Kill the dove!

by Francis Kroncke

  Chapter 20: Black intelligence and Iron Moccasin

  One morning, a week before the Jailhouse Playoffs, before he can speak to his aches and pains, Jared reads the typed note:

  “Praise Be Black Intelligence!”

  “Praise Be Black Soul!”

  Handwritten under this typing:

  “Praise Be Black Athletes!”

  Though it’s just two slogans, it’s the third that makes it a dispatch. Personal. Hand-delivered. Fearlessly deposited on the sky of the bedsprings he eyes first upon waking every day.

  They know my habits!

  “Watch him!”

  It’s been noted that he lies on his back, reaches for his eye-glasses, yawns and stretches and then lies there momentarily meditating, exploring the anagoges set forth by the interlacing bed springs.

  As Jared moves up to get up he takes off his uglies and inserts his contacts, he eye-roves a quick sweep of the area. Can he catch anyone detailing his reactions?

  No.

  Should I be paranoid? Slowly he stretches, arms high then touching toes, a few quick knee bends and a gargantuan fart. Mutters, “Fuck it, just some gambler’s psych. They want to put me off my game!”

  With a snicker at their—whoever the fuck they are!—limp attempt to fuck his mind, he crumples the message and sticks it in the back of his storage cubicle. Then he heads towards the warm welcome of a morning shower.

  “The Land of Tattoos”: It’s as if a neon sign was flickering, demarcating the entrance to a ride in Disneyland or an esoteric archaeological find. The shower room—where the largest body organ disgorges its phantasmagoria. Undeniably, it is fun to read the skins—like cheating up on the car ahead to decipher a bumper sticker.

  For some, theirs is a mark of brash youth. Just one phrase or line revealing either the power symbol of some gang or military group; the nostalgia of Mother or a loved one of long ago. Some have tried to erase a name, now married or living with Marge and not Mabel. Fatefully, they wear their affections and the folly of youth forever since erasing a tattoo leaves a welt of banded flesh, looking as if a giant slug slithered under the epidermis and nested. For others, it’s an attempt to speak using their skin as tongue. They bear slogans, attestations, images, visions, hopes, despairs.

  Hispanics are the most revelatory, a cross between mythological and superstitious. One sports a full Virgin of Guadalupe covering his whole back, with side marks to his lovers, along with his gang’s symbol of a snake striking with venom-dripping fangs and assorted names down his legs.

  Not having a tattoo readily identifies Jared as a CO. Even dopers are likely to have a small one—a chic reminder of a buying visit to South America or of an out-of-body trip on psychedelics. Jared’s virgin flesh says more about him to other cons than he knows.

  What Jared misses this morning is that by the time he’s washing his hair, the tattoos have all disappeared. He looks over his left shoulder and realizes that he’s the only white blob in a bowl of black. Normally this would not faze him. He’s worked with Black Panther groups, been involved in numerous civil rights rallies, even attended Black church services as a resource speaker. But after the sunrise note?

  Be cool. Don’t bolt. Finish up. Walk calmly. So, without a nervous twitch or tick, Jared turns off the water and starts back. It’s a pathway that narrows. Narrows in that way things go Inside, in almost imperceptible units of physio-psychic measurements. They never touch him. Would not touch him naked and in the open. It’s a choreography of slight movements, a turn of the head, a stance . . . and looks: the visual space narrowing to a squeeze.

  Hi, guys! and split. Fuck, that won’t work. Shit, it’s a long way out. He wants to saunter, not freeze up. Like juice from a grape, they let him through, drop by drop. But in passing he is tattooed, carrying their warnings on his body. “We are watching!” is imprinted. They are watching.

  Back at his bunk, Jared is a bit stymied and a lot uncertain. Should I take this bull by the horns and hunt out a leader? Is it just a B-ball thing? Or should I talk with Harley about this? Scope out its political play, if any? Who’d be on my case anyway? Fucking-A, must be the bookies trying to rig the odds? Maybe, I should just say nothing?

