Friends

            I’ve been thinking about friends a lot the past few weeks. Last fall, the guy in the bunk next to me – Mark – was getting ready to go home after seventeen plus years. I had spent a fair amount of time with Mark the last year in our college program. School didn’t come easy to him so it took a fair amount of effort on my part to get him through English class. Spending that amount of time with him led him to open up a good deal about his life.

            Mark was a guy with trust issues. That’s to be expected after you’ve done any sort of extended stay in custody. Honesty equates with weakness behind bars. So Mark, like most guys you meet; hold their proverbial cards close to their chests. You destroy envelopes with names and addresses, lest they fall in the wrong hands. Prison lore is full of stories about “the guy” at prison “X” who left his home address out and later found someone posing as his friend convinced his family to send money to help get him out of an extortion case. The stories – like most urban legends – take on lives of their own.

            I had a guy I was helping fill out financial aid forms for school buck at listing his social security number. “I don’t want anyone stealing my identity,” he said. “You’ve been locked up fourteen years on attempted murder and armed robbery charges, right?” I asked. And when he nodded in agreement I said, “Who would want to steal your ID? That could be the best thing to happen to you!”

            It’s trust and being able to open up, to expose yourself – warts and all – and have that person still have your back. Mark was just like countless other men I’ve met in here who didn’t – or couldn’t – share their story for fear their story, their guilt, would be used as a weapon. Mark did open up to me; he learned he could trust me. And when he left he felt better because he knew in the “real world” trust and friendship goes hand in hand.

            Friends. I never gave much thought to what that meant before my arrest. Friends were the guys I hung out with, golfed with, had over for drinks or meals. They were always in couples and my wife and I would evaluate their relationships versus our own. Her best best-friends’ husbands naturally became my friends. And we’d hang out and talk sports, sex, BS about the market. But, did we ever truly trust each other? Were we ever really honest?

            One night, as we were getting ready for bed, my wife told me about close friends of ours. “She’s so unhappy. He doesn’t tell her about money and, his pills are missing.” I knew what she meant by “his pills.”

            “What do you want me to do about it?” I asked. “Talk to him,” came the reply. “I can’t do that. It isn’t my place.” Isn’t my place. Funny. Later, when he heard I was arrested he sat on his bathroom floor and broke down. Two months later, he came to see me at the jail and has been there ever since. And, I’ve opened up to him about all this and everything that was happening in my life when I decided “all this” (this result) was worth the risk.

            I found out he’d been through a devastating divorce years earlier. His first wife had an affair with one of his friends and she took a lot of his assets. He had a hard time with trust after that. I listened to his story and realized two things. First, he knew what I was feeling in my own marital collapse. Second, I should have been a better friend before my arrest. I should have known what he’d gone through.

            A better friend. Let me tell you about Charlie. Charlie was my “go-to” guy at home. His wife and mine became best friends and the two of us gravitated toward each other. Charlie’s fairly quiet; his heart is in music – he’s a jazz saxophonist with a PhD (go figure!) in jazz from LSU. Charlie’s the quiet guy – except when he’s around me. Then, he talks. I don’t even know how to put into words what a real friend Charlie is.

            Two weeks after my arrest, two weeks of my life completely collapsing with my sanity barely intact, Charlie sends me a Bible. And at first, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it – what was he trying to tell me? Was he saying, “You need to get right with God?” But, here’s what I knew: I’d already actively contemplated ending it all; I was scared; I thought I was losing my mind; and my worst fears, those gnawing thoughts that my wife never loved me, were coming true. So, I opened that Bible and started reading and haven’t missed a day since.

            That Bible has become a record of my life in here. Good days and bad days I read and record notes in the margins. So often, it would be a Psalm or a piece from one of Paul’s letters that would help me regain perspective and focus. Charlie’s Bible saved my life. Without it, I’m not sure if I could have survived any of this.

            And Charlie? It was Charlie who told me she was going forward with the divorce. It was Charlie who told me she was remarrying. Charlie has always shot straight with me and he’s never asked why I ended up here, never judged me. It was always a simple smile and shrug and a, “You’d do the same for me. That’s what friends do.”

            What friends do. You want to know who your real friends are? Fuck up royally. Make an utter and complete mess of your life then see who stays around. Chances are, your circle will end up with a finger count with a thumb and pinkie left over. Most folks don’t stay when it’s hitting the fan. But the two guys I just wrote about aren’t most folks – thank God for that.

            Friends. I had a guy I was very close to in here. So close, in fact, that I let him meet my family and shared blogs I was writing. I stood up for him one time about eighteen months ago when guys began a whisper campaign that he wasn’t who he claimed to be. “He’s a sex offender, Larry. He messed with underage girls.” That wasn’t what he told me. Besides, he’d always shot straight with me. I told those guys I judged men in here by their behavior in these circumstances, not what led them here. It was a great soliloquy and my chest expanded with pride. I was a good friend, I told myself.

            I was also naïve. See, he got busted and we discovered he was dirty, dirty as could be, and all those thoughts I had about him having my back – it wasn’t so. He endangered me, and my friend DC, and the entire college program.

