You Got Nothing Coming

by Jimmy A. Lerner

  "Whassup, O.G.!" The Bone and I exchange the cute little prison handshake that Kansas taught me. We clench our right fists, tap knuckles against each other, followed by three quick taps of one fist on top of the other. This ritual possibly has its origins in the playground game of "Rock, paper, scissor, match," where both guys are the Rock. Sometimes I feel like a social anthropologist on Mars.

  "Whassup, Bone— when did you get out of the Fish Tank?"

  "Ain't been here but two days. Ain't no black fish come on out with y'all?"

  "I don't think so, but I was strained up in the Shoe for a few days, so I'm not sure."

  "Heard 'bout dat, O.G." The Bone is glancing around, assuring himself that all the dawgs are still entranced by their TVs and boom boxes. He whispers something that sends a chill rocketing up my spine.

  "Best watch yo back, O.G. Big Hungry say you be up on his bitch in the muthafuckin' Shoe. The Hunger be layin' in the cut fo you— fo sho! Talkin' 'bout peelin' yo onion."

  "Who told you that?"

  The Bone hesitates, adjusting his shower cap. "Check it out, O.G. I ain't lookin' to catch nothin' but pa-role, know what I'm sayin'? We all just be knowin', dass all."

  A TV commercial break is the signal for some of the dawgs to come over and greet me. The Bone puts his headphones back on and retreats to his bunk.

  A skinhead who seems to be held together by sinew and spit is standing at the foot of my bed.

  "You gotta be the O.G.— Kansas says you're a Righteous Con. I'm Snake." Snake extends a clenched fist and we do the little knuckle dance thing.

  Snake has a spiderweb tattoo, which is not particularly unusual in here. What is unusual— and alarming— is that this spiderweb is tattooed on the Snake's face. The web begins at the top of his forehead and spins down over and around both eyes, giving a raccoon impression.

  It's a bit disconcerting until you get used to it.

  "When's Kansas hitting the yard? I hear that punk Stranger got him strained up in the Fish Tank pending some bullshit Dirt investigation."

  I tell Snake everything I know, which is nothing. Jerry Springer comes back and Snake turns to cheer on the berserking guests. The show's theme is "When Sons and Mothers Are Lovers." It is a big hit in the dorm, where everyone calls everyone else a motherfucker.

  I notice something on the back of Snake's shaved head that completely disorients me for a moment— two golf ball-size tattoos, inches apart. They are eyeballs. The Snake literally has eyes in the back of his head!

  And they are staring at me. This is almost as creepy as contemplating the Hunger laying in the cut for me somewhere.

  And peeling my poor onion.

  The ice broken, a few of the other woods kick it with me, all of them asking about Kansas before racing back to Jerry, who is interviewing one of the mothers. Mom is wearing a tight black miniskirt, legs splayed in her chair, apparently striving for a Sharon Stone effect.

  "Fucking slut!" Snake screams.

  "Scandalous bitch!" yell the dawgs.

  T-Bone strolls down to the end of the dorm to join the two black youngsters who are also screaming at the TV.

  "Tore-up old ho!" they shout.

  "Nasty-ass be-yatch!" they scream at the TV.

  "She be nasty but that bitch got ass!"

  The woods are urging Jerry to "kick the bitch to the curb!" A couple of boom boxes are cranked up to drown out the TVs. In retaliation the TVs are turned up even higher.

  Our resident ese, a quiet young man with intense dark eyes, is trying in vain to read a book. He turns a page and shakes his head in dismay, aghast by the depraved, incestuous depths this gringo trash can sink to. The ese's name is tattooed on his neck— Loco.

  "Qué putas!" Loco murmurs before putting his own headphones on for protection. It is obvious to me that I will have to go to the store and buy a radio and headphones just to keep from going insane in here.

  I have an hour before I have to report to the kitchen, and the yard is open. Workers can come and go as they please. Like they're about something, if you know what I'm saying.

  The crash gate at the end of the corridor is open. So is the double front door of the unit. The adolescent-looking C.O. is studying his Hustler. I can just push the front door open. Amazing to me. I feel free.

  Then I'm on the yard, on my way to the store. Just like your average Joe Six-Pack on the streets who decides to pull into 7-Eleven for some chips and a brew or two. Or so I try to convince myself as I cross the yard, watching out for a certain Big Hungry Bastard layin' in the cut for me.

  I'm not completely clear on the concept of having one's onion peeled.

  But I suspect it ain't nothin' nice.

  * * *

  I do ninety days in the kitchen, mostly scooping clumps of green Jell-O or mashed potatoes onto plastic trays for patently ungrateful customers. It is the not-so-secret dream of almost every kitchen worker to find another job on the yard. Not because the kitchen work is particularly onerous— the Bone says "it ain't no thang"— but because escaping from the kitchen means also escaping from the Inferno of unit 1. Unit 1 is the only cellblock— excuse me, "housing unit"— without the cozy eight-by-six cells that most convicts prefer. Cell living, as opposed to "dormitory-style" life, is considered "preferred housing" by both the prison administrators and the cons.

