babtism

Baptism.

On weekends, the Harris County holding tank is pretty-much standing room only. It varies of course, depending on the population count, but it’s mostly packed. The holding tank is the place where they take you when you first get to jail, get booked in, and all the rest. It’s where you wait to be moved back to population.

One guy in the tank was named Pavitch, or something like that. He had a thick accent and he looked real scarred. The cops started calling him Pabitch because he kept pushing the button by the little speaker, asking when he was gona’ see the judge. I could tell by the conversation that he had been there quite a while. The cops are not supposed to keep you in holding more than 42 hours, because conditions are so crowded and dirty, but when the jail backs up, so does processing, so you might be there a while. You basically sleep on top of each other, on a dirty cold concrete floor, so after a few days guys can tend to get irate. Most take it out on each other, but some, like Pavitch try and buck the system. It might hve been too that Pavitch was not a citizen, or was in the U.S. illegally. If that’s the case, you might be there for a week. Guys that are ini the country illegal are treated much worse, because they don’t have the same rights legally as citizens, or that’s what it seems to me. I’v known migrant workers who were thrown in jail and never saw a lawyer till 3 months later, I mean they never even were asked about it. Nor did those guys ask any questions, they just sat and smoked cigarettes and waited.


Pavitch on the other hand was asking a lot of questions. He kept bugging the bosses, and they got to just ignoring him, or threatening him to let them be, and let them do their work. Other guys told him to let it alone, but Pavitch got more and more pissed. The guards got to taunting him “Little Pbbitch got his panties in a wad”, and all that sort of stuff.

Finally after Pavitch had rung the buzzer for the 100th time and asked to see the judge they rushed in, got on top of him, grabbed by his hands and feet, and took into the “get right room”. The get-right room is mostly for violent drunks who have pissed or otherwise defiled themselves. It is a cell that they keep very cold, and it has a drain in the middle of the floor for guys to piss and shit in. It is all white and very bright. Sometimes they spray guys down if they are covered with shit or throw-up or something. It happens.

They threw Pavitch in the room and rolled out a hose and sprayed him good. We could not see him from our cell because he had backed up against a wall, but we could hear him rasing a ruckus. HE was cursing and saying something in his foreign language and telling them all sorts of shit. They closed the door and he kept at it, cursing and carrying on and such. After twn minutes or so of that, we say the riot guys go in with fill dress and we could hear them working him over, telling him that this was what happened to bad little bitches. I figured they also handcuffed him to one of the rings that was secured to the wall.

After they left he was suddenly real quite. And guys went on talking about it low, telling how they told him so, and that’s what happens, and you got to get along to go along, and all that.


When I made bail I looked in the room as I walked out and saw that he was slumped in the corner, shivering and slumped and with what looked like a large bruise on his forehead. He looked like a man in hell. It was a terrible pathetic sight to see.


A few weeks later I ended up back in the tank, another DWI. When the cops transported me I threw up in the back-seat of the cop car and got a little bit of the get right room myself. Damn it was cold. I asked a round the cell block in and I heard that after they took him back to population he made a shank outta some plastic forks, and got a razor outa those stupid little razors they give you and cut up a medics face pretty bad, put his eye out is what they said. Maybe so, maybe not, you can’t believe half the shit you hear in the joint.