Jailbird

A story of incarceration and hope

Going through my files, I’ve come across this early story of mine, which was part of my graduate thesis for the MFA at Warren Wilson College. This is set way back when the Buncombe County Jail was the best view in Asheville, atop the county courthouse.

I’m running the broom around the thirteenth floor like Sloane said to, piling up cigarette butts, dead bugs and ghost turds. Don’t ask what’s a ghost turd. I did and did I get jumped.

“You be mouthing me, boy?” Sloane swelled up and pointed to a dirty bit of fluff in the corner. “That,” he said, “is a ghost turd. Let me see one goddam ghost turd on this floor and your skinny white ass is back in lockup.”

Sloane’s the worst of the jailers. His kicks come from calling white guys “boy,” but he treats the brothers just as bad. Some days I’d like to coldcock him with a sock full of soap bars even if they added an extra six months to my time.

Pushing the broom, I wonder about the ghost turds. They’re like the stuff of fancy pillows that a rich lady would rest her head on. We don’t get pillows in the cells, just a plastic-covered mattress, a yellowed sheet, and a scratchy blanket. I sweep and mop the thirteenth twice a day, but it’s a mystery to me how the fluff keeps showing up. Maybe it comes from some spirit trailing Sloane when he makes his rounds late at night and shines his light in my cell.

“Hey, trusty, come here,” a voice calls me from Right Center cellblock, the Lockbox.

“Mosely, what do you think I am? Damn room service?”

I can count on Mosely to be hanging on the bars, bugging me. The big black dude’s always wanting something. He’ll run you ragged to make a phone call to a girlfriend, or to pass a note to a buddy locked downstairs, or sneak him an extra candy bar in his store-box. Mosely will shortchange you and act like you should make up the difference.

“Hey man, gimme a cigarette.”

I pull out my tobacco and papers and start rolling him one. I refuse nobody a smoke, even Mosely. I make no enemies that way.

Another voice calls from inside the Lockbox. “Hey, what time you got?”

Seems like I’m the only guy on the floor with a watch, and it’s a cheap Timex that runs slow. Someone’s always bumming smokes and the time from me, but I recollect what it was like in Lockup and try not to begrudge them. “Two o’clock on the nose.”

Mosely looks at my tobacco and chuckles. “You got Prince Albert in a can, don’t you? Better let that mother out, he gonna suffocate.”

The dude tells the lamest jokes. I don’t even laugh since my name’s Albert and I’ve been choking on Mosely’s funky smell and this stinking place for thirty-seven days now. I’m building a solid ninety, day by day, with no good time off.

“Johnson.” My name crackles through the halls. “Albert Johnson.” Mr. Randy is calling me over the intercom. “Get your ass up here. You got a phone call.”

Mosely’s still laughing, showing his pink tongue where his front teeth are missing. “Albert’s in the can, better let that mother out.”

Upstairs in the jailers’ office, Mr. Randy points to the receiver dangling from the pay phone. “Says it’s your wife.”

Jewelle’s voice comes on all sweetness, even though she’s the one who put me here, tacking on her non-support charge to the outstanding warrants. “What you doing, baby?” she asks.

“I’m doing time. What the hell do you think I’m doing — sitting in a Jacuzzi?”

I should have hung up then while I was ahead. She starts screaming on her end, calling me all sorts of names. I’m trying to keep my voice level and still let her have her share. But Jewelle knows how to hurt me. She brings up Rose and how only a felon would miss his baby’s second birthday. I hang up but the receiver pops out of the cradle. I want to punch the coin box even though it’s no quarter out of my pocket.

“Take it easy on my phone, Johnson,” Mr. Randy says.

“Family spat’s all,” I say but I slap the railing down the stairs to the thirteenth floor.

Julius would have loved this, and I wish he were still here, even if he did have that mouth on him. He could make me laugh at about anything even myself, but he got out this morning. We were about to pass out the lunch trays when he got called upstairs. “Oh man,” Julius groaned and went, but in a flash he came running back down.

