EX-CON

by Scott Hildreth

  After a matter of seconds, Deuce walked out, gazed in my direction, and nodded his head once. I shifted my eyes around the cellblock. Batista, the man I had fought with earlier, stood against the wall with a group of four black men. As he noticed Deuce walking toward me, his gaze shifted to where I stood.

  Our eyes locked.

  I grinned and raised my clenched fists.

  “All clear, do what you gotta do, Killer,” Deuce said as he stepped between me and the open cell door.

  “Jack, god damn it,” I growled.

  The name Jackson reminded me of my sister and Em, and there was no provision in my heart or mind to allow anyone but those two refer to me by my given name. The name Killer reminded me of my trial, and I had no intention of hearing that road name in prison. The prison guards leaked my name to the prisoners from my or file, or jacket as it’s referred to in prison.

  He coughed a laugh and shook his head, “You’re a hard motherfucker, ain’t ya? Do what you gotta do, Jack.”

  “How long they put us in segregation for fighting?” I asked.

  “Thirty days in the SHU,” he nodded.

  “See ya in thirty days,” I said as I turned away.

  As I walked down the run, I heard a whistle from behind me, similar to a bird chirping. Immediately following the sound, the group of Peckerwoods began walking toward where Batista stood. My eyes shifted around the commons area. The group of Dirty White Boys who were surrounding the phones along the far wall began walking in the same direction, and as they did, one whistled a similar sound. Immediately, white men emerged from their cells like ants from a mound and assembled along the walls.

  I’d always believed if a man couldn’t stand up for what he believed in, he must not believe in it with his heart. Fighting a man for suggesting I’d let another man fuck me might seem foolish to some, but as far as I was concerned, it was a matter of respect. If I was going to spend my life living in a place where only the strong survived, I needed to be strong, or be perceived as being strong. Allowing a man to treat me disrespectfully in my first week would only open the door for others to follow.

  Although I may have been depicted differently by all who knew me, I doubt anyone ever described me as being weak. And, as far as I was concerned, thirty days in the hole, or Special Housing Unit, was a small price to pay for keeping my pride.

  Taking my pride in this particular circumstance would require another man whipping my ass. I didn’t know Batista - and really I didn’t have to - fighting was something I did extremely well. I started at an early age, growing up in the orphanage. The loss of both parents before I was a teen angered me, and my release of the anger was fighting. Although I wouldn’t describe myself as an angry adult, fighting was sometimes an evil necessity.

  “Telling the fellas you whipped my ass, huh?” I grunted as I worked my way through the crowd.

  He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet like he was training for a boxing match. My mouth curled into a shitty little smirk as he pulled his clenched fists toward his chest. From what I could see, this was going to be easy.

  “Come and get it white boy,” he growled as he tucked his chin into his chest.

  Hell, I didn’t need an invitation, but it was nice of him to give one. As I positioned my feet and raised my hands, he swung a wild left hook toward my chin. I leaned back, and as his fist swung past me, I hit him with a hard right jab. The punch more than stunned him, and although I could have ended it right then and there, I felt I needed to make a better showing for the crowd who was gathered around watching. If they saw me knock him out with two punches, there was no doubt some might call it blind luck. If they saw what I was capable of, I suspected respect would be in order when I was released from the SHU.

  And respect was all I wanted to gain.

  I allowed him to regain his wits and come at me again. As he pulled his right arm back in recoil, I swung a hard left hook into his ribcage. He gasped for breath as his hands fell to his sides. Now standing before me a human punching bag, I viewed him as nothing more than an opportunity to earn my much deserved respect.

  A very well executed barrage of punches to his mid-section, followed by half a dozen more to his face - all in a matter of seconds - was all it took. As he fell to the concrete, bleeding profusely from his mouth and nose, one of the Peckerwoods behind me gasped his opinion of what he had seen.

  “God damn, Killer’s got some hands on him.”

  “Boxer. Heard he was a professional boxer,” I heard another respond.

  The sound of jangling keys in the distance was unmistakable. In a matter of minutes, the equivalent of a SWAT team would be upon me. As one of the fast approaching officers screamed his command, bodies scattered like roaches.

  “Lockdown! Get to your cells!” the officer bellowed as the group of officers rushed into the cell block.

  “Inmate!” another screamed, “Get on the ground.”

  I gazed down at Batista. If I was going to get a reputation, I needed to make sure my message was clear. As the officers worked their way toward me, shields raised, I glanced over my shoulder. Deuce stood across the cell block, beside his cell door. Many others stood outside their cell watching the commotion. As Batista attempted to raise himself onto his elbows, the entire cell block was focused on where I stood.

  I swung my right leg back and kicked him in the face as hard as I could. More screaming and the clanking of keys from behind me reminded me I was soon going to be in worse shape than Batista if I didn’t stop.

  But I had a point to make. If I was going to spend life in prison, I was going to do so being respected by all men. I really didn’t give two fucks if they liked me, but respect me they must.

  “Don’t move, inmate!” an officer in front of me shouted.

  I gazed over my shoulder. Behind me, a wall of federal officers with riot gear stood at the ready.

