* * * *
Every prisoner stared at him. The fat man turned to scowl at him, fixating his great, bulging, horrible watery light-grey eyes deep into the cellmates’ face. For some time he tried to answer, but all the words failed. The fat man looked and looked at him, almost as if only then—at that silly, incongruous question—he had suddenly realized at last... that his son was really gone... gone forever... Forever.
His face contracted, became horribly distorted; then he snatched the hem of his shirt, lifting it over his face... and to the amazement of everyone, broke into harrowing, heartrending, uncontrollable sobs.
Author’s Note:
This short story presents readers with a brief snatch of conversation that illuminates each of the speakers and comments on issues with which they are concerned: prison, and the sons affected by the fathers remaining in prison. But, this is a very brief vignette, not only about prison, but about Men and Women, Parents and Children, Strangers we meet—and about the vast chasm which sometimes separates the things people feel from the words they say. The characters in this story stand out as distinct individuals, although not one of them has a name. The omission of names is as subtle as it is deliberate. The people in the story belong to no particular time or place. We know their names, they are our own.
Dear God, Please?
Please bring memories of joys I once knew:
Family and friends and things I would do.
Darkness and loneliness fill my cell
With pain and fear too great to yell.
I pray so sincere with head raised above;
Please God send me a letter of love!
I wait for the mailman to deliver to me,
As I wipe away tears that none will see.
I long to gaze upon pages so dear:
With riches to bring my loved one near;
Words like diamonds on pages of gold;
A message from Heaven as its story is told.
“I love you, I miss you, I pray you’ll be free.”
A treasure-filled envelope, just for me!
The darkness and pain of my cell do prevail,
As my name, again, was not called for mail!
Where Do I Belong?
“God grant, that not only the love of liberty, but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man, may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface, and say, ‘This is my country.’”
Benjamin Franklin to David Hartley, 4 December 1789
Is It Real?
Dear Mother;
You mentioned yesterday when I called that when you told your girlfriend about my case, she asked, “Is it real?”
Real…? What’s that? It’s all so entirely so unreal; everything that’s happened… I’ve considered everything carefully and contemplated each factual detail, in my dreams as well as every waking moment. In jail, locked up, what’s real? One thing only I do know: I’ve no idea what’s real. The sequence of events is not only absurd, it seems unreal!
But… every word I spoke is true!
It’s like a softball game between addicts and depressives in an insane asylum. The quality of play is erratic at best. The recovering addicts: depressed from lack of their chosen medications. The depressives: heavily dosed with exotic chemical bullets aimed at their elusive despair.
Myself: I’m clinically numb, and no idea as to the score. What’s real in this communal space looking out a 4 inch wide prison window at a separate free world? Sometimes, even I catch myself starting to believe again. I’ve not a clue what’s real!
But… I know every word is true!
I see bank robbers, murderers and rapists, sitting in the bleachers [cells] cheering. Waiting to discuss the bones coming back from medical, anxious to know, “Are they dead yet? Anxious to steal away their commissary stash.
It’s half time. The C.O.’s, the Sergeants, the Guards… the Latin Kings, 5 per-centers, Nietas, and Jamaicans all setting the next stage for plays of the game. The Sergeant sends the C.O.’s in with the game plan for the Latin Kings to make the shanks, regulate the bread, and food, and control all phone access. The Latinos won the territory.
The Blacks… where is their part? Is there any room for them today? The Whites, every one of them on Thorazine, are looking blankly at the empty field.
Wait... Some movement here! The Blacks are using brawn, good looks, and muscles—no brains—But… the food slips from their hands. It’s gonna be gone. The toughest guys, the biggest apes, confused and confounded, wonder where it went, wondering why the game ain’t over yet.
I still don’t know what’s real. If you’re confused by this, so am I.
But, tell your girlfriend... Every Word Is True!!
Does Freedom Exist?
“I know of no civilized country, indeed, in which freedom is less esteemed than it is in the United States: certainly there is none in which more persistent efforts are made to limit it and put it down.”
