The Four Stages of Cruelty (6 page)

Him? I knew of no Beggar. I had never heard the name before, and I wondered vaguely if it was a forgotten term in the ever-evolving and endlessly variant jailhouse jargon. I was not expecting such a routine answer. Another reminder: what I didn’t know about corrections could fill a Chicago phone book.

“Are you kidding me? Who is he?”

MacKay leaned back, eyes on Lewis, and gave a reasonable shrug. “Name we had for a son of a bitch called Earl Hammond.”

He stopped, and I figured that was it, but MacKay was just winding up, some pent-up bitterness working its way to the surface like slow lava.

“This was mid-eighties. He was in a gang, naturally. No big deal. Then he stabbed a fifteen-year veteran CO named Tony Bucker about fifty times. We buried Hammond same day we buried Bucker, put him in the City, cleared the other assholes out, and let him rot by himself in total fucking isolation for the next three years. Let’s just say Hammond became a favorite object of frustration from that point forward. If you had a bad day, got a cup of urine splashed on you, got your ass chewed out by a keeper, no worries, you just headed downtown into the City and whooped some cop-killer ass for a while. We’d say he was begging for it. ‘How was Hammond?’ ‘Begging for it!’ Then some weak fucking sister took up his cause, and they transferred him in the middle of the night so none of us would make a fuss. But that was almost twenty years ago, so I have to ask, where in the hell did you hear mention of him?”

I was embarrassed to admit it.

“In a comic book.”

MacKay looked at me as if I had confessed my love for Cooper Lewis.

“Something an inmate drew,” I said. I saw it more clearly now. A piece of propaganda.
The Four Stages of Cruelty
. An account of the injustices incurred for the mere killing of a CO.

“Which fucking shitbird did that?”

And that’s when I felt my first misgiving. Did I really know how someone like MacKay might react? I saw no way out.

“Jon Crowley.”

MacKay nodded. “Mister Shank Fight in the Yard, huh? Well, it figures.” And he went back to watching Cooper Lewis.

I let a moment go by, until the insistence of doubt nudged me on.

“Why does it figure?”

MacKay looked at me without understanding.

“Why does it figure the guy who made the comic book about Hammond would get shanked in the yard?”

“Jesus, Kali, how should I fucking know?”

His incredulity put me in my place. I’d heard MacKay’s comment as acknowledgment of some logical connection when it was just the usual indifference.

Minutes later he was still amped up and pissed off.

“I’m sick of waiting for this fucker.” But I felt like the anger was aimed in multiple directions at once—at Lewis, at Ditmarsh, at me.

“I’ll wait,” I said, ever the peacekeeper among violent men.

“No, you get going. I’m going to expedite this a little. There’s more than one way to take a shit.”

Pushing me around, taking advantage of our friendship to handle some personal business. Part of me felt sad for him. I had the awareness that it happens to all of us in time. We get permanently angry.

I couldn’t stop myself. “Why does Lewis have a phone up his ass, Ray?”

“I don’t know,” he said, but more drily than before. “To talk to a lawyer?”

Cooper Lewis was a small-timer. If he’d achieved any status at all inside Ditmarsh, it was as a runner, someone who did favors or took falls. MacKay would know about that.

“Who’s Lewis bringing the phone in for, do you think?”

MacKay’s smile was cold, as if he were saying, look at you, gazing into the abyss.

“Sweetie, you don’t want to take this job so seriously as all that,” he said.

I pulled the rubber gloves out of my pocket.

“Well, I’ll leave you these, then.” And snapped them with all the indifference I could muster.

I had a suspicion that Ray MacKay wouldn’t be needing them, and that inmate Cooper Lewis would be keeping his cell phone.

