Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison by T. Parsell (ready to read books TXT) 📕

Inmates with terms of up to five years were sent to medium-security. These prisons were surrounded by fences and gun towers, or armed jeeps patrolled the perimeter. Inmates who had been serving longer sentences inside the walls were transferred down to medium as soon as they got within five years of parole. Once they reached within two years, they were eligible for the camp program.

When I was called from the bullpen the second time, I was handed a document entitled, Inmate Outdates. Outdates were the earliest release dates we could be granted a parole. Good Time, time off for good behavior, had already been calculated.

"It don't mean you're getting out then," a guard said, "It just means them are the dates you could get out, assuming you don't lose no good time."

"They do it that way," an inmate with a B-number said, "because when they take the good time back from your ass, they figure you'll miss it more."

But for the moment, I was preoccupied with trying to figure out if, don't lose nogood time was a triple negative, and if so, did that mean I didn't want to don't lose no, or if I wanted to not don't lose some?

There were two types of good time, regular and special, and release dates were noted for each. No one could tell me why there were two kinds of good time, but as the same inmate suspected, "It's so the motherfuckers can have two different things to take away from your ass."

The way it was calculated, I only had to serve nine months for every year of my sentence. So my two-and-a-half to four years worked out to roughly twenty-two months. A little more than the "year and a half, tops!" my court appointed attorney assured me I'd only have to serve. My early release date was January 9, 1980. As I read this, my heart felt like it had fallen from a gun tower. The numbers looked alien-nineteen and then an eight-zero. Up until that moment, I'd never thought about the eighties before. It was barely 1978, and it was too hard to comprehend. I put it away. My release was a long way off, and anything could happen by then.

When I returned to the bullpen, I scooted over to where the white inmates had flocked. There were one or two others scattered about, but less than ten total, counting the three or four who'd already gone in. No one seemed to notice I'd moved, except for Moseley, who'd been keeping a steady eye on me.

Other than Tree Jumpers, Chesters, drug dealers, and smugglers, inmates with prison terms of less than two years were sent to camp. Inmates with a history of escape were also barred. A Tree Jumper was a rapist, and a Chester, a child molester, named after the Hustler magazine cartoon, Chester The Molester. I asked an inmate why rapists were called Tree Jumpers and he said, "Imagine a motherfucker hiding up in a tree, just waiting for some fine young female to come walking along ..."

Inmates didn't like rapists. They figured if the only way a man could get some was to take it, then he wasn't a real man in the first place. And a Chester was worse. On the inmate hierarchy, a child molester was just a fraction of an inch above a snitch. State law didn't allow child molesters in the camp program, and anywhere else for that matter-they were sent to lockup for their own protection. Otherwise they would be killed. Lock-up involved going into protective custody, where an inmate would spend his entire prison term in solitary confinement.

Listening to the guys talk in the bullpen that morning, I got the impression that they would put up with quite a lot, but raping kids was not one of them. It was a sad irony, as I'd learn soon enough, that while rape outside the walls was so looked down upon, inside it was almost a validation of one's own manhood.

When Rooster was called out and left, the other black inmates started talking about him. "Cock-a-fuckin'-doodle-do. Can that nigger talk or what?"

A few others laughed.

"That's how he got his nickname," someone else said. "'Cause every morning, that motherfucker is up at the crack of dawn, his mouth a cacklin'."

When the next con was called from the bullpen, a white inmate who was sitting off to himself, got up and walked out.

"That boy is fuckin'," I overhead a con whisper.

"No shit?" the guy next to him said. "Why didn't you say something?"

"Yeah, " another black inmate said, reaching into his pants and groping himself. "I could've used some face."

"He's with Little Chet," the first one said, "over on the North Side. He's just coming back from court." The other two nodded and dropped the conversation.

I didn't know who Little Chet was, but judging by the way the others had backed off, Little Chet must have been well respected.

Fucking meant someone was taking it up the ass, or sucking dick. And Little Chet must have been that boy's man. It was my first introduction to the efficiency of the inmate grapevine. Inmates had little else to do but talk, so information flowed quickly. If someone was fucking or snitching, was a Tree Juniper or a Chester, inmates made certain that other inmates knew about it.

"It's one of the greatest communication devices ever known," Rooster bragged, later that morning. "It you ever want to know what time it is about someone, or something, all you have to do is Telephone, Telegraph, or Tell an Innate."

After a while, I thought the inmates would run out of things to talk about, but that morning, there was plenty. They went on, non-stop, about the differences in classification, prisons, and how the system worked. I kept to myself and listened intently. Over my first months inside, I'd become as familiar with these workings as some of the old timers. That