  He chooses Harley. This is prison, ain’t it?

  Harley shares a work area with Jared. He’s the clerk to the Facilities Manager and Jared’s assigned to the Supervisor of Manufacturing. Millston employs a small percentage of inmates in the production of gloves and other clothing items used by the military and select Federal agencies. Most COs end up being clerks since they have, as a group, a college education, can write a decent letter, and some like Jared can even type.

  Harley’s already sitting down to his first coffee break when Jared walks in. With four other guys—just regular cons, no COs or dopers—he’s being curiously entertained by a loud, boasting story of dering-do and “Slap that bitch!”

  “Man, I finds my parole offiser humping my squeeze, I mean, bot’ buck nekkit ’n gittin’ it on in my digs. Man, that’s bold if ev’r I don’t says so’s . . .”

  For effect, he enacts the smart whip of his gun right up into the victim’s nostrils.

  “. . . so’s I takes this guy’s badge ’n I pins ’is dick to ’is trowsars, Jeeeesus of Christ, don’ts he yells ’n hollars! Tells me he’s gonna bust me far the forever. ’N my bitch she’s gits so far-fucking rowtated by my punchin’ this lettle puke away, she curls ’round ma leg ’n starts moanin’ far me, so’s . . .”

  He pauses for a swipe of the black juice because he knows he’s on a roll. Inspired!

  “So’s I grabs ’er by tha chin—like thiz,” he motions, showing his gentle cuddling of her face with his free hand, “’n I kneels her down, gettin’ ’er hot for ma cock ’n then, BAAAP! I knocks ’er out with ma knee!”

  He slaps his left knee, the instrument of deliverance, and all around him slap at their chairs and bang their cups in kudos. The moral of the story is quickly run out: “That’s shows thad bitch ’n enny bitch taw fuck wid me! I’s the Man!”

  “Man,” another chimes in, “I once wasted a bitch once for ev’n thinkin’ ’bout doin’ that!” More laughter, all around.

  It escalates, “Yuh, man, lemme tell ya, et’s beter ef ya cuts ’em up. Den dey can’t do et wid nobudy, nevar agin. Deys ’ave ta beg fer et!”

  What else but blood and cunt? Jared’s heard more than enough of “Slap that bitch!” since he arrived.

  “Thens I walks out, bud I gits a bright one up ’ere,” he taps his left temple. “Bad Dude, giv ’er whats she wants. Be’s Meester Nice Guy! So’s I goes back in, she bein’ as conked as a mutherfuckin’ rock, an’ I flips her butt-beauty ups tha bed, rips,” and he demonstrates his strength by tearing her imaginary panties as he would a simple piece of paper, “rips ’er panties ’n fucks ’er ass so’s hard thad I cums five times. Man, I swear it—by ma muther’s kiss—mebbe six times!”

  The four laugh and slap and howl and curse. Cups rattle and eyes bulge in awe and amazement. They have thoroughly enjoyed the story. Of the small pleasures of life, one’s cruelties, when drawn on a broad canvas, seem to evoke a bonding between so many. Such is Jared’s insight. What does Harley think of all this? He wasn’t laughing, either. The other cons don’t give a damn, even if asked. It means nothing to them that Harley gets up and walks out. Jared follows him to his work area, sits down beside his desk.

  “Look,” Harley, after reading the note, says with honesty and without hostility, “you just made a bad entrance. It wasn’t anything you did. It was just those little things you got balled up with.”

  He hands the note back to Jared. “You’re not a snitch. You couldn’t have known about what we’ve been trying to do here with the Blacks. Face it, that game, Moses and everything, you just walked into a pile of shit.” Both laugh, a small chuckle.

  “Am I in danger?”

  “I doubt it. Nothing like that. But there are strong feelings. The Afros are working ha
rd to get some respect from the Administration. So they take everything more than serious. Dig it, your just outshining Moses once, even if accidental, puts you on their watch list. But, man, you’re good. Moses showed them he knows you’re good.”

