Note: The series of episodes which make up a 9,000 word short story begins here and will run in 1,000 word episodes. The story is a graphic picture of life inside a Florida prison. A friend of mine wrote it and sent it to me. The conversations in the story are authentic and therefore offensive. There is a devotional point to this fiction: finding God in a godforsaken place.
With all your getting, get understanding.
Maybe that was easy 3000 years ago when Solomon said it. Get understanding. Today, however, it is difficult. My life has been interrupted by prison. I find a lot of things difficult to understand. For one thing, the language. Prison may be multi-cultural but its lingua franca is vulgarity. It has representatives of the very poor of every culture. The poor have bonds that the wealthy and well fed will never experience. Poverty encourages a natural commonality and allows a language that crosses ethnic and racial barriers. The rules, dress and routines enforced by the Corrections officials completes the triad of cultural forces. The most unifying is the manner of speaking. Earlier, just outside my door I heard this:
Hey Pig.
Yeah.
S’up
Nothing. Just chillin.
I’ll holler at ya.
Yeah, Dog.
It sounds like young blacks, who make up almost sixty percent of the census, but it was two young white “thugs” (as they arrogantly name themselves), who I have grown close to. Older, educated men with work experience like me don’t talk like that, and cannot make the stretch to fit in. Yet, that is my world. That is the lingo. I must try to understand if I am to have any level of reasonable social intercourse in this place. I want as little as possible. However, none is not only impossible; it is not healthy or recommended.
Two men have been arguing in the hallway. I overheard one man give a nasty retort to another man’s request for a cigarette. The man begging was insulted by the profane, curt refusal and he said, “I’s just axing ya, Niggah. Just say no. I ain’t trying to hear all dat. Just say no. I ain’t trying to hear all dat.”
They have the right to talk anyway they want. Whatever is comfortable or meaningful or easy. And, I understand I am not really allowed to comment negatively, comically or haughtily to what I consider coarse and vulgar. Even when these same people ridicule or lecture or correct me on a variety of topics or on a point in chain-gang culture, especially their favorite topic, respect. And they don’t mind lecturing or debating. Pontificating. Loudly. Even if people are asleep or reading nearby. There is no place readily available in prison to do anything quietly or alone. Not sleep. Not even cry.
So, I get understanding. I act respectful. I accept each one for who he is and for whom he presents or imagines himself to be. And often, very often, I am quiet.
Quiet is something you don’t run into much in the chain-gang. It’s not that I want to stand out. Actually, what I want is to be ignored. But, ignored is hard to be. Especially if you are old and white and weak and rich. And all inmates - white black, Latino, etc. - assume you are weak and rich. Weak means kind. Rich means an excess of $10.00 in your canteen account. You could drown in the drool of their manipulations and sweet talk. Nevertheless, I think they may be right. I am weak. It has been drilled into me all my life to be kind, respectful and generous. I was raised a Southern Baptist. Morality and character were big issues for us. And rich? In comparison to so many of the other inmates who rarely get letters and are never seen on the phone, unless they are earning a cigarette by securing a phone for someone, I fit the description.
Still, I’ve had to learn to cut people off. People claim hunger yet skip meals. Meals that I don’t like either but I eat. They turn up their noses to free State food and then beg off me. They spend what little money they have (or, claim their mother will soon be sending them) on tattoos and then beg off me. They owe their tattoo man $15.00 to $30.00 and yet claim they will return my dollar as soon as their money gets turned on. I had to get understanding on that one. I’ve toughened up and learned to say, no. They lie and say they are hungry. Get my soup and trade it for cigarettes. Should I impoverish myself to support their addiction? Or, pay to expose myself to their second-hand smoke? I used to. It’s all about getting understanding. It’s part of survival. They all talk respect, but they practice survival.
The yard has just been closed and inmates are filing in. Filing in? Stampeding. Herding. Clamoring cacophonously is more like it. Men shoulder to shoulder or face to face less than two feet apart. Screaming. Talking loud. Not in anger. Or, even with heartfelt passion. Just in the spirit of competitive noise making. There is a default emotion that is a mask for passion and sincerity or even adamancy yet really it is just a patina of sincerity and engagement without any real emotional depth; this passes for conversation in the reality which is prison. Just from gut loneliness, a need to be heard, to be considered, an attempt to escape invisibility. Or, to sound smart, or funny or to feel popular. Hear me. Touch me. Feel me, resonates in the noises they make.
They will count us soon. Then we will wait on our bunks to be called for chow. Count. Perhaps the most important procedure carried out by Florida Department of Corrections security staff. Six times between 7: 00 a.m. and midnight. And, every two hours through the early morning hours. About nine times per day. Sometimes more. So paranoid are they about escapes. Yet, with modern microwave technology and electronic surveillance of the double fences and miles of wrapped and re-wrapped razor wire stretching along the fences the chance of escape is almost non-existent. So, it seems to me, these numerous counts become a way to – 9 times daily – enforce quiet. It is a method of crowd control and also a systematic, bureaucratic exercise grandfathered in from the authentic “back-in-the-day” chain-gang. However, I enjoy count-time. It is quasi-quiet and I regularly use this quiet time to pray, especially to pray the rosary. During count-time you are not allowed to read or listen to the radio or even to lie down. Or, I should say, you do not want to get caught. So prayer can be done demurely and go undetected. I’d hate to have my rosary confiscated. So, I am rather cautious.
