Doing Time (14 page)

In the South, too, the link between prison and slavery was more obvious. After the Civil “War, the labor-lease system (whereby prisoners were leased to private contractors) sprang up. Leasing gave way to prison farms, some like Angola in Louisiana built on the former Angola slave plantation (named for the African origin of the slaves who worked it). As late as 1933, songs like “Ain't No More Cane on This Brazis,” cited above, sung in a South Texas prison farm on the Brazos River, followed the pattern of slave work-gang songs. In Avoyelles Correctional Center, in Cottonport, Louisiana, the hard work, tension, and hair-trigger responses of keepers described in Michael Saucier's poems here evoke slave labor. Under these conditions, although the exercise of skill and concentration of mind can be steadying, the solace is short-lived and the aftertaste bitter.

Contract labor performed inside prison, initiated in the South, was taken up in the North around 1900 to help make prisons self-sustaining. But the labor movement's protests resulted in legislation containing industry in state prisons. UNICOR, the trade name for the Federal Prison Industries Corporation run by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, whose employ is so desired by “Big Bird” and Colombian immigrants in Richard Stratton's story, is highly controversial. Founded in 1934, it now employs about 27 percent of all federal inmates and produces about $200 million in goods annually. Since 1990, thirty-eight states have legalized the contracting out of prison labor to private companies. This development has come just in time to help states dealing out more and longer sentences meet escalating costs of the new and expanding prisons. In a 1998 essay*, Larry Bratt writes that he has learned marketable skills and takes pride in his performance in his prison job in Maryland. Others, considering a larger context, criticize private prison industry and suggest that imprisonment is becoming a facile “solution” to the grave problems of poverty, poor education, unemployment, and racism.

Most inmates are assigned prison maintenance jobs, and it is not easy to find a prison job that is neither dehumanizing not dangerous, let alone useful to the worker. But it is not impossible. In “Death of a Duke” (Players, Games}, the protagonist has to exercise diplomacy to finagle a job that uses his skills and enables him to help his fellows. In Robert Kelsey's story here, the protagonist finds a niche that proves fulfilling to himself and others. Therapeutic programs can provide niches, as can academic or creative programs, which are described in the next section.

First on a canal boat
Later on freighter steamers
One hundred men made an historic trip
Down the Hudson River in 1825
They weren't called galley slaves
But they were weighed down with chains
They arrived in Sing Sing
The village named after the
Indigenous Sint Sincks
Popular history says they sold
Their land in 1685
The name, which has been interpreted
As “stone upon stone”
Is all that remains of those Algonquins
And the prison, of course
An awesome mausoleum
Peopled with 614 tombstones
Monuments to the Chair
But all of that was later
After the foundation stone was laid
The prisoners labored
To build their own cells
7 feet deep, 3 feet 3 inches wide
And 6 feet 7 inches high
What could be crueler
To dig their own graves
Or to suffer the added indignity
Of having the graveyard called
Mount Pleasant State Prison
Stone upon stone
Granite known as Sing Sing marble
Prisoners
Cutting stones for public corporations
Stones for a courthouse in Troy
Stones for the statehouse in New Haven
Stones for the city hall in Albany
Stones for Fort Adams in Rhode Island
Convict labor
Offered at a premium price
Working
From dawn to dusk
Cutting stone
Stone upon stone
Granite known as Sing Sing marble
Poor production severely punished
Shower baths
Hair cropped close
Darkened cells
Ball and chains
Yokes — long iron bars
Four inches wide
Weights up to 40 pounds
Strapped around the outstretched arms
Of the prisoners
With staples for neck and arm
An awesome burden
For crime — and punishment
Cutting stone
Stone upon stone
Granite known as Sing Sing marble
In 1926 more stone upon stone
Two more cellblocks
A capacity of 1,366
More than 2,000 total
In 1994, the gutted remains
Of the old Sing Sing stands
A monument to a time
The Stone Age
When prisoners were sent
Up and down the Hudson River
If you get close enough to the shore
To the granite known as Sing Sing marble
You can hear the ghosts of prisoners' past
Chronicling the history of Sint Sinck
Stone upon stone
Granite known as Sing Sing marble
The building hasn't stopped yet
Million-dollar contractors
Replace convict labor
Slowly dismantling the stone upon stone
Replacing it with fences
Triple-layered razor wire
Heat sensors around the perimeter
Perhaps a mine or two
Floodlights have it on center stage
Sing Sing on the Hudson
What an eyesore
An eerie monument
Boats on the river
No longer freighter steamers
No longer carrying prisoners
Galley slaves
But the memory remains
Shackled prisoners still call the buses that transport
Them to Sing Sing —
And all the other stone monuments —
Boats
Boats
Up and down the Hudson River
In early spring and throughout the summer
And on into fall
Boats
No longer peopled with convicts
But pleasure-seeking passersby
Boating
And water-skiing
And wind surfing
Beautiful women
Weighted down with two-piece bathing suits
Smile and wave and sometimes flash
As they dare to come close to the shore
Defying the guard towers
And the awesome history of the place
A punishment perhaps as cruel as the yoke
Watching their bare-back retreat
The waves lapping against
The stone upon stone
Granite known as Sing Sing marble
If you listen closely
You can hear the howls
Of the 614 people
Who walked the last mile
Step by step
Stone by stone
To eternity
If you listen even closer
Over the waves lapping against
The stone upon stone
You can hear the other howls
The howls of men enduring different punishments
Punishments nonetheless
Severe in their own way
In keeping with contemporary standards
Still
Some bang their heads against the stones
Stone upon stone
Granite known as Sing Sing marble
Still standing
A monument for the chronicler
To pull apart stone by stone

