Then,
there were the vacations, the trips each summer to the beach, Hilton Head
Island in South Carolina, and the trips tied into business meetings where our
children would see the country: Seattle, Park City, Utah, Sun Valley, Idaho,
New Mexico, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We’d travel over Christmas to
Caribbean Islands or head back to the beach. Travel, being on the road, was a
focal point of our family dynamics.
On
the road. How ironic that what I’m going through now is also a road of sorts.
It’s ironic that all the travel I had “before,” all those resorts and beautiful
vistas, pale blue waters, they were all on a road to nowhere. They were an
escape. I was running, running from my failures and self-loathing and guilt
over my behavior. Stealing, embezzlement is too sanitized a word, didn’t come
easy to me, at least at first. Moving, constantly bombarding myself with travel
and work and meals and dice, kept me from thinking about what I’d done. So I
focused on the road and it led me right to this prison.
Recently
I’ve been thinking about roads. I’ve wondered where this road is taking me. My
life is not where I expected it would be. And maybe that’s ok. Maybe I’m on the
road I’m supposed to be on, the road that was meant for me.
I
think often of Paul. Here was a man well regarded in the elite circles of his
culture. He moved freely among the well-heeled and intellectuals. He was, by
all appearances, a success: Good family, devout, articulate, on the right side
of the law. And, he was arrogant, an arrogance built on being so sure you are
always right, always justified in your actions. There’s no mention of Paul,
before his conversion, ever had any doubts about what he was doing even as the
blood of innocent men and women stained his hands. Their crime, punishable by
death, was to believe that an itinerant carpenter was the Messiah who had come
to set them free and reconcile them to God Almighty.
So
Paul did what any law-abiding leader of his time (and our time it seems) would
do. He sought to keep his nation, his people, within the code of conduct handed
down generations before. And he did his work well. Still, I asked myself, did
he ever have doubts?
So
many days as I’d drive alone along the backroads of
Virginia, traveling from rural courthouse to courthouse, it would hit me
“You’ll lose everything,” and that strange, small voice in the back of my mind
would whisper. I would be overwhelmed
with guilt, and fear, and dread. I’d begin to speak out loud to no one in
particular, or maybe it was to someone specific; I’d cry out “God, I don’t want
to lose my family. I don’t want to go to prison.” The voice would pass, the
road would lead me home, and I’d try and forget the voice and my response.
It
didn’t seem like Paul went through that, which made his trip to Damascus all
the more powerful. Paul, it seems, never saw it coming. Paul never thought he
was going the wrong way. And then, he left for Damascus.
Have
you ever been lost? You’re driving, sure you know where you’re headed, then get
to a point where things don’t add up. You sense this isn’t the right way. And
it’s a strange uncomfortable feeling not knowing if you’re lost.
No
one wants to be lost. No one wants to feel the insecurity of not recognizing
where you are. Your heart flutters and races a little; your breathing is more
rapid; your palms sweat. You go over how you got there. Maybe, you think, you
should have turned left instead of right a mile back down the road? But even
that doesn’t make sense. It hits you: You are lost,
Paul
knew the way to Damascus. He knew the route and was headed in the right way. Or
was he? Sometimes you’re headed the right direction for the wrong reasons. And
sometimes you’re headed the wrong direction for the right reasons. Either way,
you’ve got to get back on track. Paul needed to go to Damascus, just not for
the reason he thought. He was struck down, blinded, laid out on the side of the
road. He was bewildered and scared and alone. He had to trust, trust that voice
he heard; the voice who called out to him and struck him blind was God, and God
would lead him where he needed to go.
It’s
ironic isn’t it? Paul, blind and alone, ends up in Damascus and regains his
sight. And for the rest of his life he traveled the known world of the Roman
Empire. He encountered storms which sank his ship; he was stranded on islands,
run out of towns, beaten, stoned and dumped in jails from Asia Minor to Rome.
Not once in any of his travels after Damascus was he ever lost again. His
entire remaining life is spent on the road and his sense of direction is
perfect, never a day lost. Lost, it seems, is a state of mind.
