ROLL CALL ~ A Prison List (True Prison Story) (18 page)

At the top of the stairs, Vince looked to his right and saw deputy Primo in a separated cage holding a steel handle that apparently opened the cells. He turned and walked down the tier toward the end and saw each cell had two heavily muscled and tattooed down bodies in boxer shorts. Every face seemed to be studying he and Damon.

Halfway down the tier, two stout white men stopped Vince and Damon. “Hey, real quick youngsters, I’m Bird and this is my cellie Pelican. If you two need anything at all don’t hesitate to come to us. We’ll be right here for you little brothers.”

Both Damon and Vince said, “Thank you.”

Damon was about to introduce himself but a Mexican in the next cell yelled, “SPENCER ON THE TIER!! JAVES ON DA SEGUNDO TIER!!”

Right after that Vince listened to Mad Dog yell, “EXCUSE ME ON THE TIER!! THE KEYS ARE ON THE SECOND TIER!!”

Bird and Pelican noticed how shell shocked Damon and Vince looked standing there not knowing what to do.

Deputy Primo tapped his keys against the steel enclosure.

Bird said, “Go to your cells youngsters. When he clanks the keys like that it means lock it up or he’ll do some cell searches and get you in trouble. We’ll talk to you at chow time in a little bit.”

CHAPTER 40

Damon followed Vince into the cell and closed the barred door behind him. He felt a claustrophobic feeling squeezing in on him as the iron cell door clanked shut. He thought, this cell is impossibly small! It’s only about 8 feet wide and half of that is swallowed up by our bunks. I can’t even get by Vince while he’s standing there! Damon turned around and faced the bars and practiced sticking his arms out like everyone else had been doing. He looked down at his arms and realized, I need some bigger arms and tattoos. He changed his stance and grabbed the bars instead. He looked at the wall in front 15 feet away. About 10 feet up the wall it turned into a glass window. A lot of it was broken. Like someone had thrown something up there from the main hall to send pieces to the other side. Damon imagined the big pieces of glass being wrapped at the end with sheet for use as a modified knife.

Vince stood studying the cell and wondering where to put the weapons. The cell was only 10 feet long and the bunks took up 7 feet of that space. Vince looked at the toilet and sink, practically an extension from the end of the bottom bunk. He thought whoever sleeps on the bottom rack better face the other way. He imagined someone’s head right next to their cellie’s pooping butt. On that note, he wondered if the weapons would slide down the toilet.

“Damon, where should we hide the weapons?”

Damon turned around and looked at Vince. “How about we turn the brown bag they’re in into a mini trash bag and put it right next to the toilet. We can put some toilet paper over the top of the weapons for some cover and if we need to we can dump it in the toilet if the guards are coming.”

Vince nodded his head. “That’s what I was thinking… Which bunk do you want to sleep in?”

“It doesn’t matter. We can switch on a weekly schedule or something if you want…”

An hour later deputy Primo made his presence felt and announced a warning to get ready for evening chow. A few minutes later the cell door popped open.

Damon and Vince stepped out on the tier and noticed the child molesters in the cell next to them didn’t come out. One of them shut the cell door and both of them avoided making eye contact.

Bird and Pelican walked over and Vince took a visual inventory. Both Bird and Pelican looked like studs at about thirty years old. Neither looked like they belonged in prison, but both looked very capable. Both had well groomed slicked back brown hair and blue eyes on a stoic looking G.Q. face. Both of their arms were inkless from the elbow down but you could see the tattoos started somewhere up the biceps and triceps. Both had a pair of boots they set on the ground in front of the cell.

Bird shook hands with Damon and said, “Welcome to the west side of Sycamore. Me and Pelican here have your back youngsters and we’re the only other white cell on this second tier. The rest of the whites are on the first tier and we’ve got three cells all in a row above you on the end of the third tier. You’ll be going to chow with us and sitting at our table so we’re together.”

After shaking hands, Bird looked into the cell the child molesters were in and asked, “Why aren’t you two going to chow? We’ve got a mandatory everything over here on the west side. That means mandatory workouts, chow, showers and yard. You have to come out and participate in all of it!”

One of the child molesters on the bottom bunk said, “Nobody told us that. We just got here last night.”

Pelican said, “Now you know!”

The line to chow started moving and Vince wondered if Bird and Pelican knew that they had just been talking to a couple of hi-profile child molesters.

