Excerpt #2
All that has passed, and right now I’m seated on the floor of a large, square, gray room with a bunch of strangers waiting for...well, waiting for whatever the hell happens next when you’re being processed into a federal prison.
I know very little about this place. I know I’m somewhere near El Paso, and I know I am about to begin a fifteen-year sabbatical with the Bureau of Prisons. Or, as a guy I met in the Oklahoma City facility said, “One hundred and eighty months. You should always say months instead of years. Months go faster.” No kidding. I was not aware of that. But there’s a shitload more of them to count, so for the sake of brevity or sanity, I won’t count either for now. I’ve got plenty of time to begin tabulations. I’ll probably just put it off for, let’s say, five years. Or sixty months, whichever comes quicker.
Oklahoma City, that’s the place where I received my only information about the prison I’m sitting in right now. Oklahoma City is home to a federal holding facility where people go to have their status as human beings vacated and await transport to a place that is less temporary. I had just completed a three-week engagement there, sleeping in the upper bunk of a two-man cell.
During my short and non-illustrious stay, I was given the opportunity to reside with six different cellmates or “cellies” as we call them in the prison game. Oklahoma City is a busy place, lots of guys coming and going. Not really a place to make friends if you wanted to, which I didn’t, so that was one positive. Small victories. The place is reasonably clean, and you don’t stay in your cell all the time. You get out in an area called a day room. There, you can wander around or watch TV and shoot the breeze with some other wayward soul. Let the good times roll. I don’t hang around out in the open area much. No reason, other than I don’t watch TV and just wandering around from one wall to the next is pretty much as pointless as it looks. Then there is the ever-present danger of striking up a conversation with someone. This error in judgment opens you up to the torment of listening to the history of their case, how they got screwed by the feds, and how shitty the food is, not to mention that they just found out their wife has been shagging Bill the friendly neighbor or their brother Bob, or both.
Despite all that, on about my fifth or sixth day – remember, no counting yet – I decide to exit my place of rest to explore the outer limits of my temporary new world. But before we exit my sanctuary, let me describe it for you. The color is institutional off-white or ray. The room is about the size of a VW parking space, with a toilet, sink, and a window. Not the kind of window you could open, but a security-type of window with limited visibility. Limited, as in it provides a clear view of the brick wall straight across from you. Something to gaze upon periodically. One day, I saw a bug on the wall, but after that the activity ceased.
There were two bunk beds in the standard one-atop-the-other formation. Each was equipped with a thin mattress and a blanket. The blanket was a colorful gray and about as thick as the mattress, which was so thin it was like sleeping on a towel. My room, on this day, was cohabitated by an elderly Native American man who appeared to be about 75 years old. Apparently, for 65 of those years, he has been a multiple pack-a-day Camel smoker. I am deducing this from his behavior which consists of a hoarse rasping speech, followed by a deep, hacking cough, during which time he thumps his chest with his fist until he rids himself of some disengaged item, probably a piece of lung tissue, into our shared sink. I have deduced Camel smoking because Camel smokers are notorious chest-thumpers. It’s during one of his pulmonary pummeling sessions that I decided to roam outside our abode to participate in the allotted wander period. My trek took me some thirty feet to the east area of the day room.
There were a couple of guys with tattoos and no hair watching a game show on a wall-mounted television. Yawner. My attention was drawn away from Vanna turning a vowel to an area a few feet away, where there was a gathering of seven or eight men standing around a seated older black gentleman. As I eavesdropped, it was clear what the conversation was about. The older man said that he had “been down” for over twenty-five years and had spent various chunks of that time in different federal prisons. The guys standing around him were all first timers and they had just learned their destinations. Your destination is a highly guarded secret by the BOP until it is no longer a highly guarded secret by the BOP. No, I don’t get it either. So, this group was asking the elderly man for information about their soon-to-be new homes. As they peppered the man with questions, I noticed something that made the veteran prisoner stand out from the “newbies.” The facial expressions. The questioners appeared expectant and wide-eyed, like they were looking out from a small coastal island awaiting a hurricane’s arrival with no shelter in sight. The prison veteran had eyes that appeared half-closed as if nothing was going to happen, he hadn’t seen before, and if it did, so what? As we all hung out there in our baggy prison jumpsuits, the questions flew.
“How about Lompoc?” A young white man asked.
“You be okay there,” the older man said with a touch of a slow southern accent. “They got grass on the yard and everythin’.”
No sooner had he finished then a tall, black man in his thirties chimed in. “I’m going to some place in Colorado. I’ve got it written down here.”
“Florence?” the old man interjected, then bit a piece of a slice of bread.
“No,” the younger man said looking at a piece of paper, “Englewood, yeah it says Englewood.”
“The camp?”
The taller man said, “I don’t know,” as he handed the paper to the seated man, who read it and handed it back to him.
“Ain’t gonna have no problems there, brother,” he said.
A few more locations were mentioned and given responses such as, “I heard about that place, ain’t too bad,” to “Kinda rough there, just follow the rules.”
For the most part, his polite answers seemed to give some temporary soothing to the anguished minds around him. A few minutes later, the knowledge seekers walked away, leaving just the man and me sitting in chairs about four feet apart. I hadn’t said anything so far. Mostly because I didn’t have anything to say. I knew where I was going, but I figured knowing more about the place wasn’t going to change anything. Reservations were made, the ticket was punched, and my suite awaited. No amount of information was going to change that. So I just sat there in silence, looking around and watching guys come and go like they were going somewhere, except there was nowhere to go.
The old man broke the silence after a few minutes.
“Man, you ain’t said a word. You unsociable or somethin’?” he said
“ Just got nothing to say.”
“Where are you from? You talk like up north.”
I nodded, “Yeah, up north.”
He smiled a little and took a sip from a cup he was holding.
“New, ain’t ya?” he said.
“Couldn’t get much newer,” I answered.
“Pretty much in a don’t-give-a-hot-damn kinda mood.”
“Pretty much.”
“Figures,” he said, “They is all kinds come through. Two-time, three-time vets. Newbies. Newbies got three kinds. Least I only seen three kinds. They is the nervous and jumpy ones. . Then, they is the nervous ones that don’t stop talking, like them boys that was just here.” He took another sip from his cup. “Then, boys like you. Got a far spell to go. Living, dying don’t seem to matter.”
“From what I’ve seen so far, this is kind of dead living anyway,” I said.
He gave me a short, “heh heh” laugh. “It surely can be. If’n you want it to be. Where you headed?”
“Texas.”
“Lots of spots in Texas. It’s a prison state. Big bidness. They got Big Springs, Beaumont, some others. Did twenty-four months in Big Springs. Livable. Which one they sendin’ you to?”
“La Tuna.”
Another short chuckle.
“Lawd man, who’d you piss off?” He said with his smile intact.
I looked at him and shrugged.
“La Tuna,” he said. “Biggest shithole in the BOP. Armpit. But it is what it is. Not too good a place for a man in a don’t-give-a-rat’s-ass kinda mood. ‘Specially a white boy. La Tuna’s a Mex prison. Just happens to sit on the U.S. side of the street.”
He sat his cup down on the table near our chairs. He stood up slowly, sticking his arms straight out from his side, stretching himself as if he’d been on a long journey.
“Listen,” he said, “you get eighteen months done, they might let you transfer. They is some kinda policy on that. Worth a try. Less’n you get attached to the gangs and dust. You don’t look like no banger to me.”
He starts to walk away, then stops and turns back to me.
“Hey man, do you pray to your Savior for guidance and salvation?”
“Nope.”
“You might wanna start.”