After
my arrest I spent almost a year confined in the regional jail living, at times,
three to a cell. One man would have a mattress on the floor of the cell, a
cramped eight by ten concrete block room complete with commode and cold water
sink. We were locked in that tiny space ten to twelve hours each day. The rest
of the day the dayroom was open. Dayroom is a sterilized name for the common
area for all the cells in our pod. Twenty-four cells triple bunked. Seventy-two
men moving around a space the size of half a basketball court. Monday through
Friday I’d leave the pod and walk two narrow corridors to the adult basic
education classroom where I worked as a tutor.
That
pod, those narrow hallways were my whole world for a year. I only saw the
outside, only felt fresh air on my face, eight times that entire year. Four
times, I was shackled and handcuffed and driven the twenty miles to the rural county
courthouse where my trial, was a cause celeb. I noticed very little on those
rides, my mind awash in a thousand screaming thoughts about the disaster that
was my life.
Four
other days our pod – along with two others – had outdoor rec. Outdoor rec was a
blacktopped, open-air, basketball court smack in the middle of the jail
building. Every side was three stories of brick and barred windows. You could
see the sky, feel the sun, and then mill around with one hundred other inmates.
You knew you were still locked up. And because of the time of day – usually mid
to late afternoon – the sun was beyond the blacktop area. Shadows from the tops
of the jail covered the court; shadows formed stupid, reckless decisions that covered
my life.
It’s
funny, but that small, closed in world soon became comfortable. I learned
multiple paths to the same location. I became known to inmates in every pod.
Each time I‘d leave the confines of my pod and venture out to court an article
in the local paper would follow. With each article my status at the jail grew.
Each day, as I’d walk out of the pod and down the hallway to class I would hear
“Heh, Mr. B, can you look at my paperwork?” And, hands would reach out through
the bars with an assortment of legal documents.
I
saw it all, divorce and custody papers, foreclosure and debt notices, and
warrants for every crime imaginable. This was my world, hallways measuring less
than the distance around a high school track, artificial light, bars and
deputies and the smell of disinfectant trying to kill the smells emanating in
the stale air. Still, I knew my way. I was comfortable. My road had become
compressed, controlled, and contrived. I didn’t think about the mess I’d made.
I only thought about getting from point A to point B.
August
12, 2009. 6:00 a.m. Breakfast in the pod. I had been at the jail 359 days,
almost one full year. My life was completely changed in that year. I had gone
from a claims attorney for a property and casualty insurer headquartered in
Richmond to a convicted felon early into a fifteen year sentence. I’d pled
guilty to six counts, paid over $600,000 in restitution on my sentencing date,
signed all my other assets over to my wife (that was the deal I made with my
employer: I’ll plead guilty; you let me take care of my wife and kids), and she
promptly hit me with divorce papers.
In
one year, I’d gone from first-class airfare and evenings at the Ritz-Carlton to
shackles and dirty, worn, threadbare sheets. I’d gone from sixty dollar glasses
of Johnnie Walker Blue to tepid water; from fourteen ounce ribeyes, lamb
shanks, and seafood alfredo to grayish “breakfast gravy,” instant scrambled
eggs, and white bread. I’d gone from the life of the party – a man with dozens
of people who would hang on to his every word – to a guy with less than five
friends. Hell of a road I was on that year. There was a suicide attempt,
prescribed anti-depressants to “help me sleep,” and bi-monthly visits to the
State’s forensic psychiatrist to prepare my case for sentencing. One year. I
didn’t want to think about moving on. I just wanted to survive, survive in my
small world I’d built at the jail.
6:00
a.m. and the call came. “Pack up. You’re transferring to D.O.C.” DOC, the
Virginia Department of Corrections, prison, real prison with real time, with
real crime, real despair. Yet, I treated the news with ambivalence. I was
scared, but I was also tired, tired of everything my life had become.
