Chickenhawk: Back in the World

After the four o’clock count, I went to the clothing room to see about getting some different boots. There was a complaint window just off the service road. I got in line behind two inmates. A white-haired old man was inside the window. The guy in front of the line called him Deacon and was saying that his pants were worn out. Deacon said, “They look fine to me. What do you think this is? A fucking resort?” He looked past the inmate and said, “Next.”

“Hey,” the inmate said. “What about my pants? I work in an office, and they want me to have nice-looking clothes.”

“If you don’t like your pants, fill out a cop-out and get your counselor to authorize an exchange because you need new pants for your job.”

“You crazy? My counselor? That’ll take forever. Why can’t you just hand me another pair, Deacon? You got hundreds of pants in there,” the inmate said, pointing behind Deacon to the floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with clothing.

“You heard me,” Deacon said. “Next.”

“You prick. You act like you own this shit,” the inmate said, walking past me, his face burning with anger.

The next inmate held up a pair of underwear with a dozen holes peppering the seat. “You have some kind of flatulance problem?” Deacon said.

“No, Deacon, these are worn out,” the inmate said, smiling, intimidated.

Deacon nodded, tossed the underwear into a bin inside, and yelled, “John. Give me a pair of Jockeys, medium. Stamp’em three-ninety-seven.”

Inside, I saw John, a tall blond guy, grab a pair of new underwear off a shelf, break open the package, and put them in a stamping machine. John limped when he walked. Most of the people in the clothing room were either old or handicapped. He set the number on the machine and hit a switch. The inmate’s laundry number was impressed in black characters on the waistband of the Jockeys. John gave them to Deacon.

“Here you go,” Deacon said, tossing the underwear to the inmate.

He looked at me and said, “Next.”

“Hi,” I said. “Deacon?”

“Yeah?”

I stood back a little and held up my foot. “These fucking boots were worn out a couple of years ago. Really hurt my feet.”

“Yeah?” Deacon said, looking at me carefully. “You the new guy? The writer?”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling. I figured I was looking at a favor coming up, considering I was a celebrity and all.

“This is prison, Mason.”

“Really?” I said. “This is prison? I know it’s prison. So what? I see people wearing new boots around here.”

“You haven’t been here long enough for new boots. Next.”

“Are you kidding?” I said.

An inmate behind me said, “C’mon, man, I’m late for chow. Deacon doesn’t kid.”

I got out of line and stood by the door to the clothing room, seething. Deacon’d been here so long he figured he owned the clothes. I watched the traffic in and out of the clothing room, trying to understand how it worked. Somewhere in there, they had boots. New boots.

Inmates waited in line and walked in a door and up to a counter and called out their clothing number. Other inmates inside, one of them the old guy from my dorm, Doc, would go to one of the hundreds of bins behind them and get the inmate’s laundry. Then the inmate walked out the other door. I saw another door at the far end of the building. I walked to it and peeked in through the screen. I heard the chatter of a sewing machine. I went inside and saw a guy working on a sewing machine in a closet-sized room. The bottom half of a Dutch door with a shelf on top was closed across the doorway. I leaned on the shelf and said, “Hi.”

The guy looked up from his work. “Hi. Need some alterations?” he said with a strong accent. Sounded English to me.

“No. That’s what you do?”

“That’s right, mate.”

“You British?”

“Me, mate? No way. I’m Australian.”

I grinned. Seemed funny to me. “What—”

“Got caught at sea, mate. Your Coast Guard nabbed us in international waters and towed us back.”

“Tough break,” I said.

The man shrugged. “Better jail here than in Australia, mate.”

“Why’s that?”

“They take a sterner view of this drug-smuggling business than your blokes do. I got five years here. I’ll serve maybe two. In Australia I’d have gotten ten and served ten.”

“Man,” I said. “That’s tough.” I looked at the sewing machine.

“You knew how to operate that before you got here? Ah—” I said, prompting him for his name with raised eyebrows.

“Tom. Tom Carpenter,” he said. “I was a sailmaker on the outside. You?”

“I was a writer.”

“Oh. You’re the bloke they been saying was showing up. Robert Mason, right?”

“Bob.”

“Bob, then. I’m reading your book right now, Bob. Nice job, that. You know a lot of our boys were there, too.”

“I know. I met some Australian pilots over there. I remember they used to carry change purses made from kangaroo scrotums.”

Tom nodded. “Yep. That’s them, all right. What do you need, Bob? Something altered?”

“No. I was trying to find out who’s in charge of boots.”

“Boots?” Tom jutted out his chin. “Right behind you, Bob. That old fart in there, Timmy. He’s the bloke you want.”