The Contortionist's Handbook Page 9

  They charged on a sliding scale and they’d quit charging Dad altogether. That was two hours every week he knew for certain where I was. A dozen graduate students padded their case-study portfolios and fleshed out their research papers while I bought time. I’d be sixteen soon and off probation. If I did what they wanted, kept my nose clean, I could keep myself from being sent to some padded boarding school or locked up. After that, I was gone. I could pack a bag and with the right window of opportunity—Mom at work or the doctor, Shelly at work, Dad at work or halfway through another bottle of vodka with bugs walking across his face on the living room sofa—I’d disappear on a bus to a city somewhere. I think everyone would have been happiest with that.

  Every follow-up session, at some point, left me alone in Dr. Gaines’s office for a period of time. After four weeks, I’d read the two diagnostic manuals cover to cover, had a working knowledge of organic versus cognitive disorders, knew the difference between psychotic versus psychopathic, the definitions from a cross-section of common favorites: mood disorders, developmental disorders, substance abuse disorders, depression, mania, and bipolarity. I was reading Academic Variables in Adolescent Emotional Test Scoring when I heard Dr. Gaines’s voice in the hallway. I put the book back onto the shelf.

  “We’re going to try something new today.” Those were Dr. Gaines’s words, and it took me years to corral the itch in the back of my brain into coming out, taking shape: We’re going to experiment today.

  It looked almost exactly like a dentist’s chair, a prop for my feet and head and they leaned me back. Dr. Gaines and a nurse ran a small battery of tests—stethoscope, say ahh, penlight to my pupils—after they’d told me to use the bathroom, to go even if I didn’t feel like I had to.

  Relax, Johnny, put your head back, rest your arms here, the nurse put my hands on the arm rests of the chair. She wrapped a nylon cuff around one wrist, like she was checking my blood pressure, then the other.

  The reflex question, Is this going to hurt? came out and she said No, but sometimes this causes a sudden movement and you could hurt yourself. Then she wrapped another set of cuffs onto my feet.

  I turned to watch Dr. Gaines hitting a switch on a bank of dials and lights, the nurse turned my head up, said Open, put a gauze chew-stick into my mouth like the one they gave me when I was a kid.

  A knock at the door. I heard a guy’s voice outside, the one who always called me Champ. He said Excuse me, Doctor, then the door opened without invitation. Commotion that I couldn’t see because I couldn’t move my head, then Officer Durrel’s face was over mine.

  To the doctor, “Take this shit off him.”

  The straps off, I stood up and rubbed my jaw.

  “John Dolan Vincent. Face the wall and place both hands on top of your head.”

  NINE

  Sometimes I can be so smart, and sometimes I can be so stupid. Louis had saved one of my prescription forgery trial runs. I’d never stopped to think about why he’d shifted gears so suddenly, from arguing with me to helping me destroy them. He wrote it out for himself, calling for nonexistent 20 mg “Delauded” tablets, 500 count, and signed it “Dr. Fred Smith.” He was going to sell them. This same genius froze cough syrup to scrape off the codeine. When the cops showed up after the pharmacist’s call, he gave them my name before they asked for his. Mom or Dad didn’t bail me out this time.

  The State gave me a lawyer who gave me a black suit from the Salvation Army, a starched white shirt with pearl snaps still in drycleaner’s tissue. He sent me to a barber, said Lookin’ like a leprechaun won’t sway a jury. And try to keep your hand outta their line of sight.

  Tuesday, August 5, 1975, I looked like a snake handler at a Sunday funeral. My lawyer built my defense, introduced the jury to my high-school counselor, to Dr. Gaines and several members of his staff, all of whom testified as to my abnormal test scores and intelligence.

  The State introduced the jury to my juvenile arrest record that was twenty months from being sealed. The State assailed my alleged intelligence with my leprous academic record and my stint in Special Ed.

  “So, in this enormous battery of tests, you haven’t actually given the defendant an IQ test, have you, Doctor? And how many of these tests do you personally administer? And the rest were done by students, is that correct? Students, not doctors. Yes or no.”

