Tempus Fugit

Chapter One

Empty everything out of your pockets, Lieutenant Buckles ejaculated the words around each side of the foul smelling cigar stub he chewed constantly in the corner of his mouth. Then turn around and spread your arms out wide.

Reluctant because my only choice seemed to go to the Special Housing Unit, I complied with his orders. I pulled out my ID card, a scrap of paper on which I write notes to myself, a couple of Starlite mints, an old ink pen, and placed it all on the corner of the Lieutenant’s desk.

What did I do Lieutenant? I said.

While Officer Dingos patted me down for more contraband, the lieutenant swept my meager possessions off the desk into a zip lock bag, wrote my name and ID number on the front, and slid it across the desk towards Officer Dingos.

Don’t worry about what you did Barron, Buckles said. We’ll get to that soon enough. Now put your hands behind your back and cuff-up.

I placed my hands behind me and felt Dingos secure first the right wrist, then the other. A prickly heat of anger rose up in my chest, spread throughout my arms, and filled my head and face with a warm buzz like wasps.

Goddamn it Lieutenant, what the fuck is going on? I said as loud as I could get away with.

By way of an answer, Lieutenant Buckles leaned over to the left and farted loudly as Dingos grabbed my cuffed wrists, turned me around, and pushed me through the open doorway while the fart ripped behind us like a Kawasaki accelerating uphill.

You couldn’t ask for a finer late August day than today, unless like me, you’re handcuffed with your hands behind you and being led to the Special Housing Unit of this medium security federal prison. Ten minutes ago I sat comfortably in the psychologist’s office, sipped coffee and talked to the Doc about the time my old man came home drunk, and found the ‘AA Big Book’ Mom had put on the coffee table. He screamed out, ‘Son of a bitchin do-gooders’, tossed the book out the front door onto the lawn and shot it full of .44 caliber holes with the Colt revolver he kept in the umbrella stand behind the front door. Right in the middle of my painful recollections, the phone on the doctor’s desk rang, he picked it up and mumbled a few, ‘Uh huhs’, looked at me, hung up the phone.

Lieutenant wants to see you over at his office right now, he said. We’ll have to postpone the rest of our meeting until another time, if that’s okay with you Mr. Barron?

It was a rhetorical question because I really didn’t have a choice in the matter. When an inmate is called to the lieutenant’s office there are no options. You either go immediately, or wait until they lockdown the institution, track you down, and you go in handcuffs.

Memories for the last forty or fifty years, there’s no reason why I can’t stumble around with them for another week or so. See ya."

Now I have the pleasure of a slow walk across the compound with Officer Dingos, as he holds onto my cuffed wrists and sort of pushes me along like a shopping cart towards the other side of the compound where the SHU is located.

It's between lockdowns, during what’s called a ’ten minute recreation move’, so inmates walked the compound and universally stared in our direction.

We call Dingos ‘Potatoes’, and sometimes ’Spuds’, because he looks like a huge Idaho baker with tiny extremities poking out here and there. Two little matchstick arms, breakfast- sausage legs, and a cherry tomato head at the top.

Hey Spudso, why don’t you tell me what’s going on, I said.

I don’t know, he said. Shut up Barron, and don’t call me Spudso.

Nice enough guy Potatoes, just not real full of information.

We arrived at the door of the SHU, Potatoes pulled out his radio and said, Compound to segregation, I’m at your door with one.

I can hear the radio squawk, squeal, and then the voice of the officer inside the SHU said, Segregation to Control, pop the door, the trap is clear.

The latch to the steel door in front of us popped open with a clack as the control man in the main building hit the release button. Spudso pulled it open, pushed me inside, and closed the door behind us with a metallic slam.

No matter how hard I try to repress the fear that tightens in my guts each time I enter the Special Housing Unit, it’s always the same. It’s like eating a big Mexican dinner full of spicy peppers just before going to bed. It’s not going to bother you this time. You wake up with fire in the pit of your stomach and nothing can put it out. I try to visualize romping puppies, white-faced clowns hitting each other with huge rubber hammers, but nothing stops the fear of the unknown. I can smell the sharp tang of it reeking from my pores and mixing with the odor of the men who passed this way before and left their stink permeated into the khaki colored paint on the walls. No matter how many times they paint the walls, the smell remains the same. Probably something in the paint.

