Punch Sense

      My buddy DC has a lot of stories. Forty plus years behind bars will do that. And this week, as domestic violence was put at the forefront with casino video of an NFL player knocking his fiancée unconscious and then dragging her out of an elevator, DC’s stories again had relevance.

            He was 18 and a violent, crazed man. He also was a great boxer (the best at his weight on the east coast) and engaged to a young woman. They already had a six month-old daughter. Weekends and DC would head up I-95 for Harlem. He told Mary it was to train and workout with New York fighters. She suspected different … and she was right.

            One weekend she followed him. He ended up in a hotel on 123^rd street. It became clear to Mary that DC was a regular there. Everyone knew him. She followed him to his room and waited. A while later, she went in and found her fiancé with two other women. Not a good situation. “So Main Man, I kept guns with me at all times, three of ‘em on the dresser. Mary, she’s cryin’ and she picks one up and says ‘I can’t believe you’d treat me like this.’ She lifts the gun toward me and it goes off – I don’t think she was tryin’ to shoot me, but she did.”

            The bullet hit DC in the back of the head, at a side glance and came around by his ear.” And I’m bleeding saying ‘why you tryin’ to shoot me?’” Fast forward past the trip to Bellevue and the interview with the NYPD detectives (You’re telling us some stranger broke in your room and shot you?”) and DC is back in the Capitol City. And his fiance’s family is worried because, as I said earlier, DC has a reputation as a “bad man.” Everyone is worried but Mary. “He won’t do anything because he’s a man and a man never hits a woman.”

            A man never hits a woman. Wow, what a novel concept. At least that’s the way it appears when you turn on the TV. Every night is just another domestic violence story. And in here, I’m constantly amazed at the guys who freely admit to “smakin” their woman. “Violence,” they say, “is as American as apple pie.” In here we must be running a bakery.

            A personal side story. Early in my law practice I was asked to take a pro bono case. A young mom, two kids under age four in tow, came to my office. Her eye was puffy, her lip swollen. “He’s been hitting me and pushing me,” she told me. I slowly and methodically explained how I could walk over to the courthouse and get a restraining order. “The police will put him out. You and the kids will be able to return home. While they waited in our law office lobby, I drafted the documents. My secretary called the court and a few moments later I was walking into the Judge’s chambers. The Judge listened to my ex parte explanation and signed the order. Before I left, he’d had a copy taken to the sheriff’s department to be hand served on my client’s husband.

            I walked back to my office self-satisfied that I’d done my part to “protect” this pretty, young wife. I explained to my client that she needed to come back and see me in one week. “We need to go before the court and get the temporary order made permanent.” She leaned over and hugged me. “Thank you,” she said and I felt like being a lawyer mattered.

            The next week I’m prepped for the hearing. Only trouble is, I don’t have a client. I call the court and we delay the hearing an hour. “Where is she?” I call out to Lisa, my secretary who’s trying to her home phone over and over (this is 1985, before cellphones!) Finally, I hear Lisa talking. She hangs up and comes into my office. “Well … where is she?” I ask in frustration.

            “She’s not coming. She says they made up. He’s promised to never hit her again. She loves him and knows he means it this time.” And I’m stunned and pissed – “look at all the effort I expanded for her and for what!” I couldn’t get my hands around her mindset.

            I go back to DC’s approach – you never hit a woman. I just can’t make exceptions on that rule just like the child abuse rule. Guys who will hurt women and children are at their core messed up. But what can be done?

            First, we know violence begets violence. Show me an abused child and chances are that child will be an abuser. We live in a culture where we relish violence and then abhor it when it progresses. We scream for revenge when violence is perpetrated on us, yet we demand an “eye for an eye.”

            On any given day in here there is at least one fight, one brawl, one pummeling. And as I watch the news, I wonder if anything is really different “out there?” Life, inside and outside, has become like a thunder dome. Perhaps it’s time for all of us to focus on less violence in our words, our deeds, our responses.

