Sweet Hell on Fire

by Sara Lunsford

  For example, there was one inmate I didn’t particularly like, but he seemed to want to talk to me every second he could be near me. I didn’t have to look up his crime to know he was a sex offender. When I first came on shift, he would always try to stand too close and he would lick his lips incessantly when talking to me, making this sound like he was eye-fucking some scrumptious bit of cake.

  I told him I found it offensive, and if he wanted to speak to me, he would do it without sucking on his lips or making that sound. A couple of the other officers I had talked to about it told me not to say anything, to just let it go. That he’d do it more if he knew it bothered me. But I’m not one to keep my mouth shut if I find something unacceptable. I had done nothing but treat him with respect, and I expected the same.

  He actually apologized and told me that it was meant as a compliment. Um, no. He was a misogynist who thought all women were whores who could be manipulated or cowed into submission. He did like that I was willing to speak with him, though, so he did it on my terms.

  I even ended up talking to him about how he treated another officer, a friend of mine. He made her cry by saying all sorts of nasty things about her weight. He said even being without a woman as he had for ten years, he still wouldn’t fuck her, etc., and so on. First, I gave her shit that she let him see how upset he’d made her. He was a sex offender. With them, it’s all about the power they can have over you. I told him I was disappointed in him for treating her with such disrespect. He’d said she didn’t deserve respect because she didn’t stand up and take it.

  She told me he gave her the “heebie jeebies”—she’d looked up his crime and she didn’t even want him breathing the same air she did. She wouldn’t look him in the eye because she didn’t want to look at him at all. But being a predator, he took that as fear and zeroed in on her.

  Same guy, two officers, completely different result.

  While that’s no surprise, because no two people will have the same experience with one another, inmates and officers assume they will get similar treatment from people they know are connected. Officers will expect inmates who are related to behave a certain way—good or bad depending on how their relation behaves since they come from the same circumstances. And inmates will expect officers who are related to behave similarly.

  When the two officers were my husband and I, inmates always commented on the differences between us.

  I knew I’d made it as an officer when my husband came to second shift for a while when he promoted to Sergeant. When the inmates sent the porter to talk to him to see what kind of officer he was, what his expectations were, the inmate told him that the cell house didn’t have to be like Seg.

  My husband was confused and said he didn’t know what the inmate was talking about. The inmate responded that he’d heard something about a real hard-ass named Lunsford who had just come out of Segregation and that it didn’t have to be like that, that they could all “just get along.” My husband laughed and said, “You’re talking about my wife.” The inmate didn’t quite know what to do with that.

  But I did. I went out to celebrate that night. I wasn’t just a bitch, or a whore, or a cunt. I wasn’t female. I was an officer. I was a hard-ass. Consistently. Firmly. Hopefully fairly. I was simply authority. That meant something.

  While we were on the same shift (we never worked the same cell house or even the same security level), I was asked a hundred times if “the other Lunsford” was my husband. Most of the time, I just wanted to raise my eyebrow and scowl. Lunsford, like Sasek, wasn’t like Smith. It’s kind of unique. At least in parts of the country where my father-in-law didn’t live for very long.

  When I would acknowledge the question, I’d never get a neutral response. It was either, “Wow, that guy is a bastard. How do you stand it?” “No wonder he’s such a dick being married to you.” Or even “Poor guy. What did he do to deserve you?” But eventually, after dealing with us both on a long-term basis, a few inmates decided, and loudly I might add, that we deserved each other.

  I’d been gone for a year when my husband went into work one night with pot roast. An inmate asked him if I’d made it for him and my husband responded that I had. The inmate clicked his tongue and shook his head and told him he should employ a food taster because he wouldn’t trust anything I’d made. I was the most evil woman ever to walk the earth.

  I still laugh when my husband tells that story. I don’t think I was ever evil. I may have had to whip my dick out a few times, but they had it coming. My dad always said to give them what they had coming.

  Then there were other guys who I had absolutely no problem with who took major issue with my husband. One got out and threatened him on camera at a gas station. Said he was going to come to our house, rape and kill me and our children. My husband filed a police report, so that way if he did come to the house and we riddled him with bullets, we’d have the paperwork to back us up. But the next we heard of him, he’d beaten his girlfriend’s four-year-old son to death.

  And when he was in my cell house, I’d never heard a peep out of him.

  My oldest daughter got an invitation to a birthday party. It was for the son of one of the women who’d been inmate fucking. The one who’d invested her life savings to get this pedophile out of prison. She wanted him, the one with the rotten dick, to come live with her and her passel of kids.

  My daughter really liked this boy as a person. Said he was super nice. But with a mother who made choices like that, I could only imagine the other things this kid had been through. Not only that, but a good officer will not associate with you after you cross a line like that. As I said before, it’s not always about the truth of a situation, but how it appears. Socializing outside of work with someone with that reputation, well, it doesn’t look good.

