The Prison Book Club (36 page)

It had started months earlier with Vince, her special protege from the Collins Bay Book Club, who had left the prison before I even arrived. When he was transferred to a halfway house and found work with a moving company, she bought him some of the books that the men in his old book club were reading and urged him to read along. Because he had had an addiction, she deputized a Circle of Support for him, manned by volunteers who were friends of hers. Circles of that type were originally developed to support sex offenders as they re-entered the community, but a CSC community chaplain helped her adapt the program for other federal offenders like Vince graduating from her book club. And when Vince had trouble lining up housing after the halfway house, Carol and her husband acted as guarantors on his rental agreement. For other men, she supplied books, helped calm spouses and encouraged further education. None of this was part of Book Clubs for Inmates. It was just her seemingly insatiable need to help and her desire to see her graduates succeed.

I was not as bold as Carol, but I was eager to see whether the men would sustain their reading habit after leaving prison. I began to find out on July 4, when my cellphone rang and an unfamiliar number appeared on the screen.

“Hello?”

“Hi, it's me, Frank.”

“Hello, Frank!” I said. I had left my number for him at his new Salvation Army halfway house, a converted Victorian house with a wraparound porch in a downtown Toronto neighbourhood. He slept there and had a curfew, but was allowed to visit his home during the day.

“I'm calling you from a computer,” he said.

“Voice over internet?” I asked.

“No, it's a phone. I just wanted a plain phone but my wife convinced me I had to be able to text as well.” He had been in prison such a long time that he had missed how cellphones had evolved to include the internet, email and texting.

It was great to hear his voice. He told me that he already had a library card and a job on a landscaping crew. A library card! I told him that I was worried about him working in the heat that day. It was thirty-six degrees Celsius with 95 percent humidity and torpid air. The sky was grey with particulate matter. He said that the team had quit work at noon because it was dangerously hot.

According to Frank, his house had become chaotic in his absence. His mother-in-law had moved in, bringing her furniture with her, and the number of pets had spiralled out of control. “There are two dogs and a cat chasing each other and birds flying free,” he said, complaining that the pets seemed to live forever. “It's like Tweety Bird and Sylvester.” Now that he was back in town, the birds had to stay in their cages and his mother-in-law was moving out before Christmas.

“It must be great to see your family every evening,” I said.

He said it was, but that he had eaten the previous evening's Chinese-food dinner of duck and rice alone. His wife worked long hours and his son and daughter had numerous after-school activities. He had to weave himself back into his family's busy lives.

I was hardly surprised at what he told me next. He and Gaston were joining a book club that was just starting up at their halfway house, and Frank hadn't had to organize it. He had arrived just as someone else in the halfway house was hunting for a book club for herself—Renata, a staffer there. Frustrated by the waiting list at her local library's book club, Renata had persuaded her supervisor to let her start one at work, with parolees. Carol had offered resources from Book Clubs for Inmates, but Renata was determined to go it alone and buy the books at thrift stores whenever possible.

When the call ended I felt exhilarated. Finding time to read while in a halfway house was much harder than finding time to read in prison. As parolees, the men had multiple new responsibilities. Gaston and Frank both had to work, attend programs, observe curfews, see their parole officers and re-establish their lives with their wives and children. The fact that they had also made a commitment to a book club was an indicator that Carol's big idea was having long-term positive effects.

Three weeks later, I drove to meet Graham at his halfway house about an hour's drive outside of Toronto. Beaver Creek had released him a week earlier. As I was driving, a text came in from Frank. I pulled over and had a look at my phone. “The book group met,” his text read. “Renata is not a bad facilitator. The group is small right now with six members. The book she chose is
Shutter Island
by Dennis Lehane. The movie bored me but maybe I will pay more attention to the book if I can find the time to read it.”

I pulled back onto the road, enjoying the lushness of the roadside sumac bushes, their drupes the colour of dried blood. I was still a little nervous about meeting Graham outside of prison because I imagined that people from his past might want to target him. But I used the passing natural scenery to soothe myself, and Frank's news to give me confidence.

