Phantom Justice. Young Boone's Koo
charges.
All of a sudden, he asked, “Are you guilty or not guilty?”
I was frozen at his abrupt question and frowned.
Then, “How much did you pay to your lawyer?” he quickly asked again. I hesitated for a few more seconds.
“Did your attorney ask you to get a plea bargain?”
“No.”
“No matter what, you have to pay the girl because of conviction. You lose,” he told me proudly in an irritating way.
I listened but could not understand what he tried to tell me.
“You see, you are a big fish. Did she file a civil suit?” he asked.
“Why do I have to pay her? Give me a break!” I replied.
“America is a crazy country. Everybody wants some from you. Your lawyer has to pay some ransom to the judge, prosecutor, and policemen before conviction, otherwise you will face difficulty, and sometimes the problem will be solved without further discussion.”
I heard his words but never thought about that.
“My lawyer said nothing about penalty.”
“I am saying, paying a sum of money although for nothing. You are naïve,” he expressed his sympathy by describing his own theory. “You’d better go to the CIC, because it is safer, but Westville has a bunch of gangsters.”
He recommended I go to the CIC but I had no idea why I even had to see him today. I wondered how he became a behavior psychologist in the prison. I hated remembering how he was smiling when he talked. He humiliated me in many ways but I was patient.
October 30, Friday
My cellmate, Robert Perry, was feeling very agitated over not getting any letter from his girlfriend. He was a chain-smoker. He went down to see the counselor today, but when he returned, he became wilder. He learned that he was going to be transferred to Westville, where he would be far from his girlfriend.
“You see, Koo, I don’t want to go to Westville. I was there before and that place is dangerous. I don’t know how my girlfriend will visit me if I go there. It’s too far from her house. She lives in Bloomington,” Perry said as he kept pacing around in the cell, smoking.
I had no idea how to help his situation so I lay on the bed and watched his rants.
October 31
Early morning, the officer walked into the cell and took Perry away to his new retail store, Westville, to extend his prison education. Perry looked very depressed and reacted like he was being taken to the death chamber.
At around 10 a.m., for the first time, we went out to the range and watched a movie, Crazy People.
New Cellmate Howard’s Story
As soon as Perry left that morning, the officer brought in a new cellmate, whose name was Donald Howard: black, 17 years old, 5 feet 7 inches, 140 pounds, and a boys’ school graduate. As he walked into the cell, he did not say hello to me but began to light up a cigarette.
He glanced at me on and off without greeting. He soon noticed I was one of the expensive commodities of the DOC and then jumped up to his bunk. I felt an increasing curiosity about him for a while but said nothing. Soon, he jumped down, stood in front of the bars, and kept smoking and began pacing around in the cell.
He looked at me again as if he saw a stranger, and then, “Where’re you from, man?” he asked strangely.
I did not answer but instead just stared back at him for a few seconds. He stopped pacing and then asked me again. I knew I was in the same boat so I quickly replied to him.
“I am from Hammond,” I said and stood up.
I faced him as though adapting to the prison situation like street dogs. He looked at me and moved his eyes up and down like an inspector. He probably thought I was the wrong merchandise in the wholesale distribution system so he turned away. He kept smoking for another few minutes. All that smoke irritated my nose but I said nothing.
A few seconds later, he stood and asked, “Are you a Chinese?”
“No. I am a Korean.”
“I am from South Bend. Oh! You said you are from Hammond. I know a lot of GI.”
When I heard the word “GI,” I did not understand what he meant by it. What I remembered of the term “GI” was its meaning when I was in the military service.
“What is ‘GI,’ Howard?”
“Oh, ‘GI’? That’s what we call people from Gary, Indiana. Everybody knows GI are bad and from a dangerous place. GI has many gangsters.”
“I didn’t know Gary had many gangsters. I heard many bad accidents but was not aware of many gangsters.”
“Man, you don’t know Gary and Hammond yet. A lot of inmates are from Hammond and Gary. I know how bad Gary and Hammond are. I met a lot of bad boys from Gary when I was at the boys’ school. They were bad and did not have any respect,” he said as if he had some respect.
My curiosity about him was piqued by the way he talked. I decided to know and learn about his life as a young black American. I did not know how to ask him first so I hesitated, and then proceeded to ask anyway. “Why are you here? What did you do wrong? You said you are seventeen years old,” I asked as if these were routine questions.
“Man, it’s because of my bad habits. I have been drinking too much. Because of drinking, I have been in and out the jail several times, so most policemen know me. Last week, I got in a fight with one bum on the street and the neighbor called the police. When the police arrived, I was totally out and lay on the ground,” he said while popping smoke rings in the air.
“When the police took me in jail, the judge said, because now I am of legal age, before sentencing he ordered me to get a psychological evaluation. I believe the psychologist will see me tomorrow, and then I have to go back to jail. The judge will sentence me, but I don’t know how much time he will give this time. I know I got to control drinking,” he said gently and showed his angst by twisting his body for a second.
Because Howard was smoking damn much, it bothered my nose, so immediately I felt like sneezing. He said he was seventeen, but the way he talked, he looked over twenty years old. Suddenly his age distracted my thinking very much. I wanted to find out why he became an alcoholic and a product of the boys’ school.
Following the lunch chow, he sat on my bed and began to tell me about his street life. He gave me insights into his life and of how and why he became an alcoholic and a bad boy.
He said he started to drink at age ten. His mother lived with a boyfriend and used to bring home a lot of beers. They drank all the time in the house, so Howard had a chance to have a taste of beer. When he drank a little bit, he liked the taste, and then he began to touch the beer often while his mother was gone. While listening to his stories, something hit my brain.
“You did not go to school?” I quickly asked.
“Yeah, I went to school. From when I was eleven, as soon as I came back from school, I drank.”
“Your mother does not know you drink?’
“No, she never intended to know how I was doing at home. She was not home most of the time. I was living with her boyfriend and he did not work. He was drinking always and doing nothing but watching TV. Anyhow, he did not care whether I drank or not. When my mother came home from work, they went out together and returned late so I used to stay home alone.”
“Don’t you know where they went?”
“Well, when they come home I am in bed.”
“Where does she work?”
“I don’t know exactly where. She goes to work before I go to school. They used to go