A Moment of Silence: Midnight III

  “So you not a New Yorker,” I stated, but it wasn’t really a question.

  “Don’t matter, son, it’s the same everywhere. I been locked up everywhere. That’s how I figured out that it’s not just me. It’s a conspiracy. Everything a black man say or do, even how we talk and walk or sit and chill, is considered a crime.”

  I didn’t say anything in response to his story. I was thinking, though, that he had to be leaving something out. He couldn’t have been locked up in all these places for complete innocence. And no man is innocent. I wasn’t expecting a confession. At the same time, I’m young, but not slow or gullible.

  “I know what you thinking. You thinking I had to have done something wrong to get locked up repeatedly.” He smiled. “Well, you right. After while, I figured out if I didn’t do crime, no one would respect me. Why should I live my life as a suspect for no reason? At least if I get out there and start making real moves and big money, I could live a little, feel a little freedom, before they do what they do, ’cause no matter what I do, they gon’ do what they do regardless. Man, when I switched it up on ’em and actually turned to a life of crime, my mother stopped treating me like a retarded toddler. I gave her money. You should’ve seen her smile. It was all good then. My father respected me once I got my guns, and even moved his shit out the garage so I could park my 1966 Mustang coupe once I took him for a ride to the liquor store in it. Fuck my old lady—I had chicks lined up on the corner acting like they wasn’t lined up on the corner just waiting for me to drive up and choose one of them. Even the police showed me more respect for making them at least have to figure out my hustle, catch me red-handed, and get to take something from me of value once they finally caught up with me and made the arrest. ’Cause you know, they always steal something from the crime scene. You know that, right? All I can say, Young Black,” which is what he called me, “once I played the role they obviously had casted me as maybe from birth, everyone around me was more satisfied than they ever was when I was honest and struggling. So I just kept running the hustles, no matter the territory. They kept locking me up no matter the territory. It was better than a slow, unjust death as a good guy who gets no respect, whose life is all lows and no highs.”

  I thanked him for his time and replayed his words. My take on it was that he believed based on his experiences in life that a black man, any black man, has no choice but to play a scripted inferior position as either the pauper or the gangster, nothing else. He saw the police and the government, their arms and their armies and their prisons and their prison keepers, as being all-powerful. So powerful that they could direct the destiny of men based on the complexion of a man’s skin. I didn’t take it lightly. I considered it. As a deadly martial artist whose hands and feet and mind are trained and powerful, in lockup I had been faced with some situations and had learned some things that as a free man I did not know, had not felt or even considered before. How does one man prevail in a physical battle when being inside of a wild mob or haphazard riot that is happening at the same time the mob itself is surrounded by men armed with shields, boots, and batons and chemical weapons? Furthermore, how does a confined and cuffed man, locked in a room with unconfined and uncuffed authorities bent on not fighting, but fucking violating his manhood, prevail? I wondered if what Broadcast said would happen in prison was the absolute truth, an excuse, an exaggerated fear, or just the way he sees it.

  I could only remove the sting of Butch’s words and experiences, and the threat of his predictions of what awaited me, and any man headed to any prison in the United States of America, with words of prayer. I recited the Fatiha. I also recited the 113th Sura of the Holy Quran, which is called “The Dawn” in English and Al-Falaq in Arabic. It is a prayer for protection from evil. Then I said to myself, Only Allah is Everywhere. Only Allah is All Powerful. Fear no one but Allah. I inhaled and exhaled, getting both my body and my mind right and ready, and hardening my heart even more than before. The girl was right. We are at war. Not because we want to be, just because we are.

  * * *

  The cold cut through the cloth of the DOC coat. The cold raised up and spread out through the steel bench I was seated and chained on for hours. It caused my bottom half to begin to freeze and then numb. The cold froze up the uninsulated truck walls. I began tapping my feet on the floor to get my blood circulating. The cold cuffs were scraping against my ankles. At least I can feel that, I said to myself. I knew when the cold became so intense that I couldn’t feel anything, I’d suffer from frostbite, hypothermia, and even some kind of gangrene. Sensei had taught me many methods of torture, how the body reacts and what a ninja should and could do in those circumstances, especially when he could not immediately escape the conditions and causes. I was tapping my feet and clapping my hands together, tiny motions because of the cuffs. I couldn’t warm my hands beneath my armpits to regain circulation in my fingers because of the cuffs. My face felt stiff. I needed the ski mask, not for no nefarious deed but to guard my face and ears from the freeze.

  * * *

  I could feel the truck angling, as though it was climbing a hill. It became clear that it was not simply one hill, and perhaps not a hill at all. We were climbing a mountain, I believed, and I could feel the effect of the elevation on the intensity of the cold and the air quality as I took deep breaths.