My shift ended at four, but instead of signing out, squealing from the parking lot at a resolute fifty miles per hour, and putting the walls of Ditmarsh into the rectangular frame of my rearview mirror, I did something well beyond the purview of my narrow responsibilities: I visited Brother Mike. On my way, I concocted the remotely plausible tale that I was following up to check on him. I’d been the one to extract him from the yard, so it made a certain amount of sense, though a CO under any ordinary circumstances would never have given a moment of concern to the fate of a civilian who’d thrown himself into a corrections matter. My real motive, pressing like a heavy weight on my chest, was a desire to atone for having ignored Josh’s warnings in the Keeper’s car. I wanted to assess my responsibility for the consequences I’d seen in the yard during that brutal fight. I wanted a better understanding of an event that was, in all likelihood, ultimately incomprehensible.

The studio that housed the art class was in the education or east wing, and that location enhanced all my misgivings and the sense that I was betraying my tribe. The east wing had been a two-floored unit until 1979, when the inmates housed within had risen up and taken control, killing four of our brothers in the initial siege. A full-scale riot resulted, during which only two inmates died, leaving the account books
spectacularly unbalanced. To wreak as much destruction as possible, the walls between the isolation cells had been knocked down by the inmates involved, creating long, ragged passageways through the length of the wing. Afterward it was decided to go with the flow of that refurbishment work, knock down all the walls, plaster and paint over the unfortunate grim memories, and build classrooms and offices where cells had once stood. They housed the weak sisters within that new space, ceding them occupied territory for their anger management programs and therapy sessions, while turning the wing into an edifice for tolerance and a permanent monument to defeat.

The doors of Brother Mike’s studio were open. I had never been inside, and I was surprised by the expansiveness of the space within, a workshop filled with broad tables and tall stools, lit by giant caged windows overlooking the yard. I called out but got no answer and so, finding myself alone, wandered around to look at the so-called art. The drawings and paintings on the walls were calmer than I would have expected. Bowls of fruit, the faces of loved ones. I stopped before an abstract piece and couldn’t decide whether it was ludicrous or interesting. It was a large canvas divided into a dozen grids, with a single identical portrait of Elvis painted into each square. Fat Elvis, with the sideburn muttonchops. When I looked closely, I saw that each Elvis was different in the most trivial way—a shortened sideburn, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, a pirate’s earring. I was drawn in by the irregularities and had begun to note each variation in turn when I was startled by a voice.

“I’m over here, I’m over here.”

It sounded, to my ears, like a snarl of complaint. I turned around expecting accusation but got an impatient wave instead. Brother Mike appeared in the doorway of an office I hadn’t noticed at the far end of the studio. He seemed a mixture of anger and energy as he moved toward me, pausing once to adjust a precarious arrangement of tools on one of the workbenches. Yet there was ease to him, too. He was at home in this room and in his own skin. In comparison, I felt as though I were masquerading as someone important.

I introduced myself by name, and we shook hands, his grip about as firm and commanding as I’d ever felt. He called me Officer Williams. I hesitated to call him Brother Mike. Using the term made it sound as though we were at a lodge meeting.

And then a smile came to his face. “If I’m in trouble, at least they sent you.” A little flirtatious, the way old men can pour on the charm before much younger women.

I decided to go with the flirt. It’s a cheap instinct, but too easy to pass up.

“I’m not sure why you should get in trouble for doing something the boys ought to have done themselves. I thought that was a decent takedown for a counselor.”

“I used to box,” he explained.

I smiled. “I’d say you used to wrestle.”

“Only with sin.”

It was a joke, I think.

“You look fine,” I announced, as though my work here were done. “I just wanted to see if you were physically okay.” The word physically sounded stupid to my ears.

He grimaced, but it wasn’t pain. “I’m so sick about that,” he said. “I know such things happen from time to time, but I’m still broadsided by it all. I think that’s why I ran across the yard and got in the way. I couldn’t quite believe the whole thing turned violent. I just wanted it to stop.”

I saw my opening and put the question forward hesitantly. “Did it start because of something that happened in your class?”

I anticipated a gruff reply, a return to the bad temper, but he looked relieved. “I’m glad someone’s finally asking me about it.”

“You mean no one has been here to talk to you?”

I’d have expected the Pen Squad, Keeper Wallace, or some irate CO to have jumped all over Brother Mike by this point, a full day later.

