Hazardous Waste

All characters are adults.

*****

My murder trial took all of one morning, and most of its time Todd's ma used for crying and screaming at me. But I didn't go quietly and was restrained to stop the fingers she got from me while she put on her show. I'm not one for thinking shit out, I do, and if I fuck up I take what I get. Math is for pussies. The jury contemplated their own lil sluts and numnutz at home, and I was doomed.

In those days the state put new convicts on a caged bus and sent them to a reception center where we spent a week doing paperwork, being interviewed, and getting a variety of exams and assessments necessary for placement. It reminded me of my first week of air force basic training.

I hadn't been told anything that wasn't bull shit designed to keep me pleasant. They didn't want any problems from me. There were fifteen of us in my batch, and no one got anything except crap released by officials to expedite things and for the "greater good."

Most of us were repeat offenders. I was the lone killer in our group.

Lake Butler Reception was a cold, brick and concrete place lighted by fluorescent lamps and filled with wooden bus benches. They stripped, weighed, measured, cut our hair, and took our stuff. We sat at attention for hours while bully boys shouted, and threatened us. At midnight we were trundled off to lock-down cells, then the next morning at 4 o'clock we started the whole thing again, this time in company with more new cons just arrived from other county jails.

Some of us had to mop floors, others had to stand at attention, noses pressed to the wall, or risk a beating. Screaming and head slaps were common. Occasionally a man got hauled away. It was another world, a world where the guards screamed and spit and cussed, called you names, and insulted you for any reason.

They dared us to speak or stare at them or suck our teeth or show any kind of defiance.

I spent the second night in a shit hole identified as F-Dorm (I think), with five others. I was tired.

F-Dorm was a bizarre hospital-kinda place from some East German commie movie in which cripples limped and wheeled about and washed body parts and made sick, suppurating noises and spent a good deal of time grossly, pinkly naked. There were a lot of them, too, sick and unhappy losers. New prison meat was a side-show at Lake Butler.

F-Dorm was a well of lost souls, where all manner of personal frailties and tragedies displayed themselves like balloons at a party. We had a dwarf, a pair of obese fat men in wheelchairs awaiting heart operations, several cirrhotic alcoholics with their frail limbs supporting distended, poisoned guts that made them look like wading birds, and there was a guy with a drain in his navel, which twice a day filled a bag with a yellowish cloudy fluid that smelled like bad teeth. There were amputees and multiple amputees, paralyzed cases, imminent deaths, intemperance, wheedling, whining crybabies, manic queers quarreling like street hookers.

I was there about ten days before they moved me, so, to kill time, I pushed an old fuck's wheelchair to the chow hall and filled his lunch tray for him. He and I ate quickly in silence, shoveling down as much of the food as possible before the guards threw us out. The old man had done 16 years of a 120 year sentence, and was ravaged by diabetes, his legs no longer supported him. I remember he took his showers in the early evening with the other crippled men, all sitting in wheel chairs under the communal spray. He was there for a ticket to a state hospital like Chattahoochee with a forensics unit...crazy criminals.

I didn't wanna shower with the other men and expose myself to the guards and them. I'd wait until the freak show ended and the freaks wheeled or limped or shuffled off to bed or their card games. Then I acted quickly and quietly, undressed, showered in the fluorescent glare in front of the picture window where the guards stood watching TV; then I dried myself, dressed, and left.

Every afternoon at count time, I sat on my bunk and endured the stare-down from a pair of goons or ugly illiterate women in uniform. I never figured out what the women were there for.

I was a tough guy. I was a Vietnam Vet with some combat experiences. I had no real idea what to expect but I wasn't all that scared. I was too fucking big to play with. So they needed a reason to shoot me. Few were man enough or anything enough to try and fuck my ass. Their cocks were too short to get close enough to do it before I unscrewed their heads and shit down their necks.

The guards all dressed for combat. Airborne jumpsuits tucked into combat boots, web-belts with all kinds of useless stuff, including a night stick. These guys were serious. Then it dawned on me. They had no idea who we were. We could be mass murderers, or peeping toms. But they took no chances.