“See you in Beaverdam, whitebread,” he whooped.

Julius always kidded me how there are no blacks where I come from. “Serious man, I coming to see you when we get out. I’ll bring my mama’s white bedsheet and you and me can go burn some crosses. Just don’t be siccing no dogs on my when I come.”

He’d grin real big, then change his voice. “Looky yonder, ma. ain’t that one them African-Americans?” Julius could pluck out a perfect Beaverdam drawl, twangy as a banjo.

“Man, white folks crack me up,” he laughed. “Just tell me one thing. How far is yonder?”

“Yonder is a little ways more than just far,” I explained.

“Looky yonder,” he mimicked my drawl and we laughed.

Now Julius has long gone yonder himself.

---

I’ve been looking the guys over in the Lockbox when I pass the trays in at mealtime. I’m shopping for a new tattoo. When I was fifteen, Junior Greene carved a girl’s name on my shoulder with the heated tip of a Phillips head screwdriver while I knocked back shots of his daddy’s best moonshine. Junior rubbed india ink into the wound that read “Renee,” but after ten years her name is as hard to make out as old Egyptian writing. I forgot about Renee when I met Jewelle. But I’ve never been tempted to scratch Jewelle in my skin to show my true feelings.

In the Lockbox, I’ve seen skin that would shame a circus lady. Dragons and cobras coiled around forearms. A regimental eagle screams across biceps. A technicolor spider crawls up one guy’s tit. A skull grins out from beneath a cowboy hat on another fellow’s back. This biker shows his Ghostrider colors even with his jacket off.

The kitchen stacked an extra tray on the cart for tonight. A new man waits at the back of the crowd. Glasses on his nose and no tattoos on his knuckles, this guy looks badly misplaced in the Lockbox. He looks too clean to be in with the weekend drunks next door in Thirteen Right. In here, he’s got company the likes of Mosely who faces time for robbing a package store and feeling up the clerk. Greenlee’s waiting trial for braining his mother’s boyfriend with a baseball bat until the dude went into convulsions. Greenlee brags the neighbors had to shove a spoon in the man’s mouth to keep him from biting off his tongue before the ambulance came.

I greet the new man when he comes up last for his tray. “Hey professor. When did you get in?”

His eyes float watery behind his thick glasses. He stares at his tray with cooked cabbage, navy beans with sliced onions and canned pears. It’s crude grub when you’re used to a life of clean underwear, but it sticks to you on the way through. He shakes his head and walks off, taking just a glass of milk.

“Professor. Yeah, that’s a good one,” Mosely laughs, grabbing the extra tray. I see the name I gave the new guy is going to stick for whatever time he’s got.

---

After I collect the trays and glasses, the afternoon is my own. I have a window with a view that even bars can’t spoil, and the sun makes a fine show setting over the mountains. I can name what lies over that ridge and the next ridge and the one after until you get to Beaverdam. I have a trailer two months behind on the payments, but I’ll go there when my time’s up and hope there’s no padlock on the door.

From my window, I look over Eagle Street, and the start of the dark side of town. Julius must be in his old haunts down there, running numbers in the alleys, hitting all the shot houses, or hustling some babe for the night. He’s home now, but he’ll probably be back upstairs before my time is done.

Raising the window, I set a bottle of milk through the bars to keep on the ledge overnight. I can look down on the City Club in the bank building across town where the high and mighty eat. I imagine the clatter of silver against china, men in suits and women in furs, cloth napkins wiping the fancy food from their mouths. Except for the bars, their view is no better than mine.

After dinner, I favor a cup of coffee and a smoke. I take a bottle filled with coffee left over from breakfast in a back room where Sloane won’t spot me. I wind some toilet paper around my fingers, then tuck the sides in to make a tight ring. Fitting the bottle inside, I light the paper to make a jailbird stove. Lean back and wait for my hot coffee

At the first jingle of keys, I throw the burning paper in the toilet and flush.

