Chapter 3: The Yard

Quincy

This was my fifth day in prison and I felt like jumping out of my own skin. Not only did I feel like the walls were closing in on me every passing day, I noticed my health deteriorating from lack of good food.

Breakfast is always cold oatmeal seasoned with spit and pepper spray. Lunch? Probably a cream bologna sandwich and an apple that's been kicked around for extra flavor. And dinner? Dinner's the same as lunch.

“C143,” A guard called from outside my cell. I sat up straight on my bed, my muscles ached so bad. “Ain't got no money on the books. Better luck next time.” He slid my usual mouthwatering breakfast through the little space on the door. “Here's what I got. Enjoy.”

I'm hungry, I'll take whatever I can get. So far it's edible. I went over to the door and picked up the tray, my jaw locked. I got to my bunk and began devouring my sumptuous meal without sparing it a glance. It tasted all things awful.

The guards tell us when to eat, shower, and shit. Choosing what we want to buy is our only taste of independence. I've got no money coming from outside. Called Dad a couple of time, no response. Called my girlfriend, Stacy. Same. I'll be dead before my jail time elapses, that's for sure.

“Y’ll get ready to warm your filthy ass under the sun!” the same guard barked from the hallway as he existed, rolling his cart along with him.

*******

A wave of hot, stale air brushed my face as I stepped onto the concrete yard. The sun was harsh, but after being confined to one place where your movements were restrained, you'll grow to love the ultraviolet rays. The rays casted jagged shadows from the wire fences and metal watchtowers. The yard was a mix of chaos and ritual—men moved in packs, their routines like clockwork built on tension, dominance, and survival.

I blinked against the light. My instinct was to keep my head down, but a voice in the back of my mind reminded me: prey looks down.

So I lifted my chin, keeping my expression cool as I scanned the yard slowly.

Two men played chess with makeshift pieces. A group lifted weights under the sun, bodies hard with tattoos and scars. Some were pacing in circuits like caged animals. Others were posted up near the walls in tight clusters—talking low, watching everything.

The guards barely glanced down from their towers.

“Keep walking, fish.” A short, wiry inmate bumped past me. He called me a fish, that's what most of the prisoners call me in shower.

“Fish,” in translation, meant fresh meat, the new guy. I pulled myself from my path to let the short man walk through, watching his tiny legs skedaddle to meet his peers—he folded his baggy pants up, it was visible.

I've got no peers, and I sure as hell I wasn't going to make friends with any of these losers.

I adjusted the stiff collar of my uniform. My skin crawled. Every eye I met lingered too long, calculating. Predatory. Curious.

I followed the yellow line as instructed during orientation. The walkway split the yard down the middle, supposedly a “neutral” lane. But even that word felt like a lie here.

As I passed the weight benches, one of the larger inmates dropped his barbell and whistled.

“Looks like Wall Street’s got a new intern.”

Laughter followed.

I kept walking.

At the far end of the yard, a guard motioned me over to a picnic table bolted to the ground. “This’ll be your yard group. Sit.”

Three men already sat there. None of them smiled.

The first was older, with a grizzled beard and faded prison ink crawling up his arms. His eyes were as dead as glass.

The second was young, jittery. His knuckles were scabbed and raw—either from fighting or chewing, who knows?

The third looked somewhere between calm and coiled violence. He had pale blue eyes and a shiv-thin grin.

“You the stock boy?” he asked.

I nodded slowly.

“Why you in?” the young one asked, practically bouncing. “Ponzi or insider trading?”

I hesitated, summing up my jail sentence into one word. “Embezzlement.”

The older one snorted. “Figures. They send you here to rot with the rest of us while your lawyer drinks mojitos in Miami?”

The others laughed, but it wasn’t friendly. I stiffened. “I took a plea deal.”

“You took something, alright,” the older man said. “And in here, everything’s payback.”

“Enough.” The blue-eyed one leaned in. “You got a name?”

“Quincy.”

He nodded. “Name’s Rook. That one’s Benny, and the old bastard is Dusty. Don’t ask why. You’re with us now when we’re on yard duty. That doesn't mean we like you—it means you’re safer with us than without.”

I sat cautiously. “And if I want to stay out of it all?”

Dusty laughed, a dry wheeze of a sound that made him look ten years younger. It's best if he smiled often. “Then you better start praying, moneybags. Nobody stays out. You pick sides, or the sides pick you.”

That was when I noticed the lines—real ones—drawn into the cracked concrete beneath their table. Symbols. Numbers. Codes I didn’t understand.

In the far corner of the yard, another group was watching them. Mostly Black men, tattooed, muscular, faces hard with suspicion. Nearby, a Latino gang occupied the basketball court. Everything was sectioned. Claimed. Owned.

I'm realizing the truth now: prison wasn’t about doing time. It was about survival.

And the rules in here didn’t come in pamphlets.

I haven't spent an hour with my newly forced crew when a guard blew the whistle. Yard time over.

As I stood, Rook grabbed my sleeve and threw his arm over my shoulders. “Word of advice?” he said under his breath His eyes on his peers who had left him behind. “Stick close. You may think you’re smarter than us, but smarts don’t mean shit when someone’s got a blade to your ribs.”

I nodded, mouth dry.

I walked back across the yard with the others, the laughter, shouting, and steel-cold stares chasing after me like ghosts.

By the time I stepped back into the block, the heat had left my skin, but not my chest.

I made a mental note to take Rook’s advice to heart. It is the only way I can survive this place.