“No one until now,” he said, offering me the job. “Shall we sit down in my office?”

I nodded, reluctant now that my plan was actually working so well.

The office had a desk and a couch and another living-room chair with a coffee table between, and two walls lined with bookshelves and upright file cabinets, like a staggered canyon of skyscrapers. Papers and books seemed to have exploded from every drawer and shelf. He directed me to the couch, and I sank into its deep cushion. He took the chair opposite, and suddenly we were patient and therapist, or so it felt to me. This is where his ease comes from, I thought. He sees all the world through the prism of analysis.

“The class. Well, there was nothing really. Nothing unusual about the session. I wish I could understand it all better.”

“It doesn’t always make sense,” I told him. “You had group?” The word session was therapeutic code. I pictured a circle of men explaining their inner rages, cheering one another’s progress on, like addicts with a murdering problem.

“It was our monthly crit session, not counseling related. Anyone who’s finished artwork that month can show it to the rest of the class for comment and feedback. Those discussions can grow heated sometimes.”

“Inmates can get heated about anything.”

He smiled. “You should see grad students.”

I pushed further. “Did Jon Crowley show something?”

“He didn’t. He was going to, but then he decided his piece wasn’t ready, and we couldn’t convince him to change his mind. He’s a perfectionist. So a few others went instead. I have eight in that class, one of three groups I meet with every week. Horace Sunfish, Timothy Connors, Bradwyn Delinano, Roy Duckett, Josh Riff, and, of course, Jonathan Crowley and Lawrence Elgin. That afternoon, Timothy showed a very unfinished two-D collage, Bradwyn read a rather unfortunate love poem he’d also illustrated, and Josh showed some of his new drawings.”

I knew everyone in that crew by sight, and I was surprised at how unlikely they were as a mix. Horace was an Indian. Timothy was an incomplete transsexual they called Screen Door, supposedly because he got banged so often. Bradwyn was half Chinese, half Puerto Rican. Roy was the old-timer with one leg who worked in the kitchen, Elgin a raging Viking, Josh an utter newbie, Crowley your average mid-thirties lifer.

“Did Crowley and Elgin have some animosity between them?”

Brother Mike sighed. “A general dislike. But nothing overwhelmingly hostile, or I wouldn’t have had them in the same group. Lawrence can be unpredictable in his opinions—sometimes he’s surprisingly thoughtful, in fact—but Jon can also be moody. If anything, the animosity that day was between Roy Duckett and Jon. Do you know Roy? Roy teased Jon quite hard about not wanting to show his work. But I didn’t think much of it at the time. They’re close friends, almost inseparable, and I find there’s often less patience and everyday politeness in such relationships. But really, Jon’s work was ready to show. I had glanced through it before class when Jon and I had our counseling session. He’d made a lot of progress over the last year on what was an ambitious project, but when the stakes are high for an artist, it can be difficult to open up.”

“What was the project?” I asked.

He looked at me with amusement. “Are you interested in art?”

The sudden condescension made me bristle, and I responded badly.

“I just find it funny hearing the word ‘art’ thrown around when we’re talking about hard-core inmates.”

He’d found me out, and he smiled now with a polite reserve. “You probably don’t think much of what we do here.”

“What is it that you do here?” I was relieved, at some level, to be talking honestly.

“Paint, draw, throw clay. Sometimes we expand into collage and poetry.”

“I went to camp for that once. When I was in grade school.”

“Exactly. You think it’s camp.”

We were grinning at each other. I don’t know why I’d edged into mild hostility—perhaps an instinct to reestablish my bona fides as a CO. At some level I was bothered by the coddling that went on in this room, by the caring and nurturing of such unworthy beings. You had whole school systems out in the world where no one gave a shit.

“I thought it was supposed to be therapy. Art therapy,” I said.

“The art isn’t therapy,” he said, and got engaged again. “Not the way you think of therapy. I don’t believe art is therapeutic or even moral just because it’s art. I don’t believe it necessarily makes you a better person, whether you’re the viewer or the creator. Art is too elusive for that. Work that’s didactic or deliberately uplifting is usually crap.”

