“I’m still going to kick your fucking asses,” he yelled behind him as the guard unlocked the last gate and pushed him through. He heard Bomber and Boogey’s voices echoing down the cavernous tier, shouting that they couldn’t wait to cut him to pieces and feed him to the dogs. Their familiar voices were comforting to him and he felt sad at leaving behind the two men who wanted him dead but had become the closest thing he had to a family.
The guard walked Chancla across the yard, posted him next to the processing office, and ordered him to wait. Though he was chained and helpless, Chancla stood nervously darting his head around, ready as he could be to hobble away from the assailant he knew was lurking there. He determined that he could at least bite the guy and chew off his nose or ear, before he was shot to death.
Back in the dungeon, Bomber pushed aside his locker and started digging frantically in the wall for his shank, a six-inch homemade steel knife that he kept hidden inside a hollowed-out brick. He brandished it before the guard, yelling, “Come get me and I’ll cut your stinking rat-faced fat neck, you dirty bastard.” The guard knew that without the bars between them, Bomber would surely sink the blade to the hilt without batting an eyelid. He radioed for reinforcements and four other guards arrived, all wielding bulletproof Plexiglas shields, clubs, and mace. They forcibly subdued Bomber, shackled him from ankles to wrists, dragged him out across the yard, and stood him next to Chancla.
Even though they could hardly lift a finger, Bomber and Chancla lunged at each other. Guards yanked on their chain leashes and pulled them apart, but they still kept snarling and threatening to kill each other the instant the chains were removed. In the midst of their skirmish three guards pushed Boogey toward the other two, who started in on him, cursing him and vowing to dismantle him bone by bone. Of course, Boogey retaliated by charging them. The guards standing by grew so annoyed at their relentless antagonism that they kicked the feet out from all three and made them sit on the dirt. Every time one of the convicts ranted out obscenities at one of the others, a guard slapped him across the face with a lead-filled thong.
Behind all their snarling and lunging and cursing, each felt the fear of a man walking down the death row corridor to the electric chair. Except, in their case, death was most likely to happen out on some forlorn prairie while they stood and looked at the weeds and cacti and sage, waiting to be devoured by the ants, coyotes, and buzzards.
The guards led them through various gates and when they were finally outside, beyond the walls, each vaguely recalled his arrival, being intimidated by the guard towers, the looming fifty-foot wall of granite topped with tangled rolls of fanged security wire, the floodlights, the catwalks, and the guards cradling M16s as they patrolled the perimeters.
Now here they were outside the walls just as dawn was breaking, with thoughts of imminent death darkening their hearts. Flanked by two guards apiece, they hobbled to a van waiting in the semidarkness and were helped in and separated from each other. The driver took them down a long entrance lined with palm trees, then turned left toward the airport, leaving the prison behind in the distance.
The convicts fell quiet as they stared at their reflections in the black glass, recognizing bitterly that youth was leaving them, and that they had grown old, not in flesh or physique, but emotionally, spiritually. Their eyes scanned the surrounding prairie. It was like seeing a new land. They meditated on who they had been, what their lives had been like when they were free. Now they felt more imprisoned than ever by their own fears. What were they going to do? They didn’t know how to be fathers and husbands. Where were they going? If they lived, by what means would they survive? They had no money, no jobs, no schooling. Yes, they were leaving behind the prison but not what prison had done to them—criminalized them, made them meaner, crueler, and angrier.
They drove on, somewhat relaxed by the humming engine, as the lights inside homes across the road flickered on, cars backed out of driveways, and kids boarded yellow school buses.
Each one regretted that such mundane activities had eluded them for so long. They had been looking for excitement and adventure and had been swooped up early in life by the delusions of the gambler, who thinks he can win it all and be happy and rich—if only he could make one big score, do one good deal, meet one wealthy woman. These were the absurd dreams of the foolish young boys they had been, dreams that were now eaten away like apple cores thrown out of a window for the crows to peck into pulp.
