a black Illinois car, and a Mexican Illinois car. If you were a Blood, you rode with the Bloods, no matter where you were from, but you tended to hang around with guys from your home state or hometown—thus, the term “homies.” If you were a white, independent boy from Knoxville, Tennessee, like me, you rode in the Tennessee car, but there was a white boy car that served as an umbrella for all the white guys at the institution.
There were a lot of gangs. The Aryan Brotherhood, the Dirty White Boys, the Nazi Low Riders, the Bloods, the Crips, the Mexican Mafia—all battled to stake out their claims on various prison hustles and territories. For them, it was all about money and power, controlling the flow and price of drugs, controlling gambling or loan sharking or stores, extorting money in return for protection. The gang members were easily identified by a combination of their race, their tattoos, and the accessories they wore. But there were also a majority of inmates who didn’t join gangs, who just wanted to do their time and move on, because joining a gang meant you could be ordered to commit a murder at any time and once you were ordered, you had to do it. If you didn’t, the gang would murder you. The second most important reason for staying out of a gang was that once you were in, there was no getting out. Period. If you joined a gang and suddenly had a change of heart, the gang would green-light you, which meant they marked you for assassination.
Bobo, the cellmate who had awakened me the night the macho man was beaten to death, caught up to me as I walked along the track. It was a bright but blustery February morning, and I huddled inside the light jacket I’d been issued. Bobo was pleasant enough. He was a couple of years older than me, about the same height, and a little chubby around the face. His hair was buzzed and his eyes were dark brown. He had a stocking cap pulled down around his ears.
“There’s something I haven’t asked you, man,” he said. “Which way you going, in or out?”
“In,” I said.
“How long?”
“Life.”
“Life? Who’d you kill?”
I turned and smiled at him. “Nobody.”
He started nodding. “Yeah, boy, that’s right. You keep talking that. Didn’t kill nobody. Not nobody, not no how.”
“I’ve heard that somewhere before,” I said.
“Wizard of Oz, but you ain’t Dorothy and this ain’t Oz. Where they sending you?”
“Rosewood. You know it?”
“Do I know it? I just spent seven years there. Got sent to Rosewood ’cause I stabbed this boy up in Hazelton. I’m almost flat now, though. They’re processing me out to a halfway house in Tallahassee. Less than a year and I’ll be back home, staring at the walls, going crazy because nobody’ll give me a job. But let me tell you about Rosewood. You said you don’t want to bang with a gang, right?”
“Nah, I’d rather just stay independent. Keep my head down, run my appeal, and try to get out.”
“What’d you do on the outside?”
“I was a lawyer, believe it or not.”
“No shit? A real lawyer? What’d you do? Wills and stuff like that? Real estate?”
“I did criminal defense work.”
Bobo stopped in his tracks. I stopped, too, and turned to look at him.
“Man, do you have any idea the kind of respect you’re gonna command the second you step on the yard? A murderer and a lawyer? I’m assuming you didn’t snitch on anybody, that right?”
“Nobody to snitch on.”
“That’s good. That’s real good, because they’re gonna want to see your paperwork as soon as you get there. You’re gonna need a docket sheet, maybe a transcript of your sentencing. You have to prove you’re not a snitch, because if you were a snitch, them boys at Rosewood would run you off the yard.”
“What do you mean, run me off the yard?”
“It means just what it says. Convicts hate snitches. You come in with paperwork that says you got a lighter sentence because you helped the feds somehow or told on somebody, the shot caller is gonna walk you straight up to the security booth on your block and tell them you can’t stay, because if you stay, you’re gonna get messed up bad.”
“What’s a shot caller?”
“He’s the guy that calls the shots for your group. He’s like your congressman on the yard.”
“So if they think I’m a snitch, they’ll kill me?”
“They might not kill you, but they’re gonna put a shank or a knife or an ice pick in you. The people who run the prison know they’re serious, so what they do is, if you get run off the yard, they put you in protective custody for a few months and then they transfer you to another place. I’ve known dudes who did their whole bit in protective custody, moving from one federal pen to another, because they were snitches and couldn’t hide it.”
“So the inmates actually tell the administration who can stay and who has to go?” I said.
“Yeah, believe it or not, that’s the way it works. But let’s get back to Rosewood. First person you need to see is this dude named Big Pappy. Huge guy with a ponytail, doing thirty plus for drugs. He’s got more respect than anybody on the yard because of all the work he’s put in on the police. He’s the shot caller for the Independent White Boys and you’re gonna answer to him whether you want to or not. Once you prove to him you ain’t a rat and once he finds out you’re a lawyer and a murderer, man, I’m telling you, you’re gonna have so much respect. You’ll have dudes crawling all over each other trying to be your friend and hire you for their cases. Big Pappy will watch over you. You’ll get rich, man, I swear it.”
“I thought we couldn’t have money.”
“Ain’t you got anybody on the outside who can accept and bank money for you?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Bobo shook his head and we started walking again. He was nodding his head and smiling broadly.
“Wow, man. A lawy
er and a killer. I don’t believe it. A lawyer and a killer. I wish I was you. I really do.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The following Saturday, I stood in line for an hour in the dayroom in the detention center, waiting for one of the three phones. I’d asked around and learned how to call out. It would have to be collect, and it was exorbitantly expensive, but I hadn’t talked to my mom in almost four months. I also hoped, since it was Saturday, that Sean would be there. I didn’t know whether I’d be able to control myself when I heard his voice, but I’d decided I had to try. I had to stay in contact with my son. It was selfish of me to abandon him, no matter how guilty or embarrassed I felt.
My fingers were trembling when I dialed Mom’s number, and I could feel droplets of perspiration running down my sides from my armpits. The phone rang once, twice, and I took a deep breath. It stopped ringing, and I knew she’d answered. A recorded voice was telling Mom she was receiving a collect call from an inmate at a federal penal institution. It was telling her what to do if she wanted to accept the call and pay the charges.
“Hello? Darren?”
“Hi, Mom.”
I heard her take a deep breath, and I knew she was fighting back tears.
“Are you still in Atlanta?” she said.
“Yeah, but they’ll send me to California soon. The guys here say it can be anywhere from two to four weeks. Have you talked to Grace lately?”
“We spoke when she got back from visiting you. She’s a wonderful girl, Darren.”
“Yeah, I think a lot of her, too. Listen, Mom, I’m sorry I didn’t call after the trial. I was embarrassed, you know? Depressed, I guess. I didn’t want to talk to anybody. Then they put me in diesel for a couple of months. I guess Grace told you about it.”
“She did, and I couldn’t believe it. Are you all right?”
“Amazingly unscathed. The places on my wrists and ankles are almost healed already and I don’t think there’s any permanent damage of any kind. A lot has happened, but I’m still pretty tough.”