  “Doctor, how old is the average male child during the onset of speech development? And crawling and walking? And how old was the defendant? That old? Almost a full three years behind the average, ladies and gentlemen. And with less than even a single, full point GPA we’re supposed to believe that he’s some kind of genius. Yes, the story goes that Einstein flunked freshman math, but he wasn’t counterfeiting driver’s licenses or narcotic prescriptions.”

  My lawyer objected, had it sustained, but the judge couldn’t take it out of the jury’s ears and the Prosecutor knew that. He withdrew but then introduced my record of campus fights. Eight in all. I got hurt pretty bad in most of them. I’d usually been outnumbered, but I did what I could. The jury got to see the photographs of stitches and dental imprints from some of the other kids. The school didn’t keep records of who starts fights, just who was involved. Jail was the same way.

  My Christopher Thorne driver’s license was exhumed from an evidence locker, along with the surviving Schedule II prescription forgery. The State dug as far back as when I was eight years old, salvaging from God knows where my childhood doodles of dollar bill borders. Looks good, doesn’t it? Never mind that showing an eight-year-old’s perfect mimicry—by hand—of such detailed etching negated their assault on my intelligence.

  My lawyer was aiming for a Not Guilty. The State had plenty of evidence against me, but my lawyer was forcing them to prove my intent, that I had larger, malicious motives behind copying narcotic prescriptions and dollar bills. Louis was his trump card, even though he was the Prosecution’s witness. He knew that Louis had pocketed the slip without my knowledge.

  Louis had agreed to cooperate with the Prosecution in lieu of being charged with a felony offense. Louis, I learned, didn’t handle pressure too well. Louis should have left crime to the criminals. They swore him onto the witness stand, and the Prosecutor grabbed his leash. Louis crumpled on the stand as quickly as he had with the cops.

  “Louis, did the defendant tell you why he wanted to destroy the prescription forms?”

  “No, sir.”

  But I had.

  “You have no idea why he wanted to destroy them after so much work?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Louis, have you seen the defendant destroy his handiwork on other occasions?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Can you provide an example?”

  “Like… when he wanted to do something over. He’d get rid of his first tries.”

  “So you do have an idea as to why he destroyed those forms.”

  Louis looked wide-eyed at the jury box, as though someone there might coach him.

  “Louis, when the defendant was forging a document,” objection, sustained, withdrawn “he would destroy previous, flawed versions and save the final, finished product. Is that correct?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So then, Louis, is it possible that the defendant wasn’t happy with the results of the narcotic prescription form in question?” He held up the evidence-tagged form for the jury once more.

  “I guess so.”

  “Louis, yes or no. Is it possible that he wanted to destroy this in order to make additional, more accurate counterfeits?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you speak up, please?”

  “Yes. It’s possible.”

  I suppose I should have been angry at Louis. In truth, I wasn’t. I felt sorry for him. He was going to get busted for something else—just a matter of time—and get sent down. He’d be cellblock bitch-meat inside of two weeks, washing his cellmate’s underwear and doing himself up with eyeliner made from melted crayons and lipstick from blood
and bacon fat. He’d be tattooed with a needle using burned newspaper mixed with toothpaste, tagged as somebody else’s punk. And strange, but I felt a mixed admiration for the Prosecutor, who took a string of irrefutable facts and shuffled the deck for an altogether different truth.

  The Defense countered with an assault on Louis’s credibility. My lawyer attacked Louis’s status as State’s witness, his poor academic record, his reputation as a dealer and previous possession arrests, and the fact that he appeared to live beyond his means as a pool cleaner. And my lawyer made it very clear that it was Louis who had tried to redeem the Dilaudid prescription. He continued, hammered Louis hard to clarify that I’d never taken drugs with him, and the DUI arrest was the only time he’d seen me drink. Throughout the trial, my lawyer insisted that I not take the stand.

