Long Way Home

by Cameron Douglas

  My cellie in the RDAP unit is Mo, who’s tan, tall, and fully tattooed and has a Bic-razored head. He’s half Libyan but is from Florida and speaks with a little bit of a southern twang. He’s twelve years into a fourteen-year sentence for wholesaling meth, and he’s a gang-affiliated convict who’s been in a bunch of penitentiaries. We become business partners.

  The four biggest moneymakers in prison are drugs, gambling, cigarettes, and weapons. The people who administer higher-security prisons are mainly worried about drugs and knives, leaving the entrepreneurial inmate a relative degree of safety in running a gambling ticket or selling cigarettes. Cigarettes probably carry the lowest risk and bring the highest reward, but it’s a closed business. Cops on the take bring in the cartons, and the inmates with those relationships can sell a single filter cigarette for two or three books of stamps ($14 or $21), depending on supply and demand. Some guys buy one filter cigarette, break it down, and reroll five more, which they sell. Some guys hoard cigarettes, wait until the yard is dry, and then charge crazy prices. There’s a separate hand-rolled cigarette business, but it’s controlled by the gangs whose job it is to take care of “hot trash,” as the cops’ trash bins are called; they sift through it for guards’ spent plugs of chewing tobacco, dry them out, and roll smokes that they sell for a book of stamps each. I meet guys who are taking care of their entire family, out on the street, with cigarette profits. I started smoking when I was fourteen, but the cigarette prices in prison cured me of that addiction.

  Mo and I start a gambling ticket with a third guy, named Loco. I put up half the money. Loco, a physically imposing, half-Cuban, half–Puerto Rican avid gambler, puts up the other half. Mo calculates odds and runs the operation. Ours is one of maybe a half dozen tickets on the compound, and Loco’s job is to place big bets on other inmates’ tickets in the hope of bankrupting them and removing a competitor. He’s not very successful at this.

  Every day, we create a new ticket, a piece of paper listing all the important pro and college games happening that day. Mondays and Wednesdays we try to come up with specials for our Four Picks, enticing offers that usually pay out 14-to-1. For the Super Bowl, we offer more specific bets: Will the coin toss be heads or tails? Will Tom Brady throw fewer than three touchdowns, or three or more?

  A guy we know who has a job in the education department, and whose hustle is making photocopies, runs off a few hundred copies of the ticket for us. We have a runner for each unit, and they go out with the tickets in the morning and through the day, distributing them; later, they retrieve the filled-out tickets and the accompanying wagers, paid in $7-book-of-stamps units—or in wire transfers between external bank accounts. We record all bets on a master sheet.

  To guys who want to bet larger amounts, and who we know are good for the money, we might extend a $500 marker. If they hit that limit, they have to have someone on the street wire money to my commissary account. One guy has a $10,000 marker. But we always get paid. Our head runner is Knee-High, a Mexican kid from Austin who’s a high-ranking member of Tango Blast, and that affiliation instills enough fear that no one tries withholding payment. We always want a minimum of five hundred books of stamps—Forever Stamps—in our bank, and any profits go first to maintaining that reserve. After that, we divvy up the profits three ways: 25 percent to Mo, with the remaining 75 percent split equally between me and Loco. I net $1,000 to $1,500 a week.

  Everyone doing any kind of business has stash spots. For our gambling ticket, we need places to squirrel away our books of stamps and our lists of odds and wagers and debts. Hiding contraband is more elaborate here than at Lewisburg. We have close friends on the maintenance crew, and I pay one to loosen a tile in my cell and drill out a couple of inches of cement beneath it, where I can hide a little box. For a second space, I have the same guy install a false back in my locker. And for my personal use, like the knife I carry whenever I leave my cell, I burrow a couple of shallow holes in the soft core of the cheap wooden table in my cell: one behind a drawer handle, the other behind the rubber lining of the edge of the tabletop.

  Running the ticket adds to my confidence. I’m making money and doing most of the things that qualify as success in prison.

  * * *

  —

  Before I went into RDAP, Talib and I talked all the time. Now that I’m in a different unit, we make a point every Sunday evening, rain or shine, of walking the track together for two or three hours. We inspire each other, push each other, have the kind of conversations where you feel smarter afterward.

  We talk about Talib’s conviction that prisons are radicalizing susceptible kids through exposure to actual terrorists like Cumberland inmate Masoud Khan, who once headed a network of Virginia-based jihadists. Many of the guards are ex-military, setting up a hostile dynamic and turning prisons into breeding grounds for homegrown terrorism. We talk about energy vampires and the importance of conserving our limited time and energy for the people we love. We watch Ant-Man together, and Talib, who has met Dad during his visits, comments on the father-son dynamic between Dad’s character and his protégé, wondering if Dad had me in mind.

  Word comes that Judge Berman has rejected my petition for Drugs Minus Two leniency, ruling that I’m disqualified by my second sentence for heroin possession in prison. Since I’m already in RDAP, which will take a year off my sentence, I stick with the program.

  * * *

  —

  When I get out of RDAP, my plan is to cell with a guy named Captain. His story is that he’s been in prison for more than twenty years, twelve of them at Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) Florence, in Colorado. He was Special Forces in the military, was over in Iraq during the first Gulf War, and began shipping weapons back to the U.S. for the mob. Later, he became a mob hit man. Eventually it caught up with him, ending in a gunfight with police that left cops dead. This had made Captain a convict hero. In person, he is quiet and humble and friendly, and before I went into RDAP I’d often see him up in the education center.

  One day when we were on the yard, it came up that right before Captain arrived at Cumberland, he was at Coleman in Florida. That’s where my old friend from MCC, Dave Hattersley, was, and I asked if he knew him.

  “From New Jersey?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s dead, dude.”

  “What?”

  With Mo, Sebo, and some other fellas at Cumberland.

  “Yeah, he was killed.”

  * * *

  —

  While I’ve been in RDAP, a book has been published, written by Meg Salib. Early in my time at Cumberland, I received a letter from her, seeking my permission to write a book about her experience. She assured me that it wouldn’t delve into my family or my case, and I gave her my blessing. I said, “If you want to write a book about your experience, I can’t tell you not to do that,” and I did want the best for her. She’d suffered from our relationship; although she’d kept her right to practice law, she had lost her job.

  I haven’t read the book, a memoir, but I’ve heard things about it—that it goes into considerable detail about my case, including my early, quickly regretted cooperation, as well as talking about my family at some length. She wasn’t honest with me about the content, and I feel betrayed. It’s pretty slimy for a lawyer to write a book about her client.

  When I return to gen pop, I immediately experience the book’s impact. Captain, who I was supposed to move in with, and who’d told me he was holding a cell open for me, now claims a former cellie of his is just coming out of the hole, so he has to give him the slot.

  As I walk away, a kid named Josh comes up to me.

  “I saw you talking to that dude Captain. Do you know what his story is?”

  “I think so,” I say. I run through the facts I know: his tour in Iraq, his weapons shipping, his mob killings, his cop killings.

  “I don’t think so, man,” Josh says. He shows me an article about Captain that he found online, and the facts laid out there, usi
ng Captain’s real name, are very different: Captain and a partner hijacked a seventy-year-old truck driver and killed him, then rang the doorbell at a house, asking to use the bathroom. When a woman answered and said no, Captain and his partner killed her, raped and kidnapped her daughter, and then, in a gunfight with police, killed a cop. He also later killed a cop in prison with his bare hands. This story is a death sentence in prison. Even here, killing or hurting innocent people isn’t considered acceptable.

  With Talib Shakir at Cumberland.

  It turns out that Captain’s biography isn’t the only thing he’s full of shit about. Dave Hattersley is alive.

  * * *

  —

  Two years after my family-visitation privileges were restored—and four years since I lost my other visitation privileges—I’m allowed to see friends again, and Erin is finally approved to visit me. Everyone in here has relatives with prison records, and the higher security of higher-securities makes the officials more relaxed about who can visit.

  I haven’t seen Erin in five years. It feels bittersweet to see her. All these years, she has been my go-to. In certain ways, Erin has been there for me like no one else. But she has also been inconsistent, and I can see that she’s still struggling with addiction. I’ve lost faith in our relationship, and I increasingly believe that one of the things I’m paying for is a fresh start.

  With two and a half years left to the door, I tell Erin I don’t plan on living with her when I get out. I want to surround myself with people who are on the same wavelength as I am. I’ve now been completely free of heroin for two years. She’s upset but also understands.

  * * *

  —

  One of the many things I’m looking forward to when I get out of prison is seeing a dentist. In prison, you’re supposed to be able to get one teeth-cleaning a year, but you have to sign up for an appointment, and there’s a long waiting list; it can take up to eighteen months to happen. If you haven’t been at a compound for eighteen months and you’re moved to a new one, the clock resets to zero. My first cleaning in my whole prison bit has been at Cumberland, and it was pretty rudimentary.

  At least partly because it’s such a hassle, a lot of people in prison neglect their teeth. I’ve seen more than a few guys who have none. If a tooth goes bad, a lot of guys just get it pulled, and it’s never replaced. Men lose their dentures and wait weeks or months for a replacement set; in the meantime, with few gummable food options, they struggle to eat nutritiously.

  Around a year after Viviane sent her first letter to me at Cumberland, we make a plan for her to come and see me. During a phone call, as the date of Viviane’s visit approaches, I say, “Listen, I’m sort of self-conscious about this, but I only have five real teeth left in my mouth, I hope you don’t mind.”

  There’s a short silence on Viviane’s end, then she says gamely, “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I have one in the center, and two on each side.”

  Viviane is sweet about it, but I can tell she’s having complex feelings processing this news.

  “Just kidding,” I say, and we share a laugh.

  It’s good to see Viviane in person, and after our first visit she’s extremely loyal and present and solid and attentive. She and Mom hit it off and become friends. Sometimes Viviane spends weekends with her and the kids at Mom’s farm in Millbrook.

  * * *

  —

  I’m watching the clock, counting down the days and hours until my release, which is eighteen months out. My routine is pretty fixed. I sleep as late as possible, getting up at ten or eleven. I have a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of coffee. During the 1:30 p.m. move, I go to the yard, where I work out for two hours. At 3:30, when we all go back to our blocks for the four o’clock stand-up count, I take a shower and eat something. Then I go outside again and play handball for a couple of hours. Maybe I smoke a little weed first to make the handball more fun or the mundane conversations more palatable. I usually play through chow and cook a meal with my friends later. In the evening, I might watch a little TV.

  I was never much of a TV watcher, and in prison I’ve mainly avoided it, other than football games. Now, maybe because I’ve hit my stride and become more sure of myself, I have a couple of series I watch—Vikings and The Strain—and always make sure I have a seat in the TV room. I also watch movies when the prison shows them. Then I go back to my cell for my evening ritual of reading, writing poetry, and meditating. I’m beginning to let myself imagine a future beyond these walls. I spend a lot of time paging through a coffee-table book about India. Before I went to Brazil, years ago, I’d felt an almost mystical gravitation toward it; and now I’m starting to get that same feeling about India.

  * * *

  —

  Even though I carved out my place at Cumberland and secured others’ respect before I went into RDAP, there are now a lot of new faces. Meg Salib’s book has gotten people who don’t know me riled up.

  Tex, a younger Aryan Brotherhood kid, tries to kick up some dust. And I have an issue with another white, a militant kid named Shawn who came from USP Victorville while I was gone. There’s a tension that feels like it could erupt into a stabbing. Tex and his cronies are talking shit about me. But I have only another six weeks at Cumberland. I turned thirty-six while I was in RDAP, and, according to the BOP’s inmate-classification tables, at thirty-six a male prisoner becomes less of a risk. My security level dropped, and I put in for a transfer. While I wait for it, I try to avoid getting caught up in the whites’ drama.

  * * *

  —

  Adding to the whites’ discontentment with me, I’ve moved into a cell with Talib, a devout black Muslim—a living arrangement that is an extreme rarity in higher-security places. Even now that we live together, when we enter the chow hall we still split up. He sits at a black table, and I sit at a white table. If one line is much shorter than the other, we still go to our respective lines. That’s how segregated it is in the chow hall.

  At night, Talib goes to sleep early. I stay up reading. Our first night celling together, Talib all of a sudden yells, “Ah, ah, ah!” and starts screaming and kicking and trying to grab something. Then he relaxes. I’m like, “Dude, what the fuck?” He says, “I’m okay,” and goes back to sleep. Forty-five minutes later: “Ah, ah, ah!” and all the rest. Talib is in such a panic, as if there’s some terror inside him. This happens a third time. In the morning I say, “Dude, what’s that about? You have nightmares?” He says, “No, I just wake up with this feeling that I’m falling.” It happens several times every night, but I leave it alone and don’t pry. To me, it seems like a response to something extremely traumatizing, like he’s reliving over and over something that he manages to successfully set aside when he’s awake. It’s disturbing, and I feel for him.

  Shortly before I leave Cumberland, Talib’s father, who has been ill, dies. He’s been a regular visitor during Talib’s decades inside, and his rock. They were really good friends. Since I’ve known Talib, he’d been looking forward to getting out and spending time with his dad. I think he wanted to get out there and be the son his father wanted him to be, a feeling I can relate to on many levels. With Talib’s father’s death, that possibility has been taken away.

  33

  2015: Orange Isn’t the New Black

  I’m being transferred to my next prison. From Cumberland, Maryland, I’m driven to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, another northeast hub of the BOP transit system. Buses from the regional divisions, and planes from all over the country, converge here to pick up and drop off inmates. After waiting on the tarmac for several hours, a few of us are transferred to a plane with nearly two hundred prisoners on it, which soon rises into the air.

  I’m wearing handcuffs attached to a belly chain attached to ankle cuffs. A few convicts on the plane who are considered particularly dangerous have black lockboxes covering their handcuffs. My ankles are cuffed too tight and are raw and bleeding. I have a window seat, and I pass the time try
ing to read the landscape below for clues to our direction and destination. There’s not a lot of conversation among the passengers.

  Six years ago, the last time I was on a plane, I was flying back to New York from L.A., having just made the deal that would lead to my arrest. Since then, I’ve watched planes pass overhead, trailing their white exhaust, and wondered about their routes and their passengers. I’ve pictured the next time I’d be on a plane, free at last, looking down at guys like me. This is definitely not what I had in mind. Instead, I’m just headed to another prison.

  I don’t know where I’m going but am guessing FCI Danbury, in Connecticut, because it’s a northeast Low and my case manager at Cumberland thought I’d be going there. When we land after several hours and are taxiing down the runway, I see the words ATLANTA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. Our plane veers away from the terminal and stops in a remote section of the field. A cop starts reading off names, and the summoned cons disembark.

  We sit on the tarmac for hours, then the plane takes off again. This time it looks like we’re aiming west. The mountains are higher, the rivers become red and muddy and winding, and the land is more arid. Maybe my case manager didn’t know what he was talking about. We land at an airport in Oklahoma City, another BOP transit hub. The plane pulls right up to a terminal. This time, my name is called.

  The terminal houses a federal prison, and I spend two nights here. Then I’m put back on a plane. I ask a cop if he knows where I’m going, and he says Danbury. The plane flies for hours before beginning its descent. I assume we’re in Pennsylvania, where I’ll get on a bus for another five hours, but I notice the houses below us are huge and have pools and manicured lawns. This is definitely not Harrisburg. We land at a little airport near Millbrook, New York, not far from Mom’s farm. From there, it’s a fifty-minute bus ride to the prison where I’ll be living, its name confirmed only when we finally pass through its gates: FCI Danbury.