By prison standards, my reaction is mild. Another guy Dimitri and I become pretty good friends with is Danny Doyle, who’s doing ten years for what we figure is drugs. Then there’s a special on ESPN about Kayla Harrison, the Olympic gold medalist in Judo, and how starting when she was thirteen years old, she was sexually abused by her coach: Daniel Doyle. That’s what he’s in prison for. He’s immediately ostracized. If he were at a higher-security prison, he’d be stabbed, most likely.
* * *
—
I snort heroin a few times at Loretto, to take the edge off. Under normal circumstances, this would obviously be inconsistent with my recent strides toward self-improvement, but these are hardly normal circumstances. I am extremely disciplined and motivated, but I’m also motivated to be active in prison, to make money in prison. Part of me is still curious, and I want to know that I’m capable of running with the dudes who are doing things in here. The qualities I’m applying to prison proficiency—drive, motivation, cleverness—are qualities that will help me pursue my goals after prison.
Getting high every once in a while, ironically, gives me confidence that I’ve licked my addiction. When I’m closer to the door, I’ll test myself more rigorously and make sure I really can leave it alone altogether, but right now I don’t want to deny myself something that lets me unwind every once in a while. The rigors of prison take their toll. I’ve given up smoking. I almost never drink. I rarely smoke dope. But every now and then, it’s nice to have something to look forward to—kicking back with your cellie, taking a little bump, laying back, playing some cards, watching some sports, letting go of everything for a little while.
The original press coverage of my case continues to make life difficult for me. There’s a guy on the compound, Tetley, who’s from Buffalo, claims to be half Italian, and is in an Italian “car,” as a prison racial group is called, that is an offshoot of the main New York Italian car. He has a hustle printing out the betting sheets for guys who run gambling tickets. He’s a thorn in my side, always going up to people I’ve been talking to, asking them why they were talking to me, and trying to stir up trouble.
Early in my time in gen pop, I’m in my cell when Dimitri comes in and says, “Cameron, get your shit together, we’ve got to go out to the yard.” He was just there, and a crowd of whites and Italians, including Tetley, are up on the hill, conferring about whether to beat me off the yard. No one really knows me here, it’s relatively early in my prison sojourn, and they’re going to see if they can push me around, get something from me, test me. They asked Dimitri why he hangs out with me, and Dimitri challenged them.
Jerry Woo, who’s friendly with us both, asks Dimitri if we want him to take care of these guys. Dimitri says, “No, we got this.” I thread a couple of locks onto a belt, and Dimitri and I go outside. There are two of us, and maybe thirty of the whites and Italians. It doesn’t hurt that I’m friendly with guys like Jerry, who has a serious reputation. But also, we’re ready to go—while none of them will make a move. They’re unsure of themselves. This is an important day in establishing myself here.
* * *
—
The next day, in the chow hall, I’m about to sit down at the white table when someone says, “You can sit over there with the chomos.”
I say, “Fuck you guys,” and sit down at their table.
That night, three white supremacists, probably stirred up by the Italians, come into my cell, while another two stand guard outside it. I’m expecting them. I have a padlock on a couple of shoelaces, and I stand in the corner windmilling it as they come at me. Dimitri pushes his way in past the guards, and it turns into a melee, two against three. I get in a couple of good blows and Dimitri does too, and after a minute, which seems like much longer, the whites take off.
No one’s seriously hurt. But this is another important moment, a story that will follow me through prison and help make my reputation as someone who it’s not necessarily safe to fuck with.
* * *
—
I don’t play a lot of handball here, but I’m playing it one Monday, me and Kenny against two Mexicans, when I swing hard and hear three quick pops. I look down and my foot is stuck in a crack. I black out and wake up on the ground. My kneecap is bent sideways over my leg, like I’ve dislocated the joint. I try to move, and a wave of pain surges through my leg. Kenny goes to tell a cop, and after maybe forty-five minutes on the ground, I’m rolled to the medical center in a wheelchair.
I tell Ms. Golden, the same physician’s assistant who pooh-poohed my finger injury previously, that I’ve broken bones before, and I can tell this is serious. She tells me to straighten my leg. I say I can’t, which annoys her, and she has another nurse straighten it and put an immobilizer on it, which is excruciating and not sound medical practice. Then Ms. Golden hands me crutches and sends me on my way.
“Ms. Golden,” I say, “I don’t know what you think, but I can’t walk on these crutches.”
She says, “If I put you in a wheelchair, and I find out you’re not in it, it’s going to be trouble for you. And you’re making me go through all this, now I need to change your bunk assignment.” I have a top bunk and will need a bottom bunk.
“I know it’s a pain in the ass, but the fact is I can’t walk on these crutches, and there’s no way I can get into the top bunk.”
She gives me a piece of paper with the number for a bunk in a different unit, tells me to go there, and leaves.
