** Chapter 1
OPENING SCENE-
Aerial view of Stonerock State Prison showing a huge, circular, concrete structure. A drab, weather-beaten yard is at the center of this complex. The color of the facility is a drab, peeling gray. Its' design reminds one of the Pentagon.
SECOND SCENE-
Camera cuts past several occupied prison cells. One cell shows a black man taking a shit while staring out of a tiny window on the far wall. Next cell shows a gruff looking white man standing near the cell door with his arm out hanging out between the bars holding a mirror. The look on his face is of wariness. The next cell shows our main character Hakim Stevenson lying on the top bunk with his hands behind his head staring intently off into the distance beyond the window of his cell.
Hakim lay on his bunk for the 1445th day(or 47th month) of his imprisonment and once-again wondered how in the sam hell he had gotten himself into such a fucked up situation. He was serving 4-8 years on a possession and intent to deliver(cocaine) conviction. He was 23 years old. As he lay on his bunk in the early hours of the morning, he thought about the path his life had taken since graduating from high school. Who the fuck would have believed Hakim Stevenson, W.E.B. Dubois High School's all-state wide receiver would have ended up in jail at the age of 18? He was supposed to be in college RIGHT now, running up records and winning awards with the ultimate goal being a starting spot in the NFL.
But those dreams had vanished with his arrest and conviction. In his heart, he knew that he had done nothing to deserve the sentence. He wasn't guilty of the crime he had been convicted of. Not even fucking close! But like most Black men who find themselves charged with crimes, he'd had shitty representation, an disinterested jury of people who looked nothing like him, and an old, mean judge who seemed to mark him as guilty before the fucking trial was even over!
He had to say one thing about the criminal justice system...it was efficient in how it dealt with Black men....EVERYBODY GOES TO JAIL, NO STOPPING TO COLLECT YOUR TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS!....that was for damn sure!!
Hakim was powerfully built. He stood 6'2" and weighed 210 lbs. He possessed cuts and rips in his muscles that gave him an Evander Holyfieldish physique. He was very thick. He kept his hair bald. His skin was a medium brown color. Neither real dark nor real light. His face was set off by eyes that seemed to stare through whomever he was looking and into the deepest recesses of their beings. He'd solved a few skirmishes in jail with that intense, focused stare. He kept his facial hair in a thick goatee.
Many of the other inmates in jail did not know how to take him. He'd had to fight like everyone else in jail to carve out his 'space of peace'. He had had to check quite a few mustaches while in jail. He was known to have heavy brick-like hands that put the lights out indefinitely. He never went looking for a fight but if one came, he tried his best to beat the shit out of whomever had had the bad luck to fuck with him in the first place. He would beat them so bad that others would think twice before stepping to him about dumb shit.
He kept mostly to himself while in jail, understanding early that the gangs controlled the joint and as long as he didn't need anything from them(drugs, toiletries, cigarettes, etc....), he didn't have to come into contact with them. At first, some of them had tried to bully him out of his possessions. But after he had chin-checked a few of them, they understood he wasn't looking for trouble, he just wanted to do his time. What amazed him was the sheer numbers of black and brown men in jail! Were they only ones committing crimes or were the only ones being watched?
After a time, he realized why white peeps feared jail. In jail, every emotion, every action was at base level. You couldn't hide behind your zip code, or your exclusive club membership or your friend in the police force....you couldn't separate yourself from the reality of jail by judging the situation to be beneath you............shit was madd raw in jail with no social facades to cover it up. If a motherfucker didn't like you, you knew about it and had better be prepared to defend yourself if it came to that. The average white boy that came in here didn't understand that shit when they got here. They thought they were still out in society...hiding their true feelings of dislike for what they considered peeps lower on the social status scale....holding their noses up and shit. Thinking that bad shit happened to "them", not us. That was the equitable thing about being locked up, you had as much a chance of getting beaten, raped, robbed, or shanked as the next man. It always amazed him to see the transformation of a young, arrogant white boy into a sniveling, disoriented shell of a man. They could never come to grips with the advantages they had lost upon being imprisoned. Most of them never thought about the privileges they enjoyed in a whites-only society.....that is, not until they got their silly asses into something they couldn't worm their way out of and came to prison where the most ruthless motherfuckers on Earth roamed. Without the cloak of seemingly invincible whiteness to cloak themselves in, these pathetic dickheads were forced either to succumb to the reality of jail or go crazy.
Truth was, he didn't consider himself a racist or Black Nationalist or anything like that. Those were titles. He was beyond that. He realized a long time ago that he didn't have to pick a group to be part of, he was already part of a group that was seen as outcasts, savages, subhuman, childlike, criminal-minded and targeted since birth for destruction....Black men!
While in jail, he picked up the habit of reading. He tolerated reading while in high school. While in jail, he discovered quite a few benefits to keeping his head in a book. One was that he was learning all kinds of things about himself and his history. Second, it was a nice getaway for his mind while his body remained imprisoned behind these walls. They couldn't imprison his mind. No matter how much these racist ass guards talked towards and treated him, he refused to let them get inside his head.
He had studied African and African-American history, thoroughly. He understood the genesis of racism in this society and how the very people who wanted the world to view America as a BASTION of freedom had used it as a weapon. Double-talking motherfuckers!
One of the primary things he had learned was that his history and the history of his peeps had been stolen. Their destiny wiped out with the coming of the slave ships and guiltless, consciousless histographers and writers. Writing and reporting shit favorable to the "home team" while the truth was left to languish. Truth about him, his people, his ancestors.....rewriting "the story" to make it "their story". It wasn't supposed to be like this....stuck in a strange land where freedom, opportunity and the pursuit of happiness abounded for every other citizen except HIS peeps. He wished he could change all of that but realized over time that freedom came from within....always had...always has .....always will. What he could change was how he dealt with situations. He had grown and matured in jail. Did a lot more thinking instead of reacting. Had learned to control the temper that had kept him in more shit than he could remember when he had first arrived in jail.
He was due to get out of prison in two weeks. Pretty soon, he'd be transferred to the Step-Down unit, which was supposed to acclimate him to having freedom once again. He couldn't fucking wait to leave this place. Prison wasn't about rehabilitation, it was about destruction. You either participated in your destruction or your redemption while in jail. He was sure he would never return to jail. Shit, he wasn't supposed to have even been in jail in the first place, but he had plans to avenge what had been allowed to happen to him!
** Chapter 2
THIRD SCENE-