Jailbird

by Bill Bernico

"Card game—my house," Glen said, tossing his head in the direction of his cell.

In the county jail, or the Skyline Hotel, as it was called, your cell became your house and having other prisoners over to your house had quite a different meaning than your average suburban housewife. I was doing a forty-three day stretch for non-support as a result of my recent divorce. Here I was, a naive kid who'd never been in any real trouble, thrown in with the car thieves, father stabbers, barroom brawlers, murderers and larcenists. They were not exactly the gang of guys I'd have chosen to chum with on the outside.

I was a prisoner with Huber Law privileges. I was allowed outside the jail a couple hours each day to seek employment. I'd been unsuccessful so far and dreaded the thought of spending the next six weeks cooped up like an animal. If I found a job I could move from the west cellblock to the east, where life was relatively easier.

I'd played cards before, mostly poker with my mom and her friends, so I knew what to expect. The game began relatively friendly, if you can use that term in jail. Within the first ten minutes I'd lost everything, which probably amounted to two or three dollars. It doesn't sound like much but on the inside, it bought quite a few of the comforts of home.

I left Glen's house and returned to the bullpen where lunch was being served. I couldn't really face another day of creamed chip beef on toast, but after having passed on it previously, I was hungry enough to eat the asshole out of a rat. I took my usual seat at the metal table and waited as the guard passed each plate through the flap that opened on the door to the bullpen. The plates were passed through and down the table until each prisoner had one. The flap on the door slammed shut and the room was filled with the smell of some unrecognizable food and the sound of forks scraping metal plates.

This having been my first (and only) stretch in the pen, I was unaware of any jailhouse etiquette or pecking order. I talked and acted as freely as if I was back home at mom's dinner table--a big mistake. Lunchtime conversation eventually got around to the recent card game. I could tell by the smile on Mike's face that he had everyone else's poker stakes. Glen's face also revealed that he, like me, had lost all. Glen took his seat across from me.

"How'd ya do, Glenn?" Jim asked.

"I lost it all," Glenn said, still shoveling in the food from his plate.

"Good for ya," I said, trying to fit in as one of the guys. This dry sense of humor was readily understood at home and around my friends on the outside, but in here it was like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

"What do ya mean, good for ya?" Glen asked, scowling at me.

"Hey," I said, still smiling, "I lost all my money too. If it's good for me it's good for you." I resumed eating.

Glen stood, his fork in one hand and his coffee cup in the other. He threw the cup of coffee in my face and slammed the cup back down on the table. He was still gripping his fork when he came around to my side of the table. He grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled me backward off the seat. I was dragged over to the bench that was attached to the east wall. Glen lifted until I was seated on that bench and he proceeded to slam my head against the steel wall.

Darkness seemed to swallow me up as Glen released his grip on my hair and I fell to the floor. My vision was blurry and my thoughts jumbled but I could still hear the voices around me. Mostly it was a rambling mixture of excited undertones but one voice stood out above the rest. It was Glen's furious voice.

"Let's stab the fucker," I heard him say.

My mind raced. Could this be the end of my life after only twenty-one short years? Is this what it all came down to after thirteen years of schooling, eighteen months of marriage, a daughter, a family and my experiences up to this point? Fortunately it was not to be--yet. I heard another voice, a frantic voice in the background.

"The guard's coming," someone said. The conversation settled into a series of forced whispers. Another con whispered, "drag him into the shower."

Two inmates reached under my arms and dragged me behind a wall, around the corner and behind a shower curtain before releasing their grip on my armpits. I settled in a pile on the wet floor and just lay there, panting and scared.

I couldn't see the events that unfolded next, but from what I could hear that the guard had come and gone without noticing one less person at the dinner table. It was apparently all the time Glen needed to cool off, too, because when the guard had left I expected the boys to come back and finish me off. No one came for me and I lay there, fighting the urge to cry out loud.