It’s now a few minutes before the four o’clock count, and I need to roll myself to my new unit. I wheel to the door and can’t reach it with my hands, so I have to push it with my foot, which sends an amazing amount of pain through my leg. I have a feeling that my leg is in really bad shape. I finally get to my new cell, where my belongings from my old cell have been dumped on the floor by guards. There’s no mattress on my bed, but a couple of friends get me one and put my stuff away. I’m in a four-man cell with some older white guys. I’m lying in my bed. A bone has popped out of my knee, and my leg is ballooning and turning crazy colors. Ms. Golden gave me some ibuprofen.
On Friday, four days after the injury, I’m not on the callout for X-rays. When the warden comes around, doing checks, my friend tells him about me. The warden hadn’t heard. I say, “I’ve got to get to the hospital. This is really serious.” The warden, who seems displeased that I haven’t been attended to, approves me for an X-ray, and when they take it I can see that there’s something wrong. Ms. Golden and another staffer huddle, whispering, until a doctor enters and joins them. Then the doctor wheels me into the office of Ms. Golden, who says, “Have you ever broken your leg before?”
“No.”
“Well, it looks like you may have a hairline fracture of your femur. It’s up to you, but if you want to get to the hospital sooner than later, I wouldn’t call your family, because that will only delay things.”
She knows she fucked up, and she’s trying to minimize the damage. I’m taken to the hospital, where I’m told that I have a compound break, a 22-inch crack running the length of my femur bone. When the doctor asks how long ago it happened and I tell him four days earlier, he’s nervous. He says they need to give me an ultrasound right away to make sure I don’t have a blood clot. It turns out I do have a blood clot, and they have to perform emergency surgery to insert a filter where the arteries connect in my abdomen.
Because of the clot, they have to wait to do surgery on my leg, and they put me on blood thinners for a couple of days. Then they operate, inserting a titanium rod from my knee to my hip, with two screws fastening it at each end. While they’re at it, they fix my finger, which they say wasn’t treated correctly when I injured it. As soon as the operation ends, over the surgeon’s objections and before I’ve had any rehab, the prison guards return me to Loretto.
Back at the prison, I call Dad and tell him about the malpractice of the prison medical staff, and my lawyers start to get involved. The prison knows it fucked up. I feel too vulnerable
to sit in the chow hall, immobilized. My friends take care of me, wheeling me around and bringing me food.
It was a freak accident, but the New York Post runs a story suggesting the injury is the result of a $100 bounty on my head by “a crime-family captain.” The Los Angeles Times regurgitates the idea that I was “beaten badly.” It’s one more lesson in tabloid fakery. Apparently someone in the prison told a reporter this, and maybe made a couple of bucks, and that’s all it took. Everyone is convinced that someone broke my leg. The surgeon says, “Tell us what happened, you won’t get in trouble.” Even my family and friends are skeptical of my story. But that’s how it happened.
* * *
—
A few weeks after my leg break, I’m still in agonizing pain, and I ask the prison doctor to continue me on the pain medication I’ve been on, Percocet. He says he can’t.
A week or two later, an SIS lieutenant tells me I need to give a urine sample. This one comes up dirty. I know it’s not possible. I know there are no narcotics in my body. This feels like a setup. A dirty urine is a 100-series shot, and in a lot of places you won’t even go to the SHU for it. But the SIS guy says: “You’re going to a Medium unless you help us.” He wants to know how drugs are coming into the prison.
I say, “Hey, I wish I could help you, but I can’t, so it’s going to be what it’s going to be.”
I’m not about to start ratting now, though I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t extremely apprehensive.
I’m sent back to the SHU for another six months. It’s depressing to be back in solitary. Is this karma? It’s like I have a dark cloud over me. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong.
* * *
—
The prison has nothing to offer me, as far as physical therapy goes, but the surgeon said physical therapy is the most important factor in my recovery if I ever want to be active and run and play sports again, and I take his words to heart. I push myself really hard, doing a massive number of squats and lunges every day.
* * *
—
After three months in the SHU, I’m informed that I’m going to be transferred out of Loretto. The latest shot added points to my jacket, allowing the prison to move me to a higher-security facility. My theory is that this is all about my leg: with a lawsuit brewing, the prison wants me out of here.
As I’m leaving, an inmate I don’t know hands me a note from Dimitri telling me to check in as soon as I reach the next prison, because he’s learned that the whites are waiting for me and are going to come for me and hurt me.
30
2013: Notable Inmates
It’s March 2013. I’m on a bus to my next prison, which is—I have no idea. Of all people, Tetley, who was always trying to stir up trouble about me at Loretto, is also on board. His ticket-printing hustle finally caught up with him, his security level was raised, and he’s getting transferred too.
We go to Canaan first. My previous times here, I’ve been put in the cell with other prisoners going to Minimums and Lows. This time, I’m in the cell I used to look at from afar, relieved not to be in it, among the convicts who looked so scary to me. Shit is getting real. Looking across to the Minimum/Low holding cell, I see wide-eyed felons stealing looks at me the way I used to steal looks at the group I’ve now joined.
An officer has just been stabbed to death at Canaan, and the place is in lockdown. I’m held here for a few weeks. Then it’s back on a bus to I-don’t-know-where. It starts out full and keeps stopping—at FCI Schuylkill, at USP Lewisburg, at FCC Allenwood. Usually, transit drags on, and you want it to be over as soon as possible, but this time I’m dreading our arrival. Just after 8 p.m., having crossed the border into Maryland, we turn off the road at a sign that says FCI CUMBERLAND.
