Doing Time

by Bell Gale Chevigny

  One night, not long after that, he went to a neighborhood bar, got drunk, loud, and cantankerous. The management asked him to leave; he refused; they threatened to call the police, and he responded by throwing a full beer stein at an expensive mirror. The beer leapt in the air and hung momentarily as a droopy mustache of foam that fell with a slosh to the floor. The stein exploded into the mirror, and each burst to slivers and shards that tinkled musically to the countertop running below the mirror. The bartender called the police, who arrived in ten minutes with theatrical verve, having arrested the old man for similar misadventures. The old man, inimical to anything wearing a badge, stood ready to fight. When the first cop drew in range, the old man looped a left hook, but it flew like a hawk on the wing: swooping slowly, banking out and down, and the cop, fifty years younger, simply pulled his head back and let the hawk-hook glide by. The man fell flat on his face. The police dragged him from the bar, but only after he put up a resistance that belied his age, hollering over and over, “Oink, oink, oink.”

  They took him to jail and charged him with public drunkenness and desttuction of private property. The next morning he went to coutt, his clothes soiled from jail and the fight. The young assistant prosecutor apprised the court of the charges pending, calling the court’s attention to the fact that the defendant was a parolee on a life sentence, and though blind, Justice was attentive: With judicious economy the court dismissed the charges and revoked the parole.

  That afternoon he was back in prison.

  He had been paroled many times. When first convicted of armed robbery some forty years ago, he was tried as an habitual criminal, and as his record was already extensive then, his conviction netted him a mandatory life sentence. (The state’s criminal code has since been revised. One of the revisions served to erase the mandatory life sentence clause of the robbery statute; however, the state’s supreme court held that the revisions were not retroactive.) The parole board, on the other hand, was sympathetic toward him: his sentence was excessive; he was old, harmless; he had served more time than anyone in the prison system; his prison record was fairly good; and, probably more than anything else, he was a living anachronism, something left over from another age, and they simply felt sorry for him. Hence he was granted a lot of paroles, which, for one reason or another, he would violate and return to prison where he would stay until his next scheduled meeting with the parole board, which usually dispatched him on another pilgrimage to society. He became a veritable penal commuter, shuttling to and fro, from prison to society and back again, and he came to deeply resent the game, the pattern that society chose for him. He became determined to break the chains of conditioning that had held him for so long. But he was quite unable to do that, for the interminable years in prison had thoroughly institutionalized him. He had been polarized by prison steel, and no matter what he did or tried, it drew him like a magnet. Yet, the more it drew him, the more determined he was to exercise his will upon it, and now he had finally found a way. He doubted that there would be any more returns to prison or paroles from prison, for he knew his death was near. Whenever, in the last few yeats, he did make a parole, he stayed, not with his daughtet and the boy, for he knew that they did not really want him, but at a rooming house near the prison and near the river. It was convenient.

  He lay against the wall, opening and closing his hands, fighting the numbing cold. This time they would not take him back. He turned up his collar and wished he had a watch. The steam should have blown by now. Yet, despite his waiting, despite his preparation, when the steam whistles shrieked through the night with their deafening howl, he was caught off guard. His heart grew big in his chest and beat wildly. He tried to get up but found that he couldn’t move, that he was frozen in the moment. Then it passed, and he scrambled to his feet. He was going over. That was that.

  Letting the rope uncoil and fall to the ground, he held the loose end in one hand, with the hook poised in the other. The grappling hook had been wound with gauze and then rewound with electrical tape in the hope that k would hit the wall with a muted thud. He looked up the side of the wall, realized he was too close, stepped back, and locking his elbow and keeping his arm relaxed, he gave the hook a few imaginary practice pitches; then mightily, with every fiber of his being, he let it fly: It sailed into the night and arched magnificently over. The hook bounced on the other side and sent a tattoo of vibration to his hand. Slowly, he pulled it up. A few times it snagged on the rough contour of the wall, but jiggling his end a bit, he got it started again, until finally, two of the steel fangs bit resolutely into the slate lip that capped the wall. A good hold: This rope would not snap. But he had to hurry, for high above the gray, vaporous caps and stalks of the steam, mushrooms appeared against the darkened sky. The moon had vanished.

  From the start he felt he wasn’t going to make it. He had knotted the rope every eighteen inches which permitted him to stand on a knot, to reach up and to grab hold of the highest knot he could, and to pull himself up to stand on a higher knot. But the going was rough. He had only gone a few knots when the pain began to burn through his arms. His breathing came in shallow gasps, and he had to rest. He started up again: a knot; another. His feet slipped off a knot, and he hung from the rope, his arms stretching in their sockets. The pain raced up and down his shoulders, and his lungs ached to scream. His feet groped wildly for the knot. He turned on the rope, his back to the wall, and the rope came to him. He caught it with his knees, and his feet found the knot. Turning, he started up again. Up and up he climbed. The pain, like fire now, rolled over his back in waves, burned hot and sandy in his lungs, and surged through his legs and arms. It emanated from his chest where his heart pounded erratically, a chaotic drum to whose intense beat the pain quickstepped to every part of his body. Yet, up and up he climbed until, exhausted, he turned his back to the wall and rested, hanging squat and deadweighted, his feet quivering on a knot, sweat beading his forehead.

