A Prodigal Returns
The continuing story of a wayward son finding his way home again.....
11:30
It’s Monday, the 22nd of October, 2007. The face of the watch reports that it is 11:30, but I don’t need to glance at the watch to know that, for the routine is ongoing – just as it has been for the last five years. It’s just another count time. In cell with Tommy wondering about tomorrow.
Surrounded by others. Alone in my thoughts.
Worried. Apprehensive. Anxious. Afraid.
Even though I have an idea of how tomorrow will go, I don't think I'll be sure they're going to let me go until I'm off the property. I'm not even thinking about the first 23 yet - well, that's not entirely true - but there are more immediate concerns.
Like getting through this day with my sanity intact. So long awaited and longed for and now I’m a bundle of nerves with a racing mind and heart. Most of my stuff is packed in plastic garbage bags – some of it has been that way for months now in anticipation of this time. A lot of things have been given away to friends who will remain here for a while longer – I certainly know how they feel, for many have left me behind as they have made their own transition and walked through the fence to the freedom waiting on the other side.
But it’s the getting to that point tomorrow that now consumes my thoughts. Nothing else matters. Not the locked door in front of me. Not the routine. Not the borderline insanity of the staff and inmates alike. Not the poor food or the rain or the job or the lack of plans or lack of a place to live or the lack of transportation. None of that matters right now. Just get me to 10:30 tomorrow morning.
Everything else will follow in time.
Count cleared on time – around quarter to twelve – and, as usual for a weekday, I have already eaten the poor excuse for cuisine and am back at work. Actually the chicken and dumplings the food service serves on every fourth Monday is not that bad of a dish by prison standards. Served with cornbread and a couple of glasses of cold milk, it is a meal I relish and even look forward to since the normal, everyday fare in so substandard.
But even as I ate that meal today, my mind was not really on the food as much as the knowledge that it would be the last meal I would ever eat in this place. The last tray of either undercooked or burned food; the last line I would wait in for food in quite a while - sorry Morrison’s and Piccadilly, I will eat where I can be waited upon by a paid employee, in the home of family or friends, or absolutely alone in wherever I happen to be living; the last meal wondering if I’m sitting in the seat to which someone else has secretly laid claim and who may suddenly appear and decide to make an issue of the matter.
The last time. Still a bit difficult to wrap my poor little befuddled brain around that one.
Movement stops. It happens every day around this time and serves to keep us off the yard - from moving around at all really - during shift change. (Remember what Paul Harvey said about showing up at a prison around shift change? We'll just let that one lay where it is for now.)
Anyway, some days I remain at work through this time, not that there is ever any work to do, but it keeps me out of the pod for another few minutes, but today I returned to the unit before movement stopped so I could retreat to the relative quietness of my cell and think of what is waiting tomorrow.
Everything I can think of has been done in preparation of the grand exodus. Everyone has been contacted and all is arranged. Andy and my boys will be here in the morning. A change of clothes will be available to get me out of these State-issued things as quickly as possible. A little cash will be in an envelope with my Drivers' License. Everything else will have to wait.
Right now I just lay here in this little cell, listen to the commotion on the other side of the door and think about the life that awaits.
I’m in the cell and I’m thinking about tomorrow – about leaving this place…..finally. And as I think about walking through that gate into freedom, my mind turns to the many times I have been the one left behind as friends have made this transition.
Rob Taylor left in April of 2004. The big galoot, weight-lifter, the maker-upper of words like flink (to replace flinch and jerk) and fringe (used as the combination of cringe and fear). The one of our group most plagued with Attention Deficit Disorder, but good as gold and willing to do whatever he could to help a friend.
Billy Melton followed Rob through the gate a month later. If you read “A Life of Deception” through, you will be introduced to Billy more properly and completely, but he has been there for me during these years and, even as I write this, he is still helping and encouraging me.
Michael Stacy left. Brad Carter left. Anthony Jackson left. Big Whitsey left. Dirty left. So many have left and I’ve had to stay.
And now it’s my turn and I think about those who will remain after I leave tomorrow.
