Convict Slave 1

I don't know why it happened. I guess I wanted to prove something to Troy. That's Troy Hudson, my best friend--at least I thought that Troy was my best friend. "C'mon dude," he said. "Don't be a nerd. You're always such a fuckin nerd." And he put his arm around my shoulder. "Fuckin nerd," he said. So I said, "Sure, I'll go." The problem was how to get there. The party was about two miles away, and Troy had no intention of walking. Neither did Linda, for that matter. She was standing there freshening up her lipstick, expecting the men to take care of her. "Where's your wheels, man?" Troy said. Troy was always making that joke. My dad had died when I was 14, and my mom had died when I was finishing high school, and there was just enough money left to bury her. I went to Southern on a scholarship and had a job stacking books in the library. There was no question of "wheels" for me, and Troy always found that amusing. "What about YOUR car?" I replied. That was the joke that I got to make, after Troy's parents took his car away when he got arrested for drunk driving during the summer after high school. The whole thing was hushed up, I guess by his parents, but everybody knew that, under the Young People's Personal Responsibility Laws, which had recently been cleared by the Supreme Court, if Troy got caught driving drunk again, or anything serious, he'd go to prison, maybe for years. So his parents didn't let him have a car. "Well," he said, "I guess we'll have to steal one." "Huh?" I said. The thought of stealing a car would never have occurred to me. "Look at this," he said. "We're standing right in front of a red zone, and here's a car with its motor running. A Cadillac, to be precise. A big, beautiful Cadillac. Somebody must have come down here to pick somebody up in this big, beautiful car, and it's illegally parked. Well, that's their problem. Get in!" He went over to the Cadillac and opened the door. Linda hesitated for a moment; then she hopped in, too. I just stood there. "Come on!" Troy said. "Climb in! We're only going a couple miles." He was already sitting in the shotgun seat, expecting me to act as his chauffeur. "What, are you scared?" At that point, I guess I wasn't thinking about anything except proving myself to Troy. I got in the driver's seat. The motor was on. I looked in the rearview mirror and started backing out of the parking space. Just then, I saw a woman walking out of the theater, very slowly, holding onto somebody's arm--obviously some even older person that she'd come there to pick up. The woman looked at the car and started to scream. "Stop! You're stealing my car! Stop! Help! Police!" She was screaming at the top of her lungs. I floored it and took off. Troy and Linda were laughing hilariously as we careened down Center Street, looking for the turn onto 12th. I must have missed the turn, because pretty soon the signs started saying things like "MacArthur" and "Overlook" and a lot of other streets I never heard of, and I started turning this way and that, until we heard a siren behind us. There was a lot of confusion then. Linda started sort of wailing or screaming, and Troy started doing something with his leather bag like he was looking for the phone or something, and I heard him say, "Step on it!" which I thought was stupid, but I did. Of course, the chase didn't last long. There was a turn that was a little steeper than I calculated, and the car bolted over the curb and plowed into somebody's row of hedges and came to a stop. There wasn't much damage. The car was dented here and there, but I'd managed to slow it down before we hit, so the windshield didn't even crack, and none of us was injured. But we'd run from the cops, and it was a stolen car, so that was trouble, all right. We were taken down to the police station, and that's the last I saw of Linda and Troy that night. I was put in one cop car, and they were put in another. It was at the station that I realized how stoned I'd been all evening. Troy and I had snorted a couple of lines before we went over to Linda's place, and I'm sure the coke had a lot to do with what happened later. I'd used it maybe three times in my life before, every time with Troy, and that wasn't enough to get used to it. I couldn't remember all the details of what had happened with the car, but I knew one thing: I was determined not to implicate anyone unnecessarily, either Troy or myself or even Linda. So I asked for a lawyer. That was still my right, even under Personal Responsibility. By the time the lawyer got there, it was two o'clock in the morning. I don't know where they got this guy, but he was the kind of lawyer you would get at two o'clock in the morning when you've told the cops that you can't pay for one. He was about 50 years old and he had a fat little belly and he wore his hair in a ponytail. I'll never forget that