  “Shouldn’t that help?”

  “Naw, not to the politicos. Moses is their card to play but he has no clout. Look,” Harley finishes as he pulls out some files, getting back to work, “come to the Afro meeting tonight. Maybe we can nip this thing in the bud.”

  It all sounds too pat to Jared. “Come to the meeting” and this will be smoothed over? Maybe Harley’s stitched in differently than Jared thinks. Do I have any other recourse?

  Jared goes back to his own desk. When the whistle blows and the workday ends, he opens a drawer, pulls out his sneakers, quickly laces up and heads for the outside court.

  “Big Man!” It’s become a standard phrase of greeting. “Hey, Big Man! Right on, brother!”

  It’s a quite late-winter March day replete with layered banks of old snow huddling every wall, with only a few ice-free patches revealing the precious grass long ago given up for dead. He’s in search of some quiet time, a private zone where he can be alone and bounce the ball.

  Jared hurriedly crosses the Yard to the outer courts. He’s bundled up: a scarf and cap, gloves but just the insides, knitted slips with bare fingertips. All Korean War issue.

  As Jared drops into his B-ball rhythm, warming up, he flings off the scarf and the gloves. Before his fourth long-range bomb, he’s sweating, even enjoying the way his clothes slosh over his body as he jukes an imaginary opponent. Then, plunk! He jerks around as if expecting to be jumped from the shadows. Down at the other basket, someone . . . He calls, “Moses?”

  But no, it’s a thick-chested kid, almost roly-poly but moving about. A shiny head of long black hair flaps as he jumps. Indian! Jared’s relieved it’s not Black Intelligence.

  Plunk!

  “Hey, Chief, want some one-on-one?”

  The kid doesn’t turn or indicate he’s heard anything. He throws up a really long shot from half-court, it bangs in off the boards. Lucky! Jared’s not impressed. But he’s game. So he dribble-walks down the court. “Hey, want to go one-on-one?”

  The kid stops in mid-shot and stares at him. He eyes Jared as he does pool hustlers who come to the bars at the edge of the Reservation. He’s seen Jared play and is up for some slick deal. But no words come. The kid nods an okay. No handshake. No names exchanged.

  The kid’s fairly tall, around six flat. Although he’s just made a few impressive shots, Jared sizes him up as a “banger,” a player who slams his body around and throws up awkward bricks. He fails to sense how the kid is reading him.

  From the outset he downplays the kid’s challenge, doesn’t give him much respect. Plays loose defense. Unguarded, the kid sinks a few long bombs. That’s okay because Jared isn’t yet into high gear or fully juiced. Besides, he doesn’t plan to pour it on the kid. He’s feeling merciful! Shit, he’ll be a hero with the Big Chiefs just for taking me on!

  The kid, who he later learns is called Iron Moccasin, starts taking Jared to the well. As Jared expects, when the kid comes into his zone, he effortlessly swats the ball away. The kid hustles and grabs it, still inbounds. Stepping back a step, he shifts sideways showing his big rear end to Jared, then dribbles to the top of the key and shoulder-dips towards the basket. Jared’s already in the air waiting to swat this one when Iron Moccasin brakes hard, pulls up, lurches backwards and shoots one of the most awkward shots Jared has ever seen. As if in slo-mo replay, he watches the ball rattle the rim and fall in.

  “Three points!” the kid whoops; his first words!

  “Naw! None of that ABA shit, man!”

  Jared chuckles under his breath. God, what luck! Then he takes the rebound, dribbles to the foul line and makes his signature move. He takes only one step and leaps upwards into that part of the stratosphere that the kid will never breathe and lofts in a grand hook shot.

  Iron Moccasin hustles to the ball, turns again—this time Jared isn’t going to fall for the simple things, he’s going to make the kid work. The kid drives madly towards the basket, face twisted in fierceness. Jared takes him body-to-body and stretches up and out full-length and is just about to explode skyward in a swooping embrace of air where he anticipates the kid’s shot to be when, like a bug scurrying away as you try to smash it with your shoe, Iron Moccasin is back at three-point range. Ever so softly, again, he releases the roundball with a jerky quirk of arms and hands and it finds its way into Jared’s hands, but where he is standing—under the basket. Ploooosh!