Author Unknown
My Homework Assignment
(From A Prison GED Class)
A federal prisoner on the inside with me was given a special cellwork assignment (homework) as part of a federal program requiring all prisoners without GED’s or high school degrees to participate in a high-school equivalency program.
Question 1–What is it that only you can do?
Question 2–What work do you want to do that will make your life better?
Question 3–What can you do to make the world a better place?
Since my prison friend was Mexican, an illiterate illegal alien, and barely spoke the English he’d learned inside, he requested the assistance of a fellow white criminal who possessed a greater degree of writing skill. He was quite proud of the final product I wrote for him which he said described his thoughts precisely. I believe that in a former life, he must have been a Republican. Upon turning in the essay answers I’d prepared, he received an A grade. Please find below the answers to the above three questions exactly as I wrote them for his paper which I neatly titled:
Be All You Can Be
The question, formally presented, concerns my future. Specifically, the question as to, “What can only I do?” This question presupposes that I will analyze my talents and that I possess a deep understanding of who I am.
I am a criminal. That’s all. Not a machinist/criminal, not a nuclear scientist/criminal; just a plain ordinary criminal. By definition, then, as a plain ordinary criminal, I must either be a psychopath or sociopath because everyone knows all criminals belong to either one classification or the other according to current psychological doctrine. Therefore, to be “criminally correct”, that “special task” that only I can perform must be selected from the realm of criminal psychopathy or criminal sociopathy. Yes. That’s it. I must commit a crime. And to make it an adequately deserving crime, it needs to be heinously wicked.
In fact, I will make a life of crime. What could be a better goal for a confirmed psychopathic or sociopathic criminal? This would be a good thing for me to accomplish—which answers a separate question not formally presented in this assignment regarding, “What do I wish to accomplish in order to make my life better?”
Now, most people would argue that only evil comes from crime; not any sort of good. They would wrongly persuade me that for my own sake I should not perform a wicked crime. But I ask, is it not wicked of me to put away that which stands between me and my goal? I thought we agreed that it is good to successfully accomplish my goal, and that accomplishment would make my life better and help improve my feelings of self-worth!
Since I wish to become really good, I will do my best to make my life one long crime. It only makes sense. Consider. The U.S. Army recruiters advertise, “Be all you can be” by killing as many Iraqis as possible. Therefore, it only makes sense for me to destroy anything or anyone who gets in the way of my goal, so that I might live. This is good because in this world none save the strongest can endure. Indeed, I’m aidi
ng the evolution of all mankind by eliminating its weak.
Those who are weak must perish; the earth and the fruits thereof are only for the strong. Which of course, leads to the inevitable third question: “What can I do to make the world a better place?” Ahhh. I now understand: for every tree that grows, a dozen must wither so the strong ones may take their properly deserved share.
Why should it not be the same with people if the world is to become a better place? Is not this reasoning valid for a good psychopathic or sociopathic criminal? Thus to perform one’s duty to make the world a better place, psychopathic and sociopathic criminals should best use their criminal talents running from place to place over the dead bodies of those who fail; yes, even to win the food he eats from the mouths of starving babies. Is this not good? Is this not the scheme of all things?
People also mistakenly believe that crime breeds evil. Therein these would-be do-gooders simply lack experience: for out of crime comes many good things. Conversely, out of good grows much evil. Examine these examples. First, the cruel rage of a tyrant may prove a blessing to thousands who come after him. Count Vlad IV’s (Dracula’s) stakes which lined the road with the impaled bodies of criminals and insane people, scared and drove off the Mongol and Turkish barbarian hoards who were intent on killing ALL the people instead of just the weakest criminals and insane. They did not want to go up against such a ruthless fighter leader that would kill his own people that way. This cruel act by Count Vlad set into motion the entire Ottoman Empire whereby Christianity prevailed throughout Europe over heathenism. Surely, Count Dracula was very good for having done this very evil thing.
Likewise, in a second example, the sweet heartedness of a Holy Man ends up producing a nation of slaves. Savonarola was just such a good priest who wanted to make Florence, Italy, a “City Of God”. His harsh measures were unpopular and the citizens did not object as Savonarola burned at the stake in the city square after King Charles of Spain made the people of Florence his subjects. From the good of a priest came much evil to the people.