  So I told my daughter she couldn’t go and I told her that if the little boy asks why to tell him that she already had something she had to do. While I’m a big proponent of telling the truth, I didn’t see any reason to hurt this child over something his mother had done or put my kid in that position.

  At one point, the officer had signed up to be the room mom for my other child’s class. I sent a letter to the school board detailing her documented association with a pedophile.

  And I know this sucks for my kids, not being able to have certain friends because of how it could affect their parents’ (now just their father’s) career. I hope they understand when they’re older that if these people could negatively impact their father’s career, then they’re not the type of people who are going to be good for them in the long run.

  I remember when I was a child and we lived on prison property, a small community of tiny little cottages sat across the street. There were always lots of kids over there, but the street was very busy. I always wanted to go over there and play. I’d been invited so many times. I was allowed to walk to the gas station that was right next to the cottages, and sometimes the kids would walk over too and get candy.

  But I wasn’t supposed to talk to them. That housing was for inmate families who were relocating or here on an extended visit.

  I thought it was a stupid rule at the time, but I understand now.

  I had no assigned post on the schedule. On this day I ended up in the cell house that had become my husband’s regular post. When I got there, the atmosphere crackled with another strange mix of respect, fear, and outright dislike. I hadn’t worked this cell house before, so I knew the feeling was a blend of residual from my husband and the reputation I’d earned.

  While I was a stickler for the rules, as long as everyone was doing what they were supposed to be doing, I was laid-back and easy to deal with. The inmates in this cell house didn’t call me Lunsford, Sarge, CO—only Mrs. Lunsford. Even the ones who didn’t like me.

  This cell house had special rules—it was an open honor dorm for private industry workers, and the inma
tes weren’t forced in their cells very often. They could be out in common rooms watching TV or using the microwave, and they even had a washer and dryer so their clothes didn’t necessarily have to go out to the laundry. That was a huge perk because for some reason, the laundry had bigger roaches than the kitchen.

  It was here in this cell house I learned to make a new kind of dessert. One day I smelled the most divine thing coming from the microwave. I went to investigate and I saw an inmate pull this cake out of the microwave. I know they didn’t sell cake mix in the canteen, but these guys were crafty. They had scraped the inside crème out of Hydrox cookies and mashed the outside cookies into a fine powder. Then they added half a can of Sprite before baking it for two minutes in the microwave. They frosted it with the leftover crème from the middle. My porter gave me the recipe and I did actually try it at home, and it turned out pretty well. Almost tasted as good as it smelled.

  My porter was an interesting guy. He was helpful without being overly so. Funny without being grasping or desperate for attention. When he did talk to me, it was never anything deeper than what was appropriate. He kept mostly to himself and stayed out of trouble. On the surface. I did notice he was very well respected by the other inmates, but I thought it was because he was a convict, not an inmate. He’d done a lot of time and still had a lot more to do. He’d never see his family again outside the prison walls, but he didn’t let that mold who he was. He was calm and had a healthy respect for the old-school way of doing things, as did I.

  The regular Sergeant for this house on my shift ended up taking some leave, so I worked the post quite a bit. I got to know the guys there fairly well.

  On one really quiet night, when everything was winding down, this porter asked me to use the phone. It wasn’t technically his night, but he was a good porter and everyone who’d wanted to use the phone had gotten their chance. A simple request, one I could approve or deny a hundred times a day. Really, of very little consequence to me. As a porter, he was allowed to have these extra little things if the OIC approved. Which I did. Turned out it was his ailing mother’s birthday. She didn’t have many birthdays left; in fact, he was sure this would be her last one.

  I didn’t know any of that. He didn’t try to use that information to get me to feel sorry for him or manipulate me to get his way. He just approached me and asked like a grown man. I guess you could say I respected him.

  I tried to treat all of the guys with respect, but that didn’t mean I actually respected them. I did have respect for most of the convicts who did their time like men rather than like needy little bitches who thought the world owed them something. I tended to pay attention when those who acted like men said things to me because most of them didn’t talk just to hear their gums flap.

  I worked in another cell house again before I was back in this one. When I’d been in the other cell house, a guy had flashed me. He’d been standing at the bars with his dick out, but dressed in all of his winter gear. Hat, coat, gloves, dick flailing out of his jeans in the breeze. I’d laughed, but I’d still written him up. When he’d been served with the write-up, he came down to the office and cussed me out in Spanish. I recognized crazy whore, bitch, and something about fucking my mother.

  Back in the first cell house, I related this story to my second officer. My porter happened to be there listening. His whole face turned red and he asked me who had done this to me. I told him it wasn’t important. I wasn’t going to reveal that information. Then he asked if it was one of his people. I didn’t know how to answer that. His people? Inmates? Mexicans? What? I didn’t know what he meant. Well, yeah, it had been a Mexican, but I wasn’t sure if that’s what he was asking, and I didn’t want to offend him. So I asked him if he meant a Mexican, or an inmate, or what. He said in a very measured tone, “Mexican.” And I said I didn’t know his nationality for certain, but he was obviously of Latin descent.

