Chapter 3 - Prairie's Story
“One pack of American Spirits please,” I said.
The gas station attendant turned around to scan the shelf full of tobacco behind him.
“Yellow,” I clarified.
The man pulled the pack down from the shelf and slid it across the counter.
“Seven fifty nine,” he said.
I paid the man and pocketed the pack. Excellent. Now I just have to get back to my cell before lockdown, I thought as I made my way toward the convenience store exit. I was full of anticipation for that first drag.
“TRAYS!” came the shout from somewhere, followed by the rhythmic popping sound that was getting louder and louder until POP went the door to my cell.
My hand reached down instinctively to my pocket — Empty.
Damn, another dream.
I didn’t really notice the cravings throughout the day, but the dreams persisted. It was the same every time — a pack of cigarettes was in my hand, but I never got the chance to light one before I woke up. It had been over a month since I’d had a cigarette and probably decades since a pack was $7.59.
“TRAYS!” the shout came again.
I slid on my blue fabric state-provided shoes and walked down the metal staircase from the top tier to take my serving of fruit loops off to the quietest table I could find. Despite the fact that breakfast was the quietest meal of the day, there was always at least a little bit of chatter.
“Fruit loops for eggs,” a guy named Terry called out as he walked around between tables with his tray. “I got fruit loops for eggs.”
He’d try to make eye contact with the newest people in the pod. “Fruit loops for eggs?” he’d raise an eyebrow. Each day it seemed like the deal he offered was worse than the last, but in the end it seemed like he’d always find someone to take him up on it.
“Nobody gonna take you up on that, Fat Terry,” said Griffin. “Sit it on down.”
But Cornwhistle proved Griffin wrong. “Eh, I gotchu Terry. Over here,” he called out.
“There’s always one!” boomed Terry as he walked over to Cornwhistle with some new excitement in his step. His big hand reached down to grab the two hard boiled eggs from Cornwhistle’s tray at the same time as Cornwhistle was scooping the fruit loops off of Terry’s tray with his spoon.
There’s always one, what? I thought. One sucker?
“You don’t know if you don’t ask,” Terry remarked defensively toward Griffin as he returned to his seat.
“I guess you right then,” said Griffin.
Breakfast continued until — one by one — people would finish eating, return their trays to the tray cart, and then head back to their cells to go back to bed. This was the only time of day that the pod was mostly quiet — the time of day that I enjoyed the most. It was then that I noticed Prairie was looking at me from the card table across the pod. Sitting on the table in front of her was a full bag of coffee, and I remembered that she owed me a cup.
I carried my empty cup over to her table, and she scooped two spoonfuls of freeze-dried coffee into my cup as a greeting.
“Two scoops?” I asked. “I only gave you one the other day.”
“Two for one is how we do it in here,” she said.
“Oh ok,” I wasn’t going to argue. “Hey, I noticed you’re always up in the morning, but you don’t eat breakfast. What’s up with that?”
“I give my breakfast tray to Griffin every day,” she answered.
I tried to figure out why in my head. Does he buy her food? Does he threaten her and just take it?
She could read the quizzical look on my face, and so she elaborated.
“Griffin’s a big motherfucker,” she said. “I, personally, am not that hungry in the mornings, but big motherfuckers are. So one of the things I do whenever I go into a new pod, is find the big motherfucker and offer him my breakfast trays in exchange for his protection. He doesn’t have to be my friend or hang out with me or anything like that. But if someone wants to bully me, he’s got my back.”
“Ok ok, makes sense,” I said. “Guess I have to get my weight up then if I want a double breakfast for myself. Hey, where’s Cornwhistle? Did he go back to bed?”
“He’s sick,” was Prairie’s reply.
“Sick? He seemed perfectly healthy to me when he wanted those extra fruit loops.”
“Fruit loops are comfort food. Easier to stomach than those plain hard boiled eggs,” Prairie said. “He’s not sick sick, he’s just depressed. I think he got some bad news from his lawyer.”
“Oh damn,” I said. “I guess we’ll play cards some other time then.”
After a short walk to put the extra coffee away and heat up a cup for myself, I returned to Prairie’s table. She was watching the Crocodile Hunter on Animal Planet with no audio.
“I wish I had a radio so I could hear all the crikeys,” she said. The tv audio was broadcast on an AM radio frequency and could be listened to with a radio and headphones. It cost a bit of money to purchase a radio from commissary though. Now that I knew she couldn’t afford a radio, I felt a little bad taking that extra cup of coffee from her.
“What are you in for?” I asked.
“My fifth fuckin’ DUI,” she said. “This one’s a felony, so I got 3 years for it. Plus I have to do a rehab program at the state penitentiary. I’m hopin’ they send me there soon so I can get the hell out of here.”
I was a little shocked. “Five DUIs!?” I said, “you didn’t put a cab driver on speed dial after the fourth one?”
“I don’t give a fuck,” she said. “This is how I live. I drink and I steal. And sometimes I drive drunk. The judge won’t let me legally change my name, so I have to put Charles down on my job applications. Every time I walk into an interview, they look at me and go ‘Uh, Charles?’ and I have to explain to them that I’m trans. It’s embarrassing! Why can’t I just put Prairie down on my job applications and walk in like a woman? I even hired a lawyer to petition the court for a name change, but the judge said that with my record he didn’t want to create,” she made little air quotes with her hands, “confusion in the courts.”
“Fuck him!” she continued. “So I can’t get a job, I’ll just take what I want then.”
“Sounds like some bullshit,” I said.
At that moment the pod door opened and in walked one of the sergeants on duty.
“Tweet tweet!” someone whistled from somewhere. “They in here!”
Prairie got up from her seat and approached the sergeant. I sipped my coffee and enjoyed some silent Crocodile Hunter until she returned.
“What was that about?” I asked.
“Damn! You’re awful nosy today,” she said.
“My bad, just makin’ conversation.”
“Well I don’t know if you noticed, but I don’t have a cellie right now. That means that on any given day they can put someone in there with me. For me, it’s hard being paired up with a random stranger. I was just asking the sergeant if they were doing any movement today and he said no, so I’m good for another day at least.”
“You ask him that every day?” I asked
“Yea,” she said. “That’s why I get up in the mornings, so I can catch him making his rounds when everyone else is sleeping. Yesterday he told me I can choose a cellie from in here if I wanted to. I was gonna ask Cornwhistle but, like I said, he’s sick.”
She paused for a moment.
“What about you?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” I said. “You want me to be your cellie?”
“I mean, you seem safe enough. You’re clean. You keep to yourself. You don’t get involved in any of that bullshit in here. It ain’t like I’m asking you to go out with me.”
I thought for a moment and didn’t see anything wrong with it.
So I said, “yea whatever. I don’t care.”
“Ok!” she said excitedly. She jumped out of her seat again to catch the sergeant just as he was about to leave the pod. I couldn’t hear them talking, but she pointed at me. The sergeant gave me an inquiring look and I shot him a nod and a thumbs up. Then he left and Prairie sat back down.
“That’s a relief,” she said. “Next time there’s movement he said he’ll put you in my cell. Might be tomorrow or the day after.”
I wasn’t quite sure what I had gotten myself into, but the next morning when I woke up to get my breakfast tray, Prairie was gone. Shipped off to prison in the middle of the night.
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