Joseph Fleming

Joseph Fleming was my final cellmate. When I was taken upstairs, I had three cellmates, but there was no door locking us in. The last inmate I was locked in with was Joseph Fleming.

For the first six days, I had two different cellmates. First was Red, a convict and parolee who wasn't where he was supposed to be so his PO brought him in. Technical violation. Same for Matt. Matt got picked up on a warrant that was technicality on technicality. Locking him up served no one, except for the state of Colorado who would benefit by receiving federal dollars for the body incarcerated over Christmas. Matt was a smart guy and a good man. He did not need to be locked up.

Joseph was a decent human as well. But he was a little scarier. I was glad that the guard gave him a second tray of the rice and bean dinner, after telling him that I was going to donate my last supper to him, then me getting hungry as a motherfucker. I took the risk and ate that shit.

Joseph was 5'7", 140, but as intimidating a fellow as I would choose to associate with. Slang. Swagger. Had just done 10 days in the hole for fighting sheriff deputies over his da-duh-de-duhs (his underwear). He chose to wear basketball shorts as underwear, and when the guards asked him to remove them, he fought back. It was bullshit that he had to give up the shorts ("Da-duh-de-duhs"). I didn't like being locked in with this guy.

He had been in the pod for 45 minutes before we got locked in. First and immediately after I shut that heavy metal door, I heard about his time in the hole. He had is own cell but was on constant lockdown. He was let out for an hour a day, but there was nothing to do. Next, I learned about Nikki, his little shorty who he had been trying to impregnate. He had come up with a name for the child if it was a girl. If it was a boy, he was going to decide when he was born. But his love life was more complex than this. Jess, his wife, who has a couple kids, who is addicted to crack, had done Joseph wrong by going to Vegas for several months to sell pussy. Her own pussy. She had been off crack while she was there. Well, that's what she told Joseph.

See, Joseph sells crack. He's not addicted to smoking it, even though he does sometimes. He is, however, addicted to selling it. Shirts, 8-balls, dimes, twenties, whatever people will buy, he'll sell. It's called "work," when he has crack. As in, "Yo, man, you got some 'work' for a brother?" He can't make money unless he has crack to sell. Jess, his wife, understands this, but her problem is that she is addicted to smoking the shit.

Joseph would look me right in the eye when he had a point to make, and he would stare at a 45 degree angle down when he didn't. He stared out the window for a while as I watched from the top bunk. His face was lit perfectly and dramatically in the afternoon light. His eyes bulged out as he twisted his goatee beard. He was half Italian and half American Indian. Despite his attraction to Nikki, he was going to stay with Jess.

He had history with her. The woman's children would talk to him and ask if she had managed to get off the crack yet. He would tell them no. The older child, Teagan, was 7 and she wanted her mother back, tired of living with her grandmother. Hoping that her mother would quit smoking all that crack. Jess got her military disability check for $1,800 on the 30th or the 31st. She could blow the whole thing on crack in 3 days, easily. He was happy to be getting out on the 3rd of January, because he was happy that he would finally be able to prove to her and his friends that she is capable of fucking up her own life without his help.

I listened to his stories, in amazing detail ("Mind you, ...." he would say as he set the context for the next part). His life is fine, and he isn't out to hurt people. He is a crack dealer and a pimp for life, though.

Joseph hadn't wasted his time in the hole. He had written Jess a letter. His nickname was "Face" and Jess was "Ladiface." He offered to read me the letter. Obviously, I want to hear it. I looked over his shoulder from the top bunk as he sat on the bottom and read. He had written it on a single sheet of yellow notebook paper, using both sides. This man had the most impressive and perfect cursive handwriting I have ever seen. Absolutely perfect. His writing was not bad, wither. He needed to let Jess know that he wants to be with her. Their problems and how they had gotten through them was not lost on Joseph Fleming. They might argue about the dumbest shit. They might argue about Ratatouille, they might have problems with drugs and money, but they belonged together. She was the woman in his future.