People do this thing and that from the good or evil in their hearts. But they never know to what end, good or evil, their moral sense will bring. When a man strikes out, he is blind as to where his blows will fall; he cannot count the airy threads that weave the web of sweet and sour, man and woman, Heaven or Hell—all these things are necessary for balance, one to the other. Who knows the end to each? What righteous man can judge?
I maintain that “Fate” plays its hand; predestination twines up these things to bear the burden of its purpose. All things are gathered up in that great rope to which all things are needful. Therefore, it is not good for the would-be do-gooder to say that “This thing is evil” or that “This thing is good”; or that “dark” is hateful and “light” lovely; because to eyes other than his, the evil may be the good, and the darkness more beautiful than day. To be fair, everything is alike, everything is balance. Thus, since I am a criminal, I must strive to be the best criminal I can be. Who is to say that my crime is evil? Who can tell what good may come from my crimes?
I Want To Be Free
I’m in prison, I shouldn’t be;
Losing so much integrity,
I’m in here; you’re out there,
Do you really care
how it feels not to be free?
Not to be in the sun,
fresh air not blowing through my hair?
I want to be free, can’t you see?
Orange, orange everywhere.
Listen to them swear.
Noise, noise go away.
It’s too much to bear.
The heat wave, the stress,
How much does it all weigh?
Do you really care?
I lose a friend,
I make another.
Then we call each other brother.
Are you my friend?
Or are you my foe?
My brother, my brother,
let’s help each other.
Sometimes I really don’t know.
I lay on my bed,
A prayer racing through my head:
Dear God, please, set me free.
This just wasn’t meant to be!
I had it all, out there last fall.
Now, I just want to be free.
Can’t you see, God?
This is not my destiny!
Does Liberty Exist?
“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
Thomas Paine
Innocent With Impossible Bail
Dear Dad,
In regard to your statement “I can do little,” let me begin by welcoming your love, concern, and belief in me at this critical moment in my life. My very survival rests on your shoulders. I’m glad your shoulders are broad shoulders.
I’m counting on you to make it known that I’m innocent of all charges. I’m a small person, a recluse at that. I represent no danger to anyone. I’m counting on you to cause all people to know that I’m innocent and harmless in actions, thinking, and in personal philosophy.
I built a financial empire, lost it, and nearly built another just prior to my arrest. Now, 43 years old, it doesn’t matter anymore. I only want freedom, independence, sovereignty over my body, and the allowance to live in peace, free from government meddling and intervention.
Apply PRESSURE, and maintain its FORCE in order that this government may understand the great risk it runs in violating the Constitutional rights of persons like myself. For Constitutional rights are indeed violated when innocent people are held on impossible bail without speedy trial until by coercion those innocents give up and plead guilty. Americans cannot tolerate this disrespect. I… all Americans must protest our Constitution and never allow our government to trample, overrun, dominate and subjugate the American way of life.
Dad, therefore I must count on you, my great father, to help me survive. I hope, I dream, that this wish be granted.
Your Son,
The Man’s Story
The man emerged from prison Tuesday morning, filled with a pent-up rage he’d been keeping in check for 12 long and lonely years. He was thirty-six years old, and looked it. Pale, with a thin face, narrow slate-grey eyes, and a prominent scar slashed across his right cheek… a souvenir of his incarceration. He was five feet eight inches tall, and although once slight, in prison he’d had time to work on his body. Now he possessed muscles of steel and a remarkable upper body strength.
In prison ‘The Man’ had learned many things … the first being that defense was everything. If you couldn’t defend yourself, who would do it for you?
No one. That’s who.
Twelve years was a long time to be caged away from the real world. Twelve years was plenty long enough to drive a sane man crazy. Unless, of course, you were crazy to begin with. And you never let on, because the motherfuckers did not deserve to know the truth.
The truth was his business. Only his. And woe betide anyone who tried to get it from him.
