Chapter 14: The Population
Jared’s been in Segregation three weeks when they tell him to roll it up. It’s been three weeks of alternating periods, fragments of a life marked by nonstop reading of the trash novels and Reader’s Digest book summaries that are the bookmobile’s only fare for Seg. Later he’ll be impressed by the unlimited access to library materials that’s available in prison but for now these pastel blue weeks have introduced him to a pop culture world he truly hadn’t known existed. If there was something that could move his alienation from “normal society” an iota towards crazy, these reading materials did the job.
Pastel blue: He’s been suspended at the border between animated life and mere rock existence. Little could he anticipate how his time in Seg is but a foretaste of what his time at Millston will be like. Right now, however, by some fiat from Mount Olympus, he is judged fit to be “released to the Population” to begin Act III.
Evicted from the fancies and pastel blues of Seg, Jared is brought to the A&O—“Admissions and Orientation” dorm for new commitments—where he rightly should have been three weeks ago, and then for just a day or so. Now he’s already done three weeks, so it’s just a way station stopover as he hears, “Roll it up, Jennings. You’re getting released to the Population.” The Population—more amusing Inside jargon! The guard leads him to bed number 23, the lower bunk. Just like the Seminary! On top of the mattress is an array of supplies: toothbrush, bar of soap, tube of toothpaste, and a razor with five blades—not just an array, amusingly, but an array in perfect sequence by size. His mind fastens on the disciplined display, snared by both its evocation of perfect Institutional order and its magical transcendence of time and place.
Christ, institutions! Amused, he’s momentarily transported back to his first day in the monastery. “Possessions,” the Novice Master instructed, “are held in common. From this day forward you own nothing!” Now he looks at his Inside riches, chuckles, “Mine!” Fascinated by this booty, Jared picks up the razor. It’s an odd kind unlike any he has seen. It has a small screw that he must turn in and out to change a blade. Preter-technological, he concludes, some Army-issue relic.
Aha! Everything in front of him, everything, is old Army issue. “Magical!” he whispers to himself. He turns to the clothing, picks up what’s clearly a previously worn, full-length, thickly insulated Korean War jacket. He slips it on and bingo! he’s war hero brother Larry!
Jared flashes on his big brother as he pulls a Korean-issue cap with large square earflaps over his head. It’s a style he’s seen only in photos among his brother’s memorabilia. He plays with the long straps, tying them under his chin. He feels like a prop in a military museum, a manikin in an Army Surplus window. It’s Fucking-A Minnesota February, so what the hell, stay warm, be a soldier!
Exploring further, with a tinge of romanticism, Maybe this blanket was in battle. He likes this linkage to Larry. What he doesn’t know is that he’ll be now and forever with Larry in the land of battleground dreams: daymare and nightmare.
Jared runs his right hand around the coarse bundle, now his—but more than that, now he’s theirs . . . to wage nightly battles here, wage them while snoring under the emblem “US.” Ha, U-S, us, meaning me and you, Larry!
Packing up, Jared stuffs a set of glove liners, two stocking caps, and three pairs of calf-high socks into the jacket’s pockets. All are dirty brown with a tinge of grey—metallic grey. He stands here a moment in Korean War dress, posing, wanting this to be the picture he sends home. He imagines it printed on the front page of the Trib, headline: “Jared Jennings Battles Korean War in Prison.” Ha, what a gas! But his parodying is short-lived and his soul darkens again, knowing too well how that war is still being waged in Larry’s and his generation’s dreams. “At least I won’t be cold,” he murmurs as he disrobes and throws all the stuff inside the jacket which he then balls up.
Jared’s fanciful escapade dissipates in a blink and for the first time he scans the dorm. His instincts kick into surveillance mode. He watches the others, only six—observes their small movements like he did as a freshman on enrollment day at Saint Clement’s. Back then he was fearful of hazing; now it’s more sinister things. But stronger than fear is the touch of wonder as he realizes that he’s seeing actual criminals! In the flesh! Step right up and see real convicts! Not just the accused of County but the hard-timers of the Big House!