  Jared almost says, Thank you for your contribution.

  What appeared at first to be just a warm-up turns into a real bout. Iron Moccasin is the king of three pointers. Every time Jared moves a step further out to guard him, Iron Moccasin takes a like step backwards, heaves, and rings another three-pointer home. Some of his shots are real TV-highlight backboard bangers. Others just screech through the nets. Still others make it in by the oddest of bounces, defying gravity, physics, and Jared’s belief that angels move the planets! Amazingly, Iron Moccasin is throwing them down at seventy percent.

  These two would have never stopped except for the early evening’s cold.“Hey, we’ve got to pack it up, kid. It’s almost chow time.”

  The kid slings his last shot, a real David and Goliath–like whip and knocks out three more points! Jared is frustrated but in an amused way. At first he didn’t want to beat the kid solely using his height advantage. So he responded to the kid’s early challenge by taking only outside shots. Competitor that he is, Jared wanted to down him at his own game. But he couldn’t handle the ABA’s new three-point range. He lost!

  “Damn, I’m good!” Iron Moccasin shouts as he slaps the basketball and proudly strides away from Jared.

  “Seventy motherfucking ass-kicking percent . . . That Rez rat really stole my lunch out there!” he confesses to Sean.

  After chow and the early night’s Count, Jared makes his way to the visiting room. This is where all “approved social and cultural meetings” take place. Tonight it’s reserved for the “Afro-American Study Group.” Jared gets there just as the meeting is being called to order. He sees Harley and two other COs and joins them. As he sits down he realizes they are off to the side, as if segregated. A bit ironic!

  Jared doesn’t know what the role of the whites is. Are we here to speak? To listen? To approve? To be whipping boys? What?

  But there’s no time to ask these questions. The group has just sung the “Black National Anthem”—James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Jared really likes the lines:

  Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,

  sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.

  A short, stubby, horn-rimmed, middle-age man moves center-front. Jared notes that the guy’s already sweating. He’s worked up and begins working the crowd, waving with his handkerchief. Must be a preacher.

  Folding and holding his neatly squared hankie not far from his lips, he launches into a sermon. “Prison has always served to educate and radicalize blacks. Prison has always served its political function. To snatch ‘uppity niggers’ from the street. In most times, the outlet for uppity was in crime. Any black who wanted to get ahead knew the benefits of belonging to the ‘other economy.’ Of Crime, Incorporated. It was the only way to make big bucks. To make them fast.”

  Two beats of silence, then, “Scholars puff smoke from their waggish pipes ’bout the socioeconomics of prison populations. They snatch government grants by fantasizing about how this outlet can be shut down and its energies—of those they call street blacks—redirected to socially ameliorative ends.

  What they fail to realize, what the Black Power movement is making clear, is that prison in the capitalistic mode is a socially ameliorative end!”

  The man is mightily working himself up, mingling the tone o
f a highly educated man with the gestures of a street-savvy brother. “Academics forward statistics and conclusions with an air of innocence that shudders at its only true conclusion. That prison actually has a permanent place in our economy! They never say that. They’d lose their jobs!” He laughs. All the blacks laugh.

  “Brothers, hear me, they discuss prisons as if they are mistakes. As if they are temporary shelters soon to be abandoned and crushed once the source of crime is fully identified and washed away. I ask, Brothers, do you feel clean?” Snickering again, all around.

  “As we Black Power advocates—you know, any of us scholars who go against the tide!—as we show what W. E. B. DuBois showed them way back in the mid-part of the last century—it’s the truth, prisons are never empty. They are ever busting at the seams with the poor, the near employable, the high-energy youth from the oppressed classes. They yell, ‘Let’s not get Marxist, here! They’re not really oppressed, just under opportunized.’

