Clack Clack
I’m back.
Enough time has passed while I was gone that everyone’s already been racked in for shift change. Officer Parker walks into the section too, so she must be our CO this evening. I glance at the empty phones. “Hey CO, can I stay out and make a phone call?”
She looks at the clock on the wall before responding. “I’m really sorry about your unfortunate news darlin, but I can’t let you do that. You’ll be out in ten minutes though, so it won’t be too long.”
She pops my door and I head to my cell.
I tell old man Jimbo about the news, then spend the next ten minutes hearing him try to console me by talking about his own father and how he took care of him before he died.
I hardly listen to a word.
CLACK CLACK, CLACK CLACK
It’s the final rack-in for the night. I’m already on the toilet when Jimbo comes in and asks, “You good?”
I just spent the last three and a half hours crying on the phones with my family, telling inmates how awesome my pops was, and venting about how I’ll never get to speak to him again. But we’ve still got over half a roll of TP left, so I respond, “All good.”
He closes the cell door and sidesteps the elephant in the cell by asking, “Ready for your first clothing exchange?”
I know he’s talking about our secret mission tonight to get the coveted crack rock.
While we wait for Officer Parker to come get us for clothing exchange, he runs through the plan again. “You know that trustee in quarantine you saw Tad talking to last night?”
I nod.
“That’s Q, he’ll have the drugs in a tightly folded piece of paper, stuck to the sticky side of a deodorant label, attached to the top corner inside the garbage can.”
“Right,” I say. “I remember. Then he’ll pretend to struggle with the trash being stuck at the bottom, and that’s when I start ‘helping’ him with the trash can, right?”
“Correct,” Old Man Jimbo says. “You hold the corner with the deodorant label, and while you both look like you’re trying to get some sticky trash unstuck, you unpeel the sticker and palm it.”
“That part shouldn’t be too hard,” I say, “but then I have to hide it in my socks, right? So how do I do that without looking suspicious?”
Jimbo looks down and notices I haven’t spent forty-five dollars on tennis shoes. “Well, you can’t bend down to Velcro crocs, can you?” He thinks for a moment before the lightbulb turns on. “I’ve got it! You purposefully walk out of one croc, and when you bend down to put it back on, just slip the paper into your sock! That should be perfect. You’ll also be right under the stairs, so you’ll be mostly covered from the CO station and cameras.”
I can visualize how to pull it off, but I’ll have to be quick and precise with each movement. I can feel the pressure building, but I just can’t say no and walk away from this. There is nowhere to walk to.
“Can you talk to the CO at the station when I get to the cell to distract him?”
“Tad and Scrappy are already on it. They’re gonna have a pretend fight, which should be all the distraction you need.”
“That’s perfect. Okay, I think I got this,” I say, hands already extra sweaty.
“I know you do,” Old Man Jimbo says with a proud smile.
Clack Clack, Clack Clack
Officer Parker pops our two doors, allowing Tad, Scrappy, Jimbo and I to walk out, with operation “get the drugs” underway.
We grab the clothing carts from the storage room, then we’re joined by four other coppers ready to raid.
We return to do our section first, and everything is as straightforward as foretold. I go around holding the garbage bag for inmates to empty their trash, and the coppers to throw away state food they find stashed.
Officer Parker finds such a food stash and dumps it into the garbage bag I’m holding.
“Hey, so you’re the new trustee huh? That was you coming out of the chaplain’s office, right?” She asks me.
“Yeah, sorry I almost ran into you.”
“No problem, you just startled me is all.” She squints behind her glasses at me for a a moment and says, “why do you look familiar?”
“Probably because I’ve been here for almost half a-“
“I know! You’re the doofus who ran right into the cell door after pissing me off!”
Damn it, I was hoping she would have forgotten about that. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, don’t play coy with me. You’re a lucky duck I had so much paperwork that night, or you wouldn’t be here right now,” she says, pointing to the ground.
“Yeah, obviously it was not one of my best moments. Sorry I took it too far; this darn tongue is always getting me into trouble.”
Somehow words are coming out of me that sound playful, even though I am on a roller coaster of emotions.
She purses her lips and gives me “the look” before saying, “Well, you got away with it once, but don’t ever joke like that again with me. It would be a shame to see a pretty face like yours end up in max.”
She turns back to her search and I feel there’s much more to her than just lusty thoughts about her attractiveness. I’m pulled into the way she carries herself and the strength of her character demands my attention.
As we head to the next section, my nerves kick up a notch. After this, Q’s drugs in quarantine will be ready to be picked up.
We’ve only made it through a few cells when Officer Parker and I find ourselves within speaking distance yet again. Outside an inmate’s door, we wait while he wraps a sheet around himself and gathers his clothes.
She lets out a big sigh and complains into the cell, “We literally do this every other day, how can you not be ready?”
The sleepy-eyed inmate doesn’t give a single fuck and keeps going at his own snails pace.
Standing a few feet away from the woman I think about often, I try to come up with something to say, but my mind feels like applesauce after all the sorrow from today’s news.
And then it hits me like a piece of forbidden fruit falling on Sir Isaac Newton.
“So, what’s up with the Dragons of Eden?” I ask, thinking it’s cool to bring up something I shouldn’t have overheard.
Her eyes flash with a kamikaze of emotion. “How do you know about that?” she attacks.
Surprised at the shift in her tone, I defend by transforming into a coy fish. “Uhh, lucky guess?”
She squints at me suspiciously, and I can tell my humor isn’t landing right now. “Okay, fine,” I say. “Your whispers carry louder than you think in that hallway. I heard something about The Dragons of Eden, but that’s all I could catch.”
Her expression relaxes noticeably. “You were eavesdropping on me talking to my brother in the hall earlier, were ya?”
She may have just dropped her hair dryer in my fish tank, because I’m beyond shocked. “Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Jr. is your brother?”
She chuckles. “That’s funny. Growing up, his friends called him ‘Thor Jr.’”
The inmate taking forever finally walks out of the cell with his bundle of dirty clothes.
As Officer Parker heads into the cell to start her hunt, I keep the conversation going. “I can’t believe that’s your brother because you guys look nothing alike. I don’t mean to be rude, but he looks a little... goofy. You on the other hand, look like you could be on that show America’s Next Top Model.”
She glances my way and pauses like she’s trying to figure out where the risky compliment is really coming from.
“That would be because we don’t have the same parents,” she says.
“Now that makes sense.” One mystery almost solved, I ask, “Were you both adopted, or just one of you?”
She abruptly stops rummaging through another man’s possessions, faces me, and says, “Enough. We’re not playing Twenty Questions.” Instead of returning to the search, she struts right out of the cell.
I must have hit a nerve there, so I’m a little worried she’s going to tell on me for my provocative comments.
But the worry is short-lived. Instead of going to the lieutenant, she moves on to the next cell in line to be searched.
Throughout the rest of my time in the second section, Officer Parker keeps giving me a look. I can’t even attach it to any particular emotion either; from what I can tell, she’s just observing me. I just don’t know what I said that caused this kind of reaction.
Am I just that awkward now? Can I not even have a simple conversation with a woman? Or maybe it’s not me, and she’s just odd. I mean how many women would want a job that requires them to go to jail five days a week?