Jared doesn’t think of himself and Resisters as convicts. Today, possibly for the last time, he makes this easy distinction and separation. He observes these dorm residents as if they’re a breed apart, people who—not through acts of conscience or he assumes even conscious acts in most cases—reject the greater collective. They follow their own rules, real solo flyers, and from his distanced perspective they have a smattering of the romantic around them.
Nevertheless, Jared has been through the disillusionment of monastic life and he knows well the dark soul that lurks beneath the demeanor of even saintly ones. Saints and sinners. This somewhat comic comparison brings another slight grin to his face. What if it’s true? His smile broadens as he pictures the sextet grouped in the back of the dorm coming forward to introduce themselves as monks of a peculiar Holy Order dedicated to the stimulation of the human soul. Individuals whose Holy Rule is to act, somewhat in kamikaze fashion, on a mission to keep others from boring themselves to death. “A little crime to keep everyone prime,” is their blessed motto. Just a silly thought; he dismisses the scene. Then he spots Sean entering from a far-end side door into the A&O.
Sean arrived at Millston a week before Matt and Jared turned themselves in. As he approaches, walking the length of corridor that bisects the dorm, Jared wonders what he should say. What’s prison really like? What will we do tonight, this first night? Has he heard from home? A list of questions rapidly stream through his mind.
Sean looks trim in his khakis. His bantamweight wrestler’s physique carries the cloth well. He does look a bit comical though—it’s been quite a while since Jared has seen Sean so closely cropped and spit-clean. Even his sparse pate glints! He’s a diminutive knockoff of the Corridor Captain—but then Jared realizes that Sean might be having a similar reaction to seeing him.
Sean embraces him, once, with a muscled, belting embrace. Then, with no greeting, he holds him at arm’s length, palms against Jared’s chest and peers straight and hard into his eyes. “Three weeks in Seg. You must’ve been a bad boy in County?”
“Nah, didn’t do a thing. Where’s Matt?”
Sean presses his question.
“What did they say to you about Seg?”
“Hardly a thing. Just that they wanted to adjust me.” Jared mimes being cranked and adjusted.
“What did they do to you during the last three weeks?”
Jared’s confused, tipped a bit off stride by Sean’s intense probing.
“What’s going on, little fella? You seem to want me to say something. Truth? I just sat in that fucking vomit of pastel blue world and passed time. Like a perverted session of Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. It was tedious as hell.”
Sean doesn’t immediately respond. He sits down on the bed’s edge, pulls Jared down next to him, then grasps the tips of his collar and jerks him into a tiny private space. He whispers, “Prison’s a rumor mill. There are rumors of rumors. It’s really weird. So let me fill you in. There’s about twenty-five draft resisters here, mostly induction refusers. Not a lot of heavy mental machinery, but good hearts. When you first came in and went to Seg, most saw it as just another trick of the Warden. The COs here—that’s what they call us, believe it or not—have been in the Warden’s face lately. There was a suicide last week, of just a regular con, over in Woodwork. He electrocuted himself. Just a middle-aged guy, I think, in here for tax evasion or something like that. Just got turned down on parole, and we’re badgering the Warden about how guys who get turned down are handled.”
Sean releases Jared as he shifts around, tightening t
heir private space, almost a lover’s space, breathing together, conspiring. From this contorted, awkward position, Sean strains to look around the dorm at the other inmates. He notes what the others are doing, checks for hack shadows—whispers, “The fucking guards are everywhere, man. Remember that, some of these hacks are spooks, invisible, I swear!” Feeling secure, he continues, “The word came down that you went berserk—true?”
Eyebrows flinch, pleading guilty, but Jared moves to cover his embarrassment. “Aaah, I just did a little dance, yeah.” He doesn’t want to admit that he heard later that everyone had gotten steak that same night, and that he had flipped out over nothing. “Great steak, eh?” the guard had said innocently as he passed the breakfast tray through the slot the next morning. “Lucky you came yesterday. Great PR for the Duluth meat house.” Just stupid banter but it made Jared realize how idiotic he had been. Paranoid motherfucker!