We went through the strip search, and started our way through 'the show': the booking process into prison. During this process they occasionally sent in the goon squad to take some guy out. The goon squad was five big guys, all decked out for a war, who went to a cell, called out a guy's name, and yelled at him to "Put your hands behind your back, and back up to the cell door; turn around and we'll beat the shit out of you." And off they went.

They had us filling out paper work. I never saw so much paper work since I was in basic training. The first paper you filled out was what you wanted them to do with your ass if you died in prison. Then you talked to a counselor who decided where you'd spend your time. I was easy: Death Row. Then the Supremes halted executions and I got re-sentenced to life with no parole.

In those days, state prison was divided into four levels: Level One was road camps for the poser-pussy Cool Hand Lukes. Killers didn't go to road camps, road camps were for non-violent convicts with short sentences. Level Two were farms around the state prison complex and a relatively sweet gig for convicts with friends in high places. Level Three were the car tag plant, the chow hall, and other prison programs for folks with longer non-violent convictions and no friends. Level Four was for us lifers with murder convictions. Level Four was called The Gladiator School.

Gladiator School did all the shit work. If it involved animal or human waste it belonged to us. Human waste got loaded onto wagons and spread over fallow pastures and hay fields around the prison. Animal waste got made into compost for the farms. We also did the hot roofing work, the demolitions, and unloaded trucks. We replaced sewer lines and urinals.

Prison is pretty much like every place where people must associate and cope with each other. The reception center wasn't as intense as my Air Force basic training reception. The Air Force sent two of the largest, loudest men I ever saw, to greet us at the airport. The prison goons weren't so spit and polished as the Air Force greeters but they impressed me as meaner and dummer. Their job was to make your mind right.

They want your mind right so you don't annoy the wrong folks. Prison ain't like what you seen on SCARED STRAIGHT. Most cons don't like troublemakers or trouble. Troublemakers cause problems for all. And once a con has a compatible cellmate and a regular job and some privileges he don't want anyone rocking the boat or stirring shit up, which is what fools and nuts do. Reception center goons try to nip it in the bud cuz the cons will kill the nuts and fools. The men who get fucked and hurt in prison are the nuts and fools who start shit. Charlie Manson went in solitary to stop shit before it got started...by him.

So...don't snitch or talk shit about anyone. Don't fuck anyone over for personal advantage or gain. Don't set anyone up to do your dirty work. Don't steal; pay your debts. Carry your end of the log.

At the beginning they put me on Death Row where I had a cell to myself. I stayed inside the cell twenty-three hours a day with time out to shower and walk around a small court yard. I ate my meals in my cell. Once a week an inmate from the library rolled a cart of books around.

But the Supremes saved my ass, and the state moved me to Q Wing where I did shit work till I hadda kick a guard's ass. Life in the yard can be hard. We were walking back to Q Wing from a shit detail when a fight broke out between two men, over some god damned bull shit, and quickly sucked everyone into the melee. It was a three ring cluster fuck. The guards shit and went blind, and got sucked into the fight, too. One little fuck waved his stick around at everyone, hit me, and I took it away from him. I threw it as far as I could away from the brawl. He wanted to kick my ass but I was too big.

But the situation was a disorganized mess and didn't work out for the other guard's to shoot me or anyone. Too many people too close together. So I raised my hands, walked away from the scene, and spent some time in solitary.

In the seventies solitary was a string of cells violent cons went, if they weren't shot outright. The cells had one bunk, a toilet, and a sink. No windows. The door was covered completely. And meals were pushed through a doggy door attached to bottom of the cell door. You got fed breakfast and supper. Scrambled eggs, grits, and sausage for breakfast. With coffee or water. Supper was whatever, but often bologna on white bread. With water. Once a week they replaced your dirty drawers. If you needed shit paper you put the empty spool outside your dog door. An overhead light came on at five in the morning, and went off at nine at night.

Today solitary is a cluster fuck. The cons flood their cells with water. Pour bodily fluids under their doors. Cut themselves with razor blades. Smear blood and feces on their windows. Punch and kick the walls. Howl at the guards. Cut themselves some more. Today they take you outta solitary for walks and showers and clinic visits. You got a 1-800 toll free number to call if your feelings get hurt.