1994, Sing Sing Correctional Faci1ity Ossining, New York

Mis eyes search among the hundreds of men
crowding the fence
for someone he's worked with before
or someone whose work he knows
who isn't afraid to catch his cut

     You got a work partner this morning? Yeah. Where's your boy? Medical call-out. Trying to get hisself a doody static , huh? Yeah, the sell-out. Go ask homes there. I hear his boy got blocked last night.

Four inmates exit the toolshed
arms loaded with hoes
to chop clean a summer
of dirt, weeds, and trees;
dropped in a tangled heap on the roadside
his eyes run along the stout and steel,
trying to see the good ones

Free man spits a long red stream,
his signal… First five, pick ‘em up.
He races with the others across the road
a flurry of black and brown, sun-peeled white hands
examine, choose, discard, choose another

     This one got a good, long handle, but
the head be swiv'lin
Handle here already split.
Best drop that one, homes. Hit it wrong
against one of those palmettos
you'll be stuck out eight dollars, sure
If tt ain't my fault!
Shi', free man don't care —
figure nigger trying to get out o' work
It'll cost yon eight dollars, homeboy,
or ten days on the rock… believe that.

In the second he has
he grabs the besr two he can find
and returns to the line; cut partner looks worried
so he hands him his choice
Cut partner runs his thumb along the edge

     Dull, he says … bur not as bad as that thing I bad yesterday… bitch killed me.

† Doody statik: “duty status” is a medical exemption from hard work, good for a day week, or longer. (MES)

They take bites and slices at the earth,
testing for sharpness
amount of energy that'll be required
then he remembers: today is file day
twice a week Sarge sends the file man around.
Hours pass. Finally he comes, lays a few, deep strokes
with the heavy rasp
the weeds, grass, palmettos, and thin willow trees
give easier, and it angers him —
the small joys he has had to settle for;
throughout the long, burned-up day
he mutters … what a waste … what a goddamned waste.

1991, Avoyelles Correctional Center Cottonport, Louisiana

The gun guard sits
squarely in the saddle
broiling in the Louisiana sun
silent atop his big red horse.

His eyes squint
through salt and sweat;
carefully maintains the proper distance
should he have to run us down
or shoot.

Meanwhile,
we chop chop chop
our hoeing has a rhythm
our mouths dry and dirty
the water cooler, empty
fewer words are spoken;
we're looking for the headland.

With his shotgun firm
against his hip
and Big Red hanging a droolin' lip
they're looking for it, too.

The gun guard's eyes sweep the line
alert to any disturbance;
carelessly, I take an extra step
his 12 gauge
pumps up — KA KLAK
steel-barreled voice, blue and hot
“Get off my guard line, NOW!”

Cut partner jerks me
back into the safety zone,
off the gun guard's holy ground
who
rubs Big Red
gently with a sweaty
palm “Whoa, boy … whoa, now.”

