The Inmate Extraction: Part Two

Part One

Jason raps on the glass of the guard-station. "We're going to E Block," he says to the guard sitting inside. The guy behind the window looks at me.

"E Block," I say. I hold up a computer printout. "Balances." The sheets flap in my hand in a gusting autumn breeze. Inmate balances are delivered to the blocks once a week. They are taped up in the hallways so the inmates can see how much money they have in their accounts to spend on chips and pop at the canteen. Today isn't the day I'm supposed to bring them, but I needed an excuse to be going to E Block.

The guard nods, and picks up his phone, calling E Block to let them know we are on the way. He presses the big red button, and the gate enclosing the inmate compound rattles open in front of us.

Jason slaps the Plexiglas of the guard station as we pass. "Thanks, Mikey," he says. The guy inside his fishbowl nods, and he presses the button again once we’re inside. The gate is a ten-foot orange replica of those little wooden baby barriers they had in the seventies, the ones they used to sell to new parents until someone's infant strangled to death on one of them. It accordions shut behind us, and Mikey the guard goes back to sleep.

We’re walking along the cement pathways to the block-houses, and Jason is telling me how it’s all going to go down. The walkway is littered with drifts of cigarette butts, unswept from the day before. A fuzz of October frost sparkles on a thousand pitched smokes like the remnants of an early-season snowstorm.

"We’re going to knock on the door and give him one more chance to exit without incident, we always offer that option. If he doesn’t respond, that’s when we go in," he says. They all have their helmets strapped on now, and nobody is smiling anymore. There is a reason for these
stormtrooper costumes. They are to protect the person wearing it, and also to scare the shit out of a wannabe troublemaker.

It’s no accident that Nazi SS uniforms were black.

"We have to put the chains on his wrists and ankles. If he resists, we’ll use the batons. We’re taking him to the van outside the supply-entrance, it’s closer than the main gate.

"The important things to remember is that we’ll be firm, and that we are in charge. The time for reasoning with us is over. He’s had multiple chances, just like the rest of them did.

"That doesn’t matter though, to a lot of them. They wouldn’t be getting extracted this way if they wanted to behave. They’re all looking for a fight, these guys. Look at the teeth they have left…they want it. They might even need it. They even ask for it.

"But we aren’t going to ask him anything. He’s just going to do what we say."

And the way he speaks, I know he doesn’t believe it’s going to go smoothly. That he’s hoping it doesn’t.

We’re at the block, and we all scuff to a stop, and Jason opens the door – an absurd brown door just like the kind you’d see on the front of a public school or village library. "Okay, man. So just stand back, and let us do our job. Stand against the wall, and enjoy the show," he says. Tickets, please. Theatre three, on your left. Enjoy the show, sir.

We step into the shade of E Block, and the sound of the door behind us is the slam of a bank vault.

Part Three

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