through his cell bars and gave his rug an underhand toss. It went across the range, through the cage bars, down fifty feet, and landed on top of a card table. That’s how inmates reserved tables: first rug won.
“Boom!” he said. “Mine.”
The tables: stainless steel, polished, and bolted to the floor in the twenty feet of open space between the cells and outer walls. The cells: enclosed by a hundred-year-old cage. It was hard not to imagine it as a birdcage for something prehistoric and huge and shrieking.
The block sergeant, who weighed 350 pounds and who everyone called Shrek, rang the bell from the bubble (jail speak for glass-enclosed officer station). The doors, all 250 of them, opened.
Inmates bolted down.
Block out! Yard out! Shrek yelled into the PA system.
Normal ran by me and said, “Carpet bomb, CO. You like?” He disappeared into the mass of inmates wearing brown pants and white T-shirts.
The bell meant count was clear, evening yard was open, school was on, chapel too, for almost three hours, until lockdown for the night, final count, and the end of my six days straight on D block. That’s how the shifts worked: six on, two off.
The sun, the steam pipes, the shower room, and the 458 bodies on the block radiated heat. The hanging lights glared. The trash stunk.
When the jail was first built, the windows opened by hand crank. But time and grime had knocked the teeth off the gears and bent the shafts and sealed in every degree and breath and slam.
As soon as the inmates cleared the range, I shut cell doors. I went fast. The regular guard in the cage made it a competition. “Last one down,” he said, “sits by Shrek tonight.”
In three hours we’d be playing spades or hearts in the guard station drinking iced tea and fake-laughing at Shrek’s jokes to finish the shift. His iced tea was syrup—that’s how much sugar he used. And all his jokes had blowjob punch lines.
Earlier he asked, “Why did God invent women?”
I gave up.
“Blowjobs,” he said.
I dreaded it. The jokes. The tea. The cards. He cheated. I had had enough stimulation for one week.
Inmate Normal, the carpet bomber, ran back to his cell before I could shut it. He said, “Damn, CO. Forgot my cup. We playing for shots” (jail speak for a tablespoon of instant coffee).
He had had a busy week too. Lost two cellies to solitary confinement.
After the second, Shrek said, “That means Normal ain’t putting out.”
Must be, I said.
He said, “I’m talking about blowjobs, Langston.”
I got it, I told him.
I never knew what to say to Shrek.
Normal had stacks of soap in his cell. “Air fresheners,” he said. “New guy be dying or something.” A young guy sat watching Normal’s TV. He did smell a bit like death.
I checked on Melvin. Only his celly was there.
He said, “Nothing but a baby, that one. I have to tell him to brush his teeth. Why they put babies in jail?”
Shrek yelled into the PA system, “You, standing on the table! Yes, you. Come here.”
From below, I heard Melvin yell back, “But I won!”
He looked tiny down there. He looked like Melvin. His pants around his thighs. His white boxers billowed and bunched up above them. His fists full of lollipops and Hershey bars. The men around him laughing.
Normal played for shots.
Melvin played for candy.
Shrek got serious in the PA, “Come here, young man.”
I slammed cell doors, which seemed the right way to do it. The block was loud. The noise had built all day. I first walked into the concrete bunker to the quiet of an extended after-lunch count, not even a toilet flushing. But it was hot, eighty degrees, easily. And when count cleared, most inmates went to yard (always called just “yard” in jail speak, never “the yard”) and let me walk the ranges alone in peace. I was damp. My hat itched. I made the rounds. Doors opened. I closed them. I didn’t listen to the block announcements. My job was to shut cage doors. So that’s what I became. The caged doorman. The bell rang and a few hundred guys came back from yard and ran up and down the stairs and to and from the showers. I saw agitation. It was ninety degrees by then. They crowded me on the ranges. They yelled about the NBA finals going on that night. I walked the rectangular cage. Technically, it was a rectangular prism. It refracted smoky light. A prison prism that I rounded and climbed and sprayed with sweat.
Lines went out. There was the chapel line, the shot line, the right-before-the-evening-meal line when the inmates filed back in line. I left the cage once, for the chili con carne in the staff dining hall. Inmates left for their own chili ration and took their hopeful basketball game expectations with them down the steps. “Pistons by fifteen.” I shut doors. “Spurs by ten.” I shut doors. “Chili on a hot-ass day like today?” From the cage I watched the last one leave. I shut doors. They came back louder. “Pistons by twenty-motherfucking-two!” I shut doors. Shrek called count time, and that’s when the screaming started. “Yes! Yes! There will be ball! Yes! Yes! Ball for all!”
Count cleared. Shrek opened the cells and the entire block hit the showers and ran the ranges and ran their mouths and ran out to the yard to buy ice cream and ran down to sit at the benches to watch the TV behind the Plexiglas or to see if Melvin would continue his win streak. He looked happy. He had attention. But when a guard walked close by he quieted down. I slammed doors. My hands were sore. Then there was the game’s opening jump ball and the block became a great sweating bellowing furnace that slammed me back.
Scraps of yellow paper covered the ground like confetti. Used inmate passes. Library: get a pass. Doctor’s appointment: get a pass. Counselor, visiting room, gym, chapel, and psychiatrist: get passes, make sure they’re signed. This, from what I saw, writing passes, was Shrek’s primary occupation.
I caught Normal on the wrong range. I told him that since it was the first time I caught him—and didn’t know what do about it anyway—I’d give him a free pass. I told him, Stay on your range, please?
“Ten–four, CO. My bad.”
He held up his scratched-plastic coffee cup. “This is shot fourteen. I’m buzzing, CO. Buzzing!” Fourteen cups of coffee sounded lethal. “I know a guy who snorts it,” Normal said. “I’m doing twenty today. Twenty goddamn shots!”
It seemed too loud on the block that night. Too chaotic. Deranged. I saw a guy upside down, legs hanging outside the cage, body inside, doing sit-ups. I made him get down. I saw another standing on top of a trash can and wearing a folded-newspaper hat. I told him to take it in (jail speak for go to your cell). My first five days weren’t like that. Inmates slept. But the heat and noise kept on coming. The game made the third quarter. The fire alarm went off every fifteen minutes with a droning Whoooop Whoooop Whoooop that was so loud that if somebody had driven by on the street, and if the windows were open, that somebody would have believed