1991, Avoyelles Correctional Center Cottonport, Louisiana

No one saw the actual ascension. Big Bird — a huge black, well in his fifties — just appeared there one morning, roosting on the catwalk atop the lofty water tower in the middle of the compound. He made a nest of blankets and parcels and, like a bag lady, settled in for a long siege with magazines and his portable radio, perched in his rookery like some daft old crow who suddenly moves into the neighborhood.

“Reminds me a when I was in Texas,” said the Old Con at breakfast.

We sat at our usual table in the front of the chow hall. In the limpid early-morning sky the water tower was silhouetted high above the buildings of the prison complex; we could sit sipping coffee and watching Big Bird through the window. It was an event, something to distinguish this day from hundreds upon hundreds just like it.

“Texas? When was you ever in Texas?” asked Red, who'd done almost as much time as the Old Con. They'd been together at Marion back in the sixties before that joint was locked down. They'd been together at Lompoc in California when that institution became a maximum-security penitentiary. Red had been in so long his full torso and arms were covered with intricate tattoowork that had faded and was sagging like a wrinkled old paisley shirt.

“They had them turkeys out there,” the Old Con went on. “Big ol' turkey buzzards they called ‘em.”

“You was never in Texas,” Red insisted. “Old fool's been in jail all his life.”

“So? They got jails in Texas, don't they? An' prisons, too. Lots of'em. You never heard of Huntsville? Rough stop. An' federal joints. La Tuna. Bastrop. Seagoville. I got out one time in Texas. Went to work out there in a place near San Antone. Yessir, turkey ranch, they called it. Had all these turkeys runnin' around a big fenced-in area, jus' like us. All day they'd hang out in flocks like waitin' for food. Then at night, I never saw ‘em, but somehow they must a hopped up in the trees. Them scrubby little trees, live oaks, they call ‘em, an' mesquite. ‘Cause in the morning when the sun come up, that's where I'd see them turkeys. Sittin' in the trees all along that big ol' skyline. Jus' like that there fellah.”

The Old Con lifted his coffee mug and pointed out the window and all our eyes went back to the water tower.

When the whistle blew at seven thirty and the prisoners came streaming out from the cellblocks and living units, Big Bird hadn't moved. Groups of prisoners lingered on their way to work in the factories and stood around laughing and pointing up at the water tower.

Word circulated like an electric current. Big Bird, whose feet were so big his shoes had to be specially ordered, was an eccentric, wild-eyed man who wore trench coats or overcoats and a knit wool watch cap in the dog days of summer and carried on heated arguments with himself or sang and laughed lustily as he walked about flapping his arms. A refugee from the streets of Washington, D.C., he was forever in and out of prison, doing life on the installment plan. This was the kind of guy who, in your worst prison nightmare, ends up being assigned to bunk in your cell, and you live in fear not just because he's so big his hands look like oars, but because you know at a glance he's completely mad and you have no idea where he's coming from or what it takes to set him off.

He had a whole slew of nicknames: Camel (because of his loping stride and a hump high on his back caused by bad posture), Lurch (after the TV show character), and the Strangler. But upon his occupation of the water tower none seemed to fit so well as Big Bird.

The staff knew all about him, as they knew about all of us, and treated him with a kind of amused indifference reserved for those whose names are on the “Pay Him No Mind” list with the rest of the malingerers, charlatans, and stir-crazy old jailbirds.

After breakfast, as the compound cleared and we began our workday, two lieutenants strolled casually to the base of the water tower to see if they could convince Big Bird to come down and join the rest of us.

By lunchtime the Bird still had not flown. The Old Con, a prison archetype who had mysterious sources of information and knew everything that was happening not only in this prison but throughout the system, told us Big Bird sent word to the warden that he did not intend to jump. Groups of prisoners had been standing around the water tower heckling Big Bird and yelling at him to take off. But he had his radio (presumably the reception was good up there), he had some food, and he had his overcoat and his cap and a blanket or two, even though it was early September and the temperature was in the high eighties. He toid the lieutenants he was j ust there and come count time at four o'clock they could count him on the water tower. We wondered how that might sound when the count was called in to Washington: “One thousand eighty-one in their cells and one on the water tower.”