            Second, a lot of time is spent questioning the victim’s motives. That has no place in any discussion. What motivates a woman go stay – like my client 30 years ago or Ray Rice’s wife today – does not justify any of the actions perpetrated against them. Violence against a woman is wrong. Period. DC’s wife had it right, “A man never hits a woman.”

Wide Water

            In one of his first attempts at non-fiction, novelist Pat Conroy detailed his year teaching school on Daufuskie Island, South Carolina. Conroy, a graduate of the Citadel during the turbulent late 1960’s, chose a different path from most of his classmates. They chose military service and Vietnam, he became a teacher.

            “The Water is Wide” details Conroy’s year teaching poor, black students, descendants of the “Gullahs” who lived on all of South Carolina’s barrier islands. Daufuskie today is a retreat for the wealthy and privileged elite with multi-million dollar homes accessible only by ferry. You stand on the beach at Daufuskie and see Hilton Head Island to the Northeast; to the South lies Tybee Island and Savannah. These islands reek of money and success and whiteness; it is a far cry from Conroy’s time there.

            Conroy was changed by his year on Daufuskie. He didn’t survive the school year. The all-white school board located on the mainland, wanted nothing to do with Conroy’s ideas of exposing the island children to the world beyond their shores. And that, Conroy realized, was a problem. All these beautiful black children knew was life on Daufuskie. To the school board, that was fine. “The Water is Wide” is a metaphor for the figurative miles that separated theses children from a better life; it was also a metaphor for the distance that racism had created in the hearts of the all-white school board to the plight of the children of Daufuskie.

            I found myself thinking of Conroy’s story the other night as I watched Cubby get hauled out of the building and taken to “the hole.” He’ll be in there ten, maybe fifteen days and then they’ll ship him to a higher level – “3” or “4” – to finish his last nine months. Cubby – a cherub-faced twenty-two year old white kid – is a heroin addict. He’s “dirty;” at least once a week he spends $50 on a chapstick capful of heroin that he snorts and smokes. The heroin leaves him nearly incoherent and red-faced. He scratches and jerks and then finds himself violently vomiting for hours.

            “The Water is Wide,” so very wide. I know why Cubby uses. And, I know he’ll continue to use until he dies from an overdose. There isn’t anything DOC is doing about it. Yeah, they see him high; they piss test him; they throw him in solitary; and he gets out and finds the drugs – or the drugs find him – and he uses. He could die in here; heroin is a killer. No one will accept blame; no one – it seems is responsible; not DOC, not his mom. And all Cubby knows is the heroin helps him sleep.

            Last semester, the students were given a writing assignment. “Describing a life-defining moment.” And, in my job as TA, I read and reread the fifteen or so papers and offered style and grammar changes. I came to Cubby’s paper and felt like I’d been punched in the gut.

            He described how as an eleven year-old middle class boy, his life was turned upside down when his father – “his hero” – was arrested. He wrote, “I walked my dog at night around the neighborhood and wondered why my dad did it. Why did I have to lose my dad? What did I do to deserve this?” I read it and froze. See, my younger son was also eleven when I was arrested. And all the guilt I carry from letting him down overwhelmed me.

            So, I talked to Cubby, trying to understand his feelings over his dad’s arrest. But he looked at me and said, “Larry, you took money. You were, you are a good guy who screwed up. My dad was molesting my sister...” and he trailed off and I did the only thing I seem to think can work when these young men bare their souls to me. I hugged him like I used to hug my own sons.

            The water is wide, so very wide and swift. Cubby’s story described the first time he used heroin – at fifteen – and his father’s release from prison (after less than 30 months) and his inability to confront or hate his dad. I read and I hoped that his story would provide a catharsis and he would be healed and his pain would subside. But, he is too far from the shore and the water is wide.

            Cubby is one of dozens, maybe hundreds of addicts, I’ve met on this island. And all they know is the addiction. Cubby’s mother brings him pills when she visits she “knows” her son is suffering so she sneaks in pain pills every Sunday to “help him” relax. He gulps them down and fades … fades back into oblivion. And she’s killing him – or at least helping to – one handful of pills at a time. I wonder if she’ll feel responsible when her son overdoses, when he’s just another dead addict on the medical examiner’s slab?