little grey ponytail. And he had a really serious expression on his face. "Jerry," he said. "My name is Jeremy," I said. "Jeremy then. This is pretty bad. I suggest you plead guilty." "Guilty?" I said. "Right off the bat?" "Jerry," he says. "You don't understand. You're charged with stealing a car, evading the cops . . . ." "I'd lost my way to a party. I was trying to turn around. I didn't see them behind me . . . " "Yeah, sure. That's not what your friend Troy says. And he told the cops all about those drugs you were using." "What! Troy said what! I can't believe it. It isn't true. He . . ." "Hold on, kid. Drugs were found on YOUR side of the car, and the container had YOUR fingerprints on it." Well, that's right, I thought; I was the one who put the plastic thing back in Troy's bag. But how did it get on MY side of the car, I wondered. That was how naive I was. "You can't deny that you stole that car." "Look, I know it was wrong. But it was just a joy-ride. A car with its motor running . . . . " "But that's not the bad part," he continued. "You're being charged with kidnapping." "Kidnapping!" "Kidnapping. You kidnapped those other kids." "Troy and . . . " I couldn't think of her name. "That girl." "That's right. They've both signed statements. You forced them into that car at gunpoint. That's kidnapping, kid." "Wait! I've never held a gun in my life!" "That's funny," he said, sarcastic. "There was an unregistered firearm found in the car. Also on your side. No prints on it, but that's not entirely unusual. You see, sometimes . . ." "Hold it!" I yelled. "I NEVER had a gun! How could anybody . . . how could Troy say it was kidnapping? Why would I kidnap Troy?" "Well, he and the girl both say that you, that is, well, they say that you were pissed off about their relationship, you'd had a fight at the theater, you were high on drugs, and out of revenge, you forced them into that stolen car . . . " "What! What do you mean! Why would I. . . " "They're saying you're a homosexual, and out of jealousy. . . ." He must have seen the stunned look on my face, because his next question was, "You ARE a homosexual, aren't you?" It was my lawyer saying this. At that point, my morale broke down completely. I had never thought I might be gay. I mean, it was true that I'd had some crushes on this guy or that guy, but what teenager doesn't? That doesn't make you a fag, does it? And here was my best friend, completely out of the blue, claiming that I was a queer, and that because of that, I wanted to hurt him, humiliate him somehow . . . . That was the end. I pictured Troy and Linda saying those things about me, and I didn't have anything to say. My brain went dead. "Troy says you'd been making threats 'to get him into trouble' if he didn't make love to you. And getting him into that stolen car would be perfect, wouldn't it--considering what the cops already had on him from last summer. Under these new laws, all he needs is one more offence and he could get one very mean prison sentence. Of course, they have this new program where guys are sentenced to 'penal servitude,' which means, if I understand it . . ." "Stop! Stop!" I shouted. "I can't take any more of this." I was astonished by Troy's betrayal, but even more by the elaborateness of his lie. It was obvious whose dope it was, and whose gun. It should have been obvious long before, to anyone but me, that a lot of Troy's calls on his cellphone weren't merely to social acquaintances. Troy wasn't just dating girls. He had a business that called for unlicensed weapons. But still . . . was he so scared of going to jail that he couldn't resist betraying me? Certainly his parents had enough money to get him off, if anybody could; whereas I had nothing. Had he suddenly turned rotten and evil, or had there been something rotten and evil about him all along, something that I couldn't see because I . . . because I actually was in love with him? I was in unbearable pain. "Just tell me what I'm supposed to do!" I shouted. "Now look, Jerry," the lawyer said, and I remember him looking at his watch, "I hope I've made it clear that you're in a very serious situation. It's two witnesses against one, and the new laws are incredibly strict. We could go to court, but I understand that this Troy kid has some very powerful relations, and so does that girl. If we go to court, and if you're found guilty of kidnapping, you could actually get the death penalty." "The death penalty! All I did was take a car . . ." "Don't fuck around with me, kid. You're in deep trouble, and I can't get you out of it. I see ten kids a week like you. Don't you read the papers? This anticrime movement means business. And the court upholds every law these people get passed." "But all I did . . . " "You kidnapped those people, boy. Technically, that's what you did, though frankly, it could go either way on something