Eureka Man: A Novel (24 page)

The roly-poly guard, Sergeant Mervis Dewey,
entered the hall. “What's the problem? We got a problem here?”

“Sir, I believe there may be too many men in
this room for one officer to handle.”

“You do? Well, let me school you about these
lifers, officer. You let them be. They are the best-behaved men we
have. Let them have their meeting. Can we do that?”

“Sir, yes, sir.”

“Good. You need a break? You want me to
stay?”

“Sir, no sir.”

“OK. Call me at 2-9-5 if you need me.”

Champ's fist was as good as a gavel and when
he brought it down, the hall hushed like a congregation. He pointed
to Bell who was sitting in the front row wearing a burgundy and
grey custom jacket embroidered with the words 3rd Battalion, 187th
Infantry, Phong Dien Vietnam, 1969-1970, across the front. “That's
a fly-ass jacket you're wearing, Bell,” Champ said in earnest.
“It's a shame they're going to take it from you any day now.”

Bell looked confused.

Champ held up a sheet of paper and said, “Yo!
Listen up! We just got this memo, Brothers! The same one that'll be
posted on the bulletin boards next week. The administration is
taking all our personal clothes from us! Starting next month every
man in this joint will be wearing prison browns 24-7. Brown pants,
brown shirts and brown sweat clothes.”

“Get outta here!” one man said. “They can't
do that!”

“Yeah! I just bought a new Philadelphia 76ers
warm-up suit. Cost me seventy-five dollars! They gonna reimburse
me?” asked a second man.

“This is unconstitutional!” said the first
man.

“What are we supposed to do with the clothes
we got?” asked a third man.

Champ made his voice empathetic. “Ain't
nobody more heated about this than I am, Brothers! I got a whole
cell full of clothes. They say we got to mail this stuff home or
donate it to Goodwill or have it destroyed-”

“Mr. President! Champ! I've got something to
say about that!” Oyster Bey interrupted.

“Come on up,” Champ said. Oyster had bounded
halfway up the aisle before Champ said come.

When Oyster leaned toward the microphone, his
voice was loud and defiant. “We heard this was coming! Nobody
wanted to believe the sons a bitches would do it. Now that they
are, I got one thing to say. I don't have many personal clothes. A
couple of polo shirts, some jeans, a few sweaters and a wool jacket
my Aunt Mercy got me a couple Christmases ago. If we have to give
up our personal clothes, it doesn't take a genius to figure out
where they're going to end up. It won't be the Goodwill Store,
that's for sure. These guards will be like goddamned vultures
picking through the piles and taking what they want. Bell's jacket
and that man's warm-up suit will end up on the backs of their kids.
You can bet your ass on that. If you guys are smart, those of you
who don't have anywhere to mail your clothes to, you'll do what I'm
going to do. Take a razor blade and shred the hell out of them
before you turn them in. That's what I'm going to do. Fuck a
Goodwill! That's all I got to say and thanks, Big Champ.”

As Oyster walked back to his seat, someone
shouted, “Good idea, old head! I'm doing the same thing!”

Another man chimed in, “Me, too!”

Champ's voice grew louder as his words
tumbled out. “Christian family gatherings. Cut! Varsity sports
travel. Cut! Annual picnics. Cut to three hours! Then there's that
noon count that's robbing us of a half hour, sometimes a whole
hour, of yard every day. Last month they changed the rules for
outside picnic visits. Now a lifer has to have ten years in instead
of just five.” A moment of silence, and he added, “They fucking us
every way they can. And they ain't done. Listen to this: Quote,
'Due to the continuing increase in the prison population across the
Commonwealth, it has become necessary to place double bunk beds in
every cell. The double bunks are currently being built by our
corrections industries and installation will begin within ninety
days of the date of this memo. Any inmate who refuses to double up
will be placed in the behavioral adjustment unit until he agrees to
comply.'”

A cacophony of curses rose in the room.

“Oh, hell no!”

“They crazy?”

“Put somebody in my cell, I'm fucking
him!”

“You ain't the only one, buddy!”

