This piece has received small public attention--receiving two separate Creative Writing awards/acknowledgments--and has become one catalyst for raising Sam's voice. For this reason, among others, "The Replacement" seems to be a good place to begin this blog. Although some of you have already read this, your comments are welcomed and desired.
The Replacement
A dying bulb flickered, held strong,
then flickered again among the other fluorescent lights hanging some twenty or
more feet above them, glaring down bright and clear, exposing them as they ate
in the Day Room.
“Somebody
oughtta fix that light,” growled Pierce Conrad, a hulking man in his 50s who
sported a Fu Manchu and as many scars as he did tattoos. For two weeks now
Conrad had been complaining about that light. The cowboy, who sat directly
across from him at meals, reckoned it had been about a year since Conrad
journeyed to the Hole and that maybe he was itching to go back. Maybe it was
time to find another White table to sit at during meals – no reason to be too
close to a bomb when it goes off, he figured.
“Oughtta
fix a lotta things,” grumbled Tod Warner whose nervous tic under his left eye
was about as spasmodic as the fickle light above them. The cowboy just ate his
food peacefully, his mind a thousand miles away again and a contented look on
his face. He couldn’t care less about that light and his expression betrayed
him. Warner said, looking at the cowboy, “Three months, huh?”
Smiling
too much at this question would have invited a particular kind of attention
that the cowboy simply did not need. Smiling too wide would have implied to the
other caged wolves that he somehow delighted in their misery, that perhaps they
should find a way to make him stay longer. The cowboy turned up one corner of
his mouth and vaguely nodded as he chewed the last bite of boiled green beans
from his dinner tray. Conrad cleared his throat and eyed the cowboy, “Goin’
home, yah?”
He
looked Conrad in the eyes, confident yet modest, raised his brow and simply
nodded again. Just then the cell doors lining the perimeter of the Day Room
buzzed and clicked open, signaling the end of chow. In five minutes the trays
were neatly placed on carts attended by orderlies; a hundred khaki shirts and
pants (and two hundred Bob Barker sneakers) were safely in their cells as the
C.O.s walked around both the upper and lower tiers securing them in their
concrete boxes.
Before the cowboy had returned to
his cell he dutifully checked the mail-list. His name was not highlighted. This
had become a ritual for the cowboy every evening for the past six years: finish
chow, check the mail-list, lock up. His beautiful, faithful Alicia would write
him long, elaborate letters telling him every detail – every delicate morsel of
information – concerning her life and the lives of their two boys, Ashton and
Bill Junior. Ash had only been five months old when they came to take his
father away. Junior had been four. Slowly, over the years Alicia’s letters had
waned in both quality and quantity, and for the past six months they’d halted
altogether. He understood. A single mother with two boys (six and ten, no
less!), two jobs, and bills to pay – that was his wife. She was an amazing
housekeeper, hard worker, and passionate lover. His boys were becoming
strapping lads who kept their grades decent and minded their mother, usually.
As far as the cowboy was concerned, the only three people in this whole broken
world worth a damn were his Alicia and those two boys.
Before
retiring to his bunk to daydream while awaiting evening Rec, the cowboy
relieved himself at the utilitarian, stainless steel toilet bolted to the
cement wall right next to the exposing cell door. He shook twice and rinsed his
hands in the sink which was part of this waste removal apparatus. Slowly and
silently he walked across the room and let a disconnected glance drift toward his
celly, Donald Johnson, a young gangster wannabe from some suburban town in
Ohio. Li’l White, as Donald liked to be called, sat between their two lockers
at the small steel table bolted to the floor, rolling cigarettes for himself
and his crew.
Listening
to Li’l White talk was something of an amusing embarrassment: “You know these
cops always be crampin’ my style. I mean, can’t a brothuh catch a break up in
this mothuhfuckuh, G?”
The
cowboy smirked at the ridiculous Ebonics attempt and thought of his last celly,
Orenthal, who probably would have bitch-slapped Li’l White the first day, just to set
the record straight. Orenthal was an older cat, a proud Black man who knew the
reciprocal nature of respect and understood, like the cowboy, that good fences
make good neighbors. The cowboy and Orenthal had been amicable and found a
common ground that few can in a place where race lines are cold, hard, and
sometimes drawn in blood. On the Yard, Orenthal and the cowboy maintained the
expected racial division and stuck to their own but never denied they were cool
with one another – not to anyone. Orenthal would have put this kid in his
place, but the cowboy thought it was funny. On and on he went like a one-man
circus sideshow, “My homies on the Yard know wassup. They know how gangsta I
be.” It was even more amusing how Li’l White was talking more to himself than
to the cowboy, as if he were just practicing his quasi-dialect to impress his
“homies”.
