Doing Time (13 page)

“I lost my mother last year,” he said quietly. “This stuff's the worst, but what're you going to do, right? Get up, go to work, do your time. It gets easier someday.”

“I'm sorry about your mom,” I offered weakly, looking at him for the first time in miles. I stared at the back of his head the rest of the way into Augusta, watching the roll of fat at the base of his skull, pinched by the threadbare collar of his jacket, and waiting for him to speak.

Like every other city in Maine, Augusta bounds from the urban to the suburbs to the sticks in seconds. The broad wedge of St. Andrew's — the Roman Church meets seventies architecture — is shoved into the spine of a knoll wreathed in the conifers and hemlock walling out the erratically spaced lots and sagging roofs from the proper monotony of homes with identical floorplans and freshly mowed lawns.

I watched the church growing from its hill, remembering the masses I attended with Nana and how we'd go out for ice cream afterward. I scanned the faces of the mourners moving solemnly up the narrow asphalt path toward the rectory, recognizing none of them. Dumpy white-haired ladies in orthopedic shoes and old men in hom-burg hats despite July like a blast furnace. These were Nana's friends, I reckoned, pinochle players and retirement community denizens, all the faces who gathered for twice-weekly High Mass and for all the funerals as their members slowly fell away.

In the lee of the hill, in the broad oval of the parking lot behind St. Andrew's, Strazinski hid the Impala in among the hulking Buicks and salt-rusted Toyotas.

“So this is it?” he asked, and craned his neck to study the shingled cliff of St. Andrew's south wall.

“Funny-looking church,” he said, glancing back at me when 1 didn't comment. “I guess I'm just used to them big stone Franco churches they got around here.”

“I think that's why I liked this place when I was a kid,” I told him when he opened my door and the heat hit me like a wall. “It wasn't like everywhere else.”

At the base of the wall, ignoring the mourners drifting past them from the parking lot and hiding from the padre, two altarboys in black cassocks and white bibs pecked at a forbidden cigarette as if the filter burned their lips. I tucked my wrists in closer to my waist and pinched the tails of my jacket in with my arms, hiding what I could of the chain. Straz stood off away from me, his hands parked on the roll where his hips should be.

“We going?” I asked.

“Give me your hands,” he said presently, decisively, as he fished in his pocket for his keyring.

I flushed, exultant and trying not to show it, and shoved my wrists as far toward him as they would go, six inches from my waist.

“You shouldn't have to be going in there like this,” he said as the cuffs popped free and he turned his attention to the padlock on the belly chain. The hot summer air chilled my wrists where the steel had been.

“I appreciate it,” I mumbled as the chain fell away from my waist and Straz bundled it into the back of the car, leaving me standing there unfettered in my borrowed suit, like anyone else in the parking lot. For the first time in eight years I was on the right side of the walls of Thomaston and looking like a free man. Nana would have loved it.

“If you really appreciate it,” Straz said, looking me in the eye, “you'll remember one thing: This never happened. If Kruller catches wind of this, then it's my butt that's hanging out. Still, no one should have to bury their grandmother chained up like that. Got it?”

“I got it. And, look, whether you believe it or not, it'll sure mean a lot to my family not seeing me like that… and maybe it means a lot to me, too, you know? Thanks.”

His fleshy brow crinkled, not knowing how to take being spoken to like that.

“Yeah, well,” he said, opening his jacket to show me the gleaming butt of his .38 in its cross-draw holster. “Just you remember that it's too friggin' hot for me to be running after you.”

“I love you too, Straz.” I grinned, stepping off for the path ahead of him.

Nana's casket was white and shone like ivory on its gurney before the altar. The priest had not yet made his entrance. There had to be a hundred people in there, massed in a semicircle around the coffin, lined up in the pews with their heads bowed. I could hear only the whispers of pages as the organist, hunched at her bench and hidden beneath her hat's broad brim, flipped through her hymnal, biding her time. Strazinski dipped his fingers in the holy water at the door and crossed himself.

