I just wanted to get through the school. The tests were easy. A 70 percent on anything passed. The challenge was the method of it all. Having Redneck Sergeant make me do pushups because of a wrinkle on my bed only to report to class fifteen minutes later for lessons on how to be the Man over killers of men confused me. I was not authorized to make the killers do pushups.
But Gnarly said, “Good and solid” about my punching.
~
THREE weeks in, Rugged-Lady Sergeant led a combat lesson. Two cadets posed as inmates. She said, “Step 1 for breaking up a fight: wait for backup.” Gorilla moved behind one fake inmate, she the other. Then she said, “Step 2: break them up.” And she pulled the one cadet’s head back so hard by his hair that he later complained of whiplash. Gorilla grabbed the other by the arms.
Then we were told to eat. So we ate.
Then we were told to report to the gas chamber. So we reported.
Then we were grouped together by fours and ordered into the gas chamber. So my group stepped in as ordered.
Redneck Sergeant wore a gas mask and pepper-sprayed us. It closed my lungs. I fought panic. Intimidating Sergeant, chiseled, tall, came in to taunt us. He wasn’t wearing a mask. He said that he was immune to pepper spray. Then he said, “Why you crying, cadets? You better sound off with ‘DOC proud!,’ cadets.”
Chocolate Thunder was standing next to me. He gagged once. Then puked on my sneakers. Intimidating Sergeant covered his mouth when he saw that. “Pepper spray I can take,” He said. “But not puking.”
I retched.
I wasn’t immune to anything.
We yelled, “DOC proud!” and left the chamber and I washed my sneakers off at the spigot and retched again.
Then we were ordered up to the shooting range to be teargassed. So we walked up to be gassed.
Sergeant Redneck popped a gas grenade and ordered us to walk through the smoke and breathe it.
We walked through holding our breath. We laughed. We defied the Man. We fake coughed to make it look painful.
Then we were told to clean up and have a good night. So we cleaned up and had a good night and I wondered if I was going to ever know what to do with myself once all the ordering stopped.
~
BACK in the gym for the partner baton drills, Gorilla walked the perimeter of the action massaging his eyelid that wouldn’t close. He leaned his head back and squeezed in an eye drop. He watched me for a few moves and said, “For a second there, I could have sworn I was watching Wesley Snipes.”
So I did it right? I asked.
“Different,” he said.
I slowed down after that.
Then Gorilla yelled out, “Lunch!” So we did lunch.
Meal-Line inmate spoke to me. He said, “You should take the bean paste.” That was the vegetarian meal of the day.
I looked around before asking, it’s good?
“Better than the seafood salad.”
I told him that I would take it then, and thanks.
Not that it made us brothers. But I had made contact. Inmates weren’t so alien. Inmates even spoke my language: food. The bean paste was good, as bad as it sounds. The sorry bastards around me ate their seafood salad sandwiches while trying to kill the taste with hot sauce.
~
UP on the shooting range we fired revolvers and shotguns. I was all over the target.
The range master, Sergeant Bad Haircut, told me, “When firing the pistol, visualize pushing the bullet toward the target.” It was martial arty and my shot group tightened right up. He cut his own hair to save money. He shaved the sides and back but left the top a red mop. I never saw him smile.
Gorilla told us, “This will get you jammed up: being too friendly, or too hard. Just be professional.” Haircut kept it professional.
One cadet couldn’t hit the target with a shotgun for all the visualization in the world. Haircut worked with him. But it didn’t help. Lieutenant Rice had to find that cadet. Kicked out. Another cadet failed the hazardous materials test three times and Rice found him. Another cadet showed up late to class four times and Rice found him. Another found Rice on his own and asked to leave. He said the whole job felt wrong.
~
GORILLA said, “Tell the inmate to pull his foreskin back. Give it a 360-degree visual inspection.” Which made me miss the bottle factory. I ran the label machine there. I fed it labels and glue, and it fed me. I could accept that. I prayed for hurricanes—bottled water sales triple during hurricanes—which meant overtime, which meant everything to a guy who charged his computer and a year and a half of college failure on his credit card. I felt communion with the labeler. We were comfortable. We did not inspect foreskins.
But it paid me to be poor.
~
OUR uniforms came in garbage bags. Monday of week five we wore them. The nametag read, “CO1 B. Langston.” My label. Meal-Line inmate laughed when he saw me. He said, “You’re all official and shit now.” Then asked, “Tater tots, CO?”
~
GORILLA showed my class the type of keepers he preferred. Keepers are clips that attach to a guard’s belt. You clip your key rings to them. He liked the cheap all-metal kind. His used to be black, but the paint had chipped off and all that was left was grayish metal. “It does the job. Nothing more,” he said.
Keeper is also jail speak for guard.
~
ON graduation day, Gorilla said, “Forget everything I said.”
I locked in every word.
My class graduated outside under the cherubs, and everyone got a certificate. Then we put away the folding chairs and made room for class 616, which would be coming in less than forty-eight hours. It was Friday. All the sergeants were there, those seven warriors working for Rice and maybe something else that I hadn’t learned to identify yet. Rice said, “You did fine work. Now do more.” Nothing was special for lunch. Meal-Line inmate told me good luck. I said the same then started that Sunday dressed in my title and uniform for the massive machine labeled the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.
In a factory you learn by doing. You keep the labeler glue pots an inch low so they don’t boil over when a bottle with no cap falls in. In a jail you learn by doing. You inspect foreskins. You don’t say calm down. You don’t say relax. And you shake, you really do, you shake the first time you walk, all official and shit, through that gate.
Strip, Separate
THIS was life after the academy: Strip searches. Gorilla said, “This is a part of the job. Earlobe to asshole, inspect it all. Do the steps. This is for the good of the institution. So look close. And if you’re ashamed to look at another man’s penis, this is the time to grow up.”
THIS is what I was thinking: will “earlobe to asshole” be on the test?
In the army I went through a combat life saver school. That school was two weeks of watching gory videos and bandaging dummies. For an amputation, we tightened the tourniquet on the rubber dummy’s arm until the pretend bright red bleeding stopped. For a sucking chest wound, we taped plastic over the pretend hole on the rubber chest. To diagnose a lower lumbar fracture, we checked for a pretend priapism on the rubber crotch. We combat-saved our dummies over and over until the final exam when we had to partner up and give each other IVs, real human IVs. I got my partner on the first stick. He got me on the third.
That’s what I expected for the strip test: a real human experience.
We