Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison (13 page)

"Hungarian goulash, string beans, cornbread and grape drink," read the menu for that night's dinner. The full week's menu was attached to the bulletin board just outside the north side dayroom. Carrot cake was the dessert. It sounded pretty good after the bologna sandwiches we were given when we arrived. Corn fritters were on the menu for tomorrow's breakfast. I had never had corn fritters before. I wondered what they were. Corn for breakfast didn't sound very good.

Without a sound, an older man appeared to my left. I had finished lunch and was onto tomorrow's dinner menu before I had noticed him standing there smiling. His eyes were sparkling with the same flicker of light in his eyes that Bottoms had back in the dorm.

"Hello," I said, returning my gaze to the bulletin board. I moved onto Wednesday morning's menu. He didn't say anything, just stood there as quietly as he had appeared.

Thursday, Dinner: liver and onions, peas, scallop potatoes and grape drink. I made a grimace: even the dessert, lemon meringue pie, were foods that I hated. It looked like the grape drink was the only thing on the menu that I could have. Maybe they serve bread. I was just doing what I always did when I was frightened-I focused my mind on something else.

The guy was still staring at me.

"Liver," I said with a scowl, looking back at him.

"I'm Chet," he volunteered, "What's your name?"

"Tim," I was embarrassed by his intense stare. I wondered if he was stoned.

"Tim," he slowly repeated. "Where are you from, Tim?"

"Westland," it was a suburb just west of Detroit.

"Oh, I lived in Inkster for a few years when I was younger." His voice was gentle and reassuring. "How old are you?"

"Seventeen."

He let out a long whistle, "Sev-en-teen!" he said, stretching out each syllable of the word. He was considerably older. "You're a baby!" His voice held a hint of affection.

I smiled.

"I've got kids your age," his eyes drifted off my shoulder and into the distance, "somewhere."

I smiled back at him. I was pretty young compared to everybody I had seen so far.

"Why, how old are you?"

"What are you in for kid?" he interrupted. I wasn't sure he had heard my question.

"How much time do you have?" he asked.

"Two and half to four," I answered. I still hadn't grasped the reality of it.

"How come they sent you here?"

"I have to go back to court for an armed robbery," I said. "I haven't been sentenced yet."

"A control hold," he nodded, his face relaxing. "When's your court date?"

"I don't know," I shrugged.

His tone was encouraging. "What did you rob?"

"A Photo Mat," I said, matching his smile with a slightly embarrassed grin.

It looked as though someone had turned up a dimmer switch in Chet's eyes.

An inmate walked by us and yelled to Chet.

"Scandalous," the black inmate blurted. He smiled at Chet, but ignored me.

"You are just plain scandalous, Dawg!" He said, shaking his head. He opened the dayroom door and once more bellowed, "Scandalous!"

Chet looked at me reassuringly. "Pay no mind to him. That boy is half a bug, and his Thorazine must be running low."

"What's Thorazine?"

"Bug juice. It's what they give the bugs to keep 'em calm. Do you want some?"

"No!" I said quickly. I wasn't sure he was joking.

Chet just looked at me silently nodding his head, as though he was studying me.

"I don't do drugs."

"You don't do drugs?" There was a trace of doubt and surprise in his voice leading me to believe that he was serious about his offer of Thorazine.

"No."

"Never?" he probed with a puzzled look. "What about reefer?"

"Nah, it makes me paranoid."

"Do you drink?" He sounded like he was running down a checklist in his head.

"Oh yeah," I responded, smiling, "like a fish."

Chet smiled, and the flicker returned.

"Well, then," he said with delight, "have I got a party for you! I've got a batch coming off tomorrow. We'll have a welcoming party."

"Really!" I whispered excitedly. "You've got booze in here?" I had heard that inmates made their own liquor. I remembered a scene in the movie, The Longest Yard, where Burt Reynolds and another inmate had booze hidden in a plastic bag inside their cell toilet. But that was the movies.

"Spud juice, my boy. The best brew this side of Jackson."

"Wow! How do you make it?"

Squinting his eyes, Chet bent forward and imitated an Asian accent. "Ancient Chinese secret," he said. We both laughed because he was imitating an old laundry detergent commercial.

"Don't listen to that lying motherfucker," blurted a voice so close behind me that I felt a breath on the back of my neck. Startled, I turned around. "This boy wouldn't know how to brew spud juice if his momma's life depended on it." He was a black man with sideburns and a thick mustache that came down past the sides of his mouth. He looked like the actor in the television show, The Mod Squad, except that his hair was wavy and cut closer to his scalp.

Chet shot back at him from over my shoulder, "Oh, now don't you bring my mother into this, Boy!" He said it with an extra emphasis on the word boy. The man broke a smile that displayed a perfect set of teeth that were nicely framed by his mustache and dark brown skin.

"Oh, I'll bring your mother into this all right," he said as he brought his full attention to me. He was standing fairly close. I looked down at his feet; he was wearing worn-down brown leather slippers. Perhaps that was why I hadn't heard him when he walked up behind me.

He smiled broadly at Chet. It was clear they were friends. "And I've got your boy," he said, as he grabbed his crotch and squeezed it, "hanging right here."

I laughed, nervously, and was glad they were friends just teasing each other.

Chet put his hand on my shoulder, "Meet my newly adopted son," he said with a paternal pride, "This here, is Tim."

"Well, well, well." He was studying me intently. "Mr. Blue Eyes."

