by Damon West
“Black!” he exclaimed. “They thought you acted ‘black.’ That doesn’t surprise me. You have a little swag to the way you carry yourself. It probably intimidated some of them. Without a doubt, you intimidate the whites in here.”
Mr. Jackson went on to say I didn’t subscribe to their way of thinking, didn’t fall in line with the status quo. He said because I was intelligent, possessed a college education, came from money, and was “either fearless or careless” because I ventured into areas where I was not expected or welcomed, I was showing that I didn’t need the whites. He said I survived on an island in there and that’s why they didn’t talk to me much. This was why they were having so much fun watching me stress over going to prison on a life sentence. They loved the fact that a guy like me got hammered by that jury. The entire pod loved it.
“You represent ‘The Man.’ And ‘The Man’ just devoured one of its own,” he explained.
I could tell everyone was having fun at my expense. I heard them laugh when I walked by. They took turns coming up to me to share horror stories about the racial tensions in prison. Everybody told me I’d never survive unless I got into a gang.
“It’s extremely depressing and scary, Mr. Jackson. I don’t fit in anywhere in this place. I’ve never been this much of an outcast.”
Mr. Jackson chuckled. “You definitely don’t fit in here, West. This is a gift and a curse.” The former because I didn’t want to fit into this institution; the latter because the pressure to assimilate was going to be greater on me than just about anyone who had ever entered into the system.
“You have a light about you, West, that so many others are going to want to extinguish. You’ll be hated by just about everybody when you walk in there.” And, he said, the part of prison I was going to, because of my life sentence, was as awful as it got, that I would be fighting a lot if I didn’t get into a gang.
As I thought about how awful my reality was sounding, I told him that I understood that part. After all, every man in here had told me the exact same thing.
“They’re all full of it,” he told me. “You want to survive this experience and keep that promise you made your parents?”
I smiled. The first smile in a long time. “Yes. But how?”
Mr. Jackson looked around as if he wanted to see if anyone was watching us talk. You always felt eyeballs on you in this place.
He began to tell me about the institution of prison. He said I was about to walk into the most disgusting place on the planet. That I must forget the real world, the free world. That place was dead to me now. He described prison as a parallel universe where down is up and up is down. A place where people are going to lie to me as often as they can. “They call it ‘running game.’ You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone you can trust in the initial months. The Golden Rule you must always remember in there is that prison, as an institution, is all about race. Race runs everything.”
He emphasized that this was how the inmates, and everybody else, wanted it. If all the inmates stuck to their own races, there would be less likelihood of racial violence and racial wars.
I must admit, his words did not instill confidence in me, but they didn’t altogether shock me. I could see the self-drawn racial boundaries in county jail. I’d noticed this self-segregation was more pronounced with the men who had been to prison before. The racial deal just wasn’t that serious in county jail. I asked Mr. Jackson why blacks, whites, and Hispanics could associate so freely in county but not in prison.
He laughed. “County ain’t prison. County is like a day care facility compared to prison. In county, you have a lot of people who are in transit. Some are there for a few months; others could pull a year, maybe two while waiting for a trial date.” He stressed that this place was not “home” for any of the people incarcerated. “Prison, on the other hand, is ‘home’ to most everyone there. And home is where their ‘family’ is. Only in prison, a ‘family’ is a gang.”
He said those gangs run the show in prison, that there was an underworld of contraband, drugs, and even sex, among other things, and the gangs competed for that action.
He got back to my original question, about the races mixing so well in county, but not in prison. “You can see the white and black gangs mixing it up in here. Honestly, it’s not encouraged.”
According to Mr. Jackson, the gangs relaxed their postures in county because they didn’t want to attract unnecessary attention when there was no gain. It was clear from his descriptions that the criminal underworld in Dallas County Jail was nothing compared to what prison would be.
Then, he posed a question to me. He wanted to know if I ever watched the Mexicans, “the eses,” as he called them. “They don’t mix it up with the blacks in here much. In prison, not at all. It’s the same on the street for the eses, and there are repercussions for them if they cross that line.”
I was confused. I thought the whites and blacks had the market cornered on racial dislike in prison. Now, he was telling me the Hispanics were more punitive than whites for mixing it up with the blacks.
“What’s the deal with that?” I asked.
He explained that there was a deep-seated divide between his people and them. He suspected much of it was cultural in nature. “Look, I’m a black man who’s been to the penitentiary a few times. I’ve lived in the hood in Dallas when I wasn’t living in prison. I understand the dynamics of the situation.”
He said he noticed I called them “Hispanics.” Poking fun at me, he told me no one in prison, outside of the administration, called them Hispanics. “That’s okay, though, it’s a reflection on how you were raised. Which, by the way, is refreshing.”
He got serious. “I also notice you don’t say, ‘the N-word’. You’ll do well to never use that awful word in prison. It can get you killed. At the very least, it’ll get you hurt very badly.” He went on to say that word is thrown around by young black men and black boys so freely, that they have no idea the power, hate, and pain associated with that word. It made the older guys sick to hear it from them. He’d long since given up on trying to instill a historical perspective in them.
