Chapter 30. Sweatin', Man, Sweatin'....

At the end of nearly four years in prison, I became eligible for parole. It was my most anxious period in prison. As the big day for my appearance before the parole board drew nearer, I did everything possible to avoid thinking about it. I played cards, handball, softball; I read and worked--no dice. The thought I hope I make parole stuck to me, and the dreams and hopes I tried to keep suppressed burst into my consciousness. The night before my appearance I lay awake thinking how things would be if I made it. I drew elaborate mental pictures of the whole bit, from the instant I was released to the moment I stepped back into Harlem. I also thought about not making it--but not in detail. Nobody who knows what hell is wants to go into detail on the subject.

As the early morning grayish light seeped into my cell, I leaned hard on the bars and, through my tiny window, watched the sun rise. This was my day. Jesus, this is the day, I thought. Oh, God! This is the day for me. Turn, baby, and look into your round two-sided mirror. I looked into the glass and saw a small brown face, bleary-eyed from an overdose of wanting to be free; then I turned the mirror over and saw my face enlarged, bloated with prison time and scarred by squeezed pimples and long lines, my lips dry and my tongue yellow-coated from the nicotine of a chain-smoking night. I inhaled half deep and exhaled twice as much and set the mirror down and looked around my six-by-eight-by-nine home, and began shining myself up for the board.

I ate breakfast calmly, like the rest of the cons, trying not to show that this was a special day. But everyone knew it was, and I heard casual expressions of good luck---"Hope you make it, champ," "Buena suerte, panin, Good board, buddy." Then suddenly I was sitting on a straight-backed chair in the main cell-hall block. There were five rows of cons in chairs, then abreast, and when one con went into the board office, everyone moved up a chair and the stiffness was eased by the noise of the gray coarse pants bottoms scrunching and swooshing on the wooden chairs.

The number on my slip of white paper was 42. That meant forty-one guys before me, forty-one million years of sweating it out, of setting a slipping face into a semblance of coolness. I counted the gray faces, the blank looks, and the occasional smiles of the guys who returned from the office and I hoped that the Wise Men on the board had had a good night's sleep and no family squabbles and that they would be feeling good.

At last my number was called. I hurried in casual slow motion down the long hall and through an open green-barred door and into a hall space where the four guys ahead of me were seated on chairs. A hack frisked me. Jesus, I thought, I don't even have long fingernails, let alone a shank. Caramba, I wanna be friends with that parole board.

I took my seat next to the other guys. The only sounds in that little space were those of beating hearts, built-up hopes, and clincking eyelashes. I watched the guys before me as, one by one, they went in and came out of the board's office. The first guy came out smiling bitterly; he whispered, "I think I got a hit, maybe a year, fuck it." The rest of us smiled at each other, thinking that the law of averages made better our chances of not getting hit. Another guy came out crying, and I swore that even if they gave me the whole bundle of time, the whole fifteen-year max, I wasn't gonna crack. Like in I went, like out I'll come.

"Numba 42."
"Here," I yelled softly. I got up and thought, I hope my damn knees don't break down on me, and all of a sudden I was calm, cooled, and quietly tensed. I walked into the room. The principal keeper was there. Trusty blackjack and all, probably, I thought. Well, gents, you'll get no trouble out of me. I don't have to be jacked up. Just look at my face and see the rehabilitation written there.
"Sit down, Thomas."
I sat, but I only borrowed a very little bit of the chair, just the thin edge. I didn't know quite what to do with my hands, whether to put them behind me, up to my face, or under my rump. Finally, I crossed my fingers and started looking for friendly faces on the business-suit-clad men whose hands were occupied with shifting and reshifting white papers grew dim, and I saw a long time back . . .
. . . Hey, Moms, I gotta job, a real job, Moms, in a drugstore after school, and I make $2.50 a week and here's some money and I can give you a lotta money every week to help out and maybe with me working along with you and Pops, why, no limit to what we can do, uh, Moms?
A voice broke through my thoughts. "Well, Thomas," it said, "you don't think you're going home this time, do you?"
Jesus, I thought, I worked a long time at the drugstore and I helped Moms and Pops out and I'm only quiet because Moms said I was too skinny to keep it up and I was goofing on my school marks, but that's one of the good things I done . . .
" . . . And we'll consider you for possible parole next time we see you. Your case is very serious."
Oh my God, they ain't gonna let me go! Just like that. Almost four years in here, and in four seconds they tell me "maybe next time." I felt a tap on my shoulder from the big finger of the principal keeper and, surprisingly, I stood tall and clearly said, "Thank you very much, sirs." There was no bitterness in my voice, just a matter-of-fact, polite "Thank you," like I was all full of junk or something, numb and high.