Freedom was the unknown. It beckoned, tempting him to do things he’d only dreamed about doing during his years of isolation behind bars. First came the women. Faceless whores put on the earth to do his bidding. The Man used them mercilessly paying them more money than they deserved to do the things they couldn’t get enough of—because whether you paid them or not, all women were whores, his father had taught him that.
When his appetite was sated, he took out his list and studied it intently.
The Man’s list, written neatly on a single lined piece of paper, was the only positive thing in his life. Without his list, he couldn’t have gone on. He would have given up and hung himself, like his first cellmate. His list kept him strong; gave him real purpose. If those motherfuckers in the real world thought they’d seen the last of him they were wrong.
Very, very wrong.
The Man settled in because i
t was convenient. He summoned a locksmith and had heavy-duty locks put on his door. Nobody was to invade his privacy. Not even his family wanted him back; they’d made that quite clear. Did they really imagine they were rid of him forever? No way in hell. But for now it suited him. He had things to take care of before he dealt with his family. The Man had a list—a long list. And he knew exactly how he was going to dispose of everyone in it.
Retribution.
Revenge.
Kill the motherfuckers who had betrayed him. Every single one of them. Soon he would begin.
Three Deer
I saw three deer today. I stood exactly at this spot, then turned, just like this, and looked over there through that four inch window, one of two in my prison cell, at exactly this angle. I saw three deer—word is bond. I watched them feed for over two hours. My mind did wander and drift occasionally, remembering the events, which began ‘that dreadful night.’
“Tell us what we want to hear, or we’ll arrest you too,” said the police and the District Attorney to my wife. They repeated this threat over and over, to scare her and cause her to reveal any criminal activity on the part of myself, her husband.
My wife, not an innocent, you see, but was far from knowing, just like a child. Her mouth in gear, but her brain... not engaged, finally asked, “Just what is it you want to hear?”
“Anything... anything at all. Tell us, or we will arrest you as an accomplice,” they threatened, never informing her what she would be an accomplice to.
“I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t,” she wailed in stricken distress.
They looked at her in stone silence, and I perceived the beginning of a smile one could measure in millimeters.
The District Attorney, drawing her out, asked, “What do you mean?”
“I got nothing bad he done I know of, but if I don’t say something bad, I’m going to jail, that’s what you just told me!” She was mad, all cooperation totally gone as her rage increased. I was proud of her, but knew she would never hold up against the onslaught yet to come.
A few days later I was arrested; she received the free one-way ride to the police station. The police locked me in a cell near where they held my wife. I could hear every detail, and every sound of what then transpired that unforgettable night. Two male cops stripped her naked, supposedly to search her… except the search lasted over 45 minutes, and only ended when commanding officer arrived. Amazing! The search now over, my wife was released to find her own way home. I’ll not detail here the awful sounds of what I heard happen to my wife that night. I hear those sounds every night... every god damned night in my nightmares.
The next day, on the phone when I called home, my wife described how the police raped her. “Yes, I know dear, I heard every second. I want you to know I love you. I’m sorry sweetie. You handled it well. I love you…,” knowing no words I could say from my jail cell will ever help her, or remove the pain. She described how on arriving home, she took bath after bath and showers all night. She felt so dirty, and just could not wash the dirt off.
Raped.
Days later, she turned State’s evidence. I ain’t mad atcha—she was scared of going back to jail… back to rape. She had chased away friends who could have helped her; her mind couldn’t comprehend what was happening. I’d committed no crimes, and done nothing wrong, thus forcing her to make up whatever she believed they wanted to hear—not one bit even close to the truth. She felt bad; I could hear it in her voice over the phone. When asked why she had not told her story sooner, she replied, “I was afraid,” not knowing what else to answer. The District Attorney pounced, then led her on, asking if I ever hit her or threatened her. Now trapped, she untruthfully said, “Yes.”
First they did her body; now they did her mind...
Raped twice.
My wife’s attorney, who I had carefully selected and paid to represent her, believed her story of my supposed threats and abuse. He rushed her to court, filing motions and restraining orders, citing the terrible abuses my wife now alleged, but which never occurred. With no civil attorney to represent me, and rather than jeopardize losing my criminal case, I said nothing in my own defense, just as my criminal attorney had advised me.