Everything
I had fit into a plastic trash bag. The deputy at the jail took my things and
dumped them right into the bag. My papers, a Bible, a few pair of underwear and
tee shirts, socks, all tossed in and tied off in that clear plastic bag. My
clothes from the day I was arrested were handed to me. “Put these on,” he said,
and I stripped off the two piece v neck jump top and elastic bottoms in the drab
olive green color. There I was with my navy blue blazer, oxford shirt, and
khakis from the day my life changed. I put them on and they hung loosely off my
waist and shoulders.
“Lost
weight.” The deputy was staring at me. I had. When I was arrested I was
embarrassingly overweight, heavier than I’d been my entire adult life. It was
too much scotch, too much rich food and it had made me puffy and bloated. A
year in hell, depression, despair, and a lack of meaningful exercise and the
liquid weight fell off. So did the muscle tone. I was twenty-seven pounds
lighter, back to my marathon training weight of 170, but I was gaunt and weak.
My clothes, wrinkled from a year balled up in a bag sitting in the jail
basement hung from me. Even they were tired and ready to quit.
The
handcuffs and shackles were put on. My bag and I shuffled – that’s the only way
to describe it, shuffle, how you walk with shackles. One foot slid forward
eighteen inches then, as the chain tightened, the other foot drug forward to
the sheriff’s car. Seat belted in, we pulled out into the warm, humid August
air and I felt the sun hit my face.
And
as we drove out into the country into the neighboring county and DOC’s inmate
receiving prison nestled in the middle of farmland, I watched the homes and
lots go by. Everywhere there was green grass and trees in lush, dark summer
green. I’d been down that highway so many times traveling with work and I’d
never noticed how green everything was.
For
the first time in a year, I was on the road and I had no idea what I faced. I
didn’t know where I was going or what lay in store for me. But, instead of
fear, I was calm. I’d seen so much, been so far off the right road for so long,
this drive felt right. I was going the right way. I’d been lost, but had slowly
started to find my way. I didn’t know how long it would take, but I’d find my
way back, I vowed.
I remembered
Paul again. Blinded, broken, he found his way. The key I realized was he didn’t
find the way. The way found him. That’s where the peace came from. Even as he
traveled, even as he faced immense suffering and setbacks, he never despaired.
He was on the right road. No matter what he faced, he knew he was going the
right way.
I
thought about that as we travelled along those rural Virginia roads. That
thought stayed with me when we pulled up to a real prison complete with gun
towers and razor wire. And, that thought stayed with my when I was dumped in a
sticky, one hundred degree cell with an anti-social twenty-four year old
gangbanger starting on a seventy-six year sentence for murder. Each day, as I
walked the narrow concrete walkway back to my cell or tier two, and I passed
men whose lives were forged on violence and hate, I doubted I could go on. The
road was over. I would look below, at the concrete floor, and think there was
where my road would end. I’d gone so far off course, thrown away so much, there
was nothing left to do. I’d hear a little voice tell me after so many years off
track I was finally going the right way. “Don’t be afraid. I know where you’re
going.” Funny little voice. But sometimes that’s all we need to see the big
picture.
The
road led to a tenth of a mile sandy track outside our building where almost
every day I’d go and run. In a prison jumper with Velcro sneakers, in August
Virginia heat I’d run round and round that little track under the gaze of a
shotgun toting officer just feet behind the fence. It felt right. It felt good.
It felt free. The voice was right. There was healing and redemption on that
unlikeliest of roads.
Roads
lead so many directions. You can get anywhere really. If you aren’t careful
you’ll head out the wrong way. You’ll end up lost and confused. Just like using
GPS, there’s a way you can get turned around. And, you may find the road to
lead you back isn’t what you expected. It may go through some valleys and
broken pavement may be the surface. It won’t matter. You’ll know you’re headed
the right way.
I
travelled so many places, took so many roads but never knew where I was going
until I admitted I was lost. Now my travels are confined to concrete prison
walkways and a gravel track, but I’m going the right way. I found out who I was
and who I was meant to be. And the road? I see it clearly in my mind and it’s
not defined by this prison.
