Ol' Timer - CHAPTER 1

     The morning air was crisp.  Brian’s nostrils flared to their maximum span, drinking it in.  He hopped on the Greyhound bus, and as luck would have it, he got a window seat.  For the second time in his life he was traveling out the five boroughs.  The bus ride was soothing.  He took in the scenery, the green grass, the cows, the horses. The ride would be perfect, he thought to himself, if these fucking shackles weren’t biting into my flesh.

     Five days after being sentenced to two consecutive 25 – life sentences, he was on his way to Downstate Correctional Facility where for the next 50 years he would only be known as a number.

He closed his eyes and laid his head on the headrest.  He listened to a kid who sat across from him telling the other guys what to expect when they got there.  He was proud to let everybody know that this was his third time going through Downstate.

     “I’m telling y’all,” The kid said, “a fucking dude who used to be an inmate designed these fucking black boxes.”  The black box he was referring to was a box that the officers placed over the handcuffs to limit the mobility of one’s wrists.  “And you know the fucked up thing about it,” the kid continued, “the nigga is back in jail.  So I know he’s kicking himself in the ass every time the officers put one of these things on him.  Serves his punk ass right.”

      The teen shackled to the kid didn’t look a day over sixteen.  His hairless face bore witness to that.  He was more interested in what was going to happen at Downstate than some sell-out who invented the black box.  “So what’s going to happen when we get to Downstate?”

     “First off, you got to understand that the C.O.s Upstate ain’t like the ones on the Island.  These motherfuckers don’t play.  They will kill you and lose you in the system.”

     He went on to explain the “dehumanizing process,” but Brian tuned him out.  He had enough of the scared straight bullshit.

     His mind went back to the court room.  His heart started beating fast as he remembered the look on Sonia’s face just before he heard her scream.  Seeing her crash to the floor caused him to react without thinking.  He broke free from the bailiffs in an attempt to comfort her and tell her that everything was going to be alright.  They sacked him like he was a quarterback.  They wrung his arms behind his back as he screamed Sonia’s name over and over again.  For the first time in his life, he felt powerless.  From inches away, he could see her world caving in.

     “Help her,” he yelled to Quana who was already trying to calm her down.

     Sonia leaped off the ground and pounced on the bailiffs, kicking and clawing at them.  “Get the fuck off of him.”

     Sonia’s father grabbed her by the wrists and pulled her away.  “Girl, you gonna get yourself arrested.”

     “Don’t let them take him, daddy.”

     Sonia sobbed in her father’s chest as Brian and her father made eye contact.  The disgust etched on his face sent chills through Brian.  At that very moment, reality wrapped in barbed wire ripped through his mind, shredding the dreams he once had for him, Sonia, and their unborn son.

* * *

     “Everybody listen up,” the sergeant yelled from the front of the bus.  “When you get off the bus, keep it to the right and stop at the red line painted next to the rotunda.”  Without waiting for confirmation, he instructed the officer to open the bus doors so that the inmates could exit.

     When they got to that red line, Brian understood what it meant.  As soon as they crossed it, they would belong to the state.

     Just beyond the line stood about 12 Downstate correction officers.  Each one of them was built like professional wrestlers.  None of them were less than 6 feet.  Their sergeant was the only one who looked normal.  He was about 5’8”, weighing in at about 160 pounds.

     The sergeant from Riker’s Island handed the stack of folders to the Downstate sergeant and grinned.  “Have fun.”

     The Downstate sergeant mumbled something before sicking his goons on the fresh meat.

     The inmates were huddled into a holding pen where the shackles were finally taken off.  Brian could feel the blood beginning to circulate through his wrists and ankles again.

     “Everybody listen up,” the Downstate sergeant said.  “My name is Sergeant Sweet, but trust me, I’m far from that.  From here on in, you belong to the state.”  He gave his words time to sink in.  “Some of you, if not all of you may be retarded so let me explain what I mean.  You no longer have permission to think for yourselves.  You will do what we tell you to do.  If you as much as fart without asking permission, I will pound you out.”

     At that moment, Brian finally made out the writing on the makeshift turnbuckle directly behind the sergeant.  Scribbled on the black padding was WWE SMACK DOWN.  It brought a smile to his face.  A smile he would soon learn would always get a nigga in trouble.

     “What the fuck you smiling at?” the sergeant boomed at Brian, as he walked up on him.  He was so close that Brian could see the nicotine stains on his teeth.  “I said what the fuck are you smiling at?”

     Everyone on the goon squad flexed at the same time.  Muscles jumped out at Brian from places he never knew had muscles.

     “I’m not smiling at…”

     Sergeant Sweet grabbed him by the neck.  “You calling me a liar, motherfucker?”

