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

I struggled to catch up with him. I thought about telling him what had just happened with the probation officer, but I doubted he would believe me.

"I can't," I said. "They'll kill me if I say something."

He shook his head, but then stopped suddenly to look at me. "How old are you?"

"Seventeen."

His face softened, but then he let out a sigh.

I stood in front of him, shaking.

"Let me get the sergeant," he said, sounding exasperated.

I thought about Coach Kelly and how he yelled when I missed too many baskets, or passed the ball by accident to the opposing team. He'd blow his whistle and shake his head. "Hug the bench," he'd say to me, as he looked down at his clipboard and waited for everyone to notice. "What a dork," one of the kids on the sideline would say.

When the deputy opened the holding cell door and told me to have a seat on the floor, I thought about gym class and how the guys used to call him Coach Nelly, because of the way he came into the locker room to see who was undressed with their dick hanging out-jotting it down on that fucking clipboard of his-those of us who had showered from those who had not. But looking back on it, I would have given anything to be there again, to have the chance to shower with boys my own age in high school where the worse that could happened was someone called you a fag.

The deputy turned the key in the lock and then tapped it against the bars. He asked if I had anything in my cell that I needed.

"No," I said.

I was too afraid to go back for my cigarettes, where Nate and Loud Mouth were waiting for me.

"Are you sure?"

"My smokes," I said. "But I don't want to go back there."

"I'll get 'em," he said. But when he returned, I wasn't surprised to hear him say they weren't there.

As he walked away, I watched his keys dangling from the side of his belt. The simplicity of those small metal objects-just beyond my reach-that fit inside the locks and turned the cylinders to freedom and safety and to the outside world. If he'd just tossed me his keys-I'd never be back here again.

When I was kid, my brother Rick tried to teach inc how to pick a lock. He said I had to feel and listen for the sound of the tumblers triggering inside. "It's like having sex," he said. "You stick your little pin inside the slot and jiggle it around until you feel the cylinder release." But his analogy was lost on me.

I just wanted to get to a shower. I wanted to wash away what had happened earlier. The smell of shit lingered in the air, but I still couldn't tell if it was real or remembered. Perhaps the preoccupation was just another attempt to escape what had happened. My head pounded with a band of pressure and I felt nauseous.

From inside the holding cell, I felt the rumbling vibration and clatterclack-clack of the approaching meal cart. "That's him there," one of the inmates said to another, pushing the cart past. He nodded toward me, but the deputy wouldn't allow them to stop.

"I hope they put her up on my block," the inmate said.

I was hoping no one would find out about me and thus increase the chance of it happening again, but the inmates who delivered the meals were also the guys who carried the information. All food came from the same kitchen. So the food carts, as they rumbled past, were the lines of communication to every corner of the jail.

I started to feel there was nothing I could do to avoid what was happening or what might happen again. Sitting on the floor and waiting on the sergeant to decide what to do with me, I wanted to sleep forever, to lie down and not wake up again. But I couldn't bring myself to close my eyes. I'd never be able to close them again it seemed. All I could do was sit there and think. Inside the cell was a rnop bucket, which I threw up in twice.

Where was the fucking key that would keep me safe?

24

You Never Know Where It's Coming From

"I fucking hate _vou," I screamed at Sharon through the torn screen door.

The temperature was in the single digits, and no one had bothered to put in the storm windows. It was just as well, they would have shattered, given how hard I'd slammed the door. I was thirteen and vowed never to come back again.

There was snow coming down, and the wind chill made it feel even colder. With nowhere to go, I wandered the streets all night, ducking in and out of convenience stores and twenty-four-hour supermarkets to keep warm.

Early the next morning, crossing the parking lot of Farmer Jack's, I felt someone following me. When I turned around, my dad was about fifteen feet behind. Though he looked relieved, his eyes were tired and sad-like he had been up all night, and I could tell that he hadn't been drinking.

He didn't say much, but what he did say were the kindest words he'd ever spoken to me. "C'mon home, Son."

"I have to say, this court is extremely disturbed by some of the statements made by the defendant, as indicated in the Pre-sentence Investigation Report." The judge looked down at me, over the rim of his black-framed glasses. "Would you care to explain?"

"I'm not sure what you mean, Your Honor?"

My attorney shrugged. He looked as puzzled as me.

"Well, for someone so young," the judge said. "I find it troubling that your level of calculation and knowledge of the system would be so advanced."

"I'm sorry Judge, but I still don't understand?"

"Did you tell the Pre-sentence Investigator that you figured on probation?"

"Huh?"

"It says here, you didn't believe you'd get caught, but even if you