The View From Scranton

Some Nerve

I never used to get nervous. I could stroll into a room, a bar, a club, step up on a stage, strut into any city, its projects, and know my swagger would steel the day. Even among nerve-wrackingly strong women I remained resolute. I've had fists to my face, knives to my throat, guns to my head and still all I gave was a shrug. I had some nerve.

Before I surrendered, I threw a little going away party for myself at some then-trendy eatery on Avenue C and 9th Street. There were 9 of us and I was a wreck. I had two kinds of bundles in my pocket and a mad desire to completely eliminate both by night's end. I did. My friends were remarkably understandable, as they always had been. I couldn't understand a thing.

Early the next morning I woke in a Bartonsville truckstop. I'd been there before. Thought the dwarfs and the amputees and the three-fingered preacher man in the cross-bearing Truckers for Christ trailer would make a good story. Even submitted a bogus job ap so I could go undercover to write it. This time though things were different. I was the story. And it was about to end.

I spent my last thirteen dollars on a cab to the State Police barracks in Swiftwater. The fare was twelve and I apologized for the meagerness of the tip. That's all I have, said I. It's more than I expected, said she. You figure her figuring.

I told he uniform behind the bullet-proof glassed vestibule that I had come to surrender. He looked up. He was on the phone. Then he wasn't. Excuse me? I said I'd come to turn myself in. I slipped my identification through the slot. Hold on.

I stepped outside and lit a last smoke and took in the barren sixth-growth forest. So this is what I'd come to. Here is what I mean. I had no idea what I was doing there. Surrendering. Do real outlaws ever surrender? Before I could answer myself four state troopers burst outta the barracks, threw me to the ground and cuffed my hands behind my back. Easy gentlemen, I came in on my own accord.

Now you're going away on ours.

They dragged me back to a chair and chained me to a railing against the wall. I knew enough to know there'd be a lot of waiting and that cops didn't let you have books while you did it. They would let you have a Bible. I'd bought one the night before at the B. Dalton on 6th Avenue and 8th Street. It was gilded, like a hymnal, with those tissue-paper pages that make you feel kinda sacred. Can I have my Bible? Oh, baby wants his Bible, they laughed. Not that way, motherfuckers, I thought. Thank you very much, I said.

I forgot what I read. Some fire and brimstone hypocrisy and spite I'm sure. Whatever it was it kept me distracted while my now-heralded captors did the paperwork for my arrest. My mind wasn't on the Bible anyway. It was on attorneys and bail and how long it'd be before I'd get both.

When they took a look at my past and wouldn't let me go I wasn't worried. They always come down hard in the beginning. Put a little fear of God into a fella. When they still wouldn't let me out after a week, two, a month, I stayed steely. I can take whatever I'm dished. When months became months upon months and the sentence looked like double digits I began to worry.

But I wasn't nervous. Nervous makes you shake. Gets you jittered. Worry makes you stir. Damn good practice for one who's about to be put to the stir test.

No nerve wrack when they sentenced me. In fact, I was kinda relieved. Sure it was a huge hit, a low blow, but it was over. Now to stir. I wasn't nervous when they vanned me down to four-thousand strong Camp Hill, ground zero for incoming cons in the Pennsylvania system. I wasn't nervous when they trussed me up and shipped me to Mahanoy, where I got a too close-hand look at the baddest and ugliest and meanest among so-called men. Men who killed their families. Men who killed their wives or their girlfiends. Men who killed their kids. Men who hurt kids. Men who beat other men into comas so they could get another hit of crack. Sheer ugly hate. They creeped me out and pissed me off, but none of 'em unnerved me.

Chester didn't make me nervous either. It was ghetto, yeah. And it was dirty and stale and dark and overcrowded and there was no yard but So what? I could handle being warehoused in a modern dungeon and all the dinge that went with it.

Now I think I've lost my nerve. I leave the library and I see police walking by and I wonder if they're looking for me. A plain white caged van screeches to a stop at the light and I jump. Some moron swipes twenty dollars from UGL and I cringe. Lose the job you go back. I look over my shoulder. Especially in the House. There are men there, vindictive, petty, putrid little men, who'd drop a counterfeit dime on a cat just because they don't have a quarter. You don't have to have done anything at all. And the 8-10 evenings are an eternity. I can't sit still till the second shift monitor leaves and I know they won't be coming for someone that night. That they won't be coming for me. And just in case I forget where I am, there's a D.O.C. van out in the parking lot to remind me every time I step outside for a smoke.

Maybe I should quit smoking.

And get back some nerve.

posted by John Hood. @ 6:45 PM