That night, after we had been locked in and the trusty hotwater boys had made their rounds and the sandwiches had been passed around, and as talk and music from guitars, saxes, trumpets, and bongos whistled through the bars, I strummed on my guitar, trying not to wonder what was keeping the hack from bringing me the slip from the parole board telling me how much I had been hit for. At last the hack came by, laid neatly on the bars a white piece of paper, folded smoothly and stapled, and mumbled something about good luck. I smiled and kept strumming the guitar, leaving the white piece of indecision laying there. When the hack left, I put the guitar down and reached for the message from Garcia. I very slowly pulled the staple from it and carefully opened the paper. On it was typed very neatly:

My God! I thought, I'm here for two more stinking years. I can't make it; dammit, I won't make it. Oh shit!
"What's happening?" Young Turk whispered from the cell next to mine.
"Nothing, man, nothing except a deuce, two years. I'll do that on my head." I wanted to break out screaming; instead I thought, Well, look, man, you already got a two-year bit; next time you see the board, you're sure to make it. After all, man, the law of aver. . . "Oh, shit, shit, shit," I said, "I bet if there had been one moyeto or one spic on that board I'd'a made it. Do only blancos work on parole boards?"

In the morning, the bugle signaled the beginning of my brand-new two-year bit. I groped my way out of a hide-away sleep and found myself strangely calm and cool. I went through the ritual of washing, dressing, and making up the bed and sweeping the floor, and waited at the cold barred exit for the hack to open the new day for me with his big brass key. Standing on the cell-block tier, I made brave faces and answered the questions of "How'd you make out?" with a casual "Smooth deuce, but it beats a three-year hit."

But at breakfast it suddenly came to me, like a mad, mad feeling, like brass jazz, wild-tempoed and harsh; it blew itself up through my chest from my belly and crashed past my Adam's apple and left angry little lagrimas stuck in the corners of my eyes. Outside I became blank and hard and silent; inside I was like a hand grenade waiting for someone to pull the pin.

I walked back through the long hall to my shop. "How are things?" I heard behind me. My head snapped angrily and my tongue formed hating words, but I bit the brakes onto my anger. It was the prison chaplain. We had had several close talks over the years. He was the only preacher I had talked to who didn't make God stick in my throat. Tall and thin, he was white-haired and slightly stooped, as though the years had gotten the edge on him. The first time I met him, I was struck by his gentleness, then by his wisdom, his knack of getting across to you without pushing himself down your throat. But more than anything else, his face bothered me; it penetrated my hate, my damning hate and suspicion. It was like a face of God--and God to me meant something too good to be among men, especially my kind. Now this quiet, humble man stopped me in the corridor. My blank face gave him the general picture. He nodded me to one side and put his hand on my shoulder. I didn't shove it off, but my skin rejected the touch of his hand. I would have done the same if he had been God Almighty. We stood there, gospel man and con man, and looked across alien feelings, and then he said, "How long?"
"Two years," I breathed.
"Angry, huh?"
"Like a mother-jumping bomb," I answered.
"Less said, the better," he replied. "Now's the time, if you got heart, it'll show through."
I smiled. He had reached me, my warm soft spot, my coat of arms, my house of rep. I looked at him gently. "You're right, chaplain," I said, "I'll cool it."
"You'll make it, fella, I know you will," he said, "here and outside."

God! I thought, "Thanks, chaplain," I said, and I walked on to the shop determined to make it, and maybe even without the hate. "Say, man," one of the cons said to me, "have you heard? They're gonna build a school for the cons, a new one, and it's gonna be where the recreation hall is, and they're gonna use the con students that paint, they're learning brick masonry and so on . . ."
Brick masonry, I thought. That's me. I'll talk to the civilian supervisor and sign on. It will give me something new to do, and besides, maybe it will help on my record when I see the parole board again.