Graham's halfway house was on a dreary residential street in the city's downtown just five kilometres from a Hells Angels clubhouse. A broad-shouldered three-storey brick building, the halfway house was painted pale grey and had a wooden bench outside, presumably for smokers. The front door had been lowered to street level and there was no porch, only a tidy awning over the entrance door. What appeared to be a security camera was aimed at the entrance. Graham came out of the building wearing workout gear. I guessed that the staff inside were watching via the camera.

I suggested that we go to a café and then the library, since he was spending a lot of his time there. Halfway houses keep new parolees on a tight leash in the early days following release, so Graham had to go back inside to get permission for my suggested itinerary. And then it was time for me to take another brave step— unlock my car door for Graham and get into a car alone with him for the drive to the library. He lowered his towering frame into the passenger seat and used the mechanical lever to slide the seat back as far as it could go.

I asked if a ROPE (Repeat Offender Parole Enforcement) squad was following us, even though I knew that their focus was on parole violators. “Probably,” he said. I looked over my shoulder as I guided the car to a parkade across from the library, but no one appeared to be tailing us.

“I have this niggling concern that we'll be gunned down,” I said, thinking of his former gang members.

“No, the people who have a problem are the guys who are making up stories or who testified about people. I've got all the skeletons in the closet and they'll stay in the closet and they know that.” I reminded myself that he'd left the gang on good terms. Nevertheless his parole restrictions required him to avoid a large area of the city around the Hells Angels clubhouse.

I was trembling in the parking garage, perhaps because of my difficulties with parking garages in London, and was relieved that Graham talked the whole time. I noticed he had sweat on his brow too.

We found a fluorescent bulb–lit café in the mall near the library and ordered coffee and pastries for him and water for me. I reached into my satchel and pulled out a used copy of
All the Pretty Horses
by Cormac McCarthy. “My husband and I have both read it and we thought you'd like it.” He thanked me. I told him that Frank had joined a book club at his halfway house. “Is there potential that you could start a book club at yours?”

“It's possible. I'd have to get to know some of those guys a little better. Half don't intermingle with anybody, so I'd have only twelve guys to pick from. I think Frankie's in a bigger place.” He said that if he couldn't start one himself, he would join a book club out of the public library. “A good way to meet people, right?”

I took a sip of my water. “What are your emotions now that you're actually out of prison?”

“It's anxiety probably. Your head's going in twenty different directions. It's almost like information overload for me.” He hadn't said “a feeling of liberation,” as I'd anticipated. He hadn't said “free.”

“I know,” I said. “Things are expected and yet there are so many limitations.” He had ten more years until his warrant would expire. Ten years of parole. The authorities could impose restrictions on him for years to come.

He was aware that he needed to line up work and had already applied for two positions, including a job as a housing outreach worker for people coming out of jail. He'd included Carol as one of his references. “I could probably get a job doing grunt work right away, but I want to do something I like.” For that job application, he was transparent about his time in prison. It was now his calling card.

Meanwhile, the local John Howard Society had invited him to appear at their Prisoners' Justice Day event, and a law professor at the University of Western Ontario had invited him to speak to his students in the fall. Graham was in demand.

As we talked in the café, his eyes occasionally looked over my shoulder or out the window. It made me a little more on edge about who might be following us. I asked him if he would show me his gang tattoo with the evidence of his withdrawal. He pulled the neck of his T-shirt to one side and there it was on his freckled skin, the logo of his street crew. The colours had faded but clearly etched were the year he joined, and the year he quit. The exit year was the year he joined the book club. He offered to show me another tattoo on his arm. An image of a man with pale eyes. “My buddy who was killed,” he explained.

No matter how model a citizen Graham was now, his past was still etched on him.

