Terry - Part 3 - A Change of Plans

The end of the night, which had seemed interminable as I had lain on my bunk watching the door, was signaled by the arrival of breakfast. When the panel in the door dropped, accompanied by a whistle and an order to line up on the yellow line, I thought the guard had returned, but the voice was different, and this guard, although I couldn’t see his face, had a paunch that the other hadn’t.

Barefoot, clad only in the pants of our prison whites, Terry and I lined up facing the door. Terry, beneath knitted brows, glanced at me quickly. Interpreting that glance as a question, asking me if the guard from the previous night had returned, I shook my head slightly.

This time there was no order to disrobe. After the guard had checked us off his list-I could see it through the open panel-we were allowed to come to the door, one at a time, to take our breakfast from the prisoner who accompanied the guard. Going to the door first, I saw that breakfast was pancakes and bacon. The convict was handing me a paper plate with three rather small pancakes and two strips of under-cooked bacon, when I heard the guard say, “Give them some more.”

The convict piled on two more pancakes and two more pieces of bacon. Tears came to my eyes. Two pancakes and two pieces of bacon-it was such a small thing, but it was the first act of human compassion that I’d been shown since arriving at the Walls. “Thank you,” I said, “Thank you, so much.”

I was crying, almost overwhelmed with gratitude, not so much because of the extra food-although I was starved-but because of this act of kindness. The guard said, rather gruffly, “We’ll be back to collect the plate and fork (a plastic fork was on the paper plate). You’d better be sure that they are both returned.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, then walked over to sit on Terry’s bed to make room for him at the door. In a moment he joined me. He had also received extra pancakes and bacon.

We ate in silence. The convict had poured only a small amount of syrup on the pancakes. They were dry and tasted of having been cooked in rancid grease-the bacon was under-cooked-but, breakfast, despite that, was delicious. It had been seasoned with kindness.

When they returned to collect the plates, I took them to the door. “When are we going to Connolly?” I asked.

“I don’t know anything about that,” replied the guard.

It seemed a little cooler in the cell. Our second day in prison, September 21, was the first day of Fall. It seemed as if nature was taking a hint from the calendar. September 21-incarcerated in the Fort Worth jail, I had missed the start of school. Terry, not yet having been sentenced, had started school, had gone out for football, making the starting team as a half-back, but had his junior year cut short when he was sentenced. He had surrendered himself to the authorities at the Fort Worth jail the morning we had been placed on the bus to Huntsville after his appeal had been denied.

He spent most of the morning answering my questions about school and our friends there. C.W. and Willie had testified at our trial. They had blamed it all on Terry and me, even though they had both been along all three times we had attempted to roll queers, and Terry had been there only for the last. I suppose it had been part of their plea agreement. They were already confined to a juvenile facility. They would be completing their high school education there.

I couldn’t resist asking him about Myrna. “She said that she would wait for me,” he said, “but, I couldn’t ask that of her. I told her not to. Six years, Lyons, I couldn’t ask her to wait that long. She’s a sophomore. She’s got four more years of high school. I couldn’t expect her to spend her high school years tied to a convict.” He hesitated for a moment, seemingly looking inward, then said, “Besides, Lyons, I can’t even picture myself back in that world. I’ve got the feeling that I’ll never leave this prison.”

“Don’t be stupid, Terry,” I said. “I know that six years seems like forever, but it’ll end. We’ll get out.”

“Yeah, but, even if we do, we’ll be convicts. We won’t even have a high school education. Who’ll want to hire us? What will we be able to do? Besides, I’m not going back to Handley. I want to go where no one knows me, where no one knows that I’m a convict.”

“We can get a high school education while we’re in prison.”

“Yeah, what’s the diploma going to say, Texas Department of Criminal Justice? I can just see showing that to an employer-fuck, Lyons, what are we doing, talking about what we’re going to do when we get out? We just got to this fucking place.”

With that, Terry lay back on his bed. When I continued to sit on its edge, he said rather angrily-I didn’t know whether he was angry with me or with his circumstances-”Why don’t you get on your own bed, Lyons? I want to go back to sleep.”