“West,” he said, “the reality is you might not live through this. Because of your time, you will be subjected to the worst of the worst Texas has to offer.” He reiterated that everyone would hate me because of the way I looked, acted, and spoke.
“Your life will be very violent initially,” he said somberly. “Physically and mentally, you’ll be going to war.”
He looked around again with that “convict-scoping-out-the-landscape” look. “Always remember this. You’ll win some fights, but you’ll lose a lot more than you win. That’s okay. You don’t have to win all your fights, but you must fight all your fights.”
He told me to never turn down a fight in there, that my life depended on me never backing down. He said the minute I showed any weakness, it would be over for me. They would be like sharks with blood in the water. “When you get knocked down,” he said, “get back up as quickly as you can. Never lay down.”
He paused, and kept going, saying the first white guy that approached me wasn’t going to hurt me. That first guy was an information gatherer, sent to find out who I’d be “riding with.” That meant he wanted to know what gang I’d be joining. “You tell him you’re ‘riding with God,’ that you don’t need his gang,” Mr. Jackson said. “He’ll leave you alone at that point. Be ready, though, because it won’t take long.”
“What won’t take long?”
“Your heart-check.”
I knew what a heart-check was. I had one within the first twenty-four hours of walking into general population after my arrest. It’s basically a challenge from another inmate to see if you have heart, if you will defend yourself. Most of the ones I had seen were pretty tame. You fight for a minute, lick your wounds, and go about your business. No big deal.
“Will this be
like county jail, where someone challenges me within twenty-four hours?” I asked.
“More like twenty-four minutes.”
Yikes. I thought about that for a second. At least I wouldn’t have to wait long to get it over with.
“Remember the Golden Rule. Race runs everything, and blacks have the greatest numbers in there.”
“Not exactly the highest honor,” I said. “Definitely a dubious distinction to finally be in the majority, but it has to be in prison.”
He laughed. “A conversation for another time.” He reminded me again that up was down and down was up in prison.
The heart check was going to happen quickly, he said. That after I sent that first white guy back with my answer, the next guy who approached me wasn’t coming to talk; he was coming to hurt me. “When he gets within range, put your fist in his mouth. It’s imperative you get the jump on as many fights as you can. You’ll have to appear fearless, especially in defeat.”
“Are there any rules to this?”
“In prison fighting? There’s only one rule. You’re not allowed to beat a man when he’s on the ground.” This was in place to give the weaker guy a chance to fight. Violation of this rule could result in a beating by several others. He didn’t think I would be in any danger of violating this rule. Not initially.
“These guys are going to be coming at you from all directions. It’ll be all the white gangs first, then the black gangs are coming after you because the white gangs will ask the black gangs to do it.”
I was going against the status quo, he said, and herding me into my proper group–the whites–was going to become a shared mission with just about every gang and race in there. The Mexican gangs might cut me some slack and take a pass if I showed heart. He was clear that I should prepare myself mentally and physically to taste blood from just about everybody there.
“This is going to be awful,” I admitted.
“No doubt. But, West, you can survive it. Others have survived what you’re about to go through. I’ll shoot you straight, though. Most don’t survive to the point they have the autonomy you’re seeking. It’s the toughest environment I’ve ever witnessed,” he said.
He got deadly silent and stared into my eyes. A menacing stare that shook me a bit. Then he whispered, “The strongest man in prison always walks alone.”
* * *
I will never forget that first day at the Mark Stiles Unit. After a long trip on the Blue Bird, chained to another man, I was exhausted. Those buses leave Huntsville before dawn, and travel all over the state, dropping men off at the many prison units that make up the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. When you arrive at each unit, the bus must be processed as it enters and exits the prison. The guards check in their shotguns and sidearms, while another guard searches under the bus with a mirror on a stick. I assume they’re looking for contraband, not bombs. All this is done while the bus is parked in a sally-port type of pen, where both gates will never be open at the same time.
Meanwhile, the dozens of us on the bus who are not getting off at that particular unit sit there, chained to the nearest passenger. Fights are extremely common on these buses. No one cares, either. We are locked in a steel cage on a dystopian school bus. The only thing we can hurt is each other.
I picked up conversations from many of the prisoners about their plans once they hit the unit. Mr. Jackson told me to always keep my ears and eyes open. “See without seeing, and hear without hearing,” he would say. The code of the convict, of which I was now one.
Nearly every younger person, people thirty-five and under, was in a gang. Talk of “families” was big. It was like being around a bunch of juveniles talking about whose penis is bigger. Immaturity and fear were thick in the air. Pretty soon, according to Mr. Jackson, I was going to be living among a bunch of knife-wielding, immature men. Great.
As the bus pulled into Beaumont, I thought to myself about the day I left this area, when I departed for college fifteen years prior. I just knew I would never be back here again, that I was too big for the Southeast Texas. Well, like with so much in life, I had been wrong.
