Sweet Hell on Fire

by Sara Lunsford

  Further, where was the damn air-conditioning?

  Heat makes people angry. It’s a proven fact crimes of passion go up in the summer time. Yeah, so let’s throw three hundred criminals together in an enclosed place and turn up the heat. That’s bright.

  “If anyone wants a grievance, I’ll be passing them out with chow.”

  In Seg, we had to pass chow around since they didn’t get to come out to eat. Not only did I have Aqua Net in my eye, I was also sweating like a hog. I don’t mean a little sweaty, I mean it poured off me like I just got out of a pool. Only it wasn’t chlorinated water, it was body filth. I was embarrassed by it, and I even felt sorry that I served their food.

  Of course a few commented on it. How they wouldn’t eat anything from a fat, sweaty hog like me, and I had to agree. I wouldn’t either. I could have written them up, but it was the truth. Skinny, fat, average, it didn’t matter. It was gross no matter who did it.

  The end of the day in Seg was the worst, after chow had been passed, trays had been collected, and showers had been completed. Inmates weren’t allowed out of their cells to dump their trash, so they just threw it out on the run and the inmate workers had to clean it up.

  In the summer, the prison always stank, but Seg in the summer was especially horrible. It stank like bad breath, body funk, and rotten garbage with a hint of MSG from the ramen they made in their cells. The guys were only mandated to wash once a week, so there was the regular dirty body stench plus whatever they had fermenting. The guy who pissed all over his cell? That wasn’t especially out of the ordinary. Some would empty out toothpaste tubes and keep their feces in it for special times when they needed a shit gun. Those were especially effective. Or they’d try to hoard leftovers from meals and it would spoil. Some used their toilets like refrigerators, putting their containers of milk down in the water in hopes it would keep it cool. And some were just dirty and didn’t want to wash.

  When we finished that night, I was ready to go home. Completely exhausted. I felt like I’d done a good job, that the OIC would see I was an asset.

  But one of my friends had called during shift. His wife had left him. She didn’t even do him the courtesy of telling him she was going. She just took the car, leaving him stranded at work, and drove a few hundred miles to her mother’s. She’d also taken their daughter with no explanation and no mention of when he could see her.

  He said he was happy to see the bitch go, but fuck her if she was going to take his kid away.

  And he said he really needed a drink.

  So I went.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming him. I chose to go. If I just wanted to be supportive, I could have gone with him and stuck to my decision not to drink myself into oblivion. I chose to go, I chose to drink, and I chose not to stop after I’d obviously had enough.

  But at least I didn’t lie to myself in the morning and say I wasn’t going to do it again.

  I didn’t have a hangover, but I was damn tired the next day.

  I was in a tower, which a lot of people would have enjoyed, but not me. I hated the tower. It was boring and when you’re tired, that makes it all too easy to fall asleep.

  Well, I hated the tower except for the fact it was air-conditioned. I had that thing set so low I could’ve hung a side of beef in there.

  Because working the tower bored most people, there were stories galore of tower mishaps. From some dumbass playing Wild Bill with his shotgun “It misfired on its own, I swear!” and shooting down into the Captain’s office to yet another Darwin Award Nominee dropping her weapon onto the yard and then dropping a bucket after it and asking an inmate to pick the weapon up so she could haul it back up—it was just a disaster waiting to happen. Yes, let’s hand a loaded M14 to a violent felon. Go on. Great idea.

  I’m not stupid, so I didn’t think anything that terrible would happen, but I do have a klutz gene. If there is a pothole to trip over, I’ll find it. So I despised the tower, although I’ve always enjoyed the sound a 12-gauge makes when you rack it. It’s also fun to do it with the loudspeaker on and watch everyone on the yard hit the deck, but the powers that be frowned on that, considered it an unnecessary use of force.

  It was a fairly uneventful shift. I spent a good portion of it on the phone to the other towers. Had to do something to stay awake, and I was still observing my area, etc., and so forth.

  Until it was time for trash. The big dumpster was within my area of control, and I was responsible for running the gates that would allow the inmate workers in and out of the space.

  One of the guys on the crew was one I’d known for some time. He was tall, a huge beast of a guy, really. He was white but spent most of his time with the Bloods. He talked to me every day. Always had a “hello” and a joke. That was part of our repartee. You get to know certain guys, but there’s a fine line. Never anything personal or anything that could be considered on a deeper level than interactions you have with any other inmate.

  This makes it hard because there are always people who click more easily than others. There will be people you like and people you don’t. But you have to treat them all the same.

  I knew a lot of people who had trouble with this guy. He was a known troublemaker. Shit-stirrer, they called him. I didn’t doubt it, but I never had that sort of interaction with him.

  He called out to signal he needed to go past the gate, and I came outside onto the walk (a small sidewalk area like an observation deck outside the tower) with my M14 shouldered, as was appropriate.

  “Look at you with your gun.” He said this as if it were something cute I’d done—a little girl wearing her mother’s heels. But I wasn’t a little girl and I wasn’t wearing heels. I was wearing an M14.