“Again, this came down as they were fucking with you, and some felt you must’ve done something really wild in County. But then, as the grapevine works, it came down that you were just lying around reading.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“See, everything you do in here, man, well, somebody is interpreting, making a prediction, fucking with his mind over it. Then I heard you were brought up here by the FBI. Something special and strange there. Really. Matt and I came by the normal route, federal marshals. So it’s out that you’re on Protective Custody and won’t ever be coming out. See, I’m out here defending you, telling everyone you’re not a snitch.”
Jared pulls back, a touch dizzy. The room tilts and whirls. He rubs his eyes, stands and stretches, slaps his own face. Sean laughs.
After three weeks of solitary and its self-conversational solitude, Jared has been listening to Sean as if he were a soap-opera character.
“J, now that you’re being released, everyone’s confused.”
Before Jared can respond, someone yells from down the dorm, “Hey, Schneider, that your partner?” It’s a command-yell, shouted by a guard.
“Yes sir,” Sean stands and booms back.
“Okay, take him over to Dorm Four. Get him straight on things. He needs to be in Education by ten.”
Sean is in dutiful motion before the last directive is completed. Jared hastily grabs his roll and follows, hustling to keep pace. “Friars, surrendering your will to the Master means dropping whatever you are doing the instant you are called!”
“Dorm Four”—his gut sinks at the sound of it. I’ve lived too long in dorms. Having a dorm number makes it all just too real. You’re here, man, dig it. You’re in prison! During Jared’s seminary years it was all dorms. Then in college he started out in some renovated World War II barracks. Even countercultural commune living was its own version of dormitory life. And now this, to his eye about thirty-five double-bunkers—God, I hope I can get a lower bunk—with only a lockless three-by-three cube for all his worldly possessions.
Sean walks up to several unmade lower bunks. He’s not even thinking, Big guys on the bottom. Just knows. Pounds on the mattresses. “Just testing the springs!” Then he smells the blankets and sheet rolls. Minutely inspects the pillows. “You won’t believe what some of these have been used for!” Checks the handles on the cubes. “Don’t want doors that squeak.” In answer to a question not asked, “Best for sneaking food out when everyone else is asleep!” Finally, he evaluates the view. “Every little perk counts! Also, you don’t want the sun in your eyes when you rise.” All done, Sean settles Jared’s things on one of the lower bunks that has passed his inspection and varied tests.
“This is a good area. Most of our guys are here.”
“COs?”
Sean blanches a shade lighter. “Err, them and—shit, white guys. I meant white guys.”
Jared immediately starts making the bed. He pulls the covers taut, expertly making hospital corners, one domestic skill the Novice Master drilled into his head! Just as he finishes he catches Sean’s drift.
“Are things that crude?”
“You can bet on it!”
“Geez, back to square one. Bayonne, New Jersey, and racially segregated neighborhoods! Hell, we even discriminated against Polacks and Wops, especially Protestants!” Jared doesn’t savor this memory, especially since he remembers all the turf wars he saw his older brothers fight—one getting a lip with fourteen stitches, another throwing bricks. He remembers all this as one reason his father accepted the transfer to Minnesota.
Just as he had dealt with that then, Jared feels he can handle this now. More, after Seg, he’s not surprised to find himself reversed in time. Korea . . . Bayonne . . . Pretty soon I’ll be back in Mom’s womb!
“Jared, my man, we need more time to rap but you’ve got to get over to Ed U for testing. Yer a rat now, ya know! And I have to get back to my day spot. But one thing, don’t socialize.”
Sean holds up his left hand forestalling any response. He turns the statement into a command. “Don’t socialize with anyone. Just hold on to that thought and we’ll rap after chow. Okay?”