  On an incline, the truck jerked, then slid and spun. Maybe there was snow or ice. I heard the driver’s voice, alarmed but not a full scream. Maybe he just panicked. Now the truck was paused but shaking. I had never been in an earthquake, but the rocking of a vehicle that weighed a ton felt like how I imagined an earthquake might feel. The bench I was seated on was bolted to the floor. I was rocking like the motion of a seesaw in the children’s playground. Chained, I couldn’t get up. “Yo!” I called out to the driver. I was freezing, tapping and clapping, seesawing left to right and my body rocking forward for circulation. “Yo! CO!” I called out again, but nothing.

  I heard at least one of the front doors open. Good, I thought. But then I didn’t hear the door shut. I couldn’t hear no talking. Three minutes lapsed. I was shifting for the few inches that the chain would allow, trying to get some circulation to my vital organs. I tried balancing my feet on my toes, and bouncing them a bit. Suddenly, I heard the guard unbolting the back door, finally.

  Black snorkels, the hoods were zipped concealing their faces, all but the eyes. But I could see their broad shoulders and M16 assault rifles strapped on, which they held with both hands. A third man, unarmed, walked in my line of vision from around their right side. I was waiting for their order. I was chained to the bench freezing and now that the doors were unlocked, I’m even colder. But I could see the stars shining brightly in the night sky. It looked like a different sky than the one that loomed over Rikers, which was now hundreds of miles and hours behind where we were. The one who walked around back did a 180. No one was saying anything. He returned seconds later with some industrial tool shaped like pliers or branch clippers. He approached cautiously. I didn’t know why. His team had the arsenal and his back. Instead of climbing up and getting in the truck where I was, he stood outside, leaned in to unlock the chains that strapped me to the bench, and snapped them with the clippers, which cut them like they were soft as butter. “Jump out!” he ordered. One armed guard waved me to come out as all three of them stood a few steps back like I had a hand grenade in my grip or something. I knew I was headed to a maximum-security prison and that I had committed a murder. It seemed to me, however, that they were expecting some violent reaction from a serial killer with superpowers, who could while frozen, cuffed, and chained, knock out three mountain-sized men, two holding heavy. My body creaked as I stood slowly, the cuffs iced around my ankles and wrists. I stood up. My feet were frozen and steady but the truck still rocked from side to side. It was painful to take one tiny step, but of course I did. I felt the truck falling. The unarmed man ran towards me and grabbed my chain and pulled me forward as the truck fell backward and m
ade the noise of metal slamming against rock, crashing. As the truck tumbled, the unarmed guard reached down to the ground to help me to my feet, but the DOC-issued coat I was wearing was stuck to the slab of ice I was lying on. “Pull your arms out of the coat!” he ordered me. But my brain felt frozen and my movements were slow motion. He yanked me out of the coat and off the ground, using the dangling chain like a leash. Standing up, unable to control my shivering, I was in only the Rikers jail jumper and thin hat. The unarmed man forced his fingers into his front pocket. He drew out some keys and uncuffed my wrists and then my ankles, as one of the armed guards pulled around behind me, pointed the M16 to my back, and said, “Walk.” I followed with one behind me and two in front, one slightly to the left the other to the right. We were inching up a slippery slope that led up a dark and overwhelming mountain. The iced wind was whipping me. Within seconds, I saw another armed guard inching down the slope towards us, with a prisoner of his own. My eyes began tearing up from the temperature, not the emotion. But my tears turned to ice in less than a second. I looked at the two as they passed by without turning right or left. I didn’t want the big white boy guard’s trigger finger to itch, pulse, or pull. Strangely, they didn’t greet each other, the guards coming and going. They exchanged no words. Once we reached around the bend of what was an iced road in a mountain pass, there was another truck parked as close to the rocks and as far from the drop down the mountain as possible. There was no lettering or logo on that truck, not even the DOC insignia. The back door was already opened. The guard pressed a button and the ramp eased out. “Walk up,” one of the armed guards told me. I did. He climbed in after me. There were two benches, one on the left side, one on the right. After retracting the ramp he sat across from where he signaled me to sit, with his weapon on ready. I saw a closed tool chest and an industrial-size stuffed black trash bag. I imagined it held body parts of a defiant prisoner. The unarmed guard slammed the door shut and I heard it lock. It was back to complete blackness. I heard someone climb in on the driver’s side and the ignition started. I heard the heat switch on, even in the area where we were seated, unlike the unheated truck that drove me from Rikers. But of course I couldn’t feel it yet. That was good. I knew it wouldn’t be safe for me to go from extreme freeze to a forced-heated hot. We sat idling for more than ten minutes. It was true what Broadcast had said about brain freeze. My thoughts were not flowing like normal. I was unable to juggle the facts of what was happening in the moment, and unable to put them in a logical order backed up by reason, or at least a strong hypothesis.

