“New bitch, you owe me,” said a black man he had never met.
“Why do I owe you?” he stupidly asked.
“You owe me so I don’t pound the fuck out of you,” and his hard punch to the solar plexus sent Frank to his knees.
Each terrifying day brought new enemies. They knew he wasn’t prison hard and saw a plum target. Rather than be beaten, he accepted the grabs at his food. Whatever he had in his cell was taken by others. As he hadn’t had any money credited, he had to perform services for other inmates: washing clothes, running errands. Every day brought new demands from dangerous men.
The day he knew would come came when he wasn’t expecting it. After a shower, he was walking, wet towel in hand, past another cell when he was bum-rushed in by three other inmates. He felt his pants ripped down, and hard punches pushed out his air. A viselike hand on the back of his neck held his face to the floor as each man took turns raping him. Screams brought jeers and laughter. Movement brought hard blows. Acquiescence gave him semen in his torn anus. Blood was a poor lubricant, but all he was afforded.
“That was good, honey pants,” the bull inmate Harley had whispered in his ear. “Your ass is nice and tight. I’m gonna tap that ass from time to time, and you’re gonna be my bitch. Got it?” They left him there bleeding, covered in semen and his own filth. He’d had to tie his shower towel around him like a diaper, and still blood and feces ran down his legs.
After the infirmary, the stitches on his anus itched and burned, and his short-stepped walk brought catcalls from other inmates: “Did Harley pop your cherry?” “Can I be next, honey?” “Don’t worry…I’ll be gentle, sugar!” He was a mark, and this violation only exposed that more. Now others eyed him, and he knew there would be more attacks, more rapes.
He realized the score all too well. Fight or flight, and there was nowhere to run.
“You’re going to have to make a stand,” his cellmate, Jesse, told him. “You’re not fighting back, so they’ll just keep taking more.”
“I’m scared, Jesse,” he said. “I’m not ready for this.” He saw the scars on the other’s face and wondered if they came from inside.
“You’d better get ready. Once those stitches come out, you’re going to get it again.”
And he knew he was right. Frank, though, had a problem. Though he was plenty brave with his .357 in hand, he hadn’t physically fought anybody for years and only then because he knew the worst reprisal was a beating. He was now thinking of how to fight someone much more dangerous, someone who might kill him.
But there was no choice. There were no options. If he went snitch, he would be a pariah and take beatings from everybody. Nobody in prison could survive as a snitch. He had to man up and take what was coming. He had to set his course in his new life inside. Jesse had told him, “Man up or bitch up…make a choice.”
There’s no turning back now.
He spent the afternoon honing the end of his plastic toothbrush until it was sharp. He needed a target. He walked the long aisle toward the showers, a bar of soap and towel in his hand, waiting for someone to move into range. He held the toothbrush in his right fist, under the towel. He walked slowly, hoping it would invite an aggressor.
Near the showers he saw Harley talking with three friends. Harley was prison tough, made large from hours pumping weights in the yard. Tats and muscles and violence. Frank was glad it was going to be him…Harley had it coming. Even if Frank died today, at least he’d give him some of what he deserved.
As they saw Frank walking, the men started whistling. “Here’s our girl!” one of them said. As he drew closer still, Harley said, “Good, honey, go wash that ass up now. I might want a little more tonight.” Frank hung his head abjectly, trying to wear the affect of the passive. The bitch. As he drew even with Harley, the large man blew a loud kiss at him, face pushed forward with exaggerated pucker. Frank drove with all his strength, and shoved the sharpened toothbrush into Harley’s eye. Clear fluid, tears, and blood squirted out onto Frank’s face and arm. Immediately he was set upon by the others, who rained down punches and kicks on him.
Not Harley though. He fell to the floor bellowing, and held the remaining chunks of his left eye in his hand. Above the grunts and kicks and punches he received, he could hear Harley screaming like a maddened elephant. Blood poured into his ears. “My eye! My fucking eye! I’m blind! Kill that motherfucker!”
