Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison Read online

  2

  Last Chance for Romance

  In front of our trailer was an old fashion farm-hand water pump with a long cast-iron handle. I liked helping my older brother pump until the water gushed from the spout. It took both of us to carry the five gallon jug back inside. I couldn't believe that water could be so heavy. Ricky could have carried it himself, but he let me help because he knew I was sad he was going away.

  Boys Camp was just up the hill and in the woods, but I wouldn't see him again for two whole weeks. He said he was going to get away from me, but I knew he went for the merit badges. Last time he got one for fishing, rifling, horsemanship, and cowboy crafts. I wished I could've gone too, but you had to be ten and I was almost five.

  I hated the taste of well water. Mom said I'd get used to it, but even with wild-berry Kool-Aid mixed inside it tasted like the time I got my tongue stuck to the swing set in the middle of winter.

  On my last night before going to prison, my brother Rick took me into Detroit to buy me a hooker. As we made the forty-five minute trip downtown, Donna Summer's "Last Dance" played on the radio of my brother's van. We sang along, modifying the lyrics to suit our adventure, laughing and enjoying our last few hours together.

  It was my last chance for romance, and Rick knew where to take me. I was nervous about going downtown. I didn't know anything about Detroit, except for the Hudson's Thanksgiving Day Parade and vague recollections of the Boblo Boat down on the riverfront. But that was before things started to crumble at home and our parents got a divorce. The boat would take us up the Detroit River to Boblo Island, an amusement park somewhere between Michigan and Canada. That was also before the race riots of the late 1960s, from which, Detroit never seemed to recover. The city was now mostly black.

  As we exited the expressway, we drove past a row of burned-out buildings. I had always thought Race Riots was an odd expression, since there was only one race involved, but Detroit was a city that had been looted-gutted of jobs and money. What was left behind continued to decay, but the city's problems started long before those separations.

  The whites had moved to the suburbs, where it was thought of as safe, and the mayor of our town was determined to keep it that way. Keep Dearborn Clean was the slogan displayed on the sides of police cars, which really meant Keep Dearborn White.

  Mayor Oriville Hubbard was the longest serving mayor in the history of Dearborn, a small working-class suburb that bordered Detroit. He was an outspoken separatist, who once told the New York Times, "I don't hate niggers. Hell, I don't even dislike them. I just don't think whites should have to live with then-that's all."

  Dad said that if blacks got caught driving through Dearborn after dark, they were arrested and held in the jail for seventy-two hours-the maximum allowable by law until the police had to charge them with a crime or let them go. It was supposed to send the message that even if just driving through, they weren't welcome in Dearborn.

  Fortunately for my brother and me, the police in Detroit were still mostly white, so we didn't run the same risk as the blacks did for just driving around at night.

  Rick was five years older than me. He was bigger and stronger, and had always looked out for me. And this last night was no exception. He intended for this to be the best night, given the circumstances, wanting to send me off in style.

  He had Mom's Irish freckles and Dad's sense of humor. As he tapped on the steering wheel to the beat of the tune, the tattoos on his knuckles danced under the strobe of the passing streetlamps.

  I had always worshipped him. When I first started school, they let the kindergarten class out five minutes earlier than the older grades, so I ran as fast as I could to the other side of the building and into his fifth grade classroom.

  "Is Rrrrricky heeeeerrrrrrrrre," I'd sing, hanging onto each syllable as if each one gave comfort until the time passed and we could walk home together. The first time I did this, the kids in his class stared at me in a stunned silence, before erupting in laughter, which I mistook for encouragement. Rick complained to Mom and Dad, but otherwise he was a pretty good sport about it, and I learned how to wait for him, silently, just outside the door. It was the same way we used to hide, underneath our beds, when Mom was mad at Dad and smashing things all over the house.

  Sometimes, Rick and cousin Gordon would ditch me by running into the woods next to our school. I wasn't allowed to go into the woods, so I'd sit down on the grass and wait for them to conic back to get me. I loved being with him, even when I was old enough to walk home alone. If anyone ever tried bullying me, they left me alone once they found out Ricky was my big brother. He was a tough kid, and everyone knew it.

  He was upset I was going to prison. For weeks he kept telling me, over and over, "If anyone tries to fuck with you, just pick up a chair or a pipe or anything you can get your hands on, and blast them over the head with it. Don't take no shit from nobody," he'd say. "You let them know, right up front, that you're not to be fucked with! It's very important. You gotta let them know right way." He had a look in his eye that scared me, but it was his fear, not mine, that frightened me most.

  He was always good at figuring me out, so if he sensed he was making me scared, he'd change the subject or tell one of his funny stories from when he served time. It usually worked. He had a way of making it sound more like an adventure, than a punishment or something to be feared.

