First chapter of a story

Carcer

The story of Adam Johnson was destined not to end well; but neither were the stories of the other ten hundred and ninety four forgettable bastards at this facility. We all had names, stories, fears, first kisses, but now more than anything else, we had crimes. Because of those crimes there were numbers and letters; Adam’s was 094-AJSN. He used to joke that it was a barcode, like he was some can of food in the local grocery store.

“See this number?” He’d smirk a smile so wide you’d assume he was half retarded.

“ Put it into a register I bet the price would come up vehicular manslaughter. And if we scanned your code it say…?”

“Derek Pons, Assault with a deadly weapon, possession of an illegal firearm and resisting arrest.”

“Welcome to the real world Derek.”

That’s how I met Adam Johnson, with a firm nod. Under the steel grey sky as we stood on old concrete watching the other convicts, pretend their life were meaningful. That every cigarette they traded, each dirty picture they cranked one out to, and every bench pressed pound made them just as normal as everyone else.

Adam got to me early. It had only been a week on the inside and I was already starting to unravel. The first and only morning I distinctly remember is my first day on the inside. I was terrified of what was to come, the gravel shifted under my feet as the steel gates towered high above me as to meet the parting dark skies above Attica. Once inside I could feel the sharpened stares of the inmates, following me, searching for something, maybe something they wanted. Whatever it was it was lost somewhere amongst the steel grated floors, and the collection of souls locked away behind those iron bars. From then the day became night, and so the cycle came not in hours, but in sunrise, sunset. Day breaks and the cell gates open and the rest is a blur, a blur until the night falls. At night you can hear the stone walls bleed the sounds of collective broken spirits wailing , wailing for a life that was. That’s when I realized jail was nothing like they would have you think. It’s not the conflict that breaks you. It’s the loneliness. It’s the silence. It’s the sound of breathing at night that will bring you to the edge. Thank God Adam caught me from falling off.

Adam grew up in Hauppauge, NY and for most of his life he managed, by what he deemed a miracle, to stay out of trouble. Adam was of average height, with long jet black hair that hid most of his pale thinned face wrought with experience. Adam first and foremost was an incessant talker and relentless cynic, but moreover than that he was a procurer of rare and needed objects on the inside. Ever since I met him he had been the importer of contraband for most if not all the inmates. Anything from cigarettes to the Holy Bibles and Quran, perhaps Adam’s ability to please most of the cattle of the prison was in his education. He went to Johns Hopkins school of nursing for two years under the pressures of his parents Dan and Mitzi which slowly began to dissipate before his junior year as his mother and father went through a relatively abrupt and ugly divorce. By the second semester of his Junior year, Adam had already made up his mind that proper schooling was no longer for him. For Adam more important than his formal teaching he learned at Hopkins was what he learned shortly thereafter, when he moved to West 127^th street in Harlem. Much to the chagrin of his family he was convinced that the transition was needed for the next phase of his life. The only thing that moved forward, however, was his Chevrolet Cavalier through a stop sign and over the abdomen of a fourteen-year-old boy who died two hours later from internal bleeding in the ER.

“The prosecutor gets up there with this big blown up picture of this kid, in his 8^th grade graduation shit right, walks past each juror. Starts looking at each of them in the eye and starts spouting off shit, with his chest poked out like this saying: ‘Darnell was an A+ student; he loved his family and his friends, and he aspired to play second base for the Mets. He had a future until Mister Johnson took Darnell’s future in his own hands. Now you have the chance to at least do the same for him and bring forth some justice out of all this.’ So immediately I start thinking ‘man am I fucked sideways.’ Then I really start thinking, If I’m going to jail at least I took a Mets fan out of the equation. Does that make me a bad person, Ponsy?”

“Yes. Yes it does, Ant.”

“You know I hate that nickname right?”

“Yes. Yes I do, Ant.”

“Then why use it?”

“Because I know you hate it.”

“Touché.”

That was the highest brow conversation we would ever have, and I was fine with that. It simultaneously cut through all the bullshit of outside life and walked around all the eggshells you had to avoid keeping yourself from getting fucked or fucked up. I didn’t have anyone else in here but Adam, and I use to lie to myself that he didn’t either, although I knew he did. He despised the thought of being one of the guys who lived for the mail even though Mitzi sent a letter every Friday.