When we had finished our snack, he gave me a tour of his favourite spot in the city's main library branch—a table on the third floor near the German literature and English literature stacks. We talked about
Alias Grace
, because he had been away on a UTA for that book club discussion. He had liked the story but was expecting Grace to fully assume the identity of Mary Whitney or some similar twist.

That table was where he would begin work on his next slate of distance university courses the following month, using a laptop that his wife had mailed to him from her base in Manitoba. And in a few months' time he would take part as a “human book” in the Human Library project. It was an initiative that aimed to dismantle stereotypes by asserting that each human being is like a book worthy of being discovered, and by inviting library visitors to sit down and talk with each one.

I drove him back to the halfway house, much calmer than when the visit started. His anxiety had matched my own. Anxiety was a great equalizer.

In the months that followed, Graham dazzled his parole officer and many others. After working briefly in construction, he started a successful painting company with one of his brothers. Several police conferences invited him to speak to their new recruits. And he became the star speaker at Carol's Book Clubs for Inmates fundraisers, often telling the story of how
The Boy in the Moon
reached one murderer who attended the book club, whereas the system's violence prevention programs had not. An engaging speaker, armed with a sense of humour and plenty of statistics, Graham captivated audiences. A rule preventing Canadian charities from having directors with criminal records meant that Carol couldn't install him as a director of Book Clubs for Inmates Inc., but he became an active member of the organization.

That fall I was dismayed to discover that Gaston was back behind bars. He had left the prison on May 10, shortly after the
Alias Grace
discussion. He had attended one meeting of Frank's halfway house book club, reading
Shutter Island
. Then in mid-August he was back in the slammer for having failed a random drug test. The test showed traces of opiates. Before returning to Collins Bay he spent fourteen days in the Don Jail in Toronto. “The worst fourteen days of my life,” he told me. The Don Jail was what the men called a “bucket,” a provincial jail that acted as a holding pen for individuals awaiting trial or convicted inmates en route to other facilities. During those two weeks he fasted for three days, ranted, yelled, screamed and banged.

The irony was that the trace opiates came from the poppy seeds on the bagels provided at breakfast by his Toronto halfway house, according to Gaston. He compiled documents reporting similar cases for his parole board hearing. A particularly compelling piece of evidence was the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons Form BP-S291(52), which acknowledges that poppy seeds may cause a positive drug test and that inmates on parole must agree not to consume them. While that seemed persuasive, in the ruthless court of the prison yard, the other inmates dubbed him “Bagel Boy.”

That fall, the parole board agreed with Gaston's evidence about the poppy seeds and ordered his immediate release, this time to his home rather than a halfway house. A month later, I finally had an opportunity to meet him outside Collins Bay. It was on a day when he had just visited with Carol and she had given him one of her husband's suits to wear for a job interview at an addiction treatment centre. The interview opportunity itself was also thanks to Carol working her contacts. Inspired by Carol's generosity, I arranged to meet Gaston at the Royal Conservatory of Music café, and brought along three of my husband's silk ties to complete his interview outfit. It had been so long since Gaston had worn a suit, he was uncertain about the required components. “Is it just the jacket and pants?” he said, showing me Bryan's beautiful blue pinstripe jacket and trousers. I assured him that a vest was no longer necessary.

At the café I had a
prosciutto cotto
panini and he ordered the tuna wrap, though he was too busy talking to take a bite. Only now was he able to feel truly free, he told me in his usual rapid-fire nervous patter. During his three months at the halfway house, the burden of responsibilities was too great, he said. “Looking back now, I'm thinking, holy mackerel, how did I juggle it?” Back then, he had had to provide a complete itinerary of where he was at all times, and call the halfway house from a land line upon entering and departing a public building like a mall or library. The land-line number was proof of his location, but it meant scrambling to find increasingly rare public phone booths. When he found work on a landscaping crew, he had to phone in at the start and end of each shift. Whenever the crew drove near some of the banks he had robbed, he experienced an emotional jolt. “It brings you right back. Holy!” Once when he was late calling in, his curfew was moved up to seven o'clock as a penalty.