Embarrassed, I smiled, and we shook hands. This time I locked thumbs as we shook. As I tried to take my hand back, he grasped my hand like a regular handshake and held it for a second and then cupped his fingers and glided the tips across the surface of my palm and then curled his fingers and interlocked them with the last joints of my fingers. His hand awkwardly slid off of mine as I unsure what I was supposed to do. He looked down for a second but then smiled as he looked back up at me.

I felt foolish I didn't know the secret handshake.

"He blushes," the roan said.

Chet leaned over to my ear and whispered, "This man here is one scandalous Motown motherfucker." He said it loud enough for his friend to hear. "His own momma wouldn't trust him."

"Hey, I'll tell you what," he calmly retorted, "My momma is a big of bull dagger, and your momma is her big ass bitch."

Chet and I both laughed.

"I see The Man's sending babies up in here now," he exclaimed, as if the entire north side of the building should be outraged. "How old are you?"

"Seventeen."

"Seventeen!" he exalted. "God Damn! What's your number, Son?"

"1-5-3-0-5-2."

"God Damn!" He raised his voice as if the world should be outraged.

"I got drawers older than this boy," Chet declared from over my shoulder.

I smiled and wondered why they had called them drawers and not underwear.

"The numbers are up to one-fifty-three!" He kept his eyes locked on mine.

"Why? How old are you?" He looked to be as old as Chet.

"Old enough to be your daddy." He looked over at Chet, and they both chuckled.

"How old is that?" I asked, curiously, still smiling.

"I'm almost thirty."

"OOOOOoooooolllldddd," Chet mocked.

He didn't acknowledge Chet's comment.

I did the math in my head and questioned whether it was possible for him to have fathered me at twelve years old.

"Let's go sit into the card room, Tim. I'll introduce you to Taylor here, nice and proper like."

Chet put his hand on my shoulder and led me to the card room, where two black guys were sitting.

"Don't worry about the liver, Kid," Chet boasted. "We don't eat that shit in here."

"That's right!" Taylor said.

"Cook up!" an inmate named Red piped in, loud enough for the guys in the TV room to hear.

"Hey! Let's have roast beef tonight." Taylor said.

"We do our own cook-up," Chet ignored the others.

"Yeah," Red said, leaning over to me. "Do you like meat?"

"Hold up Red," Slide Step said from across the room. "Give that boy some room."

Red was a black man with really dark skin. He was named Red because his eyes always looked bloodshot. They were slanted and gave the appearance that he was almost Asian.

Red threw his hands up at him, as if to say, "What? Did I say anything?"

Slide Step ignored him and looked out into the day room. His feet were propped up on another chair, and he was leaning back with his arms casually crossed in front of him. Slide Step wore a scraggly beard and a knit wool hat stretched over what looked a big ball of hair.

"How old are you," I asked Slide Step, sensing that he was pretty old.

"Thirty." He seemed amused that I was interested in his age.

"Wow, that's pretty old."

He smiled and looked back out into the day room.

Red and Slide Step, like Taylor, were part of Chet's family. Chet explained that you had to have a family if you wanted to survive inside the penitentiary. He said it was very difficult to make it on your own, especially if it was your first time.

When you hook up with a family, he explained, you look out for each other. He said it could be a very cold and lonely place inside these walls. I guess he could tell that I was a little lonely. I was so happy to be out of Quarantine and to have people to talk to. I was enjoying their company. It was impossible to hold a conversation when you have to yell over to a buddy in the cell next to you. Especially in Seven Block where it was so noisy. So far, I really liked Chet and his family. They were nice to me, and I felt very lucky that he was taking such a liking to me.

Chet wouldn't tell me how old he was, but he hinted that he had served as much time as I had been alive. So he sure knew a lot about jailing. If he came in at my age, he would have to be at least thirty-four. Holy cow!

I was curious about the spud juice that they were cooking up. I wondered how they cooked it and how it tasted. I tried to picture a homemade distillery and wondered if spud juice was like moonshine.

Chet offered me another cigarette, which I accepted.

"Count time," a guard yelled from the open door of the officer's station.

It was the first time that I'd seen a guard since they showed me to my dorm. It was the four o'clock count. We got up from the card room and headed back toward our dorms. Chet handed me the pack of cigarettes he was holding and told me to keep them.

"Thanks." I put them in the pocket of my state blues.

"Are you going to dinner," he asked. "Meet me in the day room and we'll go down together. They're having Hungarian goulash tonight. It's pretty good."

After dinner, I was standing in front of Chet's door. His cell was the first of the three private rooms on the hallway near my dorm. He wanted to show me a picture of a friend of his from The World. That's what inmates called the outside, The World. He handed me a picture of a pretty woman, who was wearing a lot of makeup.

"What do you think?" he asked, studying me as if he were expecting a reaction. I wasn't sure what he was looking for, but I wanted to give it to him.

Red bumped into me from behind and reached for the picture. He looked at me with his face just inches from mine and then down at the picture. "Is that Bobbi?" he asked Chet.

Chet nodded, but kept looking at me.

"It's a man," he said. His eyes showing the delight in knowing he had fooled me.

"Really," I said. I took a closer look. I couldn't tell that Bobbi was a man from the photograph. His tits looked real under the flimsy halter-top he had on. Embarrassed, I didn't know what to say. I thought about my last night with my brother and Candy, the prostitute on Woodward Avenue. Chet and Red studied inc as if they expected a particular reaction. I went to hand the picture back; but it slipped from my hand and fell to the floor, sliding under Chet's bed. Red muttered something to Chet as he bent down to pick up the picture. Red's manner made me nervous.