“Brothers!” Secretary Anwar said. “These six
by nine cells designed to hold one man are about to hold two!
According to the new deputy warden, only out-of-the-closet
homosexuals and the criminally insane will be exempt from this
policy. So you can either put a limp in your wrist, go crazy or
just plain refuse to live in a cell with another man.”

Champ waited until the members settled down
and Anwar took his seat before he shook his head in disgust and
then forced a smile. “This memo says the double celling may only be
temporary because they're planning on building two new cell blocks
in the middle of the yard.”

“Say that again?” two men shouted
simultaneously.

“They're building two cell blocks in the
middle of the yard,” Champ repeated evenly.

Half the men in the room gasped while the
other half said that can't be right.

Everyone knew that building two cellblocks in
the middle of the yard would mean an end to summer softball games
and Sunday afternoon football games in the fall. The boxing program
would have to go, too. To make way for the new buildings, the ball
diamond, boxing gym, law library, prison chapel and the redbrick
Home Block would all have to be demolished.

“This whole prison's nothing but a fucking
cage!” Key-su, a Black Panther from Chicago stood and shouted. “Now
they want to make the cage smaller! Brother Champ! May I address
the membership?”

Champ motioned for Key-su to come forward. It
was prudent, he thought, to let the members hear from someone whose
physical presence itself was a warning sign. This black man with
braids that glittered and clanged like machetes on his head might
portend the future for them and wake them up.

Key-su hustled to the microphone and snarled
without preamble. “Brothers, let me put you down with something!
The prison system is fast finding its way into corporate Amerika!
You see, if you follow the yellow brick road of cause and effect,
you will see that the reason they need more cell blocks is because
they are locking up our young black brothers faster than you can
say there's no place like home.

“Just look what's going on in our cities. The
crack cocaine infiltration is nothing but a mass conspiracy by the
United Snakes of Amerika to up its racial oppression. Where are
these drugs coming from? The last time I checked there weren't any
cocoa fields in downtown Philly or Chicago or Baltimore or D.C.
I'll tell you where they're coming from! South America via the CIA,
my Brothers! And look who the victims are! Some of them are in this
room! You young brothers-babies-coming to jail for life! The
politicians are knee-deep in this shit, too. They're creating new
laws so that a brother who gets arrested with a little crack
cocaine gets three times as much time as a white man who gets
arrested with three times the amount of the pure shit. It ain't no
mystery why they want more cell blocks, Brothers!”

Key-su paused while the members clapped and
cheered. Champ smiled to himself and thought how this brother from
Chicago reminded him of another brother he had heard speak years
ago in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Somewhere in the room, standing
in the corners or against the back wall, Champ saw the bright
golden eyes of his first cousin Joanne and her college classmates
half-circling a freedom fighter who was doing his best to educate
them about the racist world in which they were trapped. He saw,
too, the mothers of three dead college students crying from grief
so sheer you knew they'd been condemned to die from it. And the men
they now referred to as white devils, the pink-faced men who caused
their grief, who produced it, built hi-rise projects to contain it,
designed ways to study it, and then treated those who were sick to
death of it so they could be well enough to endure more struggle
and pain. Grief was the white man's tool for wearing away his
people, Champ was sure.

Key-su went on. “And what about all the other
shit that's going on around here? The recent deaths in the
hospital! Three this month, two last month! And the mentally
deranged Brothers they keep dumping into the population from the
state hospital! They be shuffling around this joint day and night
picking up cigarette butts off the sidewalk and chasing bogeymen.
And what about the Klan beatings going on down in that Home Block?
Brothers, there's a war going on right under our noses. You all
better wake the fuck up!”

Key-su pumped a Black Power sign in the air
and walked to his seat, his bright, angry brown eyes burning like
two torches.

Every member in the hall stood up, stamped
his feet and cheered wildly. While they went on, old man Willie Dew
raised his hand and Champ waved him up to the podium. Arthritis and
thirty-six years of penitentiary life had twisted Willie's lean six
foot five inch frame into a pretzel, so it took him a minute to get
there. His wide wet eyes blinked proudly as he smiled at the
Brother who had just inspired and inflamed his heart.

