"They're Gonna' Stick a Needle in Me"

“They’re Gonna’ Stick a Needle in Me”

It was the ceiling. However much he wished it were otherwise, it was improbable that Carl would find a room without a ceiling. They all look pretty much alike, so it was not surprising that his bedroom ceiling would often snap him back to another place at another time.

“Why are we going to Terra Haute, George?”

“It’s a BOP holdover. They sort us out there and then ship us to our long-term placement. It will just be a couple of days.”

Carl really didn’t care where he was going. He just wanted to get off that bus and have the shackles removed. He had gotten used to the handcuffs, but the ankle irons dug into his skin with the slightest movement. He had been so constrained for nine hours when the bus finally pulled into Carl’s new temporary residence.

“What the hell? They’re taking us to the SHU.”

“What’s the SHU?”

“The Special Housing Unit, segregation, you know, the hole, the box. To punish guys. We’re holdovers. We don’t belong there!”

Being an alumnus of Terre Haute, George knew the layout of the place. He attributed his return visit, not to an addiction to the drugs, but to an addiction to the money.

Every step hurt, especially taken at the pace suggested by the C.O. Carl had a tough time with the stairs, but the discomfort was easier to tolerate as he knew every step brought him closer to having his raw ankles freed from the bite of the ankle irons.

The heavy iron door creaked open to a long, narrow hallway lined on both sides with more iron doors. The C.O. removed the shackles around their ankles and ushered Carl and George into a cell, an 8’ by 9’ concrete block room with bunkbeds, a stainless-steel sink, a shower…and a toilet. Carl learned that in the SHU handcuffs are removed only after the inmate is safely stashed inside the cell. Carl had to extend his hands through the slot in the door to have the steel constraints around his wrists removed. The relief was short lived as Carl now had to face the depressing reality of his new living conditions. The place was small and filthy. It reeked of hopelessness. Just taking in air was worrisome.

As he departed, the gruff C.O. snorted, “I’ll bring bedding later. Just shove the old stuff through the door when I get back.”

Carl had been assigned the coveted lower bunk. The dirty sheet, blanket, and pillowcase were still on his “bed”. Carl pulled his sleeves down over his fingers so he could remove the bedding without touching it, and piled it next to the door. The situation was a little more curious and challenging for poor George. Atop his bunk was an uncovered, soft, spongy material, 3-4 inches thick with huge triangular shaped pieces torn out. Carl and George weren’t even sure what it was. When the C.O. returned (5 hours later), he shoved the sheets, blankets, and pillowcases through the slot, and asked them to shove the old stuff back out. When George started to shove the spongey thing through the slot, the C.O. pushed back. George responded to the resistance.

“Hey, I need a mattress in here.”

“That is your mattress.”

George looked at Carl in disbelief. Neither could imagine that this thin piece of spongy stuff could ever have been intended to be a mattress, even before it had been ripped up. Carl had his own set of problems, but at that moment his concern was for George. This poor guy would have to climb up to his bunk and lie on a sheet of steel covered by a thin spongy thing. It struck Carl that his life was so bad that he felt fortunate to get the lower bunk in a freaking cell in the SHU of a max. The thought would sustain him through a lot of hard times ahead- things could always be worse.

Jails and prisons are averse to guys offing themselves in their cells, so protruding objects, such as water handles and faucets, are not to be found. At the (hard) push of a button, water popped up through a hole in the stainless steel sink, so the new occupants needed two of those little Styrofoam cups. They asked a C.O. for the cups.

“I'll see what I can do.”

Cups arrived three days later.

After moving into their new quarters, Carl and George asked for cleaning supplies. Five days later, that would be two days after the arrival of the precious cups, a C.O. pushed a cart down the hall with cleaning supplies.

“Do you guys want cleaning solution?”

“Yes.”

“Then pass a cup out through the slot”.

George, being the veteran, responded.

“We only have two cups in here. We don’t have an extra cup.”

“Then you don’t get cleaning solution.”

The C.O. started to move away. Carl and George looked at each other, each waiting, hoping, for the other to volunteer. Cup to drink out of, or cleanliness. It wasn’t exactly Sophie’s Choice, but it wasn’t all that easy of a decision either. 

George, again the veteran and a younger man, perhaps not yet as deprived of spirit as Carl, and therefore less accepting of the cell’s current state, fell on his sword.

“Wait! Here’s a cup.”

As soon as the cleaning solution-filled cup came back into the cell, Carl felt bad. He should have taken the high road, sacrificed his cup. That was then. Carl would eventually learn that it’s okay, if not expected, to take care of yourself first when you’re doing time. Survival.

Carl quickly discovered there was something worse than solitary confinement- living in a small concrete block room with another man…and a toilet. The routine was that while one inmate used the toilet, flushing constantly, the other would lie in his bunk with his pillow over his head, pretending he was still human.

The two cellies talked at length every day. There was nothing else to do. No TV, no radio, no access to a phone, nothing to read. There were no windows, and sunrise was replaced by the slamming of the slot in the door and a C.O. shoving in two trays of breakfast. Then nothing happened until lunch showed up in the slot four hours later, followed by five hours of lying in his bunk waiting for dinner to appear. Carl would just lie there, all day long, fighting to maintain his sanity. That's what you do in the SHU. The day was mercifully ended when sweet sleep finally came to Carl. “Just a couple of days” dragged on to a soul sucking seventeen.