  Thursday, August 7. Dad was the last witness. I hadn’t seen him since before my arrest, and we couldn’t speak since the Prosecution had subpoenaed him first.

  “John Dolan Vincent. Please raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?”

  “I do.”

  The Prosecution wasted no time.

  “Do you recognize any of these papers, Mr. Vincent?” The Prosecutor held up a stack of forms and half-page slips from a cardboard box at his table. I recognized them all.

  “No.”

  My lawyer raised an objection to the new evidence and the proceedings stalled for a conference at the bench.

  “Make your point, Counselor,” the Judge said.

  “Mr. Vincent, could you please describe the forms you’re holding for the jury,” the Prosecution continued.

  “They look like…” Dad was sober, not enjoying any of this one bit, “says here this one’s a Notice of Temporary Suspension. Here’s one’s a quarterly Academic Performance Report.”

  “And what kind of performance does it indicate?”

  “Says…” Dad squinted, “unsatisfactory. Says he’s in danger of failing all of his classes.”

  “Who?”

  Dad lifted his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. “My son. John Junior.”

  “Mr. Vincent, do you see your signature on any of those forms?”

  Dad leafed through the stack. “It looks like mine.”

  “It looks like yours?”

  “Yeah. My name’s on all of ’em.”

  “But you don’t recognize any of them?”

  “No.”

  “Mr. Vincent, did you, yourself, in fact, sign any of those forms?”

  “No.”

  I used to have to turn signatures upside down, mimic the meaningless lines. I learned how to turn off the meaning in my head after practicing over and over, do them right side up.

  “You’re certain.” The Prosecutor was fond of imperative questions.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re saying that someone forged your signature.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Yes or no.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any guess as to who might have had the reason and the opportunity to forge your signature on a suspension notice for your son?”

  “Objection. Calls for witness to speculate.”

  “Withdrawn.” But he’d phrased it well, specified reason and opportunity in his question, knowing the coming objection, letting the jury fill in the answers for themselves. I wondered why I’d bothered putting Dad’s signature on those papers. I hated school, should have let them kick me out.

  My lawyer cross-examined Dad, trying hard to bring out the strain of Mom’s cancer, the financial burden of both his wife and son’s medical expenses, his honest attempt to go straight and keep a steady job. He both tried to play Dad as sympathetic and erode his credibility. Do you drink, Mr. Vincent? Then onto Dad’s own jail record, skeet shooting the Prosecutor’s litany of objections. Overruled. Overruled. Overruled. I stopped listening, couldn’t look at Dad.

  I’d seen the one tattoo that, unlike the others, was visible in spite of the suit he wore: the 131/2 on his left hand. Over the next two years I’d come to learn its meaning—twelve jurors, one judge, half a chance. I figured that it was work Dad received while doing time. Digging gold mines.

  The jury deliberated for two days on a muddle of forgery charges and intent to distribute controlled substances. I spent those two days in the county jail, plus the weekend. In all, a week of oatmeal, bologna sandwiches, meatloaf, apple juice, milk, seven-card stud, basketball, and one altercation with a porter whose mopped floor I walked across on the way to the toilets.

  August 11. The jury came back with a Guilty verdict on the counterfeiting charge but tossed the rest. The judge gave me two years, minus time served. I ran the numbers in my head. Less eighty-five days, that would be May 16, 1977. A Monday.

  TEN

  Longer than twelve months and it isn’t jail, it’s prison, and if you’re under eighteen it’s Youth Camp, a euphemism that maintains local property values. And Camp regs say that when you’re being spot-searched, you keep your mouth shut and your hands flat against the wall or it’s considered an assault. Experienced COs know when an inmate is a real threat but the new ones, cowboys, they call them, or newjacks, are rabbit- scared. They’re unarmed, patrolling the worst neighborhood on earth. Corrections Officers have the same legal authority as street cops when they’re on the outside. Just like older cops are jaded and even-tempered, while the new ones want to prove themselves, COs are the same way.