For some the old days were like being buried alive, you were someplace alive, but you were no place anybody wanted you or gave a shit about you. Any con who hurt himself was screwed. Today they cover their windows and cut their veins and whine to counselors.

A month in solitary gave you time to think and go cold turkey from all the social games you usually played. I mostly lay on the bunk and played mind games. At such times I created mental problems to explore. I slept on it, you might say. On death row I read an old book about how to do hypnosis: ALL IN THE MIND, by Andrew Newton. But such manuals are mostly well-intentioned bull shit. Hypnosis really isn't all that different from fucking. And when your honey wants to fuck and cum she does all the work for you. All she really needs is a hard, hot cock to get her mind and pussy right. You provide the bits and pieces she can't. Hypnosis is the same.

A month of such activity was often useful.

Your subject needs what's missing from his bag of tricks to get off on a new direction. And if he's really stuck in the mud he'll accept any suggestion that seems plausible. It ain't brain surgery with a rusty #10 can lid.

Near the end of my time there I got a visit from the warden. "You planning on being a problem?" He asked.

"If I hafta," I replied. "If trouble comes along I'll deal with it."

"Then, your time here will go hard for you."

"And those who bring it on will go home at the end of day worse for wear. Plus I get paid to sit on my ass."

"You like boxing?" He asked.

"What's in it for me?" I replied.

That was when I got off the shit details and started my prison boxing career. About every month the prison featured a boxing tournament, hosted by the warden for staff, corrections department officials, princes, and interested politicians. The facilities and resources were rude and crude, I made my training stuff from what was available to me, but the payoffs were okay though losers got shit. I was told the king of the hill lived like a real king for a whole night after the fight. No one got any money. They got what was available and whatever gifts the pols contributed. Mostly cigarette cartons and small bottles of booze. It was an ongoing tournament where you advanced as you won fights.

The first few bouts were easy. I started at the bottom of the pile and worked my way up. The king of the hill was an old man of thirty-something named Red Chastain. He'd been there for many years, but was a long way off for me, a full year later. When the year passed I believed I was ten thousand evil mother fuckers. Like when I left basic training. I was a bad mother fucker for a day or two. The bouts were held in an arena where the prison farms displayed their best hogs and steers for sale. A ring was built in the middle of it. The fights started early.

Man! I was fulla piss and vinegar and ready to kick Red's old ass. He was thirty-six or seven. I was twenty-four. When I walked to the ring in the center of the arena, the crowd went wild with bursts of greetings and applause. Most of them were already drunk by the time the king of the hill bout happened. I acknowledged it, right and left, like I was fucking Queen Elizabeth walking to her throne, but I knew few of them. Almost all were strangers to me.

At the ring I leaped onto the raised platform, ducked through the ropes, and strutted to my corner, where I sat on a milking stool. Jack Ball, the referee, came over and shook my hand. Red was an old acquaintance of Ball. They were both old cons and pals. If Red should fuck with me a little beyond the rules, Red expected Ball would look the other way. I expected it, too.

The audience applauded Red when he sprang through the ropes and walked to his corner. Red was a sure thing. I looked across the ring at Red, for in a few minutes we would be locked together in combat, each trying to knock the other out. But I saw shit, for Red, like me, had dungarees and sweat-shirt on over his ring trunks. Red was a good looking man, crowned with a curly mop of hair, atop a thick, muscular neck. Reminded me of Dusty Rhodes with red hair.

A few years before, in his own heyday, Red found these preliminaries amusing and boring. But now he sat fascinated and captured by the aura of it all. Youngsters constantly rose up in the prison boxing game, springing through the ropes and shouting their defiance and bull shit; and always the old men fell before them. The kiddies climbed to the top of the hill over the bodies of the old men. And always they came, more and more youngsters, fulla piss and vinegar and shit, and they put the old men away, becoming old men, soon enough, who traveled the same path, pushed along by other kids, to the end of time.

