On the Fringe

Tim crouched in the corner of his cell. Arms wrapped around his knees, back pressed hard against the wall. Fear and tension stiffened his joins. All around him he heard the sounds of the ongoing riot; banging, cursing, yelling and screaming. He was on the fringe of a warzone and there was no escape.

He was sure the guards had abandoned their post hours ago, or maybe he was growing immune to the sounds of their tazers or the smell of their smoke bombs.

‘They’ve given us up for dead!’ he thought ruefully.

The very people who were supposed to keep this place regulated had fled at the first sign of trouble. Tim wished he could have fled too. The fringe of hell was no place for a guy like him. For anyone, really.

The warning alarm had been droning for so many hours that he hardly noticed it anymore. It was simply a part of the chaotic mix of screams, blaring sirens, and bi-lingual curses, which slowly began to lull him into a restless, but inevitable sleep. God, it felt like years since he’d last slept.

“And I’ll never sleep again if I don’t stay awake!” he said aloud to the empty cell. He checked his waistband to make sure the homemade shank was still there. Devon, his cellmate, had given him the rudimentary weapon, before he ran out to join his gang in the fighting.

“Protect ya’self, aight? I ain’t tryin’ to get a new cellmate ‘n shit.”

“Thanks!” he yelled to Devon’s retreating back. Without the 6’3, 280 lbs other man in the cell, it felt empty and strangely enormous; enormous enough to hide something, which could kill him. As soon as Devon left, Tim clamored off the top bunk and desperately tried to push the steel bed against the cell entrance. It may not stop anyone for long, but it would hopefully deter them and send them off in search of someone else to rough up. But unfortunately Tim wasn’t built like his cellmate. He was only 5’10 and 165 lbs, barely. Definitely not strong enough to move the 200 lbs steel bed frame the 10 feet across the cell to block the door. No all he managed to do was create a little pocket between the bed and the wall of the cell for him to crouch in.

And that’s where he’d been crouching for almost 9 hours. Tim’s lower half was going numb, the stone on the floor and walls were cold, despite the typical California weather. There was no heat or light, besides the low-level blue of the emergency lighting. Water and power were the first things to be cut-off during the melee. The flickering shadows he saw in the hall came from one of the many fires that were burning throughout the prison compound. Ghostly orange flames wafted by casting shadows of 20 foot tall men-like creatures. Truly the fringe...

The sound of breaking glass had died down within the last hour or so. He assumed it was because all the windows that could be broken were. Still no sign of the sheriff or riot police to come in and stop this. Perhaps they really were waiting for the Blacks and Latinos to finish each other off. Waiting and hoping. But where did that leave him, a scrawny half-Black, half-Mexican? Were they waiting for him to be killed off too? Was he just par-for-the-course? When they found his body would just be another dead nigger? Or another dead beaner? Or just another dead darkie? Either way, it was clear that he would be one less problem for the California Penal System and that was really all they cared about.

They didn’t care why he was there, or if he was ever going to get out. Sometime Tim felt himself not caring, not believe that he would ever get out. Sometimes, just sometimes he wished he wouldn’t. Shit was tough in prison, but it was really tough outside.

He could still remember the sentencing hearing, his useless jackass of a public defender smiling at the judge as Tim was sentenced to 15 years, eligible for parole in 10. Tim remembered all too clearly.

He remembered the night that started it all; March 8th. He remembered how hungry he was. He was at the bottom of his luck and there was no way up. He couldn’t go back to the shelter; the last time he was there was a random sweep for people with warrants out for their arrest. So it was off-limits, at least for a while. But, back then he was so determined to avoid jail.

So there he was, cold (yes even California gets cold at night), hungry, and overwhelmingly depressed. He’d been to another one of those useless career centers that day. It was impossible for him to find a job though, with the economy being so shitty. It’d been 5 months since he got laid off. In 5 months he went from renting a decent apartment, to fighting with dogs on the street for a bone from the garbage. But even that was rare, most nights it was just the overwhelming hunger. He learned quickly the pecking order of homelessness. Who got which garbage cans; who could hold signs where. Oh he learned, mostly the hard way.

He wished he’d never run from those cops which got him his arrest warrant. But, he was new on the streets, he just been laid off a month before and cops scared him. He learned growing up, that men in a uniform meant trouble for anyone darker than a glass of milk. So he ran and they chased him. But he was quicker than they were, or maybe it was the fact that he wasn’t worth it them; another homeless spic, in city overrun by the dirty sweaty unwashed masses. He was just one of many problems to them. Another number to be reported, another warrant to be issued, another indigent to be lock-up for the crime of being poor. Another body on the fringe.