Finally after ten minutes, I could hear the dinner table guests disbursing and the sound of footsteps back to various cells. One inmate poked his head into the shower. It was Jim, the car thief. He picked me up and pulled me back into the bullpen. He was older, perhaps thirty-five or so and had been used to life behind bars.

He propped me up on the bullpen table and threw a towel at my face. I grabbed it and wiped my wet head, wiping away the tears at the same time. Here I was, a grown adult and in an instant I'd been reduced to a four year old, crying in gasps, my breath erratically pulsing in and out of my lungs.

For as bad a dude as Jim tried to portray himself in front of the others, he also had a compassionate side that he reluctantly displayed to me when there were just the two of us in the bullpen. "You gotta remember," he said, "some of us are here facing serious time. You'll be back on the street in six weeks, but some of these guys got nothin' to lose. Glen's facing twenty years. How do you think he's gonna react to a stupid statement like that?"

"I was just kiddin' him," I tried to explain. It was only a few dollars and I lost all mine in the same game."

"Two dollars, two cents or a piece of toast," Jim said, "it doesn't matter. There's guys here who'll kill you for the laces in your shoes. You just keep you mouth shut and you might live long enough to see daylight again."

I finished dabbing my face with the towel and returned to my cell. The top bunk felt good as I settled in for a well-deserved and much-needed nap. My head ached so much that I'd forgotten how hungry I had been before all this. I slept for the rest of the afternoon and right through that night's supper. The next morning at breakfast they could have served cockroach soup and I'd have slurped it down and licked the bowl. Luckily it was pancakes and I wouldn't have to test my tolerance for insects.

That afternoon as I was release once again to search for a job, the overwhelming urge to skip town came over me. I couldn't go back and face five more weeks of hell with Glen and the rest of those animals. I didn't have to make that choice. That afternoon I found part-time work with a local bakery, making breads and pastries. I was anxious to return to the county jail to report my good fortune. It meant that I'd be transferred to the east cellblock with the rest of the Huber Law prisoners who left each day to go to a job. The west side cellblock occupants could rot there, for all I cared.

The turnkey took down the information I'd given him about the bakery job. Within an hour, after they'd made a few phone calls to verify what I'd told them, they opened the door to my cell and escorted me to the east cellblock—the Huber Law side of the jail. I could face the next four weeks knowing Glen was on the other side of the wall.

Apparently the guards considered me to be a prisoner who had been well behaved enough to reduce my sentence by a week. It doesn't sound like much, I know, but when you count every hour of every day and you can't wait for that forty-third day, a week off is like half a lifetime.

On the thirty-sixth day my cell door opened again and I was escorted to the turnkey's office. My personal possessions were returned to me and I signed a receipt to that effect. Without fanfare I took the elevator down to the street level of the courthouse and exited the way I'd come six weeks earlier. The lump on my head had smoothed out to where it was barely noticeable but my inner scars would be with me for the rest of my life.

It's hard to believe that a stretch in jail can be good for you, but it's that month and a half sentence that kept me from getting into any more serious trouble. The thought of doing serious time was more than I could bear.

It was a long road but I pulled myself up and made something of myself a step at a time. I later learned that Glen was thrown into an isolation cell for uncontrollable behavior. It took four grown guards to subdue this seventeen-year-old who had found a way to gain access to mind altering drugs. He had the strength of three men but was no match for the four guards who managed to slip him into a straight jacket. A month after I was released, Glen was shipped off to state prison to begin his twenty-year sentence. I never heard what became of him.

Mike didn't fare as well. Later that year I read a short article on page ten of the local paper. Mike's body had been found floating in Lake Michigan . The case was never solved.

Jim was released six months after me. Three months later he stole another car in Milwaukee and led police on a twelve-mile high-speed chase. When he crashed the car on a dead end street, he came out shooting. The police were better shots and Jim lay dead next to the car that belonged to someone else. It wasn't two dollars, two cents or even a piece of toast that he died for but it might as well have been.