“The end of a smile, starts with a sigh.”
CLACK CLACK, CLACK CLACK
First wake-up of the day. Eat breakfast. Put spoon away. Close cell door. Get back on bunk. Try to fall back asleep.
CLACK CLACK, CLACK CLACK
Second wake-up of the day. Eat lunch. Put spoon away. Close cell door. Drink instant coffee. Chop it up with celly. Clean cell. Wait.
CLACK CLACK, CLACK CLACK
Pod open. Shower. Play chess.
CLACK CLACK, CLACK CLACK
Eat dinner. Put spoon away. Read book. Wait.
CLACK CLACK, CLACK CLACK
5:30 PM. C.O. shift change complete. Pod open.
I’m doing laps with JJ when Dan comes over to join us.
“What up. Down for some chess?” Dan asks.
“Nah, I’m gonna try and win some noodles with JJ against Chino and Gunz. Maybe after though.”
“I’m watching Survivor at seven, then The Amazing Race at eight. Looks like I won’t have a chance to win my milk back before tomorrow,” he says sadly.
“Drop and give me thirty and you’re clear. Make the last five Up Daddys.”
“Bet,” he says.
We step out of the lap lane and Dan knocks out thirty pushups, yelling “Daddy” on the last five. When he’s done, we finalize with a fist bump and step back into the lane with JJ.
“You guys hear about that fat trustee?” JJ asks.
“Something about Josh’s celly asking about the dude’s crime and things weren’t adding up. You think he’s a Mo?”
“Mo?” I ask.
“Molester. Child molester. Or pretty much any sex offender.”
“Oh, shit. Gross. And yeah, I can see it. He’s got that creepy perv vibe.”
“Yeah, and I know Josh. He ain’t gonna let him live there if he’s on that shit. He’s over on the phone right now getting someone to look him up—Oh, there he goes!”
I look over and see Josh all hyped up, storming away from the phone and heading straight for his house. We keep an eye on the cell while we continue doing laps. A minute later Josh comes out red-faced, shaking his head.
“Josh!” JJ yells to him, doing the head nod for him to come join us.
Josh walks over, and a couple of dudes playing cards get up and join as well.
“So he is a MO,” one of the homies says.
“Yeah, he had some fourteen-year-old girlfriend and her parents found out. Sick fuck is like forty and the girl was in one of the classes he’s a substitute teacher for.
“Oh, hell nah, that’s fucked up.”
“I know right? I slapped him up good and told him he better press the button and get out of here or he’ll be eating out of a straw for the rest of his pathetic little life.”
“Haha, I can see him packing his shit right now”.
Sure enough, about five minutes later the MO has all his stuff bundled in a sheet, rolled up and ready to leave.
“They just take him to another section or what?”
“Yeah, they’ll take him to a Protective Custody section where he can be around all his other Cho MO buddies.”
Good, get his type out of here, I think to myself. I absolutely can’t stand the fact pedophiles exist, let alone seem to be so protected in our society. Especially here in Utah. It would be a much more fitting punishment for our society to castrate those demons upon sentencing, and death for the types of heinous crimes that involve ruining children.
CLACK CLACK, CLACK CLACK
First wake up of the day. Eat breakfast. Put spoon away. Close cell door. Get back on bunk.
As I’m trying to fall back to sleep, the speaker on the wall comes alive.
“Knight, you have video court this morning.”
“Okay, so what do I do?” I reply sleepily.
“Bring your I.D. to the programming room and wait there for transfer officers to take you to the video court room.”
“K, when do I go?”
“Now.”
JJ comes into the house. “Looks like you’ve got your first court hearing.”
“What does that mean?”
“Oh nothing, you’ll see the judge in the courtroom on a little T.V. and there’ll be a camera on you too with a microphone so you can talk to the judge. All that’s gonna happen is he’s going to say a bunch of official legal stuff and you’ll plead not guilty. Then they’ll set a future date for an in-person court hearing and appoint you a legal defender. Oh, and for your case there’s going to be a preliminary hearing.”
I’m trying to take it all in, but it’s a lot of info.
