You Got Nothing Coming

by Jimmy A. Lerner

  "Cain't a muthafucka get some privacy?" the Bone says as C-Note sits beside him. "C-Note, you're sweatin' my spot! I'm fittin' to read my bitch's letter here."

  "Da-yam, Bone! That be-yatch Lucindreth ain't nothin' but a crack ho!"

  "Doan be dissin' mines, C!" The Bone is removing his shower cap— always a danger signal.

  C-Note, untrained by the phone company in discerning "minimal environmental cues," snatches the letter from Bone's hand.

  "Ain't dissin' shit, Bone. I just be tellin' you Lucindreth suck a cock for a rock! All the brothers in Vegas be knowin' that."

  The Bone's fist moves so fast that by the time C-Note sees it he's flying backward off the Bone's tray, wondering what kind of freight train just crushed his once-lovely nose.

  C-Note's Rasta dreadlocks hit the concrete floor— hard.

  Kind of a crunching sound, like an egg meeting a baseball bat in midswing. "My bad," says the Bone.

  Very bad for C-Note, who is sprawled on his back unconscious, his nose pumping out a blood geyser that would have impressed the captain of the Exxon Valdez.

  We all scramble off our bunks, crowding around the fallen C-Note, careful not to get blood on our state-issue white tennis sneakers— bad for the sneakers.

  "Fucking Bone! Ya peeled his fucking onion!" exclaims the Snake, who is shaking his shaved head in admiration, the eyeballs in back of his head watching the door for the Man, his spiderwebbed eyeballs in front surveying the puddle of blood around C-Note's head.

  Tooshay is backing away in horror. "You cracked his dome, T! You kilt his ass, fo sho!"

  "Nah," drawls a highly relaxed Bone. "That nigger got hisself a hard haid— y'all know how he is."

  Scud comes over and prods C-Note in the grill with his foot. Actually it's more like a kick in the ribs. "Fuck— he ain't breathing, dawgs. Now we got the fucking heat coming down on all our asses."

  Loco takes a quick look at C-Note and pronounces him muerto.

  The Bone differs. "Nah, Loco, that nigger be too ignorant to even find his way to dead. Nigger got up in mines! I tol' C not to be gettin' up in mines when I gots a letter from my bitch."

  Every cellblock has a Shotcaller, and Snake is ours. We now all defer to his proven leadership skills and experience.

  Snake looks down at the flattened C-Note, who is starting to resemble a bloody black Gumby. Snake kicks C's grill. No response.

  "Fuck him!" decides our leader. "He was way outta line, dissin' the Bone's bitch. Motherfucker got nothing coming from us— it's C.O.P.!"

  The standard "convict operating procedure" for a fight inside the cellblock is to strip the loser, toss him in the shower, turn on the water, and then start yelling for C.O. assistance. Just an accident… motherfucker musta slipped in the shower— clumsy-ass fool!

  In a splendid display of interracial teamwork, C-Note is swiftly reduced to bare-butt essentials. Most of the dawgs here are not completely unfamiliar with this exercise, having stripped cars, homes, and bodies many times before.

  "Damn! Nasty-ass C-Note got no muthafuckin' shorts," observes Tooshay.

  "Motherfucker got no dick either," says Snake.

  "That's 'cause he's dead," says Scud as he half lifts C-Note under the arms and starts dragging him to the shower. "Your dick shrivels when you die— I saw that on Discovery once."

  "Then you be born dead, Scud," says the Bone, who is still sitting serenely on his bunk, refusing to go anywhere near all that potentially infectious blood.

  "C'mon, Bone, give us a hand— this is your lookout," Snake says.

  The Bone is unmoved and unmoving. "Nigger probably got the muthafuckin' AIDS! And I ain't lookin' to catch nothin' but pa-role, y'unnerstan' what I'm sayin'?"

  "Aiight, Bone. O.G., give me a hand here." Somehow we manage to drag C-Note into the shower. Snake turns on the cold water, directing the showerhead so C-Note receives a steady blast right on his busted nose.

  C-Note doesn't stir.

  Scud starts tripping. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! He's fuckin' dead and we're all going down!" Scud considerately tilts his head away from the body, does that disgusting thing with his thumb over one nostril, and expels a booger against the shower wall.

  "You nasty, Scud— you one real nasty white boy," Tooshay informs him, not for the first time. The jet stream is carrying C-Note's blood down the drain as we all crowd around the shower praying for the resurrection of C-Note.

  "Anybody know first aid? CPR? We gotta get him breathing." Scud also learned this from Discovery. T-Bone has finally decided to join us at the shower to admire his artwork: Still Life Taking Shower.

  "Scud," the Bone says, "you fittin' to put yo mouf on that nigger's nasty lips?" The prospect of this actually happening before his eyes so appalls the germ-crazy Bone that he rushes back to the safety of his bunk.

