Gorilla and the Bird

by Zack McDermott

  He decided to go to Butler County Community College for a year before transferring to a four-year college so that he could play one more year of football and better prepare himself for “a real school.”

  He got shot the night of his senior prom.

  Bobby had been on the wrong side of town wearing the wrong colors. When he stopped at QuikTrip to get some rubbers, he wasn’t too worried about the fact that there were two Bloods in the parking lot staring him down. Being C-O-C-C-Y, he was decked out in a Southpole blue and yellow polo with matching jeans and all-white Reeboks with blue laces. The Bird told him, “You look like you’re headed to the Players’ Ball,” when he stopped by the house to take pictures with his date.

  He didn’t notice that the red hoodies at the QT followed him to his hotel room. If the shooter hadn’t yelled, “What up, Blood?” before squeezing the trigger on his 12-gauge, Bobby would, in all likelihood, be dead. He’d just opened his hotel room door; Bobby threw his date into the room so she wouldn’t get hit, but the Blood got him in the shoulder. He didn’t know the guy and is pretty sure it was a gang initiation. No one was arrested, but “maybe something happened to him.”

  The shooting pretty much closed the book on school for Bobby. He told the Bird he was going to move to Oklahoma to be with his daddy. The Bird and Bobby’s mom begged him not to go, told him nothing good was down there for him and he could still go to school once he healed. “It ain’t forever, Moms. I can be a country nigga.” Bobby wanted to get to know his dad.

  Six months later, he was standing next to his dad in federal court, entering a guilty plea for his involvement in an interstate truck stop prostitution ring. Bobby Sr. had rolled on his son and told the feds that he had no involvement—that it was all B.P. Jr.’s doing. Bobby took five years and ten months; Senior got double that.

  It was all over the papers—even made People magazine.

  The Bird was at the Urban League Learning Center in the middle of the school day when she heard the news. Her colleague, a 500-pound bigot and football fanatic whom the kids called Shamu, gleefully read the headline to her. “‘Former NW Football Star Charged with Sex Trafficking.’ What do you think of your Bobby Prince now?” he asked the Bird. She started shaking and weeping and left the room. She was crushed, but also pissed. How could B-O-B-B-Y do that? Why hadn’t she tied his ass down and told him she’d only free him after he got the fool-ass Oklahoma idea out of his head? She remembered the day they got “his” ACT score, how they’d jumped up and down together. What was going to happen to B-O-B-B-Y in prison?

  “So? How’s being out?” I asked Bobby.

  “Man, bro. Fucking internet, man. I’ma learn that computer. Is you on Facebook?”

  “Barely. I wouldn’t learn that first.”

  “Everybody got they little computer on they phone now. When I went in, people was just starting to fuck with the flips and we thought that was dope. My moms stays on Facebook.”

  “I stays on Facebook too,” the Bird chimed in. “Gets people into the Bird’s school. Turning tassels.”

  “You do be turning tassels. Do.” This is one of my favorite Bobby verbal tics. If you ask him if he has a date: Do. Do have a date. Did he hit? Did hit. Did. Is his car clean? Is, cuz. Is clean.

  I shooed the Bird away and told her we had man talk to discuss.

  “Do.”

  “But for real, C-O-C—are you all right? You fucked-up?”

  “Man, prison, cuz? You trying to hear ’bout prison?”

  “Would. Would hear about prison,” I said.

  “Tell you the truth, bro. People don’t like to talk about prison, mostly. But, shit, I tell you. Watch’u wanna know?”

  “Well, the obvious. Anybody get that BPJ wooty?”

  “Nigga said ‘Anybody get that BPJ wooty?’—what you think, cuz?”

  “Hope not.”

  “Didn’t. Did not. Man, it’s like this, cuz: I’m a Crip, right? Been a Crip. Been. But when I went in, I wan’t trying to be ’bout that life. I coulda got in with them—everybody knew me in there. I had fam in there. I had niggas in there that knew my fam. I coulda bunched up, you know? But I just wanted to do my little time, man. And you know me, I ain’t got no enemies. I can get along with e’rybody. So I didn’t really have no beef with nobody.”