Damon assumed they didn’t know and wondered, would we be in the wrong for telling them? The opportunity didn’t seem to present itself.

Vince was busy taking in the surroundings. He thought, Mad Dog was right, everyone here looks like they’ve been doing this for ten to twenty years. It must be our turn to prove ourselves and earn some points.

Damon was thinking, it can’t be wrong to tell Bird and Pelican about those child molesters, we would want them to tell us if the situation was reversed, but how do I tell them?

On the way back from chow Damon realized the opportunity to talk in private was gone. The space just wasn’t there.

Back inside their cell an hour later the lights on the tier clicked down to a dim.

All the noise from conversations going back and forth from cell to cell got quiet.

Mad Dog’s voice and presence took over in a deep and loud command and reverberated in the echo chamber.

“EXCUSE ME ON THE TEIR!! OVER HERE ON THE WEST SIDE OF SYCAMORE WE HAVE A LIGHTS OUT POLICY!! THIS MEANS NO MORE YELLING OUT OF YOUR CELL!! IT ALSO MEANS THERE IS TO BE NO MORE CELL TO CELL TALKING!! THE ONLY TALKING THAT SHOULD BE IS BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR CELLIE, AND THAT MUST BE KEPT TO A MINUMUM IN RESPECT OF THIS POLICY!! WE WANT TO RESPECT EVERYONE WHO IS GOING TO SLEEP!! THANK YOU!!”

Everyone in all 45 cells yelled out at the same time in a booming crescendo, “THANK YOU!!!!”

Vince and Damon looked at each other impressed with the powerful cadence and the respectful rule and realized they hadn’t added their voices to the “THANK YOU!”

Mad Dog yelled out another deep, “WOODPILE… GOOD NIGHT!!”

Everyone of the whites in cells yelled, “GOOD NIGHT!!!”

This time Damon and Vince got into the cadence.

Mad Dog yelled, “THANK YOU!!”

Damon and Vince added their voice to the return, “THANK YOU!!!”

The Mexicans sounded off next and with a lot more of them it was even louder!

The blacks were next and they yelled out something in Swahili and added some WHOOP WHOOPS!

Vince laid down on his bunk and said, “Now I know what Mad Dog was talking about when he mentioned the integral components. It felt like he was a maestro leading an orchestra and we were the integral components.”

CHAPTER 41

In the morning Vince woke up just before Damon and wondered, what’s our program going to be like today? I should have asked Bird if we have yard or showers today.

Damon heard Vince get up, got up, and stood next to the toilet to take a piss. He thought about it and imagined himself standing there peeing into the toilet and some of it splashing onto the rim of the toilet, along with the noise of it hitting the water in a stream. He decided to sit down.

While Damon sat there, Vince heard some commotion on the tier and stood almost leg to leg with Damon to see what was going on. From the cell door Bird could be seen walking down the tier with some Mexicans.

He walked up to Vince and said, “We’re getting cell fed this morning because of an incident in the chow hall while we were setting up to feed. A couple of Mexicans had an insane knife fight that was off the hook. We still might get showers in the afternoon though.”

While Bird walked to his cell, Damon and Vince listened to one of the Mexicans explaining what happened a few cells down.

“Hey hommie, the hommie Bat blasted Chinto in the back of the head with a fucking sword!”

The Mexican in the cell said, “Chinto did Bat’s issue of dope in the shower yesterday. He deserved it. Did Chinto fight back?”

The Mexican on the tier said, “Hell yeah he did.

Somehow he produced a piece of glass and went right to Bat’s neck with it. There’s blood and pepper spray all over the place in the kitchen.”

The Mexican in the cell said, “This is stickamore… I bet we still get our showers and walk to chow tonight though.”

The Mexican on the tier said, “This is the wild, wild west side of stickamore!” As he walked away.

For the next half hour Damon and Vince listened to Mexicans conversation about the incident.

“Hey holmes, Bat’s lucky he didn’t use my ice pick. He’d be fighting a murder beef right now ‘cause my poker would have went halfway inside the brain.”

Another older Mexican responded, “Hey hommie, keep that telling on yourself stuff off the tier, you make yourself look like a youngster… Besides, those swords aren’t meant to kill, they’re used to leave a lifelong deep and puckered scar. Bat should tell Chinto to tattoo Bat above it so everyone can see what happens when someone steals Bat’s issue of dope.”

