Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison by T. Parsell (fiction novels to read .txt) 📗

to ignore me. I was too self-conscious to ask again.

Two black guys walked into the room. "Who's next?" one shouted.

"I am," said one of the smokers on the bench.

The two guys looked at me, nodded, and took a seat on the green bench opposite the table. One of them kept staring at me.

Chet appeared outside the room, knocking on the window. He motioned me to come into the day room. I pointed toward the table, indicating I wanted to play, but Chet was insistent.

"It's probably a good idea if you stuck close to me these first couple of days," he said, "until people get to know you're OK."

Chet led me to a set of chairs outside the phone room. It was off the corridor next to south side guard's station.

"I have to call my Moms," Chet said. He pronounced Moms as if he had more than one.

"How many do you have?" I asked.

"How many what?"

"Moms," I said with a smirk.

"It's just an expression. Moms." He pronounced it as if it had a Z on the end.

"Momzz," I repeated.

He just smiled.

"Hey White Boy!" one of the black inmates asked, "Where are you from?" He sat opposite me and wore a burgundy skullcap. It had tie-strings hanging on each side, like an old aviators cap. He was thin, but the fierce look in his eyes suggested he was tough.

"Westland."

"Isn't that over near Inkster?"

"Yeah," I said, "I lived right on the border. If you crossed my street, you'd be in Inkster."

"Where's Scatter at?" a guy to his right asked.

"Hey Scatter!" Skullcap yelled down toward the single cells.

"Yo!" echoed back from the end of the long sterile hall.

The building seemed more like a rest home. I was easy to visualize the place as the Psychiatric Hospital it once was. The glazed brick walls and dull floors diffused the fluorescent lighting and created a glow that was fitting for a sanitarium. I half expected to see Jack Nicholson appear at any moment, flanked by a big Indian and a nurse holding a plastic tray with a dispenser filled with bug juice.

Instead, a young black man sprang from one of the rooms. He sauntered up the hallway with a rhythmic swagger. He was holding his crotch in left hand while his right arm swung wildly back and forth in tempo with his body. He was muscular and handsome with light chocolate-colored skin.

His walk was what inmates called catin'. It was short for catwalk. The way inmates sauntered up and down the tiers of a prison cellblock.

"What's happening? What's happening?" he called out. He increased his beat and tempo as he entered the corridor. Scatter flopped down on the armrest of Skullcap's chair.

"Scatter!" Skullcap said, without looking up, "This boy says he's from Inkster."

"No shit!" Scatter looked at me, "You're my homeboy?"

"I lived on the border," I said.

"What school did you go to?" He had a youthful energy.

"Wayne Memorial," I said, smiling.

He was the closest person I'd seen to my age, with the exception of Young Blood, who I rode in with. "How old are you?" I asked.

"Seventeen."

"You ain't no motherfucken' seventeen," Skullcap said. He looked over and smiled at the guy next to him.

"Almost," Scatter said. He crooked his chin and bunching his lips together. "I will be in September."

"In September," the guy next to them blurted. He got up laughing and went into the phone booth. Scatter scooted over and took his chair.

"Well this is only April, you silly ass jitterbug." Skullcap sipped a hot drink from a plastic tumbler, and set it down on the armrest that Scatter had just warmed. "That ain't no `Almost."' His laugh had a heavy S-sound that included a slight whistle.

"Close enough," Scatter played along. He turned to me with the childish look of someone who was caught telling a fib.

He had been in prison since he was fifteen. He was convicted of felony murder.

"My rap partner accidentally shot the store manager," Scatter explained. Felony murder was when someone dies during the commission of a felony. It doesn't matter who dies, or how they die. Everyone involved in the crime goes down. Even if a cop or a shop owner shoots one of the criminals, the other guys involved are charged with murder. The rationale being that if you weren't committing the felony, no one would have died.

"I know this guy who stole a car," Scatter said, explaining the law, "and he was runnin' from the police when he hit some of lady crossin' the street."

"BAM!" he said with burst of enthusiasm. "He got sent up for murder."

"That's right," Skullcap said, "even if a motherfucker has a heart attack and shit-your ass is sittin' up in here doin' life."

"Not for a heart attack," Chet said.

"Oh, yes sir," Skullcap said with authority. "If that old bitch crossing the street had a heart attack instead of being hit by the car, they would have still jammed the brother up."

"Now how they gonna know she had a heart attack just 'cause he came flyin' by?" Chet challenged.

I was getting the impression that everyone became a jailhouse lawyer, since they all seemed to know about crimes and court and how the sentencing and procedures went. Or at least everyone had an opinion on it.

"Because," Skullcap said, searching for an answer. "Because ... The Man is just lookin' for a reason to send a nigger to prison, Dawg. You know what I'm saying?"

The answer seemed to satisfy Chet, or maybe he decided it wasn't worth arguing. He did seem to agree that The Man was always looking for a reason to send someone to prison. The fact remained that Scatter and his rap partner had robbed a supermarket and that his rap partner, according to Scatter, killed the store manager. They were both convicted of felony murder and sentenced to life in prison.

"But regular life," Scatter said. "Not natural life. With natural life, you're down till your ass dies or the governor gives you a pardon."

"Which ain't going to happen," Skullcap said.

"With regular life,"