The
cowboy sat down on his bunk with a small, relieved grunt. It had not been a
graceful 42 years. Removing his Bob Barker tennis shoes he proceeded to stretch
his slender but solid frame out over the gray, government-issued blanket and
stare longingly up at the bottom of the bunk above him where, pasted and taped
into something like a collage, pictures of his wife and children filled his
view. They were a mixture of older and newer photos, some reminding him of fond
memories and others acting as time capsules gently stinging him with what he had
missed. Well, he wouldn’t be missing any more, no sir. He smiled to himself and
twisted the tips of his handlebar mustache with rough, cracked fingers. Alicia
was the epitome of beauty to the cowboy, with those supple breasts and
immaculate hips that switched seductively yet elegantly as she walked. Unlike
himself, Alicia had aged gracefully
and he gazed with a throbbing desire at her more recent pictures, thinking of
those intense letters she had still been writing a couple of years ago. He had
saved every letter and kept particular guard over the ones in which she would
describe, in vivid detail, how he used to ravage her, begging him for it again.
He would revisit these letters from time to time when the cell-block was
snoring and let memories of hot, sultry nights envelope him with her smooth
embrace; the climax of her passion finally expressing itself through her
perfect mouth.
His
gaze wandered to a picture of her six years younger, and he looked at her sad
eyes. She was in the backyard of their beautiful country home holding tiny Ash
and staring off beyond what the picture could capture, perhaps beyond what
sight could capture. The pain in her eyes spoke of separation and shattered
dreams. How many times had she told him to stop growing? How many times had she
said it was time to invest their money and close up shop? She was the one who
knew Roy couldn’t be trusted, too. Said he smelled like a snake. The cowboy was
a man though, dammit, and told her he knew what he was doing. Then Roy turned
State’s evidence on the biggest pot operation in 500 square miles, and here the
cowboy – the man – sat. And he’d gone
federal, too, almost a thousand miles from home.
Directly
above his nose, clinging desperately to the bunk’s metal surface by two strips
of old, curling tape, was an 8-year-old Bill Junior in a baseball uniform,
holding his baseball glove out in front of himself as if he were about to catch
a ball. In his day, the cowboy had been the starting pitcher of his high school
baseball team and had one helluva fastball – fastest in the county. For a
moment the cowboy closed his eyes and he was in their front yard tossing a ball
back and forth with Junior, teaching him proper technique while Ash twirled on
the tire-swing nearby. Alicia would be cooking and soon, yes, there she is, at
the door calling her men in to dinner. Playfully the cowboy runs over to Ash
and picks him up, tossing him into the air and then zipping him around like a
living merry-go-round. Junior races over and tackles the cowboy who
dramatically falls to the ground in a symphony of laughter and Alicia rebukes
them in a coy tone from the doorway.
Bang!
The
cowboy’s eyes shot open.
Bang! the cell door vibrated violently
with the force of a fist.
“Ranger,”
called a voice from just beyond the threshold. The cowboy looked up to see Sgt.
Wilderson standing there with an envelope in his hands, “Ya got mail, Ranger.
Somebody fergot to highlight yer name.”
Quickly
the cowboy got up from his bunk and stepped agilely to the bars as the C.O.
passed the envelope to him. His eyes lit up as he read the name on the return
address.
“Wife
wrote ya,” informed the cop as if it were his duty to present the obvious.
Wilderson cupped his chubby fingers around his bulbous belly, cradling it, and
smiled the wide, yellow grin of a jackal, “Maybe that slut finally got smart
and left yer pathetic fuckin’ ass.”
The
cowboy’s jaw clenched and he glared not at Wilderson, but into him, into his body – calculating where the most important
organs were located under all that fat. The cowboy felt the letter in his hands
and snapped out of it. Wilderson’s smile hissed, “Say somethin'. Go 'head.” The
cowboy knew this was precisely the cop’s intention as he hid so bravely behind
the protection of the iron bars and his title – to lay a finger on a C.O. was
to sentence one’s self to several more years inside.
“You
sure dey didn’t miss mah name on dat list, yo?” called out Li’l White.
“Shut
the fuck up, Johnson,” sneered the cop and winked at the cowboy before walking
off.
“That
mothuhfuckuh’s a bitch, f’real yo,” muttered Li’l White, staring down and speaking into the
paint-flecked table. The cowboy walked back to his bunk as Li’l White continued
to mumble, “If we was on the streets and he came at me like that? Pop! Bust a
cap in his ass, fam. Disrespectful, fat mothuhfuckuh. He don’t even know how I be representin’. . .”
Li’l
White’s voice drifted off into oblivion as the cowboy delicately opened the
letter, handling the paper as an archaeologist might handle ancient parchment.
Slowly the cowboy inhaled his wife’s scent: a familiar and delicious fragrance
that lingered on all her letters. He began to read. As he read, everything
changed. Everything.