  The whistles shrieked on, on into the night, but their shrillness was gone now, replaced by a tremulous wail that scaled down with the diminishing velocity of the steam. A film of moisture covered him as the steam settled on the wail, already dissipating,

  He got off the wall and started climbing again. A knot, another, and another. The great pain, never gone but somewhat abated, returned instantly and fired him anew. But he climbed on. Now he saw the top, but he could hardly grasp the last knot as the angle of the rope and the wall was acute. He worked his hand behind the rope, burning his skin, and pulled himself up so that his eyes were level with the top. With a great final effort he threw his hand, arm, and elbow up and on the surfaced top and pulled himself onto it.

  He lay on the wall, the pain pummeling his body, trying to breathe. The top of the wall was wet and slick with the rapidly condensing steam. A new wave of pain fired in his chest, and death edged closer. The cloud had become a thin mist. He had to get down before it vanished. Now. But he couldn’t move; he had to rest.

  Looking off, he saw the river. His river. At night it held a special appeal for him. It lay quiet and still, hushed in its banks, sliding slowly and silkenly, a lover’s hand, sliding yet, ever gently, ever southward, winding down and down, tracing softly in its childish scrawl the way to the warmth of its design: its delta. The moon emerged and caught the river; out, out in its deepest channel, it quicksilvered and shuddered, and from high on the wall, the old man watched with an appreciative eye.

  But the river was dying too. Once, running free and wild with a deep and fierce independence, it had had an autonomy that had not escaped his notice, but now, dammed and sluiced, polluted and spoiled, under the indifferent care of the Army Corps of Engineers, subjected daily to the flagrant abuse of industry and the apathy of a disinterested public, it was dying. In the hazy collage of his memory he saw the sickly bullhead and its oily iridescence. He dismissed the image, but the boy’s face surfaced. He had left no mark on the kid. When the old man died, everything about him would die too. He had no
thing to leave the boy who had rejected the legacy of the stories, and so, with a strange and comforting simplicity, known only to the very young and very old, he willed the boy his river and thought of him no more.

  The mist had all but evaporated, but he remained lying on the wall, exhausted. He felt he could take one deep breath, and with its expiration, he could let his life escape from him. But he had known too many Jerry Daytons and Roy Bollingers, too many gangsters and colorful characters to go out like that — it was no way to end a story. What had once run deep in the river still ran deep in him.

  He got up quickly. Pulling the rope up, he unhooked it, removed the grappling hook from one side of the slate top, and rehooked it on the Up of the other side. He dropped the rope down the opposite side of the wall and climbed down with a long forgotten sprightliness. When he got close to the ground, which was higher on this side, he dropped to his feet, almost falling. There was no gtass on this side, only cinders, and they crunched and shifted familiarly beneath his feet.

  Suddenly, in the nearest tower to him, the door flew open, banging against the guardrail that ran around its platform; instantly, all along the line of the wall, all the tower doors flew open, and before he could step from the shallow shadow of the wall, the spotlights had him — an ancient moth, caught in the cones of light. Just above him, to his right, from the near tower, a shotgun shell jacked into its chamber with a terrifying, metallic finality. The sound of the bolts going home to their chambers was repeated all along the line.

  “Halt!” the guard in the tower above him yelled. The old man kept on walking. “Hallttt!!!” the tower guard screamed.

  Unafraid, the man kept walking. The cones of light made a garish escort. He knew they wouldn’t shoot. Not now. Not going in this direction. Reaching the harsh daytime glare of the inner prison yard, the cones left him as though he was no longer of interest. The inmates who worked nights in the powerhouse, alerted by the jacking shells, came outside and watched, stupefied. The old man continued to walk toward his old cellblock, wondering vaguely what old friends he might see, what stories he might tell, and selecting one of his favorites, he dusted it off a bit and added a twist here and there. A barge sounded on the river. The even hum of its engines told him it was going downstream.

  1978, Iowa State Penitentiary

  Fort Madison, Iowa

  Death Row

  Capital punishment has been at the center of controversy during the final decades of the century. In 1972, the United States Supreme Court struck down the death penalty laws on grounds that they were being applied in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner {Furman v. Georgia), violating the U.S. Constitution, The Court passed to the states the responsibility of drafting legislation that either abolished the penalty or reinstated it in a less discriminatory way. More than six hundred people had their lives spared. Thirty-eight states now have capital punishment. The exercise of the penalty continues to discriminate against the poor and people of color. It is our nation’s highest-stakes lottery.

