CLACK CLACK, CLACK CLACK
Shift change is over, and as I’m walking into the dayroom, I see Wess heading my way.
“What up,” I ask in greeting.
He wastes no time getting into business. “Yo, you got a house for me?”
I respond apologetically. “Nah, sorry bro. I took it during rack-in.”
“Dude! I already made a deal with Big Petey.”
“So that was you he was signing to earlier?”
“Yeah, I was working on a deal to get his bottle of Benadryl. I really need a pink house dude!”
“Sorry, Bub. Like I said, I already took it.”
Wess isn’t accepting a no on this. “I know your pack ain’t empty. Come on, do me a favor.”
“It’s clothing changeout tonight. Not worth the risk, can’t do it.”
“I’ll make it worth the risk. Just put the pack in your sheet when you wrap it around you.”
“And have it fall out when I start walking? No thanks.”
“Come on bro, pleaseee! I’ll make you a deal, I won’t take a cut on the next three trades.”
Hmmmm, one pill for about six bucks? That’s a pretty hefty payday. I may just be able to hide my pack for just one little clothing exchange.
“Hmm. Tempting, very tempting.”
“Come onnn, pleasssse!”
“Okay okay, if you throw in a bag of cool ranch Doritos today, plus the three free deals, then you’ve got yourself a deal right now.”
“Bet!” he says happily as we lock it in with a fist bump.
CLACK CLACK, CLACK CLACK
Once again, the nightly hymn “goodnight homie” echoes through the section, with the percussion of slapping hands and fists coming together in the background.
“You good?” I ask Kevin, ready to close the door for the night.
He puts his book down, thinks for a moment, then replies, “All good.”
I tell him about my mission to hide my pill pack tonight, and he offers his two cents on the best way to make a pocket in the sheet before I wrap it around me.
We spend the next twenty minutes trying to perfect the pocket before the coppers arrive in the section.
Clack Clack
Our cell door pops for clothing exchange.
Kevin empties our garbage into the bag that Cory’s walking around with, so I start walking towards the clothing line. The little pocket folded into the seam where my pill pack is sitting is starting to feel loose, but it’s too late to change it now, so I just shuffle forward. With every movement, I feel the pack shift slightly.
I keep imagining my little secret slipping out, tapping the floor, and condemning me to a life of one-hour-a-day out of your cell, trapped in a maximum security section.
All I can do is take another step, and then another.
By the time I finish getting my uniform bundle, the package of pills is so loose that I have to press the clothes against it to keep it from falling.
At this point, it’s just a matter of prayer.
I’m almost home and on the brink of a relieved sigh, when my heart drops at the doorway.
CO try-hard is still in there going through our shit!
He sees my celly and I arrive, then putting on his big boy detective voice, he demands to know, “Whose books are whose?”
Kevin starts answering for us right away. “Half and half, we’re both reading them.”
“Well I count thirteen here. Last I checked, six and six is twelve. You have six seconds to pick which one goes, or they all go.”
Kevin picks up one of our two National Geographics and tries to hand it to the copper.
But the CO just looks at him like he’s a disgusting slug. “Do I look like I want that? Go put it on the cart.”
Kevin is a grown-ass man, and I can see by the way his body tenses that he’s trying to keep his cool after being talked down to like he’s a child.
This CO seems to be looking for an excuse to use force tonight.
But Kevin keeps his cool and takes the magazine to over to the socks and underwear cart to be taken out of the section.
As the CO leaves our cell I give him a wide berth. As he walks by, he eyes me up and down, holding my bundle of clothes against my body before he says, “Don’t let me catch you holding extra books again,” then stalks off in search of another night to try and ruin. What a douche canoe.
Kevin comes back to the cell and closes the door. “What a douche canoe! I cannot stand that CO!”
“That was literally exactly what I was just thinking!”
Kevin blocks as much vision as he can at the door, then says, “You’re good.”
I set my clothing bundle on the corner table, and right as I do, my pill pack falls to the ground.
