Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison (12 page)

We passed a State Police Post and a small airstrip for private planes. Nestled among the hills and rolling farms, the city of Ionia was home to the world's largest free county fair, where the best in livestock, poultry, and agricultural displays could be viewed. Ionia was also home to four state penitentiaries. The Department of Corrections was the region's largest employer.

"If you're from Ionia," one of the cons in the van said, "you either worked the pigs or you were a pig." The guard smacked his baton against the caged partition and startled the offending inmate. Everyone laughed, including both guards.

We traveled another mile and then turned left. The Michigan Reformatory could be seen in the distance and the van got quiet as we took in the sight. Built in 1876, M-R was the oldest prison in the State of Michigan and boasted one of the largest cellblocks in the world. Its forty-five-toot high concrete walls and soaring gun towers loomed on a hill like an evil fortress. It looked as menacing as its reputation claimed.

Fortunately for me, the van turned left again and headed up a winding landscaped drive. In spite of what that psychologist had said to me, the Classification Committee determined I was too young and vulnerable for Gladiator School. Instead, they sent me to Riverside Correctional Facility until I was sentenced for robbing the Photo Mat.

Riverside was a close-custody prison for inmates serving long sentences, usually ten or more years, who were either very young or old, mentally ill, or in need of protection for some other reason. Protection cases included excops, informants, child molesters, and homosexuals. Riverside was notorious for having lots of sissies.

Formerly known as The Ionia State Hospital, and later The State Asylum for the Criminally Insane, the Department of Corrections had acquired the property a year earlier, and it looked like a mental hospital. It was an aging complex of several large buildings, surrounded by newly installed gun towers and twenty-five-foot-high barbed-wire fences. There were four housing units designated for each class of inmates: one building for those over the age of fifty, another for those under twenty-one, one for the mentally ill-referred to as bugs by the other inmates-and the last unit which was shared by segregation, the infirmary and the hole.

The housing unit for inmates under twenty-one was a bit of a misnomer, since there were only a few inmates who were actually that young. In fact, with the exception of the geriatric and bug wards, most inmates at Riverside were in their thirties.

I was housed in 10 Building, the unit for younger inmates. It was an aged yellow two-story brick building with small block-shaped windows that opened on pivot hinges guided by steel brackets. The openings were large enough to allow for a breeze, but not nearly wide enough for someone to squeeze free. I wondered what would happen in a fire, but the buildings' all-brick and steel construction left little chance for that to occur.

Each floor contained several dormitories and a small number of individual rooms. Though highly coveted, individual cells were issued in order of seniority. Inmates placed their name on a list with the unit counselor and waited for one of the small 8 x 10 foot digs to become available. If you received a ticket, a misconduct report for a violation of the rules, you were placed at the bottom of the list. It normally took years to earn the privilege of a room. This meant that fish were automatically assigned to the dorms.

The dormitories housed eighteen men. There were nine double bunks, eighteen lockers, and a toilet and sink in each. But the toilets were used for the purposes of taking a piss, as the inmates insisted you go down the hall, to the main can, if you needed to take a dump. As one inmate put it, "'Cause don't nobody want to smell a motherfucker's shit when they're trying to cop some Zs."

Some inmates had televisions and radios, but the use of headphones was required at all times, except when walking the yard. The yard was a noisy place where the sounds of competing radios bellowed from all directions. Most of the music was rhythm and blues or the new sound of disco. Even the white guys listened to what back home was called black music.

The day I arrived at Riverside, we sat in the control center for what seemed like hours, repeating many of the same processes we went through in Quarantine at Jackson. We were strip-searched, fingerprinted, photographed, and issued bedrolls. The Deputy Warden gave us an inmate handbook and told us to "familiarize ourselves with the rules." The opening chapter, echoing the Department of Corrections emphasis on rehabilitation, stated that we were to be considered residents, not inmates.

The Deputy Warden, who had a body shaped like a coke bottle, spoke to us in a slow, deliberate, well-rehearsed speech.

"You were sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment. So while you are here, you'll be required to participate in programming. Including school. We want you focusing on the betterment of yourselves, so that when you get out, you stay out." But since Riverside had just opened, they hadn't yet worked out all of the job assignments and construction on the new school space was behind schedule. This, along with inadequate staffing, would explain the lack of structure that I would experience later.

"You'll meet with your unit counselors as soon as we get these things sorted out," he said. "In the meantime, none of you are going nowhere anytime soon."

To get to 10 Building, we had to cross the main yard. As three guards led our group, I noticed that activity in the yard had come to a subtle, yet definite stop. Conversations ceased as inmates took us in. They pointed and nodded, leaning toward one another to make comments. Some of them yelled things, like pretty boy or sweetie, but I kept my focus on the ground in front of me.

One of the cons in our group pointed to a building on the northeast corner of the yard. "That's where the old-timers are housed." We turned right and headed toward 10 Building. The guards led us up the steps and through the door. None of the inmates in our group were taken on to 11 Building, the mental ward, so I took that to mean there weren't any bugs among us.