When they finally arrived at the airport, their nostalgia had reawakened their hurt and their hurt had made them angry. They burned with shame when the guards led them into the terminal and stood them in the lobby for all the travelers to glare at. The guards first unlocked their wrists, then handed each of them forty bucks and a one-way ticket to his respective home state, along with a manila folder containing their release papers.
“You gonna tell us now why you’re setting us free?” Boogey asked.
“Class-action suit was filed by one of the jailhouse lawyers on behalf of two hundred of you assholes. AIDS and Hepatitis-C convicts pardoned by the governor for some law called deliberate indifference. We tried to kill you infected queers off, but one of you went and filed a lawsuit. Others had their sentences commuted and they were released.”
“Where do we fit in on all that?” Bomber asked.
“Given your good time, you all would have been out a year ago. Apparently,” the guard said, “you guys had finished your sentences and were just doing free time. According to the courts, that’s cruel and unusual punishment—all right, I’m going to unchain you and you better fucking wait until we leave the terminal to attack each other or we will take you all out back and fuck you up.”
The men were so shocked by the news and so completely out of their element that they were virtually paralyzed. Swiftly abducted in the middle of the night, shoved into a van, and deposited among hundreds of strangers from all walks of life coming and going— what could they make of it? From the dungeon, with its lack of sunlight and sensory stimulation, where they had no access to radio or TV and were kept in absolute isolation in every sense of the word, they were suddenly dumped among people hurrying by with cell phones, laptops, and DVDs, among terrorist security checks and scores of guards carrying machine guns all around. They stood speechless and scared, clutching their release papers. They looked at the money in their palms and tucked away their airline tickets. They felt dangerously exposed.
They didn’t know what words to use, what feelings to have, or how to behave. They were agonizingly aware of themselves and how much they didn’t belong. They saw people shake hands, embrace, kiss—societal customs that could get you killed in prison. They put one foot in front of the other in a small semicircle, looking up at the vast ceilings and gawking at the people. The security guards kept frowning at them, and they noticed that reinforcements were now hovering about the edges of the terminal. Chancla said with disgust, “I’d fuck them bitches if they were inside.”
Boogey spotted two uniformed security guards entering, and as they positioned themselves against a nearby wall by a rental car booth, he smiled at them and said, “They’re cute little bitches, ain’t they...”
“You muthafucking nigger, don’t you ever talk that way to white men...” Bomber said.
Boogey turned and snarled, “Fuck you, hillbilly bitch!”
“Yeah, and fuck you both, assholes,” Chancla interrupted, looking off toward a corner of the terminal where a neon martini glass flashed in a tinted window.
The other two followed him over.
They sat at the bar, four swivel stools between them, all staring at the mirror and the line of labels on the whiskey bottles. When Chancla ordered his tequila and the bartender turned his back to reach for the bottle, Chancla reached over the counter and grabbed a knife and pocketed it. Boogey and Bomber followed suit.
Bomber looked over at Boogey and said, “Think you getting the jump on me—you’re dead, you little overcooked spic!”
“And when I get done with you two, I’m go’ have me a good time with yo mommas,” Boogey said.
The bartender glanced furtively at them. Other customers sitting at the small tables around the counter were conscious of the three men; something about them was odd, yet they made efforts not to stare. From years of forced abstinence, their first shots had them feeling good. Boogey ordered another shot of gin, Bomber another Wild Turkey, and Chancla another tequila.
“You keep looking at us funny, you’ll be looking out of the side of your neck,” Bomber said to the bartender, who went red with fear and nodded and put himself as far away from them as possible, wiping the small tables and chatting with the occupants at the end of the bar.
Boogey got up and turned on the TV bracketed to the ceiling. He sat with his neck craned, making soft clicks with his tongue every time the newscaster reported another of a long list of crime stories. He toasted each crime story, saying, “Ya ain’t seen shit yet...” He took a white plastic fork and combed his kinky hair. He grabbed handfuls of peanuts and stuffed them into his mouth, then slugged down his gin to clean the salty taste from his mouth.