“Sure, Daddy. Anything you say!”
Left alone, Jared tidies up as best he can. He has nothing personal to decorate his cube with, to make it his own, and no money to buy anything. Ah, finally, true Franciscan poverty! His mind plays with this, laughing at how such was the goal of religious life but oh how luxuriously he had lived in the monastery! Divine socialism, he jokingly called it, which actually was divine capitalism at its prime. Clerical Economics 101: Rob from the poor in spirit to give to those who preach the Spirit to the poor! He flashes on Uncle Sam, shakes his head, for even as a Trappist he’ll have access to everything he needs: bread and water, a cell or hermit’s hut, books if he wants, flush toilets.
“The embarrassment of Holy Poverty!” So he said to the Novice Master when asked why he was leaving the Order. That wasn’t the only reason but it was a strong one. Now he finds himself in another Institution, another communal hermitage. Ain’t I fucked!
What shall I call all this? he muses. Or is there any difference between Clerical Economics and Prison Economics? Hmmm, either way I get three hots and a cot. Twenty-four-hour security, books, hmmm. He lets these airy questions float away as he attends to more practical matters, though in fact it is his seminary training that kicks in. He’s now not a Resister but Inmate 8867-147, and as his first act of Obedience he has to find his way over to the Education Department—and heed Sean’s advice: not greet anyone on the way.
“What I want you to do is place these shapes in the proper holes as fast as you can.”
Jared is amazed, truly amazed. For the past twenty minutes he’s been completing Idiot Quotient tests and being run through a series of physical agility tasks. “Am I cutting it as a rat?” he wants to ask, but the piercing sincerity of his test-meister chokes off this levity.
“Good, good! Ex-see-lent!”
Jared smiles, a simpleton’s grin. Then he submits to a typing test and assorted dumber tasks before Mr. Pence, Education Director, announces, “Finished! Good, good! Record time! Record time! Ex-see-lent! Quite ex-see-lent!” He quickly, almost eagerly, gathers up all Jared’s tests. Jared envisions Mr. Pence running over to the Warden saying, “Record time! Record time! Quite ex-see-lent!”
Mr. Pence leaves and since Jared has finished in “Record time!” he has about ten minutes to kill. Pence told him to remain in the room until the siren sounded for chow. Slipping into his hack voice, Pence directed, “At that time, proceed back to your dorm for Count.”
Ever the used-bookstore hound, Jared gets up, goes over to the small library stack and starts browsing. But before anything catches his fancy, he hears a quick, raspy “’Ey, bud-ee!” Jared looks around the room trying to find the source and catches a fragment of a face over his right shoulder. Three fingers wave to him like a small fan. The guy talks fast but his hands move in slow motion. “C’mere, bud-ee! C’mere!”
The guy’s an old black inmate. A bit
stooped, lots of grey, with wire-rimmed granny glasses and a big, nearly toothless smile. There’s a slight glint from a gold-capped incisor. As Jared steps towards him, the guy reaches out and grabs his left arm. He pulls himself towards Jared, making like he needs to lean on him for balance, which he doesn’t. What he’s doing is controlling Jared, who, still a naïve Inside newbie, unhesitatingly walks with him to a far corner.
The old guy positions Jared, wedges him into a corner, then stands at his right side. This purposeful action brings back memories of Sister Johanna and how she used to patiently and with such serious intent position each acolyte for the grand Christmas procession. Jared quickly surmises that the guy is an old fox. It’s quite clear that this is the one place in the room where you can see who enters without them seeing you.
Big cheeky smile, “Hear yer—hear yer en fer a round nickel, so’s ah knews ya needs me.” He says it in such a way that Jared doesn’t doubt that he does need him, but for just what he can’t say. “Peeple culls me Supply Line ‘cause I’se get ’em ennyting ’ey wants.”
With that said he waits, smiling and waiting, expecting . . . What? An order? Jared doesn’t know what to say. Supply Line just smiles and smiles. It unnerves Jared.