  I’d actually never seen him that angry. He wasn’t demonstrative, but you know, sometimes it’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for.

  The next day I got a written apology in Spanish and English from the inmate who’d done it. He pled guilty to the write-up and didn’t even contest it. When I saw him again, he apologized in person. Gone were the accusations of crazy bitch whore, replaced with Señora Lunsford.

  That was when I discovered my porter was the head of a certain Mexican gang for all of the Midwest territory.

  For the rest of my employment there, I never had anyone of Latin descent treat me with anything other than kid gloves.

  Once, when I was working overtime and standing chow (supervising the inmates while they got their meal trays and ate), an inmate got nasty with me in front of a group of Mexican inmates. I was just going to take his badge number and write him a disciplinary report. It wasn’t a big deal to me. But it was strongly suggested that he get out of line and go back to his cell. He checked into PC, or Protective Custody, later that day. The Mexicans told him if he spoke to me like that again, they’d rip out his tongue and replace it with his dick.

  All because I let one man make a phone call.

  A woman from work invited me out with her, and I agreed. She was support staff, not an officer, but I’d seen her in a few of the places I went to regularly. Plus, my regular crew of drinking buddies was having a hard time keeping up with me and I didn’t want to go out alone.

  She said she knew a bar where we could drink for free because her boyfriend’s family owned it. Her boyfriend was barely twenty, but she was older than me, mid-forties. I appreciated her style—free was definitely good. Even with friends paying for some of my drinks, I’d been spending way too much money.

  It was a country bar, but they played hip-hop sometimes too. A strange combination to see guys in cowboy hats, boots, and with enormous belt buckles dancing to Kanye West. We co-opted a corner and she introduced me to a bunch of her friends, including the stripper who was paying her rent.

  I was immediately accepted into the group and treated as if I’d always been a part of it. So much so that when they started laughing and joking about things that had happened nights previous, some of them would swear on their mother’s graves I’d been there with them.

  That was nice in a sense. It felt like being accepted unconditionally. That’s a good feeling, even though it was obviously a mirage. These people didn’t really know me, and I didn’t know them. They never would really know me because I’d learned I had to keep myself at a distance.

  I’d only had one pitcher of Coors when my stomach revolted and I almost puked all over the bar. As soon as it welled in my throat, I launched myself toward the bathrooms. The entrance had no door and the individual stalls had saloon doors. I flung open the first set of doors and my cheeks billowed out, full of beer-puke…

  And there was some poor woman with her knickers around her ankles, her knees locked together and eyes as wide as twin moons in her heart-shaped face.

  I managed to hold off just in time to rear back and then barrel through the next set of doors where I redecorated the entire stall. It spewed from my mouth with no effort at all, and it was like trying to aim a fire hose. It wouldn’t stop coming. I tried my damnedest to get it into the toilet, but there was too much inertia.

  The woman in the other stall finished her business and came over and held my hair and even helped me clean it up. Yeah, I can be a bitch, but I’m not an asshole. I made the mess so I tried to clean it up. Especially since we were drinking for free.

  I never saw that woman again, but she must have been some kind of saint to help a stranger clean up projectile vomit in a bar bathroom. Especially since I’d almost puked all over her.

  This is another point where I should have seen what I was doing to myself. I should have realized for as much as I valued control, I had none over myself.

  But I didn’t. Instead, I staggered out of the bathroom after rinsing out the rag
s and decided that I should probably stick to the hard liquor. I drank and danced until closing time.

  The group decided to go back to my friend’s house to continue the party, and she drove. I didn’t realize she was as drunk as I was until she crashed the car into the ditch about a mile from her house.

  We stumbled out of the car and walked the rest of the way.

  We were still having a good time, but the party started to wind down around four and that was when she put me in a really awkward position.

  She called me back to her bedroom and closed the door. She asked if I wanted to go to another party, pulling a baggie out of her purse that had a little white thing in it that looked like a rock. It was cocaine.

  I was pretty far gone on the downward spiral, but I wouldn’t take that step. Something in me just knew that I wouldn’t come back.

  So I told her that wasn’t my thing and I left.

  Then I had to decide if I was going to write a report and turn it in to the investigations unit. She was my friend and I wasn’t a rat. I believed in the blue wall. But I also knew that if she was doing cocaine, it wouldn’t be long until she was bringing the shit inside the walls to pay to feed her addiction. That’s the nature of the beast.

  In the end, I didn’t feel I had any choice. She wasn’t just hurting herself. She could get people I cared about hurt. Maybe even killed. So I turned her in.

  I felt this horrible weight in my stomach with every stroke of the pen as I wrote out my narrative about what had happened, but I did it.

  Turned out to be the right thing to do. It wasn’t long before she was caught having a relationship with an inmate and allowed to resign. They never caught her with drugs on her, but they knew she was bringing them in.

  My husband asked me to go out for lunch and then to Best Buy for some media shopping.