            “He needs to just quit.” “He’s nothing but a junkie.” I hear it all the time here on my island. Hell, I thought it all the time when I lived “out there,” on the “mainland,” when the water was wide enough to keep me from such people, such things …

            We have a new college instructor, biology teacher, a sweet woman. She saw Cubby nodding off in class. She had to let him know the investigator needed to speak with him. Class ended and she approached me. “Will he be alright? I could tell he was in a bad way.” Her worry, her care and concern were obvious and so alien to life at this place. I assured her it wasn’t his first go-round with drugs and the investigators. And I told her he’d be all right – even while I don’t believe it.

            They’ll send him to a higher level and he’ll be preyed upon by some ruthless sociopathic inmate for whom a young man is nothing but fresh meat. And the demons that torment Cubby will grow and he’ll find more drugs and the gulf between the world “out there” and the pain in his soul lengthens because the water is wide, too wide for our humanity which seems in such short supply, to overcome.

            I had a GED student, TMac. He never amounted to anything in class. Forty-something and just obnoxious and ignorant. He would come in and out of school and no matter how hard I worked, how much effort I put forth, he just didn’t care about getting his high school education. So, I start working full time for the college program and I start teaching computer classes and I leave the adult basic ed students to other aides.

            TMac approached me the other day. He needed help filling out papers for a Richmond City program to get him drug treatment and counseling. And I was curt and short-tempered with him. “Why do you want my help now?” I said. He looked down and quietly said, “I’m an addict. I been here inside seven times. I can’t go back out and use again.” You ever feel like dirt on a shoe? Where had my humanity gone? The water, the wide gulf between this island and compassion, had – I feared – washed over me.

            “Am I my brother’s keeper?” DOC will tell you in here the answer is no. Cubby is just a junkie. And junkies rise … and fall on their own weakness. The water, the wide water, tells you that. I lay in my bunk the other night and prayed about Cubby and this seemingly impassable waterway. The separation on this island and these men – like Cubby – who only know what they feel. And what they feel is pain and shame and failure. That water is so wide and prison makes it worse. But there can be a bridge, a way across. Cubby has to swim, one stroke at a time; swim to shore and peace and self-awareness. I have to believe he can make it. I have to believe we all can.

Guilty

            I had a bet with my friend DC. Twenty-five push-ups per count. “Main Man, there’s no way a jury is gonna convict that man,” he said. “Just watch,” I told him. And the verdict came down: “guilty!” Eleven times the word was read. DC – and half the commonwealth – was shocked. I wasn’t. I take no glee in watching former Governor McDonnell’s life come crashing down. I’ve been there. But, having been there, I knew the result beforehand. Allow me some brief observations since I’ve gone through it.

            First, Mr. McDonnell has not honestly come to terms with his actions. Had he, he wouldn’t have put on that ridiculous defense blaming everything on Lady Macbeth, excuse me, Mrs. McDonnell. For years I rationalized and compartmentalized my wrong doing. Help in the community, work my butt off for my employer and my church, tithe to charities – all that I used to balance against my criminal conduct. Then a funny thing happened in late 2007. The rationalizations stopped working.

            I quit sleeping; I started drinking more. And, every quiet moment in my car became a conversation with God. “I’m out of control,” I’d say. “I don’t want to lose my wife and kids; I don’t want to go to prison.” For almost a year I prayed for a divine miracle all the while thinking I’d be better off dead. Then the day came and the call to the company’s president’s office and the five page letter where I was told I was being placed on “paid suspension” while an investigation was conducted over financial “irregularities.” I never read the letter. I knew what I’d done and I knew it was wrong. Then and there I admitted it.