Harley’s compatriots redoubled their efforts, and Frank realized how strong they were as he received the beating they gave. Through it, he took pleasure in hearing the wails of his rapist, even as he saw stars and his vision and hearing went.
The guards saved Frank from being beaten to death, but the beating was savage all the same. He was taken by stretcher to the prison hospital, where he spent three nights. The two broken ribs, three broken fingers, and twenty-five stitches were a small price to pay, all things considered. Better than stitches in my asshole, he thought. He was fortunate Harley was taken to an emergency room outside prison, or that night might have been his last.
Frank accepted the year addition to his sentence gladly. He knew it was necessary. Part of being in prison—get hard or get dead. Harley was transferred to another prison for health reasons. It would not be the last time he would need to commit violence, but it gave him some breathing room and a bit of respectful distance from those who wished to do him harm. Nobody would ever consider him an easy mark again.
So Frank grew hard. He adapted to this life as he had adapted to all his others. He took on the countenance of those around him. He sharpened his mind and built his body. He started with pushups in his cell…mean mugging those who were too near to him. When confronted, he threw fists and kicks like a savage. He shadow boxed in his cell and pumped weights when he was returned to outdoor privileges. Within a year, though middle-aged, he was in the best physical shape of his life. Lean and powerful. He projected danger, and others learned to keep a healthy distance. His glare meant violence.
He killed his kindness. He snuffed out his heart. He became like all others inside: deadly. Ill-tempered. He tried to carve out a spot in his heart for kindness, to remember that there was love in the world. But when he sat down to write letters to his children, he knew he was faking the love he professed to them. His insides were black and dead. And as every day passed, the world outside became more distant…a phantom, a shadow. All that mattered was the now. That minute. Inside. There was nothing else that was of consequence.
So it was with a heart of stone that he read a letter from his lawyer, not even a year after he began his sentence. Ex-lawyer, he assumed, as he had no more money to pay him.
Dear Frank,
I’m sorry, I wanted you to know. Mariah was found dead in a hotel room in Phoenix. Her son, Elbert, is in foster care. Apparently she had spent all the money you left them.
I’m so sorry for your loss.
He tore up the letter and flushed it down his cell’s toilet.
Months later, he was walking across the yard when he was approached by a member of the Aryan Brotherhood. He knew he had to respect the most violent gang inside. If he ignored them, it was a slight he would pay for. Politics in prison is truly a blood sport.
“You gotta get with your race, Frank. The colored savages in this place ain’t gonna stay away forever. You woke people up, but they’re still out there, and you will get hit. You pledge with the AB and we’ll be your shield. Nobody fucks with us.”
Frank tried to be non-committal. Gangs both created and solved problems inside, and he had hoped to avoid them. “I’ll think about it, Ned…I need to lay low for now. I just had a year added.”
The man’s smile didn’t hide his serious eyes. “That’s okay, Frank…we got this shit wired tight. Something happens, we never rat on a brother. We protect each other and help each other out. Someone attacks you, they die. Someone steals from you, they die. Nobody fucks with us…not even the guards. We run the church services too, and Brother Weezer is the past
or…you go to church now and then, and that looks good for parole. Weezer writes a letter to the parole board saying you’ve had perfect attendance and are a changed man…well, that’s something positive the board can consider. You’ll probably do less time because you’re with us.” Frank smiled for a second and wondered if he could sit through a church service again, even if he knew it was for show. “And one more thing you’d better consider…Harley’s crew isn’t finished with you. I hear they’re saying ‘eye for an eye’ to people they know.”
“Okay,” Frank said, “let me think about it for a bit.”
“You think about it,” he repeated, his face serious and eyes narrow, “but don’t think too long. You need to back your race in here. Don’t let the niggers and spics turn you into a piñata. You join the Brotherhood, and your enemies become our enemies.” He turned the back of his hand to Frank, folded over the middle finger, and flashed the three-fingered sign of the Aryan Brotherhood. Frank saw the black Nazi cross tattoo on that hand. He walked away.