  There are now more than thirty-five hundred people on death row, and nearly five hundred executions have taken place since the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1973, with a record-breaking seventy-four in 1997. Nevertheless, the abolitionist movement continues to grow. The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal and his writings have drawn many to it. Co-founder of Philadelphia’s Black Panther Party and a popular radio journalist very critical of police brutality, he was convicted of murder and in 1982 sentenced to death. (Since Pennsylvania reintroduced the death penalty in 1978, Philadelphia authorities have sentenced to death more than eight times as many blacks as whites.) Then Sister Helen Prejean’s account of her experiences as spiritual adviser to the condemned, Dead Man Walking; the movie based on her book; and her devoted activism helped to spur the formation of abolition committees across the country. Polls consistently show that support for the death penalty plunges in direct proportion to information about possible alternatives. Meanwhile, the restoration of death rows affects all prisoners, as Judith Clark’s poem, closing this volume, shows.

  Though from a certain vantage we all sit on death row, some of us know this better than others. The condemned struggle for physical, mental, emotional, and moral survival — and sometimes growth — like other convicts. But, like saints and existential philosophers, they also face the rigorous spiritual test of making annihilation their familiar while remaining human.

  With executions multiplying across the land, prisoners awaiting release see the condemned as their doubles in extremis. Prompted by the restoration of the penalty to New York State, Kathy Boudin, in “For Mumia: I Wonder,” seeks counsel from one more versed in resisting despair. What do you do with fear, how do you plant hope, she asks, and “how you grow your life / in a row they call death.” Those who sit or have sat on the row offer a range of answers.

  With remorse so deep and comprehensive it becomes visionary, Stephen Wayne Anderson’s dreamlike meditation seems to say. Remorse for his crimes deepens with recall of early sorrow and expands with grief for the executed who have gone before him.

  With a questioning sprit, Jackie Ruzas answers, in a haunting meditation written during his trial for a capital crime. The question he puts to the friendly priest drives him away. As Ruzas’s whole life fills his empty cell, he poses riddles to himself and the condemning world that few would dare to raise themselves.

  With bravado and gallows humor, Jarvis Masters would reply from San Quentin. The split consciousness of time and reality that prevails on death row gives form to his witty poem in which instructions on making prison hooch strictly alternate with the judge’s intonation of his own grisly recipe for the poet’s execution. Absorbing this ultimate prison toast, one wonders for whom the second cup of pruno is intended — the judge? the reader?

  Death row writers are sometimes blessed with a capacity to see human experience whole, to break down imaginative barriers separating their readers from themselves, to engage us despite ourselves. Anthony Ross’s story opens with the electrifying image of the condemned protagonist Walker in a coffin surrounded by mourners in dinner dress. As the centerpiece of a public feast, he reminds readers of our complicity in human sacrifice. Walker takes our imaginations hostage, enlisting each of us as his double, and craftily defers his own ultimate challenge to us when he writes: “Imagine seeing the end … your end — every day, until you die.” Before being executed, Walker refuses the invitation to say any last words. But as the acidic gas seems to ignite his lungs, consuming his last chance to speak, he thinks, “Yeah, I do have something to say.”

  If, when we catch our breath, we wonder what it was that Walker had to say, we have only to consult ourselves. Ours, after all, is the last word.

  For Mumia: I Wonder

  Kathy Boudin

  I wonder what you do with fear

  do you give it space to float

  between the shadows of the bars that crisscross lines

  of mousegray cinder blocks

  In the mustard yellow lights does it change

  into moving shapes of ghosts in pale green masks

  I imagine

  that you let fear flow

  like tears

  to wash away the salt it brings.

  I wonder how you plant your hope

  do you walk in fields of dreams

  or find it in the magic of a spider’s web

  in the ceiling corner of your cell,

  in the constancy of seasons,

  in the tenderness

  that somehow

  survives.

  I wonder how you grow your life

  in a row they call death

  Is it true

  not enough hours in the day exist

  to write all the articles in your mind

  that sleep takes you away

  from finding legal points to save the

  lives of others on your tier

  that life is full

  when you are full of life.

&nbs
p; I wonder what your lessons are

  for those of us who now await

  New York’s first execution.

  1995, Bedford Hills Correctional Facility

  Bedford Hills, New York

  Easy to Kill

  Jackie Ruzas

  The door,

  I can see its molding if I scrunch in the

  left corner of my cell

  and peer through the bars to my right.

  Each morning I awake

  one day closer to death.

  The prison priest, a sometime visitor,

  his manner warm, asks

  “How are you today? Anything I can do for you, son?”

  “Is it just that I’m so easy to kill, Father?”

  His face a blank, he walks away.

  Play my life back on this death cell wall,

  I wish to see my first wrong step.

  To those who want to take my life,

  show me where I first started to lose it.

  1975, Madison County Jail

  Wampsville, New York

  Recipe for Prison Pruno