Chris Ebbs will stay for a while. He’s a good friend and one of the very best guitarists I’ve ever met. I know how he feels.
Wes Davis was my cellmate for nine months and has become a real friend and encourager, even as he remains. Another twenty-four months and he’ll follow me, but for now he stays. I know how he feels.
Lane Locke moved into my cell after Wes was transferred to Northeast. He was only there for three months before his custody level improved and he was able to move to a minimum security complex, but his friendship remains and though he is saddled with a life sentence, I pray for him that the Parole Board will allow him to leave the prison in another few years.
Charles Van Tilberg. Mouse. Larry Chamberlain and Andre “Big-Head” Anthony. They all remain and I feel for them.
And so another hour passes and the moment I’ve been waiting for is that much closer.
As has been the case for the past 1948 days, at precisely 1530, the door to the cell is slammed shut and once again we’re caged up so we can be counted. What was a humiliating and depressing event five years ago is now just overlooked as one more thing with which to deal. Funny what you can get used to.
And since this is my last afternoon count time, I guess it’s only natural to reflect back to that first day. Alone in that freezing cell in the damp basement of the Shelby County jail, confused, in shock from the events of the day, the past but a memory, the present a haze and the future uncertain.
My only clothes were those I was wearing. No sheets. No blanket. No pillow. No toothbrush. No hot water. Cold sandwiches on stale bread and lukewarm fruit drink. Awakened every hour for count and bed check.
It was a long night.
Now that is only a memory, the long ago beginning of what is now finally ending – but the first step in a long journey that is now winding down. Thank God. I'm weary.
So I sit here on my bunk with most of my worldly belongings around me in plastic bags and try to focus on a book to take me through the next few minutes. But focusing is impossible – there’s too much to think about; too many possibilities and issues, all of which will hit me square in the face within the next few hours.
Maybe I should just pray…….
Count time – the last four o’clock count. That feels strange to write. That tomorrow at this time I will be somewhere else, with someone else, away from here, doesn’t seem real yet.
I’m still on the bunk for there’s nowhere else to go – no other options. The TV news is on but I can’t focus on it. Mentally I’m trying to rush through the stages – the predictable and endless cycle of stages – that still stand in the way of my departure. It’s repeated itself so many times that it’s all not even in the memory anymore. It’s just a habit. When the door slammed at 1530, the timer in my head started and, without checking the watch, I know it’s about time for count to clear. I’ll hear the alert tone sound over the officer’s radio – will that sound ever leave me? – and then he’ll open the doors.
The mental alarm is screaming at me and it occurs to me that the significance of this day may be interfering with the accuracy of it. But, according to my watch, it’s dead on. Count is late clearing – the geniuses are at work again. The standing joke is that count time only ends on time if the officers’ boot laces are not so tight to prevent them from having access to their toes.
Whatever the problem, I wish they’d hurry up. There are still several stages awaiting before I can lay down and try to go to sleep, and this count thing is holding me up.
I’m ready to get started!
Count finally cleared at ten minutes to five and, while most of the men in the pod are running to the chow hall for the evening swill, I am making a bee line for the showers, thanking God with every step that this will be the very last time I will have to do this here.
For the uninitiated, a housing unit contains two separate and distinct pods. Each pod is self contained and is composed of sixty-four 2-man cells, eight shower stalls – one of which is supposed to be reserved for the handicapped, 7 telephones, one ice machine, one microwave, and 128 men, most of whom apparently had no training at home on any subject.
The showers, the topic at hand for this hour’s segment, are each about thirty inches wide and five feet long. At varying heights on a side wall, situated almost as far as you can get from the door, is a shower head. The heads are not adjustable and have been wound down so tightly that you literally have to move around to get your entire body wet. And, since the spray is so fine, if the water temperature is not approaching the scald point, by the time the droplets get to you they have cooled to the point of being frigid. (There’s a way around that involving the top of a shampoo bottle with the neck adjusted to fit the head – this narrows the stream of water so you can actually get clean in there.)