Frank thought, Yeah, and your enemies become my enemies.
He knew he’d have to declare for the Aryan Brotherhood, and he knew he’d have to commit a stabbing to join. Blood in, blood out. That would be more time added to his sentence. A second stabbing would probably add multiple years. But gangs were a fact of prison life, and he knew he was either with them, or they’d be against him. He hated those toothless twitchy bastards, but he also wanted to live. Survival was the first need he had to fulfill.
As Frank walked the yard that day, he reflected on the Frank he was before. So long ago. Sacramento Frank. He pondered that man, who now seemed light-years away.
Sacramento Frank was naïve: a good man with a good heart, but innocent to the ways of the world. He lived in a world of rules. There were responsibilities and proper consequences. Societal norms to conform to, and structure to the events of the world. Go to college. Pay taxes. Tithe at your church. You don’t lie, cheat, and you certainly don’t steal. Hard work was its own reward, but the harder you worked the more the paychecks came. God sat in judgment in the end.
He didn’t understand that these rules weren’t set by some cosmic order. He didn’t understand chaos and entropy. He didn’t understand other forces could align against him no matter how he lived his life. When he was hit by the storm, his roots weren’t deep enough to keep him upright, and he buckled, cleaving his home and his life. Shallow-rooted Frank was a disaster waiting to happen; it was just a matter of time before something knocked him down. Without that strength of character, he didn’t have the wherewithal to pick himself up. When presented with his first real fight-or-flight test, he had fled, and now found himself in a prison yard, surrounded by men who meant to do him harm.
That evening, he pledged to the Aryan Brotherhood, and was given a shank to stab a Mexican of his choice. Blood in, blood out. A week later, he sported his first swastika tattoo.
XXIX
He slid his hand into his navy sport coat’s pocket. Frank instinctively tensed, though he knew no weapon would come out. He produced a small torn and spotted picture. He put it on the table and slid it toward him. “I saved this for you. The one of us got lost somewhere in my first foster home.”
Frank knew the picture very well. Being in the center of it, his face was the most pronounced. He was so much younger then and wore a tailored suit. Full head of hair, styled. Smiling, unfettered eyes. Sacramento Frank. The edges of the photograph were twisted and split. Water spots. The face of his wife completely unrecognizable, scraped off in a moment of pain. Matthew and Mark were barely visible through the stains and small tears. Little Ruth, though, was smiling up at him, as was Luke. He looked down and regarded it. Feigned bravado was his first response.
“Yeah?” He looked at him with dead eyes.
“I thought you should have it back.”
“I don’t know those people.”
“They’re you, Frank…your family…”
“I know who they were….and I know I’m not that person. That person is a stranger to me. Those people are all foreigners. A life I don’t remember. The person I was then…I’ve mostly forgotten him. He had a skewed sense of the world. He smiled through his well-cared for teeth, and wore Armani. He put money in bank accounts and investments, planning for a life that wasn’t going to be there. A fantasy future. He thought his life was secure and that he had built something that would last forever, like the Pyramids of Egypt or something. Such an asshole…” He looked away from the photo as if it was ugly to him. “Tomorrow knows the lies we tell today. All of them.”
Perry considered the man in front of him. Frank continued, face still turned away. He was gritting his teeth, and his jaw muscles were flexed hard.
“There’s a price for what we do, Perry. There’s a penalty. If you sit in your home and never go out, you’re fine. If you venture out, you’re building up friction. You cut someone off in traffic, or you give a cop a dirty look. Friction. You grate against others. You grind out your existence. Abrasive existence. That scraping will make a spark and start a fire. I found that out the hard way. I worked hard. I loved my family. I didn’t cheat…didn’t smoke…drank a couple beers a year. I worked sixty hours a week. I saved. I invested. I paid my taxes, and I tithed from every paycheck. And look what happened to me!”