            I thought about that a lot the other day after my two buddies left visitation. God has blessed me with these two – and so many others. And, I try and reciprocate that love and friendship in here to guys. It’s just not the same.

            There are a few men I’ve met in here who I consider like family. Friends, real friends, are few and far between.

Birthday

            A little story – I had just finished a five-week trial, my first big case as a lawyer. I was defending four prominent local citizens who served as directors in a small East Tennessee bank. The bank failed – part of Tennessee’s 1982 bank run that led a few lawyers to suicide, ruined a number of politician’s careers, and led young lawyers like me into battle after battle in court.

            Here I was, less than four years removed from law school and I was trying a multimillion-dollar shareholder suit. Don’t get me wrong; I wasn’t in over my head. I was a good, aggressive trial lawyer. I wouldn’t quit and I didn’t like to lose (two traits that helped me survive my early days in prison). I was in court eight to ten hours each day; then, to the office for three to four hours (plus weekends). Finally, home to an eight-month pregnant wife.

            The jury stayed out a day and a half. Finally, a little after lunch, they came in with a verdict: for the defense on all counts. My clients were vindicated. I drove home and walked into a completely cleaned house and huge meal (a new recipe she was trying – beef stroganoff). I didn’t know what “nesting” meant until later, that surge of energy right before birth.

            I settled in to watch the NIT final. It was a little after eleven when she told me her water broke. “It’s too early.” I said (we were three weeks from his due date). We went to the hospital got her in a room, and less than three hours later I saw him born. He was beautiful. And I held him moments after he took his first breath. I looked at him and knew there was a God. And I don’t know why, but I leaned in close to him and sang my favorite Bob Dylan song, “Forever Young.” It was for me, every wish I had for my precious son.

            There are a thousand memories like that floating in my heart and head right now. There’s the time I was the only dad in the pool during “Mother-tot” swim and he and I swam circles around the others. There was 1993 and my beloved New York Rangers won the Stanley Cup, their only one since the 1940s. It was nearly 1:00 am and I went up to his room and picked him up and carried him down to our living room. As the players skated around the ice and Natalie Merchant’s song, “These Are Days” played, I held him and told him this is why we stay loyal to our teams, to our families – it’s for days like these.

            For so long we were inseparable. He thought I was perfect – the perfect lawyer, father, husband. Maybe that was the problem. Or maybe, I led him to believe the world was black and white. Either way, my arrest changed us. It destroyed a family and for that I am solely responsible. Someone asked me a question about my “ex” the other day and in a moment of unimaginable honesty I told her I live with more heartache over my ex and my sons than anyone knows. There is nothing that prison could do to me that cuts me quite like that.

            My older son turns 26 tomorrow. He is a remarkable young man – An honors graduate of a prestigious liberal arts college and a soon-to-be law school grad. He married his college sweetheart who is as beautiful as she is brilliant. He has his whole life ahead of him – a great job already lined up; a young wife who loves him. And I miss him terribly.

            Birthdays, anniversaries, so many memories. Those are my real prison sentence. But, like Paul in his letter to the Romans put it, “But we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.”

            Maybe Paul Simon explained it better. I found myself singing this song as I ran this morning:

            “Oh little darling of mine

            I just can’t believe it’s so

            And though it seems strange to say

            I never been laid so low

            In such a mysterious way

            And the course of a lifetime runs

            Over and over again

            But I would not give you false hope

            On this strange and mournful day

            When the mother and child reunion

            Is only a motion away.

            Happy Birthday son. I love you. Dad.

Chase to Freedom

            He didn’t look like the other IT students when he started back in late 2012. Back then we were operating under a special DOJ grant to provide college training to “at risk” offenders – guys who were classified as “likely” to re-offend after release. And you could spot those a mile away. They were young – mid-twenties mostly – with their state jeans sagging low, their language coarse, their attitudes arrogant. You’d look their name up on the admittance data sheet and see a compass score (recidivism likelihood test) of “9 out of 10” or even “10 out of 10.” You couldn’t make a bet in Vegas on these guys succeeding. They were all on their second – or third – two year bid, heading for twenty to thirty inside a few years at a time.

            But he was different. He was mid to late forties and quiet. He carried himself with a dignity you earn in a place like this over years of watching the system break so many others. He introduced himself to me in a soft voice, polite. “I’m not very studious,” he said. “But I’ve been gone so long I know I need this program.” He told me he never so much as turned a computer on, nor had he ever written anything other than his GED essay ten years earlier at a higher security level.

            I checked the sheet. First name, “Chase,” Compass score, three. He was an atypical student. Over the next six months he and I grew closer. When he started our intro computer class he typed ten words a minute, mechanically scanning the keyboard and plunking down his left or right index finger. He would read and reread English assignments; he’d write three, even four drafts of papers. Slowly each week there’d be improvement.

            And the two of us began to talk. He was originally from Baltimore, public housing that was gutted to make way for the hotels and tourists spots that became the Inner Harbor. He’d sold drugs, “managed” women (i.e. prostitution) and nearly killed a man. For that he got twenty years. And so, at age twenty-seven, after two short stays in the Baltimore City Jail in his late teens and early twenties, he started doing real time at a high security prison in Virginia.