The decision to cool myself made the next two years the hardest I had done because it meant being a smoothie and staying out of trouble, which in prison is difficult, for any of a thousand cons might start trouble with you for any real or fancied reason, and if you didn't face up to the trouble, you ran the risk of being branded as having no heart. And heart was all I had left.

For a year and a half I managed to keep clean. Then, in the early spring, I came to my first crossroad. The day was bright and sunny, the kind of a day that makes a con want to be on the outside. I was engaged in the daily serious business of killing time, playing handball in the yard. Usually this was a loose time, but that day the yard seemed like it was strung up with high-tension wires, and over those wires vibrated an undercurrent of murmuring. Riot was in the air. I played handball like I'd never played before. Everyone did what he was doing like he'd never done it before. And at the same time we all wondered what our role would be when hell broke loose.
The bugle blew, indicating that it was time for us to line up and march back to our cell blocks. But as the lines started to form, the cons' usual loud yak was not as intense; eyes looked at eyes and faces reflected reflections, and the cons hung back from their assigned places. The hacks quickly got the drift of what was happening. "Hurry up, you men, get in line," they shouted. "Come on, line up." Everywhere in the yard, the same thing was happening. Not all the cons were gonna be part of the riot physically, but all of them were going to be part of it spiritually. In the west end of the yard, cons began to leave their respective hacks. More cons left their lines and walked toward the west side of the yard. The hacks looked at each other; one or two hurried to the telephone. No attempt was made to restrain the cons from leaving their lines, and almost as one, they seemed to feel freer, like they were their own men.

I stood there watching and weighing, trying to decide whether or not I was a con first and an outsider second. I had been doing time inside yet living every mental minute I could outside; now I had to choose one or the other. I stood there in the middle of the yard. Cons passed by me, some going west to join the boppers, others going east to neutral ground. The call of rep tore within me, while the feeling of being a punk washed over me like a yellow banner. I had to make a decisions. I am a con. These damn cons are my people. . . What do you mean, your people? Your people are outside the cells, home, in the streets. No! That ain't so . . . Look at them go toward the west wall. Why in hell am I taking so long in making up my mind? Man, there goes Papo and Zu-Zu, and Mick the Boxer; even Ruben is there.

The deadly quiet unrest had now grown to a loud roar, as the west wall began to breathe, taking on the life of hundreds of cons, young and old. The mass of men was becoming a unified monster. The blue-jacketed hacks scurried back and forth, directed by white-shirted officers, into position for a defensive stand or an offensive push. They no longer talked to the cons. I still stood in the middle of the yard. Over the loudspeaker, a hack announced, "Any of you men who want to quietly line up, can do so, and you'll be escorted to your cell blocks." Nonparticipating cons lined up two by two and walked toward the cell-hall blocks. Some of my boys came up to me. "Piri," said one, "if you go down, we'll go down."
Damn, I thought, and my face expressed it, don't make me choose for you. I can't even choose for myself. I pondered my predicament. I had been in jail five and a half years. In less than six months I would go before the board again. I owed them nine more years, which they'd probably make me do if I joined up with the boppers. That meant I'd be more than thirty-five years old when I got out.
Caramba!
The sound of the west wall cons got more angry as they tore down the hacks' wooden stands and splintered them into clubs. It hit me inside. Never punk out was the code I had lived by; fear came second, rep came first. Hell, when something went down, I had been there; and if I had to hurt, I had hurt, too. So what was keeping me back? Was I afraid? Hell, no. Did I want to see the board and go home? Hell, yes! But was I a punk to want this? I didn't know.