  I turned toward my right. Another line of officers with riot shields and helmets stood in front of me. For lack of a more accurate term, I was surrounded. I sighed and gazed down at Batista.

  “Inmate…do not move…get on the ground!” the officer demanded.

  I swung my leg to the rear and kicked him with all my might one more time. Cheers erupted from the entire cell block. I did it again. More cheering erupted. I fully realized the majority of the men witnessing the beating viewed it as a racial incident. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. I beat Batista because he was disrespectful to me in a manner that was contrary to my survival in prison - and for no other reason. I gazed around the cellblock and raised my hands in the air as if I had just won the World Championship Heavyweight fight. Screaming, cheering, and beating on the steel cell doors echoed throughout the cellblock.

  Although I received a beating from the guards much worse than the one I gave Batista, I did win something on that day, and it wasn’t the championship fight.

  It was respect.

  And that was all I needed to survive.

  JACK

  June 6, 2015

  The changes a man’s mind goes through in prison, adapting to the differences between being free and being confined can’t be forced. Naturally, over time, the mind makes adjustments, eventually accepting confinement as being a way of life. I suspect no differently than animals adjusting to their surroundings in the wild, man adjusts to his surroundings in prison. The adaptation, at least for me, took roughly a year.

  I had accepted prison as being my home, realizing there was no way I could change the situation to be something it wasn’t. Accepting it, however, didn’t change my mind’s inability to process the change. Living in a room the size of a child’s bedroom closet with another man, and never having so much as a moment’s privacy wasn’t easy to adapt to. Initially, the days seemed as if they were hundreds of hours long. The weeks passed like months, and each year resembled living a complete lifetime. I convinced myself with the slow passage of time I was destined to live the equivalent of many lives in prison,
watching the clock spin at a rate much slower than it did in the free world.

  After a year, something within me changed. In hindsight, I believe although I had become comfortable with being incarcerated, my mind had not. Now, after almost nine years had passed, my surroundings had not changed one bit, but my mind accepted my new home as being the only option I had.

  Although many men find God in prison, often praying for change, acceptance, or protection from harm, I was not one of them. God had been in my life, my way of living, and my heart since I was a child. I doubted many people looked at me and categorized me as Christian, but I was and had always been.

  When I was free, my family consisted of my younger sister Sydney and the men in the motorcycle club I rode with. Although I had written off the club at the very beginning of my incarceration as being nothing more than a group of men who like to drink beer and fight, casting my sister aside was a difficult decision.

  I loved Sydney in a manner differently than most brothers would love their sisters. Growing up, I acted as her best friend, brother, father, and family. We had very little as children, and went from foster family to foster family after the death of our parents. Eventually landing in a foster home where we remained until adulthood, I did my best to protect her from any and all things that would possibly cause her harm. Sydney was the world to me, and losing her had proven to be far more difficult than I could have ever imagined.

  But it was necessary.

  My only love was also cast aside, which provided her the freedom to live life beyond the walls of the prison I was condemned to spend my life inside. Tying Em to me would have been beyond selfish on my part, and releasing her was not only the hardest thing I had ever done, but something I struggled with each and every day for the eight and a half years I had been incarcerated.

  As much as I loved Emily I decided early in my incarceration I must to cut all ties to her. I chose to remove her from my mailing list, visiting list, and force her to proceed living a life without me in it. Asking someone else in the free world to be incarcerated by proxy wasn’t something I could bring myself to do. I was required to spend the remaining portion of my life in prison, and from what I could imagine life would be like for her, allowing her to become part of the living hell I was in would have killed me.

  I didn’t abandon her out of anything but the deepest of love. I loved her then, and I continued to love her more than I was ever capable of loving myself.

  Separating myself from Em and my sister allowed them to live life without any attachment to me, and forced them to accept the loss of me from their lives - no differently than if I were dead - and proceed living without the day to day sorrow from having the man they desperately and completely loved dying a slow death in prison.

  My only tie to the outside world was the box of letters I had saved from my early years of being incarcerated. I cherished them and read, reread, and read again their contents, reliving the stories and memories they depicted.

  “Step out of the cell, Shephard,” the officer barked.

  I folded the letter, slid it into the envelope, and carefully placed it into the shoe box of letters. After positioning the box under the bottom bunk, I walked out of the cell and turned to face the guard.

  “Another fucking shakedown?” I asked as I stepped out onto the run.

  “Cell inspection. The new AW wants shit tightened up around here. He thinks your houses look like shit,” Officer Turner responded.

  The new Associate Warden was an anal retentive prick. He had been relocated from a minimum security prison camp to the maximum security prison I was housed in. Immediately, he changed rules and regulations regarding paint, floor polish, cleaning supplies, and cleaning procedures. As much as he tried, he couldn’t change the fact he was in an actual prison and not in a prison camp that resembled a college dorm. I was quite certain his mind was adapting to the changes no differently than mine did.

  “You’re going to need to get your shoeboxes of letters put up or toss them in the trash, Shephard. Same thing for your cellie. If it can’t fit in your locker, it’s trash,” Officer Matting said as he emerged from the cell.