As soon as we are in the trap area and the outside door is secured, an officer from the SHU appears at the barred gate on the other side of the trap, fits his key into the lock and opens the door, steps into the trap, closes the door and locks it.

The officers wear the usual gray pants and blue shirts, except the brass who wear white shirts. But the SHU officers all look like displaced garage mechanics, overdressed for the occasion. They wear dark blue overalls with lots of pockets and zippers, bloused at the cuff and stuffed into high-topped, shiny combat boots. A plastic utility belt girds their usually ample middle, and the belt clips and metal rings hang with cuffs, keys, and radio. Dressed for a parachute jump with no airplane in sight. These guys all look the same, wear a mustache and goatee that circles around the face and chin. Most of them are jerks with too little to do and too much time in which to do it. The one who comes into the trap is no exception.

Hey look who we got, he said. What’s going on here Peg, they catch you giving blow jobs in the janitor’s closet?

Funny man, with a sense of humor grounded in the seventh grade.

I’m surprised the warden let you off his leg long enough to do a few minutes of work Murphy, I said. When in prison stick to prison humor, besides it was the only thing I could think of to say at the time. Hey do me a favor and don’t call me Peg. My friends call me Peg.

Yeah okay freak, he said, is that better for you. He took another step into the trap, opened the gate to a small cage and motioned me to enter. Just get your lame ass in here and put your hands through the hole in the bars so I can get the cuffs off you.

Spudso pushed me over to the cage, I stepped inside and Murphy locked me inside.

Put your hands through the hole stupid, he said.

I didn’t reply, thrust my hands through the hole and waited while he unlocked the cuffs.

Strip down and push your clothes and shoe out through the bars, and take off that fuckin leg too.

Aw shit Murphy, you’re not going to take away my leg again.

Quit your whining cripple, I’m not taking your leg. I want to inspect it for contraband then I’ll give it back. I’d take the fuckin thing home and use it to start a fire but there ain’t enough of it to burn good.

Murphy and Potatoes laughed at the joke I'd heard a thousand times. Make that a thousand and one. Spudso gave Murphy my bag of personal property, and Murphy cleared him out the door with the control unit.

I removed my clothes and shoe and pushed them out through the bars. Good thing it’s summer time and warm. In the winter you freeze your ass off here getting stripped and searched. The only place the heat works well is in the offices. I’ve been in place that was one year old, and still the heat didn’t work. The cold coupled with the fear will make your balls hide in your belly and your dick invert. Finally I unstrapped the Velcro from the boot that runs up over my upper thigh and holds on my wooden leg. I lost the leg from the knee down to a stump grinder when I was eight years old. I never could get used to the usual prosthetics. My dad turned a leg down for me on his lathe so ever since I’ve worn wooden legs like the old pirates. The leg I had on was made of birds-eye maple and walnut, glued in layers and turned down on a lathe so the legs wider at the ends that the middle, sort of like an hourglass. I wore it the day the Feds came around and busted me, four years ago. Although they now let me keep the leg and have replacement rubber tips for it, they’ll take the leg away it if breaks and give me a plastic one from their handy closet of federal prosthetics. Security of the institution and all that you know.

Murphy placed my clothes in a plastic garbage bag he brought along for that purpose, wrote my name on a piece of paper and stuck it to the bag with tape. He took the bag into a room beside the trap area and left it there, and came back out with a pair of bright orange coveralls, boxer shorts, socks, and t-shirt, and pushed it all through the bars. I wondered why they dyed the shorts, socks and t-shirt orange because they always faced to a light shade of sort-of pink. Just dye them pink in the first place is all I’m thinking.

I really don’t look good in this color of orange Murphy, I said. Have you got something in taupe?