  “Never? Were you ever scared?”

  “Bro, I’m telling you. Prison wasn’t all that bad. Moms was writing me. Couldn’t never call, ’cause that shit’s expensive, cuz. But I just did my little time. I got in one little beef—that was the only time I was scared. But not ’cause I couldn’t handle ol’ boy, it’s just—shit don’t end in hands there. Traditionally. Don’t.”

  “Kill him?”

  “You know I ain’t no killer, bro. Nah, we was playing basketball and I was talking shit—you know how I fuck around. And this dude was younger, so he, I guess, felt like he was being disrespected, but I was just playing. And dude couldn’t hold me, and I just kept telling him, ‘Bro, you know you ain’t gonna guard me. You gotta get somebody out here to guard me.’ Ol’ boy just kept trying to guard me and I just kept scoring. And so anyway. I could tell he wanted to fight me and I could tell we was going to have to do it there on the yard. ’Cause you ain’t trying to get it in the cell, cuz. So anyway, I told him, ‘Come on, then, if you need it. If you need it, come get it.’”

  “You win?”

  “Bro, I ain’t trying to be cocky—but you know I can fight. I wasn’t even mad, but I think dude just felt like he had to fight me. So, yeah, I touched him up a little bit. And then I hear that ol’ boy wants to stab me and I’m like, well, fuck. I got dudes offering to shank him for me, but I ain’t trying to hurt nobody. And, man, you know I can talk to people. So I just went up to him and told him, ‘Man, I ain’t even got no beef like that.’”

  “That was it?”

  “Was. Was it. And that was the last fight I was in. Because, bro, check it. We play basketball in there. And I ain’t bragging, I’m just telling you that—”

  “You’re fast as piss.”

  “Am. And they saw me touch dude up so, man, think about it. They know I’m fast and they know I can fight, so if you trying to look tough and then you get your li’l ol’ ass kicked. Bro, it don’t work, you know? So I was chilling. But mostly just ’cause I ain’t got beef like that with nobody.”

  “You act like it wasn’t all that bad.”

  “Ain’t trying to go back, bro. I seen some horrendous shit. Like, two dudes, one Mexican and one black dude, raping this white dude. Hearing that, bro, I will never forget that sound. I saw dudes get stabbed, they bleeding out. Dudes is playing cards, another nigga bleeding to death. But I ain’t broke. I got all my limbs and my teeth and my kneecaps.”

  Listening to Bobby recap the first half of his twenties for me, all I could think was What a waste of life. Bobby didn’t even know how fucked he was now that he was out, how hard it was going to be for him to ever get a job with health insurance. Six years in prison makes you a convict for life. Bobby was looking for work, but it would take a strong character reference from the Bird just to get him hired in the stockroom at Dillon’s after checking the FELON box. His conviction also made him ineligible to receive federal financial aid, so going back to school was out. In all likelihood, because of some admittedly fucked-up stuff he did when he was eighteen years old, he’d peaked at prom king.

  I had written my law school application essay about the atrocity of Bobby’s life and imprisonment. Here he was, personal statement in the flesh, calling me out. I couldn’t remember the exact wording, but I was pretty sure my essay mentioned something about how I was determined to dedicate my life to defending those whom our society was failing and the criminal justice system was destroying. As best as I could recall, it didn’t say anything about sitting on a lawn chair in my mother’s garage, crushing eight domestic beers every night.

  Most people, even most liberals, don’t give much thought to the fate of guys like Bobby. They s
ubscribe to the good/bad binary and, to them, Bobby is a no-brainer bad dude, guilty of participating in an interstate truck stop prostitution ring. It’s easy—and convenient—to believe that jail is an acceptable solution to the question of What do we do with all of these felons, most of whom seem to be black? No part of the criminal sentencing process asks: “Was his dad a pimp or an accountant? Did his dad encourage him to join the family business? Is locking him up going to do anything for him or us in the long run? To what extent was he just a cog in a larger machine in which he had no free will?” These sorts of considerations confuse the narrative: only bad people commit crimes, and it is okay to put bad people in cages. Easier not to think too hard on it.