  Let me tell you brothers, prison has always been black. Hear the truth, the first man in the first real penitentiary—right in Philadelphia of course, refuge of freed slaves—was black.” Most lean forward, having never heard the truth of this historical footnote. “And do you know what he got busted for?” They want the answer. “His name was Johnson and he got five years for stealing a twenty-dollar gold watch! …Ain’t that something!”

  He preaches and teaches and exhorts for another half hour. It’s a performance that’s replete with half a Baptist “Witness Bench” call to “Come to Jesus” conversion fervor and half the radical ravings of a riot instigator. Jared is moved and admires his stamina. When the preaching ends, the room rocks with a raucous, hand-clapping, hooting and metal-chair-banging standing ovation. Everyone’s up: black and white.

  Jared stands but is still wondering, Why does Harley want me at this meeting? Where’s all this going? Are they going to organize? Are they going to do something? Or just sweat and get hoarse?

  Then a partial answer is delivered as two Black Muslims, identified by their top-buttoned shirts and telltale neatness, jump up and down in sequence vigorously proclaiming, “Praise Black Intelligence! Praise Black Soul and Spirit!”

  These words are like spark to gunpowder. From clapping the room begins to sway and soon rocks and thunders with wilder, more heated hoots, hollers, stomps and that high-pitched chatter that is not meant to be listened to so much as felt. It’s that quintessential Black Holiness bonding epiphany.

  Around the room some thrust Black Power fists upward. Others exchange secret handshakes. There are voiced praises to Allah. Lots of shoulder and hand slapping, a few hugs. Not a single solitary black approaches any of the whites. Jared, Harley and the two other COs just stand there, doing nothing, just being white!

  “Black Intelligence.” Was it just a coincidence? If Jared has any doubts, all the Black Muslims walk all the way across the room just to pass by the four white guys. Chillingly, they stare only at Jared. Harley and the others seem unaware. It’s clear to Jared, It’s not just this B-Ball thing!

  As the COs start to leave, Jared approaches Harley. He wants to sit down for a while but instead Harley grabs him and says, “Let’s hit the Chapel. We’ve still time to catch Group.”

  Group, Jared knows is the “Buddhist Meditation Group.” It’s the COs own “approved group.” The title tells how cleverly they snaked the intentions of the Warden’s directive on “Groups.” He didn’t want the COs meeting alone without standard supervision. He believed that they would go religious, and that would feed into his hands. Both the Catholic and Protestant chaplain hang from his vest pocket. But Buddhist? How could he justify sending in Christian ministers? It was a tricky freedom of religion issue and he knew no Buddhists. He had to settle for assigning a regular hack the task of peeking in now and then. He heard back that they just lounged around, burnt incense and listened to that wild music that has infected America since Woodstock.

  Jared’s never been invited. Either Harley is making a mistake or this is a sign that he’s in.

  His first impression tonight is that these “Buddhists” do just lounge around and listen to records. He follows Harley’s moves, even attempts to sit in the yogic lotus position, but does so quite clumsily and unsuccessfully. The others are amused. Awkwardly and a bit uncomfortably Jared just lies on his side, propped up by a shaky elbow. From this “Buddhist” position Jared whispers questions about the Blacks. Harley whispers back.

  “They need us there to fend off the Warden. He’s been making a big deal about ‘reverse racism.’ If you can believe he uses such a perverse concept.”

  “That’s it? We’re just the white icing on the chocolate cake?”

  “Something like that.”

  Jared is irked by Harley’s ready acceptance of what he takes to be a sell-out.

  “Is all they do just talk?”

  “What do you mean all?” Harley asks, himself a bit annoyed.

  “Fucking-A, man, are they planning anything?”

  “Look Jared, the Black leaders have a harder job than we do. Do you realize how brainwashed and beaten down most black inmates are? I mean, man, they’re tracked into the prison system right out of the cradle.”

