Kill the dove!

by Francis Kroncke

  Chapter 35: “We are men!”—Attica prison riot

  An armed guard comes and takes Jared to his cell. They walk through several corridors, footsteps scrape, iron gates creak, Jared enters and settles down on a cell bunk. It’s an ancient cell, just a wrinkle in the wall. Not unlike the scar on his face. A thin, narrow space, functional—a slit. Another body sleeps in the upper bunk; it isn’t wakened by his entry. Automatically, without self-awareness, Jared touches the hibakusha tucked under his T-shirt. He lies down and stretches out. Cray’s words like cinders of brimstone still smolder on his cheeks.

  “What am I doing in Attica?” he murmurs as he pulls a pillow over his face. He’s already tired and as he drifts off the day’s scenes all run backwards, images wildly replay themselves.

  As Jared sleeps, he doesn’t have a clue that Cray is writing about him, stating in his report that Jared has come to Attica “just at the right time,” during “the lull before the storm.” If told, Jared might have simply laughed. But the truth is that he comes on the heels of an unrestful but unifying summer among the black inmates. The Reverend is referencing the summer’s protest launched by the self-proclaimed “Attica Liberation Front.”The Liberation Front protested “conditions.” They didn’t petition the gods for ultimate liberation, not even for liberation from incarceration. Only liberation from indelicacies. They asked not to be locked up sixteen hours a day. Boldly, they requested the opportunity to take more than one shower per week. These conditions, which seemed not unreasonable to reasonable men and women, were denied. Why? Steve would have enlightened Jared. “Don’t they get it?” They messed with the Administration’s techniques for control, for fine-tuning punishment.

  Consequently, Jared walks into an Attica where mounting friction thickens the air. It actually invades his dreaming right now and he wakes with a nervous start. He feels like someone’s just kicked him in the gut. He’s sweating profusely, his T-shirt is soaked. He slaps his face, once, twice. Then he kneels down as if to pray.

  “Wazzup? Buddy, don’t die on me before breakfast, will ya?”

  Arnold rolls off the top bunk. His words startle Jared, tap into an unguarded fear—Attack Rape? Jared jerks around, catches the guy in full eyesight, bolts upward to his feet, his mind’s racing, processing—Shit! Arnolds say to himself, The guy’s flipped out! If Arnold wasn’t the type of guy he is, he would have belted and looped Jared back into dreamtime with a well-muscled left upper-cut. But it is Arnold—a guy in his twentieth year Inside, and he knows how to handle loonies. So with a step quicker than Jared can observe, he’s right in his face, places two hands firmly on his shoulders, digs his fingertips in so that there is an awakening pain and shouts, “Hey. Hey!” It works. Long-timer magic! Arnold pushes Jared back, gently, almost brotherly, all the while laughing at this crazy con. “Buddy, take it easy, Jack! Relax.”

  Jared’s been just sitting there, dazed, fifteen minutes go by before Arnold says, “Arnold.”

  “Jared.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Errr,” and a stream of images from the Ride just about kick-start him into talking about Adventures with Agent Steve Witson when an interior voice stops him—not now!—and he blurts, cryptically, “I’m just visiting.”

  Arnold: “Visiting?”

  Jared nods, affirming his statement. He’s not in the least struck by how odd it must sound to Arnold. Cons do time and speak of “dropping a nickel,” say, if they’re doing five years. No one says, “I’m just visiting.” Curious. Somewhat amused, Arnold asks, “How long are you visiting for?”

  Jared responds as if this is just average con talk. “Shit, man, fuck, I’m not sure.” Then Jared stands and stretches, not impressing Arnold with his height and stature or testament of the scar.

  Once again Jared’s just about to start in about the Ride but stops. Arnold observes the mental shutdown. Without intent, Jared throws him a wacky curveball. “Shit, I’m not going to be here for long, you can bet on that.”

  Enough said. Arnold’s willing to let Jared wait. Each goes about his day, doing time their own way. Arnold reads and writes. Jared does puzzles, sleeps and stares at the ceiling.

  Around three o’clock—the sun still high and keeping their cell bright—the voice of a soulful blues harmonica tracks up and down the block. It stops their conversation. Actually, Jared stops only because Arnold does the instant he hears the first note. The tune’s picked up by another con who’s drumming on a set of bars. Then it’s lifted up and amplified by a whole lot of clapping and shouting. “Play it, man!” “Tell it like it is, leetle brudder!”