  Rick hated Sharon, our stepmom, as much as I did. He ran away from home when he was thirteen and was placed in a reform school. When Dad wasn't working, or off on another bender, he'd take us up to visit him on weekends. We'd stop on the way, at a supermarket, and pick up candy and fruit, but we weren't allowed to have any ourselves, because it was for Ricky. It was a good thing I loved him, because it never seemed fair that the treats should go to the one who had gotten into trouble. Inside the visiting room, we'd sit and watch him eat, as he told us stories about what went on in there. He could always spin a tale that would make us laugh. Reform school didn't sound like such a had place. He confided in me once that it was better than being at home.

  Dad reminisced about what it was like when he had been sent there. He and Uncle Ronnie served a couple of years for breaking into a store when they were kids.

  When the state wouldn't let Rick come home for the Christmas holiday, Dad helped him escape by holding the front door open as he was leaving the visiting room. Ricky ran out the door, and Dad yelled after him. "Rick! Don't do it," in a bogus attempt to look like he was surprised. A few nnin- utes later, Dad picked him up down the road, at a spot where they had agreed to meet.

  After the holidays were over, Dad took him downtown to sign up for the military. Dad had to do the same thing, when he was eighteen, except that a judge gave him the army as an ultimatum. Otherwise, he would have gone to jail.

  Rick said the Air Force was also better than being at home, but then he got a dishonorable discharge for giving a "blanket party" to a snitch. That's when you throw a blanket over someone and beat the shit out of him. Later, when Rick went to prison, he never did say if prison was better than being at home.

  But on my last night, Rick laid off the advice. We had set aside the time for fun and laughter and enjoying each other's company for the last time. We started drinking at his apartment around three, and then he took me for a steak dinner at The Ponderosa. Afterward, he smoked a joint, and I drank more beers.

  Rick liked country music, but since it was my night, he let me listen to whatever I wanted on the radio. I loved the new sounds of disco. It had a beat and a rhythm that felt sinful and bad, and something else I couldn't explain. It had a feeling of forbidden access, maybe because it was black, and whites didn't listen to black music.

  My friends all listened to rock and roll. They liked the Detroit bands like Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent, Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band. I liked rock and roll as well, but I was fascinated with disco. Though I wished I had the courage to listen to what I wanted to without caring what others thought of me
. "Turn off that nigger shit," one of my friends sneered. After that, I only listened to disco when I was alone.

  I had seen Saturday Night Fever a few months earlier and fantasized about dancing like John Travolta on a lighted dance floor. The Bee Gees were all the rage, but I'd grown tired of them. They were missing something that black girls like Thelma Houston or Donna Summer had. The way the music made me feel free and afraid all at the same time felt almost sexual.

  I couldn't understand why Ricky liked country music. He'd taken his wife Belinda to see Conway Twitty for her birthday. It all seemed so cornball and hillbilly to me, yet ever since he served time in a Florida prison, he liked Hank Williams and Loretta Lynn and complained how Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings were renegades who were out to ruin country music. I didn't know what he was talking about, and I didn't care. As long as he liked it and didn't try forcing it on me, I was OK with it.

  We picked up a black woman, named Candy, on Woodward Avenue. It was in an area known for prostitutes between Six- and Eight-Mile Roads. She had on a leopard-skin miniskirt and rust-colored lipstick that was outlined in a darker brown.

  "Don't give her the money until you come," Rick yelled, after having gone first. He zipped up his fly as he walked into the diner to have coffee with her pimp.

  As soon as I stepped inside the van, she asked me for the money.

  I was nervous, so I gave her the fifteen dollars Rick had negotiated. I pulled down my jeans, past the knees, and leaned back against the side of the wheel well. The carpet was soiled and felt coarse and gritty on the cheeks of my ass. I tried as hard as I could, as did she, but we couldn't seem to get it up. No matter how hard I tried to concentrate, Donna Summer's lyrics kept beating in my head. "Will you be my Mr. Right? Can you fill my appetite? I can't be sure that you're the one for me."

  I was too ashamed to admit it at the time, but the fact that she was a black woman, or that she had on way too much make-up-had nothing to do with it. It was because she was a woman. I couldn't tell this to my brother; I could barely admit it to myself It was usually only when drunk that I could face this truth about myself, and even then, it was difficult. I could always blame it on the booze, since it was only when I drank that this desire would surface. Well, sometimes it came up in my fantasies, but then I'd tell myself it was just a phase I was going through. There weren't any queers in my part of town, and I didn't know of any other part that had them either. It was the Midwest in the 1970s and people didn't talk about these things, especially not in my neighborhood, unless it was the butt of a joke.

  Queers were what you called a sissy, or a friend that pissed you off. Or it was something you heard about that happened in prison. Maybe that's what my brother was so concerned about. Perhaps that's why he seemed so afraid. Or maybe that was why I felt so drawn there. I don't know. You just didn't talk about these things. That's why, the next morning, I couldn't tell Rick what happened that night, or rather, what didn't happen.

  My head was hurting from the hangover of my last dance.

  3

  The Absence of Drama

  As I was leaving for court in the morning, Rick came out of the house and called to me.

  Sharon started to say something, but stopped herself. Instead, she got into the car and started it. Rick handed me a carton of cigarettes, and Sharon looked away.