            Gov Bob hasn’t gotten there, even now. Photos of him driving a Ferrari or smirking with Rolex blinging on his wrist and he says, “Hey, it’s ok.” No, it’s not … and he knows it. His own staff begged him not to wear the watch; his security detail tried to get him to avoid the Ferrari. And, Bob McDonnell is a smart man; he’s a decent man. But let me let you in on a little “truth” – good, smart, decent men are capable of doing wrong things.

            His defense, blaming his wife, stupid! You man-up and you take it; you stand there alone and you take the punishment. You don’t throw the woman who gave you five children under the bus to save yourself. A side story: Detective Clouseau (the investigator on my case) couldn’t believe I’d just admit everything. So, he decides there had to be millions stashed away. He teams up with a forensic accountant and schedules a “big meeting” with me. The detective tries to play “good cop” while the accountant is “bad cop.” They tell me they want “the truth” or they’ll prosecute my wife, throw her and my kids on the street. They’ll go on a hunt at work and “anyone” who received anything from me will be fired and perhaps worse. I listen to this bullshit for a few minutes and then I snap. “Leave … my wife and kids out of this! Leave everyone else alone or I swear I will fight and drag this out for years!”

            I’m red in the face; my shackled hands have slammed the table; and, I don’t give a damn what happens to me. There’s a pause, silence, and then the company President whispers to the accountant. A ten minute break and “Alright Larry. We won’t bother anyone …” I make no plea deal; I save the house and assets for my family and ironically I find my equilibrium. No one was responsible for the mess I found myself in other than me. Governor McDonnell needs to find that same honesty inside.

            Then there was the report about the Governor’s reaction to the verdict. He sobbed; he fell apart. Sentencing day. I’m alone in a basement holding cell at the Goochland County Courthouse. My wife isn’t there; she’s ready to file for divorce as soon as certain “settlement” papers are signed that day with my employer. I’m hoping for “time-served.” My lawyer says, “Prepare for two and a half to four years.” I go into the courtroom in shackles on my feet, waist, and hands. I see my parents for the first time in eight months.

            The hearing begins. The Prosecutor, who’s already told my attorney he’s being pressured by my former employer for a stiff sentence asks for thirty years. “They’ll suspend almost all of it,” my attorney whispers to me. My turn and three friends, three men who never have wavered in their belief and support for me, testify about who I really am. Other letters are read including one from a few elderly African-American women who served with me on a local food pantry board. “Jesus loves Larry and would show him mercy. Do the same for this decent man.” I fight back tears. I feel like shit about myself. They feel otherwise.

            Then, I speak. I make no excuses. I apologize to my family, my employer, my friends, and the court. I hear two young women – my paralegals – sobbing as I speak. I finish and I wait and then the Judge sentences me: “fifteen years with the Department of Corrections.” I am given more time that most child pornographers, child molesters, and second degree murderers.

            “Anything else from the defense?” The judge looks down at my lawyer and me. “No your Honor,” I say and add, “thank you.” I’m escorted from the courtroom. I won’t cry; I won’t succumb. I am alone in that holding cell and I repeatedly ask God why He just won’t let me die. An elderly sheriff’s deputy drives me back to the Henrico Jail. He is the same deputy who has driven me all four times that I’ve left the jail to go to court.

            There are no words between us on this trip. I look straight ahead and have no thoughts. We arrive at the jail and he escorts me in and signs me back over to Henrico authorities. My life feels over.

            As he is unhooking my shackles he speaks to me.” Mr. B, you are a decent man. Never forget that. You did yourself proud today. You can get through this.” I have never forgotten that deputy or his words. I’ve often wondered why he chose to speak such encouragement to me. Perhaps my behavior that day really did matter; perhaps it was God sending a message.

            The other morning, one of the teachers I work for asked me if the Governor “will be able to carry himself through this as well as I have.” I was stunned for a second. See, I know how tough this has been. And, every day I feel like I let someone down. I remembered that night after sentencing reading Psalm 27:

            “Though an army may encamp against me,

            My heart shall not fear …”

            And I thought about Hemingway – “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

            Governor McDonnell is a convicted felon. And, he’s a disgraced lawyer. He will, in all likelihood, go to prison. He will lose his retirement, his wealth. His marriage is over. His reputation damaged. But if he listens to the quiet voice inside he will overcome this. We are better than these convictions. We are broken, but in those breaks comes rebuilding.

