Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison by T. J. Parsell Page A

reassuring. "How old are you?"
"Seventeen."
He let out a long whistle, "Sev-en-teen!" he said, stretching out each syllable of the word. He was considerably older. "You're a baby!" His voice held a hint of affection.
I smiled.
"I've got kids your age," his eyes drifted off my shoulder and into the distance, "somewhere."

I smiled back at him. I was pretty young compared to everybody I had seen so far.
"Why, how old are you?"
"What are you in for kid?" he interrupted. I wasn't sure he had heard my question.
"How much time do you have?" he asked.
"Two and half to four," I answered. I still hadn't grasped the reality of it.
"How come they sent you here?"
"I have to go back to court for an armed robbery," I said. "I haven't been sentenced yet."
"A control hold," he nodded, his face relaxing. "When's your court date?"
"I don't know," I shrugged.
His tone was encouraging. "What did you rob?"
"A Photo Mat," I said, matching his smile with a slightly embarrassed grin.
It looked as though someone had turned up a dimmer switch in Chet's eyes.
An inmate walked by us and yelled to Chet.
"Scandalous," the black inmate blurted. He smiled at Chet, but ignored me.
"You are just plain scandalous, Dawg!" He said, shaking his head. He opened the dayroom door and once more bellowed, "Scandalous!"
Chet looked at me reassuringly. "Pay no mind to him. That boy is half a bug, and his Thorazine must be running low."
"What's Thorazine?"
"Bug juice. It's what they give the bugs to keep 'em calm. Do you want some?"
"No!" I said quickly. I wasn't sure he was joking.
Chet just looked at me silently nodding his head, as though he was studying me.
"I don't do drugs."
"You don't do drugs?" There was a trace of doubt and surprise in his voice leading me to believe that he was serious about his offer of Thorazine.
"No."
"Never?" he probed with a puzzled look. "What about reefer?"
"Nah, it makes me paranoid."

"Do you drink?" He sounded like he was running down a checklist in his head.
"Oh yeah," I responded, smiling, "like a fish."
Chet smiled, and the flicker returned.
"Well, then," he said with delight, "have I got a party for you! I've got a batch coming off tomorrow. We'll have a welcoming party."
"Really!" I whispered excitedly. "You've got booze in here?" I had heard that inmates made their own liquor. I remembered a scene in the movie, The Longest Yard, where Burt Reynolds and another inmate had booze hidden in a plastic bag inside their cell toilet. But that was the movies.
"Spud juice, my boy. The best brew this side of Jackson."
"Wow! How do you make it?"
Squinting his eyes, Chet bent forward and imitated an Asian accent. "Ancient Chinese secret," he said. We both laughed because he was imitating an old laundry detergent commercial.
"Don't listen to that lying motherfucker," blurted a voice so close behind me that I felt a breath on the back of my neck. Startled, I turned around. "This boy wouldn't know how to brew spud juice if his momma's life depended on it." He was a black man with sideburns and a thick mustache that came down past the sides of his mouth. He looked like the actor in the television show, The Mod Squad, except that his hair was wavy and cut closer to his scalp.
Chet shot back at him from over my shoulder, "Oh, now don't you bring my mother into this, Boy!" He said it with an extra emphasis on the word boy. The man broke a smile that displayed a perfect set of teeth that were nicely framed by his mustache and dark brown skin.
"Oh, I'll bring your mother into this all right," he said as he brought his full attention to me. He was standing fairly close. I looked down at his feet; he was wearing worn-down brown leather slippers. Perhaps that was why I hadn't heard him when he walked up behind me.
He smiled broadly at Chet. It was clear they were friends. "And I've got your boy," he said, as he grabbed his crotch and squeezed it, "hanging right here."
I laughed, nervously, and was glad they were friends just teasing each other.

Chet put