The End of Marking Time

by CJ West

  “What happens if you get caught?”

  Double struggled for an explanation. I knew I wasn’t asking the right guy, but he’d been through the new system and come out ok.

  “You go to court, but it’s no BS like it used to be. You go in and thirty minutes later your trial is over and you get your sentence.”

  “How can they do that?”

  “Mostly because there’s no more juries.”

  “They can’t do that.”

  “You don’t want a jury, man.”

  “Why not?”

  Double thought some more. A lot had happened in four years and he couldn’t possibly sum it up in a two-sentence explanation, but he tried.

  “They let everybody out three years ago, right?”

  I nodded.

  “The people went freaking nuts.”

  “People?”

  “Imagine going to rob some guy’s house. You get inside, but you don’t know you’ve tripped some fancy alarm. You’re going along, looking for some cash or whatever, and bang, you get a bullet in the back of the head.”

  I looked at him sideways. I was more careful than that.

  “Dude, brothers are getting shot every day. People aren’t afraid of going to jail anymore. You break into some guy’s house, he’s not scared of you and he’s not calling the cops. He’s not afraid of some ankle bracelet any more than you are, so he lights you up.”

  “Don’t they get arrested?”

  “Sometimes. But the cops side with whoever owns the property. And even if they do get busted, they get the same as us—reeducation.”

  “Reeducation?”

  “It’s probation on steroids. They’re serious. You’ve got meeting after meeting with these guys who teach you how to live right.”

  Double almost convinced me to go legit, but I didn’t know the first thing about getting a job. I couldn’t flip burgers all day or stand guard over some warehouse all night. Double was convinced there was no other choice, but I was smarter than him. At least I thought I was. There was no real punishment for crime anymore. Why couldn’t he see that? As long as I avoided angry homeowners, I could go right back to work. I didn’t know it yet, but I had a lot to learn about the changes Double hadn’t mentioned.

  Before he left, he showed me pictures of his wife and kid. They had a place not far from my old apartment in West Roxbury. He told me I should move back into the neighborhood and we could play some ball on weekends. He told me I was going to like the way things were.

  “Couldn’t miss,” he said.

  I had my doubts.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Wendell Cummings was the next person through my door that day. He’s leaning against the glass behind me now, waiting for me to finish my story. I know you recognize him because he brought you here. He seems patient now. He started off that way when we first met, but his patience didn’t last.

  The first thing he did that day in the infirmary was fasten a tracking anklet and tell me never to take it off. If it ever came off, even for a minute, I couldn’t go more than five feet from it. It could withstand intense heat. It could be submerged underwater to any depth. “Never, never, never take it off,” he said.

  The nerd was completely serious. He had straight gray hair that hung down in his face. The dress shirt and worn boat shoes made him look like a guy who chose to work in a library where he could keep learning even if they couldn’t pay him much. He was book smart for sure, but there was a major problem with his plan to track my movements— the anklet was so big I could almost kick it off. I wondered if he was that much of an idiot? He must have known what I was thinking because he said, “This is serious, Michael. I’ve taken charge of you. You keep that anklet on and you keep out of trouble. Your trouble is my trouble and I’m not having any of it, understand?”

  I tried not to laugh, but I couldn’t help thinking how idiotic government people were. I’m no imposing figure, especially after lying in bed for four years, but Wendell was barely my size and he was fifty years old. On top of that he looked goofy and uncoordinated. I had been threatened by some scary dudes and let me tell you, Wendell Cummings wasn’t one. He threatened to track me with an ankle bracelet I could slip off anytime I wanted and if I got in trouble, there was absolutely no chance of me going to prison. At that point I couldn’t believe anyone chose to go straight. It made no sense whatsoever, but I had a lot to learn.

  I don’t think Wendell trusted me. I shouldn’t have trusted him when he opened the box he brought with him and gave me a can of peaches and a Coke. I hadn’t had either since I’d been locked up and it looked like a feast. Canned peaches and a Coke weren’t expensive, but when you really want something for a long time, it’s fantastic when you finally get a hold of it. I’d wanted peaches in a can since I was six years old. To me it was a big deal.

  The peaches were still in the open can with heavy syrup and a fork the way I liked them. The Coke was poured into a glass, something I didn’t normally waste time on. As I speared the first peach slice, the snack warned me. It whispered that Wendell Cummings knew me too well, but I didn’t listen.

  He said again, “I put together your program, Michael.”

  He acted like some kind of god for creating this program. I had no idea what he was talking about, or why he thought it was so important, but to Wendell it was a very big deal.

  “Your trouble is my trouble. Remember that, Michael. We’re going to do everything we can to help you. Whatever happens, you cannot be arrested again. Do you understand?”

  I nodded, eating my peaches.

  He pulled out a black cloth case that held stacks of DVDs. “Each of these runs about six hours, Michael. When you get home, you will find a box attached to your television. You’ll insert one of these DVDs and play it each day. You must be in front of the television with your anklet on the entire time the DVD is playing. If you need to leave the room for any reason, you must stop the DVD and restart when you return to the room.”

