You Got Nothing Coming

by Jimmy A. Lerner

  I'm idly wondering if this is what my friends at Alcoholics Anonymous refer to as a "bottom" when I'm shoved from behind and we are herded in front of the steel doors.

  "Lower access!" shouts one of the guards. Two sets of sliding steel doors open sequentially, and sixteen new fish are marched inside the Fish Tank.

  For a moment I'm blinded by the swift transition from the sunlight to the cavernous gloom of the Fish Tank. Like stepping from the light of a dazzling day into the darkness of a movie theater. Except this theater is broiling hot and filled with the stench of sweat, urine, and something worse— the thick oppressive odor of fear and despair.

  Forty cells on each floor, or "tier," are arrayed in a compressed horseshoe pattern around a lower-tier staff office and the upper-tier Plexiglas-enclosed gun bubble. A steel handrail runs around the upper-tier catwalk, probably as a reminder to convicts that there is an unpleasant thirty-foot drop to the concrete floor below. If the fall doesn't kill you, I suspect the fetid puddles of water on the floor might.

  Once my eyes adjust, I spot one of the reasons for the stygian ambience. Most of the fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling are burned out. All of the steel cell doors are marked in foot-high black numbers, cells 1 to 40 on the lower tier and 41 to 80 above. A large communal shower stall takes up a portion of the central lower tier, directly opposite the lower guard station and Bubblecop's pod directly over it.

  "Get behind the red line!" Bubblecop screams down at us, angling the barrel of the shotgun down for emphasis. We all step back from the open door of the staff office where a thick red line is painted on the floor a few feet in front of the door. Like mindless moths to a lightbulb, we'd all been drawn to the cool flood of air-conditioning washing out from the door.

  A middle-aged cop with a crew cut, a clipboard, and the approximate dimensions of a fire hydrant emerges from his cool sanctuary.

  "Listen up! Most of you ain't real fish— you been down before— so you know the drill." Here the cop pauses to make eye contact with several of the dawgs from the Group W bench. "Welcome back, dickheads," he says sweetly, flashing a grotesque parody of a smile.

  "Before I give you losers your cell assignments, you're all going to shower— with disinfectant— then pick up your state issue and proceed next door for intake processing. You slow-play me and I will personally fuck you. You horseplay in the shower and you will be shot. Now… MOVE!" We all shuffle toward the showers as if still encumbered by the cuffs and chains, everyone conscious of the Bubblecop with the shotgun.

  "Stop right there… now strip! Leave your mangy-ass clothes on the floor— you'll get them back later." The group striptease is accomplished with much cursing, groaning, and the selling of wolf tickets.

  Then the screaming begins.

  All around us and above us, convicts are standing and shouting from behind their cell doors, faces pressed up against the square glass windows. The spectacle of sixteen naked, sweating bodies has apparently inflamed the current guests, inspiring them to scream out their respective welcomes.

  "Yo, fish! Love your shoes." Please don't let him be referring to my wing tips.

  "Hey, bitch, come on up to my crib when you done— I got something for you."

  "Don't drop the soap, dawg!"

  "Hey, hey, flaco! You a pitcher or a catcher, homes?"

  "Yo, fish— yeah, you, skinny-ass with the glasses! Y'ever been hit in the shitter?"

  I would like to presume they are all just glad to see us.

  The squat crew-cut cop— STRUNK, according to his little plastic nameplate— positions himself and his clipboard between the shower stall and the queue of naked fish. We're all trying, without much success, to avoid stepping into the puddles of brown water that are fed from the overflowing toilets behind the cell doors. From every third or fourth lower-tier cell, like little toilet tributaries, the sludge streams out from under the doors.

  "Control!" Strunk yells up to Bubblecop, who peers down through a narrow horizontal opening in the glass.

  "What's up?" Bubblecop asks, kneeling down with his shotgun in an effort to hear Strunk above the bedlam of convict shouts coming from the locked cells.

  "Porters!" shouts Strunk, and Bubblecop rises, takes a couple of steps back to a huge desk console, and pushes some buttons. Cell doors 1 through 5 are electronically cracked open. Ten "porters"— convicts clad in blue jeans, blue work shirts, and white tennis sneakers— spill out from the cells and assemble in front of a long steel table set up against the wall adjacent to the showers.

  "Sixteen fish setups," orders Strunk. From cardboard boxes beneath the table the porters start pulling out Day-Glo-orange coveralls (no white paper suits, thank God), gray blankets, towels, sheets, soap bars, and small plastic bottles of "disinfectant" shampoo. To each separate pile a plastic coffee mug is added. A small plastic comb, a tube of toothpaste, and a toothbrush are dropped into the mugs.

  Incredibly the plastic cups are designer mugs with vertical gold jailhouse bars against a deep blue background. HARD TIME is printed over the bars and below that, in smaller print, BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE. I love it. It's the first sign of prison humor.