  The music streams through cell block bars. The beat is contagious. Arnold gets up and starts dancing, a modest high stepping and body wiggling. Jared’s amused. The sound is snappy, heart-thumping and damn irresistible! Arnold turns, motions to Jared, “Dance, man! It’s the Blues!”

  As if in a bar and a bit drunk both men start moving to the beat. They swing around and hunker up and down, sway and act silly, gyrate arm in arm. At the instant the song stops, Arnold shouts, “Raymond, you sweet muddafuckah, blow it out!” This profane endearment is seconded by a chorus of encouragements, some spoken, some clapped, some whistled. Arnold faces Jared and smiles, starts clapping his hands. “Little Raymond’s a mute, but he kicks ass with the tongue of his harmonica!”

  Arnold is almost in rapture, as if Raymond—an unknown to Jared—is his kid, just capping a high school performance.

  “Mute?”

  “Believe it! Never says a word. Guess he’s mute, or at least he lives mute.”

  A mute bluesman. Jared is struck by the image. An appropriate oxymoron for the world Inside

  Just ten minutes later, it went down. It being the moment of crack! boom! at the end of a long, long fuse. Jared soon smells the smoke wafting in from the Yard and up from the bottom tiers. The noise doesn’t just become louder, it becomes convict noise, that rowdy, reckless, violence-prone sound that got most of them here in the first place—outlaw noise. Delighted, Arnold knows it’s here for sure because Raymond is on his harp belting out a moaning blues.

  What drifts about is that most cell blocks are cleared, except theirs. No one knows why they’re the only ones still in lockdown. It all began, they hear, when inmates in one cell block busted through an old rusting door, somehow linked to a guard’s oversight. Then, one after another, the tiers were freed. Cons are running around everywhere. Word is that there are hostages—some Free World visitors!

  “Any women?” An utterance of hope, fear, dread and anticipation; a daisy chain.

  “No wimmin.”

  They hear that a leadership group is forming. It’s trying to unify the revolt, get some attention from outside the walls. More news is made up than recorded, and rumors fly that Bobby Seale, and Fi and G.I. from the Young Lords, even movie stars like Raquel Welch are coming.

  The wildest rumor—“It’s true, it’s true, man. Believe me!”—is that Raquel is coming with Jimmy Brown to reenact their love scene from 100 Rifles! This rumor lives longer than any others. It thrives as it taps into that fuck-the-white-bitch fantasy of every heavy-loaded black stud.

  Among the more rational minds, a council of leaders forms to contact senators and congressmen, journalists and publishers, activists and radical lawyers, and leaders from the oppressed communities. To everyone’s surprise, the Warden takes their list and agrees to honor their requests.

  All throughout the day, flyers arrive, some printed, some scrawled. One phrase appears to unify all messages. Jared reads this and it finally becomes clear. Scribbled on some well-worn, oft-handled, skin-greased paper, he reads the con’s message: “WE ARE MEN!”

  This phrase is like a narcotic. Jared slips back onto his cot, closes his eyes, and remembers. He’s back at the family home in Hastings. He’s just returned from the seminary for a summer of temptations, August 1963. At this phase of his life, he’s an avid reader who eats ideas and thoughts, is fattened by the desi
re to know. He’s been sitting in the living room all day reading Greek Classics and theological works. Near dinner time, he takes a break for the evening news.

  He’s watching something, half paying attention. Then, as if a message from Above, across the TV screen a criminal message appears. “I AM A MAN!” He turns up the volume. It’s a Civil Rights protest march. He has never marched. He is unsure what to think. “I AM A MAN!”

  What can this mean? Who wrote it? Who carried it? Was it an individual, a nation, an alien species?

  Jared struggles with the TV image and message. He grew up in Bayonne, New Jersey, where humans were partitioned not only by geography and gangland stakes but by soul markings. The sacred dog lifted its leg and pissed, set its ownership scent on the Irish Roman Catholic Church in this neighborhood. Then scented on the Italian Roman Catholic Church just blocks away, and still a third scent on the Polish Roman Catholic Church up towards the City line. No one cared much about the Protestants and Jews, for they are the lost, the outcast, the betrayers and the damned. Forget niggers and spicks and the eerie slant-eyes. Jared’s world is all and only Catholic. Until this startling TV moment, he never doubted that his kind was better than all the other kinds, even other Catholics. Fatefully, that all changed as the Tube conveyed the prophet’s revelation: “I AM A MAN!”

  Jared pondered, Why was this written?

  It took him years to fully hear Martin Luther King’s Dream and to grasp the meaning of that simple sentence. Now, he himself is the one who holds up the sign, “I AM A MAN!” For that is how he has summed up his war resistance, his draft raids. Just this short sentence, that means for him: I am a man. Do not kill me!