His raised voice drew the attention of the guards, so he softened it, though his lowered voice contained more menace. “I left my home one night with a friend and never got back. Life stuck a knife in my back…my best friend held the blade, but it was bigger than him. The giant, unrelenting, and unforgiving force of the universe took a shit on me. I left my home that night with a full life…a life I was proud of. I came back the next day, and I was human wreckage. Societal offal, to be cast off with the rest of the trash. Life grinds people up. Your mother once told me, ‘you cannot conquer time.’ I found that out…found it out the hard way. Everything I’ve done in my life I’ve paid for and then some.”
“I don’t buy that, Frank, and neither should you. This place can fuck you up…screw up your perspective. Generally speaking, life gives you good things if you are good. Good brings better, bad brings worse. It’s just that sometimes bad things happen to good people.”
His eyes leveled at him. “That’s just it though…bad things do happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people.” He kept his voice measured. “People rape and murder innocent victims every day. Every…single…fucking…day. I’m in here with many of the perpetrators. You’re just a minute away from disaster. At any moment, someone like me could pull a gun and change you forever. I know, because I’ve been on both sides of it. Everybody in this place committed a crime against someone like you. Found an easy victim and hurt him. For money, or drugs, or excitement. Out of sheer boredom. And yet some thieving politician rakes in millions, robbing the people he’s supposed to serve, and nothing bad happens to him.
“Nobody wakes up thinking it’s going to happen to them. Nobody gets up in the morning thinking it’s their turn for tragedy…or worse. Nobody in a plane crash ever imagined they would die that day. Nobody who is raped or murdered thinks it’ll be their turn. But I know…I know too well…it can be your turn at any moment, and there’s not a goddamned thing you can do about it. Someone is going to be murdered today. Someone is going to be raped today. Someone is going to be robbed or stabbed or shot or hurt today, and there’s little they can do about it. I shared a cell with a guy who raped and murdered an eighteen-year-old girl, and every day he told me he wished he could have killed fifty more young girls.
“And just look at me! I lost my family, my career, my best friend…everything I had worked for…poof! Gone in an instant! Everybody involved in that night ended up in calamity. I’m sitting in prison after a long series of bad events, but I was backed into a corner. I’m paying for my own sins, sure…but also for the sins of others. When I hit back…when I fought against the forces aligned against me…I ended up caged like a rabid
dog. The funny thing is that I was not dangerous before. I was a good man, if imperfect. Now…living here…I’m dangerous. Very dangerous.”
Perry was used to swagger from men inside and wasn’t taken aback by it. He knew it to be a defense, a wall against the pain. He tried to break through that fortress. “But you’ve done a lot of good things in your life, Frank. You’ve made a difference in the lives of many people. Bad things happen to everybody, and we all make mistakes and hurt other people, whether a little or a lot.”
“It’s a pretty idea to think about…that I somehow did something good in my life. But it’s all ashes. My son…my second son…Mark…he’s in jail. I got a letter from my oldest. Mark was busted for drug trafficking. A half-pound of coke. How did I make a difference? Mark and I used to go to Boy Scout camps together. Now he will be in Folsom Prison for the next few years. Reality caught up to my family. I was good until I wasn’t, but none of that good got transferred to them. Only the bad. My baby girl, Ruth, is living with some guy, and they have a kid together. They’re living on food stamps. My children are all damaged. All struggling with having me for a father. I left behind a legacy of ruin. I’m worse than nothing…I have done more harm than good.”
“You made a difference in my life, Frank. That’s why I’m here.”
Frank looked at him flatly. “Did I?” It was almost a challenge. “Your mother died, and you went to foster care.”
“I’m here because you made all the difference. For me.”
Frank looked up at him again. In that moment, he saw the teenager he had left. Saw him from afar. And he remembered the small skinny, dirty young boy he had met all those years ago.
The Juke (Changes Book 2) Page 20