US 2 Part 1

Be quiet in the common bathroom.

I’m no stranger to vicious prisons, but I was still cornered, and hard. By a group of rapists in the corner of the shower room. I thought I had timed it right to shower safely, but there are always those who don’t give a shit about other people’s calculations.

“Ack.”

It started with a vile blow to the back of my head. My skull was slammed against the tile. My brain rattled and my vision spun. No matter how much I shook my head, there was nothing I could do when the semicircular canals in my ears went on strike.

“Ugh, heu, haa.”

As I stumbled, a leg slammed into my abdomen. As my body fell, another guy drove his knee into my diaphragm. My arms had already been pinned, one on each side. In short, several of them had jumped me. The height of cowardice.

“Heueueu, euuh, heu. Ha, haa, haagh.”

My breaths were forcibly shallowed. I felt my hips being lifted, but I didn’t know how many seconds ago it had happened. My senses were a beat behind.

Blood welled up endlessly from my torn eye socket. It would have been strange to see anything even if I had opened my eyes. Blood, thicker and different in composition from tears, seeped painfully through the slit of my eyelids. Huh, is that a hallucination? Through the serum-colored, piss-filtered haze of my vision, something other than the rapists’ feet came into view.

Ah, those legs look familiar. Legs whose silhouette I knew. Some guy who was passing by had stopped in front of this stall.

“An agreed-upon affair?”

It was Tony Kenner. He asked in his characteristically slow tone.

‘…As if. Shit.’

I shook my head with all my might.

“Hmm.”

Tony Kenner said monotonously.

“In any case, the only sound in a place for washing should be the sound of water.”

One of the smelly white guys broke out in a cold sweat. Yeah, you’re having a hard time too, trying to crush my diaphragm. The white guy glanced at Tony and covered my mouth, but a laugh suddenly escaped me. It was so absurd, for fuck’s sake. What kind of a skit was this?

“L-Like this.”

“I don’t care. But can you stop this sound too?”

Tony Kenner turned on the water in the next stall and wet his hands. He slapped a nearby muscle, making a wet sound. It was an example of the slapping sound of one’s groin against another’s buttocks when being taken from behind.

Shit, it’s so easy for him since it’s not his problem. I felt like I was going to throw up, but I whipped my head back with all my strength. I bared my teeth like a rabid dog, pushed away the hand covering my mouth, and shouted.

“Shibal. I’m going to fucking bawl my eyes out. Really loudly, sir.”

Korean and English were all jumbled together. Because for curses and onomatopoeia, nothing has the same punch as my mother tongue. But it was strange how I still tacked on a clear ‘sir’ at the end.

I searched for Tony Kenner’s eyes. I stared, persistently seeking them out. This goes against your rules, doesn’t it? Right? As if in response, he spoke.

“Yeah. That’s not allowed.”

The white guys lowered their gazes. Isn’t a battle of wills a matter of numbers? Their image was already ruined, but they still retreated, making some crude jokes.

I, too, staggered and grabbed the faucet. It was the moment I hunched over and opened my mouth.

“Thank you. You saved my…”

That motherfucker. My arm was twisted and I was choked. From over the partition that came up to my solar plexus. It wasn’t the ignorant work of amateurs; there was the elegance of a professional. To think he could use my own dislocated arm to make it look like I was choking myself.

As I briefly lost consciousness, I reviewed.

[Tony (Fucking) Kenner’s Rules]

1. All items must be in neat rows and at sharp angles.
2. No talking in your sleep.
3. Only the sound of water in the shower room (Not even a thank you that’s 68 percent sincere. A task for future research: is it possible at 100 percent?).

By the time he finished showering and turned off the water, my cochlea had disbanded their hardline union. I thought maybe I could get up now. Stomach acid had spilled over my skin, which was cooked from the hot water.

As I pushed myself up against the wall, a guard came in. Tony Kenner gathered his shower things and trudged past.

“Inmate number 97S446.”

“97S446. Manuel Oh.”

“What happened here?”

He looked pointedly at Kenner. It seemed he wanted to tack on a charge of internal misconduct.

But isn’t it strange? When those Aryan lackeys were surrounding me, he was so conveniently absent from his post, and now he shows up looking for order?

“I slipped on some soapy water and fell. I think I hit my head on the tile and passed out for a moment. When I opened my eyes, the guys who were here when I came in were all gone. It’s a snapshot of our callous modern society. Look here. No one even checked on me while I was puking my guts out all alone.”

The content was slightly sarcastic, but my tone and expression were deferential. I added the guard’s title with the same frequency Curtis chanted ‘amen.’

“Inmate number 97S446.”

“97S446. Manuel Oh.”

I repeated this act two more times. It was a war of nerves. The guard, who had been glaring at Tony Kenner’s back, finally glared at me. His eyes were itching to pin something on me.

“Lights out in the shower room in three minutes.”

“Yes. Understood.”

***

No one told me the reason. But Tony Kenner was like an evil spirit. I had enough sense to figure that much out.

