by Scott Pratt
Strong hands began pulling on my shirt and strong arms wrapped around me, restraining me. I became aware of a voice in my ear.
“Easy, dude. Easy now.” The voice belonged to Big Pappy.
I then became aware of yelling and cursing and people surging around me. There was another amplified sound, this one of a shotgun round being pumped into the chamber. It was a recording the guards played over the loud speakers when trouble was brewing. Then there was gunfire from a guard tower, and everyone was on his stomach on the ground.
The last thing I heard before two guards dragged me off to the hole was Sir Robert’s voice.
“You’re dead, motherfucker!” he yelled. “You’re a dead man!”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
They walked me out of the Special Housing Unit, also known as the hole, a month after I kicked Bobby Lee Frazier in the nuts. It didn’t matter that Bobby had started the fight. All that mattered was that I had been involved in a fight with another inmate, and the institution, by its own rules, had to punish me for it. The punishment was being locked down in the darkness for twenty-three hours a day, one hour of rec, no phone privileges, one short shower a week, and no contact with anyone other than the guards who brought cold food, usually bologna sandwiches, which were slid through the pie hole twice a day. It was back to the existence I’d lived early on during my incarceration, the existence of an animal. It also put all of my legal cases on hold, but I was fortunate in that I didn’t miss any deadlines. The system worked excruciatingly slowly, especially when it came to prisoners who are representing themselves or using a jailhouse lawyer, but the system would have been more than happy to spit a case out and bar it forever because the jailhouse lawyer was cooling his jets in the hole and missed a filing deadline.
But the institution and my legal work were the least of my problems. I had attacked a gang member, a Son of Odin. I didn’t kill him, but I’d knocked him down in front of everybody. I’d embarrassed him. The fact that he deserved it didn’t matter. The SOs would be looking for me as soon as I walked back out onto the yard. They had to back up their boy. I didn’t know how they’d come at me, whether it would be one guy or two or five or whether they’d bring knives or shanks or clubs or maybe even a gun, but I knew as certain as the sun would rise and set that they were coming. The thought entered my mind a couple of times that all I had to do was put up no resistance, just let them kill me, and I would be free of the nightmare I’d been living, but I knew when they came, I’d fight them with everything I had.
As I walked through the metal detector and into the cellblock, I was keenly aware of my surroundings. Frazier lived on the same block, although he lived downstairs and several cells over. It was late afternoon and a lot of the inmates had come into the block from the rec yard or the chow hall. Guys were moving in and out of the cells and the workout rooms or sitting at the card tables. I didn’t see Frazier or any of his gang brothers. I walked up the steps, went into my cell, and was relieved to see Dino sitting there. The place was spotless. Dino smiled, stood, and put out his hand.
“Welcome back, Darren,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“And how was the hole?”
“Dark and smelly, much like you’d expect.”
“Was there a toilet there or do they make you use a bucket?”
“Toilet, Dino.”
“Good, good. I was envisioning you having to squat—”
“Dino, please. Didn’t you have anything better to think about?”
I noticed a shadow behind me and turned quickly. I was relieved to see Big Pappy’s wide frame filling the doorway.
“Mind if I come in?” he said, as if we had a choice. Still, he was polite about it, which was important in the etiquette-conscious world of the convicted felon.
“It looks like you made it in one piece,” Pappy said.
“Yeah,” I said, “I think I’ll live.”
“That’s what I came to talk to you about,” Pappy said. “Mind if I take a seat?”
“Suit yourself,” I said.
As Pappy moved toward the concrete stool, Dino began to wiggle by him.
“I’ll just go downstairs until you’re finished,” Dino said.
“Might as well stay,” Pappy said. “You’re his cellie. You need to hear this, too.”
I leaned against the corner of the top bunk while Dino sat on the bottom bunk.
“Bobby Lee’s still in the hole,” Big Pappy said. “They gave him two weeks more than you because he was the aggressor, even though you whipped him. It’s a problem, though, Darren. It’s a problem for you, for Bobby Lee, for his car, my car, for everybody. I mean, this could potentially blow up big, you know what I mean?”
“Not really,” I said.
“It could turn into a riot, or at least a huge fight, which would mean lockdown for everybody for a couple of months minimum. But I met up with Midas. You know Midas, right?”
“Shot caller for the Sons of Odin. Big, nasty-looking guy.”
“He’s an okay dude, you know? Just doing what everybody else is doing, which is time. Trying to get his hustle on while he’s doing his time. But he got into this little Odin thing a few years back and now he’s the man and there isn’t any going back for him. They all look up to him and he has to do right by his people. I can totally respect that. One of those people is this dim-witted cracker Bobby Lee. Bobby Lee’s got some mental problems, some shit caused by him getting pounded on by a stepfather that tried to kill him when he was three or four years old. So Midas looks at Bobby Lee kind of like a son; he says he’s got this father complex for him. But he realizes that Bobby Lee did wrong. I mean you don’t just go jump a man the way he did to you out on the yard without somebody’s prior approval, without letting somebody know what was going to happen. He didn’t ask permission from Midas or anything.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said. “With all due respect, of course. Midas and his friends were watching the whole thing. They were laughing.”