  My brother and I stared at each other for a long moment, neither of us knowing what to say. It had all been said before. He looked down at his feet and back up again. As usual, he was trying to hold it together. None of us were anygood at emotional stuff.

  "Remember what I told you," he said. It was his last piece of advice. "No matter what happens in there, Little Brother. It'll be your memories that hold you together."

  I looked at him and nodded.

  "Up here," he said, thumping the side of my head. "And in here, " be gently pressed my chest.

  "Not more than four years," the judge ordered, "and no less than two and a half." He scribbled in the folder and passed the file to the clerk seated on his left.

  "You are hereby remanded to the Michigan Department of Corrections."

  I was disappointed that I didn't get a May God have mercy on your soul, or even a May you rot in hell final admonishment. It all seemed so horribly lacking in drama. I was just another number. The bailiff was calling the next case before the Sheriff deputy could get his handcuffs on my wrist. The judge didn't look up at me. There was a huge stack of manila folders and dark brown files in front of him. It was sentencing day, and the court had a full docket. They were using an abandoned wing of the Wayne County Hospital as overflow to the congested courts in downtown Detroit.

  I looked over at Sharon, she was blowing her nose into a hankie as she turned and walked out. Our eyes didn't meet, so I wasn't sure if there were tears. Dad couldn't get off work that day, or perhaps he couldn't bear towe knew I was going to prison.

  The deputy took me into the back, through a large set of double doors, to a holding cell. A long metal bench was attached to the wall. He unlocked my handcuffs and ordered me to take everything from my pockets and place it onto a table. I removed my wallet and a pack of gum from my right front pocket. I had three quarters and two dimes in the other. I took a pack of cigarettes and a green lighter from my shirt and placed it onto the table next to the carton my brother had given me that morning. He said they would hold me at the county jail a few days until I was transferred to the state prison.

  The deputy told me to remove my belt and shoe laces, so I couldn't hang myself, and to place my hands on the wall while he patted me down. He unlocked the cell, ordered me in, and closed the barred door with a clunk. The vibrations echoed off the walls. I tried to ignore the metallic sound of the turning tumblers and the thud of the locking bolt.

  I fumbled for a cigarette and asked the deputy for a light, not knowing how long it would be before he'd be back again. He kept my lighter, which was considered contraband, and gave me a book of matches from his shirt pocket and told me to keep them.

  "Thanks," I said. My hand slightly shook as I took the matches.

  Behind him, a deputy entered with another prisoner. As each new inmate was placed inside the cell, I tried harder not to think about the sound of the turning bolt that slammed into the steel jam I'd gotten myself into. It had been almost a year since I was arrested for sneaking into a hotel room at my after school job at The Airport Inn.

  Using a stolen passkey, a buddy and I had gone to the hotel to find an empty room to sleep in. We had been out late drinking and didn't want to go home and risk waking our parents. Sharon was such a light sleeper that when I was younger, she could hear cereal being poured into a bowl and she'd wake up screaming. She made me stand in the corner or kneel at the foot of her bed until she was ready to get up. So if I just didn't go home at night, no one would have cared that I wasn't there.

  I was supposed to get probation, but since I was out on bail at the time I was caught for another crime, the judge wouldn't honor my plea bargain. Part of the deal with probation is that you can't get into any more trouble. So I blew it, before I was even sentenced.

  My lawyer said, "Don't worry about it. When you come back for the Photo Mat, the judge will probably give you the same amount of time as he did on this sentence."

  I guess the biggest problem I had with what he had to say, was the word probably. I was worried about it, because everything was happening so quickly. He was a court-appointed attorney, and so far, things hadn't worked out exactly as he said they would. But that wasn't his fault, he was quick to point out, since I was the one who had gotten arrested again.

  "Trust me," he said. "You'll go to a minimum-security camp, and with good time, you'll be back on the streets in no time."

  My brother was helpful, in terms of coaching me on how to carry myself once I got to prison, but he wouldn't come to court for any of my hearings because he had warrants out for his arrest involving unpaid child support and traffic tickets. So I had been mostly a
lone. At least Sharon came for my sentencing. She had to drive past the courthouse on her way to work.

  The more crowded it got inside the holding pen, the more I realized how must worse my situation was than I'd ever imagined. There was no way out of it now.

  Trust me, the lawyer said. He was probably right.

  4

  Who's Angrier than Who?

  When we heard Dad's horn outside, I said to my sister Connie, "I looked the last time. It's your turn to look."

  We were living at Grandpa's house, on Cook Street, and I was still in the first grade.

  Connie walked over to the window and slowly lifted the blinds.

  "Is she there?" I asked.

  Connie dropped her head and sighed.

  We were hoping that Dad's new girlfriend, Sharon, wasn't there or that her two boys, at least, would be off with their own Dad.

  "Time to go,"Mom yelled from the bathroom, where she was putting on makeup. "Tell your Dad if he doesn't pay me the child-support he owes-he's notgetting you kids next weekend."