  "Sporks," says Strunk, using the same tone a surgeon might employ when demanding a scalpel. The porters start dropping plastic orange spoons with forklike prongs into the cups. Sporks? A combination spoon and fork?

  Go figure.

  "Skell! Lay it down for these fish." An emaciated porter with a shaved head and a gray stubble of stunted beard shambles to the head of the table. His age is what a medical coroner might describe as "indeterminate," after issuing a death certificate to a corpse that has washed up under a bridge. Strunk hands Skell the clipboard, then disappears into the air-conditioned staff office.

  Skell surveys the new fish with the practiced eye of an old street hustler before favoring us with a ghastly, toothless grin.

  "All right now," announces Skell, obviously pleased to be in charge of something. "You fish are gonna step up to the table, put your clothes in the plastic bags— make sure you write your name on the bag with the marker. I ain't lookin' to get crossed out by the Man behind some fish be saying he got ripped off by the porters— y'unnerstan' what I'm telling you?"

  Kansas, who has apparently heard enough, steps over the red line. If not for the tattoo mural on his back and chest (a bare-chested woman astride a motorcycle covers his back), he would look like a Greek statue (on steroids) come to life. The neck swastika further detracts from this classical image.

  "Fuck you, Skell! We unnerstan' that you ain't nothing but a punk-ass porter, skid-row motherfucker, so quit trying to act like you're about something."

  "GET THE FUCK BACK BEHIND THE RED LINE!" Bubblecop is on his feet, the shotgun muzzle protruding through the opening. Kansas leisurely gets back in line, slow-playing Bubblecop.

  A clearly chastened Skell pretends to study the clipboard before resuming his little orientation speech. His closely shaven skull is studded with large scabs and bright red patches.

  "Hey, Kansas! We missed you, dawg! What's up?" Skell flashes some gums at the giant and then starts picking at one of his skull scabs with a broken black fingernail. His efforts are quickly rewarded by a generous flow of blood and pus which trickles down his forehead, slowing briefly at the barrier of eyebrows before resuming its disgusting downward journey into the hepatic-yellow eyes.

  Skell mops up this mess with a swipe of his blue shirtsleeve, just as casual as a jogger wiping sweat from his brow. The dawgs from the Group W bench and the newcomers from the Washoe County van all go crazy.

  "That's sick, dawg! Damn— you ain't touching my shit."

  "Fuck, dawg! You are one foul motherfucker!"

  "That's outta line, dawg!"

  "Way outta line!"

  The Bone, who has been busily renewing his old gang ties with the Washoe convicts, all of whom are black, shakes his shower cap in dismay.

  "That's one nasty-ass white boy!"

  This remark ignites a c
orresponding black chorus from the back of the shower line.

  "Muthafuckin' Skell ain't sheeit! I be knowing his pale ass from county— got the muthafuckin' AIDS or somethin'."

  "Whatever Mighty Whitey got, it ain't nothin' nice."

  "That's what I'm talkin' about— punk touch my shit and I gonna bust a fuckin' grape."

  "Nigger, puh-leese!! You couldn't bust a grape in Napa wid jo cleats on!"

  All the dawgs, black and white, with the exception of your clueless narrator (bust a grape?), explode in laughter, prompting Bubblecop to scream "SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

  An unperturbed Skell resumes his speech, the fingers of his left hand absentmindedly continuing to explore the scabrous topography of his skull.

  "All right now, everybody gonna pick up one towel, a bar of soap, and a bottle of this lice-killer shampoo. You got to rub this shampoo shit all over your dome and your skin— unnerstan' what I'm sayin'? If you don't use the whole bottle, the cops will make you do it again." Skell glances up at Bubblecop as if to confirm this threat.

  Bubblecop starts shouting orders.

  "Pick up your shit! Four at a time— MOVE!"

  We surge forward, trampling the red stripe on the concrete floor. Skell and the other porters take up positions behind the table, Skell bargaining with each convict before handing over the towels.

  "Whatchu need for the Wranglers, dawg?"

  "Kick me down a can of Bugler tobacco, dawg."

  "No Bugler this week, bro. How 'bout half a bag of 4 Aces?"

  "Fuck that half-bag bullshit— I look like some fuckin' fish to you? How 'bout two bags of 4 Aces and a jar of Folgers for the Wranglers and my wedding ring?"

  "Lemme see the ring, dawg."

  "Hey, bro, that's eighteen-karat gold— straight up!"

  "Aiight, dawg, gimme the ring."

  I reach the table and start stuffing the suit into the bag when Skell hisses at me, holding the towel just out of my reach.

  "Whatchu need for them shoes, dawg?"

  "Nothing today, thank you, I'm fine."

  "Fine?" Skell looks like I just slapped him in the face. "You talkin' outta the side of your neck, dawg?"

