Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison (9 page)

"Only scrubs and fish wore State Blues," an inmate with a B-number said. Scrubs were guys who were poor, didn't have family on the outside, or lacked the game necessary to hustle some clothes. Hustle some meant stealing them from an open cell, snatching them off a weaker convict, or "getting some fat chick on the outside to buy them."

Later on, when my brother Rick came to visit, I couldn't believe the number of overweight girls in the visiting room, kissing and holding hands with young muscular inmates. Occasionally, the chaplain would be called to perform a wedding, and the inmate would be granted a one-time-only conjugal visit. Rick said as soon as these guys got out, they'd dump them for skinnier girls, but in the meantime, their hefty welfare checks helped beef up the inmates' lean, 50-cent-a-day job pressing license plates in the prison factory. And the girls didn't seem to mind all the foreplay they were getting in the visiting room.

The state shoes were like the kind my brother wore before being tossed out of the Air Force. I remembered, sadly, how he'd pay me to polish them and how proud I was that I could spit-shine them so well his staff sergeant could see his own reflection. But the state shoes had a dull shine. They looked downtrodden and miserable. Perhaps it was because inmates were forced to make them in one of the prison industries.

The classification process would take six weeks and would include a physical, educational and vocational testing, a psychological exam, and a hearing with the classification committee. But Inmate Classification should have been called Convict Orientation, considering how we were all being educated. Inmates who had been there before, explained to the rest of us how things were done. The men with older numbers, a B or C prefix, were treated with respect. While we were in the bullpen, however, we were all in the same position, so those who knew something were quick to brag about it.

There were dozens of prisons and camps in the state and tour different levels of security: Minimum, Medium, Close-Custody, and Maximum.

A memo, posted on the inside wall of the bullpen, explained classification:

Security Assignments are made in accordance with severity of crime, perceived dangerousness of inmate, length of incarceration, and past history of escape or violence.

Major concerns for the Committee include: limiting security risks, assessment of rehabilitation needs and maintaining the good order & security of all institutions within the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC).

As I read this, an inmate standing next to me translated: "However much time a motherfucker's got?-That's where they're sending his ass." Meaning, the longer the prison term-the higher the security.

I wondered why they didn't just say that, so everyone would understand, but then Rooster stood up and started imitating a southern lawyer.

"Irregardless of what this particular memorandum stipulates," he said, "Convict Classifications-are primarily determined-by the length of your adjudications."

"In other words," he grabbed his crotch, "The longer the dick-the longer the ride." He gave his pelvis a slight thrust, and everyone laughed.

"Man, sit your Perry Mason ass down, fool," the first guy said, smiling. "And mother-tuck all that mumbo jumbo M-D-O-C bullshit." He pointed at the memo. "It's very simple: If you're doing less than two years, you're going to camp. Up to five-medium-security. Anything higher, and you're going inside."

When inmates talked about going inside, they meant inside the walls of a close-custody prison. Inmates with long sentences, up to and including life, were sent there. They were surrounded by walls, motion sensors, razor wire, and gun towers. The older cons went to Jackson, while those of us under twenty-five went to the Michigan Reformatory (a.k.a. Gladiator School). At this point, I didn't know if the name the inmates had given the place was real or not, but I didn't want to find out.

Inmates with terms of up to five years were sent to medium-security. These prisons were surrounded by fences and gun towers, or armed jeeps patrolled the perimeter. Inmates who had been serving longer sentences inside the walls were transferred down to medium as soon as they got within five years of parole. Once they reached within two years, they were eligible for the camp program.

When I was called from the bullpen the second time, I was handed a document entitled, Inmate Outdates. Outdates were the earliest release dates we could be granted a parole. Good Time, time off for good behavior, had already been calculated.

"It don't mean you're getting out then," a guard said, "It just means them are the dates you could get out, assuming you don't lose no good time."

"They do it that way," an inmate with a B-number said, "because when they take the good time back from your ass, they figure you'll miss it more."

But for the moment, I was preoccupied with trying to figure out if, don't lose nogood time was a triple negative, and if so, did that mean I didn't want to don't lose no, or if I wanted to not don't lose some?

There were two types of good time, regular and special, and release dates were noted for each. No one could tell me why there were two kinds of good time, but as the same inmate suspected, "It's so the motherfuckers can have two different things to take away from your ass."

The way it was calculated, I only had to serve nine months for every year of my sentence. So my two-and-a-half to four years worked out to roughly twenty-two months. A little more than the "year and a half, tops!" my court appointed attorney assured me I'd only have to serve. My early release date was January 9, 1980. As I read this, my heart felt like it had fallen from a gun tower. The numbers looked alien-nineteen and then an eight-zero. Up until that moment, I'd never thought about the eighties before. It was barely 1978, and it was too hard to comprehend. I put it away. My release was a long way off, and anything could happen by then.

When I returned to the bullpen, I scooted over to where the white inmates had flocked. There were one or two others scattered about, but less than ten total, counting the three or four who'd already gone in. No one seemed to notice I'd moved, except for Moseley, who'd been keeping a steady eye on me.

