The Jodi Picoult Collection #3 Read online

“Man, we just flowin’ . . .” Blue Loc replies.

  Elephant Mike knocks the ball out of Clutch’s hands. “Go wash up. You ain’t touching me with those hands until you scrub off the spook that’s all over you.”

  The ball bounces toward Concise, but I intercept it. I toss it quickly at Clutch, who automatically catches it and goes for the three-point shot. When it swishes through the net, he grins, the first time I have seen the kid smile in three days.

  “It’s a game,” I say. “Let him rotate in.”

  Blue Loc comes forward. “You talkin’ to me?”

  Concise turns to him. “Yo, lay offa da pipe, cuzz. Jus’ let’s go.”

  The play resumes, harder and faster. The detention officer goes back to his spot along the wall. When Elephant Mike walks away, Clutch looks at me. “Why did you stick up for me?”

  I shrug. “Because you didn’t do it yourself.”

  * * *

  Garnering respect is the same across races: Never break weak. Back the play of your brothers. Never let a woman in on the real deal. Stand strong in the face of adversity. Get one over on the system at every opportunity.

  Have heart.

  Keep your word, because it’s the only thing you’ve got in here.

  * * *

  Concise is testing his hooch. As far as I can tell, he has several different bottles in various stages of fermentation; I suppose this way he can be sure of a steady income. “Do you ever think about what’s going on outside?” I ask.

  He looks over his shoulder. “I know what’s goin’ on outside. Bunch of fools watching ESPN and gettin’ in each other’s business.”

  “I mean outside outside. In the real world.”

  Concise sits down, his arms balanced on his knees. “This is the real world, cuzz. Why you think we keep comin’ back to it?”

  Before I can answer, Clutch appears in the entry to our cell. He is holding a bottle of shampoo and quivering from head to toe. “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  He looks like he is going to throw up. “I can’t,” he blurts out, and suddenly I see Elephant Mike standing behind him.

  Mike grabs the bottle from Clutch and squeezes, so that human feces sprays all over me. “You want to be a nigger so bad, rub this into your skin.”

  It is in my hair, my mouth, my eyes. I gasp, trying to breathe around the awful smell of it, wiping it off me and then holding out my hands, covered with shit. Concise jumps Elephant Mike, as the detention officers rush into the cell. They pull Concise off Mike and throw him down into the mess on the floor. “Stupid move, Concise,” the officer yells. “You’re one D away from being reclassified into close custody.”

  Another detention officer grabs my arm and steers me out of the cell. “You need to be decontaminated,” she says. “I’ll bring you stripes.” I turn around and see, over my shoulder, the first guard shove his knee into Concise’s back to handcuff him.

  They think Concise did this to me, I realize—a black guy trying to make his white cellie so unhappy that he’d beg to be transferred out. They assume that Elephant Mike, the same race as me, is there because he’s come to my rescue.

  “Wait,” I say, as the guard pulls me away. “Mike did it!”

  Concise, hauled to his feet, swings a heavy head toward me. His eyes are slitted; his jaw clenched.

  “Ask Clutch,” I call out, and as I am shoved toward the shower, I see the boy’s head turn at the sound of his name.

  * * *

  These are the words we use to refer to one another: Forty Ounce, Baby G, Buddha, C Bone. Half Dead, Deuce, Trigga, Tastee Freak. Preacher, Snowman, Floater, Alley Cat, Huero, Demon, Little Man, Tavo, Thumper. Bow Wow, Pinhead, Boo Boo, Ichabod. Chicago Bob, Pit Bull, Slim Jim, Die Hard.

  In jail, everyone reinvents himself. You would never call a guy by any name except the one he gives you. Otherwise, you might remind him of the person he used to be.

  * * *

  Afterward, there is a pall cast over the pod. At lights out there is hardly any conversation. Concise lies on the top bunk. “Mike’s on the loaf for a week,” he says.

  The loaf is a punishment, a severe form of disciplinary segregation. In addition to being separated and locked down and stripped of privileges, inmates are fed a brick of cuisine that has everything mashed into it—all food groups and a drink. It is the penalty for assaulting staff, for having a shank found on you, for throwing blood or bodily fluids.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  Concise rolls over. “Clutch backed you up. I figure he’s countin’ down the seven days along with Mike. Because on Day Eight you can bet he be gettin’ hammered.”

  In this society, telling the truth is not rewarded, but lying to the right people is.

  “The DO said that you could get reclassified,” I say after a minute.

  Concise sighs. “Yeah, well, whatever. They caught me cookin’ up some stuff a couple times when they tossed my cell.”

  To be moved into close custody is a bigger deal than he is letting on. Cellmates are housed alone and in lockdown for twenty-three hours a day, and worst of all, if you get convicted, the prison usually upholds whatever classification you had in jail.

  “First thing in the mornin’, you outta here,” Concise says. “Clutch got an extra bunk in his cell, now. I don’t need this grief.”

  A few minutes later, Concise begins to snore. I close my eyes and try to listen to the sounds in the jail. It takes me a while to realize what’s missing: For the first night since he’s been here, Clutch isn’t crying himself to sleep.

  * * *

  “Stripes!” Every morning we get a laundry call, the DO in charge swapping our towels and shorts or sheets or stripes for fresh replacements. As I walk down to the pod slider to make the exchange, I glance into Clutch’s cell and see him still asleep, curled on his side in bed with the blanket pulled up to his face. “Clutch,” I hear over the intercom. “Clutch, rise and shine.”

  When he doesn’t come out, the officer goes to his cell. “Clutch,” I hear the DO say, and then she calls for medical assistance.

  There is a lockdown while the paramedics come. They cannot perform CPR; it is impossible to dislodge the sock that Clutch has stuck so far down his throat. He is pronounced dead by one of the jail shrinks.

  They carry Clutch’s body past our cell on a stretcher. “What was his name?” I ask the EMTs, but they don’t answer. “What was his real name?” I yell. “Doesn’t anyone know his real name?”

  “Yo,” Concise says. “Sissinit, cuzz.”

  But I don’t want to calm down. I cannot stand the fact that, under different circumstances, that might have been me. Is Fate getting what you deserve, or deserving what you get?

  Concise glances at me. “He better off like that, believe me.”

  “It’s my fault.” I turn to him, tears in my eyes. “I told the DOs to talk to him.”

  “If it wasn’t you, it would have been someone else. Sometime else.”

  I shake my head. “How old was he? Seventeen, eighteen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why not? Why didn’t anyone ask him where he came from, or what he wanted to be when he grew up, or—”

  “Because we all know how the story end. Wit’ a sock down your throat or a bullet in your gut or a knife in your back.” Concise stares at me. “Some stories, they the ones no one want to hear.”

  I sink down on the bunk, because I know it is true.

  “You wanna know what happened to Clutch?” Concise says bitterly. “Once upon a time a baby boy was born in New York City. He didn’t know his daddy, who was locked up in the pen. His mama was a crack whore who moved him and his two sisters to Phoenix when he was twelve, and then OD’d two months later. His sisters shacked up with their boyfriends’ parents, and he hit the streets. The Park South Crips became his family. They fed him, clothed him, and one day when he was sixteen they let him in on the action when they sweet-talked a girl into having some fun, and they all took turns with her.