“So why bother with it?” I didn’t mean the dismissal to be voiced so harshly, but Brother Mike was undeterred.

“The art gives them confidence, a means of expressing themselves, sometimes for the first time. Most of the men here have low self-esteem, and what little they do have, the system grinds out of them through the daily humiliations and restrictions.” He raised a hand. “I’m not criticizing. It is what it is. But as we refine punishment, we whittle away the human psyche. In my experience, that does nothing to encourage rehabilitation, let alone actual penance, the soul-saving stuff I’m supposed to be engaged in. Artistic creativity is a bit of salvation from that institutional degradation. It gives a sense
of purpose, a sense of accomplishment, a platform to discuss moral and spiritual issues, occasionally personal insights.” He laughed. “Maybe that’s just ego speaking, but I swear, at conferences, my presentations go over very well.”

I nodded. “Sounds challenging.” Like I’d crashed some cocktail party and was agreeing with opinions I didn’t quite understand.

“I build some trust, foster some self-expression, and channel the art making into the restorative justice work we do. Are you familiar with that concept?”

Restorative justice. I knew the term, and it had always seemed ridiculous to me. “A little. You let perpetrators and victims talk things through.”

“It’s my way of saving souls, Officer Williams. It takes years to prepare an inmate, and years for an inmate to successfully reach out to the people they’ve wronged. But when it happens, when those sides start to correspond or when they actually meet face-to-face, you’d be amazed at the emotions that surface and the humanity that gets revealed. And that’s when people make a connection and move forward, sometimes with great positive impact on each other’s lives.”

“Why would any victim want to connect with a perp?”

“They’re connected already. They’ll never not be connected. This is just a way to handle the awesome psychic reality of that. Otherwise”—he shrugged—”the hate and the anger is like cancer killing us a little more every day.”

His eyes were locked on mine, and I knew then he was a true believer. I, on the other hand, had never believed in anything deeply in my entire life—except for the importance of contingency
plans, the likelihood of the most certain things fucking up, and, perhaps, on my worst days, the utter elusiveness of the human connection Brother Mike insisted on pushing.

“Well,” I said, “I admire what you’re doing.” I didn’t mean it, but I admired something about him, the true believer aspect, I suppose.

“We both have difficult jobs.” It sounded like simple honesty, and a little chip of ice melted from my heart.

“Jon Crowley was working on a visual narrative,” he said, “a story in pictures and words that delved into the themes of restorative justice quite heavily.”

I was disoriented by his description of Crowley’s comic book. Restorative justice was not the vibe I’d picked up glancing through the pages.

“The Four Stages of Cruelty,”
I said, the words slipping out.

“You’ve seen it?”

“No,” I said. “Heard someone mention it.” He knew I was lying.

“Since you’re interested, perhaps you’d like to look at his source material. You can borrow this if you like.”

He reached up to the shelf above him and retrieved a heavy, water-warped book and passed it to me.

“An eighteenth-century British artist named Hogarth developed a series of prints called, of course,
The Four Stages of Cruelty
. Hogarth believed art
could
change people. He was a reformer. Social injustice and the root causes of criminality were among his themes. You should look through. We can have a vigorous discussion afterward. And I make the most wonderful cookies.”

I didn’t know whether he was teasing me or getting rid of me, but I stood and prepared myself to leave, weary from my masquerade.

“One more thing,” he said, as if it had been he who’d called us together. “I have something unfortunate to give you.”

“What do you mean?”

I was slightly alarmed by the announcement. Brother Mike walked back to his desk and found a manila folder and brought it to me. I took it, cautiously, and looked inside.

A piece of white paper with an ink drawing on it. A woman holding a bejeweled sword, and that woman was me. An accurate likeness of my own face. My naked profile with long hair, an arched back, and pert, upturned breasts that could have been imagined only by someone who’d never seen a thirty-nine-year-old without a bra.