Burn My Shadow by Tyler Knight

Author:Tyler Knight
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rare Bird Books
Published: 2016-10-07T21:49:44+00:00

Street Cred

The shackles restrict me to baby steps. I’m being moved into a holding tank in Downtown LA’s Twin Towers. County jail. The chain gang holds a dozen of us, linked waist-to-waist, handcuff-to-handcuff.

My charge is Failure to Appear. I forgot about the pile of unpaid tickets I left in the glove box of my old car. The act of not showing up for court, even for a civil infraction ticket, is itself a misdemeanor. Eventually I was stopped while walking down the street; the police ran my name and came up with a bench warrant for my arrest.

Everyone in the chain gang wears county blue jumpsuits with “LA COUNTY JAIL” stenciled on the back. On the feet of some of the men are county-issued slippers. I’m the only one in street clothes: white linen slacks and sweater, and some sandals. You may as well have put a “my asshole is snug” sign on my fucking chest.

We shuffle to the holding tank. A group of Sheriff’s Deputies bark commands on top of each other, including “Face the wall” and “Spread your legs.” When we comply, they take off our waist chains. A female deputy frisks me, hands roving up my inner thighs. She commands me to open my mouth, lift my tongue, then move it side to side. She removes my handcuffs.

Another deputy asks the racially-ambiguous looking prisoners, “Who do you hang with?” LA county jail segregates the races into separate areas for safety. Race riots are not uncommon inside. There are only four non Blacks or Latinos among us. Three white guys and a Filipino kid. In the Twin Towers, you may be grouped in with guys on the way to prison for God knows what and for how long, so what the hell is another few months added for stomping on a new guy? The lone Asian kid hyperventilates.

The deputies leave and shut the steel door. The dread of being buried alive and forgotten washes over my brain and soaks my amygdala. A few of the black guys stare at me and talk amongst themselves. I do my best not to stare back, choosing to focus on a point on the wall across from me. The Asian kid stands in the center of the holding cell, alone and weeping.

After a while (with the absence of clocks or windows, it’s impossible to track the passage of time) guards open the door and snatch both me and the Asian kid away. I’m moved into the black men’s tank. The guards crammed enough people to fill a high school gymnasium into a room the size of a classroom. One steel door…steel benches bolted to the floor…open-faced toilet with a drunkard passed out on it. Again, no windows, no clock. There’s unoccupied space on the steel bench but I do not sit. When my legs get tired of standing, I pace about to get the circulation going. More people look at me. They talk amongst themselves.

One kid, tired of standing, takes a seat on the bench without asking.

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