Another guard met us, and the group was cut in half and told to step to the side. The rest of us were ordered to follow up the stairs. On the second floor, we were taken down a long glazed-bricked hallway where dormitories appeared, every twenty to thirty feet, on the left-hand side. Through the narrow windows of the painted steel doors, I could see the first set of bunk beds, which blocked the view of most of the room.

At the end of the corridor was the guard's station. One guard handed paperwork to another while a third guard led us into the dayroom.

Inside the dayroom, there were several orange fiberglass-molded rocking chairs arranged in slapdash rows in front of a television that had been mounted from the ceiling. Two inmates were watching a soap opera while one of them sipped from a plastic tumbler. To the left, a doorway opened onto the poolroom. The partition wall that separated the rooms was lined halfway up with glass. The inmates shooting pool stopped their game and came to the windows to gawk. We couldn't hear what they said, but several more inmates got up and joined in. While I couldn't hear clearly, the one word that came through was fish.

The guard walked us through the dayroom and into the smaller card room where he ordered us to take a seat at one of the tables. He went back to the office.

"Hey Slim," a black inmate said, tapping on the window from the TV side of the partition. I wasn't sure, but it appeared he was looking at me. One of the inmates sitting behind him whispered something, and they both laughed. They were staring in my direction. I turned and looked behind me, thinking they couldn't mean me, but there was no one there. I looked down at my fingernails and pretended not to notice them.

A few minutes later, the guard returned with a clipboard and a handful of keys dangling on long nylon strings. You were only allowed inside your own dormitory, to which we were each issued a key.

The guard read through several pages of orientation notes.

"There are four counts a day," he said, "One at 6 A.M., one at 4 P.m., one at 9:30, and the last one at midnight. At count times, you are to be in your dorms and on your bunk or you will be considered AWOL, and you will be shot." He paused to look at us. "And," he added, as if being shot wasn't enough, "you'll be issued a misconduct report."

Several of us looked at each other.

"The mess hall is in the basement," he said, "meal times and menus are posted on the bulletin board just outside the officer's station." Meal times alternated depending on floor. We were to be in our dorms at eleven and lights-out was 11:30. We would meet with the unit counselor, and those appointments would be posted on the board. He said the rest of the rules were listed in the inmate handbook.

"I thought we were residents," one of the inmates said.

"You're a bunch of convicts," he said. "I don't care what that book says. Just make sure you familiarize yourselves with the rules." He then read off our names and numbers from his clipboard. "1-5-3-0-5-2, Parsell."

"Here," I said, raising my hand.

"Dorm 1013, South." He handed me a key

"Thank you," I said, realizing how out of place my politeness sounded.

"This is the north side. The south side is through that door." He pointed to the southwest corner of the dayroom, behind the two inmates in front of the TV. Having lost interest in the fish, they were now engrossed in The Young and The Restless.

The guard finished handing out keys, ordered us to grab our bedroll, and then he and another guard split us into groups. We walked through the door that led to the south side. It was an exact duplicate of the north. There were two inmates shooting pool on the other side of the partition while The Price Is Right played to an empty day room.

We crossed the dull floors and continued down a hallway to the right. The guard stopped and directed one of the inmates into the first dorm and then took two others and me to the second. My key chain had a brass ring on it that indicated the building, floor, dorm, and bunk: 10 Building, 2nd floor, Dorm 13, Bunk D. I was on the upper. Young Blood had the lower. Young Blood was an eighteen-year-old black kid from Detroit, whose cell was across from mine in Jackson.

A short, pudgy, white guy in his early twenties jumped down from his bunk.

"Hi," he said, smiling. "I'm Bottoms." He had shoulder-length, dirty blond hair, and his skin was greasy. His eyes had a bright gleam.

"Hi," I said, extending my hand. "I'm Tim."

We shook awkwardly as he tried to grasp my hand by the thumb.

Young Blood gave him a disinterested nod.

"You guys just come through the Bubble?" He asked.

"Yeah," Young Blood said, studying him as he undid his bedroll.

"What's your number?" He asked, still smiling.

Prison numbers were unique to each inmate, issued sequentially as you entered the system, so inmates could tell how long you'd been down by how high your number was.

"1-5-2-9-7-4," Young Blood said, not looking up as he made his bed.

"What's yours?" Bottoms looked at me.

"1-5-3-0-5-2." I came in a few days later than Young Blood, so mine was higher.

"God Damn!" Bottoms blurted. "The numbers are up to one-fiftythree! "

"Fish-ass motherfuckers," said a dark-skinned black man, as he came out from the bunk next to Bottoms. "I'm Frank," he said. He was friendly, but not smiling.

Frank was about 6 feet 5 inches tall and looked as though he weighed twice as much as me. "You motherfuckers are gonna get the floor wet," he said.

I must have looked puzzled.

"He means your drippin' wet," Bottoms said, "fresh out of the tank."

I smiled and nodded.

Bottoms smiled back.

Curious about what I'd heard about gays earlier, I asked, "Hey?Are there a lot of fags in here?"

Bottom's sparkle turned to a dull gaze as he focused his eyes to the floor. "Nah," he said softly, as if to shrug. He backed away and turned to his bunk.

I was embarrassed I asked the question. I hoped I didn't seem eager to meet any sissies. Seeing that Young Blood was finished, I unfolded my bedroll and began making my bed.