Forlorn Hope, Part Six: It Can Always Get Worse
Today is Tuesday, August 9, 1967.
I'm still sitting in that same solitary cell in the Franklin County Jail, still waiting to die. So what the fuck happened?
Awakening in the holding cell yesterday at dawn, I stood up, nearly tripped over my leg irons, and stumbled to the toilet to take a piss. Somewhere through the fog of my mind, more details of my early-morning arrest came into focus over the porcelain bowl.
There was Pitbull reading me my rights in the holding cell, then grimly informing me I matched the description of a man who robbed the Casey's gas station in Sheffield that night. Did I want to tell him anything about it?
"No, I don't think I will," I muttered.
Then you can see the judge later and tell him. Oh, and I think you're that fugitive out of Idaho wanted by the FBI. Something about sex perversion, escape, and punching out a cop. We'll find out in the morning. Don't go anywhere, kid.
Dazed, I sat back down on the steel bunk, held my head in my hands, and tried to think. What were my options? Did I have any at all? Surely they'd match my fingerprints and call the FBI. I'd be chained up in the back seat of an Idaho State Police car on a one-way trip to Boise within a week.
Well, I said it was Mexico or the penitentiary. The penitentiary it is.
Unless they were going to try me here for a piss-ant gas station robbery first? Would they send me to the Iowa State Penitentiary first before shipping me back to face my Idaho sentence?
Shit. All roads lead to prison.
At seven o'clock, a different guard banged on the iron grille, snapping me out of my reverie. This, then, must have been the other man last night - Fuchs was his name.
Get up, inmate. Put your hands behind your back through the trap.
Not knowing what else to do, I complied. Cold steel biting into my wrists again - I realized with horror that I was already becoming used to the feeling. Again, I sighted the Wanted poster as I was taken through another door - and before me stood a wall of iron grates, with a bronze plaque affixed - P.J. Pauly and Bro, Patented 1876.
Jail, late-19th century style. In the space age, no less.
I had no time to admire the architecture, for I was marched around the corner to a pair of stairs and directed inside a steel-grilled shower enclosure. Once the padlocks snapped shut, I heard two words I would come to know - and dread.
Down went the jumpsuit, off went the cheap boxers, and again began the degrading ritual of displaying every part and orifice of my body to another man. As I turned around and faced Fuchs, a new face appeared behind him - by his nameplate and stars, this was Sheriff Bind.
Lift your junk and your balls. Let it drop. Do it again. Do it again.
Fuchs had obviously seen it all before, and then some. But Bind stared for a moment, then looked at me with a smirk.
No wonder you're a faggot, with that little thing hanging there. Didn't give you much to work with, did they?
I'm naked, being strip-searched, in a shithole Iowa jail, staring down life imprisonment on the installment plan... and this asshole with a tin star is calling out my dick size? Can it get any worse?
I was learning. It got worse anyway.
Finding no contraband up my ass, Fuchs picked up a sprayer from the floor and aimed it at me through the grate.
Close your eyes and hold your breath.
I barely had time to obey his orders before a mist of pungent, oily liquid enveloped me.
Turn around. All the way around.
I was being deloused! The sensation was unlike anything I'd ever felt before.
Into the shower. Now. You have five minutes.
I hastily wet down, scrubbed the delousing agent out of my hair, and was just beginning to enjoy myself when-
Turning off the water, I stepped over to the grill. There, I was confronted with the first true realization of my situation.
You're locked into a shower cage, dripping wet, strip-searched, deloused, buck naked, staring at a guard holding an armload of convict clothing - and that's what you're going to wear for the rest of your natural life.
I toweled off and stepped back into my orange jumpsuit - less awkwardly this time. I told you, I was learning. Hands cuffed to a leather belt and legs chained, Fuchs and Pitbull marched me back out to the booking room.
A plastic bracelet was snapped around my right wrist, a board was draped over my neck, and I was told to stand against a height chart as a flashbulb went off. Reading upside down, I realized I was Inmate 754. My last shred of humanity stripped away.
Turn left. Turn right. Wipe that smile off your face, inmate.
Then I was walked over to the fingerprinting counter. My identity, indelibly marked in black ink, was systematically imprinted on a neatly-organized card. A card that would seal my fate.
Finally, I was led back inside the steel cellblock. I could see three grilled doors, a sink and toilet at one end, and a small table with attached chairs.
Through the grating of the first cell, I saw the form of another orange-suited inmate, and I could hear the voice of another through the bars of a third. But I followed orders, saying nothing in reply. Fuchs unlocked my handcuffs through a slot in the bars, deftly removing the leather restraint belt in a single motion.
I was directed to enter Cell 2 and sit on Bunk A. Collecting my kit from the table, I stepped inside-
Pull the door closed behind you, 754. I won't ask you again.
I no longer had a name. I was a number. Turning, I did as I was told, then stepped all the way to the back grating of the cell.
No, not "the" cell. My cell.
With a deafening crash of steel, the old Pauly lever-locks slammed home, shaking the entire cellblock. I was locked in. For good?
I knew, then and there, that I was well and truly fucked. But I did not yet appreciate how fucked, "fucked," could really be.