  In the morning, a mimeographed newsletter lies in the middle of the cell. Jared picks it up, reads it, then wakes Arnold. “Listen, man. Shit, you gotta hear this. Dated September 9, 1971. Here, just this part of ‘The Five Demands. Fuck.’”

  WE ARE MEN! We are not beasts and do not intend to be beaten or driven as such. The entire prison populace has set forth to change forever the ruthless brutalization and disregard for the lives of the prisoners here and throughout the United States. What has happened here is but the sound before the fury of those who are oppressed.

  We will not compromise on any terms except those that are agreeable to us. We call upon all the conscientious citizens of America to assist us in putting an end to this situation that threatens not only our lives, but each and every citizen as well.

  We have set forth demands that will bring closer to reality the demise of these prisons, institutions that serve no useful purpose to the People of America, but to those who would enslave and exploit the People of America.

  As if on cue, as Jared finishes reading, three cons walk into the cell. Black, brown and red. They look at Arnold. He raises himself on an elbow, looks down at them, then flips onto his other side, backside to them, and pulls the covers over his head.

  “You’re Jennings?” Brown asks in a way that tells Jared he knows they know his name.

  Before Jared can answer, the taller of the three—Black—turns as if to leave, head-signaling to Jared, C’mon. We’ve no time to waste. The other two are out of the cell as the third guy—Red—hand-flags Jared with a nonverbal, Right now, move it!

  In a whiff, Jared’s off, but to where? They walk through several tiers and cell blocks. “Bad shit,” Brown keeps mumbling as he surveys the damage. Busted up bunks. Trash on the floor. Broken white-lightning bottles. Lots of hootch stink all over the place. In one tier there’s more blood pooled and splattered than Jared ever wanted to see. Bad shit! Bad shit!

  “This the honkey muthafucka?” It’s not spoken as an endearment. The speaker is a very large, bordering on humongous, Hell’s Angel type white guy with tattoos more visible than pure spaces of flesh on his face and arms. Except he can’t be an Angel, he has “Black Power!” slashed across his right upper forearm. The other three enter the cell and sit down. It’s like a meeting’s been called and Jared’s the only one who didn’t get the memo.

  Sensing that he has to make some statement, Jared states in a firm voice (working hard to sound calm and confident), “I’ll help you out however I can. But you should know, I’m just passing through.”

  White: “I’m just passing through,” whined with a faked limp wrist. As Jared hears it turned back, it does sound, shit, a whole lot of things: stupid, whiny, weak, nutty, crazy.

  Red: “The passing through is over. Ain’t no other place to go.”

  Brown: “Help. Do you think we need help?” A bit irked, as if responding to a condescending remark.

  “Shit. Fucking-A, guys, hey, give me a break, man. What’s going on? Who’s in charge? You tell me why the fuck I’m here.” Sounds better even to himself.

  The three start lightly laughing as if sharing a private joke. White seems particularly amused. He says, “If we didn’t know Cray went berserk after your visit or that Arnold was supposed to read you like a lab rat, you wouldn’t be here.” White pauses and eyes the other three, “We don’t know the fuck why you’re here, honkey. You tell us something we don’t already know!” Jared wants to ask, Why are you calling me honkey? But lets it slide.

  Not knowing what to do, he just starts talking. “Say, man, I read your manifesto. Glad to see you’ve taken a nonviolent approach.” As if hearing a straight man delivering a line, the four crack up—a muffled giggle from Red and a lot of knee slapping from the others, a hoot from White.

  White: “Man, are you fucking crazy?” Turns to the others. “Shit, sure can see why he drove Cray over the edge!”

  Brown: “Bad news, Arnold didn’t say a thing. Nuttin’.” And as if this was critical, White shakes his head, “Too bad. Too fucking damn bad. Christ.”

  As this curious meeting is transpiring, all over the prison other meetings are in session or concluding. Some are ad-hoc judicial proceedings called to avenge ancient wrongs, both individual and gang-tribal. Every now and then shrieks of pain pop and burst in the air. There’s a lot of motion and commotion everywhere. While not on the agenda, a small group of cons all of a sudden appear outside White’s cell, clearly there to participate. Someone throws in, “It’s going down, man. Motherfucker soon—if not already.”

  Hearing this, White and the others start to leave the cell. Red grabs Jared by the arm and yanks him forward. The whole group moves through the prison like one gigantic being, weaving up and down and in and out, until they come to the main doorway into the Yard. Red pushes Jared to the front of the line where he has a front-row view to what’s going down.