            Here was the thing about Chase – he was real. He wasn’t some caricature of an inmate/rapper/future NBAer; he was a guy who lived – who survived – the worst of DOC and found his soul. A few years in, he converted to Islam. So many of the Muslim inmates, like so many of the Christian inmates, are civilly religious. By that I mean they love the trappings of the religion and the grouping participation gives you, without the responsibility. Chase, however, was devout in his faith. He wasn’t saying he was Muslim while gambling, stealing, and selling porn. He was peaceful; twice I saw him break up fights.

            Yeah, Chase is a good guy. He finished out IT program and stayed in the college building making candy – that’s right, he’s the resident candy-maker. About two months ago he started going to medical every few weeks. “I have a swollen saliva gland,” he told me. “The doctor said to suck on sour candy and that would clear it up.” Two months later and his neck swelled. Medical got a little concerned then. So they sent him to Southampton Hospital for tests. The results weren’t good. Chase has stage “2” Lymphoma. He begins chemo tomorrow morning.

            For six weeks Chase will be shackled and transported each morning to McV Hospital in Richmond. They’ll drive him back each night and lock him in an isolation cell. That’s cancer treatment in prison. I’m probably more upset about it than Chase is. “It’s all part of being locked up,” he matter-of-fact told me.

            Being locked up is always an excuse for bad treatment. It was Chuck Colson, who following his “Damascus Conversion” and prison stay wrote, “Prisons are evil. They don’t rehabilitate … when you send kids to prison already embittered and they are brutalized and ignored they don’t change. Jesus commanded us to be salt and light in the world.”

            Chase isn’t the first inmate I’ve known who’s gotten sick in prison. Ray – a 66 year-old Vietnam Vet – has fourteen months left. He takes nitroglycerin almost daily for his weakened attack-prone, heart. Why is he still in here? Surely the state can see the logic in releasing seriously ill offenders a little early. Unfortunately, in our “tough on crime” Alice-in-Wonderland state, you have to be within “90 days of death” to even be eligible for early medical release.

            Chase is prepared for chemo. And, he takes the misdiagnosis in stride. Still, I can’t help but wonder what it says about us as people that we tolerate what happens behind bars in the name of justice. Chase told me the other day, “Cancer or no cancer, I’m walking out of here in December.” I wouldn’t bet against him.

But Hey …

            The other day another female officer was “escorted” – classy word “escorted” – off the compound. She was “involved” with an inmate. Her Don Juan was sitting in 7 building, a/k/a “the hole” dealing with a fraternization claim and a pending transfer. The officer? She’s gone, but she won’t be prosecuted. Officers in DOC don’t get prosecuted very often. That’s just the way things are. Two have a relationship; the inmate loses his good time and goes up a security level. But the officer – fired or, more likely, resigned and still gets the state retirement years from now. But hey, that’s the way it is.

            “Shawshank Redemption,” the movie and Stephen King short story, brutally depicts Andy Dufresne’s wrongful conviction and life behind bars in a fictitious Maine prison named Shawshank. We read and see a world of violence, and wasted life, and corruption at the hands of prison administrators and guards who treat the facility like their own money dispenser. In the midst of that Andy keeps hope. Hope, he says, “Is a good thing, maybe the best thing. And hope never dies.” But that’s just a movie, just an eighty-page short story. Funny how life imitates art.

            Corruption is rampant in here. And I would expect it from the inmates. After all, scams and hustles make life go on behind bars. But the extent to which those running the prison are dirty, well it’s hard to tell one shade of blue from another.

            Fraternization is always a problem. A few times each year there goes another female officer or female counselor out the front. And it’s not just the sex that gets compromised. Those officers look out for their “boos.” Dirty officers feed information; dirty inmates do the same. So the game’s fixed; the field isn’t level.

            Drugs, tobacco, cellphones. Imagine getting “shook down” by a dirty C/O. You know she brings in cartons of cigarettes for $100 a carton. Here she is confiscating your extra shirts. Who are you going to tell? For all you know, she’s paying off the C/O up front. And you – you’re screwed. You’re a rat; you’re off the compound, sent somewhere where time isn’t as easy. Hey, that’s the way it is.

            Officer comes to you, “I need a gun cabinet built.” The wood – birch, beautiful stuff – has been ordered through the school for “carpentry projects.” So the carpenter, getting forty-five cents an hour, builds the gun cabinet. It’s friggin’ beautiful; stained, inlay work. He builds two matching bookcases and end tables. And all that stuff – all that furniture – goes right out the back through the sally port. Free furniture courtesy of the taxpayers who’ve been lied to so they think these places keep them safe.

            Everything in here has a price. Everything in here can be bought. So you see guys getting high on the rec yard and you want to say, “Hey dumbass, that’s what they put you in here for.” You know the dope came in by an officer so you ignore it. All you do is hope, hope you get through this and when you get out someone gives a damn that you kept your honor and dignity in a dark and discouraging place.

            Andy says hope’s a good thing, maybe the best thing. Andy says hope never dies. But hey, that was a movie. This is real.