"Whatta ya say, Piri?"
All I had to do to save nine years was to get on a line. I stood in the middle of the yard.
"Piri, what about it?"
Stop pulling at me!
"Make a choice, Piri, make a choice."
Oh, dammit, I've got to go, I thought, and started to walk toward the west wall.
"Hold it," a hack said. They were now all over the place. I looked at them, the guys looked at them, we looked at each other. Our decision was being made for us, and we could save face. I let myself be molded into a line, my eyes and heart at the west wall but my mind out in the wild, wide street.
The angry shouts from the cons gathered strength and volume. "We want better food!" they shouted, loud enough to hide the fear of what they knew was a hopeless fight. It was the age-old prison gripe. I couldn't dig that. The food wasn't like the Ritz, but then, I never ate at the Ritz. No, I knew, and I guess every con that had a head knew, it wasn't food they were fighting about. They, we, all of us, in one way or another, were rebelling against time, against the locked-up feeling of being part of a building instead of a part of life. The food was just the fuse. And every con knew what the outcome of the riot would be, but the two-hundred or so rioters pushed that thought away. "We want to see the governor!" they chanted. I saw a few old-timers among the rioters, but the rest were mostly gray-eyed, healthy kids looking for a rep or a blast-out from boredom.

Oh, man, I thought, hell is sure gonna break loose. My last view of the riot at close range was of the cons huddled at the west wall, tense and ready-looking, and of the hacks at the east wall looking the same. Between them was the big empty prison yard. We were marched inside and locked in our cells. From outside came the roar of human voices, screaming defiance, curses, and threats. One of the hacks passed by my cell and I took a chance and asked him, "Say, what's happening out there now?"
"Can't you imagine?" he said.
"Yeah, we can," I muttered. And by God, I could. I could imagine the warden and the governor's aide asking the huddled cons what their complaints were, saying that everything could be worked out, if there was a legitimate beef; and I could hear the cons reply: "Go fuck yourself, you motherfucker." Then the warden would deliver an ultimatum: "Get back to your cells and we'll get to the bottom of this trouble. Go now and there'll be no retaliations." And the cons would shout: "Aw, go screw yourself, screws. Yeah--ra--ra."

Chino, Dulcien's cousin, also was at Comstock. On the barred window in front of our cell block, I saw his reflection passing by on the tier below. "Chino, Chino," I called, "tell me, baby, what's happening out there?"
"Piri, is that you, man? I thought you were out there."
"Yeah," I answered, "I thought you was out there. How's it going? Them screams and yells are getting bad."
"Oh, man, Piri, it's hell out there. It's cold as hell out there, and the hacks poured water on the guys. So they rushed the hacks and it was murder. They had state troopers and all kinds of people out there. But they have heart, Piri, the fuckin' kids got heart. They're rushing them hacks with most nutthin' but their hands, and all they're getting for their guts are split heads and blood clots."
"Move along you," a hack called.
"Piri, cool it, I gotta make it."
"Yeah, glad you're okay, Chino."
"Yeah, baby, same to you."
The battle spread to the cell block itself, as the locked-in cons shouted their angry sympathy for a lost cause. They knew the rebels didn't have a real beef, but cons are cons and time is thicker than blood. In the reflection of the mirror, I saw a young-blood guy snatch the keys away from an old hack, push him down, and run along the cell blocks opening cell doors, one after another, shouting, "Come on, come on, come on, come on!" Some came, but many, weighing the odds, decided against the sucker bit and lay down and made believe they were dead.
The roar in the cell block was deafening. Curses and cries of "I'm a punk, I should have stayed out there" were being thrown all over the place. The fever of the riot had caught on. Fortunately for the prison authorities, the majority of the cons had been restored to their cells, but they did what they could. They drenched wads of paper in lighter fluid and tossed them out of the cells; they dropped carefully aimed bottles full of water on the hacks on the main floor, screaming their hatred at their targets. The place was like a burning hell, a bedlam, a damn nuthouse. Why don't they shut up? I thought, and found that I myself was screaming just as loud, that I, too, was throwing out bottles, cans, anything; every con was one.

Hacks were running all over the place. Whenever they saw something thrown out of a cell, they slapped a "Keep locked" sign on the cell. No doubt the occupants of these cells would receive special consideration later on. The cons, to avoid reprisal, stuck mirrors out of the cells to see if the hacks were there or not before flinging out their hatred. If the hacks saw the flash of a mirror, they made another "care notation." Some hacks confronted the offending cons, words were exchanged and the sound of a cell door being opened by the hacks and the accompanying sounds of pain told the rest of the story.

