Chapter 11 - New Faces
Day 23 - Early Afternoon
The steady stream of hot water flowing over me and the slow deep breaths I was taking were helping to slow my heart rate while unanswered questions began to surface in my thoughts.
How long will I have to be in the hole?
When will they send me to prison?
When’s my release date?
Will this fight change my release date?
I felt like I had lost complete control over my life.
What do I do now?
The water stopped so I pressed the button on the wall for another 30 seconds. I only had about 45 minutes left until I had to lock down, so I wouldn’t press the button again until tomorrow. When the water stopped flowing I dried myself off, put on my scrubs, and walked back out into the pod to where the wall-mounted phone beckoned me.
There were no plastic chairs in this pod like there were in the general population pod, but the cord was long enough to reach one of the stainless steel chairs on the table that was bolted to the floor. I picked up the receiver and wasted the next minute of my time talking to the phone robot.
“Please enter your 10 digit access PIN.”
12345678910
“To make a pre-paid phone call, press 1. To place a commissary order, press...”
One motherfucker.
“Enter the 10 digit phone number you wish to dial, followed by the pound key.”
12345678910#
“Your call is being connected.”
The phone rang a few times, Celia answered with a friendly, “hello,” and the phone robot continued.
“YOU HAVE A PRE-PAID CALL FROM... Mick... AN OFFENDER AT THE SOUTHERN CORRECTIONAL FACILITY. TO ACCEPT THIS CALL, PRESS 1. OTHERWISE, YOU MAY HANG UP.”
Throughout the message I could hear Celia pressing the button on her phone over and over again, but the system wouldn’t accept her input until it was completely finished with its message. Eventually the call was connected.
“Hey Celia,” I said.
We talked for 14 minutes before the phone robot came back with a, “YOUR CALL WILL BE TERMINATED IN 60 SECONDS.” Usually we would want to talk for more than 15 minutes and I would hang up and call her again for another block of time, but I knew I was going to be forced back into my cell soon and I wanted to make the most of my time out. We said our I love yous and goodbyes and then I hung up the phone. It was good to hear her voice and I was grateful that I was still able to call her while I was in the hole.
“Who was that?” shouted Harvey. I turned around to see his face in the window of cell number three staring at me.
“Damn man,” I remarked with surprise, “you just standing there watching me talk on the phone?”
“Yea, so? Ain’t nothin’ else to do in here,” he said with a shrug and a smile. One of the things I had learned in jail over the past few weeks is that privacy was important and direct questions were discouraged. I felt like I should’ve been offended at Harvey’s directness.
I stood up and looked around at my options; two stainless steel tables and space to walk around them, a shower in the corner, my open cell door, four closed cell doors — including Harvey’s, and two closed exit doors at opposite ends of the pod. I had come in through one of the exit doors and the other exit door was actually a connecting door to another pod that was identical to this one. Another hole adjacent to this hole. Saget must be over there.
Harvey was right. There wasn’t anything else to do in here.
“Well,” said Harvey. “Who was she? That your wife?”
“Girlfriend,” I said as I started walking. After about 30 feet I turned left, then left again in half the distance, two more left turns and I was back where I started.
“What’s her name?” asked Harvey when I came back around. I gave him a sideways look as I walked past his cell, but didn’t answer. “Oh, ok, it’s gonna be like that then,” he said. “Hey Withgod! You up?” he said with more volume.
A groaning sound came from cell number two — enough of an acknowledgement for Harvey to continue. “Tell him Withgod! Tell him I won’t give up until I get answers!”
A face appeared in the window of the door to cell number two, rubbing sleepiness out of his eyes. Withgod apparently. He looked at me and said, “this motherfucker will annoy the shit out of you until you answer him.” Then he put his face into the crack of the door and yelled loud enough for Harvey to hear him. “Hey Harvey. Do you ever sleep man? Go the fuck to sleep!”
Harvey had a shit-eating grin on his face, as if talking to two people at the same time brought with it the same excitement a child gets on Christmas morning.
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead!” answered Harvey. “So what’s her name?”
I just shook my head as I continued walking my laps. Withgod said, “he’s harmless, for real though.”
“Yea,” said Harvey. “I’m harmless.”
“I mean look at him,” said Withgod. “He’s a fuckin’ string bean. And he knows we’ll be outta here and in a real pod together next week. So unless he wants to get his ass beat, he’ll stay harmless.”
“Oh, I ain’t afraid of you, Withgod!”
“It’s easy to have a big mouth behind a locked door. But you just wait Harvey! You’ll see. You won’t be the first string bean I’ve knocked the fuck out.”
I continued walking while Harvey and Withgod made small talk. I’d join in on occasion, but mostly I just listened. The next thirty minutes came and went quickly before the loudspeaker roared to life.
“Time’s up Westwood!” It was the voice of the CO I saw in the pod earlier. “Lock it down.”
I walked back into my cell and pulled the door closed behind me. Moments later the sound of a POP indicated that a different cell door had been unlocked remotely. Harvey’s. His face appeared in the window of my cell’s door, the same grin painted on it from ear to ear. “Well. What’s her name?” he asked. This time he threw his head back in laugher. He had me trapped.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” I said, hoping that he’d forget by then.
“Bet!” said Harvey. “And I won’t forget neither!”
Damn.
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