“Six days of wondering whether it not got there, a day hoping they read it, then another twelve days hoping they write back and that it gets here. I think I rather not be one of those people. I guess that’s why I bother you all the fucking time.” He would tell me, but I didn’t mind it though.

As a child, I did not have the comfort of Adam’s privileges, I was born to a fractured but relatively unbroken home in Northern Philadelphia on 71^st and Lafayette streets. I knew the darker side of the dealings, I saw the users obtain their fixes of the cracks of the pavement; heating cheaply manufactured baking soda cut with cocaine on blackened aluminum spoons. Perhaps that’s when I realized I needed to get away. I went to a school outside of the city, away from trouble in at the State University of New York at Cortland I graduated in the scheduled four years with a degree in accounting. None of which matters now, I was here and I was to remain here for as long as my sentence dictated.

In a place like this, time no longer has significance; it only takes two or three days to stop thinking about hours until lights off. After that it takes two weeks to stop counting the months and so on, and so on… Here it’s easy to forget about time, at least until your sentence starts seeming feasible to finish. Adam could start counting again. It was an ugly eight plus years for him and it was only four months until it was time for him to leave on good behavior. Once he started going to church, the parole board started saying he had remorse for what he had done.

The two of us every day would walk into the chow hall, and sit on the steel benches that were just as cold as the New York winters outside. Adam loved the cafeteria food they served us, and would lap it up like one of those starving Somalians on TV. I never liked the shit they gave us though It smelled to much like the crap in the toilets that wafted in the air a couple of hours later.

“The shit looks good today doesn’t it Ponsy?”

“It looks the same everyday. Cold Chicken and cold beans”

“Where’s an attitude like that going to get you?”

“Hopefully out of here in five years.”

“Or back in here in five years.”

“Optimistic.”

“Yeah aren’t I, speaking of which you ever going to tell me what got you in here Ponsy?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Actually, probably not.”

“You’re some piece of sh—“

The force of an intentional, unintentional elbow interrupted him as the throbbing pain lingered in the back of his neck.

“Hey! Watch it asshole!” he said as he rubbed his head quizzically. “Jesus, the people in here huh?”

He muttered to me while pointing his thumb in the general direction of everyone. We laughed it off and we ate every piece of crap they threw on our trays.

Everything was fine, or as fine as they could be inside a correctional facility chow hall. The all familiar buzzer sounded bringing us all to a slow rise. Funneling towards the tray return I couldn’t help but wonder, “What am I gonna do when you finally get sprung out of here huh?” I joked, but with no response.

Suddenly I could hear the sound of wheezing covered by the collision of a plastic and metal. I turned and looked into the face of Adam who was clasping his neck and staring into my eyes. Blood was straining through his fingers onto the collar of his shirt as he dropped to the floor next to a sharpened piece of blood stained bedpost.

I screamed for help into the crowd, but not one person cared what happened. In the distance I could hear the guards shouting something unintelligible, but all I wanted to hear was Adam. I wanted to hear something, about how much he hated the Mets, or about the food, anything. Anything but the sound of loneliness scraping against my ears.

The medical staff tore me away and took him away in seconds. I visited him in the infirmary later that night, he was laying there with a blank stare and a bleached face, his heart rate dropping steadily. His eyes opened widely, as he gargled something unintelligible through his throat. “I just came here to tell you something.” I responded, he nodded his head forward as much as his wound would allow. “After I got out of college, I moved in with my girlfriend of three years, who was living in Buffalo at the time. One night after work I came home a little early to surprise her with something, and the door was unlocked. So I went upstairs and found her lying in bed with another man.” I was choking up at this point “Anyway, I look at her in her eyes and she mouthed something along the lines of ‘I didn’t want to hurt you.’ So I took it upon myself to take the closest thing to me and start screaming and swinging.” I could feel tears welling in my eyes as I scratched out one painful memory after another. “I kept thinking to myself, she couldn’t hurt me if I was hurting them, they can’t hurt me if I was—“

An all too damning sound of Adam’s ECG flat-lining sent a team of nurses into the infirmary. Then they sprinted to his side and huddled around him screaming obscenities and medical jargon, slowly amongst the noise and panic he faded away. That was the last I saw of Adam Johnson.

I could still smell and feel the blood soaking my hands. I cried until my throat burned and tore at my hair until I couldn’t feel anymore. Above me in my bunk I could hear the sound of grunting as I assumed my cellmate had a hard time masturbating over the sound of my whimpering, and so it goes. Adam was dead, and I was alone.