“What will I need?” he asks genuinely. “There’s not a lot to need in here.”
Old Supply Line’s eyes pop out, his right forearm rifles up to muffle his laughter. Jared has given him a true moment of amusement, one evoked by a display of ignorance and an innocence that the old con hasn’t encountered in years. Oddly for the time and place but with grandfatherly concern, Supply Line places one hand on Jared’s mouth and with the other pats his face. With that he slips from the room, vanishes so quickly that Jared looks at where he last was, trying to detect what must be a secret doorway. But he finds nothing.
Oh well! Too tired to chase the mystery down, Jared turns back towards the bookshelves but is once again interrupted, this time by a high-pitch siren. It commands, “Lock-up and Count! Lock-up and Count!” Jared obeys, starts towards his dorm.
There are six Lock-ups and eight Counts per day, two while asleep. Jared posts by his bed as one guard strolls around the dorm eye-checking and counting while the other hack holds sentry at the main doorway. As the Counter moves, Jared’s eyes follow, studying each “resident” as he overheard a guard euphemistically call the inmates.
On the face of it, they all look normal. But what the hell did you expect? Green monsters from Mars? However, this review has a purpose, for Jared is looking, searching for the eyes, eyes that he believes will tell him things. He has a theory about eyes and he wants proof. The eyes are the gateway to the soul. Guard them and stand fast against the Devil! But for now he sees only citizens who have erred—or, more to the point, who erred by getting caught.
After this Count comes lunch, then Mail Call, then some make-do work assignment—his “day spot”—followed by a Yard break, then another Count, ending with dinner, some Rec time, the final awake Count, and Lights Out. Two sleep Counts and one wake-up tally. He caught on to this routine in snippets of conversation with the bookmobile hack while in Seg. At the moment however there’s an eye-witness novelty to it all that he’s enjoying.
Once the hacks are gone, Sean comes over to take him on a short tour. He slowly walks Jared through the dorm, describing the “neighborhoods.”
“Look, the Admin’s into integration but it ain’t working! Gangs own the dorms, so though we’re a white dorm—Honkey Heaven! of course—there’s a small sprinkling of every group here. Same everywhere else. Look, Blacks in the back. Gays in the buffer area between the Blacks and Hispanics and Indians. Note the homey view!” he snickers, “All they can see is the Tower!” Turning another corner, “This is White-tee! Note the scenic vista!” And lastly, pointing towards but not going into the area, “There we have the slums—for the Floaters, guys who don’t belong to any group. Notice the shitty view—a South Side for all the homies from Chicago and Minneapolis!”
“Floaters” are those the hacks shift around when tensions get too high and groups need to be isolated, increased, or decreased. Sean warns, “Most are snitches.” Jared hears: If someone gets killed, it’s usually a Floater.
Jared learns that prison has groups within groups, mostly racial and political, although religion and cities also play a definite part. “The Black Muslims . . . see that felt picture over there?” Sean points to the corner of the room. Jared sees what appears to be a portrait of someone’s dad with a fez or some peculiar Lodge hat on. “That’s Elijah Poole. You’ll get to recognize the Muslims by that picture and their impeccable dress. Next only to the gays, these guys are starch on starch, all creased and wrinkle-free in their prison khakis. You’ll see, their special mark—shirts buttoned at the top.” Jared has worked with Black Panthers but Muslims are new to him. He wants to ask about this button thing but lets it drop as Sean hastens the pace. “Among our blessed brethren in white skin you’ll find your Vets and Bikers. This’ll be most evident later.”
“Later?”
Sean snickers, “In the Tattoo Parlor.” He breaks into a full guffaw when it’s clear that Jared doesn’t have a clue.
“And now our gay brothers or as they want us to say, ‘sisters.’ Dig this, J—you are now entering the land where your body will be prized as it has never been prized before.” And as they walk by, Jared notices several guys checking him out, up and down, affecting X-ray vision. Sean grabs his right shoulder, spins him around and, greatly amused, says while waving a naughty finger, “Not now, not now, big boy. Later, later you’ll have the pleasure of walking that runway. Later!”
