The heavy thud of the cell door banging shut behind me barely dissipated from my mind when the hunger pangs struck. I’d been an involuntary guest of Madison

 

Correctional for less than six hours and was I was already starving.

My cellmate, Taz, moved about in stark contrast to how I felt. With ear buds in and Metallica jamming his voice shrieked as he belted out lyrics. Shit, I muttered. I’ve got 50 more years of this?

I don’t remember what Taz was locked up for, but what I do remember is that his hands shoveled chips to his mouth without a care in the world. Ruffles BBQ Chips to be exact.

Like a bird on a branch I peered down upon him from the top bunk. I had no money. All my worldly possessions remained crammed into the short netted bag at the end of the bunk. None of it was food.

“You want chip?” Taz shouted through broken English. His hand thrust the black and red bag to within my reach. I hesitated. My stomach yowled.

I snatched a handful.

Taz reminded me of the Painted Man in Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. Tatted gazes of loved ones time stole from him sprang life-like from his arms. Scaly red/green dragons clawed across his chest. Mermaids hauled back thick chains restraining toothy eels on either leg. He was a sight to behold.

In the days that followed I discovered no one from the outside supported Taz financially, yet he lived like a king. How, I wondered, was this possible?

Each night when 10PM came about Taz eyed the guard’s post from within the cell. The moment the guard departed and a new one came on shift he sprang to action. His hands moved deliberately filling small pill bottle caps with colored liquids. He slid the cell chair into the corner, dropped into it and waited.

Rat-tat! Rat-tat! Taz clicked open the cell door and two expected guests flowed in. His ‘customer’ was Cali from down the range, the other Taz’s “six-five,” of whom is a lookout, who took up position in the dim shadow of the corner of the cell.

The hypnotic whir of the homemade tattoo gun became familiar rhythm. Fashioned from throw away parts of everyday junk; motor from cassette player; the empty tube of click pen, sharpened section of guitar string and he was in business. The secret to his comfortable prison life.

Taz freehanded work from memory. If you could think it, Taz brought it to life. Soaring eagles flashing razor talons; skull with crossbones; and even some of the dumbest stuff I’ve ever seen but you wouldn’t catch me dead with. “Anything customer need,” he had once said.

I suppose this was one reason why cons sought and respected him. The other reason? Taz had hands. He reminded me of that movie character in a fight scene. Soft spoken diminutive fellow, but try him and you would live to regret it. He would even warn you before hand, “You not want this” words that fell deaf to the dumb who took him at face value. We who knew him sat back and enjoyed the street fighting tutorial which inevitably followed.

Taz not withstanding, this didn’t solve MY problems. My account balance read zero. I had no one from the outside supporting me. Friends fled like field mice, and family disowned me in anger and disappointment.

At the time I earned $17 a month slaving the unit scrubbing toilets. From morning to evening I mopped up after men who couldn’t hit the urinal if their life depended upon it, scrubbed all manner of DNA from toilet seats and the floor. Each time when I considered this being my existence for the next several decades I weighed clocking out of life altogether. Let the world win. Maybe I’d get lucky and be able to start over as a tiger or shark somewhere.

My stomach constantly ached. During count-times I fought hunger pangs while listening to Taz devour bags of junk. He was like a honey badger in the neighbour’s trashcan feasting!

At commissary every dime of my 17 bucks went toward hygiene for the month. If I was fortunate I would have enough for a bag of chips after spending my slaved earnings. I once made a bag of chips stretch all month. It sucked ass.

“Hey man,” Taz suddenly said one afternoon. “You hungry?” He angled the cell chair into the corner and arranged caps of colored liquids on the metal desk.

“What? Hungry? No,” I said. Goddamn I WAS hungry.

“Taz help you.” The motor on the homemade tattoo gun whirred to life like a dentist’s drill. He clicked it off.

“I can’t draw.”

“No man. You not draw.”

“Okay, well what do you suggest?”

“You smart. You very smart”—his finger pointed, tapped at the side of his head—” You help me with my legal work I help you.”

“I don’t know.” I was horrified Taz thought I was smart enough to be a lawyer. “I don’t know anything about the law.”

“No!” He grumbled. “You not have to. You type. I do everything, you take and type and make good for me.”

Rat-tat! Rat-tat! Taz allowed the first customer in. Behind him followed the day’s six five.

“Okay,” I said.

Taz gave an approving grin. The tattoo gun whirred to life and the six five faded faded into the shadows in the corner of the cell…

The next day I found myself in the law library with Taz’s chicken scrawled letter to his judge as to why he should be released early. I read it thoroughly and shook my head. You kidding me? I griped to myself. The damn thing reads like some five year old! I skulked down into the bucket seat of the plastic chair.

The clock ticked dumbly onward. Eternity passed.

I sat up again. The cursor to the Word document flashed impatiently. You can do this Chris, I encouraged myself. I forced out the entire letter onto the screen exactly as Taz wrote it. Then, I went through and stitched together sentences from the broken English; crafted paragraphs out of the sentences; and created purpose to the paragraphs. Done! With document in hand I struck out to find Taz.

The cell door banged shut behind me.

Taz glanced up and the whirring of the tattoo gun died off. I held the paper up to him. He wiped his hands and carefully took the letter.

I stood holding my breath. The wild pounding of my heart thundered in my ears.

“This good,” he said, to the letter. “This good!” The smile cracked across his face until it overtook everything. “This good!” He offered the letter to his customer, shared it with the six five lookout. “You do good job Moni,” he said, calling me by my nickname which is a play on my last name. The other guys echoed this sentiment.

I exhaled.

Taz paid 20 dollars for that letter. Twenty-dollars! I made a month’s worth of pay for five hours of work. Unexpectedly, word traveled. I suddenly had convicts seeking me to type letters for them, and to help fill out standard forms. Within the month I had more business than I had time to fill requests.

“I quit,” I told my unit manager.

“You quit what?” He said bemused.

“I quit my porter job.”

The chin jiggled through his laughter. “You can’t just quit. This isn’t the street young man.”

“I don’t care–I still quit.”

“Ex-cuse me?”

“I said, ‘I quit.'”

“You’ll do your job or I’ll throw you in the hole!”

“Fine. You’ll still need to find someone to replace me. I’ll still have quit.”

Behind the desk the exhausted leather chair creaked beneath the sudden shift in weight. Beady eyes lit upon me from within the round Pudge of flesh. The unlit tobacco price pressed in between thick lips. This happened whenever he was angry or thinking. He never smoked from it. At least, none of us ever witnessed it if he did.

He uncradled the phone handset and I steeled myself. I assumed he was calling for the Yard Dogs to cuff me and drag me off to the hole.

“Hi, Beth, it’s Stanley,” he said, into the mouthpiece. “I’ve got Monihan here in front of me and he says he’s tired of being a porter. Uh,huh. Yeah. Have you had any problems out of him? I see. Thank you.” He cradled the handset.

“You’re on the reclass list,” he said to me. “When you go to reclass you can choose another job. Now get the hell out of my office.”

Back at the cell. I perched atop the bunk, peering down at Taz like a bird in a branch. I dug another fistful from the bag of Ruffles BBQ chips between my legs. I fished a can of Coke from the netted bag of food at the end of the bunk to wash the saltiness down.

The tattoo gun whirred.

*This story first appeared on 31 March 2024 on Minutes Before Six at minutesbeforesix.com. https://minutesbeforesix.com/wp/the-unexpected-hustle/Christopher’s writings have also appeared in Prison Journalism Project.

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