  All fish are required to do a minimum of ninety days in the kitchen before being free to seek other prison employment. The phone company called it "pursuing outside opportunities" whenever someone was forced out or fired. The official company announcement was always the same, except for the names and the job title:

  "Marvin Finkelbinder, Vice President of Human Resources Quality Reengineering, has elected, effective January 1, to pursue outside opportunities." Marvin would be calling us in a week boasting about the plethora of profitable outside opportunities inundating his home fax before casually inquiring if we knew of any inside opportunities for an outside "consultant." Of course, he had nothing coming from us.

  The instant that news of Marvin's demise was announced, all the still cushily employed corporate dawgs would snicker at the water coolers. "Hear about old Marv? You mean the Finkster? What happened? He's history! Outside opportunities? You got it." And we'd all feel pretty good and smug about ourselves to have survived the latest downsizing, right-sizing, streamlining, restructuring, or the highly feared "market repositioning."

  Oh how we strutted about the corporate corridors like we were about something! I often obtain the same empowering sensation by reading the obituary columns. Particularly the death notices of my betters— who are seemingly legion. I am convinced it's only a matter of time and some unfocused scientific research until all situationally depressed people are taken off Prozac prescriptions and given subscriptions to the obituary sections of their local papers.

  * * *

  I like to get my exercise and entertainment by walking in endless circles around the yard, counting my steps. It's no longer oppressively hot and it beats kicking it in the Inferno with the Jerry Springer Fan Club.

  There is a bank of phones just outside the chow hall where the Yard Rats love to swarm around the young fish trying to call home. The Yard Rats here are either the weight-pile pumped-up skinheads or their first cousins, the woods. Most woods are just a haircut and a tattoo or two removed from a state of skinheadedness.

  This is how the Pressure works.

  A fish fresh from the Tank named Timmy finally gets his pale and trembling hand on a free phone. This is after he has paid a "toll" to the Yard Rats for the privilege of walking in their yard. He also has to pay the skinhead Phone Posse first if he wants to actually use the phone.

  It's the same economic principle we employed at the phone company by charging customers for both "access" (dial tone) and "usage" (toll). Except we called it "market bundling." A few of our detractors (mostly nutcase "consumer" groups) called it "predatory and monopolistic practices." Sometimes the phone lines of these public interest "guardi
ans" would mysteriously stop working. Then they would frantically call 611 demanding instant restoral of service.

  You can bet they were high on our priority repair list! Ha! They had nothing coming! Go whine to the Public Utilities Commission. Punk-ass bitches!

  But I digress. The Phone Posse would pretend to wait on line behind Little Timmy so they could overhear each tremulous word to Mommy. As instructed, Little Timmy beseeches Mommy to send him some more money. He tells her it's for store items like stamps and envelopes so he can write her more often.

  He doesn't tell her the money is really for his daily yard toll. (A monthly fee can be negotiated at an attractive discount.) He also doesn't tell her it's for his cell or bunk rental or for his seat in the chow hall or his "life insurance policy."

  If Mommy questions why Little Timmy needs five hundred dollars a week for some stamped envelopes, if Mommy appears to be balking, one of Timmy's new friends might get on the line. He would politely explain to Mom that if she desires to have Timmy returned to her one day without an asshole the size of Texas, she should seriously consider contributing to his health and welfare.

  Sometimes— lots of times— this works. Unless this happens to be one of the calls randomly monitored by the prison. All calls are recorded but few are monitored. Or Mommy might take it into her head to call up the prison. She tells the whole shabby story to an assistant warden, who has only heard the music of these violins about five thousand times before. The A.W. assures Mommy he will immediately handle this outrageous incident and eventually refers it to the Dirt for investigation.

  The crack investigators of the Dirt review all of the phone tapes for the date and time in question. About two months later, decisive Dirt action is taken.

  Little Timmy is summoned to Dirt Headquarters, a wing in the administrative building. Timmy's visit is instant public knowledge in the yard. Sergeant Stanger sits a highly agitated Timmy down. He then delivers a friendly, fatherly lecture, a "tough love" kind of talk, which is overheard by the ubiquitous Skell mopping the office next door.

  "What are you?" Stanger says. "Some little punk-ass bitch? A snitch-ass punk whining and puling on his mommy's titty!"

  After a few minutes of tough love, Timmy breaks down, sobs like a self-fulfilling prophecy, and finally snitches out the Phone Posse and the Yard Rats.