On the witness stand, her story grew much longer and greatly detailed. She believed the story was necessary for her own defense as well as important to retrieving our son, now placed in foster care. The Judge, in ruling, said, “She is a classic case of abuse,” and granted her attorney’s request for the restraining order. A deep sob filled the courtroom; then my wife burst into heart-wrenching tears. She had just realized her husband was now gone forever; her child, gone too; that she had no way to even pay for food, and no education to get a job. Her attorney, thinking the tears came from relief that the abuse was now over, put his arm around her to comfort her; while I, in handcuffs and chains, could only seethe, knowing the abuse was only just beginning. I knew the real truth, first her body, then her mind, now her spirit.
Raped thrice.
Her face became to this very day, a shocking face, with a composition of light and shadow. Her face had hardened into a venomous mask, rigid and taut, ready to crack… but not from grief—from hatred.
I saw three deer today... right out there!
Jury Duty
“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.”
James Bovard
Doin’ Time?
“Daddy, when did time begin?” I asked nearly forty years ago. My adolescent eyes, not innocent, but far from knowing, inquired of my father.
“Just a little more time, ok?” I’ve spent the last thirty years asking, my eyes greedy, inquiring of everyone, in the knowledge that time is money.
“Oh, God, please…When does time end?” I ask now, my mature eyes, now knowing, filled with tears, inquire of nobody… of everybody, while waiting in jail the last year with no trial date set for a crime I never committed.
Time... My cellmate says, “Yo man, ya gots to knock it down to da scientific, since yo da communicatin’ man with all da big words.”
Our forefathers understood time. My Daddy raised me with the Puritan work ethics of time. That’s why his great granddaddy fought for and gave us the Constitution of the United States, lest we forget in time. That’s why the Constitution enumerates the right to a speedy trial.
Let’s talk about time for trial, but first, as my cellmate again says, “Let me handle some business and we’ll resume positions.” I know. Attorneys call it, ‘housekeeping’. My daddy says, “let’s digress a bit first.” I like his words best.
To my untrained mind, there are four ways the courts look at any Constitutional issue.
1.The First: Certain issues enumerated specifically and diversely, like the right to an attorney.
2.The Second: Issues handled by “emanations and penumbras” led to the birth control laws and abortion laws today. AKA: what mood is the judge in today?
3.The Third: Literal Construction and demand for specific performance.
4.The Fourth: Liberally constructed on Framers intent.
Now in regard to time for trial, let’s “resume positions…” or “progress forward”, as my daddy prefers.
Time. Just to get out, people lost in hope confess to crimes never committed. “In cases involving involuntary confessions, the courts feel that important human values are sacrificed in order to secure a conviction against the will of the accused. Blackburn v. Alabama.
Constitutional provisions for the security of person and property should be liberally construed. Further, note a literal construction leads to a gradual depreciation of all rights.
The constitution requires that every effort be made to see that a defendant in a criminal case has not lost the basic protections the framers thought indispensable to fair trials. The rights guaranteed to a criminal defendant give him the greatest possible opportunity to utilize every facet of the constitutional model for a fair crimina
l trial. Further, that any trial conducted in degradation of that model leaves open the possibility of an unfair trial precisely because all the protections specified in the Constitution were not provided.
Alas… My head dropped to my chest to disguise my sob as I heard my attorney tell the judge, “We wave time”.
Two Words
Dear Mom,
There’s this guy. Black—that’s his name... heart too. Three hundred pounds, six feet three inches of solid muscle makes him the biggest, darkest, and meanest black man I ever met. Black is one evil dude. I met Black my first night in this pod. He tried to shake me down for my commissary food package. Anticipating my careful hoarding of food, he wanted to know what remained of my stash.
Food equals money in jail. A tray of jail food equals one can of soup. Three soups at a buck each (33 cents to those on the outside) purchases one Rolly, or cigarette tobacco which is then rolled up in pieces of toilet paper used as cigarette wrapping paper. The term “Rolly” is derived from the concept of ‘rolling your own cigarette.’ The tobacco in a Rolly comes from a piece of a real cigarette—after it is cut into four quarters. A prison guard smuggling a carton of cigarettes into jail easily supplements his income by two hundred dollars at a clip. Food becomes the basic building block for money here. That’s what interested Black in my food stash.