Murphy pulled a can of Copenhagen out of one of his zippered pockets, dipped a huge finger full and stuffed it into his mouth, shook the excess off his fingers onto the floor.

I’ve got something in a nice lavender for you faggot. Just put the shit on and shut up. What size shoe do you wear? One nine-and-a-half and one two-and-a-half. He laughed at his own joke, brown tobacco spittle leaking from his lip. The manual says we got to issue you two shoes and I don’t care what you do with them once you get them, but you gotta have two.

That’s the way it is around here, everything by the book. It works that way some of the time and the rest of the time procedure is an invention of whichever dim-witted guard you’re dealing with at the moment.

I put my leg and clothes on, Murphy cuffed me again before he moved me from the trap cell into the hallway. Left turn goes to segregation housing and right, the way we turn, to the three dry cells.

Aw shit Murphy, not the dry cell. I don’t have any dope on me and I’m not getting ready to go out on a medical trip. What the fuck’s going on here?

Look shithead, I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t ask cause that’s not my job. Just get in the fuckin dry cell, put your hands through the bars so I can uncuff you, then relax.

There are three dry cells lined up on a short hallway off the main hall. The corridor ends in a blank wall with the barred and gated entry at the other end. The dry cells are for men suspected of having drugs secreted in their body. They strap him naked to a concrete bed and wait for him to shit out that which did not belong to him. A guard sits in the cell with him at all times.

I stepped into the cell, Murphy secured the door, I stuck my hands through the opening in the barred door and he removed the cuffs.

Murphy left, locked the barred gate at the end of the corridor, clattered and banged his bronze key, and jingled off down the hallway.

Look at the bright side Barron, I thought as I lie on the thin mattress on the concrete island in the center of the cell, at least it’s quiet here.

* * *

Chapter Two

I sat down on the cold concrete bed to try and make some sense of the last hour, but nothing came to me immediately Lets see, I’m stuck in the dry cell, locked in SHU, and so far I haven’t got a clue what’s going on. Of course that’s not so much out of the ordinary around here, and if a guy panicked every time he felt in the dark about something, hell, he’d just go out of his mind.

The dry cells are only eight feet by six feet, with a concrete bed that looks like a bier for a coffin. It sits about two-and-a-half feet off the floor and there’s a lip around the top so the foam-filled mattress won’t slip off. Steel rings are attached to each corner for obvious reasons. There’s no sink or toilet in here so they have a plastic urinal and if I have to shit I shout until a guard comes to take me to the bathroom across the hall. The cop gets to watch me shit so I won’t steal the toilet paper and make a bomb, blow the gate and make good my escape back into the prison.

I hear the gate at the end of the hallway open and moments later Murphy shows up at the bars in front of me holding a plastic bag with a toothbrush, soap, toothpaste, a washcloth, and a towel.

I took the comb out cause you won’t be needing it, besides I don’t want you using it to kill yourself.

Yes, but I can always eat the soap, stuff the toothpaste into my nostrils, and hang myself with the towel.

"Don’t even think about it asshole, at least not on the rest of my shift. Wait till I get off work and let the next shift do the paperwork.

Murphy left and it was quiet again.

The crack the cop made about the comb didn’t even pique my temper. I’ve heard all the stupid jokes that were even invented, some of them real clever, regarding my lack of hair. I’m bald, except for eyelashes and a group of hairs growing on the right side towards the rear part of my head. I let the hairs there grow and they’ve been growing for about five years this time around, so I’ve got an eighteen inch, sliver-colored, braided pigtail, thin like a pull chain on a light bulb fixture in the center of a room.

All my hair fell out when I was ten years old and I got some disease that I can’t remember the name of because they didn’t have a nickname for it, and the Latin name was too hard to memorize. My mom called it the Nair disease, after a product sold in the 60’s called Nair. It was supposed to take the hair off of women’s legs without shaving. The Nair disease hit me in November, put me into bed with a raging fever for four days that left me weak and dehydrated for the next week. The first week after the fever the hair began falling out of my head in clumps, my eyelashes and eyebrows fell out. All kinds of shit would get into my eyes without eyelashes, but other that that it didn’t hurt or anything and the doctor said that maybe some of it might grow back when I reached puberty. The good side was I’d never need to shave, no haircuts, and I’d never have to worry about going bald when I got old.

