The Same Old Jailhouse Jive
By Charles Shea LeMone
In the recreation area of Cell Block D an old black man, who answered to the name Wordsmith, set up for business every morning from nine o’clock until the shrill lunch alarm sounded. There at a corner table he wrote letters for the other inmates, charging five cigarettes per page. Though he did not smoke, he used the cigarettes to trade for things like ballpoint pens, notebook paper, envelopes, postage stamps and candy bars. He was one of the unfortunate inmates who never received mail or visitors. When he was not writing letters, waiting for customers or working in the library five evenings a week, he kept to himself.
One afternoon, while lying on the bottom bunk in his upper tier cell, a tall, lanky, young man came to the open door and stood. Wordsmith looked up from the newspaper he was reading and waited with a smirk on his face. The young man, 19-year-old Daryl James, stared directly into the old man’s bored, unwavering gaze as he cleared his throat before speaking.
“I could tell you didn’t believe what I wrote my girl the other day. I know because I could see it in your eyes.”
“So what?” Wordsmith guffawed. “It’s not like you were writing me.”
“I meant every word, though.”
“So what’s that got to do with anything?”
“I just want you to know, I mean what I said,” Daryl declared as he took a half-step back. “When I’m done doing my 18 months, I won’t be bangin’, frontin’ or slingin’ shit for nobody!”
“It’s not about what I believe, young blood,” Wordsmith said as the young man turned to walk away.
Stroking the scraggly gray beard on his narrow, 50-year-old chin, Wordsmith laid the two-day-old newspaper down in his lap and sighed wearily. They were all the same, he thought, the young newcomers. He recognized the forlorn, puppy-dog look in their eyes long before they sat down to compose their lies. Always a standard form letter filled with promises to their mothers, grandmothers or girlfriends about how different they would be once they’d served their time and were free on the streets again. He’d written the same jailhouse jive a thousand times or more and could probably write a thousand more letters just like those with his left hand and both eyes closed.
Maybe some of them actually believed their own lies, he mused. But he knew better than them about the odds they’d face once their time was served and the prison doors opened to release them like a revolving door. The rate of recidivism for young black men (common knowledge to anyone who read as much as he did) confirmed that he was right. So why should he believe any of their jive nonsense?
Two months had passed when Wordsmith decided to sit down across from Daryl in the cafeteria at the end of a quiet table. Despite his sloppy handwriting, misspelled words and lack of grammatical grace, the young had taken to writing his own letters—two or three per week. Watching him struggle at this on more than one occasion from several tables away in the recreation area, Wordsmith began to muster up a modicum of respect for the younger man.
“How’s it be, D. J.?” he asked, holding a plastic-fork, ready to dive into his franks and beans.
“It is what it is, old man,” D.J. said nonchalantly, as he pushed his empty plate aside.
“And your plans for when you get out of here?”
“I’m gonna get my GED diploma,” he said with a shrug. “Get a job. Get married. You know, man, live the straight life.”
“Think that’s going be easy?”
“Hell no! I know it won’t be no piece of cake. But with Obama in the White House now, maybe things’ll open up more for young black men trying to get ahead, even an ex-con like me.”
“Maybe.” Wordsmith appear skeptical and chewed for a moment in silence before saying, “It’d be wise of you to have a plan that doesn’t count on nothing or nobody except what you’re willing to do and how ready you are to overcome whatever obstacles you’ll be confronted with out there in the real world. You see, there’s nothing worse than a poor ass nigga with a little bit of education who thinks he has all the answers. That’s exactly what’s got me doing five to ten years, thinking I could scheme the system by stealing other people’s identities and such.”
He laughed, a somewhat strangled sound and went on with a distant look in his eyes, “I had it all going on big-time for awhile there, though. Everything I’d ever dreamed of having was mine. All the hottest women and lots of buddies calling themselves friends. But that was back then, before I took the fall. Now what have I got to speak of?”
“So what you tryin’ to tell me?” D.J. leaned forward, tapping a slender forefinger on the scarred tabletop.
“Get that GED, yeah! But don’t stop there, young man. Take whatever job you can get no matter how menial and keep on keeping on. And don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’re too cool for school. Any schooling, except what you’ve already learned in the streets, is what you should be going after.” The old man paused. “Most important, though, learn to learn on your own time, too, and love doing it.”
“Learn what?”
“Whatever you have an interest in, a passion for, learn all you can about that and more!”
“Hmm…” D. J. leaned back and rubbed his hands together.
“You read?”
“Read?” D. J. asked with a raised eyebrow. “Like what?”
“Anything? Do you read… anything?”
“When I was in school, there wasn’t no way around it. I had a year to go, though, when I dropped out and joined the local posse with the rest of my homies. Other than that, I like some comic books. That’s about it.”
“That’s what I thought.” Wordsmith frowned and the wrinkles in his forehead etched deeper crevices into his walnut-hued skin.
“Meaning?” D. J. asked in a voice tinged with sarcasm.
“Get a pass from the guards and meet me in the library tonight after supper.”
When D.J. arrived in the dusty, claustrophobic room, Wordsmith had him fill out a library card. Then he gave him an old, well-persevered hardbound book and told him to start reading it that night and let him know when he was done.
“What’s this?” D.J. looked at the title on the spine of the book, perplexed, as though he was holding an artifact belonging to the original Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
“Tarzan of the Apes, written by Edgar Rice Burroughs,” Wordsmith pronounced each word with precision. “Give it a try. You might be surprised to find out you like it. This copy just came in so count yourself lucky.”
The next morning, shortly after Wordsmith set up shop, he spotted D. J. entering the recreation area, smiling as though he’d just won the lottery and holding the book clutched in a tight hand as though it was a prized possession. Wordsmith smiled in return.
“I just finished it this morning,” D. J. said enthusiastically as he sat down, still holding the novel. “That’s why I skipped breakfast. I had no idea a book could be so much fun and exciting.”
“They can be a lot more, too,” Wordsmith said. “But knowing that much is a good start. Come by the library again tonight. I’ve got something else set aside for you. But this one will require you to borrow a dictionary to take out with it.”
As D.J. exited the area, Wordsmith, opened a small notebook that he always kept in his breast pocket. In it he had started a list of books he would introduce to the younger man. In his distinctly legible handwriting, he added Native Son by Richard Wright, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington and Black Elk Speaks.
If things went the way he now envisioned, D. J. would ready for Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment before too long and be a lot wiser when his jail time was served. Then maybe, just maybe, he hoped Daryl James would have established the deep roots to the knowledge and understanding he’d need to assure he’d never set foot in another jailhouse as long as he lived. Surprisingly, that thought, alone, warmed the old black man the inmates called Wordsmith.
