Bronx Noir полностью

Just a harmless speed addict, I think to myself, I never intended to hurt a soul. Especially not the retired couple whose pension checks I pilfered or the single mom whose life savings account I drained. What a time to be thinking about my vics. How will I stay afloat with the weight of my conscience suddenly acting like a ball and chain? I will surely drown in the insanity of this institution, and I realize how urgently I need a life preserver.

Down the concrete and steel hallways of the jail, I walk alongside misfits of the morning. Entering the large steel dining area, still half-asleep, I’m assaulted by the echo of clanging, banging, and hammering steel. The noise, the noise! Steel walls, steel doors, steel pots, steel pans, steel benches, steel tables—all of which underscore the hell society has banished me to.

As I drag my tray down the stainless steel line, kitchen workers throw and splatter food on my plate. I don’t make eye contact, just try to put one foot in front of the other.

I sit next to an older, bespectacled junky who obviously doesn’t know the meaning of water or soap. I eat cold cereal. With my face down, I think about how I can’t wait to get out, get out and…then suddenly it hits me—I have nothing to get out for. I have no life on the outside worth returning to. The girl I loved, an addict like me, was lost to the streets last I heard. I’m a college drop-out with only lies to put on a resume. When I get out, the only choice I have is to return to the mix, the only thing I know, which will land me right back in this hellhole. For the first time, I consider hanging up, ending it all. Believe it or not, it’s hard to pull off in a place like this. I go back to my cot and sleep another eight hours.

“On the chow!” the CO barks, alerting inmates it’s feeding time again. I drag myself out of bed and kick on some slippers. I have no idea what day or time it is. I try not to think. My thoughts lead only to one place.

On the way to the mess hall I notice a door with the words, New Beginnings…Create a new life and a new future today. Why does the name resonate so much? I repeat it to myself over and over—New Beginnings, New Beginnings. Then, like some prizefighter’s left hook, it hits me. It is one in a long line of stories Billy’s told me. Last time he was locked down on the Island he managed to weasel his way into being a trustee. He was assigned to sweep and mop some program office. Bits and pieces of his tale are coming back to me. All he kept telling me is that he was so smooth he could find a vic anywhere, even on the inside. “Simple, old-fashioned justice,” he called it. It was his way, he thought, of sticking to the system that stuck it to him so many times. The last thing I want to think about is that world.

God works in mysterious ways, I think, but did he really expect me to join a stupid jailhouse program? Been there, done that. I shuffle along to the mess hall.

I get my food, some kind of slop meant to be meatloaf, and walk to a gray steel table that’s probably been painted for the twentieth time. I sit down and bury my face in my hands. I consider throwing the tray against the wall. I’m filled with rage and desperately need a hit. I haven’t felt my emotions in years and the pain is unbearable.

“Hey.” The guy sitting next to me tries to start a conversation, but I wave him away.

“Don’t wanna talk, man,” I tell him.

“Listen, I know where you’re at,” he says. “I’ve been there. I can see it. New Beginnings is what you need, brotha.” As he goes on about the program, how cool the counselors are, how they help you find a job and get clean once you’re released, I just want him to shut up. I don’t have the energy for hope.

To get him off my back, I grab an application for the program from a table and fill it out. He tells me he’ll give it to the director. The next chapter of my life suddenly has promise, however slight.

I pick up my spoon and take a portion of the meatloaf and place it in my mouth. I chew once or twice, then slowly open my mouth, letting the disgusting fodder fall back onto the tray. This isn’t the first jailhouse meal that has repulsed me, but it’s the first time the pain has run so deep. I push the tray aside and sit there staring at the New Beginnings mural and wondering what that phrase means to me.

I return to my housing unit and wait for the count to be cleared. The jangle of keys attached to the belt on the spreading waist of a CO signifies the change in shifts.

Clank! The crash of metal against metal, bouncing apart, then meeting again with another steely thump tells me that the day is beginning. Soon it will be business as usual in the facility.