"THE WEIRDNESS BECAME OVERWHELMING.”

“THE WEEKENDER is a tight fever dream drenched in dark cavity searches, Spam sandwiches, and the lonely movement of time. A modern day Beat com-bination of Rocky Balboa uppercuts and Kerouacian human perception, NATE JORDON’S writing fires off the page like a consecrated bar fight, splattering the walls with clock springs, a raw fortitude of language, and a fair amount of blood.”

ROB GEISENAuthor of BEAUTIFUL GRAVEYARDS and PAPER THIN

“In THE WEEKENDER, JORDON describes the greatest fear of all literarily-inclined small-time crooks: ending up inside the slammer with the pros. Fasci-nating characters and hilarious dialogue populate this story that manages to be both hilarious and sobering.”

NICHOLAS B. MORRIS Author of TAPEWORM

“NATE JORDON obliterates all decaying museums of stuporous thought and blasts us into a fugue state of thrombosis, both potent and life-altering.”

MEG TUITE Author of DOMESTIC APPARITION and DISPARATE PATHOS

M E M O I R - $5.00

M O N K E Y P U Z Z L E P R E S S . C O M

9 780985 170516

ISBN-13 9780985170516ISBN-10 098517051-4

50500

THEWEEKENDER

NATE JORDON

THEWEEKENDER

THEWEEKENDER

NATE JORDON

MONKEY PUZZLE PRESSBOULDER, COLORADO

Copyright © 2012 by Nate Jordon

All rights reserved. No part of this book may

be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever

without written permission except in the case of

brief excerpts. Printed in the United States of

America.

Cover IdeaGet in the car, Helen

MONKEY PUZZLE PRESSPO Box 20804

Boulder, Colorado 80308monkeypuzzlepress.com

ISBN-10: 0985170514 ISBN-13: 9780985170516

Cover DesignNate Jordon

To all the believers out there.

"A present, je suis au fond du monde, o

mes amies! . . . non, pas mes amies . . .

Jamais delires ni tortures semblables

. . . Est-ce bete!”

Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell

THE WEEKENDER

11

“How do you know what time it is?”“When you been here long as I have, you get used to

the routine. Things here run like clockwork and you can estimate time according to what’s going on. They do body counts every four hours—eleven p.m., three a.m., and so on, right? Breakfast gets served at four thirty in the morning. Med pass comes by every six hours. So, according to what’s going on, you can estimate the time. Just don’t plan on getting good sleep with all the interruptions.”

“What’s there to do around here?”“Shit, that’s what. There’s some books over there,” he

pointed to a stack of tattered paperbacks on the top bunk in the corner. “Go for it, read what you want.”

I walked over to inspect the titles.“Just here for the weekend?” came a voice from the

bottom bunk. He was a stout fella with well-groomed black hair and a misshapen yet carefully manicured beard.

“Yeah.”“What’d you do?”I kept it short.“You’re lucky, man. This place sucks. They treat us like

dogs, food stinks, nothing to do, they don’t feed us enough. Fucking start a riot in this place.”

“Yeah, riot!” someone said.“Fuck this place!”A sinister energy began to rise in the cell, but no one

got too excited and soon everyone went back to doing absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, I scanned the paperbacks.

The collection of books was about the most ridiculous I’d ever seen. It was the type of crap that could’ve been found in a ninety year-old woman’s house in Mississippi, living alone reminiscing the days of yore: romance, riverboats, slavery. One collection boasted the titles of different states:

12

NATE JORDON

Alabama!, Georgia!, Kentucky!—the exclamation point in the title. I grabbed Yellowstone Kelly, a western, and went back to my bunk.

“What’s up, man? My name’s Chance. But people call me Moody.”

“Nate,” I said. We shook hands.“So you’re a weekender, eh?”“Yeah. Unless someone made a clerical error.”“First time in jail?” he asked.“Well, I’ve been thrown in the ol’ drunk tank one or

two times. But this is the first extended stay.”“Ah, don’t sweat it, man. Time’ll fly by. Where you

from?”“Fresno.”“Fresno? You know a guy named Geno Gray?”“Nah,” I shook my head. “I’m not originally from there

so I don’t know too many people.”“Then where you from?”“Texas.”“No shit. Don’t mess with Texas, right?”Moody was in his early twenties and the more he

talked, the more I noticed his quick wit. He had charisma, but I could sense a crazy streak. He rattled story after story throughout my stay, all entertaining. If he wasn’t talking, he was asleep.

“Where you from?” I asked.“Oakhurst.”He told me this was his second time in the can. Last

year he did six months for a drug related charge and not long after his release was picked up for another drug related charge and here he was, the third week of a five year sentence. Moody resembled potential, but it all got twisted. He’d probably make a great politician but I got the

THE WEEKENDER

13

feeling he’d never escape being a career inmate.A guard burst in, “All right, count time! Out of your

bunks, let’s go!” He started flipping through a stack of 3x5 cards and calling names. This gave me a chance to see everyone in the cell.

