Chapter 6 - Locked in a Cell
Day 22 - Midday
I sat on my bunk and stared at the wall, not sure what to do with myself. Propped up against the wall was Saget’s photo board. In the center was his girlfriend’s face smiling sweetly — a newborn baby in her arms. I felt like I was invading his privacy by looking at it, but the only other thing to see was a wall of painted cinderblocks. I felt a tickle in my nose and I was on the verge of a sneeze when Saget started to yell.
“Hey Scout, what are you doing!?”
He was standing up against the locked cell door looking out.
“Oh, your cellie’s taking a shit? Ahhhh ha ha,” he pointed out the cell window while laughing. The doors were pretty much soundproof, so he dropped down to his belly to yell through the crack between the door and the floor.
“I bet it fuckin’ stinks in there! Tell him to put some water on it!”
It was noon and we had just returned to our cells for the afternoon lockdown period. The morning rec period was about 4 hours long and ended with lunch. Many people, including Saget, slept through the rec period until lunch, and now they were full of energy.
While Saget continued yelling through the door, I was still fighting back a sneezing fit.
I wish I had my allergy meds.
I slid my property box out from under the bunk and dug around a bit until I found a little bottle of saline nasal spray that I had ordered from commissary. It wasn’t medicine, but I figured it was worth a try.
I stuck the bottle into a nostril and squeezed while breathing in. The saline spray went all the way through my nasal passage and landed on my tongue. It tasted awful and I immediately started coughing.
Saget jumped up from the floor, turned toward me, and said, “yo, you alright?”
I blew my nose into some toilet paper and threw it in the toilet while continuing to cough a bit.
“Yea,” I said. “Just used some of that nasal spray. Shit’s disgusting. It landed on the back of my tongue.”
“Oh ho ho,” Saget said. “You won’t be able to snort cocaine then. That shit does the same thing. And it tastes a lot worse than that nasal spray, I guarantee it!”
I gave him a questioning look. I wanted my allergy attack to stop, I didn’t want to have a snorting competition.
“You could probably do molly though,” he continued. “In fact, you should definitely do molly. That’s my drug of choice. You can stay up all night dancin’ at the club. It’s a blast.” He started shaking his shoulders and dancing around the cell a bit.
“Is that why you’re in here? Possession?” I asked through my stuffy nose.
“No,” he said. “Burglary. You seen in the newspapers people buying cartons of cigarettes here and then driving them over to Port City to sell? A single pack costs double in Port City.”
“Yea, I’ve seen that. Is that you?”
“Oh, no. I got caught trying to steal cigarettes from Big Johns. The little gas station outside of town,” he said.
“Oh. And then you were gonna sell them?”
“That was the plan. Got caught on my 19th birthday too,” he lamented.
“Seems like a hard way to earn a living,” I commented. “A lot of work and a lot of risk for a small payoff.”
“Psh,” he said dismissively. “You got kids?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t know what it’s like to not have any money to buy diapers,” he said.
“True.” I paused for effect, “I also don’t know what it’s like to spend all my money on molly,” I said.
He snapped his head back at that and gave me a sideways glance with a smile. The kind of face that said, “you caught me.”
“Well anyway,” Saget continued. “I’m trying to change. My baby momma’s father is the pastor at a church. He’s been real helpful. When we first found out she was pregnant we wanted an abortion, but he convinced us to keep the baby. He said he’d help us when we needed it, and I’ve been going to church on Sundays to try to do my part.”
“Oh, ok. Cool,” I said. I reached into my property box and pulled out a brand new bible. “Where should I start?”
“You should read the book of Matthew,” he said. “And you should go to church here! They got services on Wednesday nights. The pastor who leads it is real cool. He’s done some time before.”
A lot of people would leave the pod on Wednesday evenings for church and it would be pretty quiet in the pod for an hour or two. I had considered going, but I really enjoyed the quiet pod on those nights.
Maybe I’ll go next time to see what it’s all about.
“AH CHOO.”
The nasal spray wasn’t helping at all. But my allergy attack got me thinking of the CO the other day who had the large can of pepper spray on her hip. OC spray is what Saget had called it.
I feel like I’ve just been sprayed with whatever’s in that can.
“What’s OC spray?” I asked Saget.
“It’s like pepper spray, but ten times worse,” he said. “Yea, that shit’ll fuck you up. I’ve only ever seen them use it to break up fights. Even if it’s just a little dust up, they’ll empty the can on your ass. That shit’s no joke either. You go blind if it gets in your eyes; snot pours out of your mouth, your nose, your ears; and you can’t breathe at all so you start coughing and gagging. Feels like you’re suffocating. And then they slap the cuffs on you, yoke you up, and throw you in the hole with no shower and no sympathy. Takes hours to get back to normal.”
I gave Saget a good look from head to toe. He had a short faded haircut — a bit longer on the top and tapering down to very short on the sides. The kind of haircut you had to pay extra for in here. He had a tattoo on his forearm that said, “destined for greatness,” in a fancy script. And he was very thin. He didn’t look like someone who would do well in a fight.
“When did you experience that?” I asked him.
“In juvie,” he answered, but before he could elaborate he was interrupted by a loud POP, and the cell door swung open.
“SAGET!” yelled one of the COs from the pod. “Go down to booking.”
Saget pulled his green scrub shirt on over his white t-shirt and walked out. I poked my head out of the cell. A fat CO sitting at the desk looked me in the eye and yelled, “lock it back down!”
I closed the door and enjoyed complete privacy for the first time in weeks. Well... almost. A COs face would still appear occasionally in the window of the cell door when they made their rounds.
About a half hour later, I was startled from my nap with another loud POP, when in walked Saget. He began talking quickly and loudly.
“These motherfuckers got some nerve!” he said. “Someone broke into my baby momma’s church and stole money from the safe. And they’re tryin’ to say I did it!”
He began pacing the length of the cell. He was breathing loudly.
“They pointed to my tattoo and said they got that on the security camera footage. Psh, I told ‘em that was bullshit. If they had evidence then they wouldn’t be here looking for a confession. So I told ‘em to fuck off and talk to my lawyer.”
“Did you do it?” I asked.
He turned to me with an angry look and shouted, “Fuck no!”
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