Sweet Hell on Fire

by Sara Lunsford

  An officer does his job and gives them what they have coming and nothing else. Officers are fair, firm, and consistent. Officers are professionals who do their jobs and put their lives on the line every day. We’re officers the same as any other law enforcement and enforce state and federal laws within the scope of our duties. A guard is sloppy, lazy, inconsistent, illiterate, easily bought—a finger-up-the-nose-to-the-first-knuckle waste of space. To call us guards is an insult that’s damn near in the “fighting words” category.

  This convict went about the business of readying the equipment for use, and I went about finishing my prep too. I had a pre-rec check of the yard to complete. Checking for holes in fencing, modified equipment, contraband, etc.

  “That’s an interesting rapport you have with him,” a man said from outside the fencing as I began my checks.

  I shrugged halfheartedly. In corrections, that shrug translated to “it is what it is.” A common phrase used universally throughout law enforcement.

  “Can I come in?” he asked.

  I looked at him again, assessing him. He was as tall as I was, and I was about six-foot-one in my boots, wearing khakis and a white polo. He had dark hair, cropped closely to his head, and wore the type of no-nonsense black framed glasses that are often called “rape prevention goggles.” Very cheap, also very easy to replace. He wore tennis shoes, not the boots that officers wore.

  “Can I see your ID?” I had no idea who this guy was and when in doubt, always ID. He could have been a visitor who’d wandered off, someone sent to test me to see if I would challenge him for his ID, or he could have been an inmate who was trying to get into one particular yard/rec time or another—one where he wasn’t supposed to be. He could have even stolen those clothes from somewhere and this could be part of an escape.

  He flashed his ID. The Unit Team Manager for Segregation. This was the oh-my-God interview. Son of a bitch. And here he’d caught me without my company face on. Well, nothing to it but to do it, right? I let him in and he walked with me as I completed my checks.

  “Yeah, well, you know we’re all individuals and what works with some people doesn’t work for others. You have to communicate in a language they understand.”

  “Very interesting. Tell me more,” he said as we continued around the yard.

  God, I can’t believe how thick the crap was that was coming out of my mouth…I’m good at that, affecting my behavior to blend in with those around me. Although working at the prison made me less inclined to bother with any filter for anyone and effectively killed any tolerance I had for bullshit. And that’s what it was, changing my mode of speech to suit someone else’s sensibilities. Bullshit. Yet, as I spewed what I knew he wanted to hear, I knew some of it was true.

  I debated the next example and decided to go ahead and tell him. “For instance, when I first worked in D cell house out on OJT (on the job training), I asked an inmate to please go to his cell, and he laughed at me. He said, ‘Look at this bitch here with her pretty manners. Don’t you know you’re in prison, girl?’ I smiled and asked him if he’d rather I said, ‘Lock the fuck up, you shit-bag motherfucker.’ He stopped for a minute and really did take time to consider, and he decided he’d rather I said please and treated him like a man. I told him I would be happy to treat him with respect and courtesy as long as he did the same.”

  “You know you’re not supposed to use that kind of language. He could have written you up.” The unit team manager looked at me disapprovingly.

  “Yes, I know.” I nodded. “But I could have written him up for failing to follow a direct order and sent him to Seg. It comes down to communication. Some of these guys grew up in an environment where courtesy and respect are seen as weakness, and they don’t understand what you’re saying to them unless there are a few ‘fucks’ sprinkled throughout. It doesn’t get their attention otherwise because it’s not their native language. It’s also thinking outside the box. There could have been paper on both sides, but there wasn’t, and I haven’t had any issue with that inmate since the interaction. I think it was a great opportunity for risk reduction.”

  He seemed to chew this over for some time. He asked me more questions, but I knew even though he may not have liked my methods that I’d said the right words. Risk reduction. That’s what everyone was about, and it looked really good on paper.

  Then he told me that the OIC had already told him that he wanted me for the post. He said he still had a few more people to interview, but as it stood, he wanted me for the post too. It was vital that they both wanted me. The OIC, a first sergeant, was in charge of everything security related in the cell house, but the Unit Team Manager was responsible for all administrative matters.

  I was elated. Something was going right.

  Until later that night after shift when I was standing out in the parking lot across the street from the prison, where we’d gather to bitch and complain, generally letting off steam before going home.

  My engine overheated, and my piece-of-shit Camry burst into flame.

  The next day the friend who was supposed to pick me up for work forgot, and I didn’t have enough money to call a cab or any minutes on my cell phone. So I had to hoof it about a mile up the street to the nearest pay phone. I had fifty cents to my name. Enough to make one phone call.

  I called my husband so he could come and get me when he got off his shift at the prison, and so he could also call the Captain and tell him I was going to be late and why. I wasn’t worried about how that would affect my career because I was usually a consistent employee and accepted overtime shifts and extra responsibilities.

  It turned out to be another tower day and halfway through the shift, my oldest daughter called. She was elated. She’d started her period.