Suddenly the whole cell block was quiet. Just like that, like if somebody had died, there was a moment of silence. Then a voice broke out from somewhere in the great echo chamber. "Hell," it said, "its all over, our fellers lost, they're bringing them in." Straining bodies pushed against the bars on all the cells; everyone felt a touch of shame at not having shared in the pain of our gray brothers. The hacks formed a double row and the wet, cold, beaten kid-cons walked between them. Some just barely could walk. Damned if it didn't remind me of the moving pictures where the Indians stood in a long row and let the white captive run through. Only the colors were reversed.

The cons walked into the main cell block, where I couldn't see them. But the word was relayed from cell to cell: "There's guys lying all over the floor, bleeding and busted up." I sneaked out my mirror for a look and became so absorbed that I didn't see a hack walk up on me.
"Don't you know any better, feller?" he asked. It was Casey, the good-o hack. I said nothing. I waited to be marked. "Keep Locked" and, later, probably messed up.
"Don't do that again, feller," he said.
I nodded and he looked at me, and damned if there wasn't distaste for what was going on written all over his face.
At four a.m. the hacks were still going into the cells. The taste of tear gas was all over the place, although the rioters were all locked up, and the sound of flesh being pounded into bruises pulsated through the cold morning air. "Let them alone, you lousy bunch of bastard hacks," someone shouted.
"Who said that?"
"I did, you motherfucker. They've had it, let up off them."
The sound of a gate being thrown open and three or four pairs of hack-filled shoes rushing into a cell was followed by the grunts and groans of uneven combat. I screamed, "You maricones, you punk faggots. It's easy eh? No danger, no fuckin' hurt to you--makes you all feel big and tough. Who the fuck is civilized? We're supposed to be the animals, not you."

"Let 'em alone, let 'em alone," began a chant. From time to time a corazon-felt cry of "Mommie" came from one of the kid-cons. Then the scene got quiet and I lay down and thought about the kids getting their teeth knocked out. Suddenly my bed was lifted up and dropped by a blue-shirted arm that reached into my cell. "Hey, get up off that bed," a hack said.
I got up, feigned sleep and stood there wearily. It was a shakedown. The hacks motioned me to stand in the corridor, then they searched in the cell, the bed, and the toilet bowl for what I had hidden in my mind. One of them turned an eye on me, and I lowered my eyes because if he had seen the odio there, he would have had to hit me and I was afraid I would have to hit him back, and then he would have to kill me. So I stood quietly and looked at my bare feet and thought about outside. After they had wrecked my home they ordered me back inside it and crashed the bar-door shut on me. The hack started to turn away and caught me looking at him.

"Anything the matter?" he challenged me.
I turned my back on him and looked at the shit bowl, wishing I could puke all over the damn world.
"I asked you, feller," he repeated nastily, "anything the matter, got any beefs?" His hand was tight on his stick and I knew that he would use an answer or silence as an excuse to bash me.
I shrugged my shoulders and said, "No, nothing's the matter except I'd like to go home." I forced myself to smile, but it came out a "You can go to hell" smile.
The hack read this and moved toward the door, but Casey, the good-o hack, said to him, "Come on, give me a hand," drawing him away.
I wanted to curse. I stood there for a long time, hot tears running down heat-flushed cheeks, hating all the way from my childhood to my old age. To hate---you gotta keep living.

The next day the lid was down. There was no mail out, no mail in, no visitors, no recreation, no food in the mess hall. We got one meal in our cells, served by trusted trusties who were watched by trusted hacks. After a day or so of this, we were allowed to come into the mess hall, three or four tiers at a time, with a convoy of hacks. Talking was forbidden, but stories of reprisal spread around anyway---stories of broken arms and bruised kidneys and cons carrying their mattresses being black-jacked from behind and falling on their mattresses. Hacks and cons acted as dead strangers. Some of the hacks looked real hard and mean; others looked like they wished they were some other place. In my cell, I lay back on my bed and went over all that had happened in the last three days. All I could think of was how the riot would affect the decisions of the parole board when I saw them again. Jesus, I wish it had been a legit beef these guys jumped stink about, I thought, and in the back of my mind I kept thinking that it was.

The prison held on to its tight air of tension for a long time after the riot. Cons and hacks remained on cold speaking terms. We did only what we had to, everything else was a blank.

by Piri Thomas

from "Down These Mean Streets"
original copyright 1967