I was hurt and a little angry myself. The night before, when frightened by the guard, he had wanted me in his bed. Now that there was no longer a threat, he wanted me out. “Fuck you,” I mouthed, silently, and climbed onto my bunk. “Mother fucker,” I mouthed again, more hurt than angry, but tired,too; I put my pillow over my face and soon drifted off to sleep to be awakened all too soon by lunch.

The same guard, accompanied by the same prisoner, was back. After he checked us off his list once again, we went to the door to collect our lunch, Terry first, this time. I didn’t hear the guard say anything, but we were each given three sandwiches-each a slice of bologna between two slices of white bread, no mayonnaise or mustard. I suspected that we were only supposed to have two. When I collected mine, I asked him, “When are we going to Connolly?”

He replied once again, “I don’t know anything about that.”

Terry was sitting on his bed eating his sandwiches, bending over occasionally to pick up his cup from the floor where he’d placed it to wash down the dry sandwiches with weak Koolaid from his cup. Tentatively, I sat down beside him, wondering whether he would order me off it again, but not even glancing at me, he continued to wolf down his sandwiches.

Neither of us had on our shirts. With furtive glances I compared my chest to his. We both had hair around our nipples, but I had a small amount of hair also in the center of my chest, where Terry had none. I was skinny, my rib bones protruding, with little-or no-muscle definition. Terry’s chest muscles were well defined; his abdominal muscles were ribbed like an old time wash board. He was well tanned. My earlier anger was washed away be the love-and the lust-that I felt for him. I felt my cock get hard.

We ate in silence. After Terry had finished, he walked over to the sink, rinsed his cup and hung it on its hook, then dropped his pants, revealing his butt, keeping his pants from dropping to the floor by spreading apart his legs and peed into the toilet. Below his well formed butt, through his legs, I could see the yellow stream of his piss. It made an almost musical sound as it struck the water.

I had finished eating by the time he returned to sit down beside me, so I stood up to wash off and hang up my cup. I, too, needed to pee, but couldn’t. I still had an erection. When I turned to walk back to the bed, I casually held my hand in front of my crotch to hide the bulge, but probably only drew attention to it, because Terry said, “Shit, Lyons, don’t tell me you’re getting horny in this place. I haven’t had a hard on since I got here.”

Sitting down beside Terry, my face burning, I said, “ I haven’t beat off for a while (actually, I had that last night in Fort Worth, just two days before). You probably fucked Myrna before you left.” He didn’t admit that he had, but stared ahead in silence, seemingly lost in his thoughts. To change the subject, I said, “I would have thought that we’d be on our way to Connolly by now.” Thinking about the guard from the night before, I continued, “I don’t want to spend another night here.”

With that statement, Terry, raising his head, looked at me. His brow furrowed as, opening his eyes wide, raising his eyebrows, he said, “Me neither. That guard gave me the creeps” It was the first time either of us had spoken about him since the previous night.

“Yeah,” I said, slowly shaking my head, “me, too.”

Standing, Terry began pacing the cell, back in forth in front of me. So confined was the space, I had to sit upright to give him room. “Fuck, there’s nothing to do,” he said. “I wish they’d come get us to take us to Connolly.” I pulled my feet off the floor, stretching out on his bunk to give him more room, lying on one elbow watching him pace back and forth. Looking down at the floor while speaking to me, he continued, “How did you stand it, Lyons, all that time in jail in Fort Worth? One day and I’m going crazy.”

“Boredom, I guess, is the worst part, but you get used to it.” At least, that’s what I had thought before coming to the Walls Unit. Here there seemed to be things worse than boredom.

Terry continued to pace. Nervous energy, I guess, wouldn’t let him stop. I had certainly paced for hours in my cell at Fort Worth. There, I had been alone. I was feeling many conflicted emotions, but boredom wasn’t one of them. Here, I had Terry. My feelings for him-about him-crowded out any feeling of boredom.

He must have paced for at least an hour, during which, when he had spoken, his questions had been rhetorical rather than requiring an answer from me, “God damn it, when are they going to come for us? What’s taking them so long?”

He stopped pacing when I got up to take that long needed piss, but began again when I lay back down. It was definitely cooler in the cell today. I thought that I could sense the smell of rain on the air blowing into the cell. Eventually, stopping at the foot of the bed, he said, “Let me lie down. OK, Lyons? Swinging my legs over, I stood up and he plopped himself, face down onto the bed. “Fuck-” he said, “Fuck, I can’t stand this.”