            If he asked me, I would tell him this – don’t fight to save your past; move forward to save your soul.

            Perhaps, just perhaps it is in these failures that God’s true path for us comes through. Good, decent men can overcome their wrongs.

            Grace Potter, what a gorgeous woman with a beautiful voice, sings “Low Road” with this,

            But it’s a low, low road

            You’ve gotta roll down

            Before you find your way, my friend

            And it’s a high, high hill

            You’ve gotta climb up

            Before you get to the top again.

            Someone needs to let Governor McDonnell hear that song.

Thoughts on the Governors

Governor Bob has had his whole life exposed during these past 5 weeks. We’ve learned his marriage was in disarray and his wife was a loud, abrasive, near psychotic who could have given Lady Macbeth a run for her money. We’ve also learned Bob was corrupt.

Now, the Gov.’s future, his freedom, rests with a jury. Hey Gov. – I’ve been there. The difference between you and me is I knew what I was doing was wrong; and, I “manned up,” admitted my wrongdoing and took the heat. I didn’t defend my actions on the back of my wife and our problems.

I had a bemused reaction the other day when I heard Mr. McDonnell say he wished he acted in a different manner, but all of us do things we regret. No kidding. As Governor, he could have applied that philosophy to thousands of men and women behind bars who deserve a “second chance” and who shouldn’t be doing time just for time’s sake.

But he didn’t. He supported the present criminal justice system that sends way too many to prison for way too long; it’s a system forged in retribution and vengeance that costs the commonwealth dearly in destroyed lives and communities.

A quote about liberals goes like this: “A liberal is a conservative who’s been arrested.” Governor Bob will soon learn his fate. Perhaps this will be Mr. McDonnell’s Damascus moment when he will find his real calling and his soul. That would be a better result than sending him to prison. I know from personal experience. 

And out new Gov. – Governor Terry? He’s presiding over a budget meltdown. He has the chance to do something extraordinary and change the money-sucking criminal justice/corrections operation in the state.

Like Moses to the Pharaoh, hey Gov., “let these people go.” Institute meaningful early release. Restructure sentencing. Fire your DOC head and his sycophant managers and bring in real reform-minded leadership. Re-establish a parole system that rewards good behavior.

What is happening is DOC has to find $43 million in immediate cuts. “Buy less office supplies” is the message to staff. Are you kidding me? Virginia’s prisons are too full, too expensive to run, and have too many non-violent offenders just “doing time.”

Come on Governor Terry. Be courageous; be bold; make real savings happen. 

Transitions

Nothing remains constant in here, least of all the population. It didn’t used to be that way. Years earlier, you went to a prison and you stayed there for years. You knew who was living around you. Every week just two or three would leave and two or three would take their place. Now, it’s a whole new world of corrections – which is odd because the Virginia state budget is such a mess, you would think they’d quit locking people up for stupid, short sentence stuff and then moving them from low custody facility to low custody facility. Transitions are part of life; in here you move, things change, just for the hell of it.

So last week, “Randy” left, He was supposed to have gone in February but he’s a “civil commitment” guy. You know, his sex crime was so severe, so abnormal, that he has to be civilly committed. Here’s the funny thing – he spent his entire time in low custody. I’ve met violent predatory sex offenders who have been at high security levels worked their way down here, who aren’t civilly committed. Meanwhile, this guy “Randy” spends his eight years here (that’s right, 8 years for sick child porn) then goes through a due process hearing for the last 6 months before heading to the “behavioral science” center.

Early in the morning last week (before 6:00 am count) they woke him up. “Get all your stuff. They’re coming for you at 6:30.” And that was it. Randy will be held in sex detention for a year. Then, they’ll be another hearing to determine if he’s “cured.” Can you ever be “cured” of aberrant sexual feelings?”