like this. There's no telling who a jury would believe, if it came to trial, which isn't in the interest of either side, really. I talked to the deputy D.A. just now, and she agreed to ask for a reduction of charges if you plead guilty. She'll also ask for a consolidation of charges, with a free ride on the gun issue. Of course, a gun used in the commission of a crime should automatically get you sent up, but I'm not sure that the other side wants a close investigation of where that unlicensed weapon came from, given the influence of Troy's parents, and Linda's. Still, the deputy D.A. is doing you a favor, and if you want her to go through with it, it's now or never. You can't wait till tomorrow. She's already drawn up the papers--standard forms, really--and I strongly suggest that you sign them. Look, you've got a clean record. The clock hasn't started running on you, like it has on your buddy Troy. I figure you'll get some kind of active probation, which would probably mean you'd have to see a case officer for a few years, and piss in a bottle every month or so." "Really?" I asked. "That's not so bad, considering . . . ." "Well, that's the sentence you'll get unless the judge decides to count all the charges as separate and perform a judicial addition, in which case you're dealing with the strike three rule, and in that case . . . ." --he went into some legal language that I wasn't capable of following; not at the moment, anyway-- ". . . but I don't really think that'll happen." With that, he reached into his battered old briefcase and took out something that I never read. It was about 20 pages long and filled with words I'd never seen before. But he told me it would definitely save my life and likely get me nothing worse than probation. Who wouldn't have signed? I don't remember anything else about that night except passing out in some kind of room where they left me after the lawyer went away. The next thing I knew, a cop was waking me up and telling me I was "due in court." He took me through a door into a courtroom. It didn't look much like the courtrooms I'd seen on TV. There was nobody in it except a bailiff or two and a woman sitting at a table about halfway back and my lawyer sitting at another little table on the other side of the aisle from her. I went over and sat down next to the lawyer. He was looking even more rumpled than he had a few hours before, and he also seemed a little nervous. In fact, he was sweating. I thought that must have something to do with embarrassment about the way his client looked. I looked bad. I mean, I hadn't had a bath that morning, and I was really hung over. My clothes were a mess, my skin was sticky with old sweat, I needed a shave, and I was in despair about what I remembered that Troy had said about me. Thinking about it, though, I could see what Troy must have had in mind. He knew he would go to prison if he admitted that he stole that car. But I had a clean record; I could get out of it with probation. So it wasn't such a bad idea for him to "accuse" me. Probably the kidnapping business was just something the cops cooked up out of the so-called evidence. Troy would never have said a thing like that himself. He and I would have a beer this afternoon, and laugh about it all. "All rise!" The judge came into the court and sat down. "The case of People versus Morgan," he said. Then he said some stuff I didn't understand, and my lawyer went up and talked quietly to him and so did the woman, who I guessed was the Deputy District Attorney, or her assistant. While they were doing that, I looked around the courtroom to see whether anybody I knew had turned up, but nobody had. Except for the people who got paid to be there, and me, there was nobody else in the room. "The prisoner will rise," the judge said. That was the first time I'd heard myself called a "prisoner," and it didn't sound right. I wasn't a prisoner; prisoners were guys with bulging pecs who worked on chain gangs in numbered uniforms. I was just a college student. The judge was one of those guys who are about 50 years old and are trying to look like they're 20. He looked like a guy who "runs" every day and has an exercise bike in his bedroom. He had a little mustache and little red eyes. "The defendant has confessed to car theft with evasion of arrest, driving under the influence, and unjust holding of another person." What? I thought. Did I confess to that? Was that the "reduction of charges"? I turned around and looked at my lawyer, and he looked down at the table. "The defendant has waived all rights to appeal." I turned around again, completely confused, and looked at my lawyer. This time, he just stared back. I guess that's what I'd done when I signed that paper. "I therefore sentence you, Jeremy Morgan, to penal servitude for the rest of your natural life. Defendant is remanded to custody. Next case."