  Stanger pats him on the back and offers a few final words of advice. "Be a fucking man! You did the crime, now do the time! Stand up for your little punk-ass self! Now get the fuck out of my office, you little snitch piece a shit!"

  Nobody likes snitches in prison.

  Timmy's "friends" visit him that evening at his bunk in C wing of the Inferno. Didja snitch? the dawgs want to know. Didja rat us out? Timmy swears up and down and sideways that he didn't snitch on anyone, would never try to get nobody crossed out and yada, yada, yada until the boys get completely nauseated and start slocking the crap out of him.

  A couple of the sickest dawgs then help Little Timmy into bed. They join him.

  Later they will brag about having administered a "snitch inoculation"— a series of penile injections up Little Timmy's already battered butt. No one in C wing saw nothing. Heard nothing. It wasn't their lookout, y'unnerstand?

  In the morning the unit C.O. makes his rounds through the wings doing the six o'clock head count. He notices that Little Timmy can't get out of bed. He is less than responsive to simple sentences such as "What's your name and back number?" Timmy, his grill busted and dome dented, gets to visit the infirmary for a two-week vacation.

  Upon his release the Dirt make sure he P.C.'s up for the duration of his two-year sentence. The protective custody cellblock, adjacent to the Shoe, is nothing more than a twenty-four-seven solitary confinement lockdown unit. It is populated by Chomos, serial rapists, snitches, rape victims, and some of the more irritating J-Cats whose symptoms are not sufficiently smothered by Thorazine.

  Timmy's mom will receive an official-looking form letter assuring her of the "intensive and ongoing investigation," that "swift and certain measures" have already been taken to ensure Timmy's safety and rehabilitative progress.

  The yard swims with Timmys— fish food for the sharks. And more arrive every day even smaller and younger than Timmy, courtesy of the current fashion of trying and sentencing children as adults.

  In all fairness to the investigative prowess of the Dirt, there are cases where the phone-taping system has yielded some fruitful results. Just a year ago the Bone made his famous escape. Shortly after being sent from this prison to a minimum security conservation camp, the Bone just walked away from his duties as a firefighter. He figured he didn't start the muthafucka and, besides, it wasn't his lookout.

  An hour following T-Bone's abrupt departure, the Dirt reviewed hours of his recorded phone conversations with his girlfriend, Lucindreth, in Las Vegas. The Bone was indiscreet enough to confide his escape plan to her, including the address of his favorite crack house in Vegas "where I fittin' to lay up." The Bone says he only enjoyed a couple of hours of freedom, chillin' with Lucindreth and a pipe in the crack house before he was taken back into custody.

  He insists he did have time for sex with Lucindreth. He smiles shyly when he tells us he "got some stanky on the hang-low."

  The Bone is convinced the police violated his free speech rights. He spends all his free time in the law library, where he stares at the covers of big, intimidating books about the First Amendment and applicable case law.

  He tells anyone who will listen that it's all about "a muthafuckin' 'spiracy to silence the blap man."

  No one listens.

  'Cause the Bone got caught.

  And now he got nothin' comin'!

  * * *

  Sooner or later all new fish receive a "Heart Check" from the Yard Rats. It is a test of the inmate's willingness to physically fight back. It is considered a test of courage here.

  Timmy flunked his Heart Check. Stanger's tough-love speech to him was actually very much in alignment with the Code of the Stand-up Con. The fish who resist threats and extortion, who valiantly fight back and don't snitch when they are beaten down, are granted that all-important Respect on the yard. Having survived the Heart Check, they are frequently inducted into one of the many social clubs where they can proudly participate in the infliction of organized misery on fish with heart problems.

  Some fish that flunk the Heart Check and have no money are permitted to work off their rental and insurance overhead by serving as "Yard Tricks." They look out for the police or rival gangs. They keister balloons or even tattoo guns up their obliging assholes. They are employed to gather market intelligence on incoming vans of fish and J-Cats. Yard Tricks can be seen hustling across the yard carrying some righteous stand-up dawg's dirty clothes to the laundry or sweeping and scrubbing out the cells of the Shotcallers.

  In the corporation we called these guys gofers, or worse. You could identify them on the organization chart by their own little boxes just below some Executive Shotcaller. They would have titles like "Executive Assistant."

  My latest home, the Inferno, and the rest of the prison are run by a loose coalition of woods and skinheads known collectively as the Car. They even have an organizational mission statement of sorts: "If you're not in the Car, then you're out of the Car." The statement could use a bit of wordsmithing (a skill for which I was legendary at the phone company), but it essentially conveys the underlying threat of being kicked to the curb. To pursue outside opportunities.

  If Kansas is the chairman and CEO of the Car, then Snake is his chief operating officer. The Snake allocates, monitors, and controls the revenue-producing market segments— the phones, the store thefts, laundry, prison industry scams, and the very lifeblood of the Car, the drug trade.