Transitions. They moved a gay guy into the building the other day. Change that. We’ve had gay guys in the building before. We’ve never had a guy who sits to urinate, plucks his eyebrows, and calls all the officers “sugar.” I’ve seen all this before, the flamboyance and exaggeration. Is it real? I’m not sure, but prison is a mass of guys wanting people to think you are something/someone other than who you really are. Guys aren’t just gay in prison, they’re “Bird Cage” over the top gay.

The whole building environment changed when he swished his way in. There’s an air of uncomfortableness. A few closeted fellows feel emboldened and become more gay; others more homophobic. The building is tense. Meanwhile, he sings show tunes in the shower.

Football season kicked off last weekend and with it, gambling tickets flew around the compound. One of our college guys runs back and is pretty good on his lines. Just on Saturday he took in over $500 in tickets. I watched him sweat out a few “10 pick” tickets late Saturday – they could have hurt him; instead, it was a profitable weekend; very profitable. 

Fall is always a transition time in here. Football keeps things moving. Forget New Years; the first Thursday night catches almost everyone’s attention. With football season you know fall lockdown is coming. After that, Thanksgiving and Christmas. So stamps thousands of them – change hands with tickets: 5 picks, 8 picks, parlays; gambling is back with a vengeance.

Every week, twenty to thirty new guys show up and the same number leave. DOC spends millions each year “transporting” – i.e. moving 3 or 4 guys at a time on old school busses to various prisons around the state. It’s a stupid system which makes perfect sense in a money wasting backward operation which is DOC. And yet, the “new” guys coming in aren’t new. So many are back for round “3” or “4.” The “system” hasn’t worked; it hasn’t rehabilitated them. They grease the wheels of the system; they keep DOC in business.

And the guys showing up are uneducated and ignorant; many are plain dumb. They have little – if any – hope of success outside. Prison time becomes just another season for them. They cycle in and out. They “remember” on their last bid that “chicken on the bone” was served every week. “They don’t feed us like they use to,” they moan. Maybe, you should stay out, you think.

It’s a mind-numbing process. Like a hamster on a wheel, you move at break neck speed hoping to outrun this time. You try to ignore the predilections and violence of so many around you. You try to find humanity in your surroundings. You try and block out the guy who lies about his military status as he seeks to con a free education. You think “I can do this; I can get through this.” Like Andy Dufresne in “Shawshank Redemption” you try and hold on to beauty and joy and hope so you don’t transition into just another DOC number.

Transition may be the wrong word. It’s a conveyor belt in here. And for far too many, the belt runs into a wall. You have to be better than that.

A Tale of Two Cities

The dichotomy was apparent. During the same weekend; from the same city, great joy and pride and terrible heartache and loss. Chicago. Summer in Chicago. And like so many other summers in that mid-western city, the blood of its youth spills too easily. Black children lying dead. Teenagers gunned down by gun-toting Black teenagers shouting gang slogans. A three year old shoots himself in the head with a gun his paroled felon father – a gun he should not have because of his criminal record – carelessly left out. Five dead. All children. Another weekend in Chicago and it barely registers a mention on the news.

Pennsylvania. Baseball; little league baseball. An all-black team from the Southside of Chicago, “the baddest part of town.” They win the American draw, beating a team from Nevada who five days earlier had knocked them around. It’s Williamsport – idyllic, rural Pennsylvania – where every summer young baseball players from around the world gather and play the greatest game on fields of green grass and manicured infields. Baseball and Pennsylvania are a million miles from Chicago.

For months the talking heads on Sports TV have decried the absence of Black big leaguers. And, by the numbers they are right. Growing up, I remember Mays and Aaron, and Gibson. I wanted to be Willie Mays. Today, less than one in ten ball players are African American. The pundits have a dozen theories. But, I listened as the coach of the all-black squad from Chicago, from the almost all-black “Jackie Robinson Little League” answered the question:

“Baseball is a game passed down by your father. In our league we still have a lot of fathers. It’s not that way for everyone.”