Willie cleared his throat and smacked his
lips together several times. “Now you know what …. You know what
troubles me? Well, I'll tell you. All these damn pigeons fucking
and flying all over this joint.” Laughter broke like a dam in the
hall and Willie had to wait until it subsided before he went
on.

“Everywhere you look around here, there's
pigeon shit. Early Greer, listen, brother! I loves you, but you got
to stop feeding them damn things.” More laughter, and then, “It's
getting so it ain't safe to look up in the sky no more. The pigeons
fly over the yard dropping bombs of shit all over a man's head and
back. You can't hardly walk anywhere without stepping in pigeon
shit. Then you walk in your cell with shit on the bottom of your
shoe and now you got shit on your rugs and floor. Then later in the
night you walk around your cell in your bare feet and now the
shit's on the bottom of your feet. Then you crawl in bed and now
you got pigeon shit in the bed with you.”

The laughter reached a riotous level before
Willie raised his hands head high and brought his palms together,
touching gracefully. “We had this problem back in '59, and what
they did was they put poison in some day-old bread and fed it to
'em. It worked like a damn charm, too. But you have to be careful
if they do that cause you know how they like to fly up on the big
St. Regis roof and roost right on the edge? Well, when they die
roosting up there they more often than not fall five stories down.
I saw with my own eyes what it did to one ma'fucker that was
standing too close to the building and got clocked. It wasn't a
pretty sight, I'll tell you.” This time the laughter sounded like
thunder. Willie stood there, hat in hand and drop-lipped, until the
excitement died down, and then he shuffled to his seat.

Champ smiled compassionately at the old man.
“Thank you, Willie. We'll address the pigeon problem with the rest
of these issues the next time we meet with the administration. Now
I want Omar Ali to come up here and tell you about a new bill the
legislators just passed.”

“Thank you, Brother Minister. Good evening,
Brothers. For those of you who don't know, the state legislators
just signed a bill that could make every lifer in this state a
walking dead man!”

“Say what?”

“I ain't heard about no new bill!”

“Yeah! What's it's all about?”

Omar Ali and Champ exchanged looks. The sign
of rumble in their eyes was clear. “According to this new law,
three out of five votes from the Pardons Board is no longer enough
to get your sentence commuted. Now all five members of the Board
have to agree. This might not be so bad if it wasn't for that crime
victims advocate who now sits on the Board. That crazy woman votes
no on every application they put in front of her.”

“So what you're saying is we're fucked!”
shouted a man from the back corner of the room.

“Yeah! The whole thing's a bridge going
nowhere now!” Another shouted from the opposite corner.

“Oh, no, Brothers!” Omar Ali protested. “They
can't make something like this retroactive! They say it is, but
we're planning to file a class action suit on they ass! This thing
violates ex post facto protection in the United States
Constitution! We going to fight this all the way to the United
States Supreme Court! Don't lose hope!”

“Hope? I hope those lawmakers die of
cancer!”

“Yeah! Those no-good cocksuckers!”

At that moment, Sergeant Dewey walked through
the side door, raised his hand and whirled his finger around. Omar
Ali walked away from the podium while the conversations swelled in
the room. After Champ gestured with his own hand and announced they
were out of time, Deacon Bob stood and said, “Brothers, losing all
these amenities and rights is a difficult thing. But with the help
of the Creator, we shall overcome. No doubt about it.”

Outside the dining hall Oliver and Early and
the others stood around listening to a group of insurrectionists
wielding conversations about ice picks, fire, and blood.

“I know what'll make 'em stop this shit!”

“Yeah! Tear this motherfucker down!”

“Hit 'em where it hurts!”

Another man was singing “Fire!” by the Ohio
Players. The one beside him was chanting, “Attica!” over and over.
Others mentioned a hunger strike. “Do I look like I'm ready to give
up a meal, niggah?” Chinaman asked, squeezing one of the folds of
fat around his waist. “How bout a work strike? Now I could go for
that.”

Oliver cringed as he pictured the routine of
his daily life going up in smoke-hostages, fires, torn bodies,
bleeding rectums, blood on the sidewalks. Who needed it?