Tim Curran - Fear Me

Soon as Romero saw the new meat, he knew there was going to be trouble. He felt it down in his guts, something cold and inexplicable that just started chewing through him. You were sitting on ten years hard time and wouldnt see parole for another three, you got real good at spotting trouble. Knowing how it smelled, how it walked, and how it talked.

The sergeant hack, Jorgensen, brought the new meat in, said, Here you go, Romero, we got you a new cellmate. Hes young and pure, dont go dirtying him up. Jorgensen thought that was funny, took the kid by the arm and pushed him at Romero. Hes all yours now, dont break him.

Then Jorgensen stepped out and the cell door slid closed. He went on his merry way, twirling his stick, laughing with the other hacks, looking for cons to hassle and heads to crack.

Romero just stood there, giving the new meat the look. You did enough time, you got real good at the look. This was Romeros second stretch. Hed already done five years at Brickhaven for grand theft and an illegal weapons charge when he was twenty. Now he was forty, doing a dime for aggravated assault and battery of a police officer, staring down the long tunnel at the light flickering at the end. Romero wanted to feel that light on him real bad, on his face and hands, making things glow inside him where there had only been darkness for too long.

What he didnt need was this skinny little boy fucking things up for him.

You got a name, Cherry? Romero put to him, crossing his muscular forearms over his chest, letting the kid see the jailhouse tats on them. Letting him know right off that he was a ballbuster, a hardtimer that would bite out your eyes and fuck your skull if you got in his way.

Danny, Danny Palmquist, the kid said.

Romero shook his head. Candy-ass name like that. Palmquist. Damn, the cons were going to eat that up with their bare hands. Good, Danny, Ill call you Cherry. You got a problem with that, Cherry?

Little shit didnt have anything to say to that. Just stood there in the corner, that lost puppy hang-dog look on his face. But then, Romero knew, thats what guys like Danny Palmquist were: hang-dog puppies.

Jesus, look at the kid.

Not more than 56, 57, maybe 140 pounds, more meat on a taco than this one. The cons were probably already arm-wrestling to see who got to pop his puppy ass first. Sickening. Just a skinny little nothing. Size didnt always matter-some of the meanest pricks behind those walls were little guys with shivs and acid attitudes-but you could see that Danny Palmquist was a zero. He wouldnt be able to defend himself, which made him prey. Within 48 hours, he was going to be somebodys punk old lady.

Romero was hard.

Before he took this fall, hed worked the streets, pushed coke and junk, stole cars, busted skulls, even had himself a few bodies out there. A life like that made a guy ready for the joint. Made him lean, mean, ready to bust if you looked at him the wrong way. But this kid? No, he didnt have any streets on him. He was small town, junior glee-club material. Probably pissed himself when the local bully gave him a shove. There was just nowhere for a guy like that in a maximum security joint. Blacks would sniff out ve d sniffhis sugar-ass. If they didnt, spics would take him. Shit, cons his own color-bikers and Aryan Brothers-theyd be all over him, be selling his ass first thing you knew.

He needed somebody to watch over him, protect him.

But he wasnt tough enough for the ABs, Skinheads, or redneck whiteboy traffickers. No gang would touch a cherry like that. And Romero? He had his own problems.

He sat on his bunk, lit a cigarette. Youre on top, Cherry.

But the kid didnt move. What you in for? he asked.

Stupid little peckerwood. What you in for? Kid saw too many prison movies, James Cagney and shit. Like I said, Romero told him. Youre on top.

I guess you dont like to talk much.

Romero gave him the look. Shut your pisshole, Cherry. You dont, Ill shove something in there, shut it for you. You know what Im saying to you?

The kid did.

The second day.

The kid was still a virgin and still hadnt been extorted, but it wouldnt last. Out in the yard, all the cons were watching him, smelling that new meat, wondering whose punk he was going to be.

Wasnt going to be long, Romero knew.

First, theyd take his food in the mess hall, then theyd throw him a beating out in the yard, maybe try to rape him in the laundry or showers. Thats how it would begin. Pressure would build. Cons would get randy like starving dogs circling a fresh, juicy bone. Decide who was going to get the first bite. Then some ballbuster would come along, tell Palmquist that hed protect him for money. Didnt matter where he got it-mother, father, sister, brother, priest-long as he got it. And if he couldnt get it? Then hed be a punk for some hardtimer, sucking the guys dick and bending over for him. Because thats how it worked inside: You werent part of a gang or tough enough to do your own fighting, somebody had to do it for you.

And it never came free.

Not at Shaddock Valley.

It was a real hard-time sort of hole. You locked up thousands of guys like animals for months and years, pretty soon even the good ones lost their humanity and showed their teeth. It was a grim, gray concrete world where you buried hope with the biggest shovel you could find and yourself with it. Violent guards, bad food, cramped conditions, loneliness, frustration. Hot in the summer, like an icebox in the winter. Bugs. Rats. Throw into the mix dehumanizing treatment and the constant invasion of privacy, the degradation of strip searches and cavity searchesit took away what was left. Then all you had were predators and prey. Guys with tattoos and dead eyes wandering the yard, sniffing around the block, looking for the stragglers, the weak ones, anything they could bring down, sink their teeth into that wouldnt bite back.

The inmates at Shaddock robbed each other, fought each other, pushed drugs and booze, smuggled porno and contraband, sometimes even women. They killed for money and sometimes for free. They made weapons and stabbed each other, beat each other, raped each other, murdered each other, snitched on each other. Most of them had absolutely nothing to lose. Shaddock was a bubbling, seething cauldron flavored by the very worst society had to offer-bullies and rapists, serial killers and racists, Jesus freaks and gangsters, psychopaths and fanatics-only in there it was compressed, localized, compacted behind barbwire and high stone walls. Refined, if you will, into a toxic brew that stank like shit and body odor, vomit and pain and blackness and you could smell it the moment they processed you through.

End of the line.

And in such a place, a guy like Danny Palmquist didnt stand a chance.

You dont say much, do you?

Romero was laying on his bunk before lights out, trying to read a book about some guy surviving in Antarctica. He liked books like that because he understood survival real well. Why dont you shut the fuck up, Cherry?

The kid sighed, sitting at the little desk against the cement block wall, staring at those bars. Just saying, shit, were locked up together, might as well pass the time.

Listen, Cherry. I aint trying to get in your asshole or slit your throatwhy dont you be happy with that?

Im just saying we could talk.

Romero didnt want that, didnt want nothing to do with the little bastard. You talked to a guy, then you started feeling like he was your friend. And when that happened, y heou felt like you had to take care of him.

And I dont need that, he thought, I really dont.

Thing was, Romero wasnt sure that this is what was bothering him about the kid. That hed have to fight his battles for him. There was something else, something about the kid he just didnt like only he wasnt sure what it was.