  On top of that, had Bobby been caught a few months earlier, the courts would have chalked up his crimes to his undeveloped adolescent brain. Magically, on his eighteenth birthday, he transitioned from wayward youth to evil man. So we slapped him with 2,190 days in federal prison instead of probation and an expungement. Bobby became the one in four: a black male in America who’d spent some time in prison. Could have gone to Arizona.

  Bobby had been locked up in a far scarier place than Bellevue, and for 200 times as many days. I’d experienced something analogous to incarceration; he’d experienced incarceration. My depression was strangling me, yet here he was, sitting with me at the kitchen table, praying for an opportunity to stock shelves, and smiling. “I’m blessed, bro, just blessed.”

  The world isn’t obligated to help people like Bobby, but I think I am. I saw how many more hurdles than your average white suburban teenager Bobby needed to clear to earn the right to enroll in a Psych 101 seminar at Arizona, and the dire consequences of catching his toe on even one of them. And it pisses me the fuck off.

  A hard-ass trial lawyer in our office once referred to us—public defenders—as “moths to a flame.” We’re there because we can’t help it—because we can’t be anywhere else. But this commitment to social justice comes at a steep price. The job attacks your empathy—the speed and ferocity of the attack varies, but everyone feels it. Like a marriage, the first part is all catalyst—a chemical reaction that can carry you through the first several years in relative bliss. It’s the lull afterward that requires effort.

  The older, more embittered public defenders are the equivalent of the miserable alcoholic uncle who says “Trust me, don’t ever fucking get married.” The honeymooners, fresh out of law school, tell themselves (and the old-timers) that they’re different. They are privileged to be here, thrilled really. “We have the best job in the world,” they assure one another. The statistics don’t apply to them; they ignore the hard data, along with the anecdotal misery permeating the air.

  If you really look at it with your eyes open, it’s hard to deny that the job takes something from you. You will look older than your peers at law firms. You will not be able to afford the same moisturizers, gyms, and clothes that are the first line of defense against aging. You will become familiar with the term “loan forbearance.” You will, in all likelihood, drink a great deal more than you should. All of your colleagues will reinforce on a nightly basis that this is not a problem; they will be standing next to you at the same bar, on a Monday, five whiskeys deep, pretending the suffering they’ve witnessed all day, week, month, year, last five years, doesn’t tuck them in every night. You will smoke. Even at $13 a pack, your colleagues will always be well supplied and willing to share, no questions asked. They will know that you need a smoke and will often offer before any request is ever made; they enjoy saying “One of those days, huh?”

  You will get angry. Here’s a twenty-minute snapshot: Mr. Santos, my client, an elderly drug addict with AIDS, is escorted to a holding cell behind the courtroom. Santos is old and looks much older. He’s an addict, takes methadone, and was caught with someone else’s methadone bottle. That’s not legal, even though there are several non-nefarious explanations for why it could have happened (e.g., maybe he was dope sick and didn’t have his bottle on him). He’s been in jail since he was arraigned five days earlier; this is his second appearance before the judge. The inside of his file distills his sad story into a few chicken-scratched acronyms: AIDS, MH issues 730, Undoc Mex, Meth Px, Prog. That’s a lot of good stuff. Gives me a good Come on angle with the DA. “Guy has AIDS, mental health issues, has a methadone prescription. He’s done a drug program in the past, gets treatment and medical attention through a program. Can’t we do time served?” I leave the illegal immigration status out.

  “Will he take it?”

  “Imagine he will; can I have it?”

  “If he’ll take it today. Onetime offer.”

  “Fine.”

  “Counsel, you’re up,” the court officer tells me once Santos has been secured behind the bars, and I go into the back to deliver the good news through a Spanish interpreter. “You want to go home? I got you time served.” Bad news: he doesn’t really get it and I have five minutes, max, to make him understand what the deal is before the court officers march him in front of the judge. That’s usually more than enough time to run through the magic words we have to say before the judge will accept the plea: It’s a yes, no, yes, yes, yes.

  Do you understand that you are pleading guilty to a crime and as a result of this plea you will have a criminal record? Yes.

  Is anyone forcing you or coercing you to take this plea? No.

