It’s a big facility, eleven stories high with rough gray stone and bars so black and thick you can make them out even on the top story, law and order’s parallel lines. I love the jail. It’s a building which constantly hums, murmurs, the cons at the windows of the lower floors ragging the pedestrians or shouting obscenities across the areaway to the women’s block. And the woman shouting back, soliciting Johns from the eighth floor. The invitations and promises tumbling all that way somehow lose their viciousness, space moderating the human voice. It’s as though they were all outside at recess and the rest of us indoors with flus and colds.
Some old gal spots me getting off the bus. (Whores must have incredible vision.) “Dey’s dat nice Mr. Bondsman,” she yells. “Hidy, lover. You still got dat golden prick on you? Man got a golden weewee,” she explains to the street.
“Whut you sayin’, fool? Him? Ain’ nuthin’ weewee ’bout it. It de Trans’lantic Cable. You kin get J’rus’lem on it. One time I call up Poland, talk to de Prince.”
“Dat de hot line den in dat white man’s pan’s?”
“Yeah, dass ri’, dass it all ri’.”
“If dat so,” another voice adds, “let dat boy get up de vigorish an’ get us all a partner.”
“You means a pardon.”
“Shit, fool, I know what I means. I means a partner. I gettin’ tired dis ole cellmate dey gimme. She ain’ no bad lookin’ girl, ya unnerstan’, but she got fingernails on her like de railroad spikes. She makin’ my po’ ole hole bleed.”
A crowd has gathered in the street to listen. Another face has come to the window and takes the place of the woman who has just spoken. “Dat ain’ blood, honey, dass gism. Dis gal got fo’ty years ub de gism packed up her crack. I jus’ heppin’ her to get it out. She got so much gism we habbin’ us snowball fights up heah.” The men laugh.
I squint against the sun and look up at the women, staring into their eclipse. I can’t recognize them, though I go with whores from time to time. If they know me it’s because I’ve become part of the jail’s unofficial personnel, as the lawyers have. They wouldn’t dare speak this way to the guards, or even to the prison’s cooks and bakers. Nor, I’ve noticed, do they tease each other’s visitors. Only strangers and those of us who can help them.
The girls have had their turn. Now it’s the men’s chance at me. An enormous black face appears at a barred window on the third floor. He sticks his arms through the bars and holds them out in front of him, suddenly turning his head and bending, pressing his ear against the bars as if he’s listening to them. He makes some sort of imaginary adjustment on the bars with the fingers of his right hand, then strums them with his left. He begins to sing in a loud, terrible voice.
“I got de blooooooz,
I got de blooooooz,
Oh boy oh boy, do I got de blooooooz!
I got de blues in de mornin’
I got de blues in de ebenin’,
I eben got de blues in de afternoooooon.
I got de blooooooz,
I got de mornin’, ebenin’, afternoon blues.
I got de blues in Febr’ary,
I got de blues in fall,
I got de blooooooz on Thursday, April twelfth.”
A white face appears in the cell next to his. “I’m in a jungle,” he screams. “I’m in a fucking jungle. I’m locked up in a fucking jungle with a bunch of fucking coons. I feel like Dr. David Fucking Livingstone.”
The black man opens his fingers and turns fiercely to the white man. “You made me drop my guitar, you pink-toed bastard. How in hell I supposed to practice without I got a guitar? How they gonna scubber me I ain’t got my twenty-string guitar? It’s useless to me now all busted up on the cement. You think they treat Leadbelly this way?”
“Use your accordion,” someone calls. “Let them discover you on the accordion.” There are many white faces at the windows now.
The singer disappears, returns, thrusts his arms through the bars again and starts to make crazy, waving, squeezing movements.
“Lady ub Spain, ah adores you,
Lady ub Spain, ah adores you.”
He breaks off. “It ain’t the same,” he says disconsolately.
“Then take up track!” a prisoner shouts. They laugh.
Below them I applaud. “Very funny, ladies,” I call. “Very amusing, gentlemen.”
“You liked it?”
“Oh, yes. ‘Vastly entertaining dot dot dot.’ ‘Four stars dot dot dot — Alexander Main, Cincinnati bailbondsman.’ You’ve got a big hit, kids. Boffo!”
“You think they’ll hold us over?”
“Months. Years.” I do a two-step, a little shuffle. I break into song:
“There’s no business like show business,
Like no business I know.
One day they are saying you will not go far,
Next day on your dressing room they hang…you.”
“Sheeeit.”
“You think so?” I hold my palms out and up to them. I turn them over. “You see that? Recognize that? Any you people remember what this stuff is? Sunshine. Look, watch this.” I breathe deep. “Fresh air. Smells good. I’ll tell you something else. I ever need to take a crap I get to lock the door. No lids. Sit on a toilet seat like a kid’s inner tube. I go out to lunch they hand me a menu. There’s a napkin on my lap so I shouldn’t get crumbs on my suit. After lunch, I feel like it I walk in the park, sit on a bench, look at the girls. If I wanted I could throw a ball over a wall and chase it. I could walk a mile for a Camel. I got a radio next to my bed pulls in all the stations and there’s never any interference on the TV from the electric chair.”
“Go peddle your papers, motherfucker.”
“He is.”
“I am.”
“Sheeeit.”
“There are seven million arrests in the United States annually — I’m giving you the latest year for which we have statistics — a hundred and sixty thousand people in the jails, prisons, pens and work farms at any given moment. I’m giving you the latest moment for which we have statistics.”
“Sheeeit.”
“Eighty thousand of you monkeys are in a pretrial or preconviction stage. Eighty thousand. Do you follow what I’m telling you? One out of every two could be out this afternoon if he went bail. I’m coming inside. I’ve arranged with the guards to see as many of you as I can. They’ll be no trouble. Just call the guard and tell him you want to see Mr. Main.” I have a sudden inspiration. “Tell the screw to take you to the visitors’ room. What the hell, I’ll do the lot of you. This town’s been kind of boring with you mothers off the streets.” There are catcalls but I shout above them. “I talk this way in the public streets because this ain’t privilege but constitutional rights we’re discussing. Don’t ask me how it happens, but you creeps have constitutional rights. God Bless America and I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
The screens in the visitors’ room give it the look of high summer. I wave to the guards, chipper Phoenician that I am. An act of the purest good will because it makes no difference to these sober, side-armed fellows. They have no more regard for me than for their charges. The public makes a mistake when it assumes that all its officials are on the take. Many of these men, low fellows bribed by their very jobs, don’t get a penny off me.