“What?” he whispered, catching me watching him. “You figure I got to be French to be a Catholic? Hell, even the friggin' Pope's Polish.” Then his hand was on my shoulder. “Go on and sit with your folks. I'll be back here by the door. Don't get lost now.”

Taking a seat by himself, he left me standing in the aisle at the back of the church, scanning those gathered for a place to sit. My family was assembled in the pews immediately in front of Nana. My father, grayer and more railish than he'd been when I saw him last Christmas, was the first to notice me. The wrinkles of his crow's-feet pinched, his eyes hardening as he whispered in my mother's ear. Her shoulders trembled and sagged. I could just hear her sobs from where I stood in the rear. I watched the news of my presence ripple from them and through the pews with quick curt glances and feverish whispers. My sister leaned more deeply against the husband I'd not yet met, the crown of her head in the ginger of his beard as he sized me up from over his shoulder.

Through the ride up from Thomaston, bouncing around in the back of the prison's Impala, I'd steeled myself up to march right in, ignoring my chains, and impose myself on them because that's what Nana would have wanted. I barely acknowledged them before I turned from them and slipped into the pew beside Strazinski, knowing she'd understand. He tensed awkwardly as I sat, then nodded sympathetically. I watched his vast bulk relax from the corner of my eye. He shook his head and watched the altar, waiting on the organist and “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.”

1998, Maine State Prison Thomaston, Maine

Dixon said he'd lost his pump already, curling his arms profoundly, scrutinizing the bulge of biceps. Big snowflakes fused to the burrs of his green knit hat and melted over his warm sweatshirts.

I let the heavy lid slap closed over the weight box and sighed at having made it through another cold routine. The winter workouts were becoming lethargic in the blinding spotlight beams of the prison yard. I inhaled and the air crystallized and tickled my moist nostril hairs.

“It's these cheap weights,” Dixon said, squeezing out one last curl.

He was right. It was the futile equipment, the warped barbells and spurred cables and rusty plates. It was the wicked weather and the absence of motivation. Ultimately it was the monotony of prison ambience: the razor-wire fences, the dirt and concrete ground, the Great Wall stacked with gun towers resembling tiny huts lit with big round spotlights. It was a battle with confinement and fatigue.

A flock of pigeons perched on the Great Wall and the gun towers' shingled peaks. There was an instant ripple of feathers as they abruptly flapped away toward the black sky. It reminded me of when I used to go hunting with my father before my incarceration, when our presence in the woods was momentarily powerful and our prey sensed it fearfully.

I noticed other inmates closing up their weight courts and weaving through the maze of bulky weight boxes and machinery to get to the main yard. The routine was over and it was time to go.

I slipped into my state coat but left it unzipped, as did Dixon. It was imprudent to zip it, especially after a workout when one's muscles were tired and tight. It was wise to stay as loose and flexible as possible, ready for the unpredictable dangers in the political battleground of the main yard.

I followed Dixon off the weight court and we siphoned into the stream of inmates lumbering along the main walkway through the tables divided according to racial or political decree. They sat at tables or stood in a huddle around a television drinking cup after cup of coffee to stay warm, cheering as the last minutes of a football game ticked away. Others rapped in rhythmic harmony to a metal tabletop and snap of many fingers. Some merely waited, standing erect in the snow-fail with their hands stuffed in warm pockets, rocking on their heels, wondering if the announcement to “return to the blocks” would ever crackle over the weathered speakers. The need to get into the prison blocks, into our cells, and beneath wool blankets always intensified as the cold long evening stretched on.

A damp snowflake settled on my eyelash and, just as I blinked to cleanse the blur, a feathered creature of brilliant white sailed across my path. I froze beside Dixon and other astonished inmates. The bird flapped its powerful wings and climbed to the prison block windows. It curled its steel talons into the wire mesh, adjusting thick wings against its body. Its feathery head bobbed and swiveled as it surveyed the area.

The yard was quiet. The eternal hype of rap lyrics, the shouts and whistles of football philosophy, the political arguments and subtle threats of inmate reasoning were all scooped up and tossed away. It was as if a magical wind had swept the yard of its life and carried it off to the dark sky, where it remained suspended, its essence lingering in bulky suspense.