  We talked about it; I asked her if she had any questions. I made a big deal about it being a good and positive thing. Told her I’d buy her something special to celebrate and we’d have a grown-up dinner out together. When we hung up, I cried like a little bitch.

  I was missing so much of her life working this second shift (2–10) and living as we were. I didn’t see any other avenue for us though. That made it worse. I felt trapped in this mess I’d made trying to get out of the other mess I’d made of my life. It was a vicious circle.

  But I plugged it up. It was prison. I was behind the walls, and my personal bullshit had no place there. Even hanging out by myself up in the tower, as it were.

  The husband took me to lunch so we could talk about the kids, but invariably, the conversation turned to The Job. When we were together, no subject had ever been taboo, and with both of us working there, it was the natural progression of the conversation.

  Tensions, rumors, his snitches, my snitches, and just what was going on in general. More caches of shanks had been found. Some in cells, some on the yard. Guys were hoarding newspapers and magazines they weren’t supposed to have, and, in most cases, they’d use it for armor. Numbers were up in Seg, with inmates doing stupid shit to get in there. Inmates who were normally no problem were walking up to officers out of the blue and threatening to shank them. Why? It’s a check-in move designed to take them out of population and into protective custody but without looking like a pussy or spilling whatever information they have.

  Some of the brass would have frowned on us and this conversation. Talking about all of this stuff outside of work was in effect “taking it home.” In training, they tell us not to take it home. That’s universal throughout corrections. My father was a federal corrections officer, and he never brought it home. He never told me anything about what happened at work beyond what I absolutely had to know, until I did The Job myself.

  As a kid, there was almost a whole year in which I didn’t see my father. He worked eighteen-hour days with no time off, for months at a time, during what came to be called the Cuban Crisis. I don’t remember details, only that inmate
s were lighting their mattresses on fire and there were riots. They had to go on lockdown.

  Shortly after this, or at least shortly to my kid memory, an officer was killed. Not on The Job, though, but at home. He brought The Job home with him, they said, and he took it out on his family. He’d beat his wife almost to death. I remember overhearing my mother and the other wives talking about the night he chased her with a baseball bat and she was crying and pounding on doors to see if someone would let her in.

  His son had finally had enough and killed him with his own gun.

  It was one of the times I asked my dad about his job because I saw him on television behind yellow crime scene tape. Looking back on it now, it was like that scene from The Godfather where Al Pacino tells Diane Keaton not to ask him about his business. He told me he couldn’t and wouldn’t talk about it, that I didn’t need to know those things.

  There were many nights my father would come home and just sit silently in his chair. Sometimes, I don’t know how he did it. He didn’t go out with friends, he didn’t drink, and he didn’t do anything but work and come home. He did woodworking in his spare time, but that wasn’t really a hobby. It was like a second job. A little country-themed craft store in town sold his work and took orders for commissioned projects to help put food on the table.

  He had a good reputation as an honest man, but he was a hard-ass too.

  During my first stint working at the prison, the prison dentist picked me up in a bar. He’d worked both at the federal level and at the state. We were on our way back to his house and conversation turned to The Job, and when he found out who my dad was, he apologized profusely and asked me not to tell my dad that I’d met him and especially not that he’d tried to take me home.

  When I was a teenager and still in my rebellious fuck-you-all stage, I used to like to bring home the most inappropriate guys, but there was one line I wouldn’t cross. He couldn’t have done time. If he had, my father would have buried me in a shallow grave with lime in the crawl space. He pretty much kept his opinions about other guys to himself; he’d just give them that thousand-yard stare. By the time I was seventeen, he stopped bothering to learn their names.

  Until the guy I met at the biker bar.

  Everyone knew me down there and they’d serve me and my friends. My friend’s dad had taken us in there and bought us beers and smokes, so after that, they served us every time. We knew to put the beers down if they got raided and to say we were only there for the karaoke.

  This guy, he was all that a rebellious little antisocial like me could want. He had twenty tattoos, long hair, a Harley, a jaw like a brick, and his biceps were bigger than my head. He was also about six-foot-three. He read poetry and quoted Byron and Keats to me while we were dancing. He even got into a bar fight over my honor. Some guy had called me a slut and asked how much I’d cost him. This guy had been big too, as big as my biker. With just as many tattoos. He had more patches on his jacket though. Which I learned later meant he was higher up in his gang. But he got his ass handed to him in two pieces, and he was banned from the bar. My biker couldn’t have been any more perfect if his name had been Snot.

  He came to pick me up and my dad answered the door. By now, my dad had gotten used to the company I kept and knew the less he said, the more likely I’d get tired of them and they’d go away. But this one was different. I knew it as soon as my dad opened the door and the guy’s posture changed. His eyes narrowed and the badass biker started sniveling like a little bitch.

  “Lieutenant. SIR.”

  I didn’t even have to see my father’s face. I knew then he’d done federal time. I didn’t say a damn word. In fact, I don’t think I could have gotten to my room faster if my ass had been on fire. I sat on my bed, waiting for my father to come in and talk to me/murder me slowly. But nothing happened. We never spoke of it again.