  When this newjack, a punk maybe twenty-five, fresh-faced and gym-sculpted to twice my size, stopped me on my way to the mess hall, You, hands flat and feet apart, eyes ahead, my reflexes were still intact. But my reflexes were shaped from a teenage lifetime of schoolyard fights. I was getting held up for the breakfast line and needed some coffee bad and this flunky’s groping my waist, ankles, armpits, legs so he can strut for a female guard.

  I said, “Don’t start enjoying that.”

  He finished his search, said nothing, and stood back. I waited for his all clear, knowing I’d upped him.

  “What did you write on your palm?” he asked me and I knew then he was an idiot. And when I held out my empty palm so I could laugh at him, I got it.

  The standard-issue baton comes in at twenty ounces of galvanized aluminum, harder than diamond but feather-light for a fast swing. Enamel coating that might chip against a brick wall or a car hood, but not your wrists, ribs, elbows, ankles or knees. In the half-heartbeat it took for me to recoil from the pain in my arm, I’d shifted all my weight to my left leg and the same whip-flash snap of aluminum blasted the strength from my knee and after that, I remember bits and blurs of trying to cover my face, throat, stomach or ribs and being one step behind where he was hitting me.

  My reflexes stayed. I resumed my push-ups and crunches, worked with a deck and read whatever I could to pass the time. Found my shot five days later, pissed into an empty cup and waited, waited, waited, first balcony above the gallery, dumped it onto the guard when he passed below. Gassed, cuffed and stripped, they threw me into the Hole.

  Solitary, a.k.a. the Hole: ten-by-ten polished concrete cube with a molded slab jutting from the wall. Toilet, stainless steel, one; tissue, individual sheets, fifty; tear-resistant mat, one; blanket, wool, one. I splashed the burning gas from my face with water from the toilet tank, kept my face down because they never turned off the lights in the Hole. Threats, screaming, gas, sticks, fists—none of them changed my reflexes. None of them stopped my spontaneous pushback when a CO crossed me or another inmate wanted to test me, say something to my face or give me a reason to step up. It was the light. Ten days of light, thirty days of light, light that pushes through your eyes when you try to sleep, burns the shadows into nothing and bleeds any remaining contrast or color out of the grey box you’re in with no books, cards, paper and nothing to hook your brain to.

  I’m slow, sometimes. Kids, fifteen, sixteen learn to drive, learn the value of
a paycheck, long-term goals and self-discipline. I learned, after months and months of light, to make the faster-than-thought choice between drawing a line, standing my ground and keeping my pride versus being invisible.

  I didn’t hear from Mom or Dad for my first nine months inside, and they didn’t hear from me. April of 1976, I turned seventeen. I got a birthday card from Shelly in a small package with four chocolate bars, another deck of cards and a gift notice from a science magazine that said she’d bought me a subscription. I ticked off the months with cover headlines about cell mutations and black holes.

  One month later, I was reading on my bunk when a CO told me I had five minutes to clean up, that I had a visitor. I asked who and he walked away without answering. I brushed my teeth, combed my hair back with a splash of water and signaled a guard.

  Overhead fluorescents washed everything in the Visiting Room in a sterile, green-white light: the checkered linoleum floor, the fifteen wooden tables, the metal folding chairs. Ask me what I remember most about those two years, and that’s it.

  Three vending machines stood against one wall. Your visitors had to buy snacks for you. Inmates couldn’t carry coins. Anyone wanting to go to the restroom had to get permission from one of the guards flanking the room perimeter. They didn’t want anyone switching clothes or pulling contraband out of some orifice.

  Dad waited at a table. His beard had grown out, not long but covering the lower half of his face. White, grey, black and brown all at once, the color of snow and mud. His eyes were the callous black shark eyes that I’d always remembered, unlike the day of my trial. A cigarette burned just above his knuckles. No filter, he smoked them down to a nub of tobacco wedged between his teeth, crushed them out when he started spitting out tobacco flakes more than he was inhaling. Two cans from the machine sat on the table in front of him.