“Maybe they knew, maybe they didn’t,” Pappy said. “The point is, though, that he says he didn’t know. Now we have to go forward without the yard going up in smoke. You understand that’s why the feds allow the whole gang thing to go on, don’t you? They could stop it if they wanted, but they let it go on. Do you understand why?”
“I suppose it has something to do with discipline.”
“Exactly,” Pappy said. “Discipline and control. The gangs command discipline, they have rules. Gang members have to live within those rules. When they break the rules, they’re disciplined by their own. Otherwise this place would get out of hand in a heartbeat. There would be constant fights, constant riots, and constant killings.”
“So you’re saying Bobby Lee broke the rules when he came after me on the yard without getting permission from his shot caller?”
“Right, and now he’s going to pay the price.”
“Which is?”
“He’s lost his back up. He’s on his own.”
I shook my head, still not quite understanding. “I don’t get it,” I said.
“I told Midas that I’d keep my boys out of it if he’d keep his out of it,” Pappy said. “But he’s still gonna come, Darren. He’s gonna come alone, and he has to keep it private.”
“Private? You mean—”
“He’ll come here. He’ll come to the cell, and he’ll be armed. Do you have a weapon?”
I shook my head.
“Get one. He’ll be out in fourteen days. If you handle him, it’ll be over. Even if you kill him. Midas says it’s between the two of you now.”
“And if he kills me?”
“I guess you’ll be dead and the rest of us will keep on living. That’s just the way it has to be.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
He came the same day he got out of the hole.
I was in my cell, lying in my bunk reading a legal brief I’d printed out in the library. Dino was there, sitting at the desk writing a letter to his mother. It was eight thirty or so, about an hour before we’d be locked down for the night. I’d looked for Bobby Lee Frazier all day because I knew he was scheduled to get out of the hole, but I hadn’t seen him. I found myself hoping he’d done something in the hole to get his stay extended, or maybe the powers that be had decided to transfer him to another max.
It started with a warning from below. Someone down at one of the card tables saw Bobby Lee walk into the block, stop by his cell for a few seconds, and then head straight for the staircase. Bobby Lee’s cell was downstairs. Mine was upstairs.
“Trouble comin’ your way, Darren Street!” a voice called out.
By the time I jumped down off the bunk and chased Dino out of the cell, Bobby Lee was in the doorway. I saw him lift his shirt and pull out an ice pick that was at least a foot long. And then it was just Bobby Lee and me, in the small cell together. He was so big he seemed to fill the entire space. I hadn’t gotten a weapon as Big Pappy had suggested. I just couldn’t make myself do it, I couldn’t picture myself as a knife fighter, but as I stood there looking at that pointed steel, I wished I had something to even things up a little.
He came at me slowly this time, remembering, I suppose, what I’d done to him when he bull rushed me on the yard. I was focused so intently on the ice pick that I didn’t react quickly enough when he punched me with his left fist, his empty hand. The punch caught me in the right temple and sent me staggering back against the wall, and then he was on me. I felt the ice pick slip into my belly the first time and remember thinking it didn’t hurt as badly as I’d thought it would. I started punching Bobby Lee in the face with everything I had, but he stayed right in front of me. He wouldn’t go down, and I didn’t have room to maneuver and grapple with him. In the meantime, I kept feeling the ice pick, again and again. I remember my vision starting to blur, then I started to get cold.
At some point, I had what I believed to be a dream of someone cutting Bobby Lee’s throat. A large knife appeared out of nowhere and slid across his neck from under his left ear all the way across to beneath his right ear. I was showered in warm blood.
I began to slide down the wall. Warm blood was also running down my lower body; it was almost pleasant. My head became lighter and lighter. I looked up and thought I saw Dino standing over Bobby Lee, holding a knife. Big Pappy walked into the cell and took the knife from Dino’s hand.
I think.
And then I left my body and floated to the ceiling, where I watched the guards come in first, and then the medical people. I wanted to float outside the cell, through the roof, out of the prison and off to a different and better place, but I couldn’t. Something was making me stay.
I later found out what it was. Life. Life made me stay. Bobby Lee Frazier had stabbed me eleven times with that ice pick, but he didn’t kill me. The human body can withstand an incredible amount of abuse and still survive.
Unfortunately, I was living proof.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Prison infirmaries are almost as good as the military when it comes to trauma care. They see a lot of stab wounds, and they’re well trained when it comes to reacting to life and death situations. The staff at Rosewood, I was told, was as good as it gets. I didn’t know whether I should regard that as a blessing or a curse.
I lost a lot of blood, but a transfusion had taken care of that. The stab wounds had punctured various organs and had perforated my bowel in a couple of places, but the doctors had worked their surgical magic and seemed to think I’d be fine in a few months. They had done all they could with the wounds and were managing the pain with medications. Now all I had to do was heal.