Jackie Robinson. Perhaps no single man’s courage and self-control mattered more in the country’s slow march toward integration than he did. Jackie Robinson, a great man, a hero. And yet today, more young black kids in Chicago can tell you about Jay Z than Jackie. Who really matters? What really matters?

Missouri. Over four thousand people gather for the funeral of a young black man gunned down by a white police officer. No one yet knows what happened. I don’t presume to know what was in the officer’s heart before firing those fateful shots and I choose to believe he is distraught because blood has been spilled. Too many – on both sides – use this tragedy for their own political ends. Blood spilled and a family mourns a son gone too young. And, another family lives with the repercussions.

Here’s what I wonder, how many black children have to die in the street of Chicago at the hands of other black children before someone stands up and says “enough!” Where is the national outrage and national dialog as we watch thousands of young kids turning to gangs and killing each other? Why is “Ferguson” the issue and not just a symptom of something so much larger? And why are we not watching – and listening – to the mothers and fathers of those ballplayers?

A young man I know in here from Richmond told me about the shootings that regularly took place near his home. He was raised in a home with a mom too young to care for herself, let alone three young kids. So “Gramma” became their refuge. “Gramma” fed them, even when it was just mayonnaise on white bread. “Gramma” was responsible. Mom? She was in and out; Dad? He was at “state farm” (Powhatan to those not “in the know” on Virginia’s prisons).

And summers in Richmond, summers in the city’s notorious Gilpin Court, were filled with robberies and drug deals and killings. My young friend whom I tutor in English and Excel and any other class which comes our way, tells me when he was six he was sitting on the front stoop with his brother and sister. “It was loud, like a firecracker. Pop, pop, pop. Then, people across the street started running and that’s when I saw him … bleeding as he fell in the street.” His first seen “body.” Man shot across the street staggers and dies yards from him. And his six-year-old eyes see it all.

A few moments later, the police and an ambulance arrive. The neighbors stand all around but nobody “saw anything,” at least not in Gilpin Court. An ice cream truck approaches and Gramma gets the three kids popsicles, “Red, white, and blue rockets,” he tells me. They stand with the others behind the yellow tape, licking their popsicles as the dead man is loaded up and carted off and the blood, pooled on the ground remains. Gilpin Court, Richmond. Another dead black young man.

I can’t watch the news about Ferguson, Missouri anymore. It seems almost ghoulish and undignified. And, no matter what that young man may – or may not – have done, I can’t help but think it could have been avoided. There are too many dying too young and they look like so many of the young men I care about in here.

I confront race every day in this place. Early on, in my first few weeks in jail when my life was in a complete tailspin, I realized how little I really knew about being black in America. Every opinion I held as fact came from a life almost completely devoid of blackness. Then again, almost every opinion I held as fact came from a life almost completely devoid of contact with poverty, poor education, ignorance, and a whole lot more. My opinions were all forged from my own privileged life. I knew, I soon realized almost nothing about living – and dying – in America. Dylan wrote about such things in “License to Kill,”

Now all he believes are his eyes

And his eyes they just tell him lies

But there’s a woman on my block

Who sits there as the night grows still

She says who’s gonna take away his license to kill?

I hear about my young friend’s life in Richmond, I watch as more families weep over the loss of children cut down for no good reason and I wonder who will take away our license to kill? When will we see beyond color or economic status and mourn, really mourn the incredible waste of life and vow to do better? It seems as if it will overwhelm us, destroy us, condemn us. And then, twenty young black kids in yellow shirts with white pants run across the infield and I see hope.

Two cities. You can take all the pain and death and despair of Chicago, and Ferguson, and Richmond together and weep and lose hope until you see Williamsport, Pennsylvania and grass, and smiles, and baseball. 

You know what gives hope? When all you see and hear is death and anger and you look around your prison housing unit and almost every TV is turned to a team of little leaguers from Chicago and guys, hardened by life and crime and death are pulling for these kids as they play … a game.

There isn’t a black and white; there’s green and there is the sound of a ball coming off a bat and there’s joy. 