  Fifteen minutes in, I was just beginning to feel the presence of heat. I heard the armed guard seated across from me moving around a bit. Suddenly, he flashed a spotlight on my face that pierced through the darkness and caused my eyes to squint from the shock of switching from blackness to a powerful direct light. I knew then that he wanted to see me, and my facial features, but did not want me to be able to see him. It worked. All I could do was look away until my eyes could adjust. My unfrozen temperature tears were careening down my face. He probably thought I was crying. “Undress,” was all he said. I heard some plastic rustling and a bag landed in my lap. “Put those on. Then, hand me your clothes,” he ordered. He moved the spotlight from my face down to my feet. I assumed that was how he planned to monitor my movements. It was warming in the truck now. Warm enough for me to begin to feel my fingers and to use them to remove my clothing, and change into their prison uniform, and what felt like the same type of heavy snorkel they were wearing. I set my mind that, assault rifle or not, if this big guard tried to do anything filthy as I undressed and re-dressed, I was gonna kill him. I was fifty percent sure that he wouldn’t. They had uncuffed me after all, and rescued me from becoming a fallen frozen fossil. However, without cuffed hands or ankles, in a minute or so I would be capable of disarming him, and without firing his weapon I would strike him into unconsciousness, then chill quietly. When the guards unlocked the back of the truck, they would be facing an armed, defrosted, ninjutsu warrior who did not want to take their lives, but would do whatever it took, by any means necessary, to survive. That was my plan. The girl was right. In the face of an attempt at a violation of my manhood, it would be freedom or death.

  Swiftly undressed, the spotlight steadily aimed at my feet, I stepped into the prison jumper. It seemed to be black, although I wasn’t certain because other than the spotlight on the floor, there was only darkness. There were wool socks, quality ones like I’ve seen in the stores that specialize in winter sports and winter wear for camping, mountain climbing, and a variety of seasonal activities. There were gloves, thick insulated ones. There was a real wool hat and heavy boots. I sat them on the floor where the spotlight was aimed. Hi-Tecs or Vasque, I thought. The boots were either brand. I speculated, but couldn’t see or read any labels. I stared down at my Jordans. They were made for cement like on the streets of New York. They were for basketball courts, indoors or outdoors. For dribbling and faking players out. For shooting and jumping, and flying and dunking. Not for mountain climbing and sliding on sheets of ice or snow. That was precisely why I couldn’t feel my toes. It only made sense for me to leave them to the side and step into the heavy boots. I already knew that once we reached prison intake, my Jordans would be confiscated. Rikers was jail. Things were allowed in jail that would never be allowed in prison. I picked up my Jordans, tied the laces from both kicks together, and retired them.

  “Put them in the plastic bag,” the armed guard ordered. I had dropped everything in there except my kicks. “The tennis shoes also,” he said. I knew then that he wasn’t from the state of New York. Who would refer to Jordans as “tennis shoes”? He had to be a down south farm dude, a countryside white boy. When I dropped my Jordans into the plastic bag, the guard ordered, “Take a seat.” I sat down. He picked up the plastic bag, lifting the spotlight from his flashlight off my boots and back directly into my face. He walked backwards towards the driver, knocked three times on the gate. The passenger-side guard opened the slot and the plastic bag was handed off to him. Then he slid the slot closed and I heard the door up front open.

  Twenty-one minutes in, as I tied my second bootlace, I heard a vehicle drive past the truck we were idling in. It was moving uphill. Seconds later, the truck that we were in pulled out, veering immediately to the left, reversing, and heading down the mountain. I thought it was strange that we were heading downhill when the first DOC truck I was being transported in spent a substantial amount of time easing up the mountain until it jammed, then skidded, spun, and dropped off the edge of a cliff. It had teetered and crashed downward the same second that I was yanked and dragged by the chain. My brain and my body were thawing now. I was questioning myself as to why the other guard was walking a prisoner downhill on New Year’s Eve in the dark on an iced mountain slope. I knew from the sound of the accident of the first DOC truck that after it tumbled and crashed against the rocks, they could not have recovered that vehicle. Even if it could have been towed up the mountain on a powerful cable, there would still be no way to drive it in that condition and absolutely no way to tow it, repair it, and drive it in twenty-one minutes. Was it a random vehicle that drove past us just now while we were parked, that just happened to also be a diesel-engine truck out on a dark mountain road deep into the New Year’s Eve night? Or was the guard who was walking down the icy slope with his prisoner walking toward a third vehicle, separate from the one that crashed and the one I was being transported in right now? And where were we? And oh shit, my few belongings went down with the first DOC truck and my paperwork was also in the sack. And how come these boots fit perfectly? Cancel the last question. The prison system knew all the medical and physical information about me from the day I was hospitalized, my blood and urine drawn and every aspect of my health tested. Even my weight and height were documented and my fingerprints taken. I reminded myself, Jordan Mann.