  “Sweet Jesus!” Jared blurts—a word all at once of discovery, surprise, despair and resignation. On top of every wall is a solid line of rifles. All are aimed towards where Jared is standing, right at the doorway entrance. Helicopters fly overhead. There’s a lot of scurrying back and forth behind him, but Jared doesn’t have the inclination to look. He’s both fascinated and horrified by the scene. His feet are leaden—he can’t move. Thoughts come slowly, ooze and seep to the surface. Then, like a school kid standing in the center of the theater’s stage as the curtain is pulled, for the first time ever Jared knows, simply knows, that everyone—cons, guards, reporters, the army, every fucking whomever is out there, even Cray—is waiting for him to speak his opening lines.

  “You ready?” White says, as if this has been rehearsed.

  The others wait.

  I’m just visiting. You’ve got the wrong guy! An avalanche of words, commands, pleas rush chaotically through his mind; his heart has stopped beating.

  The door to his left is opened and it’s as if a great wind sucks him out. Jared is walking towards the center of the Yard.

  Later accounts of what happened differ; such is the curious way legends are made. Jared walks, calmly—much to Cray’s admiration!—to the center of the Yard. He looks around, taking in each person, pivoting slowly but smoothly.

  “I am a man!” he booms. Clearly. Distinctly. It is a statement, a proclamation. It is
an indictment. It is an act of rebellion. It is a moment of joyous celebration.

  Just these words he offers. Once, facing east, then north, then to west and south. It’s a primal ritual, basic and fundamental. “I am a man!”

  At this point the accounts differ.

  “They fired on him. Missed every time. He had protection. God’s angel was with him!”

  “No, man, shit, he was shot. Once, twice, three times. I sees his head snap back. Sees that in ’Nam, man. I knows what I sees.” Stymied, “But how’d he live? Anyone sees who’d drugged his sorrie white-ass away?”

  “Sinners! Do you now doubt? The Lord slew His messenger and then raised him from the dead!” So Cray preaches, often. “This is proof that the Spirit is in here Inside with us. He is here for you! Repent! Come to Jesus, Sweet Jjjjjjjjeeeeeesssssssussss!”

  Arnold never tells anyone what he saw. “He stopped breathing. That’s all. He stopped and they stopped. He was willing to die there, but they breathed first.”

  Nevertheless, reality being what it has to be, Warden Vincent R. Mancusi is proud that he has won the day. He, the ultimate battlefield general. Once he saw that it was Jared, he knew what he had lost. He knew that he couldn’t kill him. Not just because he was a white guy but because he was the Boss’ guy. Cray’s “sacrifice.” How White and the other ringleaders cajoled Jared into this act of rank foolishness, he doesn’t care to determine. He just prides himself on the fact that he immediately won the day through strategic retreat.

  True, Mancusi had to write in his report that “shots were fired.” But he never wrote more. He remains confused as to the specifics, like everyone else. But no one—commission, study group, FBI investigators—ever meets to compare notes.

  Jared himself isn’t aware of how it ends. He simply finds himself awakening back in a cell—all alone.

  But in a dream he sees himself leaving the Yard, bullets bouncing all about, walking as if on water, back Inside. The cons part as he walks by. He says nothing, does nothing. Halfway through the crowd he abruptly stops, turns back to Red, Black and Brown and says in a firm, commanding voice, “All is lost. There’s just too much love here in Attica.” To himself, he hears his own thoughts, “Prison has failed these men. They will not escape. They do not know how much they’ve imprisoned themselves!”

  “Are you fucking nuts?” A dismissive question. Spoken. Cursed. Threatened. A lot of heads shake in stupefied disbelief. The unexpected idiocy of it all paralyzes the leaders. They know all is lost. Powerless, they watch the fear escalate, becomes carnivorous. As soon as he is able, Arnold grabs Jared and drags, almost carries him back to their cell. “Man, I’ve never met anyone as fucked up as you!”

  Arnold shuts the cell grate but no guard is on duty to lock it. He slips down under his bunk, takes out and assembles his makeshift weapons: a long bladed knife and seven expertly balanced pencil-like darts. He’ll be sentry tonight. He knows Jared is lost somewhere, somewhere deep Inside. What a nut case!

  “There’s just too much love here in Attica.”

  Should Jared have been surprised? Sweet Steve. Agent Stephen Witson. “At night, an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out and said . . .” With the soft light of early morning guiding him in a singsong voice, “Jennings. Jeeenn ... iiinnggs. Je ... eee ... eeee ... iii ... iiii ...nnnggggs!”