“It’s
“I ain’t got no beef wit’ you, Fa—Mister Fat Rat.”
And that was it. His last vestiges of strength. He had yielded his manhood by calling Fat Rat “Mister,” a cardinal sin. In that instant, Fat Rat connected fist to face, knocking B.T. hard against the bars, where Hog took the liberty of grabbing his cheeks. B.T.’s knees buckled; until Hog had fondled his cheeks he was going down.
“Ahh,” B.T. gave a start when Hog’s hands touched his ass. “Cuz, what you doin’?”
“Shut up, punk. You know you like that,” said Hog.
Catcalls began coming from the adjacent cells. B.T. looked around like a frightened, trapped lamb. But in contrast to a meek, feeble-bodied person, he stood there six foot one and buff. Yet he had no inclination to defend himself from what was definitely a head-up situation.
Hog was out on the tier and could not get in the cell. And I was not going to get involved. I had no beef with East Coast or B.T. Could I have prevented it? Yes, and I intended to, but it would be interesting to see how far this would go. I can’t now qualify my thinking at the time. In my mind it was kill or be killed, live and let die, law of the land.
Fat Rat had backed to the rear of the cell and begun to disrobe. I thought then that B.T. would strike, but he didn’t. He still seemed to think that Fat Rat could be deterred by reasoning, by appealing to his intellectual morality. B.T. had been to the pen and had gotten “tamed.” He’d learned manipulation and vocabulary skills. But shit, Fat Rat, like me, was uncut street, straight out of the bush. The only language Fat Rat knew or respected or could be persuaded by was violence. Everything else was for the weak. Action and more action—anything else paled in comparison.
Fat Rat stood wide-legged in tattered shorts, belly hanging over them. He looked like an enraged Buddha. He was ready to fight or fuck, and knowing Fat Rat, he planned on a bit of both.
“Oh, Hog, you just gonna let yo’ homie trip on me like this, huh?”
“Hey, Fat Rat, cuz, I don’t wanna fight wit’ you, man.”
B.T.’s pleading was reduced to a whimper, clashing hard with his appearance. He was evenly dark from head to toe, and standing there naked he looked like a Zulu warrior.
“Nigga, you gonna do somethin’,” Fat Rat said, massaging his groin and stepping up on B.T.
“Cuz, you
POW!
Fat Rat punched him hard in the solar plexus.
“Oooh… awright, awright,” he said, barely getting the words out.
“Now, what you gonna do? You ready to get ’em up or what?”
Fat Rat forced his way behind B.T. and made him move to the back of the cell.
“I don’t wanna do this, Fat Rat,” B.T. said, straightening up to his full height, towering over Fat Rat by at least three inches. Even Fat Rat had to take a small step back.
B.T. put his guard up and positioned his feet in a fighting stance. Then swiftly, like greased lightning, Fat Rat rushed into B.T. and began pounding him everywhere at once with furious blows. Fat Rat’s hands were hammering blurs, reducing the formerly upright B.T. to a pitiful clump of flesh under the steel sink. B.T. hadn’t thrown a blow, hadn’t said a word, hadn’t resisted with one fiber of his being, but Fat Rat didn’t seem to recognize this. He continued to hammer away at B.T.’s defenseless body as if he had put up a ferocious struggle. I believe he continued out of sheer fear of B.T., from when he had finally stood to do battle.
Fat Rat clearly wanted to make sure that B.T. never resisted again. When Fat Rat ceased hitting him, B.T. lay unconscious on the cold concrete floor. The entire side of Able and Charlie row was deathly quiet. Everyone was listening.
Winded and crazed beyond any reasoning short of death, Fat Rat began tearing his sheet into shreds. I knew what this meant. Once he had torn enough he dragged B.T. out into the middle of the cell. He then rolled him over onto his stomach and proceeded to tie his hands behind his back, then his legs; then he tied his bound limbs together. Only after he had been securely bound did B.T. start to squirm against the tension of the sheets, which held him in a hog-tied position. Fat Rat, in all his brutish arrogance, put one foot on B.T.’s back like a big-game hunter who had bagged a tiger and shouted from the depths of his lungs.
“HOOVA!”
And it seemed to echo forever, bouncing off wall after wall.
“Hey, Monster,” Snake from Seven-Six said to me from the lower tier, “what’s goin’ on?”
“Head up,” I replied, which also implied that there was nothing I could do.
Big Hog had to lock it up, but before he left he told Fat Rat to save some for him.
Fat Rat, enjoying his audience, wanted to make an impression as being a total brute. He looked over, as if just noticing me in the cell.
“Monster, what’s up, cuz? What should I do with this punk?”
“I don’t know Rat. Cuz is a coward-ass muthafucka, huh?”
“Hell yeah,” Fat Rat replied and looked down at B.T. with disgust.
“Let me up, cuz,” B.T. said, trying to sound irritated. A bit late for that shit. Fat Rat responded by pissing on B.T.’s back and head as he lay on the floor. I couldn’t believe it.
“Ahh, cuz,” B.T. cried, “you wrong Fa—”
BAM!
Fat Rat kicked B.T. hard in the side.
“Oooff…
“And don’t even say ’cuz’ no mo’, you ain’t no Crip.”
“Fat Rat,” I said, “who gonna clean this shit up, man?”
“Him,” Fat Rat said, indicating B.T.
I knew Fat Rat wasn’t going to untie him and expect him to clean up. Surely B.T. would make an attempt on Fat Rat’s life now. Wouldn’t anyone so treated?
“You gonna untie cuz? Man, Fat Rat, you on one now,” I said.
“Monsta’, this nigga broke. He ain’t wantin’ to see me. Shit, I should change my name to King Fat Rat.”
I rolled my eyes to the ceiling at Fat Rat’s insanity. He then bent down and began to untie B.T. I slid back on my bed so as not to be in the way of what I was sure was going to be some stomp-down action. Once B.T. was loose, he stood up and went peacefully over to the sink.
Uhn-uhn, no you don’t,” Fat Rat said in a fatherly voice. “Befo’ you clean yo’ self you fin’ to clean these walls, the toilet and… Hey,” Fat Rat hollered over the silent tiers, “anybody need they drawers washed?”
“Hell, yeah,” several voices replied from down the tier.
“Send yo’ line down here,” he shouted. “What you lookin’ at, punk?” he said to B.T., who flinched each time Fat Rat spoke. He was totally conquered.
B.T. washed the graffiti-packed walls, washed several pair of underclothes, braided Fat Rat’s hair, massaged Fat Rat’s back, and finally, Fat Rat made him eat a bar of County soap and drink some perm-repair shampoo. Rat was ruthless. After B.T. had done all of this without so much as a flicker of resistance, Fat Rat body-slammed him, tied him up again, and slid him under the bed on his stomach. Fat Rat had done all of this without an inkling of shame or remorse. B.T. was his de facto servant-slave. He followed through on every demand like a robot. The life had left his eyes and his swollen face showed no feeling. All of his movements seemed to be under the supreme command of Fat Rat’s verbal remote control.
It was at times as amusing as it was scary and pitiful. How could B.T. let this happen? How had he grown up in South Central and escaped being tested for weakness? His will to resist was sapped like soda from a glass slurped through a straw. Fat Rat pranced around the cell like a proud little Buddha who had just converted another disciple. He kept trying to explain to me the process of the “breaking stages” he was putting B.T. through. He had actually developed a little science to it.
“You see, Monsta,” he said like a college professor, “the first thing I did was strip him of his clothing, dig? This make him feel less than strong. Then I degraded him by pissin’ on him, you see? And then I wouldn’t let him