  Here we go. He stood there with the rest of the street crew—other inmates who took care of small maintenance issues, etc. He was fronting for his boys.

  “Yep,” I said, and just nodded.

  The officer with him raised a brow at the exchange, but I ignored him. I had to make my own reputation. If I’d allowed the other officer to handle it for me, or if I’d deferred to him, my rep would be in the crapper.

  “You wouldn’t shoot me,” he said with a big grin.

  Yeah, actually I would. Part of my interview when I applied for the job consisted of:

  Interviewer: Could you shoot someone if you had to?

  Me: Yes.

  Interviewer: You’re hired.

  And I would. The Seg OIC who’d been in ’Nam said that it was easy to say I would pull the trigger, but actually doing it was something else entirely. I respect what he tried to say with that statement, but I know me and I know if it was me or the inmate, I’d shoot him with no hesitation, and I wouldn’t feel bad about it.

  When I tried therapy for another issue, the therapist told me this was a sign of sociopathy if I could really do that. She said it like it was the most horrible thing in the world that I would kill a person. But I didn’t see it as killing a person. I saw it as neutralizing a threat. Keeping the dark things in cages and behind walls. That’s what I was paid to do.

  I guess her diagnosis should have bothered me, but it didn’t. A psychiatrist I worked with as a secretary, not a patient, once told me that most law enforcement and Special Forces types have similar brain function to serial killers and exhibit antisocial and sociopathic tendencies. It all depends on how it’s used, whether for the betterment of society and within acceptable confines or without.

  It’s something that if we don’t have when we start the job, we have to cultivate it to be effective. We have to separate ourselves from them, and it’s for their own good as well as ours. So we treat them all the same, no matter what horrible crime they’ve committed. We have to inure ourselves to the horror of a father who would rape his Down syndrome daughter and father a child with her. The horror of a man who drove ar
ound in his car with his dead wife in the trunk for a month, eating pieces of her body. Looking into the eyes of a killer and knowing what’s looking back at you isn’t quite human. A predator higher up on the food chain. Faster, smarter, stronger, and waiting to pounce.

  So could I shoot him?

  What about if I couldn’t? That was the more important question because the ramifications of my answer had a much broader reach. What if he climbed the wall and I couldn’t pull that trigger? I’d be responsible for every atrocity he committed. Would I rather his blood be on my hands or the blood of a child he raped and dismembered? The mother he guts, the cop he shoots and kills while he’s in pursuit?

  He said it again. “I talk to you every day, girly. Quit acting like you’d be able to pull that trigger.”

  I don’t need to talk shit. I know what I would do and what I wouldn’t. That’s part of our training too. Examine every situation and plan for every eventuality. Go over it in our heads. I still do that in every place I go. I always spot the exits and try to plan for every contingency.

  “Climb the wall and see.” I shrugged with a grin.

  That was enough. It told him our interaction didn’t have to change, but it also told him where I stood. His crew too.

  “Aww, it’s like that? You’re a hard woman.” He joked and put on a smile, but we understood each other.

  Yeah, it was exactly like that.

  Something I almost had to prove the next day.

  Hospital duty.

  I’d never done it before, but I’d heard that hospital duty was even more boring than tower duty. I didn’t think that was possible.

  I told the officer I relieved I’d never done it before, and he said it was no big deal. Just make sure the inmate doesn’t leave the room, don’t let him have calls or visitors, keep him cuffed to the railing of the bed unless he needs to use the john, and if he does, make him leave the door open.

  Seems simple enough, right?

  Wrong.

  Inmate was a talker. As soon as he opened his suck, it didn’t close. I probably could have landed a 747 inside his jaw and he’d have been talking around it. Big jaw—he had a large frame. I could tell by the way his feet hung off the end of the bed that he was taller than me. He was tatted all up his arms with a shaved head, and he had a distinct tweaker look about him. He could have been a big guy if he’d gotten off whatever shit he was on.

  He was also missing half his calf muscle. Of course, I had to hear about how that happened too. Cancer. But of course it was the state’s fault because the cops Tasered him when they took him down after a seventy-two-hour standoff in which he’d killed four police officers and his wife.

  Then he whined for me to take off his cuffs. The cuffs were hurting his ankle.

  Yeah, right after he tells me he’s a filthy cop killer, he wants some sympathy? He wouldn’t have gotten any anyway, but that’s not a bright move. But I could tell he didn’t consider me a cop. To him, I was a rent-a-pig or a cage kicker. We’re not good enough to be cops.

  I wouldn’t uncuff him, so he hit his call button for the nurse.

  “You know, with his leg like that, he’s not going anywhere,” the nurse said, eyeing me disdainfully. “You can take the cuffs off.”

  Like bloody hell I would.

  “Sorry. Can’t do it.”

  “It’s inhumane,” she growled.

  “Tell that to the families of the people he killed, honey.”

  She snorted and rolled her eyes and left.

  Yeah, cry me a river of purple panther piss. Sure, they’re still people and should be treated as such, but not to the point of endangering others. What’s next? Prison is too hard, so it’s inhumane to send them there? Slippery slope.