“You niggers like peanuts, like monkeys,” Bomber ridiculed him, squishing red cherries between his black teeth, red juice running down the corners of his mouth and his chin.
“And you crackers is all about cherries, and popping yo white-ass cherry is what I’m planning to do.”
Bomber got mad at the last statement, his left eyelid fluttering uncontrollably as he swigged from the Wild Turkey bottle, picking at the label, squinting his eyes at himself in the mirror beyond the bar counter. “What the fuck you looking at, grease ball?” he said to Chancla.
Chancla had been staring in the big mirror too but was not conscious of seeing Bomber because he was deep in thought. “I’ve never killed anybody I didn’t have a good reason to kill, and I’m thinking about the reason I’m going to kill you two,” he said aloud. He got up and raised his shirt. Facing the other men he traced a long scar hidden in the lush fruit bins and said, “This punk tried using a machete—I gutted him with his blade.” Pointing to a variety of other scars of various lengths and widths, he said, “Here I gave him a free shot—I fucked his wife and told him to take a free shot—he did—then I showed him how to really use it.” He turned his right fist to the customers. “Got teeth stuck in these knuckles—a policeman tried to stop me from taking his car. Every knuckle had one of his teeth embedded in it. They had to wire these knuckles up—”
“What’d you do to me?” Boogey interrupted. “I kinda was trying to figure that out.”
They stared at each other for a long time, oblivious of the airport activity in the background: porters in blue uniforms hurrying dollies full of suitcases; harried parents trying to keep their kids from roaming off; weeping girlfriends kissing their lovers; stern-faced businessmen and women rushing by with briefcases; unwashed, uncombed college kids with strained looks from partying the night before checking their pockets for lost tickets or misplaced IDs.
The commotion made Chancla feel more isolated than he felt in the dungeon. He had tickets to fly back home, but back home was where they had arrested him and sent him to the federal prison in Texas, then transferred him to Arizona for two escapes. Back home was Seattle, but no one and nothing was waiting for him there. He figured that as soon as he got off the plane, he’d roam around town looking for his old crime partner, and if no business came his way, he’d flip a coin to see which way to go—heads, he’d pack it to Mexico; tails, to Canada. He sat back on the stool, licked the top of his hand, sprinkled a dash of salt on it, kicked back a shot of his tequila, bit into the lime wedge, and licked the salt from his hand. “Fuck all of you,” he said to the clientele glancing at him. He spun himself around on the stool and stopped suddenly, facing the mirror.
“It’s that place...” he said to their reflections. “That place...”
“Fuck that hellhole,” Bomber growled, now quite drunk. “Fuck that place and fuck home and fuck my wife and fuck my kids...” he slurred and downed another shot of Wild Turkey.
“I guess it does something to you, ’cuz I can’t remember anything you did to me that I should kill you for,” Boogey said.
“That place runs on us hating each other, on us killing each other—it breeds racism and it breeds criminals,” Bomber said.
“Here’s to that, brother.” Boogey raised his glass of gin and swallowed hard.
They heard the airport intercom loudly announce a flight to New Hampshire.
“What’s your flight number, Bomber?” Chancla asked, but Bomber was mumbling to himself. Chancla rose, checked Bomber’s ticket lying on the counter, and said, “That was your flight they just called on the intercom, Bomber. Be good to get back home to your old lady, your kids, fish some of those streams and—”
“Fuck my old lady, fuck my home, I ain’t going to nowhere except back out there to rob me some dumb muthafucka...” He grinned drunkenly, swiveled around on his stool, and yelled at the few travelers having a drink and minding their own business.
“Flight-number this, you cocksuckers!”
They looked up from their books and papers and prepared to leave.
“You ain’t no man,” Bomber heard a voice say. He turned to his left, ready to stab the fool, when he saw it was Chancla.