I felt euphoric. My heartbeat thumped in my ears as adrenaline spurted into my bloodstream. Then suddenly the heavy bird plummeted down. Inches from the ground, its wings unfolded and caught a breeze that lifted it into a sensuous arc of freedom. Inmates parted for the bird's flight up the main walkway and then turned to watch it gracefully settle on the shingled peak of an officer's watch booth.

We gathered around the little booth and watched the owl twitch its wings. Shuffling its feet on the snow-dusted peak like a cat padding about a pillow, it found its perch. It curved its muscular neck and, with its beak, scratched the tuft of feathers on its chest. Then, with its dark round eyes, it looked at us and blinked.

Two officers inside the booth gazed at the hundred or more inmates encompassing their little haven.

“They look nervous,” I said.

Dixon elbowed an inmate at his side and they grinned in unison at the two officers. Not long after, the announcement exploded from the rusty speakers.

“THE YARD IS CLOSED… RETURN TO THE BLOCKS.”

The snow continued to layer our shoulders and hats as we remained steadfast. One of the officers spoke into a phone; the other twitched like a trapped mouse, eyes bulging and rolling from one group of inmates to the next. The officer hung up the phone and nodded to his partner.

If we refused to enter the blocks what would they do? What law were we breaking by watching a snow owl? Would they rush at us with batons and shields and beat down every last one of us? Would an officer emerge from the dark cove of the gun tower and fire hot bullets into our flesh?

Then I realized something very peculiar about this formation of inmates, this aggregation of whites, blacks, and Hispanics. We were a unit of power. There was no racial discrimination to inhibit our combined strength, no political force to determine what would go down. We were the elite of this cramped atmosphere, able to strike back if struck upon.

Inmates gazed with unblinking eyes at the fixed monument on the booth's shingled peak. I wondered if they, too, were aware of our power. Would this power emerge as a riot where a few would take charge and eventually lose, or would everyone participate and stand proud against the threat of the system?

“THE YARD IS CLOSED,” the speaker crackled, “RETURN TO THE BLOCKS.”

And they did. Inmates smiled at the great bird, shook their heads, then turned away and headed for the blocks. The powerful elite dwindled before my eyes. The suspense split and the elements we knew so well — prejudice, ignorance, self concern — sifted back down from the void like snowflakes onto our shoulders.

Dixon nudged my arm. “C'mon, Danny.” He wiped the snow off his shoulders and gazed at the trapped officers. “We got ours.”

I followed him up the slushy steps of our block and turned to look one last time. The two officers had emerged from the small booth and were now herding the last of the inmates toward the blocks. The booth stood detached from everything else.

On its peak snowflakes settled on the white owl that had provided me with an existential moment that would last forever. Dixon's last statement was now clear. I flexed my biceps and felt the swell of blood in the tight muscles: energy reborn.

An officer waved for me to enter the block. I realized he was one of those trapped from before. I smiled and nodded, then followed the last of the inmates into the reality of confinement.

1993,
Auburn Correctional Facility Auburn, New York

You ought to come on the river in nineteen-four, You find a dead man on ever' turn row. You ought to been on the river in nineteen-ten, They's rollin' the women, like they drive the men.
“Ain't No More Cane on This Brazis”

In the wake of the American Revolution, Quaker reformers repudiated the colonial practice of public and corporal punishment, creating in Philadelphia's Walnut Street Jail the first institution to combine isolated confinement with labor. The idea of extracting labor from prisoners took deeper hold than the notion of penance, especially after the abolition of slavery. Some historians argue that prisons have sustained slavery by other means. In his essay, “From the Plantation to Prison” (1990),* Easy Waters noted that the New York legislature considered bills on the emancipation of slaves and the creation of the first state prison on the same date in 1796. In “Chronicling Sing Sing Prison” here, Waters narrates the shipping of convicts, virtual “galley slaves,” to build their own prison in the early nineteenth century.