Other than Tree Jumpers, Chesters, drug dealers, and smugglers, inmates with prison terms of less than two years were sent to camp. Inmates with a history of escape were also barred. A Tree Jumper was a rapist, and a Chester, a child molester, named after the Hustler magazine cartoon, Chester The Molester. I asked an inmate why rapists were called Tree Jumpers and he said, "Imagine a motherfucker hiding up in a tree, just waiting for some fine young female to come walking along ..."

Inmates didn't like rapists. They figured if the only way a man could get some was to take it, then he wasn't a real man in the first place. And a Chester was worse. On the inmate hierarchy, a child molester was just a fraction of an inch above a snitch. State law didn't allow child molesters in the camp program, and anywhere else for that matter-they were sent to lockup for their own protection. Otherwise they would be killed. Lock-up involved going into protective custody, where an inmate would spend his entire prison term in solitary confinement.

Listening to the guys talk in the bullpen that morning, I got the impression that they would put up with quite a lot, but raping kids was not one of them. It was a sad irony, as I'd learn soon enough, that while rape outside the walls was so looked down upon, inside it was almost a validation of one's own manhood.

When Rooster was called out and left, the other black inmates started talking about him. "Cock-a-fuckin'-doodle-do. Can that nigger talk or what?"

A few others laughed.

"That's how he got his nickname," someone else said. "'Cause every morning, that motherfucker is up at the crack of dawn, his mouth a cacklin'."

When the next con was called from the bullpen, a white inmate who was sitting off to himself, got up and walked out.

"That boy is fuckin'," I overhead a con whisper.

"No shit?" the guy next to him said. "Why didn't you say something?"

"Yeah, " another black inmate said, reaching into his pants and groping himself. "I could've used some face."

"He's with Little Chet," the first one said, "over on the North Side. He's just coming back from court." The other two nodded and dropped the conversation.

I didn't know who Little Chet was, but judging by the way the others had backed off, Little Chet must have been well respected.

Fucking meant someone was taking it up the ass, or sucking dick. And Little Chet must have been that boy's man. It was my first introduction to the efficiency of the inmate grapevine. Inmates had little else to do but talk, so information flowed quickly. If someone was fucking or snitching, was a Tree Juniper or a Chester, inmates made certain that other inmates knew about it.

"It's one of the greatest communication devices ever known," Rooster bragged, later that morning. "It you ever want to know what time it is about someone, or something, all you have to do is Telephone, Telegraph, or Tell an Innate."

After a while, I thought the inmates would run out of things to talk about, but that morning, there was plenty. They went on, non-stop, about the differences in classification, prisons, and how the system worked. I kept to myself and listened intently. Over my first months inside, I'd become as familiar with these workings as some of the old timers. That first day, however, I gathered as many details as I could. But no matter how much I learned, nothing would prepare me for what I was to face in the days that followed.

The longer a prison sentence, the higher the security, and the higher the security, the greater the violence. Close-custody prisons were the most dangerous, because the state had the least control over inmate behavior. In a minimum-security, where most inmates were within a few months of parole, the state held good time and early release dates as leverage, so violence was minimal. But in the higher custodies, where no one was going home for years-maybe never-convicts could give a fuck about the rules.

Inmates who weren't seeing the Parole Board for a decade or more, believed they'd have plenty of time to clean up their records, once they were transferred to a lower security prison that didn't demand as much violence. Many believed it was not a good thing to go to the Parole Board without any misconduct reports in your file. "They'll call you conwise," an inmate said, "and they'll give you a flop." (A denial of parole in six- or twelve-month increments.) "It's always better to have a few tickets," he said, "Cause otherwise, they'll think you'd been laying low and you're trying to manipulate."

As for inmates who were never seeing a parole-those inmates serving life-they had nothing to lose. What could the state do, give them another life sentence? There was no death penalty in Michigan, so there was no death row. Inmates who caused too much trouble in close-custody were sent to Marquette, the state's only maximum-security prison.

Marquette was located off the shores of Lake Superior in the upper tip of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where legend had it security was so tight that inmates were welded into their cells. Only the most violent prisoners were shipped there, after having killed someone while at another prison. I doubt they were actually spot-welded in, but as Rooster put it, "They might as well be, 'cause unless a motherfucker's got him some snow shoes-he ain't goin' nowhere."

Convicts liked the word motherfucker a lot. They used it mostly when referring to other inmates, but These Motherfuckers or The Motherfucker usually meant The Man, Authority, The Courts, or The System. It was the function words like the or these, or the singular or plural form that indicated which motherfucker they were referring to. Some motherfucker could be either, like "Some motherfucker stole my shit" or "Some motherfucker jammed me up, sending me down for a dime" (meaning they were set up and sent to prison for a ten-year stretch).

They talked about time in terms of nickels and dimes, and serving a quarter-deuce (twenty-five years to life). Now that's a motherfucker, because with a quarter-deuce you won't see the parole board until after you've finished serving the full twenty-five. By then, it's very possible, because you've spent so much time here-you may not want to leave this motherfucker.