It was as close to nothingness as could be constructed in this world. The barest of physical surroundings wrapped in an eerie silence, broken only occasionally by exchanges of useless information between Carl and George. Carl did learn a little about the drug trade- the best seller, the best customers, cash flow, resupplying inventory, distribution, and putting together a reliable, trustworthy sales force, the last being undercut by the reality of George’s current location- “Once the noose tightens, the rats learn to sing”.

George was not a drug user. He was too smart for that. As such, he needed to bring a “tester” with him when making a purchase. His first stint was a result of his top rated tester detecting fraud in the product to be purchased. The argument quickly escalated to guns, and George shot the would be seller. George proudly showed Carl the bullet hole in his side that he received in exchange.

It was a theme that would regularly arise. Guys that had done horrible things on the outside would occasionally do “nice” things on the inside. The same drug-dealing guy who shot someone had given up his cup for the good of the community of two. Carl would juggle that dichotomy many times before he concluded he could only judge people on the basis of how they treated him, how they acted inside the fences. It was its own world.

Carl also picked up a few tricks of the drug trade from inmates shouting conversations from cell to cell down the hall. Apparently, there was a difference of opinion as to how to best add moisture to a product to increase weight in order to expand profit margins. George frowned upon it as it was a dishonest business practice and fostered distrust throughout the industry.

On the 3^rd night, Carl heard a frightening disturbance from a cell across the hall, loud shouting, bodies bouncing off walls, moans, groans, then silence. A flurry of C.O.’s raced down the hall. Within minutes, a shackled inmate with a bruised face was led down the hallway. This was a noteworthy occurrence as absolutely nothing had happened for the three previous days, so Carl and George took turns peering out the small window in the door to observe the commotion. They expected the removal of the 2^nd inmate to soon follow, but the hallway remained empty. The sound of garbled radio messages cut through the silence. Eventually one C.O. exited the Unit. Two C.O.’s and a man in civilian attire entered. A half hour later, two C.O.’s arrived with a stretcher. Ten minutes later, the 2nd inmate was carried out on a stretcher. He was not moving, eyes closed, with a badly battered face and a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth.

“Holy crap, George, I think the guy’s dead.”

“It sure looks like it.”

Carl crawled into his bunk. The secret to surviving in prison is to keep your eye strictly on what is right in front of you. Don’t let your mind stray outside the fences. Distraction provided by the discomfort helps, the uncomfortable “bed”, the food, noises in the night, the stainless steel toilet in the corner of the cell, flashlights shining in your face in the middle of the night for count, your unfriendly keepers, the “difficult” amongst your peers. The site of seeing a dead man being hauled out of his new residence shocked him out of the present and back to a place where neighbors weren’t killing each other, where he could walk outside, breath fresh air, go to the movies with his wife, toss a line into the river, shop for groceries, play with his dog, touch the edge of an evergreen. How in God’s name did you end up here, Carl?

It was unsettling for Carl to learn from inmates across the hall that death row was one floor above them. He stared at the ceiling, contemplating the fate of men residing just feet above. At night they could hear voices through the vents, the voices of the condemned. That was disturbing for Carl, and he was grateful he couldn’t make out their words. But one night they could hear one of their upstairs neighbors rapping. Because of the repetition, the refrain became clear- “They’re gonna’ stick a needle in me, they’re gonna’ stick a needle in me.”

 The words hit Carl like a depth charge from above, sending a shock wave through his brain that left its mark. It seemed surreal. Some guy was up there rapping while waiting for the day they would march him over to the death chamber to end his life. Whatever the guy did, the thought of a planned killing of anyone seemed to defy the laws of God and humanity, and it left Carl with a disturbing sadness. He would stare at the ceiling with the troubling realization that his ceiling was the floor upon which others paced while awaiting their call to death.

It was that song you can’t get out of your head. When Carl wasn’t hearing the refrain from above, he was thinking the words, “They’re gonna’ stick a needle in me.” The rapper’s repeated refrain became Carl’s curse. He couldn’t escape the message, even with his pillow wrapped around his head.

Carl would lie in his bunk most of the day, either sleeping or just being there as there was no other place to be. He could almost feel his spirit evaporating into the hot, stuffy air of his cage. The thoughts swirled around in his head like an ugly, destructive tornado- what he had done, the lives he hurt, his wife, his children, his dog, the lilac bushes along the back fence, the bus ride, the shackles, his Styrofoam cup, the heat, the dead guy, the iron door, the toilet in the corner of the cell, meals through a slot, George, the number of years, months, weeks, days, hours, before this would all go away, and always that song, those words, those words, those words. Please go away, those words. It was like trying to rid oneself of the color of your eyes. Those words had seeped into his mind, his heart, his soul. As unwelcome as they were, Carl and those words had become inseparable.

After seventeen days in that hell hole, Carl was chained up and moved to a better place to serve out his term. He left the miserable conditions behind, but he couldn’t shake those words.

Carl managed to survive the five years he would later describe as “half dead”- alive, but separated from the real world. Five years away from family, five years of looking forward to the end of every day, five years of being stashed away like a piece of excess inventory gathering dust on a shelf.

Carl moved on. He reconnected with his family and went back to work. He was able to put it all behind him, the dehumanization, the mind-numbing boredom, the strip searches, the shackles, the endless hours walking in circles in the rec yard, all but one thing- that damn rap song. “They’re gonna’ stick a needle in me”. He might think of it during the day when he was alone in his car, or sitting by himself at a table in the breakroom at work, but the haunting memories usually visited Carl at night. Sometimes the words kept him from falling asleep, and other times his wife would wakeup in the middle of the night to see Carl, with a distracted look of sadness, staring at the ceiling. Someone else’s death sentence had become a life sentence for Carl.