Originally published in Verbicide issue #15

Ever since coming to prison I had been confounding people; I just didn’t look like a criminal. I was too polite, too well spoken, and too intelligent. It threw people off.

It began as soon as I arrived in the R-unit at Shelton. I was always being asked what I was in for and I soon learned to take pleasure in the surprised faces when I told the truth. No one ever suspected me of being an armed robber. I was always mistaken for an embezzler, a crooked bookkeeper, or a computer hacker. A big black dude once told me, “You look like a librarian but you got the name of a serial killer!”

As a consequence of my bookish appearance I was often asked for legal advice. No one believed me when I told them I knew nothing about the law. I soon learned to fake it, to just reel off some legal-sounding horseshit and bask in the gratitude of my fellow convicts. I don’t know how many men I unwittingly helped set free or else accidentally sent to Death Row with my bullshit, but because I never charged a fee for my faux legal advice, I had a steady stream of “customers” for the first three years of my sentence.

But then I gained a newer, more fearsome reputation.

I became known around the prison and honor farm as “One Punch,” or “Butch the Badass,” a vicious, one-handed annihilator of anyone foolish enough to bother me — a seething bundle of violence, best left alone.

It came purely by accident, or luck, which may be the same thing. I had gotten into a stupid argument with Mahmood Mahtab, a Pakistani prisoner. (In order to appreciate the following exchange, imagine everything he says being delivered in the voice of Apu from “The Simpsons”).

He had puffed up over something I had said and he replied, most indignantly, “You are most certainly a dirty bastard, and I should be now kicking your ass!”

Now, if there was one thing I had learned after several years in prison, it was that 99 percent of all convicts were shit-talkers, sucker-punchers, and loud-mouthed cowards. Being somewhat of a loud-mouthed coward myself, I said, “Well get to kicking!”

He held up a hand. “Do not piss me further!”

“Come on, Gunga Din, is your kicker broke?”

What happened next came as a complete surprise. No sooner had I insulted him with my Gunga Din wisecrack, when he uttered this ear-piercing, nerve-rattling war-cry. It sounded like that goddammned wail that Xena lets loose just before she starts beating ass, a truly ungodly and evil noise.

Screaming like a madman, he rushed towards me. To tell the truth, the war-cry freaked me out to the roots of my hair, it was a terrifying sound, and if there hadn’t been an audience of ten or twelve convicts standing around I would’ve turned tail and fled. But I didn’t. What I did do was shoot out a straight-armed fist at him as he came rushing at me. It was really a blind shot — I practically had my eyes closed — I was afraid of some sudden death-blow, impossible to avoid, some form of East Indian Kung-Fu or some other exotic and deadly martial art.

But it was I who delivered the killer punch, quite by accident. My fist just happened to catch him in the throat, and the combination of his forward momentum and the snap of my arm sent him airborne for a full two or three seconds — his feet went up (I SWEAR to GOD they almost brushed my ear; it was that close) and his head went back and he hovered in mid-air like that, suspended in time, while a room full of black dudes all simultaneously made the Buckwheat-oh-my-goodness face. It was one of those weird frozen moments, etched forever in all our minds. Then, like in the old Roadrunner cartoons, gravity took over once again and he fell to the floor and started rolling and thrashing, sputtering and gasping while his face turned a deep shade of purple.

I was as shocked as everyone else; as I watched him kick and wheeze and flail on the floor, I was afraid that he would actually die. I saw my remaining four years stretch into twenty (Murder) or twelve (Manslaughter).

After a minute or two, he regained his healthy brown color and began drawing in long, ragged breaths. I was so stunned that my face went completely blank; I guess the other cons thought it was stone-faced COOL, a sort of Clint Eastwood-like indifference to my own deadliness.

And thus was born my reputation, completely undeserved, as a mean motherfucker.

After that it was a daily fear of mine that someone would get the notion to test the newest badass on the cellblock. I had heard it described as “the gunfighter syndrome.” But it never happened. I had to play my cards close to my vest, never appearing arrogant or too sure of my (non-existent) martial arts abilities, but careful to never let on that the whole thing was a hoax, a lie, a misunderstanding.

I used to cringe when a new guy was brought through the honor farm chow hall and his tour guide would say, “Now, you see that skinny white boy over there with the broom? That’s Butch…we call him One Punch…don’t fuck with Butch; I know he looks like a square and all but he will fuck you up! I seen him do it! With One PUNCH!”

And then they’d call out, “Hey, One Punch! What’s up?”

And I’d smile and wave and wonder when the next guy they brought in would walk up to me, slam me right in the kisser, and say, “One Punch my ass, motherfucker! He ain’t nothing but a Bitch!”

But like I said, that never happened.
—
In 1996, Raegan Butcher was convicted of first-degree armed robbery and spent seven years in prison. His first book of poetry, Stone Hotel, was published shortly before his release in 2003 and received enormously positive reviews. His second book, Rusty String Quartet, was recently published in May of 2005. Both books are available at www.buyolympia.com. He currently lives in Olympia, WA.