“Johnson, get your butt out here!”

I can hear Sloane’s boots sounding down the block. I undo my pants then walk out of the cell, making a show of having finished my own natural business. “Here,” I say. “Hold your horses.”

Sloane’s come to tell me Mr. Randy wants a watch on the new man in Right Center. Keep my eyes open, keep him company, and it might count as good time.

“Guy with glasses?” I ask. “You mean the Professor.”

Sloane frowns at his clipboard. “Name’s Sullivan.”

“What he do? Is he crazy or something to need me as a babysitter?”

“Johnson, you asking me questions? You getting an attitude?”

“Oh, no sir.” I need to keep in mind the proper attitude, according to Sloane. He says “jump,” I better say “how high?” He says “shit,” I say “what color?”

Sloane marches me over to the Lockbox. “All right,” he yells down the block, “everybody in their cells. Move it!”

They bitch and moan. Usually lights don’t go down until ten. Inmates can roam the walkway, play poker on the benches or fight over what to watch on the one black-and-white tv.

Cell lockup is hard time to build. Your room to move is cut from thirty paces along the block from the shower to the door to just eight shoelengths from your toilet to your cell bars.

Soon the walls look like they might be squeezing in on you. I’m not a big fellow, but I can stand by my bunk, spread my arms and touch both walls with my fingertips. If the walls don’t get you, the noise at night will -- coughs rattling out of ribcages, teeth stubs grinning, foreskins flapping under the sheets. Sometimes in lockup, I’d have to sit on my bunk and let the back of my head thump against the metal wall, just to have a noise to call my own.

“Move it Mosely!” Sloane yells. Inside the lock control box, he pulls a lever to shut the cell, fifteen sounding as one giant door closing. Then he unlocks the main door and walks down the block. I follow after as he tests the bars at each cell, checking that they’re secure.

At the new man’s cell, Sloane points to the bench outside for me to sit down. “You best be awake when I make my rounds, Johnson, or I’ll put you in with Mosely.”

Mosely’s hanging at his bars, scratching at his red bikini briefs. “Oooh, Prince Albert, don’t make me want you.”

“Shut up.” Sloane yanks the tv plug on his way out, then he shuts me inside the Lockbox for the night.

Something’s happened for Mr. Randy to want a lockup of Right Center and order a babysitter for the new man. One look at the Professor in his cage and I see why. His glasses sit crooked on his nose and there’s a nice shiner under his right eye.

I take out my tobacco, cross my legs and start rolling out some smokes for the evening. I wish it was real weed I was rolling, but the last time I had any of that, I got busted back to Craggy Prison for a nine-month stretch. The Professor crouches on the edge of his bunk, watching me.

“Smoke?”

“I was trying to quit,” he says.

But he takes the cigarette and I cup a match in my hands through the bars. In the glow, I can see the shiner under his eye turning purple. “I went two weeks.” He coughs.

I ask about his eye. “You fall down?”

“The black guy, what’s his name? He wanted my candy bar.”

“Who, Mosely?”

“Oh Christ.” The Professor’s shoulders start to shake. He tries to hold himself still, but can’t. He’s choking to keep the sobs from breaking out of his throat. I’ve seen it before and it’s bad to watch to watch a man go to pieces.

“Mosely’s one sick mother. Don’t mind him.”

Mosely must be listening at his bars or I don’t keep my voice down. “Hey whitey, what you call me?” he hollers. Come here and say it.”

I sigh and walk over to Mosely’s cell. “I said you’re one sick mother. You and your mother.”

He lunges for me through the bars, but his hand misses my faces by inches. “I kill you, man. I rip your head off and spit down your neck.”

I start striking matches one by one, flicking them through the bars onto his mattress. Then I flick matches at Mosely. He backs off, swatting at the sharp little flames like a man swarmed by bees.