Moving rapidly toward my cell door, Black demanded, “Lemme see what you got!”
I leaped right to the front of my door, blocking his entrance. That’s right, me… with the skinniest body, the knobbiest knees—shaking of course—you ever saw. Looking him square in the eye with a totally fearless voice, (I’ll never where it came from) I replied, “Don’t you go in there. My bunkie is sleeping.”
“Well, what you got left?” he demanded.
“Crackers,” I calmly answered, not at all sure why my fear unreasonably just vanished.
“Lemme have them,” he ordered, as he bumped against me making another bold move to enter my door.
I answered promptly, “Sure, I’ll get them for you. What you got for trade?”
Black stomped off muttering and quietly swearing, looking carefully around to make sure none of his friends saw his failure to intimidate the scrawny white guy. I’d known that if he’d won that round, I’d have never been safe again.
We never spoke since that day—until several months later, when one day, I exited the shower room, a towel wrapped around me for cover, wearing nothing else but a pair of sandals. In the center of the pod, and 48 guys, I hit a water spot on the floor. I went down, and my towel went up. Black laughed loudest of course; then turned and asked with genuine concern, “You alright?”
Those two words meant so much, for in prison there is never a kind word spoken. Good lookin’ out, Bro. Prison’s not toughened me, but it’s sure been an education. Today, Black came to my cell. He wanted to know how the stock market works. I described to Black how selling drugs and selling hog futures is exactly the same thing. And I showed him how he could make more money as a dealer—ah, stockbroker, that is, by betting both sides of the game and hedging against losses.
Survival
“No man survives when freedom fails, the best men rot in filthy jails, And those who cry ‘appease, appease’ Are hanged by those they tried to please.”
Hiram Mann
Waiting For The Word
God stopped talking to people, by my reckoning, between twenty-two and twenty-five hundred years ago, during the heyday of the Hebrew prophets. Human kind, though they could not have known it at the time, would embark on a new phase.
Herein lies the difference between men and angels: Angels know everything and can do nothing about it; men know nothing and can do whatever they want. Absolute certainty about anything is anathema to the human condition; free will is unknown to the angelic. But I digress.
Jeremiah was one of the last prophets of whom we know who actually had conversations—arguments, sometimes—with God. The first one came when Jeremiah was just twenty-one years old. Jeremiah tried to convince God that he was too young and callow for the burden of prophecy. And God said that He had known Jeremiah since before he was a glimmer in his parents’ eyes, that God had grown and fashioned Jeremiah to this mission the way an artist fits a shape to its landscape. I do not know of an instance when Jeremiah won an argument with God, but I suspect that the experience of verbal combat with His creations was one that the Deity did not relish. The prospect of losing the debate—especially given God’s plans, at the time, for the human race—loomed.
Maybe He does talk to us once in a while. People say they hear from him, and we dismiss them as deluded or we ascribe ill intentions to them for saying so. Maybe on a rare occasion He does say something here and there, but because of the rarity we cannot be sure, even if He does, and perhaps that is the point.
If we knew for a certainty that God was looking down over our shoulder, how could we be other than perfect? How could we make decisions, moment to moment, on grounds other than that they were right to make? How could we decide to be good if such a decision were foregone? And how would we know whether we were doing good for the Light within us or out of respect and fear for the Light peering over our shoulder? How could we grow?
We would all be doomed to be angels.
If God were to come down and say, in that stentorian voice of my imagination, “Phaedrus T. Wolfe!” I think that alone would make my day. Even if He had no more to say than that, I would be delighted. Even if He said it in a squeaky off-key voice. In a crackling adolescent voice. I could go with that for a while. I still would be unsure, even self-doubting, the way I was when my mother’s “visions” first began to assault my sensibilities. But if God were to talk to me, and I could know it was Him, I would willingly, happily go made for the remainder of my days and wish them to be long.
Meanwhile, I must content myself with our ongoing one-way conversation: