Running the Books

by Avi Steinberg

  “Great,” I said. “Just what I need.”

  He had written the better part of a manuscript, a book. He said he’d received some positive letters from a publisher. I was intrigued. He had to get busy typing up this book, he said. He needed it formatted in accordance with submission guidelines. This meant undertaking the large task of transferring hundreds of handwritten pages into Word documents. He could type about eight and a half words a minute—he needed a lot of help. He’d probably need an editor, as well, he said. I offered my assistance.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  I had just brought in an ancient floppy disk of mine as a donation to the library. I looped back into my office, located behind the counter space, and found it. I transferred out the old files, essays on Torah topics I’d written back in my yeshiva days, and made room for C.C.’s pimp memoir files. I wrote his gov on the disk—it would stay in my office for his use. I remembered my training during orientation: floppy disks could be easily refashioned into slender but terrifyingly effective blades, shanks, and were contraband of the first order.

  “Kat said you was all right,” C.C. said when I emerged and handed him the disk. He seemed to be trying to convince himself.

  In prison these kinds of statements made me somewhat nervous. They could imply just about anything, from the willingness to help someone apply to college to helping them commit a double homicide. But I was happy to take a compliment. We shook hands. C.C. Too Sweet and I were now in cahoots. I noticed an officer standing by the door, taking note of this.

  Too Sweet would show up in the library every day with a pile of handwritten pages popping out of the fraying, taped-up mailing envelope he’d converted into a folder. He had carefully written the words Legal Material on the envelope, in the hopes that this would protect his work from being confiscated during routine searches and shakedowns.

  I discovered that he was already making money as a writer. He was one of a regular group of inmates who mined the resources of the library for material gain. Using our Microsoft Publishing program, these inmates would mass produce blank greeting cards with messages like, Whatz Good Mommacita? or Holla Back! The cards often turned up folded up and left in library books.

  Or inmates would ask for multiple copies of the crosswords or wordfind games that we handed out and sell the extras. Or try to trick me into photocopying documents that looked exactly like legal forms, but turned out to be some variety of a “Warrant for the Court of Love,” which stated, among other things, that “the defendant has the right to be caressed in a sexually explicit manner, until such time as she can no longer take it.” These made a wonderful gift from prison for the holidays.

  Other inmates would steal books, magazines, paper, markers, blade-sized splinters from the back of wooden chair—anything that wasn’t tied down. Any of these items could then be sold on the extensive prison black market. I had to be especially vigilant about theft and hustles after big sporting events, when the prison was teeming with inmates desperate to pay up gambling debts. I usually closed down these illegal businesses. But I permitted C.C.’s venture.

  When he was low on cash, he’d write poems and sell them to other inmates. I turned a blind eye and permitted him to make copies of these poems. C.C.’s freelance poetry business relied on some skill and creativity, not simple theft (not that theft was necessarily devoid of skill or creativity).

  Some of his poems were holiday themed, particularly for Mother’s Day. Others were just generic prison poems or love poems. Other inmates too lazy or unable to put their thoughts into words were always looking for poetry to mail to friends and foes alike. C.C. started a prison Hallmark company. For a dollar a pop, or its equivalent, C.C. would sell you this poem:

  In Jail

  Being in Jail is lonely at night,

  It is waiting for letters that no one will write.

  It is depending on people

  You thought were your friends,

  Waiting for letters no one will send.

  It’s sitting around with nothing to do,

  Trying to figure out who is really who.

  It is finding out hearts are made of stone,

  And realizing that you are alone.

  It is waiting for visits that never take place,

  From so-called friends who’ve forgotten your face.

  It’s wondering why time moves so slow,

  When prayers are answered but the answer is No.

  I will do my time with my head held high,

  Knowing that you ain’t built to ride or die.

  The day will come when I am free,

  Then it will be my turn to forget when you need me.

  C.C. also sold a version of this poem with a less threatening conclusion:

  Then you’ll see what I can be.

  Other poems by C.C. were not for sale. These poems were more elliptical:

  The eyes see absence

  Musk that looms still

  The breath that’s close

  Remembrance of times

  Run as you can, hold strong

  A flower sways willingly.

  C.C.’s forays into poetry, commercial and artistic, were secondary, however, to his main project—Memoir of a Pimp: The Real Life Story of C.C. Too Sweet. I had suggested From Rags to Bitches, a title that, I later learned, had already been taken. But C.C. preferred the simple elegance of Memoir of a Pimp.

  Almost every day C.C. would come to the library and we’d talk about his manuscript or just chat about life generally. We developed a rapport. During our first meetings, C.C. was struggling with how to begin his story. He decided on a teaser.

  “I’m gonna hit ’em real hard with some heavy pimp shit, you know what I mean?—something real greasy,” he told me, pronouncing it greezy, “and then, before they can say ‘damn!,’ I’m gonna back up and start from the beginning, when I was just a cute little kid.”

  It sounded like a good plan to me. I looked forward to seeing it. Until I did, I’d have to content myself with C.C.’s less ambitious efforts.

  Warrant 69

  ARREST WARRANT

  A warrant for the arrest of __________________ ’s heart has been issued, due to the fact that it belongs to me now. And you are no longer in control of it. I must inform you of your right to remain silent while I kiss you all over from head to toe. You also have the right, before sexual intercourse, to be presented a marriage license. Anything you say or scream during intercourse will be used against you in the court of “LOVE.”

  DEFAULT JUDGEMENT

  Please be advised, once you sign this document, it will go into effect immediately without further notice. Your signature is required for this legal document. In the event of the loss of this document, NO other will be issued and you will be forced to plead this case as Total, Unrestricted, Unrestrained Devotion and Satisfaction, which will result in further obscene action against your sexual body. Which might include: Licking, Whipping and Kissing you until you pass out. I am forced to blow your mind in every sexual way imaginable for the rest of the years to come. If you don’t go freely, I will have to take you by force.

  SENTENCING

  Your sentencing has already been decided for the best interest of all involved. You have been found guilty of “Love in the First Degree.” The state of Love “demands” the maximum sentence. You are hereby sentenced to life with me, without possibility of bail, parole or good time. Your sentence is in a maximum security facility called “MY ARMS.”

  YOUR PLEA

  Not Guilty _________________ Date

  Guilty __________________ Date

  Paul the Dog

  Seven inmates showed up for the new cycle of my creative writing class. There was C.C. Too Sweet; young Dumayne; Jason who went by JizzB; Rob who went by Shizz; Frank who asked to be called Lefty, a request that was universally ignored; Fernando, a mysterious middle-aged Latino man; and, at the last moment, Chudney, the guy who took extensive notes on March of the Penguins.

  From
the moment I walked into the classroom, which was actually a large storage space in the back of the library, I could tell Frank was trouble. He was already mid-sentence, mid-paragraph, settling comfortably into the middle of an infinitely self-generating narrative. Within a second of conversation, he gave you the panic-inducing feeling that he could and very well might patter on forever. To speak to him was to interrupt him.

  Nobody, however, was speaking to him. Nor were they listening. Even before the class started, there was already a distinct feeling of torpor in the room. Frank, eyes aquamarine, face boozed-out purple, resembled a hard-bitten Buzz Aldrin. An elderly boy, in high spirits.

  “Do you believe in God?” he asked me as I walked in. Before I could answer or even sit down, he waved off his own question, “Aw, it don’t matter if you or me believe, right? He exists, even if you or me or him or the other guy or Jason over here don’t believe—not that you don’t believe, Jason, I’m just making an example is all. I made a video for my church for Easter—actually, it was a bit after Easter—about why people should believe. I wish I could play it for you. It’s basically just me sitting in my brother-in-law’s shop talking to the camcorder about Jesus and how Grace saved my life and all that. I can’t do it for you here, though, cause it’s pretty long and I wrote it up and everything. You’d have to see it. My priest said it was pretty good. But of course he’s gonna say that, right? My wife? She don’t believe, though. Her brother committed suicide when she was just a kid, if you count seventeen as a kid, which I don’t. I think kids should start working at fourteen. Anyway, she don’t never use that word, suicide, but she ain’t here, right? After he committed suicide she stopped believing. I feel her pain, you know, who wouldn’t? But what I don’t, can’t and won’t even try to understand is what God’s gotta do with her brother’s suicide. If he exists, he exists, right? Don’t change if some guy, even your brother, blows their brains out. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about my wife, by the way. She’s a good woman. Very loyal. Trust me, I know. She’ll stick with you, thick and thin. We had this dog that got run over, he’s a mutt, though I think he’s mostly some kind of retriever, his name is Paul, after Paul Newman, who my wife has a thing for—honestly, I don’t mind if she’s, you know, attracted to other guys, that’s normal, hell I’m attracted to lotsa other ladies, believe me, and some of them are attracted to me, including some good-looking ones. But I trust her, you know. And, God bless her, she trusts me. Anyway, Paul, the dog, he was hit by a SUV and now he’s a paraplegic …”

  “Man, you gotta be fuckin’ kidding me,” C.C. Too Sweet muttered, and threw his head back in exasperation.

  “No, wait,” said Frank, lost in thought, “that’s right … he’s a quadriplegic. You know, like paralyzed in all his body, except the head. Or wait, maybe in his head, too. Is that possible? I forget ’cause it’s been so long, ya know, and my wife, she and I were already split right before I got pinched. Anyway, the dog don’t move at all, he just lays there. Do they call you a ‘quadriplegic’ even if you’re a dog?”

  Frank had to be silenced or I risked losing the class, possibly for good.

  Once I got Frank quiet and captured the attention of the other inmates, the class could start in earnest. I gave the guys my spiel about writing, and about how the class was meant as writing for the sake of writing and not, as prison writing classes tend to be, for any specific therapeutic goal. I wasn’t trying to correct their morals nor was I interested in hearing how much they’re improving. They could save it. I wanted to work on writing skills, period. I proved my point by giving them a neutral assignment to describe a place that everyone in the room had in common, Boston’s South Station, and to write it for a reader who is not familiar with Boston.

  “South Station!” said Frank. “That’s where I first saw the light.” But this time I preempted, “Don’t talk, write.”

  The men got to work. Within ninety seconds, Dumayne threw down his pencil and declared, “This shits is boring, man.”

  I told him to write, not talk.

  He wrote another word and then piped up again. “When do we learn how to write about love? I need to write my girly some poems. I don’t wanna do this boring stuff.”

  Chudney spoke up, “It’s supposed to be boring, man.”

  This was news to me.

  “You’re supposed to make it exciting,” he explained.

  “That’s right,” I said. “Thank you, Chudney.”

  “No problem,” he said, with a satisfied smile.

  Frank balled up his paper and threw it into the trash. “I didn’t know you wanted it to be exciting,” he said. “I got to start over.”

  Suddenly Chudney stood up and said, “And another thing—you gotta learn how to hold that pencil, man.”

  He walked over to Dumayne and was about to manually correct his writing grip.

  “Um, Chudney,” I said, “sit down. Right now. Don’t touch him.”

  You didn’t touch someone else in prison unless you were asking for trouble. This was a basic rule. I noticed Shizz, on the other side of the room, tighten his grip on his pencil. The last thing I needed in my classroom was a fight.

  But Chudney ignored me. “Ain’t no thing,” he said, grabbing Dumayne’s writing hand and pulling his fingers into the correct posture. “This little man here’s a friend of mine growing up,” said Chudney. “I call him my little cousin.”

  And indeed, as Chudney aggressively set his hand straight, Dumayne wore the proverbial sulk of a compliant younger brother.

  “Now that’s how it’s done, son,” Chudney said, patting him on the back.