  He must have seen my smirk. Everyone he told this to must have had the same reaction.

  “Michael, if you don’t watch the entire DVD, you get no credit, understand?”

  “Credit for what?” I asked before slurping some syrup.

  “The program, Michael. The program. You cannot move ahead until you complete each DVD successfully.”

  “What if I want to watch something else?”

  “You can’t.”

  “What do you mean I can’t? I can’t watch television in my own home? You’re out of your mind.”

  “Things are different, Michael,” he said coolly. “We take rehabilitation very seriously. You must complete the program before you can go to work, before you can restart your relationships with your friends, and yes, before you can watch television.”

  I didn’t bother arguing. Wendell Cummings was out of his mind.

  He showed me the numbering system on the DVDs. There were fifty-two of them. Once I had watched each one all the way through, I’d receive directions that told me what to do next. I could only watch one each day, and if I didn’t complete the DVD in one day I needed to start again from the beginning the next day. There was an instructional video, blah, blah, blah. At this point I was really losing focus. He stressed how important the videos were and that somehow they would help me to make big changes in my life, but my eyelids drooped and I couldn’t stop them.

  The last thing I heard while Wendell Cummings was in the room was that I should expect my counselors to start arriving the next day. I wanted to ask why I needed to talk to counselors, but my eyelids were so heavy I couldn’t hold them open. My head lolled to the left and I fell asleep with Wendell Cummings watching me.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  When I woke up, the lights were dimmed to simulate night inside my hospital room. Debbie sat by the door and watched me intently. How could it be nighttime? I hadn’t even had lunch. The last thing I remembered was Wendell blabbing on about his program. Did I nod off and sleep through t
he entire day? Debbie wouldn’t tell me what time it was and when I found the tender spot at the base of my skull, she warned me not to touch it. She said I had a sore from lying on the pillow too long and that I needed to leave the bandage alone.

  Now I know that was a lie. What they did to me was illegal. How could they plant something inside my head and get away with it? I don’t know what kind of justice this is, but you should consider what they did to me as much as anything I’ve done wrong.

  Debbie gave me two pills to help me sleep, and the next morning I met my education counselor, Dr. Blake. He was a big guy, not tall but well-rounded in the physical sense and he had a thick beard and dark curly hair. He was young, probably a newly graduated Ph.D.

  Dr. Blake shook my hand vigorously and pulled the single chair close to my bedside. He explained that this was the start of my program more enthusiastically than any bureaucrat had ever spoken to me. Blake was excited to help me go straight and be a productive member of society, yada, yada. So I listened to him babble and tried not to interrupt.

  “What was the last grade you completed in school?”

  “Seventh.”

  I guess I should have been embarrassed that I never finished eighth grade. Blake was the first in a stream of people tasked to mold me into shape. Every one of them had been to college. They weren’t geniuses or anything, but they’d made the investment I wouldn’t make in myself, not that I really had a chance where I came from.

  “Did you have difficulties in school?”

  “Besides paying attention?” I asked. He wanted to know if I was a moron, without sounding politically incorrect.

  “Can you multiply twenty-three by three?”

  “In my head?”

  “Can you?”

  I asked for a piece of paper and he refused. When I couldn’t answer, he gave me a few really easy problems I could do in my head. I wondered what multiplying had to do with life but didn’t ask. This was serious to Dr. Blake and to his credit, he didn’t make fun of me. I was embarrassed by how simple he had to make the problems for me to answer them right. He made a few notes and then handed me a typed page and asked me to read the text.

  I struggled with the third word and Dr. Blake make a tick mark on his notepad. In my school if you learned to read and write you were a prodigy. I wasn’t a retard, but I spent more time worrying about how to keep my skin intact than reading books someone made up. There might have been a few kids I went to school with who could have read that entire page without fumbling, but not me. I stumbled over lots of words. After a while I stopped trying to sound them out and said pass when I got to a word I didn’t know.

  When I handed back the page he asked me to name the seven continents. I got North and South America, Asia and Africa. I had no idea what the other three could be.

  He asked me who the president of the United States was. You’d have to be dead not to know Barack Obama was president when I went to prison. Hey, I watched TV, but I couldn’t have known he’d lost reelection while I was sleeping. Blake asked me to name the two halves of congress in the federal government. I had no idea what he was talking about.

  He asked me about the court system and I knew everything about it down to the difference between district, superior, and federal court. He was impressed with my knowledge of appeals and other procedures. The problem, he explained, was that this system had been entirely revamped in the last three years. The only part of American government I was familiar with had been erased. My ignorance earned me a civics class. If I had known he was assessing my weaknesses, I would have worked a lot harder to come up with correct answers.

  He asked me about Tom Sawyer, Captain Ahab, Mr. Darcy, Moses, Gandhi, and Muhammad. I knew these people were all famous. Some of them were fictional. I told Dr. Blake that Tom Sawyer was a young kid in a book by Charles Dickens. When he grimaced I knew I was wrong and I didn’t try guessing who the other people were. Blake was surprised for a minute but made some notes.

