I offered mine in return, and we shook.
“I know you can be a hot head, but if you want to stay in this cell with me, you will have to learn how to control yourself.”
“I’m not a hot head. I mind my business. If somebody comes at me, then I have to defend myself.”
“So that whole episode in the yard was all them. You didn’t do anything to provoke them?”
“Man, what are you, undercover or something? Ain’t nothing happen in the yard but a disagreement between me, and people I don’t even remember.”
“Greg and Elson.”
“What?”
“Greg and Elson are the ones you knocked out in front of your cell. They are the ones who put the hit out on you. Teddy is the one who stuck you.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
I continued to play dumb.
“A’ight, a’ight, El, if that’s how you want to play it. They were all transferred anyway.”
“To another part of the prison?”
“No, to three different prisons. You have to be careful how you move around here. You never know who you may offend,” he shrugged.
I decided not to ask any questions. I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant, and I planned on keeping it that way.
“Are there any other room rules I need to know about?”
“No, not for now. What did you do to get here?”
“Ain’t that against the rules or something? You ain’t supposed to ask what I did.”
“If I don’t ask, how will I know?”
“I ain’t do nothing. I got locked up on a bogus charge. I wasn’t nowhere around where the crime was committed but…”
“But what?”
“But, I got tired of seeing my mother and my sister cry. So, I took a plea to put them out of the misery of the court trial.”
“Every man that’s incarcerated in here has declared his innocence.”
“Well, I guess we just a bunch of not guilty motherfuckers serving time for some shit we ain’t do.”
“Profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate. Do you know what that means?”
“Yeah, I know what it means. It means that people that cuss don’t know how to use proper English, so they use profanity instead.”
“So, you’re not dumb, that’s good.”
“No, dumb has never been used to describe me.”
“You didn’t ask me what I did to get in here.”
“I don’t need to ask. I already know.”
“You know who I am?”