Most of my cellmates seemed Mexican. There were no blacks. I was one of six whites.

One of the white guys was refugee thin and had only one eye. He didn’t wear a patch or anything to cover the hole where the other eye should’ve been, and I must’ve been staring at it, because then I realized he was staring at me. The look he gave made me cringe, so I squatted down and sat on my bunk, hidden from view.

Once body count was over, I curled up on my bunk, spread the wool blanket over me, crumpled the towel and laundry bag into a pillow, and tried to sleep. But there were still a few inmates awake, talking and moving about. I decided to inspect the little Ziploc bag the guard had given me: small bar of soap, toothbrush, small tube of toothpaste.My intake papers were in there too—demographic info, mug shot, finger prints. I folded them up and put them back in the Ziploc, then placed it by my head.

The white guy occupying the bunk next to me looked like an extra from Saturday Night Fever : a disco ball of wavy gray hair, sideburns, and a bushy horseshoe mustache. He just lay on his back, staring into somewhere else.

The guy in the bunk above me was my neighbor’s pudgy twin: black hair graying at temples, and a bigger, bushier horseshoe above his soup coolers. Why he chose a top bunk was beyond me, because he’d huff and fuss with each ascent and descent, “Ooowwwa!”

I opened Yellowstone Kelly but before I finished reading a paragraph, the lights went out. Most of the cellmates

14

NATE JORDON

climbed into their bunks, but two or three milled around and a few more kept talking. When there was some occasional silence, I’d begin to drift off into sleep.

Then:“CORTEZ! CORTEZ!”It was in a cartoonish pitch, and very fast. “CORTEZ! CORTEZ!”Muffled chuckles rolled through the cell. This continued throughout the nights. But that wasn’t

the only strange silence breaker. In the early morning hours someone crooned: “Freedom ain’t get no closer.” Whoever it was did it intermittently, day and night. Occasionally he’d change it up: “Freedom ain’t get no closer, this is the life I chose.” It began to wear on me.

When the next body count came around at three o’clock, there was no call to get out of the bunks. Then I felt a hand violently shake my shoulder.

“You Jordon?” It was a guard.“That you, Helen?”“Okay, go back to sleep.”My eyes closed for awhile, but I never made it.

Nate Jordon has a love/hate thing with words. He occasionally publishes those written by others. Occasionally he burns his own. He points to the moon.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brad McLelland’s bruisers is a wild, dark and humorous road novel that ignites the senses, burning like Oklaho-ma wildfire. Hop in the truck with Leo and Jeremy and take the ride of your life.

Fiction / $6.00Paperback: 76 pagesPublished: May 2011ISBN-10: 0-9826646-6-4

Like getting punched in the nose after drinking a six pack of PBR, Nicholas B. Morris’ fourteen stories in Tapeworm move from backwoods Arkansas to concrete jungles, churches to prison cells, from delusions to truth.

Fiction / $15.50Paperback: 126 pagesPublished: June 2010ISBN-10: 0-9826646-3-X

The Aftermath, etc. is a rare look at the broken man in his natural environment: a wasteland of pizza, porn, and beer. GITCH’s only escape is through the pen, and if it were not so, the fine art of handmade explosives.

Poetry / $15.00Paperback: 104 pagesPublished: May 2010ISBN-10: 0-9826646-2-1

other books from

MONKEY PUZZLE PRESS

THE WEIRDNESS BECAME OVERWHELMING.

“THE WEEKENDER is a tight fever dream drenched in dark cavity searches, Spam sandwiches, and the lonely movement of time. A modern day Beat com-bination of Rocky Balboa uppercuts and Kerouacian human perception, NATE JORDON’S writing fires off the page like a consecrated bar fight, splattering the walls with clock springs, a raw fortitude of language, and a fair amount of blood.”

ROB GEISENAuthor of BEAUTIFUL GRAVEYARDS and PAPER THIN

“In THE WEEKENDER, JORDON describes the greatest fear of all literarily-inclined small-time crooks: ending up inside the slammer with the pros. Fasci-nating characters and hilarious dialogue populate this story that manages to be both hilarious and sobering.”

NICHOLAS B. MORRIS Author of TAPEWORM

“NATE JORDON obliterates all decaying museums of stuporous thought and blasts us into a fugue state of thrombosis, both potent and life-altering.”

MEG TUITE Author of DOMESTIC APPARITION and DISPARATE PATHOS

M E M O I R - $5.00

M O N K E Y P U Z Z L E P R E S S . C O M

9 780985 170516

ISBN-13 9780985170516ISBN-10 098517051-4

50500

THEWEEKENDER

NATE JORDON