CRIMINAL Justice
by
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Bones was good, damn good. "Who turn you out, Bones?" Johnny asked, zipping up his trousers. Leon vomited into the utility sink while water roared from the faucet, washing away the sound and evidence of his discomfort. I wonder what be waitin’ at the walls for Bones, he that scared to go back, Johnny thought. Or maybe he ain’t no real she-man. Maybe Bones got dignity I ain’t seen yet. He chuckled at the apparent contradiction. "Who turn you out, Bones?" he asked again. "They bargain, Man, you know how it be," Leon said, coughing. "Knights buy me. That be pain, Man." He scrubbed his face vigorously with the towel as if to erase the humiliation. "Leastways the Knights don’t cut you," he added. "Them motherf***n’ white-a** peckerwood Devils-- they cut ‘nitials on the ni**ers they own. They buy my baby brother. He kill hisself." "Where you get them dots, Bones?" Johnny asked. "Knights do that?" Leon’s eyes were wide and white. "It be that peckerwood screw...the one they call Dutch." Perspiration covered his face, gray with fear and disgust. "He say he kill me if I tell what he do." "DUTCH! HAW, HAW!" Johnny burst out, then lowered his voice when he saw the smaller man’s fear. "Dutch? That upstandin’, law-abidin’, f**-hatin’, honky motherf***er? What he do?" Johnny had seen scars from bullets, knives, whips, burns and unidentified objects, but he had never seen dots like Leon’s. He couldn’t imagine what a screw might do to Leon that would make dots like that or what could be worse than what the Knights, the Devils or any of the other prison gangs might do to their booty. A snort of laughter escaped as a thought occurred to Johnny. He saw Leon’s face darken in anger and shook his head. "It’s O.K., Man," he said. "I just wonderin’--if what he do so bad that Dutch got to kill to keep it secret, how come convicts ain’t thought of it first?" Leon looked startled and stared at Johnny for a minute while he sorted it out. "Yeah," he said, "convicts do more badder things. But a convict do this, he be braggin’ about it. It be his signature, his claim to fame. An’ a man don’t feel so much shame ‘cause cons is cons." Leon ducked his head and swallowed a couple of times. "Screws ain’t cons," he said finally. "You weren’t no quiff ‘fore you come to the joint, was you Bones?" "Sh**, no!" Leon spat out. "I survivin’, that’s all. You know how it be. Good head save your ass." "Bones, you tell me what Dutch do, I’ll see that none of these motherf****rs use you no more. Anyone messin’ with you, they messin’ with me. Ain’t no one in this place mess with Johnny Bates." Leon was silent for several minutes. Then he slipped out of the storeroom, checking every place nearby where someone might be listening. Satisfied, he grabbed a bag of potatoes and began dragging it towards the walk-in cooler. Johnny took another. Leon whispered, "Dutch got hisself some leather gloves. He got a thumbtack poking through each of the fingers and thumbs. When he f*** your a**, he claw you...like a cat." Leon released his grip on the potato bag and flexed his fingers in illustration. "He get off when he see blood runnin’." Johnny stared. "Son of a b***h," he spat out. That perverted motherf****r, he thought, and didn’t speak again until all the produce was in the cooler and he’d swept the dust and debris away. "I’m goin’ after the motherf****r," he said then. His eyes gleamed. His tongue darted out to trace his lips. His body seemed to get bigger. He bared his teeth, white and glittering gold. Leon stared at Johnny, then nodded. He washed his hands and started across the kitchen toward the dining room.
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About the Book
Johnny Bates is incarcerated in the minimum-security correctional facility fighting boredom. One day he learns about an injustice that is being visited upon certain convicts in the maximum-security prison by one of the prison guards. Johnny decides he must be the one to right the wrong. To do that, he must return to maximum-security, to the Walls. Once again in maximum-security, Johnny happily reunites with his old friends from his earlier stay, both convict and guard. He works his way into the place and position he wants and needs in order to complete his mission, while here he learns again the habits of the officers and other convicts and plans the method by which he will put an end to the injustice. Inside the Walls, a lot has changed and Johnny finds himself violently thrust into the most recent problem confronting inmates as well as the prison administration, the problem of juveniles who’ve been sentenced as adults. The new trouble does serve to keep the attention of the security staff focused away from Johnny, so although it’s a distraction, it’s not as bad as it seems at first. As he told the warden, "I’m glad I ain’t your biggest problem no more." Johnny manages to right the wrong, to wreak the kind of justice (punishment) that will be understood and accepted in prison culture, a culture which seems to be slightly out of step with that of free society, but upon closer inspection is frighteningly similar. The book illustrates that prison is not entirely a war between good (security staff) and bad (convicts), but a way of life with love and hate, fear and humor, and pleasure as well as hard knocks. In prison as well as on the outside, life is what you make of it with the cards you are dealt.
About the Author
K. R. MacLeish has worked as a correctional officer in both maximum and minimum security prisons in the Midwest. She began her career in the prison system when hiring women in male institutions was new. "I learned," she says, "that a woman who was self-confident and didn’t hide behind the power of her badge, had an easier time in the job than many of the male officers because some of the men, both inmates and officers, seemed always to have a need confront each other and prove their masculinity over and over. The prisoners wanted to show their better side to women officers in most instances, even keeping their language clean." After relocating to the southwest, Ms. MacLeish worked as an Intensive Probation Surveillance Officer before attending law school at the University of Arizona. She has had several short stories published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. This is her first novel.