So that is how he found himself, on March 8th crouched under a rose bush, his Dodger’s jacket (the last thing his father ever brought for him before he died) spread over him like a blanket. A pain in his right side made him realize, he’d probably lain on a rock. Rolling over, he tried to get back to sleep; he needed to be awake soon, to make sure that he wasn’t found on anyone’s property come sunrise. This time the pain was in his left side; a dull jabbing, that he absently swatted at with his arm. Then he heard it, a woman’s voices gasp.

‘Shit!’ he said as he scrambled to his knees, ignoring the pain of his face and arms being scratched by the thorns on the roses. And there she was, a middle-aged woman, maybe Latino, maybe white, he wasn’t sure at the moment, holding a broom that she was using to jab him in the ribs like some sort of dead animal.

“I’m sorry maam, I was just tired, and so I thought I’d lie down. I’ll be on my way now. “He blurted out in a rush. Grabbing his jacket about him, Tim moved into a crouching position, getting ready to stand up and run off the property. He felt the damp spots on his pants and shirt where the moisture from the ground had soaked into his clothes.

In a flash he stood up, but just as quickly the woman, either startled or angry, let out a shriek to wake the dead. Without thinking Tim leaped forward and grabbed her with his hand over her mouth. He just wanted her to be quiet. He just wanted to leave and not make a scene. But it was too late. Lights were coming on in the surrounding houses, neighbors were coming to investigate. He let he go and turned to run. But even that was not to be. As he turned around he heard the sirens and the now-too-familiar flashing blue and red lights. The woman must have called the cops before she decided to poke at him. The sirens and strobe-like lights sped down the block.

He could have run had he been stronger. Maybe he could have run and gotten away too. But it was hard to focus and think quickly when you hadn’t eaten in three days. Hard to motivate your feet to move when your stomach was so empty it felt like you inhaled a balloon. He hardly even noticed the cramping anymore. But he noticed the lightheadedness, the subtle feeling that something was just beyond your grasp. Some great idea was on the fringe of his consciousness, some idea like running away, some idea like not sleeping on someone’s property; some great idea, just on the fringe of his thoughts, which was only accessible through a good meal and proper bed.
But no sleep and no food make it very hard to focus. So Tim stood there, he stood there as the officer forced him to the ground, handcuffed and threw him into the back of the car. He felt like he was still standing, like time itself just moved around him, but he was still in the same place, when he heard the charges read against him: breaking and entering, resisting arrest, assault and battery, criminal trespassing, evading a warrant. The world shifted around him and he was still standing there.

“How does the defendant plead?”

“Guilty, your honor.”

His lawyer couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t just sleep on the street, like a “decent bum” his words, not Tim’s. Tim didn’t explain to him that he didn’t know what a “decent bum” was. He didn’t explain to him that bums got arrested sleeping on the street. He didn’t explain that being a decent bum was what got him his first arrest warrant. It was a crime to be homeless. Tim realized, all too well, how guilty he was.

But that brought him back to now; crouching against a brick wall, sort of like he crouched underneath that rose bush, all those months ago.It seemed the worst of the rioting had died down. He wondered who’d won – the Blacks or the Latinos. Tim was in the new “mixed” cell, in which inmates weren’t automatically segregated by race; some shit about the Supreme Court deciding it was unconstitutional. It wouldn’t matter to him, who won, or who lost. He was on the racial fringe too; one of the only guys in here who hadn’t been in a gang since he was old enough to stand. Caught between two races, he’d never fully belonged to either. Caught between two worlds and now he was crouching in the shadow of hell.

He was on the fringe of society. Cast away like so much useless refuse. Cast away to be caught up in the dragnet called prison; caught up so the rest of the world could go on living their lives. Maybe on the 6:00 news they would catch a story about a riot at “Chino.” Maybe they would hear about the homeless interned in prison for being poor. Maybe someone would hear his story. But he doubted it. He was on the fringe and the only way left to go was down.

Check out the two articles today’s story was based on:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/us/10prison.html?bl&ex=1250049600&en=7d16ba3057e2733a&ei=5087%0A

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/opinion/09ehrenreich.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=opinion