  The men returned to their silent work. I noticed Dumayne struggling, in vain, to hold the pencil as Chudney had instructed him. I noticed other things, too. You can tell a lot about a person by the way he sits and writes. Fernando, who hadn’t uttered a word yet in this class, was a curious little man with an implausibly round head, an expressionless lampshade mustache, an autocratic pout. He sat with ironing-board-straight posture and scribbled decisively in florid Catholic-school penmanship, writing on his prison-issue loose-leaf paper as though he were drafting an armistice. He resembled a deposed but proud South American strongman. Perhaps he was.

  I was pretty certain Shizz was not a strongman. His pleading eyes were the only steady feature on a face that was in a state of constant and rapid flux: a mask of worry morphed into despair morphed into a wicked private joke morphed into self-flagellation. The overall effect being a troubled, ambivalent soul. His pencil, too, was in constant motion and never left the page, though he employed the eraser end as much as the business end, and did so emphatically and with elaborate displays of emotion.

  Frank was more sedate when writing than speaking. And certainly more punctuated. I sensed he was out of his element with the written word. This was probably a good thing for everyone.

  Too Sweet seemed distracted and wrote a word or two every few minutes. This was a man who sat in his cell and wrote dozens of meticulously handprinted pages a day. He was tired out. I got the strong impression he didn’t want to be here, that he had signed up out of politeness to me. When he did write, though, he did so in bursts, like a Richter scale registering a distant tremor.

  And then there was Chudney. Chudney was, it seemed, a noticer. He stared at the heavens, waiting for the words to drop right out of the troposphere, poised, ready to catch them before they hit the ground and smashed to pieces. Since there was no window to the outdoors—or penguin movie to watch—he was stuck gazing at the ceiling. He assumed two distinct poses: sitting perfectly still, elbows on the table, fingers linked, head bowed as though in prayer, pencil, out of his hands, sitting on paper—and then, perhaps ready to receive his answer, he’d pick up the pencil and raise his head to gaze at the ceiling. He frowned often and occasionally copied some words down onto the page.

  I gazed at the ceiling, too, to see if I could see what he saw. All I could make out, though, was an aged water stain with a dark, wet
brown border that was slowly expanding.

  After twenty minutes, an officer swung by, leaned against a bookcase, and pointed to his watch. I collected the papers, thank yous were muttered by all. I gathered up the pencils and counted them. Seven for seven. Every potential weapon was accounted for. This was the basic metric of a successful class in prison.

  Later that night I read the short essays from the class. Shizz’s was full of false starts, rhymes, plagiarized lyrics, extended metaphors, and other varieties of quasilyrical filler. It’s hard to believe what a remarkable, tortured, smudgy mess a person can make of an innocent white sheet of paper in the span of twenty-five minutes. But there were some heartfelt and affecting moments in his account of a man trying, and failing, to catch a train. An appropriate subject for him, I thought.

  Chudney’s was a short and oddly compelling inventory of the strange people you see at the train station (himself included, he admitted). Dumayne offered a spare description of the physical space, floor to ceiling. Fernando’s was incoherent; it was unclear whether he understood the assignment. Or English. Too Sweet sketched out a sad encounter he once had there. And Frank, in his frank attempt to be “exciting,” wrote a fast-paced thriller about a train robber and a group of cops engaged in a shootout during rush hour (the upshot: there was blood). This, he said, was “based on real events,” though he didn’t specify which. Jason had given up, erased the sentence or two he had written, and filled the page with gang graffiti.

  I was satisfied with this start.

  To the Principal’s Office

  Word got back to me that Officer Chuzzlewit had submitted his incident report. He had, it turned out, conveniently omitted the detail about his chemical attack on the library. In turn, I submitted a report to my supervisor, Patti. She kicked it up to her supervisor. Within hours, I got a call informing me that the sheriff’s deputies, Geoffrey Mullin and Jack Quinn, wanted a word with me.