  Snake is unscrewing the lid off a bottle of bleach. He kneels just outside the jet spray, studying C-Note.

  Scud is intrigued. "What the fuck you gonna do, dawg? Gonna bleach him awake?"

  "The Snake fittin' to bleach him white back to life," puns Tooshay, and we all crack up as Snake pours the bleach (which he later insists was ammonia) directly onto C-Note's mashed face.

  C-Note twitches awake like Lazarus rising. "Muthafucka!" he screams. "You be burning my eyes!" C-Note is scuttling ass-backward away from the deluge of bleach, tries to stand, makes it halfway to his feet before falling facedown on the hard concrete of the shower floor.

  This time it sounds more like an egg meeting a hammer in midswing as C-Note's front teeth shatter and are swept away by the bleached water and down the drain. I am reminded of my grandpa George's reflection: "Whether the hammer hits the egg or the egg hits the hammer, it's always bad for the egg."

  We all race down the corridor to the locked crash gates.

  "Man down! Man down!" we scream at the pimply young cop in the office, who eventually puts down his Soldier of Fortune and coffee and comes to investigate this latest affront to his correctional routine.

  C-Note returns from the infirmary three days later after explaining to a skeptical nurse how a Clorox bottle tripped him in the shower, thereby knocking out his front teeth and bleaching his Rasta locks peckerwood white.

  'Cause C-Note ain't no snitch, he ain't no punk, and he sure ain't fittin' to catch nothin' but parole!

  * * *

  The D-word.

  Ask any convict who has been down a few days for his definition of a "man" and the concept of "disrespect" will surface quicker than stank on shit. Let's use Kansas's definition of a man, since it's illustrative of the prison's general population.

  "A man," Kansas might say, "is someone who tolerates no disrespect! A real man, a stand-up man, seeks out disrespect and destroys it!" Not surprisingly, this Manly Mission Statement keeps all the Real Men in prison very busy, prison being such a fertile incubator for disrespect.

  It also keeps them coming back here. Until the parole system succeeds in obliterating all traces, all minute suggestions, of disrespect on the outside, I suspect the recidivism rate here will remain at over 80 percent.

  What makes the Big D such a formidable foe for the nearly extinct forces of rehabilitation is not so much its pervasiveness as its utter absence of gradation.

  There is no little disrespect. There is no "somewhat" or "mildly" disrespectful, no inadvertent slights, no concept of being accidentally jostled by some dawg in the chow line.

  Many of the dawgs here do not make a distinction between an enemy who tries to "bitch-slap" him and a friend who simply forgets to say "What's up, dawg?" as a yard greeting. It's all disrespect.

  When necessary, the Real Man, the Stand-up Righteous Con, will offer a distinction should someone be foolish enough (never happens) to suggest that "sinking a dick in Timmy's tight little ass" could be construed as "faggot" behavior. The Righteous Dawg would simply laugh at such ignorance because he is a "pitcher," y'unnerstan', not a "catcher."

  And every Righteous Con in the jo
int knows a catcher ain't nothin' but a punk-ass bitch!

  Of course, these manly assertions require a temporary suspension of belief in other convict adages: "Today's pitcher, tomorrow's catcher," or "Today's punk, tomorrow's rapist."

  But as Emerson explained: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…"

  So when some wood suggests I stop bird-dogging his conversation (eavesdropping— one of my many character flaws) or Mr. Toad advises me not to be "getting up in mines" ("mines" in this instance referring to mines bidness— y'unnerstan'?), I respect their wishes.

  Do your own time… or someone will make you do theirs.

  —OLD HEAD SAYING

  The Old Heads are lifers and other convicts who have been down for decades. Sometimes I stop counting my steps in the yard to sit down in the dirt and play chess with them.

  The Old Heads like to talk about the good old days in the joint— the late sixties and the seventies— when the guards ("the pigs!") were the true enemy instead of fellow convicts. When a Convict Code of Honor prevailed because back then, a Real Convict was a "Straight-up, Stand-up Con!"

  The Old Heads have seen everything. Done everything. Just ask them.

  "Attica? Fucking A, dawg! I was doing a double nickel in that fucking joint back in '71 when the Shit Jumped Off— and I'm talkin' about some serious shit, you know what I'm saying? Some serious fucking shit! None of this punk-ass bullshit you see today with faggots and J-Cats and wanna-be gangsta boys getting in the Car and rolling up to some snitch's crib to slock and cock 'im, know what I'm sayin'?"

  All the Old Heads tell you how they did time at Attica when the Shit Jumped Off, making Attica prison the convict equivalent of Woodstock, which was attended by all 50 million or so of my fellow baby boomers.

  Just ask any boomer.

  If the Attica riot was the Old Heads' Woodstock, then they had to have traveled there not by some Day-Glo VW microbus, but by horseback. Because the dream they dwelled in back then, when the Code of the Stand-up Con held sway, when Convict Righteousness ruled, was nothing less than a bright and shining concrete and barbed-wire Camelot of the imagination.

