The Most Courageously Crazy Thing I Ever Saw

It was the darkest, most exciting epoch in my short life. I had always been a man of principles, and my number #1 rule in life is that if you're going to fuck up make sure that you fuck up really, really bad. As a testament to this, not only had I managed to pick up a 10 year prison sentence, I had had the foresight to make sure that I received this term in California which is like the New York Yankees of prison systems, if you like to play "chicken" with your life it is the only place one should want to be. But was this enough? Of course not, because, not only do I possess questionable principles, god likes to pick on me and saw fit to make sure that I was placed in cell house D-5 at Wasco State Prison. The "D" stands for D-yard and the 5 means that it is the fifth building on that yard, there are two types of inmates that reside in this particular building, the first type are psychopathic, hardened gang banger, white supremacist, drug addicted, killers, that stopped giving a fuck many years previously. The second type are skinny, blond haired, scared to death, kids from obscure suburbs in Minnesota, I most likely fell into the second type. Basically you have four different groups in one building, every prison in the state is racially segregated and then split up again into rival gangs, the Whites, the Blacks, and then two rival Mexican gangs- Southsiders, and the Bulldogs, everyone is pretty much on permanent lock down, the only time you come out is to pick up your food tray, take a shower, or stab somebody. Once a week new arrivals are brought in which is exciting because hopefully some of them will have taken the time to pack their asses full of tobacco and Meth. One of these new arrivals, was a Southsider from Los Angeles nicknamed "Trigger," he was a real "gangsta muthafucka" and to prove it he had the number 13 tattooed on his face as well as the customary "tear drops" below his right eye. Over the years I was never able to figure out why some one would do this to themselves, it's pretty hard to rob some one and get away with it if you've got a giant 13 on your face, you might as well just tattoo "ARREST ME" or "CRIMINAL," on your forehead. Trigger was in the tobacco selling business and bidnezz wuzza boomin', smoking in C.D.C is prohibited so when someone smuggles it in everyone is willing to sell all their shit to get a couple of cigarettes, and Trigger was starting to act like he was fucking Pablo Escobar, selling joint size cigarettes, for 3 bucks a piece. Living next door to Trigger was "Scratch" a 28 year old white dude from Mojave, He had long blond hair down to his shoulders, and a large tattoo covering the top of his upper back that said "PECKERWOOD" which is a nickname for all white convicts, he had a slim build and compared to other inmates he was relatively inconspicuous. His cellmate whose name I cannot recall had decided to buy 5 cigarettes on credit from Trigger and had promised to pay him the $15 when he went to the canteen. Unfortunately, the next day Scratchs' cellie got moved to a different building, it was nobodies fault these things happen and there was nothing that anybody could do about it, Trigger, apparently would have to "charge it to the game" (this is prisonese for "you aren't getting your fucking money").........or would he? In the prison block, when you are in your cell there are two ways to communicate verbally, the first is to yell out of the crack in your door, and the second is to talk in the vents which are connected to the cell next to yours, being neighbors Trigger told Scratch through the vent that he had to pay his ex-cellies tobacco debt, to which Scratch replied that he didn't smoke and that it wasn't his debt so that was all there was too it. Trigger was outraged by this snub and started screaming obscenities toward Scratch. Rule #1 in prison is that you never talk shit to someone through a door this is known as being a "cell soldier" a cell soldier is someone who acts all tough and hardcore when he knows that his adversary can't get at him, this is an unforgivable social faux pas in the joint, it is like the drunk guy at the bar who pretends that his buddy is the only thing stopping him from kicking Hulk Hogans' ass. A few weeks later the whites and blacks were let off of lock down which meant that we got an hour of yard time twice a week, yippee! This also meant that Scratch could work a couple hours a day as a porter. The porters job officially is to serve the food trays and clean up afterwards, the main perk of this job is that they get to keep any leftover Salisbury steak and stale bread, also they are in charge of passing drugs and knives from cell to cell as well as various other types of plotting and scheming. I remember being surprised when I heard that Scratch had taken the porter job because the guy was a master artist and had plenty of food from trading drawings and cards that he had devised.....hhhhmmmmm. Whenever it is feeding time the tower pops the doors of the porters who come out and prepare to serve dinner, the process which I am about to relate is called a "drive by" the tower begins dinner by popping open the doors of one race or gang at a time, these inmates will then form a single file line and they will walk by the porters who will hand them a tray upon which they will return to their respective cells at once. Then they let out the next group etc. etc. It was the Southsider's turn to get their trays, the Southsider's have a saying that goes like this "you bite one bean you gotta bite the whole burrito" which basically means that "we're scared of a one on one fight, and there's more of us than you in here because we don't get away with any crimes" everyone knows this policy.....and so did Scratch. I hadn't a clue anything was going on, I was reading a very compelling John Grisham novel about a crime fighting lawyer at the time, when my cellie "Shorty" motioned for me to come to the window to watch something, I remember him eloquently asking me if I wanted to see "some gangster shit" to which of course I replied that in fact I most certainly did. He points to Scratch, and so I watch him as he passes out trays to the Mexican Southsiders one after the other, and then I see Trigger reach out to get his tray from Scratch and....and....wham!!! Scratch punched this fellow so hard it sounded like a horse getting hit over the head with a cinder block, Trigger was reeling back but Scratch was on him, repeatedly landing death blow after death blow, all the Southsider's converged on Scratch, trying to save Trigger and his big fucking mouth, but it was useless because evidently this man had spent the greater part of his life watching the movie Braveheart and studying ninja's. Trigger to his credit was trying to save his life and get away but unfortunately for him prisons are built with the main principle of "preventing escape" Southsider's were hitting Scratch, the cop in the tower was shooting him with the block gun, the cops on the floor were hosing him down with pepper spray, but all this just seemed to encourage Scratch....and did I mention that he was doing all this while wearing flip flops?? He didn't even kick them off! I guess the man likes a good challenge. I made a mental note to myself never to anger Scratch, or claim that he owed me money, it seemed better to just let him keep it. So finally our protagonist decides that he has made his point and everyone involved gets down on their stomachs, the alarm had been going off the whole time so there are about 50 correctional officers in the building and they're putting everybody in zip ties Trigger looked as though he'd never been so relieved to be alive and in handcuffs...in the blink of an eye Scratch jumps up with his hands behind his back in restraints and runs over to his mortal enemy (still in his flip flops!) and kicks him square in the face! No Southsider even tried to get up to retaliate, I guess they had all quietly decided amongst themselves to let nature run it's course. They took Scratch to another building and I never saw him again, but I had learned a valuable lesson, never talk shit through a door because you never know who you're fucking with.