The Inmate Extraction: Part Three

Part One, Part Two

The E-Block supervisor doesn’t like that I’m here.

“There’s an inmate extraction this morning,” he says, looking out his window at Jason. “Admin are supposed to be in their offices.” He ignores me. I can see a book, open on his lap in the dimness of his guard-bubble. Guards have a high-school education and pull down double my salary with overtime.

I hold up my printout prop again, to catch his attention. I shake it around a bit…see? “I just want to tape up the balances in the hall, and I’ll be out of here. It won’t take a second,” I say.

The supervisor is very unhappy about this. It’s written all over his face. Prison guards never hesitate to express negative emotions. Spend a few years surrounded by convicted felons who have no interest in the Tony Robbins program, and their attitudes begin to effect a change in even the most stalwart of personalities. Give a person enough time here, for instance, a twenty-year veteran who has seen it all, this guy who might have started as the most mild-mannered nice guy will turn into a cynical, pitiless screw with no interests other than his own. Prison guards, on average, die less than three years after they take their retirements.

“Wait until after the extraction is over, then. You know you’re not supposed to be in there,” he says. But he doesn’t order me. I can sense his weakness. He knows that I’m not supposed to be here, but doesn’t know who I am. He’s a younger guy too, new on the job. I stare at his eyes, saying nothing. Do this long enough with someone, and the other person will eventually give in to what you want. It helps too if you’re physically more intimidating, or taller than the other guy, like I am in this case. Go ahead, try it yourself sometime and see what happens. People will avoid confrontation almost at all costs. This is something I learned from the inmates. If you watch them through your window, out in the yard on a daily basis, you can learn lots of things from them that you can apply to your life. Some staff members, they keep lists on their walls of various gang members, pinned up there like a human resources org chart. Some people, they follow the prison debt lists (it’s known which guys owe money to whom) to see what the outcome will be when a con can’t pay what he borrowed. Wagers are made. It’s like being tuned to the Discovery Channel, featuring the social habits of monkeys in the African Savannah. There are social orders, behaviours, hierarchies. Who needs reality tv when you can watch the real thing outside your office window?

The young supervisor sighs, giving up. “All right, whatever. Go ahead,” he says. He presses a button beside his phone, and we hear the loud buzz of servos inside the wall. The door to this level clanks open like an industrial version of the doors on the Starship Enterprise.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jason tells him. “We won’t tell anybody.” We pass into the hallway, a breeze of warm air pushing on our faces like we’re coming into a house out of the cold. It has a heavy, hunting-camp smell of smoke and bacon grease, a thick odor that sticks to your skin and clothes like diesel exhaust. A guard working in the Blocks, one of the first things they’ll tell you is, after a while, you can’t get that smell out of your clothes, your hair. It’s like mechanics who always smell like motor oil, no matter how many times they shower.

Eau de 10w40.

The smell puffing out of the Block is the drifting scent of failure, the hot stink of unfocused, impotent frustration. Our heels clock on the brown granite floors, echoing through the dim hallway before First Breakfast, and I know that the first thing I’ll do when I get home tonight is shower like Lady Macbeth.

We’re at the cell. Jason opens the viewing window, peering around inside for a moment, and then slips his baton from his belt. He raps the metal door with it, whack!-whack!-whack!, and puts his mouth up to the window. “Roberts!” he says, raising his voice. “Roberts, we are here to transfer you this morning to Kingston Pen. Stand against the rear wall of your cell, turn around, and place your hands on your head.”

Jason peeks around in the window again. “He’s not doing it…I can’t see him. These windows are too small,” he mutters.

“He could be beside the door,” says another guard.

Jason grimaces. “Probably. That’s why we’re here,” he says. He smacks the door again with his baton, and yells down the hall: “Open! 107!” at the supervisor in the bubble. A moment passes, and then there’s a loud, chock! inside the door. We all exchange looks. The last barrier between Roberts and us is gone.

There’s no response from inside the cell. We can hear the mutters of other inmates, vague murmurs mumbling through three feet of reinforced concrete in the hallway.

But Roberts is silent.

Jason wraps the swing-cord of his baton around his wrist. He looks back at the other members of the Emergency Response Team, then over at me against the wall ten feet away, giving Roberts one more chance, a quiet moment to present himself inside his cell in the acceptable manner. He doesn't.

“I still can’t see him. Shit,” Jason says. He puts his hand on the door handle of the cell, buffed to a mirror shine after forty years and a thousand hands.

The guards, they all take a deep breath, and Jason yanks open the door of cell E-107.

Part Four
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