Doing Time by Bell Gale Chevigny Read Free Book Online

prisoner is to enter an alien universe. One’s most trusted resources fail to help interpret the new setting, and the simplest social interaction may be fraught with peril. Sometimes seasoned inmates help newcomers begin to do time. In William Aberg’s “Siempre,” set in an unusual Arizona jail that housed both men and women, a veteran talks a novice through fear of the penitentiary {the pinta, in Mexican argot} to which she is being sent.
    More often it is a “cellie” who helps a “fish” to learn the ropes. In Clay Downing’s 1974 story “The Jailin’ Man,”* the title figure teaches the narrator how to heat water for coffee in the glass part of a lightbulb and in the process to feel less sorry for himself. Ingenious ways to prepare food are also shared with newcomers. Jarvis Masters describes learning how to make powerful wine in “Recipe for Prison Pruno” (Death Row). Advice on how to avoid danger abounds: “Drink plenty of water and walk real slow” is a typical admonition.
    â€œSymbiosis” between inmates is possible, according to the avuncular mentor in David Wood’s story by that name (1996),* if you learn how to carry yourself like a true convict: “Look every man square in the eye and let him know you’ll fight back. You don’t have to win a fight, just hurt the other guy bad enough so he won’t want to scrap with you again.” This swift cultivation of attitude, a particularly male response, is not restricted to men. Thus in Denise Hicks’s 1996 entry “Where’s My Mother?”* the neophyte reports: “I was learning the none-of-your-business stare; the no-you-don’t-know-me stance; and the why-I’m-here-could-not-possibly-be-of-any-concern-to-you pivot.”
    Old hands school new prisoners in the cons’ rules, as crucial to survival as institutional regulations. Each prison has its underground economy and its informal government, with leadership ranging from fluid to stable. Prison mentors elucidate the “code” of the “stand-up” convict, a signal feature of prison subculture for generations, particularly among men. Akin to “honor among thieves,” it has tenets like “Be loyal to cons,” “Don’t let anyone disrespect you,” and “Never snitch.” This ideal is still nurtured by old-timers who nostalgically lament the bygone days when convicts, they say, ran penitentiaries. In “Ring on a Wire” (1996),* a story by George Hughes, the narrator’s “cellie” celebrates a mythicized golden age when they could “take your freedom, take your property and everything else away from you, but not your word.” For such as he, only a “convict” was a “real man.”
    But beginning in the 1980s, new throngs of rash and fearless teenagers doing time made a much more menacing experience. The “code” began to degenerate into little more than vengeance against snitches or, as Victor Hassine puts it, “Darwin’s code: survival of the fittest.” In his poem “Convict Code” (1988),” Alex Friedman describes “walking on by” scenes of weapon-making and gang rape, and then being stabbed twenty-eight times by a stranger—”and everybody walked on by.”
    In “How I Became a Convict” (extracted from his book Life Without Parole), Victor Hassine describes his adaptation to Pennsylvania’s prison for the most violent criminals. His first impulse was to retreat and build himself a cocoon. His ultimate decision to engage the life around him typifies that of most effective prison writers.
    For many, survival begins with mastery of prison lingo. (See “I See Your Work” in Players, Games). Some novices feel compelled to create lexicons of their new argot. Often harsh and minimal, this patois is sometimes rich in nuance. For the transferred prisoners