Time

Two college guys getting ready to leave. Every week one of the remaining IT guys packs up; it’s been like that all year. We’re down to the last five; five guys all finishing their last few days, or weeks, in here; guys finishing their time. Time. What is it? In here, it’s a whole lot … and it’s nothing.

“Seen a man standin over a dead dog lyin by the highway in a ditch. He’s lookin down kinda puzzled pokin that dog with a stick. Got his car door flung open he’s standin out on Highway 3. Like if he stood there long enough that dog get up and run. Struck me kinda funny seem kinda funny sir to me. At the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe.”

Bruce understands time. Guy’s looking at his dog, thinking he’ll just jump up and go. But he won’t. The time is gone. Time, “a system of measuring duration.” In here, time is everything … and nothing. 

My friend DC has been locked up for forty-two years, let me write that again: 42. 1972 he was arrested and convicted of armed robbery within weeks of the Olympic boxing trials. Nineteen years old and the world waiting to see him in the ring. It didn’t start out as forty-two, the court gave him twelve. Back then you earned 30 for 30; twelve was a max of six. At four, DC made parole, everybody made parole. The weekend before his release there was payback and dead convicts. DC was in solitary facing death or life behind bars … and time moved on.

Mikey, the middle class white kid and so damn smart for fifteen. He stabs a neighbor kid to death and at fifteen he escapes capital murder for a first-degree plea. “Do 25 on 50.” Fifteen years old, what do you know about how long twenty-five years is? Now, he’s 36 and he’s spent more time behind bars than outside. “Under four,” he said a few weeks ago.

You hear years thrown around with almost hushed reverence: 25, 20, 15, 8, 6. On and on time goes. Six years; six years since my arrest. What is it? Divorce; longing; guilt; redemption. There were missed graduations, birthdays, weddings. Tears shed; smiles of nostalgia. “Time heals all wounds,” bullshit. “Time waits for no one,” true. “Time is what you make of it,” thank God!

Years are handed down arbitrarily as though in some mystical calculus this precise number of years, this time, adequately punishes. How many years, how much time is a life worth? How many years equals $2 million? I don’t know the answer. But, I know time doesn’t serve anyone well as a punishment. I asked Mikey one day if he thought his victim’s family has had their pain lessened any by him being in here 21 years. “I don’t think so,” was all he could say.

There was a time during this six years when I thought this time – so arbitrary, so long – was meant to kill me, to break me and leave me with nothing. And then, miraculously, I came to understand time is in His hands. It was no longer a sentence but an opportunity. And my friend DC? “I’m a better man now than I was back then,” he told me. I believe him.

Time wears men down in here. Even short runs – two or three year bits – break men. Life outside moves on and if you dwell on it, it’ll destroy you. Maybe, just maybe that’s where the punishment comes in. One day or ten, if you dwell on the time and thieving nature of it you will succumb. So, you look beyond the years, you look to the future, to life. You look, you hope, you live. Even in here, you live.

Guys prepare to leave. They get quiet; they stay to themselves; they run through all the “what-ifs” – what if I can’t make it out there? But the time comes and they go.

I don’t know how much time a crime is worth. In my former life I thought I knew it all. Now, I have more questions than answers. Like the “Hamburglar” he leaves tomorrow. Eleven years for sexually assaulting a little girl. Has eleven years “cleansed him,” made him realize his sexual proclivities are twisted? I don’t think so. He’s returning to his mother’s home convinced he is the victim. Has eleven years made the neighbors forget what happened? Time has changed nothing, and that is the cruel truth when we rely on time; it has no feeling, no emotion, it just is. 

“Lord won’t you tell us tell us what it means

So at the end of every hard-earned day people 

find some reason to believe.”

Time moves on. New guys show up; old guys go home. People’s lives move on; nothing stays static. You can drift through life – inside or outside – or you can find the reason you’re where you are at that moment. Time is nothing but a measurement. Life is so much more than time. And maybe, just maybe that’s what I needed to learn to begin again. Forty-two years or forty-two days, time is what you do with it.