“So you ready to have it out now? I’ll teach you who a man is, boy,” Bomber retorted. He was drunk and unsteady enough that he could only stagger to his right slightly, giving Chancla the advantage. Chancla grabbed him from behind, braced his arm around Bomber’s neck, and whispered into his ear, “A man, a real man, not some wipe-ass bitch, would get on his plane and make it home to his family in time for supper. A sniveling ass bitch who can’t hold her liquor would pussy up and stay here.”
Then Chancla pulled in tight to hold him as he struggled to free himself, flailing his knife around at the air before him but not near enough for Chancla to be in danger. Chancla looked at Boogey, who understood what was happening and nodded back to him, giving Chancla a silent signal that he was on standby, waiting for him to indicate when he was needed.
“You a man, muthafucka,” Chancla continued, “you’ll make it to the gate—get up on that stairway to the plane and don’t let them know you’re drunk—that’s a man—pull it off, I challenge you.”
“I’ll show you, asshole.” Bomber’s words distorted into a lot of rolling r sounds as he lunged forward toward the escalators that went up to the gates.
Boogey caught him under the armpit on one side and Chancla grabbed him on the other, and they kept moving him forward, moving him fast down the corridor to his gate. Just before they reached the door, Chancla shoved Bomber against the wall, slipped his knife out of his pocket, and whispered fiercely, an inch from his face, “You gotta make it across the tarmac and up those stairs, Bomber—then you’ll prove you’re a man to me. And I’ll respect you as a man—across the tarmac, up the stairs—you can’t let them know you’re drunk—do it, Bomber—”
“Do it, Bomber,” Boogey pitched in.
Somehow, Bomber seemed to grasp the importance of going home and of proving to them he could handle any challenge. He gave each of them a sweeping glance, lacking any malice and showing a hint of acknowledgment that they had gone through and survived a war together. He turned and walked out into the bright sunshine as Chancla and Boogey watched through the plate glass windows. They saw him tip slightly but regain his balance, grip the stairway railing, and slowly climb up the steep steps to the door of the plane, where he handed his ticket to the stewardess. Before he vanished into the cabin, he turned and saluted his two friends, grinned, flipped them off, and disappeared into the plane.
Chancla turned to Boogey and said, “I gotta find my gate...”
Neither knew what to say or how to say it.
Finally Boogey said, “Uh, uh, how, I mean, how can I get in touch with you? I mean, if you want.” An undertone of sadness shaded his words. He shuffle
d.
“Sure I want, Boogey...” Chancla said, and his words were pained, as if each were a thorn pulled from his tongue. “. . . Never thought anyone would want to get in touch with me though. I don’t know how to write and I ain’t got no number. I know— if you’re in Seattle, or you want to leave a message for me, call Andrei’s—it’s a bar I’ll probably be hanging out at for a while until I decide what I’m going to do.”
“I’m in Atlanta, my momma’s name is Ruby Pass... I’ll take you fishing for catfish like you never dreamed,” Boogey said.
There was an awkward moment, and when Boogey leaned forward to give Chancla a hug, Chancla involuntarily drew back, defensively, and Boogey caught himself.
Chancla said, “I didn’t mean to, I just—it’s weird, you know—” He extended his hands out and they slapped palms and high-fived.
Mother’s Ashes
One afternoon I happened to be standing in an open garage bay when a pack of bikers descended on the premises like a storm of dark rumbling clouds. I was watching Big Joe tune up my old ’52 Harley, hoisted on the hydraulic forklift, when they roared in with their hot-blue chrome pipes, smelling of motor oil and rank with road grit. There were no women with them.
Big Joe, a bearded, long-haired, six-foot-seven, four-hundred-pound giant, had been president of the biker gang Border Bounty Hunters until he retired a few years ago; high in the rafters on the wall, his gang jacket hung in a dirty glass case like an ancient collegiate championship pennant from his glory days.
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