Friends Till The End

Sean Nokes, Henry Richards, Ralph Ferguson, and Adam Sanders used sex as one more vicious tool in their arsenal. The repeated rapes were not only the ultimate form of humiliation, but the strongest method of control the guards could wield. The very threat of rape kept us frightened of them all the time, never knowing when the door to the cell would swing open, always wondering when we would be pulled from a line.

-

It was only a game. It was only supposed to be a touch football game that should not have ended in the consequences we got. I remember what happened during the game and it’s all a blur for what happened after. The last voice that spoke to me was Nokes as he threw me into a solitary confinement isolation ward mocking me, “there’s your locker room, football star.”

-

Every year at Wilkinson’s, the guards would host a touch football game against a group of inmates for the local residents to come watch. It was their idea of showing friendly competition which was phony; considering that the games were always rigged and you always knew who the winner was before the game started. This year, Jaime had a plan.

We had convinced a kid named Rizzo to join forces with us in an attempt to defeat the guards to gain an ounce of revenge. Jaime felt that beating them would make them feel the way us and the rest of the inmates felt. Beaten and humiliated.

We all knew the ‘touch’ term would not last during the football game when sweat, blood, and torn clothes ran up and down the field. For ninety minutes, spread across four quarters and a halftime break, we played the guards in the toughest, bloodiest game of touch football ever seen at the Wilkinson Home for Boys.

For those ninety minutes we took the game out of the prison, moved it miles beyond the locked gates and the sloping hills of the surrounding countryside, and brought it back down to the streets of the neighborhoods we had come from. For those ninety minutes, we were once again free.

We were down by a touchdown midway through the fourth quarter, our energy sapped by the cold and brutal tactics employed by the guards in their all-out effort to emerge victorious.

Jaime stood in the center of the huddle, the sleeve of his sweater of his left arm drenched in blood, courtesy of a cleat stomping he received from Richards and Sanders. Two thin streaks of blood flowed from his head. Mike was breathing heavily, his ankle thick and purple. Vic was barely able to stand, having been sandwiched a number of times by Nokes and Ferguson.

I sat on my knees, spitting blood from a split lip, my breath coming in spurts and the pain in my ribcage too strong to ignore. I looked around at our other teammates, all of them bleeding and raw. Rizzo’s hand was broken, twisted in a pile-on four plays earlier.

We needed one more play, one that ended in a touchdown and a knockout.It would have to be a street play done by Rizzo. And since Sanders was the one who crushed the knuckles and bones of Rizzo’s hand, it would have to be Sanders who would be paid back with a punch.

When the play started, I stayed next to a kid named Drew who seemed to stand in pretty good condition, considering the blood that was dripping and streaming down from his legs. As blood, saliva, and tiny pieces of flesh flew throughout the field, Nokes, bloody and bruised tackled me from my left side.

“You fucker!” Nokes shouted, slapping and punching at me with both hands. “I’m gonna fucking kill you!”

“Get off of him!” Drew screamed, pulling at Nokes’s hair, grabbing at one of his arms. ”Get the fuck off him!”

By the time I looked over to Jaime and Rizzo, Sander’s body lay inches from Rizzo. He was face up, his legs spread, and his head at an angle, motionless. Jaime fell to his knees and pumped a fist into the air while Rizzo held the ball in his broken hand with a wide and triumphant smile. We had won the game.

Nokes stood on one knee, staring at me, Jaime, Vic, and Mike, the blood from his nose running into his mouth.

“You’re dead,” he said. “You are gonna pay for this in ways you never dreamed of. All of you. You’re all gonna pay.”

“You ain’t worth shit, Nokes,” Drew said to him. “We’ve always knew it. And after today, everybody knows it.”

“Outta my way, you fuckin’ asshole.” Nokes said, limping away to join the rest of the guards.

Jaime walked up to him. “Hey, Nokes?”

“What?” Nokes barked, hate in his eyes.

“Good game.” Jaime said.

-

It was my second day in the isolation ward, my back against a damp wall as I sat alone in darkness. I was brought down to the place the inmates called the “hole” immediately after the game, dragged down by Ferguson and Richards. They threw me face first to the cement floor and laughed as I crawled around, looking for a way to lift myself up. They slammed the door behind them, bolting it from the outside and their heavy footsteps becoming echoes.

There was no bed in the hole. There was no toilet, no noise, no food, no water, and no fresh air. There were only large, hungry rats and madness. I tried my best to ignore he blood that still flowed from my football wounds and the squeaks of the rats moving somewhere in the cell.

I spent my first day in the hole sleepless, moving my legs from side to side, hoping to keep the rats away from my cuts, knowing sooner or later I would have to give in and close my eyes and they would make their move. One of my eyes would not open and my lips were swollen in dry. There was a pain from my neck down to the base of my spine and my ribs felt numb which forced me not to move my torso.

I could not distinguish morning from night nor the time, each passing moment being promised with no rescue. The guards had not brought in any food or water, and the stench of dried urine and feces was overwhelming.

I was not alone in the hole.

I knew my friends were somewhere in the depths with me in their own cell, each I their own pain and suffering from their own demons. Rizzo was there too, brought by the guards, his other hand broken on the way in. There was no use shouting out to them, they would not be able to hear. I knew none of us would come out the same.

I do not know how long I was in the hole when I heard the click of the lock, the bolt being pushed back, and the handle being snapped open. The sharp light forced me to shut my eyes and the rats to run into the corners. I heard footsteps approach me.

“Thought you might be hungry, football star,” a voice said. It was Nokes, standing above me with a large bowl in his hand. “I brought you some oatmeal.”

He placed the bowl in the center of the room and slid it to me.

“Looks a little dry though,” he said. “Nobody likes dry oatmeal. Tastes like shit.”

I heard a zipper slide down, watch him spread his legs and listened as he peed into the bowl of food.

“There,” he said when he was finished. “That’s better. That should help it go down easier.”

He walked out the room, a set of keys rattling in his hand.

“Enjoy your meal, football star.” Nokes laughed, closing me back into my dark world.

The minute I heard the lock turn and the bolt shut down, I rushed for the bowl and ate my first meal in the hole.

Notes