  "Excuse me?" What is this repugnant creature talking about? My hand involuntarily goes to my neck, though.

  "Fine?" Skell now tries to look amused, his yellow eyes flickering over his fellow scavengers, enlisting them in his little game. "How you gonna be fine, dawg? 'Less you talkin' some sideways shit. Fine? Hello! You're in fucking prison, dawg!" This cracks up the porters as well as some of the fish. Skell tries again.

  "How 'bout a full bag of 4 Aces, dawg, or maybe you don't smoke? Tell you what— I'll give you twenty stamps for the shoes." I shake my head, considering, as the naked dawgs behind me start muttering impatiently.

  A frustrated Skell hisses once more. "Whatchu want, dawg?"

  What do I want? I want to not be standing naked in a puddle of convict piss, waiting to take a group shower with a bunch of criminals. I want a time machine, travel back a year, before all this madness began. I want a trip to Disneyland, a bowl of ice cream. I want to wake up in my own bed back in Danville, California, and laugh about this obvious nightmare.

  I want to hold, to hug, my little girls.

  "Can you get me some paper and a pen?" I ask.

  Skell is momentarily astonished but quickly recovers. "Pens are contraband in the Fish Tank, dawg. How 'bout I hook you up with a pencil and, say, half a pad of writing paper?"

  "Deal," I say, snatching the towel, soap, and shampoo.

  The shower produces only cold water (why am I not surprised?), but given the suffocating heat in the Fish Tank, I am grateful for it. Three of the Group W dawgs who preceded me into the shower are shrieking in pain as the disinfectant burns eyes and skin.

  The convict catcalls rain down on us from upper-tier cells.

  "That white fish got ass!"

  "Dat's what I'm talkin' about— par-tay tonight!"

  "Yo, fish! Fish! Dey fittin' to be a party tonight!"

  "A muthafuckin' par-tay in yo butt!"

  "In yo mouth!"

  "And all yo friends is coming!"

  Whatchu need, dawg? I look up through the veil of ice water, check on Bubblecop's position— he's back to studying the desk console— then pour the disinfectant down the drain. Body lice will probably be the least of my problems.

  Whatchu want, dawg?

  Right now, I just want to die.

  * * *

  Freshly showered, deloused, and resplendent in our orange jumpsuits, we are marched by Strunk through another set of sliding steel doors and into the fish processing area. It's similar to the bullpen in the county jail— a couple of benches for the fish, five World War I-vintage desks manned by convict clerks in blue, a separate area for photo ID and fingerprinting. The clerks are all pecking away at ancient Royal typewriters. The upper tier is apparently reserved for middle management, with two small glassed-in offices (presumably air-conditioned) for the intake sergeant and unit caseworker.

  The ubiquitous Bubblecop, having shifted from a view of the shower to a new perch overlooking the benches, has upgraded his weaponry. Possibly bored by the limited mayhem potential of the shotgun, he has switched to an M-16 rifle.

  The moment we entered the bullpen all the black convicts took seats on one bench and Kansas and his all-white choir claimed the other bench at the bottom of the steel staircase. Once again I was squashed between Kansas and one of the cookie-cutter no-chin cons.

  After a few minutes the intake sergeant emerged from his upper-tier office and stood at the railing, gazing down at us like the pope surveying the throngs of faithful in St. Peter's Square. Except the sergeant's eyes do not radiate Christian love and forgiveness. Something more akin to loathing.

  The intake sergeant is an unimpressive figure with an amazingly unkempt bush of a black beard and a crumpled khaki uniform bearing evidence of a moist and hasty lunch. If not for some teeth, the sergeant would have fit in very nicely on our bench.

  With an impatient, very unpapal wave of his hand, the sergeant signaled for silence from the benches.

  "Listen up, fuck sticks! This is the only advice you are going to get in the joint."

  "Fuck sticks?" Kansas was indignant. "That's outta line, dawgs. That's straight-up disrespectful!"

  "Po-lease be trippin'," whispered the Bone.

  The sergeant glared down at the benches till the dawgs hushed. "Rule number one," he continued, "y'all got nothin' coming! Rules number two to two thousand— see rule number one." The sergeant paused to let us bask in this bit of penological cleverness.

  "My name is Sergeant Grafter. I am a correctional officer— not a fucking prison guard and not a cop. You will address me as 'C.O.' or 'Sergeant.' Your other hosts, including C.O. Strunk here, you will address as 'C.O.'…"

  C.O. Strunk, who may have only heard this speech two thousand times before, stifled a yawn and sat down behind one of the war surplus desks.

  "…'cause you are convicts! Your job here is to lie, cheat, steal, extort, get tattoos, take drugs, sell drugs, shank, sock, fuck, and suck each other. Just don't let us catch you— that's our job." Grafter then consulted his clipboard with obvious distaste, while I reflected on my presumed job with fresh clarity.