  “You know good and god damned well those boxes won’t fit in my fucking locker. Shit, I can’t fit my fucking clothes in the little fucker,” I paused and gazed past him at the two boxes of letters Sydney and Em had written me, “Sorry, Boss, but I’m not tossing my letters, they’re all I’ve got.”

  “Having a surprise cell inspection on Monday. Your cell can’t have anything on the floor. That’s the AW’s new rule,” Matting said.

  I turned around and placed my hands behind my back. “Cuff me and take my ass to the SHU now. I’ll take my letters with me. Fuck the AW.”

  “I’m not taking you anywhere, Shephard. Just get all your shit off the floor,” Matting said.

  I turned around and focused on Turner. He shrugged his shoulders and grinned. I shifted my eyes to Matting. He shrugged and tossed his head toward the next cell.

  “Step out of the cell, Newman,” Matting said as he leaned into the cell beside me.

  I glanced down at the boxes of letters. They were all I had to remind me that there was a world outside of prison, and my only means of communicating - even if my communication was limited to reading letters I had never responded to. To toss them in the trash would be to walk out on what little life I had left. The letters kept me sane and provided me hope that Sydney and Em would continue living the life I would never be able to. In some respects, I lived vicariously through my thoughts of them. And, although I hadn’t written Sydney in over four years, and Emily in almost eight, the letters continued to come, one a week, for eight years.

  All of which I refused to accept, open, or acknowledge. The prison simply provided a letter refused chit, stating I refused another letter, and the name of the person who attempted to send it.

  “Time for store,” Newman said as he stepped beside my cell door.

  I nodded my head as I grabbed my mesh laundry bag from on top of my bunk.

  “Big order this week, soap and Batteries,” I said as I buttoned up my shirt.

  Earning $0.23 an hour wasn’t the wages I suspected I’d retire on, but there was no changing the work system in prison. Working 6 hours a day in prison earned me $6.90 a week to spend. With a bar of Dial soap costing $1.00, and a granola bar costing $3.00, my priorities quickly became the necessities, and nothing more. I treated myself once a month to a treat of some sort from the store, typically a candy bar. The order from the Commissary went in by filling out a request several days in advance, checking the appropriate box beside the item requested. The inmate placed his prison ID number on the request, and signed his name. The order was then waiting for him at the Commissary, and the money was removed from his ‘books’ or account to pay for the items purchased.

  As Newman and I stepped into our place in line, I gazed down the ranks of men. In my time at Big Sandy, I’d seen men come in, leave, be transferred, and get killed. Although one would suspect someone like me would have no worries after doing eight years, the opposite was true. In prison, a man must always be on guard and attentive to his surroundings at all times. A new inmate attempting to make a name for himself, or someone trying to get his patch with one of the gangs was always a threat. As I studied the men, their movements, and listened to the faint whispers, I relaxed slightly, feeling minimal tension amongst the crowd.

  “No talking during movements,” the guard bellowed.

  After being escorted to the store and waiting in line for my turn, I stepped up to the window and held my ID up for the officer to see.

  “Shephard,” I said.

  “Double A’s and Dial?” he asked.

  I nodded my head, “Sounds about right.”

  He handed me the items and printed a receipt. As he handed me the receipt, he nodded his head toward the piece of paper. I glanced down to see my balance, but based on his gesture, I figured my funds had diminished beyond my previous calculation
s.

  $2,542.36

  I gazed down at the paper for a moment, wadded it up, and placed it into my pocket.

  “You saying that’s what I got on my books?” I asked.

  He nodded his head once.

  “Next!” he bellowed as he peered past me.

  I slapped my hand against the counter. “Gimme a jar of motherfucking peanut butter.”

  “Shephard, you know there’s no substitutions. Get it next week. Next!” he hollered.

  “Where’s my order sheet?” I asked.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “In the trash by now, why?”

  “Had a peanut butter on it. All I got was batteries and soap. Need that peanut butter, Boss,” I responded.

  He shook his head and grinned.

  “Missed a jar of peanut butter for Shephard,” he barked over his shoulder.

  The inmate working in the commissary walked up and handed the officer a jar of peanut butter. The officer printed a new ticket and handed me the jar.

  “Next!” he hollered.

  I stepped aside, peered down along the ranks of men, toward the guard, and twisted the lid from the jar. As I studied the guard, I shoved two fingers into the jar of peanut butter and slid them into my mouth.

  I found it odd something as simple as a jar of peanut butter was able to provide tremendous satisfaction to an inmate in federal prison, and be nothing more than a snack to someone in the free world. All of the things I had taken for granted on the outside were now viewed as luxuries.

  Being touched affectionately. Listening to a bird chirping. Turning a doorknob and opening a door. Deciding what to wear. Petting a dog. Sitting at a stoplight. Deciding what to eat.

  Taking a shit without an audience.

  These were simple things I would never do again.

  I dropped the peanut butter into my laundry bag and reached into my pocket. After stepping to the side and away from the watchful eyes of the other inmates, I removed the wadded receipt and stared down at the balance.