“And, um, that means that I’ll... ummm... I don’t know man, what would a preliminary hearing even be for? I’m trying to guess but I have no clue.”
“You’ve really never been in trouble, eh?” JJ says, like he actually believes me for the first time. “That’s gonna work in your favor. The judge will like that. A preliminary hearing is just where the judge decides if there’s probable cause to believe a crime was committed and that you might’ve committed it. If so, the case moves forward to trial.”
He’s speaking another language, and he’s speaking it more fluently than he does his regular English.
“In your case, since you called the cops...” He pauses and shakes his head, clearing away cobwebs of disbelief. “The prosecutors are gonna officially enter all the evidence to the judge. Seems pretty clear cut, so the trial will proceed. That is, if you plead not guilty this morning when you go to video court.”
“Yeah, but I am guilty. I already told the detectives a million times I fucked up and feel terrible! So what’s the point in saying I’m not guilty?” The frustration in my voice is building.
The kind of frustration that’s always lingering in the back of my mind, like a piece of pork stuck in your teeth for two days that you just can’t get out no matter how much you pick at it.
“Because that’s just how the system works. They can still offer you a deal, and there’s gonna be a bunch of time while your public defenders and the prosecutors compile their evidence. You’re potentially looking at a couple years before it actually goes to trial. But like I said, that’s if they don’t offer you a deal first. And given everything I’ve heard from you, I can see them dropping the charges down pretty good so you won’t have to do much prison time.”
“Wow, so I’ll definitely be going to prison then?”
“Oh for sure, bro. I know it sucks, but you’ve got a body on your hands. You won’t do twenty years or anything like that, but probably five to ten.”
“Geez.” I let out a big sigh. “What’s prison like?” If I have to go, I want to know.
“Those are stories for later. You should probably head over to the programming room now, you wouldn’t wanna miss your date!” JJ jokes.
I brush my teeth, grab my I.D., and head to the programming room, as it’s called. That’s where vetted non-jail staff come in to run various programs like AA, NA, and church.
Another inmate pulls up a chair next to me to watch CBS news. Twenty-five minutes pass without a word between us, both of us soaking in the station’s provocative narratives designed to keep us coming back “right after this commercial break.”
I’m only half watching, the other half imagining what court will be like. Then my thoughts drift to prison and how long I’ll be locked up. Will it really take years of being in this jail just to actually end up in prison, like JJ said.
A breaking news alert interrupts my spiraling thoughts, as I hear my name come out of the TV.
“Cillian Knight, the man accused of hitting and killing a homeless man on the freeway while driving intoxicated, is going to plead either guilty or not guilty today.”
“That’s right Karen. Knight called 9-1-1 after allegedly running into the yet-to-be-identified man early in the morning, October fifth.”
I can feel the guy next to me looking at me before he even opens his mouth. “That you up there, homie?”
“Yeah. I was drunk leaving a party and the dude was just out in the middle of the freeway,” I say for what feels like the hundredth time.
“And you called the police on yourself?” he asks in disbelief.
A gigantic sigh leaves my body.
“I did. But I had no clue he was gonna die from the hit. I literally thought I was saving his life.”
“That sucks,” he says, then goes back to watching the news.
That sucks, he says to me. Like it’s just another headline he spent fifteen seconds caring about. It’s puzzling how indifferent his whole vibe feels when hearing someone talk about a life-changing experience.
“What are you in for?” I ask, returning his nonchalant attitude.
He doesn’t turn away from the pixelated reality as he starts telling me about getting busted holding dope while trying to slang on the block. As his story unfolds, he keeps puffing himself up bigger and bigger. According to him, he’s stacked with cash, ice, wheels, women, kicks, and at least a couple plugs for whatever he wants. When he shifts to talking about dope, he gets even more animated, bragging about how much weight he moves.
I’m still learning this language. Some terms I figure out from context, but others leave me scratching my head. At some point he said something about holding four bloons in his mouth that he swallowed when the cops rolled up on him. I think that means he put the drugs into little balloons? I wonder if that’s how they get some of those drugs in here. Although that means he’d have to pass them, then dig through his poop to retrieve them. Gross, but I can see how that would work. I’m gonna have to ask JJ when I get back.