Or did I? Maybe I’d thrown my sense out the window. Because while everyone else was avoiding the guy on their own, I was having the opposite thought.

‘Good. Let’s live in the evil spirit’s shadow for a while.’

When Tony Kenner eats, I eat too. (Secured an adjacent table)

When Tony Kenner goes out to see the sun, I see it too, the sun. (Secured a 2-meter radius)

When Tony Kenner lifts weights, I build them too, muscles. (On a machine two stalls over)

When Tony Kenner goes to borrow a book, I must borrow one too, a book. (Academy Award-winning acting skills required)

Let’s not even mention the more trivial things. The list goes on.

But the labor we were assigned to was different, and there was nothing I could do about it. Even if I felt like I was going to piss myself from fear, I had no choice but to be careful on my own during the times I was alone, coming and going.

Was it the Saturday of my first week, when Curtis and I were spacing out after a meal? He suddenly asked.

“Your trust account is open, right? Yours.”

“Yeah.”

“Buy me something from the commissary, 50 cents’ worth. A Twinkie. Buy me a chocolate Twinkie.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I lost the bet. It broke this morning. A handkerchief was tied to the bars of the new Latino’s cell. The first puddle of dough.”

“So what.”

“You owe me about 10 percent, morally. Of the money I lost. As an Asian.”

What does being Asian have to do with it? I frowned with a perplexed expression, then my thoughts drifted elsewhere.

“You only bet five dollars on me?”

The damn mouse grinned sheepishly. I chuckled along with him. He was a guy I couldn’t decide whether to hate or get close to.

Because everything that came out of my mouth had already become public property. But everything in the world is like two sides of a coin, and a person’s strengths and weaknesses were also inseparably forged.

If I could gently coax Curtis, couldn’t I also extract rare information about others? Of course, right now, all roads had to lead to ‘Figuring Out Tony (Fucking) Kenner.’

Just then, Curtis changed the subject.

“Your strategy is working. The one where you hide behind the ghost everyone pretends isn’t there. Right?”

I just raised an eyebrow. I listened to the talkative guy while running my tongue over my molars.

“But in this chicken coop, you think you’re the only new guy who’s come up with that brilliant idea? I’ve never seen anyone assigned to Kenner’s cell last long. Six days is impressive. It’s amazing. I don’t know when you’ll snap, but he’s not going to let you follow him around like a baby bird forever. You will definitely snap. Ah, I should set up another pool for this.”

“And make a whole five dollars off it.”

I smacked my lips with a bored tone and casually asked. As if I had just run out of things to chat about.

“There are places I can’t follow. We’re separated during labor. Labor. Where does that guy go, anyway? A guard opened the passage to C-wing for him?”

“Ah. Chaplain’s administrative assistant. It’s open to us on Sundays too. So it’s not that special.”

The gears in my head started turning at high speed. Success. Tony Kenner’s name came easily from Curtis’s lips. For once, he loosely let more information slip.

“But what’s the point? It’s not something you can get a good rating for.”

“What do you mean?”

“Does he have a bible in his cell possessions? Or a cross?”

When I shook my head, he said it as if it were obvious.

“From what I’ve heard, he’s openly non-religious. I don’t know because it was before my time, but the chaplain who strangely placed his trust in him and appointed him to an admin position just happens to be Catholic.”

“Hmph.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. Despite my name, I’d lived my whole life without religion, so the terminology was unfamiliar.

“The guys who can only come for one-off events or visits are the clergy. The ones who commute regularly are the chaplains. And these chaplains are divided into four ranks.”

As I blinked my ignorant eyes, Curtis added more detail.

“Juniors are escorted by a correctional officer for all their activities. The two assistant chaplain ranks can reside in a limited area without an escort. The senior chaplains have a real range of activity, but those guys usually need about 20 years of ministry experience.”

I must have been listening with a pretty dumb expression, because Curtis even posed a question to my blank face.

“There are 12 senior chaplains here, you know? How many of them do you think are Catholic priests?”

This guy has a knack for making even the most trivial things sound annoying. He beat the drum and played the gong all by himself before giving the answer. Raising his index finger.

“One. Just one. Compared to a regular county jail, the ratio of religious diversity is a mess. Thanks to guess who.”

Ah. I recalled the warden’s photo I’d seen so clearly on my first day. Even an idiot could make this deduction.

“Then the rest must be Protestant pastors planted by the warden.”

And one more deduction.

“So what Tony Kenner is doing is not only something he can’t get a good rating for, but it’s a step further, an eyesore…”

“Yep. His head is screwed on tight in a way that’s different from ours. Ever since he came in taking his full sentence raw. When a crazy guy spins 360 degrees, he ends up back where he started so it’s not obvious, but he’s still crazy. Among us lambs, that guy lives with the memory of being crazy his whole life. He just doesn’t shout ‘I’m crazy!’ at the top of his lungs. Anyway…”

It was just idle chatter. An expression of unease about the unease itself. The proof of what was so unsettling was that he couldn’t provide any evidence.

***