Sitting back on his bed, I, tentatively, began massaging his shoulders, not knowing how he would react. His tense muscles, seemed to relax under my touch. He didn’t tell to stop. After a few moments, when I had thought he was asleep, I quit and climbed onto my bunk. After I lay down, I heard him say, “Thanks, Lyons, that felt good.” I smiled to myself, placed the pillow over my head and soon fell asleep, not awaking until they brought dinner.

Dinner-and they still hadn’t come for us to take us to Connolly. It was the same convict, but a different guard. I was the first one to the door this time. When the convict started to give me three sandwiches, peanut butter again, the guard said, “Two sandwiches. You know they just get two.”

“I thought we were going to Connolly,” I asked.

“No one is going to Connolly,” replied the guard, but he would say no more.

“No one is going to Connolly.” Those words preyed on my mind. I wouldn’t have cared, except for the guard from the night before. Even, being locked in this cramped cell, with nothing to do, hadn’t been so bad. I had Terry with me. That had overshadowed everything. Maybe it had been my imagination, I thought. Maybe, the guard had just been doing his job.

“Did he say that no one was going to Connolly, Lyons?” Terry asked, after he had sat beside me on the bed.

“Yeah, that’s what he said.”

“Why, Lyons? Fuck, I can’t stay here. I’ll go crazy in this fucking cell.”

I think that I had heard Terry say “fuck” more in the last two days than I’d heard him say it all the previous year, but, I couldn’t really blame him. His life had been destroyed. Nothing would ever be the same for him again.

“Maybe, it wouldn’t be so bad,” I offered, almost convincing myself that the perceived threat the previous night from the guard had been my imagination. I was remembering, instead, laying on bed with Terry, giving him a massage, his telling me, “Thanks, Lyons, that felt good.” Already, in my fantasies, we had gone beyond that.

“Not so bad? Are you fucking crazy? Not so bad? Look at this cell. We can barely move around in it. There’s nothing to do. Don’t you remember what happened last night?”

“Maybe that guard was just doing his job. Maybe we just imagined everything. We had a rough day; we were tired, and he woke us up.” I was trying to convince myself as well as Terry.

“I don’t think we imagined anything. Even if we had, I still want out of this cell-out of this hot motherfucking prison. I want to go to Connolly.”

He walked over to the toilet, dropping his pants and sitting down on it. Angrily, he said, “I’ve got to take a shit. Do you mind not watching me while I do? Shit, Lyons, sometimes I think you’re a fruit. You’re always watching me.”

Turning away, climbing up on my bunk, I lay down, putting my pillow across my face. After a few minutes I heard the toilet flush, then felt Terry plop onto his bed. We both lay there for several minutes in silence, then I heard him say, “I’m sorry, Lyons, I didn’t mean it. Hell, I wouldn’t care if you were a fruit. You’re the only friend I have in here. I don’t know whether I could have made it through today without you.”

Leaning over the edge of the bunk, hanging my head over so that I could see him, I said, “Terry, I need you, too. I was locked up in a cell by myself for six months. I was so lonely that much of the time I wanted to die. If I watch you, it’s because I’m afraid that, if I look away, you’ll disappear, and I’ll be alone again.” I began crying.

All that I had said was true, even if I hadn’t told him everything that I was feeling. I didn’t tell him that I watched him because I loved him, that I had always loved him from the first moment that I had seen him in algebra class, and that I loved him more now than I ever had.

Standing up beside the bunk beds, he put his arm across my shoulders. “Lets don’t fight, Lyons. We have to stick together. We have to look out for each other. I’ve never been so scared-that’s probably why I’m so touchy-get pissed so easily. All those guys out there...I heard them say what they wanted to do to me. I saw how they looked at me; then the guard last night-I think he wants me, too. Promise me that you’ll protect me.”

Protect him? Terry was much stronger than I, who should have been looking to him for protection, but I answered, “Terry, I would give my life for you,” and I meant it. Smiling, for the first time since we had been in prison, he ruffled my hair, then lay back on his bed.

Lying back on the bed with the pillow over my face, I soon fell into a fitful sleep, expecting to be awakened at any time by a whistle, a shout through the door speaker, or the clang of the door panel being dropped.

Continued in Part 4, Harris. The boys make a friend.