Doing Time by Bell Gale Chevigny

Author:Bell Gale Chevigny
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

First Day on the Job

Henry Johnson

I have learned this: it is not what one does that is wrong, but what one becomes as a consequence of it.

— Oscar Wilde

“Twenty years ago when I was young, kid,

we kept a special room in the basement at Attica —

ripe as any butcher shop, soundproofed.

Wild Bill, your squad commander,

shackled nigger convicts to the wall

and we beat hell out of them

with rubber hoses ‘n such.

Lord, the screams in that place,

the heat and smell of blood.

Don’t step on that junebug near your foot.

Had that same look in my eyes

my first day on the job,

like a child separated from his mother in a department stote.

The Sergeant assigned me to work in D Block,

had to feed the cons waitin’ to appear

before the adjustment committee.

It was like feedin’ hogs. I watched

the trustee pour hot coffee for each of ‘em

from a three-gallon tin can.

One of the cons in lockup begged me for a match,

dashed a mug of scaldin’ hot coffee

in my face. The doctors saved my eyes,

but the skin on my face never healed right.

Friends told me they found the bugger hangin’

in his cell, one Sunday. One of his friends

must’ve slipped him some rope, God bless’m.

This here’s your locker,

used to belong to old Deke Miller —

he shriveled up like a burnt piece of bacon

before he passed. Heard it was cancer.

When my wife ran off with a mechanic

from the next town, I staggered around for a while

like I was dazed from a blow to the heart.

Look here. See the girl with the blond pigtail?

that’s Ellen, my daughter. Put her through

one of them fancy nursin’ schools myself.

She’s in Denver now, don’t see her much

except for Christmas. Old Deke and his wife

clothed and fed her while I drank.

I was proud, hard.

But how hard is a man? —

pushed around against his will,

that King boy

tootin’ his communist ass in our faces,

and singin’ his heathen songs

in our streets.

And in anger, kid, in anger he swears

that no door in America will be closed to them

even if it means breakin’ us

law by law.

So you see, you have to treat these bastards right.

See the con moppin’ the rotunda floor?

Used to wear one of them afro haircuts

almost a foot high, and cobra-quick with a knife.

He’d call you cracker so often you’d answer

as though it was your Christian name.

But look at him now: bald, shaky in the knees.

Wild Bill pounded his head like a T-bone steak

with the south corridor keys,

slipped him back into his cell before mornin’.

Go on, ask him who Malcolm X is, or

Jomo Kenyatta. He’ll shit all over himself.

You look pale, but you’ll be just fine.

Cain’t use the room no more, dammit.

So you gotta be smart.

They need to know the discipline of a guard’s club,

the keys jangle like death bells ringin’.

We got to control their words, break ‘em

and fling ‘em into the mud like we did that King boy.

And we have to feed ‘em right always

if not pork

then with an education that will send ’em marchin’

into the fire. Know what I mean, kid?

Here, bite a chew of this tobacco —

it keeps you calm.

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