  I wasn’t worried about all his notes and questions until he showed me the stack of DVDs I’d find when I got home. There were five or six books he expected me to read, and I told him he was out of his mind.

  “You don’t understand,” he said.

  “I guess I don’t.”

  He pointed to the red light on the ankle bracelet. “No one will hire you until that light goes green.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “That light doesn’t go green until you get your GED. And to do that, you’ve got to prove to me that you’re ready.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t need a job. I certainly wasn’t reading all those books, but Dr. Blake’s intensity made me nervous. There I was a convicted felon and they were paying this guy to teach me things I should have learned for free in high school. I didn’t understand what was happening, but I was in no position to argue with Blake.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  If my conversation with Dr. Blake was a shock, my meeting with Dr. Charlotte Finch was intriguing. I was delighted to see her walk into my room. Her long red hair shimmered under the fluorescents and her taut body waved and curled as she stalked up to my bedside and offered her hand. She saw me check her left hand for a ring and find none. She smiled a knowing smile that was neither an invitation nor a rebuke.

  “I’m the family counselor,” she said.

  She stiffened at my horrified expression.

  “Don’t worry, this will be the easiest session you’ll have this week. We should be done today.” Boy was that a lie.

  “Don’t tell me I need your approval to get that light off?” I looked down at my ankle and the glowing red light.

  “Don’t think of it that way, Michael. I’m here to help.”

  “Do you do this for everyone who leaves prison? I mean, how can you afford all this? How many prisoners have been let out in the last few years?”

  “That’s a lot of questions. Just relax. This isn’t going to hurt. Yes, we do this for everyone. We think it’s important for you to be comfortable in all aspects of your life. If you are at ease, you can work yourself back into society in a positive way. We’ve had a lot of practice. We’ve released two million prisoners in the last three years.”

  Two million? How could two million felons rejoin society in a positive way? Charlotte, Dr. Blake, and Wendell Cummings were kidding themselves.

  “How many years do you have to go to school to be a doctor?”

  “Eight years of college usually, depending on the specialty.”

  I couldn’t believe all these people spent eight extra years in school. I hadn’t even finished the first twelve, not even close, but it was clear to me you couldn’t empty the prisons and expect it to go well. They might have spent a lot of money on fancy educations, but they had a lot to learn.

  “Let’s get started,” she said, opening a folder. “Would you like to talk about your parents or your siblings first?”

  “Parents?”

  “I only have record of your mother here in the file.”

  “Does it say ‘fat menace’ under her picture?”

  “Come on now, Michael. You need to be honest with me and yourself. Your mother wasn’t a menace, was she? She brought you into this world and cared for you, didn’t she?”

  “She stuck a gun in my face and said she was going to kill me.”

  “When was that?”

  “The first time, I was thirteen.”

  She looked surprised, but I could tell she’d heard stories like mine before. All she said was, “Why?”

  “I was her original ticket out of the house. She got pregnant with me when she was fifteen or sixteen. It wasn’t an accident. She knew the government would give her an apartment in the projects and enough to feed the two of us. It was ok at first, but she never stopped getting her ticket punched, if you know what I mean. By the time I was thirteen, there were six other kids. Money was tight. She never got a job, just kept getting pregnant and angry when there wasn’t enough to go arou
nd.”

  “So you started getting into trouble?”

  “I was hungry. I clipped a can of peaches from the grocery store and I got caught. DSS and the cops brought me home.”

  “Your mother had good reason to be angry then.”

  “She wasn’t worried about me. She was worried about DSS taking her kids away. Without us, she’d have to get a job. When she stuck that gun to my head she said, ‘You bring DSS here again and I’ll shoot you dead, boy.’”

  Charlotte had to stop and think about that a minute. “But you stayed until you were eighteen.”

  “Is that what your file says?”

  She turned it toward me knowing I couldn’t read the small print.

  “One of the kids found some fancy jewelry in my bedroom two years later. My mom went crazy looking for the gun and I split. I was fifteen and I never went back.”

  Charlotte wrote something in her file. I wondered if she’d bust my mom for collecting when I wasn’t even there. It would serve mom right. Charlotte asked about my brothers and sisters and I told her I saw them sometimes on the street. Nothing regular.

  “What about your father?”

  “Never met him.”

  “Would you like to?”

  “What are you talking about? My mother doesn’t even know who he is.”

  “We have a new program,” she said. “When a baby is born without a father, we put the DNA into our computer systems. Every man who gets a DNA sample taken by the government is compared against the list of fatherless children.”

  “You can tell me who my father is?”

  “About eighty percent of the time. Do you want to know?”

  I’d never really had a family. My mother didn’t count. She was too young to know what she was doing. Finding my father was likely to be a huge disappointment. He certainly wouldn’t want any part of my mother and he’d have no real obligation to me. I was twenty-five. What did Charlotte think I was looking for? A handshake? A ballgame?