“Holy shit, that was close.” I say, quickly picking up the pack and putting it in my box.
We turn away from each other to give each other some privacy as we both put on our uniforms.
Out of respect, I feel like I need to tell Kevin I’m moving. “Soooo, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna be replacing Cory when he leaves Wednesday.”
He nods up and down at me. “I think you’re gonna like that better. I mean, if you’re going to be here that long, then it’s better to have a steady routine.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too. Plus, I get along with all those guys, as you can see.”
“I do see.” He says it slowly. “And my unsolicited advice is for you to be careful. Don’t allow them to get you to do anything you don’t wanna do. I’ve seen it happen way too much to kids your age.”
I’m about to respond, but he cuts me off before I get a word out.
“I know you’re not a kid. Just don’t get caught up in that ‘It’s cool to be in a gang’ mindset.” He throws up the ol’ finger air quotes before twisting them into gang signs.
He means well, and I take his advice to heart, even though I already know it. “Thanks man, I hear what you’re sayin’.”
We clasp hands together and pull each other in for two slaps on the back. Straight men can hug too; we just make sure there’s some hitting involved.
CLACK CLACK, CLACK CLACK
It’s Wednesday night and my birthday’s gone as well as it could. The only thing nagging at me is my dad not answering his phone all day. When I called my sister right before rack in, she said she hadn’t heard from him either. But she said she’d pass along the message that I love him and tried to call.
Cory left like he was supposed to, and the crew voted me in. Moving into Old Man Jimbo’s cell feels like I moved across town. Even though it’s just a stone’s throw away, the placement right under the stairs gives off a feeling of added privacy.
During the day, the crew gives me the lowdown on what we do each night and what my position will be as the new guy. During clothing exchange, I won’t be the guy who hands out shirts, or pants, or even the socks and underwear. I’ll be the guy who walks around with the COs, holding a big trash bag for them to throw “contraband” into from the cells they search. Other than the difference in roles on those nights, we all share the same responsibilities. After work most nights, we get to go into the programming room and stay up watching late-night television, with an occasional movie.
Clack Clack
Tad, Scrappy, Old Man Jimbo, and I walk out of our two cells.
Clack Clack
The CO opens the section door with his key and we walk casually out of the pod. We don’t go far down the hallway before everyone stops. The CO pulls out his keys again and opens a regular-sized door. Inside is a large closet stocked with cleaning supplies, shelves of sheets, and carts loaded with folded uniforms.
Scrappy goes about the room and points out the obvious layout while Tad makes a dumb joke about escaping that I’ve already heard.
Old Man Jimbo is the one who wheels the socks and underwear cart out of the closet. The CO escorting us around is an senior citizen with that IDGAF personality that seems to come standard with most coppers working the night shift.
It feels absolutely bizarre being able to move around in a space that’s not the little fishbowl I’ve become so acclimated to. We start out by going to our section first, then move onto the one adjacent to ours.
Everything is as simple as it seems. That is, until we hit quarantine.
Quarantine was the first place I was sent to after being released from the “drunk tank” when I first got to jail.
The entire jail has just two of these sections, and both have an odor to them. Most of the inmates in here are coming off heavy drug or alcohol use, and the smell, is a mix of despair and shit.
We divide into two groups, one for upstairs and one for downstairs. Almost nobody wants to exchange their socks or underwear in here.
As Jimbo and I finish upstairs, I notice Tad still at the first cell talking to the section trustee. Scrappy coughs a signal for Tad to walk away. The copper doesn’t notice at all as he finishes his rounds.
As we head into the fourth and last section we’re responsible for, I see Tad give us all a grin and nod behind the CO’s back.
We do the same routine in the other quarantine section, and when Jimbo and I make it up the stairs, I whisper to him, “What’s the good news?”
“I’ll tell you back at home,” he whispers back, “but it looks like we’re still good to go.”
It’s got to be about that “surprise” Scrappy was talking about.