     Every fiber in Brian’s body was telling him to knock this motherfucking crack head out.  Brian out manned him in every aspect.  He would have snapped the sergeant’s twig neck, but he knew he would be invoking the wrath of the goons.  So he just stood there and let the sergeant choke him out.  When he felt his knees buckle, he panicked and swatted the sergeant’s hand from around his neck.  The sergeant backed away as the wrath came.  They pushed and shoved Brian between one another like lions playing with a mouse.  The last thing he remembered was getting hit in the back of the head with a wrecking ball.

* * *

     As Brian slept, he heard a slap way in the distance of his mind.  A couple seconds later, he heard it again.  This time it was louder.  The third time, it was in his ear.  The fourth time he jumped up as he felt the sting.

     “He’s up boss,” one of the goons said to the sergeant.

     “Well get his ass in line with the rest of them.”

     The goon picked Brian up by his collar and stood him up.  “Walk your ass over there with the rest of them.”

     Brian, still stunned, squinted to see where they were.  The rest of the guys he came up with were standing in front of a long table in their underwear.  When Brian got to the table, the C.O. opened his folder.  “Strip down to your underwear.”

     Brian did as he was told.

     “Throw all that shit in that garbage bag under the table, unless you want to pay to send those clothes home.”

     Brian threw them in the garbage bag.  No way in hell was he going to send some clothes home that he wore in jail.  When he got out, he didn’t want anything reminding him of prison.

     From there, they all walked to a partitioned area where they were stripped frisked four at a time.

     Brian was used to being stripped frisked because it was something he had to go through after every visit on the Island, but being in a P.O.W. camp in the middle of Cambodia couldn’t prepare him for the Downstate reception process.  He stepped into the partition with the C.O.

     “Take your underwear off, turn them inside out and don’t, I repeat, don’t shake them.”

     He took them off and dropped them to the floor.

     “Open your mouth wide and run your fingers through it, then lift your tongue.”

     Brian complied.

     “Lift up your arms so I can see your underarms…good.  Now bring your hands in front of you and turn them around…good.  Now lift your dick only…now your balls…turn around and lift up your right foot and wiggle your toes…okay, now lift up your left foot and wiggle your toes…now bend at the waist, and spread your ass cheeks wide enough for me to see up your anal cavity and don’t move ‘til I tell you.”

     Brian froze.  What the fuck? On the Island, they make a nigga squat and that was it.  Brian knew from experience that niggas be trying to sneak all kinds of shit through reception.  From drugs to razor blades, so he knew these motherfuckers had to be thorough, but this was ridiculous.

     The C.O. inched up.  “I ain’t got all day.  Let’s go.”

     To the officer, it was a job that he had become used to, but to Brian, he felt like he was about to give up his manhood.  Fuck it, he said to himself.  He knew that if he didn’t do it now, they were going to beat him down, put him in the box, and make him do it another time.  He bent over and blocked everything and everyone out.

     “Okay, that’s good.  Put your underwear on and go stand on line.”

     Brian stood on the shower line, feeling violated.  In his mind he had just been raped.  He wanted to just curl up into a ball in a corner somewhere and just die.  When it was finally his turn to get into the shower, he had to sprinkle some powder all over his body that supposedly killed lice and shit like that, and he wasn’t at all surprised that the water was frostbite cold.  He stood under the thirty second shower, wiping as much of the powder off as he could.  He didn’t want to be like the dude in front of him who came out with half of the shit still on him.  And the sergeant didn’t give a fuck.  He just sent him on down the disassembly line.

    After the shower, he came out and grabbed the bundle of clothes that were waiting for him on the long table.  He had three pairs of underwear, two pairs of pants, two shirts, a state coat, and a pair of state boots; all courtesy of the state

.

     The last stop on the disassembly line was the grooming process.  Everybody, unless you had a court order from the judge, had to shave all the hair off their heads and faces.  Brian couldn’t remember not ever having any hair on his head.  He came out of his mother’s womb with enough curly hair on his head to pull into a ponytail.  He stared at the stranger in the mirror, then looked at the ID numbers machine-pressed on his shirt and sighed.  Molested, scrubbed, shaved, and serial numbered in one day.  The dehumanization process was complete.

     Everyone lined up into pairs, there had to be at least 50 of them, and marched down the corridor.  They stopped at each house, dumping off three to four guys from the line.  Finally, they got to 3 complex, housing letter E.  Brian and three other guys were called out and marched inside.

     When Brian walked into his cell, he heard the door lock behind him.  His eyes quickly focused on the mattress.  Between the long bus ride, and Downstate’s reception process, he was dead tired.  He unrolled his sheets, wrapped them around the twin size mattress, and plopped down.  He fell asleep, studying the graffiti on the walls.  The last thing his eyes rested on was a cross scrawled on the ceiling right above his head with the ash from match sticks.  As he sunk into a murky sleep, he wondered how many before him lay in this same position, staring at this sign of hope before closing their eyes.

     As his eyes closed for the night, a tear ran down his face.  He wished he could put himself in that tear, so when it evaporated, he too, could evaporate and be free.  There is no fucking way I’m doing fifty years of this shit, he said.  No fucking way.