Someone left a half-used roll of toilet paper on the bench. It would just fit through the bars. I light another match under the torn edge. “You best be careful, Mosely. I’d hate to see you catch on fire lying in bed tonight.”

Mosely’s not so cocky now. “Be cool, Albert. I was just funning with you, man.”

I go sit back down in front of the Professor’s cell. Mosely’s probably done wet his bed, because he knows I meant my threat.

The Professor - I forget his name, Sullivan? - he’s rubbing his face with his hands, the thick glasses moving up and down on his nose under his long fingers.

I try making conversation. “I seen that happen in Craggy, man burn in his cell. Guys soaked down a roll of toilet paper with lighter fluid, tossed it in on the dude. Strange, but the brothers don’t get any blacker when they burn, the skin turns pink. Never heard screaming like that in my life. Still, it ain’t as bad as this jail. At Craggy, they let you out for exercise.”

He ignores my story. “Where am I?” he asks. “It seems like forever going up in the elevator.”

“Yeah, thirteenth floor. There’s a good view from the trusty block. See the whole city at your feet.”

I wish I hadn’t said that. It might make him feel worse inside the Lockbox where the sun has to creep around corners and bars to find him.

But he starts laughing. “Thirteenth floor? Who ever heard of having a high-rise jail in the middle of downtown? I can’t think of a finer fire trap.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. This place catch fire, and we’d all look like that dude in Craggy.”

The Professor wrings his hands, brushing one palm against the other like they were covered with dirt. I ask him what he’s in for.

“Manslaughter, I think, maybe death by motor vehicle. They’re going to say I killed someone. I don’t remember. Maybe a Highway Patrolman.”

“A trooper?” I take a long low whistle at this. “You didn’t kill just someone there.”

I can tell though he’s torn up bad about what he’s done. He probably thinks he’s better than me and the others up here, but he got drunk like the rest of us and did something he would have plenty of time to regret.

“I suppose I’m allergic to alcohol,” he tries to smile. “I drink it and it makes me break out in rash actions.”

The Professor has the saddest story and he tells it in the finest words. He takes some good-looking woman to a fancy cocktail party, I’ll bet at the City Club, wining with the rich folk on top of the world. But the woman walks off, leaves him at the open bar. He gets in the car, expensive foreign make, I’d guess, and goes screeching down the road, but he’s driving blind with booze and hurt, he doesn’t see the blue lights ahead. He blacks out and crashes through the roadblock. Trooper’s down and dead before they pull him out from under the sports car.

“Take it easy, man,” I say when he finishes his story.

His hands jump on his lap like DT’s are sneaking up on him. Winos in for drunk-and-disorderlies get that shaky after about a day off the juice. They snooze for about five minutes, then something jumps from their mind onto their bunks. By morning, they’ve strangled the life out of their blankets. The shakes creep up the Professor’s arms into his shoulders, and he’s sobbing and rubbing his eyes again.

“Lay down, man. Lay down and get some sleep. I’ll sit and watch,” I say. He stretches out on his bunk and crooks his arm over his eyes, trying to shut out the feeble glare from the hallway light.

“Goodnight, Sullivan,” I say.

My cigarette glows red in the dark, and the Timex sweeps its green arms slowly on my wrist as I wait in the Lockbox for Sloane to come.

---

Jewelle comes to visit on Sundays. She has always been faithful in that way. During my nine months at Craggy, she visited regularly. When I did time for the bad checks, she drove out to the work farm. She always brought clean socks and underwear.

But Jewelle hates coming here. A jailer downstairs goes through her handbag every time. She says what she has looks so sad spilled out on the counter. Loose change, hair brush, wads of tissue paper. They don’t allow the nail file or even the cheap ballpoint pen to go upstairs. Dangerous weapons.