Some stalls are better than others – lower heads and less mist – so the demand for those is huge. Consequently, on this night – this last night here – I am skipping dinner (a usual practice) to snag one of the good stalls. With shower shoes donned (I’m ready to lose those things for good), a well-engineered shower spray reducer and my shampoo and soap in hand, I make my way across the pod, through the stream of dinner-bound men, and suffer through the last one of these.
18:30
O, the joys of being able to cook for myself again.
Cooking is something I’ve always enjoyed. Working in the kitchen, even if it is not the best equipped kitchen in the world, is a pleasure I have sorely missed over the past few years. And, back when I was able to cook whenever I wanted, I took it for granted just like so many others things from the past.
The condition and quality – not to mention the quantity – of the food served inside the fence has already been described. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that, in order to supplement my diet and not starve to death, I regularly purchase items from the small commissary list provided by the prison and cook in the cell.
And it’s an adventure. Dicing a summer sausage with a spork is fun. Thinking up new combinations using chili pouches, the aforementioned summer sausages, tuna, Ramen noodle soups, salsa and burrito wraps is a challenge. Finding a bowl that would fit down inside my hot pot so the mixture could simmer was almost impossible.
But if prison does anything for you, it teaches you to improvise, be resourceful, and to use the items at hand for purposes surely never intended by their manufacturers. Adapt and overcome may well be part of the Marine motto but it applies equally to the prison inmate. Survival demands it.
So, as the last day of my prison life winds down, I break out my spork and a summer sausage and begin the process of making my last meal here.
Thanks be to God!
Still an hour until lockdown and I’m hiding in my cell. Not that I am necessarily afraid of what or who is on the other side of the door, but I just don’t want to deal with the questions, false well-wishes and barely veiled jealousy of those who would visit.
There are a few I want to see for the last time. There are a few to whom I will (and have) pass on the personal belongings I have decided not to take with me from this place. There are a few that I will miss, think and worry about, and pray for after I’m gone. But, by and large, there is no one I want to see or listen to or deal with so I’m locked in my cell a full hour before I have to be.
Thank the Lord that this is the last night.
20:30
Here we go again. Same routine repeated all through the day. The call gets shouted that it’s lock down time. Failing to plan ahead – not a big priority here – the mad rush to get to the ice machine, score one last cigarette, bum a soup or a chili or a popcorn from a neighbor, and finish up the phone call causes the normal pandemonium of the day to seem like the calm of the tomb.
Finally, all last-minute errands having been completed, everyone scurries for the cell doors – to be caught outside the cell after the officer makes his door-slamming rounds is not a wise move. Doors clang shut. Another night of hyper-confinement begins.
Cellmates move around the cell, chronically in each other’s way in the tight space. Personal matters concluded, lights turned off, and televisions are turned on, headphones donned and each one enters the relative - and blessed – silence of his own thoughts.
But tonight mine are not silent. They’re roaring. Sleep’s going to be tough tonight.
21:30
The fare on Monday night television is a yawner. Or perhaps I’m just not able to focus on it – my cellmate seems enthralled by something he’s watching. For whatever the reason – distraction or poor writing and show selection – it’s high time I just give in and try to pass this night like all the others – asleep.
It’s a schedule that has worked for me for these years. Early to bed – well, to sleep; since there is nowhere else to sit in this cell, most of my time in here is spent in bed – and early to rise. The fan I have mounted right over my head effectively drowns out the residual noise from the neighbors, the pod and the cellmate so sleep has rarely been a problem during these many nights in this unnatural situation. Sleep generally comes shortly after I decide to yield to it and that is usually around this time of night. Why change the routine tonight just because it’s the last night, right?
Early to rise for that is about the only time of the day that I can even begin to focus on the reading of the Word of God and prayer. Those quiet moments at the beginning of the day, before the commotion of the day gets wound up, set the tone for the day and, I firmly believe, is the reason I have not completely lost my sanity during this sentence.
So, for the very last time ever, I turn my TV off, switch off the reading light, intiate the noise masking device and roll over toward the wall. All the time knowing that sleep would be an impossibility tonight. Too much on my mind. Too much to anticipate. Too many unknowns and uncertainties to think about.
I’ll see you in an hour.