  “Yeah, yeah, man,” he bites the word, “I know all that shit. Who do you take me for?” Jared’s now boffo pissed. “I could’ve run down what he was saying tonight but,” and Jared sprinkles the phrase with sarcasm, “Praise Be Black Intelligence!”

  Harley slips out of his lotus and lays out closer to Jared. He’s angry, a bit shocked. This reaction Jared knows well. Harley’s a draft resister, not a raider. As a resister he believes in his “place” in life, that his historic role is to protest, be a dissident. He sees himself as a moral man, not an outlaw, a criminal. This, despite the fact—or in denial—of his being in federal prison!

  I shouldn’t be surprised by this, Harley upbraids himself, feeling some regret for bringing Jared into the Group.

  Jared doesn’t pause. “I mean—fuck it!—do we have to put up with crap like that? Black Intelligence. As if there’s any difference. Jesus Christ Almighty, that’s really a motherfucker!”

  “Okay,” this is the only way Harley knows how to handle this, “okay, just don’t feel obligated to come to any of these groups.” Jared knows he means both the Black meetings and here with the Buddhists.

  “Right on, man, sure, okay, I read you!”

  Superbly jerked and more desirous of ass-kicking these “granola revolutionaries” than ever, Jared slams-dunks Harley with a threatening, challenging tone. “Look Harley, if they want to do something, ring me up. Otherwise I’ll just pass.” Stupid fag-ass motherfuckers. All of you!

  As Harley rolls away and back up into lotus, Jared goes flat belly on the carpeted sanctuary. He begins to mull over and reevaluate this morning’s wake-up message. Maybe it’s more threat than show? Wouldn’t Harley have some indication of what’s going down? Am I reading the Muslims wrong? Motherfuckers!

  “I saw you out there with Iron Moccasin.” Clyde uses the simple statement as a lasso to rescue Jared. He’s seen Jared blunder about from the moment he came in.

  “Isn’t that kid just a damn fine shot?” Jared throws back.

  Jared’s hooked. Clyde reels him in. For the next five minutes, Jared details and regales Clyde about his chess game with “the kid.”

  “He went forward then backwards, leaned way, I mean man, way back and launched this one, I mean, Fucking-A he heaved it. I’ve never seen anyone so awkward with the ball and by damn it bangs in. And not just once, but over and over again. Where the hell did he learn to shoot like that? I didn’t know that roundball was so big on the Rez.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Man, the kid really picked it up somewhere.”

  “Of course, in here.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, he’s an Inside kid. Been institutionalized ever since he can remember. Abandoned in foster homes, then picked
up by Juvie Hall. Man, did you know, all crimes on the Reservation are federal crimes? Iron Moccasin’s done a lot of time here at Millston. It’s more like his true home. He’s the type the socios call State raised. B-ball’s been his babysitter for a long, long time.”

  Their conversation dies down after that. For the better, Clyde concludes. Jared fades into the music and the freelance meditation. But “the kid” is tramping across his mind, The Fucking-A cruelty of it all!

  Jared’s never really spent time talking with an Indian. This is so despite his activism and the fact that Minneapolis is one of the largest urban Reservations in the States. But now, “the kid.”

  Prison and “the kid” validated what the black preacher was getting at. “Look at our Indian brothers. Their Reservations are minimum security prisons. Millston’s their graduate school.”

  Playing “the kid” was one of those chance meetings that marks a major turning point in Jared’s life. “The kid” never speaks to him again, they never play again, he never learns another dot or dash of biographical detail. Yet it is “the kid” who’s the kick that sends him reeling downward into unknown spaces, real and spectral.

  It’s simply that Jared doesn’t want “the kid” to exist. He can’t take finding another Vietnamese gook wandering in his world. Blacks, Hispanics, gays, women, Asian-Americans are now linked with “Native Americans.” Jared’s gives up! “I can’t help you, kid.”

  Back on his cot, just after lights out, just before he dozes off, the cosmos sings to him.

  The night is lonely; there is nothing to do.

  The days are lonely; there is nothing to do.

  You are lonely; what is it you must do?

  “Escape!” Escape.