Half an hour later the trays of food were passed out. Vince watched how the cells around him slid the empty trays back on the tier when they were done.

When the trays got picked up, Mad Dog’s voice made his presence felt and thundered authoritatively.

“EXCUSE ME ON THE TIER!! ALL WHITES ON THE TIER, WE HAVE A MANDATORY WORK OUT POLICY YOU AND YOUR CELLIE MUST PARTICIPATE IN!! WE WORK OUT WITH THE MEXICANS IN TWO GROUPS AND AT THE END OF THE ROUTINE WE DO 123 BURPIES FOR THE MEXICANS FOR A TRIBUTE!! THIS IS YOUR FIFTEEN MINUTE WARNING!! NOW I HAVE TO RESPECTFULLY ASK THAT ALL RACES ON THE WEST SIDE OF SYCAMORE PUT OUT ALL CIGARETTES AND WICKS IN RESPECT OF OUR ROUTINE!! THANK YOU!!”

“THANK YOU!!!!”

A Mexican’s voice repeated the same thing Mad Dog had in Espanol.”

Fifteen minutes later Mad Dog’s voice yelled, “TODAY WE ARE DOING THE SHORT LIST!! IS EVERYBODY READY!!!”

“READY!!!!”

A Mexican yelled, “LISTO!!”

“LISTO!!!!!”

Mad Dog yelled, “FIRST GROUP, READY, 150 JUMPING JACKS!! BEGIN!!”

Vince asked Damon, “Do you want to go with the first group or the second group?”

Damon said, “I’ll go with the second group so I can see what the routine is like.”

Vince did his set of jumping jacks and sat on the bunk when he was done and said, “Now I see why everyone rolls that mattress up and puts it at the end of the bunk. It’s so we don’t sit on the mattress and sweat all over it.”

A Mexican yelled out to the second group. “LISTO!! VAMANOS!!”

Vince and Damon went through the list of pushups, arm rotations, squats, lunges, knees to chest and then back over the same exercises. At about the halfway point Mad Dog yelled,

“WOODPILE, HOW DO YOU FEEL?”

Every white on the west side yelled, “ONE HUNDRED PERCENT!!!!!”

Mad Dog asked again to build the crescendo, “HOW???”

Every white on the west side, “ONE HUNDRED

PERCENT!!!!!”

Mad Dog, “THAT’S WHITE!!!”

The Mexican calling their cadence, “MEXICANOS, COMO SE SIENTE???”

All of the Mexicans yelled, “DAKAIUS!!!!!!”

Vince and Damon worked out inspired by the growing crescendo of energy. At the end they were both near exhaustion.

Damon said, “Squeeze your stomach muscles when you exhale and you’ll get your second wind back faster.”

Vince tried it and Damon couldn’t help but notice how shredded he was. “Vince you don’t have an ounce of fat on you.”

Vince said, “Yeah but I can’t seem to ever get much bigger either… Do you mind if I take a cell shower first?”

Damon shook his head that he didn’t mind and watched Vince tear off a piece of paper and put it in the sink. He held it down until enough of the hot water from the sink held it in place for him.

Damon followed suit and showered after Vince and when he was finished cleaning up he asked Vince something he’d been wondering about.

“Vince… Are you scared of dying in here?”

Damon watched Vince think about it with his back to him standing at the bars looking out. After a minute he turned.

“I’m not scared of dying; I’m scared of living… When my mind asks me questions I don’t want to answer like, why did that happen? Or how should I feel about it? I get scared to answer my own questions. I have to live in the Moment and look for excitement so I don’t have time to answer.”

Right then a visitor showed up and got Both Vince and Damon’s attention. The visitor set the broom he was using on the bars and then grabbed two handfuls of them like they were his.

Vince studied the thirty something year old white guy hanging on their cell. He had his shirt off and his head cocked impossibly far back. Vince discerned he was doing it to show them the tattoo he had on his neck better. It was a three letter tattoo in old English that spoke of his gang affiliation. On his stomach he had another old English tattoo of where he was from, ANAHEIM. The rest of his tattoos on his chest, shoulders and arms were a jumble of evil looking artwork to complete the picture. Vince thought, he sure is trying to get a lot of mileage out of those tattoos.