Once inside the Stiles Unit, every man is sent into 12 Building, where Administrative Segregation is housed, stripped down naked, sent through a metal detector, and then placed in an X-ray seat to make sure he is not hiding a weapon or any other contraband up his butt. They call this “keistering.” I would learn just how disgustingly common it was for inmates to transport contraband up their asses. After that, you put your chin on an X-ray panel that will check for anything you are hiding in your mouth, like perhaps a handcuff key. Once done with all the body searching, you get dressed and head to UCC (Unit Classification Committee, a three-judge panel) to learn your housing and work assignments.
Once done with Classifications, I was sent on my way to my new housing assignment: 7 Building, G-Pod, 45 Cell. Thankfully I had a bottom bunk. One of the many nuggets of wisdom Mr. Jackson gave me was to itemize all of your medical problems when you are being processed by medical at intake. He told me I needed to have legitimate medical reasons to secure both a bottom bunk and a medical restriction to keep me out of working in the “fields.” The “Fields Squad,” or the “Hoe Squad,” is the designation given to the inmates who go out every day and either cut the grass around the massive prison farm or take hoes, better known as “aggies,” and work in rows of men to plow fields all day long. It’s definitely work you want to avoid if you can, Mr. Jackson assured me.
Mr. Jackson told me that in the old days of prison, guys would be worked so hard in the fields that they would mutilate themselves to get out of their field jobs picking cotton, breaking rocks and hoeing rows. He said they would sharpen their aggies and cut their own Achilles’ tendons in half or cut the ligaments that connect the thumb to the hand, both sure ways to get out of field-work. “Their work was grueling, and the field bosses were like slave-drivers. Prison fields were rows and rows of mostly black men picking cotton, with a white guard on horseback carrying a long rifle. Whatever you do, avoid the fields,” he warned before I left County.
Avoid them I did. I already had my own Achilles’ tendon and shoulder injuries. Both left me nasty scars and legitimate concerns for range of motion with certain types of labor. Because I cannot take the impact of jumping down from a top bunk, the intake doctor gave me a bottom bunk restriction. The Achilles injury earned me a “No working on wet or uneven surfaces restriction,” thus eliminating the fields. I never thought I would find a use for those two injuries. Thank you, God. I was assigned to be a cook instead, which would eventually bring on a whole host of other problems, or “occupational hazards.”
When the doors rolled, and I walked into G-Pod, it was like in the movies when someone walks into a bar or club they don’t belong in and the record scratches, leaving nothing but dead silence and stares. Dozens of sets of eyeballs stared me down, people got up and grabbed their friends, and I heard lots of laughing and snickering. It was like the nightmare first day of school to a kid who gets bullied. To occupy my mind and displace some of the fear, I surveyed the pod. G-Pod looks like any other pod on a prison that was built during the prison boom of the early ’90s. The bottom floor is the day room. That’s where inmates congregate all day and night. There’s only one TV on this particular pod. So many men for only one TV. There are benches in front of this TV, too. Two of them. According to Mr. Jackson, that means the whites sit on the floor. But I saw some old white guys sitting on the benches.
On the day room floor, people are sitting at the tables, drawing, reading, drinking, staring. Each table has four seats welded to the table to keep the inmates from using seats as weapons. The tables are octagon-shaped, the seats round, likely to reduce the number of corners and sharp edges. These things can cause much damage to human tissue. I witnessed a seemingly harmless fight in county where a guy’s head hit the corner of a squared table. He almost bled to death and had to
be taken to the hospital. Everything in this place is, literally, nailed to the floor. And everything in this place is cement and steel.
There are three tiers. A stairwell on each end of the pod gives access to the eight cells on each tier. That’s twenty-four cells, two men to a cell, forty-eight people on each pod. A lot of personalities. Assuming each man has only one personality, which I learned in county is never the case. Lots of mentally ill people are incarcerated. To add to this toxic soup, every man on this pod has a sentence of at least fifty years. Pretty much the entire pod has life sentences.
There are windows everywhere. Hopefully the view is good. In each stairwell, and bookending the showers, nothing but glorious daylight comes through. This will help in the hotter months because Texas prisons do not have air conditioning. The air is stale, with a touch of the petrochemical aroma so common to this part of Texas.
There are other smells I am registering. Smells I know well. I have known them since I was a pre-teen. The sweet smell of marijuana, and the smoky smell of cigarettes. Both are illegal, according to the Inmate Handbook. Oh, well. I scan the room, surveying everything and allowing my preservation of life instinct to do what it has been doing since this nightmare of incarceration began. Situational awareness is what Mr. Jackson called it.
On each tier, there is a set of individual showers, which divide the cells evenly. The showers have saloon-type half-doors on them, providing a little privacy. Interesting. Four cells, shower, shower, four more cells on each floor.
The idea of individual showers appeals to me, as opposed to the car-wash type at the old red-brick transfer facilities in Huntsville. There must have been fifty people in the showers at one time in there. I thought about how many men must have been raped in those showers over the many decades that old facility had been around. Aside from it being pretty gross to be around a bunch of naked men, I never relaxed during the few minutes each day we were allowed to shower. Oddly, I find myself looking forward to the idea of a nice, long, hot shower all by myself.