  Then he said he had to go to the bathroom. So I unlocked the cuffs, knowing it was going to be a huge hassle to get him back in them, but I couldn’t deny him the bathroom. At least, not at this juncture.

  I reiterated he should leave the door open, and as I did, a different nurse came back in with his lunch tray. I crossed away from my chair to the other side of the room to get out of her way, and as soon as he came out and a look crossed his face, I knew I’d fucked up. I just wasn’t sure how.

  He bent over my chair and pulled out a big black bag, out of which he produced a bottle of state-issued pepper spray.

  Apparently, the officer I relieved of duty and the Control officer who’d sent me on duty had both neglected to inform me about a duty bag and that it held such goodies as a belly chain for transport back to the prison, extra restraints, and pepper spray to force compliance in case of an attempted assault or escape.

  He had it aimed at me with a cold smile, eyes dead and flat. “What do we have here?”

  The nurse had flattened herself against the wall, afraid to move.

  What did we have here? My dick in a sling if I didn’t get that spray back from him. I really didn’t want to take another shot of pepper spray in the face, but I didn’t want him to escape or take the nurse hostage. Or do any number of horrible things that could have happened.

  He had pepper spray, but I had a .38. Not my favorite—I hated the .38, vastly preferring the 12-gauge. But I’d make do with what I had.

  “Put it down,” I commanded in the most even, calm tone I could manage.

  “No, I don’t think I will.” He grinned wider and tossed the canister back and forth between his hands.

  Yeah, so I might take a shot of pepper spray in the face. Whatever. I had before. It would sting like a motherfucker, but I had six bullets to neutralize the threat. Even with my eyes on fire, I could still hit center mass. He was a big target.

  I took a breath. My hands weren’t even shaking. I drew my gun with no hesitation. “I’m going to tell you one more time to put the spray down.” Hopefully it would drive home the fact that I would shoot him.

  I didn’t want to.

  But I would.

  Lives depended on my choices.

  Given his history, I already knew part of what he was capable of, and that would be on me if I let him escape.

  In a split second I imagined the scenario, pulling the trigger, the aftermath. The face of his daughter and if I could look at her after.

  Could I? If I wounded him? If I killed him?

  Yes, I could.

  “Put the pepper spray down on the table and back away slowly. This is your last chance to comply,” I said firmly.

  “Or what? You’ll shoot me?” He took a step toward me.

  I inhaled deeply.

  And I’d fire on the exhale.

  Cool and smooth. On target. Center mass.

  He dropped it and held his hands high. “It’s not like I could do anything. I’m missing half my leg.”

  He didn’t need his leg to kill the nurse. Or the cops who would have pursued him. Especially not since he was a tweaker. If he’d been high, a bullet might not have stopped him. Maybe not even all six.

  “Close your mouth, and sit on the bed.”

  He did as I ordered, and I recuffed him after holstering my weapon. I put him in the belly chain too, restrained him so he couldn’t go for my gun. The nurse suggested they catheterize him so he didn’t need to leave the bed. I told her as medical staff, that was her call.

  When I recuffed his ankle in addition to his wrist, I saw a red circle starting to chafe where the cuff had been, where the skin was obviously thin and about to break open.

  I wrapped a washcloth around his ankle to build a barrier between the metal and his flesh. Not so much he could even shift the cuff around, but enough so that it didn’t tear his skin open.

  One might ask why I’d give a fuck after what had just happened, but like I said, it was my job.

  “Hey, Lunsford. How’s it hangin’?” one of the yard worker
s called to me as I walked into the enclosure for the first rec period of the shift.

  I was a yard dog that night, which meant it would be me and two or three other officers walking around while three hundred inmates had their rec time. This was a dangerous post because when things kicked off (be it a riot, fight, shanking, etc.), it was usually on the yard or in the chow hall. In fact, it had only been a few years since an officer had been beaten to death with free weights on the yard.

  “A little to the left,” I answered.

  He laughed. “Aw, I know that’s right. You’re OG, Lunsford. O. G.” He accentuated both letters individually.

  “Back at you.” I nodded my head in acknowledgment.

  OG means original gangster. He had told me before I was “old school,” both terms that most inmates and uniformed staff respected because someone who’s OG got things done. No touchy-feely let’s-talk-about-our-feelings bullshit that nonuniformed staff who don’t deal with the inmates on a day-to-day basis think is a good idea. You and the inmates both do what you have to do. More often than not it puts you at odds with each other, but there’s a certain amount of respect there too. On both sides. The inmate tries to get something past you and you try to make sure that doesn’t happen, and you both understand it’s just part of the game.

  The best part? The lines are clear. There is no miscommunication about what’s expected from either party.

  It’s the difference between convict and inmate, and officer and guard. And yeah, there is most definitely a difference. Convicts do their time with their heads down. They don’t bitch and they don’t snitch. There’s a saying in prison: Snitches get stitches. But convicts are a rare and dying breed. Prison culture has become popular in the mainstream, glorified in media, and these men who come to prison now behave like inmates. Those that I’d call convict rather than inmate are few and far between.