Lockdown Blues

(Originally Posted on January 14, 2015)

"We are children of our landscape, it dictates behavior and even thought in the measure to which we're responsive to it." - Molier 

Twenty-four hours a day trapped in a 5′ x 9′ cage with a huge, sweating man whose stink is only exceeded by the toilet overflowing with excrement. And to be honest, I don’t smell very pleasant myself. The radio says it’s 101 degrees outside, which means it’s probably 115 degrees inside these unventilated prison bowels.

 

There’s no water, and that exacerbates the misery. If I had water, I could wash away the layers of grime accumulating on my skin. If I had water, I could wash my bed sheets, now foul from absorbing several days’ worth of sour sweat.  If I had water, I could flush that nasty toilet, which, even with several magazines covering its opening, and me cowering on the opposite end of my bunk, is still emitting fumes that make my eyes water. Most importantly, if I had water, I could quench my desperate and unreasonable thirst and recoup some of the fluids I’m steadily losing in this morbid sauna. (There’s a cruel prison phenomenon we often joke about: When they turn the water off, the body reacts by immediately becoming very thirsty, accompanied by a strong need to defecate. Much like when they handcuff your hands behind your back, your nose begins to itch.)

There’s an irrational fear fermenting in my gut… What if they don’t turn the water back on? It’s a ridiculous fear of course — even in this state, where incarcerated people have less value than ugly insects — the death of a large group of inmates would be frowned upon, wouldn’t it? Surely even the right-wing extremists dominating the Bible belt would protest the inhumanity, wouldn’t they? My growing panic seems immune to reason.

 

It’s quiet. Gawd but that’s so rare in prison, especially during a lockdown. Two hundred bored souls within talking distance, and this suffocating heat has silenced them all. If I wasn’t so distressed about the water, I’d be relishing this incongruous peace, heat or no.

 

Most inmates generally stay on their beds through a lockdown which lasts between 3-5 weeks; it’s an unspoken etiquette in these tiny cages where there’s really only room for one person on the floor at a time. When you’re in your rack, you aren’t in the way, and when you’re inactive, you cause less body heat.

 

Laying on my tummy, I gaze through the black painted chicken-wire covering the bars at the gray cement floor in front of me. Little of the floor is actually visible though, because it’s covered in trash all the way to the dingy, broken windows ten feet in front of our cages. Where does so much garbage come from in an environment completely isolated from America’s over-consumption? None of us are allowed more possessions than we can carry, and that won’t keep you in competition with the Joneses. Actually, I can see some crushed pop-cans, chip bags, Ramen soup wrappers and other colored plastic refuse amongst dozens of worn-out magazines. Perhaps prisoners are permitted to consume more than I thought. The fortunate ones anyway. Making up the majority of the trash, however, are hundreds of brown paper lunch bags and discarded food. We’re allowed three sack lunches a day, affectionately called Johnnies, during lockdowns. Johnnies invariably have two stale sandwiches, one of which always consists of government-donated peanut butter. With the exception of the upcoming shakedown (search), Johnnies are the most dreaded part of a lockdown. A guy comes to miss hot meals and bowel movements.

 

Most of the prison population loses weight during lockdowns, which is interesting to me because of the inactivity and so much bread and peanut butter. (Eat your heart out Weight Watchers.)

 

The forest of trash I’m staring at is explained by the lack of inmate slave labor. During lockdowns, it’s the guard’s responsibility to sweep up the accumulating garbage and stuff it into the 55-gallon barrels at the end of the run. But the guards refuse, which, given their poor wages, seems understandable. So the trash has accumulated and rotted for three days, adding its own miasma to the sweating body odor of the surrounding caged men and their gorged commodes.

 

With a sigh of boredom, I try to count the number of Johnnie sacks directly in front of my cage, which is one of twenty-five cages juxtaposed on one row, joined by twenty-five more directly above — all contributing to the paper and plastic carnage in front of me. It’s impossible to count the sacks, even in my narrow scope, because they’re piled on top of each other hiding the ones beneath. So I stop counting paper bags in favor of bread crusts. Then I spot an albino cricket frantically jumping amidst the refuse, and I wonder just what’s gotten into this crazy insect. The stifling heat is an ultimate deterrent of excessive movement, especially for a gland-less bug. As I focus closer, I see what’s got this blonde cricket in such a frenzy: I’d failed to notice the hundreds of ants coating the garbage. Actually, though I cannot see for sure, I suspect he has at least one tiny ant attached to him, causing great pain because he doesn’t stop hopping even when he lands on an ant free zone.

 

It isn’t long before my new hero succumbs to exhaustion; he’s stopped moving, and I wonder if the overheated exertion has killed him.

 

It hasn’t. I see him feebly twitch as a swarm of ants converge to eat him alive. I’m not sure at what point the little guy dies, but I hope it was quickly after they began to eat him. The ants dismantle the unfortunate cricket with efficiency, and the last ant struggles away with his final piece of grizzly food a short time later. There’s not a single visible reminder that the albino cricket ever existed.

 

Time passes, and I continue to gaze at the garbage where the fellow met his inglorious end. Maybe death from dehydration wouldn’t be so bad after all.

 

I’ve read that environment, even colors, affect the psyche, moods and decision making. If that’s true, where does that leave me? I’m completely surrounded by ugliness and decay, stained, cracked and graffiti coated walls, rusted steel, and a sea of garbage. Later the noise will begin: violent voices rocking the despondent air with their ghetto accents to combat their monotony and destroy my sanity. Such a wonderful environmental medley for the soul. If surroundings truly affect emotional well-being, is it any wonder I sit here being consumed by gloom, like a cricket being devoured alive by ants?