Whoa!! What did he say! I was amazed, totally confused. The judge had sentenced me to penal servitude for "the rest of my natural life"! Did that mean what it sounded like? What WAS "penal servitude," anyway? They weren't about to explain. The judge said, "Next case. Bring in the defendant!" and a bailiff came over and grabbed me by the arm. My lawyer was putting some papers in his briefcase. "What does that mean?" I shouted. "What have you done to me?" Now there were two bailiffs holding onto my arms. One of them yanked my right arm behind my back. I felt cold steel closing on my naked wrist. It was a weird sensation, warm flesh against ice-cold steel. Then the bailiff yanked my left arm into position and I heard for the second time the click-click-click of the manacles. I tried furiously to pull my hands apart, but they were locked together. I was cuffed. The lawyer came over to me. "I haven't done anything, kid," he said in a whisper. "I got the best deal I could. I told you, I see ten kids a week like you." "LIFE IN PRISON?" I shouted. "It's not exactly prison," he said. "It's this new program they've got. . . ." By now, the judge was pounding his gavel and exclaiming, "Take the prisoner away! Bring in the next defendant," and the bailiffs were dragging me off. "What?" I shouted. "I don't understand!" By the time I said that, I was already out of the courtroom and being propelled down a featureless hallway toward a door guarded by a gun-toting officer. I started finding out how hard it can be to keep your balance when you're wearing steel chains. "Here's one for Jackman," the bailiff on my right side said. "OK," said the officer in a bored way, "you're in time. Take him out." What is "Jackman?" I wondered, but these guys didn't look like they were in any mood to be asked. The officer unlocked the door and we were suddenly outside on a loading dock. You know what those places look like: a collection of concrete slabs, with a giant dumpster standing over at one side, stinking, and a sudden dropoff down to the pavement where service vehicles back up to load and unload goods. Today, I was the goods. The two bailiffs and I stood there for a minute, and the one on the right looked at me with a sneer and said to the other, "Think you can handle this from here, Joe?" "Reckon I can, Harry," Joe replied, and he was sneering too. Harry went back through the guarded door, and Joe and I stood on the dock for about 10 minutes, which was more than an eternity to me. Joe was a black guy, about 25 years old, with a belt full of holsters and handcuffs, and muscles out to here. He stood in place, holding me by the biceps, saying nothing, staring straight ahead, a mountain of muscle. There was no question about my trying to get away. I was stunned. I couldn't think. My world had crashed into pieces. I was being taken to prison. Prison, I thought. Prison. Prison. Prison. That was all I could think. But what did it mean? I didn't know anything about prison. I was soon going to find out. A white van stopped in front of the driveway and started backing up to the dock--a van with heavy bars on the windows. I'd seen those vans before. They went through town at certain hours of the day. Big white vans. When I saw them, I knew in a vague way that there were men inside, men on their way to prison. Men who were convicted, sentenced, and locked in those vans, going away to be punished somewhere. But I'd never paid any attention. It didn't mean anything to me. On the sides and the rear of the van were block letters, black on white: "STATE PRISON." It backed in slowly, with that highpitched beep-beep that all government vehicles have. It stopped, and two prison Officers climbed out of the front. One stood by the rear door and another came up the ramp onto the dock and headed in my direction. He was wearing an olive drab uniform and he was a big, beefy guy. A very big, beefy guy. He came up to the bailiff and said something friendly that wasn't meant for me to hear. They smiled and chatted. The other bailiff came out again and handed some papers to the prison Officer. The Officer signed some of them and handed them back. Then the Officer turned to me. I was standing there with my arms cuffed behind my back, trying to understand what was happening to me. Suddenly the Officer put his face an inch in front of my face and screamed, "On your KNEES, motherfucker!!!" A load of spit landed on my cheek and I could smell the tobacco he'd been smoking a few minutes before. "NOW!!!" he screamed. I fell to my knees-- almost fell on my face, not knowing how to allow for the cuffs and somehow expecting my hands to be there to steady me. Funny, though--at that moment, I was thinking, "I wonder what my landlady's gonna do with all those clothes and schoolbooks?" I also wondered what time it was and what class I was missing right then. Insanely, I wondered whether I could make up my schoolwork when I finally got back home. But then I felt my socks being pulled down to my shoes and I heard another pair of irons