October 23, 2007 OK, so I didn’t see you at 2230. I really didn’t expect sleep to come but it did and I have no memory of the night. The hours passed unnoticed and without incident. I don’t even remember hearing the jingling keys of the third shift officer as he made his rounds. Amazing!
05:30
And now, awake in these early morning hours - the best time of the day in prison – the cell and the pod are still silent as a tomb. Most are sleeping. No one’s running their mouth. It’s my time with God in the stillness of the day. Why should today be any different than all the others that went before? In fact, of all the days spent in this place, this is the one day that thanksgiving is the most appropriate, from my perspective anyway.
Just a few more hours……….
06:30 Devotions are done. The pod is waking up. Next door, clearly audible through the heating vent, there is another discussion about who stole who’s soup – fifteen cents is almost an hour’s pay for some. The alert tones on the guard’s radio is hitting more frequently as the compound wakes up and the radio traffic picks up.
Outside the rain from the previous evening continues to pour and the weather prognosticators are predicting its continuation throughout the day. Overall, it promises to be a nasty day for most of the Mid-South.
Inside my cell, things are still relatively quiet. I’m up and dressed. Last minute packing is done. My cellmate is still asleep and won’t wake up until the doors open and I leave for breakfast.
So here I sit, on my bunk waiting for someone else to tell me it’s time to start the day. I wonder what it will be like when I am able to begin the day when I’m ready? When I can open my own door and eat breakfast when I choose? When I have to actually decide what clothes to wear?
I’m ready to find out. I’m ready for the doors to open and the day to move along.
07:30
The packing is complete and the goodbyes have all been said….several times. I’m ready to go.
I just couldn’t bear the thought of another breakfast in this place. No more imitation eggs. No more brick-hard biscuits. No more nasty tables and rude, vulgar tablemates. No more. So I ate a pouch of instant oatmeal in the cell as the rest of this microcosmic world rushed off to chow.
A few more minutes of peace in the pod as I try to prepare myself mentally for what awaits just outside the perimeter fence. Just a little over three more hours and I see the boys and my brother and say goodbye to this hellhole.
08:30
It should be just any minute now.
I’ve been thinking about and planning for this day for months. And the call for me to leave this pod and move to the Intake Building for processing out of here should come just any time now.
Or so I’ve heard.
I don’t understand it – how it could possibly happen is just beyond me. But the fact remains that there are men in this prison who have been here, served their time, dealt with all that a prison sentence involves, either been paroled or finished their sentences and released as I will be shortly. And, even after all that hell and stress and loss of time and freedom, they end up doing something – usually something that is completely ridiculous and stupid – that lands them back in here. Failing to report to their parole officer, indulging in controlled substances knowing urinalysis is imminent, driving under the influence, leaving the state without permission are just some of the evidences of the brain-damage that is so prevalent here.
But, regardless of why they are back here, the fact remains that they are here and I have resourced them and picked their brains about what I could expect from this day. Almost to a man, they have all said that the call to move to the processing building comes around 8:30, with the actual possibility of leaving the facility usually occurring prior to the 11:00 count.
And since the clock has finally seen fit to make its way around to that magic hour, the nerves are really raw now. And the minutes are c r a w l I n g .09:30
It’s pouring rain outside. I can hear it on the roof of the unit. As I stand on the upper tier, propped up against the rail, talking to a couple of my friends, my only thought is, “Why haven’t they called me?”
Friends……..there have been a few and I hate to leave them. But leave them I will. Their time will come as mine has. They will face the same uncertainty and deal with the same anxiety that I am now experiencing. Hate to leave them here, but I gotta go. Why haven’t they called me yet?”
I’d like to get out of the unit for a while if only to get away from the constant reminder that I’M STILL HERE, but it’s pouring rain out there and I would really prefer not to get completely soaked.
Did I mention that it’s raining?
Did I mention that they haven’t called me yet?
OK, fine. The old saying goes that a watched pot never boils so maybe – just maybe – if I walk over to where I’ve been earning my forty-two cents an hour for the past ten months and just move a little and talk to someone other than these guys who are secretly hating me for getting to leave this place……maybe time will pass faster or the cameras will let the staff at intake know that I’m now wet and out of the unit and now would be the most trouble for me. Maybe then the pot will boil and the call will come.