On my fourth day in the infirmary, a female officer came to see me. She was a green-eyed, pale-skinned redhead of around forty, tall and slim with rounded shoulders. She smelled of soap in her starched uniform and had a businesslike, matter-of-fact air about her. Her name tag said Gibbons. She didn’t ask me how I was feeling or whether I was comfortable talking to her. She just walked into the room and stood next to the bed.
“I’m investigating the stabbing that took place in your cell,” she said without introducing herself.
I nodded.
“Are you willing to talk about it?” she asked.
“Not really.”
“Why not? You were almost killed.”
“You know how it is,” I said. “If I talk to you, all I do is cause problems for myself. Either you’ll charge me with something or you’ll charge somebody else with something and want me to be witness. I wind up with a charge or labeled as a snitch. It’s lose-lose for me.”
“I’m not going to charge you with anything,” she said. “All I’m looking for is confirmation of some things we already know.”
“If you already know, then you don’t need confirmation.”
“Mr. Frazier came to your cell armed with an ice pick, is that correct?” she said.
“Somebody was obviously armed with an ice pick. I have the holes in me to prove it.”
“And it was Mr. Frazier?”
“I didn’t say that. Didn’t you find an ice pick on whoever was in my cell?”
She shook her head. “The weapons had been removed from the cell by the time our people were able to get in and secure the scene.”
“Weapons? As in more than one? I didn’t have a weapon.”
“There were two weapons used in the altercation, Mr. Street. An icepick and a knife. A butcher knife had been stolen from the kitchen, where your cellmate, Mr. Long, happened to work. We think that was the second weapon.”
“Dino didn’t give me a knife,” I said. “Wait just a second. What happened to the guy who stabbed me? You say his name is Frazier? Where is he?”
“He’s dead. You didn’t see someone nearly cut his head off?”
I lifted my arm and covered my eyes. “I dreamed it,” I said. “At least I thought I was dreaming it.”
“Must have been a pretty vivid dream. You had blood all over you. I’ve never seen so much blood in a cell, and I’ve seen a lot. So in this dream of yours, who was holding the knife? Was it your cellmate, Mr. Long?”
“I have no idea. I’d been stabbed a bunch of times. I was going down, fading out, and I had this dream where I thought I saw a knife cutting a throat.”
“What you saw was your cellmate, Mr. Long, cutting Bobby Lee Frazier’s throat. Mr. Long was covered in blood, too, when we got in there. But while you and Mr. Frazier were bleeding all over the place, somebody took the weapons. We’ve searched for them, but we’re probably not going to find them. Weapons tend to disappear when something like this happens; it’s certainly nothing new. Inmates get rid of as much evidence as they can and then clam up. Nobody saw anything. As far as we’re concerned, anything you did was in self-defense, so you’re not looking at another charge. They’re not even going to send you back to the Special Housing Unit for fighting after you get out of here. But just for administrative purposes, I’d like to know whether you saw Mr. Long kill Mr. Frazier.”
“Administrative purposes? That’s what you call pinning a murder charge on Dino Long, who may very well have saved my life? And you want me to be a witness? Forget it, lady. Not a snowball’s chance in hell.”
“From the evidence I’ve seen, Mr. Long used deadly force and killed Mr. Frazier in defense of another, which, as I’m sure you know since you were a lawyer on the outside, is a recognized legal defense to a charge of murder. But even if I wanted to charge Mr. Long with murder and have him take his chances with a jury, I couldn’t do it.”
“Why not?” I said. “Does the warden have you guys on a short leash?”
“Mr. Long is dead,” she said. “He hanged himself in a holding cell while we were conducting our investigation. So even if I wanted
to, there’s nobody left to charge.”
Dino was dead? I closed my eyes and opened them again, hoping, once again, that I was somehow dreaming and not living this nightmare that wouldn’t seem to end. Dino had never struck me as the kind of guy who would do violence. He was quiet, almost meek, most of the time. And she was probably right. He must have gotten the knife he used from the kitchen, but he hadn’t said a word to me about it and he knew—just as I did—that Bobby Lee would come to our cell. That meant he intended all along to fight with me, to fight for me. He’d killed a man for me, and the weight of the act had apparently crushed his already fragile psyche. I turned my head toward the wall as my body howled for more pain medication.
“Get out,” I said to the guard.
“So you don’t want—”
“Get the fuck out of here!” I yelled, and she turned and strutted out of the room.
CHAPTER FIFTY
I was sitting in the chow hall eating lunch when Big Pappy came hurrying in. I’d been out of the infirmary for only a week and had finally gotten through the withdrawal symptoms from the narcotic painkillers I’d taken. It had also taken a few days to get used to Dino not being there. All of his things had been cleared out and, I assumed, shipped to his parents. I’d thought of him often while I was in the infirmary, but each time I did, the last image in my mind was of him hanging from a belt. I spent a lot of time blaming myself, telling myself that if I hadn’t reacted violently on the yard with Bobby Lee, none of this would have happened and Dino would still be alive. It was sad and painful, but I realized during that time that I’d been through so much sorrow and pain over the past eighteen months that I was becoming numb to it. It was as though my heart had become calloused, and I wondered whether I would ever be able to feel anything meaningful again.