The other kids in school thought being bald was cool and some of them even shaved their heads so I wouldn’t feel self-conscious. When I hit puberty my eyelashes grew back, and that hair began to grow on the right backside of my head. I didn’t care much about it but my mom would snip it off with whatever sharp object was near to her reach at the time.

I always played a pirate at Halloween. Clip on a hoop earring, put a patch over my eye, and strut around on my peg leg hollering, Har Har, walk the stinking plank matey.

I lie back on the cement bed and actually found the plastic-foam mattress more comfortable than the lumpy ticking-stuffed one back in my cell. I put my hands behind my head and tried to figure out what’s going on here. I got up this morning and went to breakfast, relaxed in the cell, went outside and took a walk, ate lunch, and went to the shrink for my weekly ego reduction. I’m smart enough to stay out of the usual trouble one might find himself in here behind bars. The fights, dope deals, and debts like gambling, borrowing from the unit store-man and not paying on time, or keeping a greedy scurrilous faggot on the line. I can’t think of a thing in my simplified life that might cause me to wind up locked inside the jail within the jail.

Maybe my cellie Gary did something. Gary once lived in a garden shed on the back of an acquaintance’s property on the island of Maui, and shot heroin while working up to find the courage to give himself the hot shot that would kill him and end his misery. One evening DEA agents came to the shed and arrested Gary for drug trafficking and conspiracy. They threatened him with guns, threw him on the ground, cuffed and searched him and whisked him off to jail. Gary’s acquaintance told the agents that Gary is a kingpin and all the drugs they find under the shed, his drugs, belong to Gary. He does a deal with the cops, gets four years for snitching ,and Gary fights his case in court and winds up with fifteen years. Nobody ever said the system was perfect.

Gary’s the perfect cellie though. He works hard in food service, cleans up after himself, goes to church, and heads for bed early. He stays out of trouble so I know this trip to SHU is not about him.

I’ve been here over four years, have no incident reports filed on me, and only two trips to the SHU previously for what the administration calls, ‘Investigation’. Hell, I’ve only got eight months left on my five year sentence. All I want to do is go home and live the simple life with my wife Mona and Cindy the Dog.

During my life I’ve spent sixteen years bucking the system and getting locked up for it. I feel weary from the effort and sick and tired of prison life. I’m fifty years old, I want to get out of here, work some, and live well. That’s it. No complications. Now this shit happens.

The door at the end of the hallway unlocked and I hear guard-type brogans and boots clomping down the hall towards the cell. Murphy showed up first.

Get up Barron, turn around and put your hands through the bars to cuff-up, he said.

I groaned as I rolled off the bed, hobbled to the bars and stuck my hands through. Murphy put the cuffs on and unlocked the door. As I turned around to face him his hand came up from the waist with a small green canister, his finger on the white button on the top of it.

Mace, I shout inside my head, and try to fling my hands to my face for protection. No good Frank, they’re cuffed behind . I feel my balls shrink in fear, then Murphy hit the white button and all I know is searing pain as my eyes and skin burn. Someone hit me in the face, I felt my nose bend but not break, and then a whole group of elephants fell on me. They pinned me to the bed and pummeled me, in the stomach, the balls, and some shots to the head around my ears. I’m numb to the pain now and it felt like the numb-humming moment just before the anesthesia takes you under when you’re bound for surgery. The last thing I remember is they pull me off the bed and toss me towards the floor. My head clunked as it landed and I saw sparkling lights, heard a loud hum in my head, and it all went black.

* * *

Chapter Three

I came to once, just slightly though, and my mind felt like the dentist’s needle went too far and poked me in the brain. Through the double-layer-cheesecloth fog I pulled myself up onto the bed and passed out again.

I dreamed I sat at the kitchen table watching Mona open the oven door to inspect a loaf of onion cheese bread, all crispy brown and golden cheesy. Her cute butt stuck up in the air as she bent to the oven rack and I’m thinking how fun it will be to sneak up on her and press myself tight against her. The aroma of the bread hit me hard and I woke up with drool running down my cheek.

Jesus Christ Barron, you’re disgusting.

I opened one puffed eye, looked towards the bars and knew it was after four in the afternoon because third-shift officer Marbles stood at the bars and looked at me. We call him Marbles because that’s what he has for brains, plus he talks funny, and he’s another SHU clone: Head and facial hair; boots; belts; zippers. A fatter version of most of the others.

Get your ass up Sleeping Ugly, he said. You’ve got an important guest here to see you.

He must have eaten anchovies smothered in garlic. I can smell the stench from where I lie. I tried to sit up and groaned out loud as I felt the pain of my battered body protest the movement.

Shit Barron, Marbles said, you look like you must’ve fallen out of bed while you were napping. You look like hell. Come on and get up pronto before you fall out of bed again.

Give me a minute to piss, I said and reached for the plastic urinal.

Naw, you ain’t got time for that. Just get your fucking hands through the bars and let me cuff you up.

I felt angry. These guys had kept me in the dark about why I was here, they put me in a dry cell, and they beat the shit out of me. I didn’t feel much like cooperating.

Hey look Marblehead, I really need to piss and I’m sure my guest wouldn’t want me wetting my pants right in the middle of our important meeting.

And I said cuff up fucker. You got ten seconds to cuff up or I’ll mace your stupid ass. He reached down to one of his zippered pockets for the spray can.

That won’t be necessary officer, a quiet voice said from down the hall, just out of my range of vision. Just open the cell door will you, and then you may go.

Marbles started to protest, But the regulations say…

The voice sounded less easy-going, Look, I don’t give a crystal fuck what your regulations say, I’m running this investigation and I take full responsibility for the prisoner. Quiet was gone, replaced by confident authority. Now open the goddamned door and leave.

There was a nice little pop, bang and the end of each word, and Marbles head moved a little to each side like he’d been slapped.

Marbles turned and thrust the key into the lock, looked down to turn it and realized I was pissing on his foot.

Son of a bitch, he shouted as he danced away from the unwavering stream. You’ll pay for this cripple.

Just take the money off my books for the shoeshine asshole, I said, shook the dew off my dick and tucked it away.

Marbles walked away while he mumbled something about busting my chops.

That was kind of a stupid thing to do, the voice said, now easy going again

The man behind the voice pulled the cell door open and motioned me to step out. Not everybody who puts on a gray summer-weight suit, white shirt, dark tie, and black wingtips is an FBI agent, but this guy might as well have worn a big sign. He didn’t stand very tall, but the thing that caught my attention was his pale green eyes, and the way they looked at me. One of his eyes must have been lazy from birth and he never got it fixed, so one of the eyes always tracked a bit off center, and I couldn’t tell which eye looked directly at me. Pretty damn unsettling, but an effective interrogation tool I’d bet.

My dad said I was born stupid and then got worse with age, I told him. There’s nothing that guard can do to me that the others haven’t already done.

The man smiled at me, or at least I guessed it was a smile, because just the ends of his lips twitched upward for a moment.

It looks like someone got to you already, maybe we’ll talk about that later. Come with me.

It looked like he was headed out of here so I followed him down the hall and to the right, down the other hall to the cop's cage where another C.O. clone sat minding the store. I didn’t see Marbles anywhere.

Come out here and open the gate outside to the trap, and bring one of those sack lunches with you.

When the fibbie talked to the C.O. he jumped right up to comply, so I guessed he knew who ran the show. He grabbed a sack lunch from the counter in the office, came out and handed the bag to me, opened the gate to the trap and called control to pop the door to the outside. The outside door clacked open, the fibbie pushed it and we stepped out into the gorgeous leftover evening of that perfect August day. No clouds, high seventies, a little breeze stirred the leaves on the ornamental maples that lined the sidewalk outside the SHU.

We’re in the upper compound, all administrative offices, SHU, and hospital on our side; recreation, library/school, Unicor factory and the chow hall on the other. The lawn looks meticulously trimmed and edged, and flower gardens in full bloom without a weed in sight adorn the spaces between sidewalks. Down the hill there’s four housing units in the lower compound. It’s not nearly as pretty as it is up here.

The agent stopped, turned around, stuck out his hand and said, I’m agent Sellers, with the FBI.

I took his hand in mine and it feels small, but I can feel power in it when we shake. Probably comes from holding all those guns he practices with endlessly so he can shoot the eyes out of convicts in orange coveralls. As we step closer I also notice he stands almost a foot shorter than my six-two. His size doesn’t seem to make a difference to him though.

Frank Barron, I said as we shook, but you already know that. Kind of quiet isn't it?

He let go of my hand and stood back to look at me, with one eye or the other.

Mister Barron the joint is locked down so you don’t have to worry about someone seeing us walking around up here. Just to be sure though, we’ll walk over to recreation and sit outside at one of the tables and talk.

He turned and walked and I fell in beside him. We cut across the lawn from the SHU to the recreation building, and even though he didn’t have a radio to contact Control, someone must have been watching because the steel door latch clacked open in front of us. I had a feeling nobody would want to piss this guy on purpose. He pulled the security door open and motioned me inside, then closed the door.

I felt weird being in recreation with nobody else here. The ping pong tables are empty, nobody chased the basketball in the gym, no shouting or people jostling each other in fun or anger.

We walked down the hall to the outside door and it’s unlocked. Sellers pushed it open and motioned me past him, so I walked over to the nearest cement table in the shade and plopped my lunch bag down. I sat and Sellers sat on the other side and faced me. I didn’t say anything and neither did he. I didn’t give a damn to chit cat, I was so hungry I dug right into the lunch bag, took out the bologna and rubber-raincoat cheese sandwiches, opened them up and combined the contents on two slices of bread and bit into it.. It tasted pretty dry so I rifled around in the bag and came up with two packets each of mustard and mayo, ripped them open and squirted the contents onto the bread. The sandwich tasted better. Not good, just better.

While I prepared my dinner, Agent Sellers reached into his suit coat pocket, pulled out a spiral notepad and a gold Cross pen. He lay the notepad square with the edge of the table and lined the pen up perfectly with the side of the pad. I wondered if it came naturally with the years of interrogations or if he practiced that move at home in the mirror.

"Mister Barron, I need to know your movements from twelve o-clock noon until two

o-clock this afternoon?"

I didn’t want to stop eating to answer his question, what with only two bites left of my sandwich. Besides, he seemed the patient type. I finished up the last bite, wiped my hands on the orange coveralls, and leaned forward with my forearms on the table.

Easy, I said. After lunch I went back down to the cell to pick up a couple of candies for this afternoon, then went up to the library and watched a video from noon until one: Flora and fauna of the Hawaiian Islands. Real fascinating stuff. After the video, at one o-clock, I went to my appointment with my analyst, Doctor Raphael, and the rest is recent history.

I rummaged around in the brown bag and discovered a plastic bag with two oatmeal chocolate chip cookies inside. Yum, my favorite. They must have put them in there to weaken my resolve and make me confess to whatever they’re investigating. I pulled a cookie out and bit into it while I waited for Sellers to reply.

He diddled with his notepad and pen for a moment and said, Can anyone verify you were in the library?

Shit yes. This is prison Sellers and I’m kind of hard to miss ya know. One of the advantages to being bald and having a wooden leg is you get noticed. The guy that checked out the video to me noticed, and he also gave me a set of headphones to plug into the television monitor. In exchange, I gave him my prison ID badge.

Sellers pretended to jot this useful information on his notepad, but I see his pen nib isn’t sticking out of the end of the pen.

"Did you return to the unit after you left the library, before you went to