Just maybe……………….. I’ll let you know in a bit.10:30
So it’s now 10:30 and that signals yet another count time in this place. I was supposed to be at Intake by now taking the last steps prior to release. Instead, I am sitting on this prison mat as the door slams yet again. I am beginning to wonder if this nightmare is ever going to end…….
Ok. You've all been very patient with me as I've slow-walked you through these 23 hours. I guess I'll wrap it up.
I mean, the suspense isn't really there, is it? I did in fact get out for, if you’ve read these, you've surely read some of the other entries, both here and on the associated blog, so the over arching question as already been answered.
But the how of the whole thing is more than worth a quick wrap up for - all these months later - I'm still amazed at the ordeal it is to get out of a prison after you've done your time.
So here goes........
After the 11 o'clock count cleared - around 11:45 - I succumbed to the pressure of a couple of my friends and, finally fully subscribing to the theory that the pot watched isn't quick to boil, walked over to the other building where the rest of my co-workers were gathered and tried to visit with them to ease the stress of the “ifs” and “whens”. Drenched to the skin for the rain had only intensified during count, I paced a different floor for a very long 45 minutes before the call finally came that I should gather my things and proceed to the Intake Building.
Back across the compound - in the rain again - I returned to the housing unit, secured a buggy, loaded three incredibly heavy plastic garbage bags containing all my earthly possessions (remember this for the number and weight of these bags will be mentioned again), and started across the very damp compound again, but for the last time.
The time is now 12:50PM.
We, the four others being released and I, arrive at the Intake building and are stuffed into a holding cell and locked up. Surely, we all think, this will be a short and painless process. After all, we’ve done our time and are theoretically free already. We are sitting twenty-five yards from freedom but it might as well be a thousand miles. You see, a new group of men – called a “chain” – has arrived from a county jail and, in the infinite wisdom you only experience fully when you find yourself at the mercy of a State agency, the new guys are processed in before anyone’s attention is focused on those of us trying to leave.
So we sit. For over an hour, we sit. Five of us, all ready to go, all soaking wet, all with family and/or friends waiting in the adjacent building, sit in a forty square foot cell waiting for ….. well, we’re not quite sure.
Finally it’s our turn. At 2:15, the door is opened and we are called out one by one to process out – in return for one signature we all receive a pair of navy blue sweat pants and a white t-shirt. (Did I mention that it’s 45 degrees and pouring rain?)
At 2:35, we traipse outside, carrying our belonging (me with three huge bags), and stand, in the rain, for ten minutes while someone tries to figure out if they are allowed to open a gate.
Then, to add insult to the injury of being delayed, cold, wet and frustrated, rather than allowing us to walk over to the building – the building we can almost touch with an outstretched arm – to our families and our freedom , we are loaded into the back of a pickup truck (did I mention it is raining?) and driven, at speeds in excess of 40 miles per hour (I was watching the speedometer through the back window) for two miles around the perimeter of the prison (do you understand that it is raining buckets?) to the Administration Building.
Now, I’ll slow things down for this is a momentous few minutes.
As I enter the building my glasses, streaming with water, instantly fog and blind me. Taking them off is not an option for I’m virtually sightless without them. Drying them off is an impossibility for there is nothing on my person less wet than the eyewear.
I stumble into the building, following the shape of the guy in front of me, and ease my way through the rope maze to the information desk where my identification is verified once more. Once I have satisfied the State – again – that it’s really me and that I really am supposed to leave today, I turn toward the entrance and see the most beautiful sight of my life – my three sons, grown and impressively so, standing with my brother by the door. Suddenly my face is wet again, not from the rain this time, but from tears of joy and relief and pride and anticipation and thankfulness.
We hug. We cry. We generally make fools of ourselves standing there. And not one of us cares. We’re together again and that’s all that matters.
As the tears slow and are replaced by big grins – as the urge to hold onto each other subsides a little – we turn and walk to the door and begin our first day together………………………
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