Red glanced over to the VIP box and nodded to the warden. The warden saluted Red. Then Red held out his hands, while his crew, slipped on his gloves and laced them tight, closely watched by the referee, who first checked the tape on Red's knuckles. Ball then watched a guy do the same for me. Red, watched, saw Youth incarnate, deep-chested, fulla muscles that slipped and slid like live things under the skin. The whole body was fulla life, and Red knew it was a life that had never oozed its freshness out through the aching pores during the long fights wherein the youth paid his toll and departed not quite so young as when he started. He didn't act to worried about me. Red and me are about the same size.

Ball announced the start of the bout and we advanced to meet each other, and, as the horn tooted and the crews got out of the ring with our stools and shit, we touched gloves and instantly took fighting stances. And instantly, like machines of steel and springs balanced on hair triggers, we went at it. I was in and out and in again, landing a left to his eyes, a right to his ribs, ducking a counter from him, dancing lightly away and dancing back again. I was swift and clever. I was fucking dazzling. The house agreed. But Red was not dazzled. He had fought too many fights and too many young punks. He knew the blows for what they were, too quick and too deft to be dangerous. I looked to him like I was gonna be like all the others and rush things from the git-go. It was to be expected. It was the way of youngsters.

And I was no different, in and out, here, there, and everywhere, light-footed and eager, a living wonder of white flesh and stinging muscle that wove itself into a dazzling fabric of attack, slipping and leaping like a Tasmanian devil from action to action through a thousand actions, all of them centered upon the destruction of Red, who stood between me and victory. Red patiently endured me. He knew his business, and he knew kids. We both endured each other. There was nothing to do till I lost some steam, was his thought, and he grinned to himself as he ducked a heavy blow I aimed at his head.

I won the first round and the house yelled. I overwhelmed Red with avalanches of punches, and Red did shit. He never struck once, he covered up, blocked and ducked and clinched to avoid punishment. He feinted, shook his head when a punch hit, and moved about, never wasting an ounce of strength. He waited for me to tire and slow before he dared counter-attack. All Red's movements were slow and methodical, and his heavy-lidded, slow-moving eyes gave him the appearance of being half asleep or dazed. Yet he saw everything, and was trained to see everything through all his years in the ring.

Red's eyes did not blink or waver before a blow, but calmly saw and measured distance. Seated in his corner for the minute's rest at the end of the round, he lay back with outstretched legs, his arms resting on the right angle of the ropes, his chest and abdomen heaving frankly and deeply as he gulped down the air driven by the towels of his team. He listened with shut eyes to the voices of the house, "Kick his ass, Red?" many were crying. "Muscle-bound and meat-headed," a man on a front seat said. "He can't move quicker. Two to one on Kane." He looked to me like Mister Cool Breeze.

After the horn blew I came forward three-quarters of the distance, eager to start again, and Red was content to let me do it. It was congruent with his policy of economy. He was well trained, and well fed, and every step counted because of the extra weight he carried. His battery was fully charged.

The second round was a repeat of the first round, I was a whirlwind, and the audience pissed and moaned about why Red did not kill me right off. Beyond feinting and several slowly delivered and ineffectual blows he did nothing but block and stall and clinch. I wanted to make the pace fast, while Red, out of his wisdom, refused to help me out. He grinned with a certain wistful pathos in his ring-tempered countenance, and saved his strength from the wisdom only Old Age has. I was the punk kid, and threw my strength away with abandon. To Red belonged the ring generalship, the wisdom bred of long, aching fights.

He watched with cool eyes and head, moving slowly and waited for my fizz to evaporate. To many in the audience it seemed as though Red was hopelessly outclassed, and they voiced their opinion in offers of three to one on me. But there were wise ones, a few, who knew Red of old, and who covered what they considered easy money.

Round three began as usual, one-sided, with me doing all the leading, and delivering all the punishment. A half-minute had passed when I, over-confident, left an opening. Red's eyes and right arm flashed in the same instant he saw the opening. It was his first real blow, a hook, with the twisted arch of the arm to make it rigid, and with all the weight of his half-pivoted body behind it. he was like a sleepy lion suddenly thrusting out a lightning paw. It, caught me on the side of the jaw, and I dropped in a heap. The audience gasped and murmured awe-stricken applause. The man was not muscle-bound, after all, and he could drive a blow like a trip-hammer.