  Have you had adequate time to speak with your lawyer about this plea? Yes.

  If you are an undocumented immigrant, do you understand that your plea may have collateral immigration consequences? Yes.

  Is it true that on January 12, 2010, in the County of Kings, you did knowingly possess a controlled substance, to wit, methadone without a prescription from a physician? Yes.

  Sentence imposed. Time served.

  Cuffs come off. Go in peace and sin no more.

  At least that’s how it should go. Mr. Santos’s plea was routine—the judge had undoubtedly taken thirty or forty just like it by that point in the late afternoon. I’d probably stood up on six or seven of them that morning alone without a hitch. “If you get confused, don’t answer. Tug on my sleeve and ask me. You understand? Entiendes?”

  “Sí, entiendo.”

  “What do you do if you get confused? Blank stare. You tug on me, okay? You ask me, okay? You don’t answer, okay? It’s okay to ask me, but don’t answer any question you don’t understand, okay? It’s going to be yes, no, yes, yes, yes. I will tell you the answer in your ear. Understand?”

  “Sí, entiendo.” But Mr. Santos fucks it up in front of the judge.

  “Have you had enough time to speak to your lawyer?”

  “No.”

  Shit. Technically, this is true—that he has bungled up the five magic words is irrefutable evidence of that. He’d been afforded five minutes to comprehend 500 words of legalese in a foreign language.

  As soon as he says “No,” I grab his arm and say, “Yes. Yes, you have.”

  “My lawyer?” he asks the judge.

  “I’m not taking the plea!” the judge announces with some gusto.

  “Judge, if you’d just…He was confused for a moment, the interpreter has translated the question again. He understands. He wants the plea. He is ready to allocute if you’ll just give him—”

  “Not taking the plea, Counsel. Next case. Court officers take charge.” Gavel.

  It’s Friday afternoon, and we took too long. The judge is cranky and wants to go home; that’s the real reason Mr. Santos will spend his weekend on Rikers. Five minutes of the judge’s time was not worth sparing an elderly drug addict with AIDS three more days in jail. Sorry, Mr. Santos. See you Monday and we’ll try again!

  No time to wallow. I can think about whether or not I fucked that up later, because Mr. Prescott is waiting to take his own plea: fifteen days for shoplifting batteries or deodorant or whatever else he could lift from Rite Aid that has some street value. Maybe he’s buying drugs with it. Maybe food. Maybe both. Either way,
the folks at Rite Aid are out $35. And you, Mr. Prescott, can take the plea now and be out next week or reject it and risk them raising it to a month or forty-five days.

  “I’m going home?” he asks before I can even establish whether he remembers my face or not. Santos has been swapped out with him and he’s now standing in the holding cell.

  “We have an offer, but unfortun—”

  “Time served? I’ll take time served. We can do that.”

  “I know you would, but that’s not the offer. They’re offering you fifteen. You’ve been locked up five days already, they automatically shave off five days for good time, so you have…five more days.”

  “Man, fuck that. How come they can’t give me time served? Or an ACDC?”

  He means an ACD: adjournment in contemplation of dismissal—it’s essentially a dismissal.

  “You know they aren’t going to give you an ACD, man.”

  “Okay, time served, then.”

  “They won’t do time served.”

  “Can you just ask them?”

  “I did ask them. Of course I asked them. Ten times probably I asked them. What do you think I’m doing here?”

  “You right. You right. Can you just ask ’em again?”

  “You think they’ll cave on eleven? We aren’t doing better than fifteen days. That’s five more days—you can do that.”

  “I’m not taking that shit. I’ll do time served.”

  “Of course you would. I’d like them to kick us a little money too, but we aren’t going to get that either. You want fifteen? I know you don’t want it, but will you take it?”

  “Ask the judge.”

  “I will ask the judge. Of course I will. But this judge is a dick, and I promise you he won’t do it.”

  “Try.”

  “The only try I can do is say ‘Will you consider ten, judge?’ and he’ll say ‘No,’ and then he’ll ask if we’ll take fifteen. It’s a huge roll of the dice if you reject it today—next appearance they might want a month. Bite your lip, man.”