“Don’t take it so personal,” I tell her. “You didn’t have to bend over like I did and offer your hind end for inspection.”

The glass that separates us is smudged with fingerprints. Too much breathing has fogged the surface, blurring her face. Jewelle’s gained some weight from when I first knew her at 14, but she still looks fine. Her denim dress is slit up the front over her thick legs.

“How’s the baby? You and her getting along?” We speak through the wire mesh of a speaker box.

“Doing fine. Everyone’s fine,” Jewelle says.

I look up at the ceiling. Some joker has scrawled YER ASS BELONGS TO RANDY RAY.

Jewelle tells me about her new job as a flag girl on the road crew. She’s making five dollars an hour, but she doesn’t like all the honks and whistles she gets from truckers. I can see the outline of her bra through her blouse. I have forgotten what her breasts look like.

“I wear two sweaters and my big coat and I still about freeze,” she is saying.

“Have you got on underwear?”

“What?”

“Lift up that skirt and show me.”

“Albert!”

“Come on, for old time’s sake. Show me.”

“Albert, grow up.”

“Sorry. I’ve got to tell you something.”

Jewelle pushes her hair back and leans her ear closer. I see the pink swirls inside, the gold loop dangling from the fat lope, but I don’t dare whisper what’s been locked up inside me.

---

I’ve been sitting in front of the TV for most of the day. Don’t remember what day it is nor do I much care. I take out the tobacco with my name on it and start rolling a smoke. I’ve been trying hard not to think all day, but there’s too much time on my hands. When I stick out my tongue to lick the paper, I notice my fingers all yellow and stained.

This morning, they found the Professor hanged in his cell. He was sitting in the corner with one end of his bedsheet knotted to the bars and the other end tied around his neck. Sloane said his glasses were folded neatly on the floor beside him, like he didn’t want to see the end too clearly. But I can see those blue eyes rolled back in his head, his long fingers finally lying still in his lap.

I think about Julius, how he’s going to visit me in Beaverdam like he said. I like to think the Professor would have come too. We would have sat in the trailer with Jewelle fetching us beers and me bouncing my baby on my knee. We would have been regular citizens and happy.

It’s not the TV, but a gentle cooing that brings me back from Beaverdam to the thirteenth floor. I look up and see a pigeon walk through the unlocked door into the cellblock. It struts, bobbing its shiny green head from side to side, its blank yellow eyes ignoring me.

When I try to ease out of my chair, I spook the pigeon into a flutter of feathers. It flies about, bumps into the walls, shaking ghost turds all over my clean floor.

“Hey! Hey!” I chase after it, my shower slippers flapping as loud as the pigeon’s wings. The bird and me go past Mosely at the bars to the Lockbox, around the corner at Thirteen Right where the weekenders sleep, and down the runabout to the barred windows.

The pigeon bangs against the glass and falls to the floor. I trap it in my arms. I hold it close to me, feeling the flutter of heart and wing against my chest.

But the bird’s not hurt. It will fly if I let it. I could watch it soar over Eagle Street where Julius runs the alleys, see it shoot past the City Club where the Professor drank too much. I could follow its flight all the way over the ridge into Beaverdam. Lifting the window, I slide my prisoner through the white bars.

Stupid bird sits there. Won’t even spread its wings.

I shove it off the ledge. Damn thing drops like a rock out of sight.

Twisting my face against the bars, I try and see where my pigeon went. Thirteen stories down, I count a hundred birds grubbing on the wet sidewalk.

I grind the bones of my face into the cold bars. Flecks of paint peel away in my fists. My arms are shaking as bad as the Professor’s. The scream I’ve guarded inside me finally breaks free, the long cry I kept down in lockup, thumping my head against the wall.

On the rainy street, white faces look up from beneath umbrellas. The flock explodes into the wet air.

“Yonder,” I yell over the beating wings. “Yonder. Over yonder,” until I heard Sloane running down the block to shut me up.