clicking together, and I felt the same cold steel on my ankles that I'd felt on my wrists a few minutes before. The only difference was, I'd never really imagined that they still chained guys by their legs, like animals. The steel grabbed at my ankles like the irons I'd seen in those old-time pictures of convicts chained together, sweating their balls off with picks and shovels on some southern road gang, wearing stripes with big black numbers on their backs. But I didn't have long to think about that. "Get your au ass up!!!" was the next command. Easier said than done. I struggled to my feet, swaying from side to side, my ankles chained little more than twelve inches apart. Then the Officer who'd been standing by the van came up and the two Officers frogmarched me to the vehicle. They let a narrow ramp down from the rear and, shackled hand and foot, I shuffled up to the back door. As they pushed me through the opening, I cracked my head on the roof of the van, and I thought, "Troy would never crack his head on anything." Once inside, the first Officer kept me moving down the center aisle. I expected to find rows of seats, like a school bus, but there weren't any seats. Instead, there were rows of steel bars, the bars of cages. Six or seven cages stood on either side of the aisle. The van must have stopped at some other courthouse before it came for me, because some of the cages at the front of the van already had guys inside them, guys filling the cages, their bodies pressing silently against the bars. The word "zoo" came to mind. A zoo for men. I'd shambled almost all the way to the heavy steel door at the end of the aisle when the Officer yanked me to a stop. "In here," he said, swinging open the bars of the first empty cage on the left. "Git!" I jammed myself into the tiny compartment. It was less than two feet by two feet, and less than six feet high, so I had to bend down just to fit inside my cage. The top half of the outer wall was a window with heavy bars, bars that sliced the outside world into five or six thin strips of light. Solid steel separated my cage from the cages fore and aft. "Hands out behind!" the Officer commanded. I stuck my hands out as far as I could behind me, and I could feel the Officer gripping my wrists like a vice while he unlocked the cuffs. Great, I thought. At least my hands will be free. I was wrong. "Turn around!" he said, slamming the door closed with a resounding clang and scraping a big key in the lock. I negotiated the turn with difficulty. It was a tight fit in there, a very tight fit. Every place where there wasn't a part of my body there was part of a wall or a bar. My ass and my shoulders kept running into the steel sides. Finally I got turned around and confronted the iron door of my cage. "Hands through the bars!" was the next command. I stuck my wrists through and the cuffs snapped back on my wrists. My hands were cuffed to each other on the outside of the bars. "Stand there and shut the fuck up!" the Officer yelled. "I don't want to hear a noise out of you, not now, not never!" Then he strode toward the rear of the van and vanished, leaving me trussed to the bars of my cage. I was facing another prisoner, a guy who was trussed just inches across the aisle from my face. He looked to be a kid about my age, maybe a little older- -slim, medium height, good haircut, little stache on his lip, not bad looking. Unlike me, he was wearing a suit and tie. All dressed up for court, I guessed. One of those junior executive types, certain to impress the judge. Only this guy was crying. His eyes were wet, and big tears were crawling down his cheek. And he was looking at me as if I could help him in some way. "Oh, man," he said in a low, intense whisper. "Oh God! I gotta get outta here. I can't do life in prison!" I was about to say something, I don't know what, when the door at the front of the van flew open and the second Officer, who must have been sitting up there ever since I was put inside, marched back and paused ominously in our section of the zoo. First he looked at me, then he looked at the other guy. I never knew what fear was till I saw that Officer stop in front of me. When you're chained like an animal to the bars of a cage, you can't do anything, you just have to endure whatever happens to you. You have to stand there and wait for it. The Officer was carrying a baton in his right hand, and he started to pat it in his left. The Junior Executive looked up at him. "Listen," he said. "You gotta help me. Please! Lemme make a call. Just lemme make a call . . ." He didn't say anything more. The baton pumped through the bars, right into the poor guy's unprotected belly. "I thought you were told to SHUT UP! So SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!" The prisoner slumped down, hanging from the bars by his irons. Then the Officer turned in my direction, as if he was ready to do the same thing to me, and I felt the sweat dripping down my face. "Remember this," he said, patting the baton, "and SHUT THE FUCK UP!!"