  So I sit in the dirt playing chess with the Old Heads, listening to the stories. Respectfully. Listen as they continually reinvent and refresh the decades of hard time until the past glimmers, if only in their hearts.

  I listen. Because I, too, need a Camelot of the heart.

  * * *

  Big Hungry comes for me in broad daylight. Right in the center of the yard where every guntower cop can see us. He bears down on me like an enraged bull elephant, roaring.

  "O.G.! You been up in mines!" The Hunger is stylin' today, his black silk do-rag covering his tiny head and the gold teeth sparkling in the desert sun.

  Five yards away now. "O.G.! You been sweatin' my bitch! Been up on my Cassie!" Then a mountainous shadow falls over me as the Hunger reaches down to crush my dome. Or onion.

  But I'm not there.

  Smooth and slick as my mop gliding across the Inferno floor, I evade the black tree limb about to crash down on my head. The Hunger is crushing nothing but air.

  Knowing it is suicidal, hopeless, and probably even stupid, I drive my right fist into the Hunger's face, connecting with a gold tooth or two. Very bad for my hand. It has no more effect on Big Hungry than a bee sting on a grizzly. Except to make him even madder.

  The Hunger is lifting me right off my feet— by my neck. A massive right paw pulls back to center a killing shot to my domelights.

  There is a soft, wet, sucking sound. The sound of a muted rattle. It comes from the spot on the back of the Hunger's head where the Snake and Scud have just double-slocked him with a dozen or so C batteries.

  The Hunger melts in slow motion to the dirt, an incredibly poignant reenactment of King Kong toppling slo-mo from the Empire State Building.

  By the time the beast kisses the earth, the Snake is already shoving my petrified ass forward, Scud playing lookout. "Just move, O.G. Gotta get into the Inferno— don't look back!"

  "Fuck, Snake, you killed him! You killed Big Hungry!" Scud wails as we pass through the open gate of the Inferno.

  "You mean we fucking killed him," Snake answers. "You always fucking whine about the same shit, ya know that, Scud? Look at C-Note over here, kicking it with the Bone— wasn't he dead too?"

  The Bone, playing spades with C-Note, removes his shower cap. "Whassup, Snake, O.G.? Who be dead today?"

  In answer, the Inferno C.O. starts shouting "LOCK IT DOWN!" and pushes the button that slides the gate shut. We can hear the cop radios in the yard sputtering "MAN DOWN!"

  Because the Hunger is thoughtful enough not to die, we are only locked down for two days.

  * * *

  The Code of the Stand-up Con holds firm. So far, anyway. None of the dozen or so dawgs who witnessed the Hunger's meltdown have snitched. The guntower cops are too high up to identify anyone.

  The Dirt, led by Sergeant Stanger, once again revel in the opportunity to skin-search us, then tear apart our personal belongings. During the lockdown the Freemen and cops load bag lunches— peanut butter and jelly mostly— onto food carts, which are wheeled to every cellblock.

  The Inferno dawgs view it as a nice vacation from kitchen labor. They spend their free time watching Jerry, Ricki, Montel, and WWF. Convicts are required to wear their headphones when watching TV or listening to music. It is a "housing regulation" that is universally ignored. Headphones would interfere with the communal bonding experience of dissecting the anatomies of the female talk show guests.

  A lot of heated debate takes place over whether a particular female guest "got ass" or don't got ass. Or if she's a "straight-up ho" or just a potential whore.

  "That bitch be all tore up!"

  "She be tore up, Tooshay, but she got some ass!"

  "But the bitch got a nasty ol' leather crotch!"

  "Yo, Scud, check it out! Yo momma be on the TV!"

  "Nah, ain't my momma, Bone— my momma works at the methadone clinic handing out drugs to your momma!"

  "Damn, that's some cold-ass shit, Scud!"

  I get out my little radio and headphones. The radios have clear plastic cases to deter their use as crank or crack stashes. The TVs are also transparent. The vinyl mattresses are not, however, and most convicts keep their drugs and Pert bottles tucked inside them. Shanks are taped under the beds.

  I find a station playing gold— James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, the Beach Boys, my kind of music. I crank the volume up, tighten the headphones, and go time-traveling while pushing my Bic against the lined paper.

  The Bone looks up for a moment from an examination of one of the ho's.

  "Yogee! Always be writing! You the writinest muthafucka I been knowin'… Why you always be writin'?"

  I remove the headphones.

  "Because Bone… because I can't fly."

  * * *

  Big Hungry recovers from the dent in his dome in the infirmary. He refuses to take his J-Cat medication— Haldol— which is supposed to diminish his delusion that everything he desires in life "be mines!" He is shackled and cuffed and shipped back to the Nevada Prison for the Criminally Insane— J wing.