I’ve never heard of this place. I’d hoped I was going to Otisville, a Medium in New York that’s known to be relatively tame, and which would have put me closer to my family and friends. It’s dark now, and raining. My name is called. So is Tetley’s. Just my luck. I was already anxious, in light of Dimitri’s warning, and now I know that Tetley is going to cause trouble for me right away.
* * *
—
Intake lasts awhile. The SIS officer photographs my torso, cataloguing my tattoos. I still have three months left in solitary, but she says I’ve been in solitary long enough, and they’re going to let me out on the yard. “Is there any reason you can’t be on the compound here?” They ask this of everyone, mainly to weed out gang conflicts, informers, and pedophiles. I think about Dimitri’s warning, and about Tetley. For a moment, I consider checking into protective custody.
I say, “No.”
Checking in would be waving the white flag, broadcasting that I’m afraid to be out on the yard, that I can’t take it there, that I’d rather be isolated and safe. There are people who’ll stab someone just to get sent to an SMU, because it will guarantee eighteen months out of gen pop. Even some of the famous rappers check in for their own protection.
That’s not an option for me. If I took it, I’d feel terrible about myself. I know that someday I’ll be out on the street and telling my story, and I don’t want it to be about how I spent my time in protective custody because I was afraid to walk the yard at a higher-security.
Cumberland.
I sign a piece of paper, as I’ve done upon arrival at every other place, absolving the BOP of responsibility if I’m killed here. The cop hands me a bedroll and a pair of tiny, goofy-looking pants to replace my transit pants. I’m sent down to my assigned unit, A2, where the guards are just locking prisoners in for the night. When I get there, everyone’s already inside, staring through the locked glass door at the end of the unit to where I’m standing. They’re waiting to see who the new arrivals are. These moments are exciting for many inmates and scary for others. I still have long hair. As I wait to be let in, a young white kid with a shaved head and tattooed arms runs up to the glass from inside.
“Where are you coming from?”
His tone is more intent than aggressive, but it immediately sets me on my heels. I’m already noticing a different type of inmate here, men with face tattoos and serious white boys.
“I’ll see you when you get in here,” the kid says, neither friendly nor hostile.
A cop replaces the kid at the door, opens it, and leads me to a two-man cell, which is a pretty good size and has a steel door with a little window in it. An older guy, who introduces himself as Dickie, has the bottom bunk.
* * *
—
Night is my favorite time of day. One more day in the books. It’s quiet. It’s peaceful. I’m locked in. No one’s coming in. I can relax a bit.
I can’t believe I’m here. Am I going to make it at a medium-security? Actually, this is a medium-high, a step up in security level from a regular Medium. Will I be killed? People get killed all the time in places like this. I think about the old-timer at Lewisburg who embarrassed me when he asked, “Have you ever been in a Low, Cameron?” I imagine running into him now and asking him, “Have you ever been in a Medium? No?”
When I was at Lewisburg I felt like I was Billy Badass and that when I emerged from prison I’d be a bona fide convict. Now I know that I’d barely even started down that path. And now that I know what the path is about, I want to separate myself as much as possible from the people who are on it.
* * *
—
In the morning, as soon as they pop the doors and I emerge from my cell, I go to the laundry to get towels and other things I’ll need. A kid named Buck, who’s from Virginia, offers me a bunch of extra items but cautions, “If you’re no good, don’t take this stuff.” He means, if I’m a chomo or don’t have acceptable paperwork. I say, “I’ll let you be the judge of that when my paperwork gets here.”
Reps from the major groups watch who comes in, feeling out who’s gang-affiliated. This is when your prison future is determined. Most people in prison are sheep who either belonged to a gang before pr
ison or want the protection of one in prison, or they just want to feel like they’re part of something. An emissary from your racial group will come up to you and give you shower shoes and soap. You don’t want to be alone. You start hanging out with them. Now you have friends. They give you a job, moving drugs or running gambling tickets. Now you have some income. A month later, if you’re white, you’re running around shouting Nordic prayers to Odin. And if war comes, you have to go to war. If they ask you to “put in some work” and hurt someone who owes money for cigarettes, and you don’t want to do it, you’ll be labeled a coward. Your only option will be to check in and tell the cops you’re not safe here. But three or four months later, at your new place, you’ll get beaten up or stabbed.
There’s no welcome wagon for me, and I have no interest in one. I’m an anomaly. Maybe it’s because of my family, or because the details of my case have been publicized, or because of the reputation I’ve developed in prison, but I manage to avoid a gang’s embrace.
* * *
—
On the unit, a white shot-caller named Farmer—who is heavyset and tattooed, with a brown goatee, a southern drawl, and a perpetual smirk—says I can sit at the white table in our dayroom until my paperwork arrives. It’s standard, when you arrive at a new place, to plunk your paperwork down in the dayroom so that anyone can inspect it. “We ask everyone for their paperwork,” Farmer adds. I say it’s in my property, which I should get in two or three weeks.
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