Cellular Chess

 
“Knock, Knock.”

“Who is it?” I asked as if I couldn’t see that it was Waters, the Assistant Tank Captain. 

“I come in?” he asked needlessly, stepping through the open cell door.  After fourteen months in the county jail, he scrupulously observed jailhouse courtesies.  He was a short, very muscular black inmate.  Waters had some real intelligence except in the area of burglary, which he had the bad judgment to choose as a career path.  Normally though, he didn’t say or do anything stupid.  Stupid was what got us all here, but some of us were trying not to compound the felony, so to speak.  By virtue of his time here and personality, he had the respect of the other inmates in our area and had become the assistant tank captain.

“We got a problem with Bobby.”  He did have a way of getting right to the point.

“There’s always a problem with Bobby; gimme something new.” 

Bobby Bosner was a big, ill-tempered, and foul-mouthed inmate even by jail standards.  Those were his good features.  He was one of the eighteen current inmates in our tank and hadn’t caught on that he was no longer in control of his, or anyone else’s, life.  Anytime something happened he didn’t like, which was most things, his first and only solution was “I’ll kick your ass.”  It was this attitude that resulted in his second visit to the Sheriff’s Sheraton in a year.  This time the charge was murder, although it looked like he could get it down to manslaughter if he kept his cool in court.  No one was taking any bets on that.

Bobby had taken a liking to me; maybe because I let him beat me at cards or chess most of the time.  This meant that he didn’t threaten to pound the shit out of me more than two or three times a week.  Mostly, I ignored him and went right on with what we were doing.  With his attention span, he’d forget about it in a few seconds if you didn’t give him any feedback.  Still, I felt we were likely to do the knuckle waltz someday when I didn’t respond to his intimidation.  There wasn’t anyone in the tank that Bobby hadn’t bullied or threatened and most people backed down.  If I did too, it could create more problems than Bobby.  Older inmates were considered fair game by some and I was pushing fifty, so showing any weakness could make me a target.  After over twenty years of martial arts training, I knew I could take him, but only if I hurt him two ways, fast and often.  One thing that had been pounded home early in my training was, “take out the big guy first and the others may back off.”  Bosner had about a hundred pounds and twenty years on me.  I planned to be quick, vicious, and make sure there were witnesses to say that he’d jumped me.  With his reputation, that shouldn’t be a problem.