  I called the guy the next day and the first thing he said was, “You didn’t tell me who your dad was.” Like it was somehow my fault.

  “You didn’t tell me you’d done time,” I shrieked.

  “That’s not something I usually talk about on a first date.”

  “Why the hell not? You know this is a prison town.” We had the federal prison, state prison, community corrections, CCA (Corrections Corporation of America, a privately run corrections facility), county jail, military detention barracks—we were loaded to the brim with prison.

  “I didn’t think you were that Sasek’s daughter.”

  “Yeah, because we all know Sasek is like Smith. Really? Are you kidding me? I’m lucky I’m not dead.”

  “You? I was the one there to pick up his precious and only daughter.”

  “I thought you were a badass. You’re sniveling.”

  “I’m not ashamed to admit your father terrifies me. He could ruin my parole.”

  “And you’re on parole? Oh. My. God.” My dad could have gotten in serious trouble at work for that since this guy was still on paper, as we called it, meaning he still had an active file.

  “I don’t think we should see each other.”

  “Well, no shit.”

  “He’s not mad, is he?”

  I hung up without answering him.

  But that wasn’t taking The Job home; that was The Job coming to him.

  I looked at my husband over lunch as I remembered this, and I tried to imagine what he’d do if one of our girls brought home someone he knew from his cell house. I imagine his reaction would be much the same. My husband and my father don’t like each other very much, and it makes me laugh because in a lot of ways, they’re a lot alike. It wasn’t always this way, but now as I’m writing this and my husband has done The Job for a few years and he’s good at it, the similarities are ridiculous.

  Except my husband does bring it home, but not in a bad way. Meaning it’s not heavy or subversive. He brings it home, we talk about it. Part of it could be because I’ve been there, I’ve done it. I know the places he’s talking about, I know the policies, I know the frustrations and the little victories. There shouldn’t be anything we can’t share; making an officer be two people drives a wedge into any relationship: platonic, familial, or romantic.

  When we both were working there, it was common ground when everything else seemed so far apart.

  Like this day. We talked. We laughed. We commiserated. We ate french fries. And it was good. Even when our conversation turned to the darker parts of The Job, not just commiserating over the same stressors and pressures but the horror of which only humanity is capable of.

  Like when he told me about the inmate who tried to disembowel himself with the jagged lid of a tuna can.

  That takes a certain kind of horrible dedication to carve at yourself and pull out your own guts. He was a sex offender, a diaper sniper (child molester). He was also Latino. That’s something that the Latin gangs won’t tolerate. The population at the prison where I worked was different than most because we had the only sex offender treatment program in the state, so these offenders weren’t victimized as often as sex offenders are in other populations simply because we had so many. But the Latin gangs don’t care. One of their own? They’d torment him until they killed him or he killed himself.

  This inmate had tried to kill himself seven times. The staff would save his life, and then as soon as he was back in general population the gang members would take after him with a lock in a sock, gang rape, and anything else they could think of to torment him.

  This time he slit his wrists too, and he bled out before he could get emergency care.

  You’re probably wondering how I felt about hearing this. It’s an awful way to die, to be so tormented that you’d pull out your own intestines. If I was the officer on duty, I would have done my job to get him emergency care. I would have followed protocol. But his death wouldn’t and didn’t keep me up at night.

 
; It’s a wretched state of affairs when the only commonality you have with someone you love is another person’s death and pain. But sometimes, that’s just the life working The Job.

  I put a deposit down on an apartment. I needed my own space. It was a little box of a place, but I didn’t care. It was mine.

  And I got news about the car. I could fix it, but it would take all of my furniture money. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.

  But I didn’t let that stop me. I had to have my own place. I don’t do well living under someone else’s rules, and I don’t do well with sick people either. I don’t know how I’m supposed to act. So rather than subject myself to that discomfort, I avoid it.

  One would think since I didn’t like living under someone else’s rules, that I’d have more sympathy for the inmates. But I hadn’t fucked up and gone to prison, so I was free to live by my own rules, within reason—as they would be if they hadn’t gone to prison.

  I had a place to live but no furniture, and I couldn’t really afford to rent any. Not with how much I was drinking, and I wasn’t ready to give up going out with friends for nice furniture. But there was too much going on to really worry about it. There were plenty of people who had it worse. Or who made it worse for themselves.

  One of my Seg friends called me at home to tell me about what happened to Front Butt.

  Front Butt was a guard. He didn’t even try to be an officer.

  We called him Front Butt because he was so overweight, it looked like his butt was in the front, and he’d earned our derision by being worthless. All he did on shift was eat. He didn’t search cells, make checks, or generally do anything but sit on his butt and stuff his face. Not always even with his own food. He’d eat anyone’s food. He’d take the inmates’ food, not items from the chow hall but items from the canteen that inmates had paid for themselves.