Dearest
William,
It has been six long years without
you. I have been lonely and scared and I have carried these burdens on my shoulders
alone, but I have found strength in the dark hours of sleepless nights. I don’t
know how to say these things which must be said. Over the last year I have
grown immeasurably and have not allowed myself to be chained down by my
obligation to you…
Do you think this is easy for me to
say? It’s not. It kills me. Bill, there is someone else. He is a good man and
he really cares about us. He cares for
us, too. I have been able to quit one of my jobs because of him and eventually
he says he wants to free me from the other one – if I want, that is. I love
him, Bill. I’m sorry.
The boys have taken to him as well.
Ash is wild about him and Junior is slowly coming around, too. In fact, he’s
Junior’s baseball coach and Junior is becoming quite the first baseman. He’s
really turning our lives around, Bill. I’m sorry.
Please don’t try coming here when
you get out. I’m in the process of filing for a divorce. This hurts to say,
Bill, but there’s just no other way. I do hope the best for you in life and
want you to succeed when you get out. Look at it this way: you get a fresh
start. Nothing to hold you back.
I’m
Sorry,
Alicia
The
paper fell from his hands to the cold, unforgiving cement floor. He sat on the
edge of his bed with his elbows on his knees and his head drooping below his
shoulders. He was a man, defeated. His eyes began to burn. His stomach twisted
and stretched and he felt his supper rising in his throat. Sweat began to bead
over his forehead and on the back of his neck, but he was cold. So cold. He could
hear his own heartbeat pumping, pounding in his eardrums. Hadn't it been
obvious, cowboy? Hadn't the letters stopped? The telltale signs were all there,
demanding his attention, and he had ignored them. He refused to see it
happening and now her goodbye cackled mockingly up at him.
Breathe
in. The cowboy forced himself to breathe. Inhale. Exhale. In through the nose.
Out through the mouth. He stopped allowing his imagination to torture him; he
pushed the thought of a stranger in a business suit from his brain, ripped the
image of Junior on first base from his mind, and flung the picture of hands
squeezing his wife's breasts and gripping her hips to the farthest reaches of
his disintegrating soul. He buried the pain quickly and efficiently, replacing
it with carnivorous fury. He found his center and his eyes refocused. His
celly’s voice came back, so shrill and annoying. The kid had never stopped
talking, “. . . and I keep tellin’ that bitch I need my money! I know she’s
getting’ her taxes back soon and I need some mothuhfuckin’ paper on my books, fam. I gots t’get paid. I don’t keep fat bitches around for my health. I need
that dolluh!”
What
the fuck was this insipid brat whining about now? The cowboy looked up and
stared at this pathetic waste of flesh who betrayed his pitiful identity crisis
with every word he uttered. The cowboy’s jaw clenched. He put on his shoes and
stood up. He stepped on his wife’s final letter as he moved in front of his
locker – a metal closet that contained all his belongings in the world. He spun
the dial on his padlock. 23-14-32. Click. Uninterested in the contents of his
locker, he simply cuffed the padlock in his fist. Breathing slowly and
methodically he began to pace the cell like a puma in a zoo. Li’l White looked
up from the table and glanced curiously at his older celly who was suddenly
acting peculiar. The cowboy stopped pacing as he came to the cell door and
peered out through the bars at the huge clock on the Day Room wall. Five
minutes to Rec. The incessant flickering light near the ceiling of the hall
caught his attention and he snarled. He tossed the padlock up and down in his
hand to a silent cadence. Feral eyes darted down with hypersensitive vigilance
to Sgt. Wilderson, hands on his belly, walking around contentedly like a prize
turkey.
“Hey
. . . what are you doing?” called out the uncertain voice of Donald Johnson
behind him.
“Fixing some things!” as the cowboy
roared “fixing” he spun in his tracks and by the time he got to “things” a
perfect fastball was leaving his outstretched hand. The punk had no time to
react as the padlock came in on its mark, colliding with his right cheek. His
head snapped back, a small shower of hot, sticky blood painting a very
postmodern picture on the brick wall behind him. The cowboy walked forward,
picking up the padlock. He approached the motionless brat, placed two fingers
just under his jaw, got a pulse. The punk’s right eye hung from its socket like
a festive red and white Yule tree ornament. He picked up the freshly rolled cigarettes
and put them in his shirt pocket, figuring Li’l White wouldn’t be in any state
to share them with the Blacks who owned him.
The
cell door popped open for evening Rec as the cowboy reached down and untaped
the razorblade imbedded in a toothbrush from the underside of the table. The
cowboy put the shank in his back pocket and gripped the padlock tightly as he
walked out of the cell. He could use some real solitude, but first there were
some things that needed fixing.