They end back at Jared’s bunk and sit down at opposite ends. Sean wants Jared to pay special attention to his concluding comments.
“Look, I want to get serious for a minute.”
“Okay, little man. You have my total attention. I’ve cleared my calendar just for you!”
“Look, some of the guys think you must be a snitch.” He looks hard at Jared, pushing the unasked question with his eyes. Jared is at a loss for words. “Some even say you set us up for the fall.”
Jared’s mouth drops open but nothing escapes; he’s too stunned by this unexpected indictment.
“They hold it’s part of this Catholic Radical thing that raiders must get caught—go public. That your rap about sociopolitical sacramental acts has to go down as a public thing.”
Sean stands up and steps over in front of Jared, lightly grips his left shoulder.
“I told them it was the purest bullshit I’d ever heard. But this Seg thing, man, and the FBI ride—well,” he takes a deep breath, “I’d wager it’s more paranoid in here than it is out there. You’re going to have to deal with some of this. I just wanted you to know, so you’d have some time to prepare for what might come your way.”
All Jared can offer is a soft, “Thanks, bud.”
Sean starts to sit down again but reconsiders and resumes, still standing. “Look, this little introduction is nothing unless you understand the peculiarities. But first I need to hit the head.”
Jared flops down onto his bed, bunches up a pillow. Everything’s so fucked up!
When Sean returns from the bathroom he sits back on the edge of the bed. “About the gays, so I can get that over with. Even the hacks call them by their girlie names. So don’t freak. He may look like a Charles or a Robert but he wants to be called Betty or Susie. You’ll adjust. But more important is the party.” Sean pauses.
“What?”
“I don’t think you had this in the Sem, my friend. But just after Lights Out the meat market opens. You can visit or stay home. The party’s open to everyone!”
Jared’s curiosity is aroused but he’s also more than a tad shocked.
“You mean they permit it? Right in the dorms?”
“Yup. Dig it. I think they really encourage it.”
“I’ll be damned! A warden with a Free Love philosophy! What else goes on here?”
Sean checks his watch and hops off the bed. “Chow!” he broadcasts, finger-tapping his watch. He motions for Jared to follow. Getting a good place in the dinner line is a push-and-shove, kiss-my-ass daily contest.
“C’mon, I can’t tell you everything. You’ll learn. You’ll learn quick enough.”
Although guys jostle for position there is scant advantage to getting through the chow line first. Food is as bad at either end of the clock. Quantity is the only possible reward. But getting ahead seems important to many. Of such trivial things Jared is to learn are prison pleasures made.
He and Sean pile their trays and are making towards the CO table when Jared hears it for the first time. “Hey, Big Man, are you lonesome tonight?”
It’s “Big Man” that he’s to hear, time and again. Prison is physical time; everything is measured in carnal units. Size and muscle are important. It’s not unlike the world of jockstrap sports. But then it is very, very different because—it’s an Inside truism—the gun’s a cock, the cock’s a gun. The violent macho quite often ends in violence, at times murder. Unlike in basketball, the loser often does not go home.
Sports—how that word has played out in his life. The only thing matching his lust for books and his craving for soaring ideas is sports. From early childhood he’s been a “scooter,” playing every sport he could—as Burston had accurately sketched. It led, in college, to visits by NBA scouts, invitations to special camps, but the war cut him out. He couldn’t enjoy competition like he used to. He didn’t want to support anything “The Establishment” venerated. Like many, he heard the call of the Hippie ’60s, “Tune in, turn on, drop out!” For him it meant time in the pristine woods that engulfed Saint Clement’s campus.
What he learned during that year in the woods is that life is a Great Wheel. Everything comes back to itself. It was in the woods where the Wheel turned and he first re-encountered Quinn. Nightmares that were living daymares. Flipped, because this time Jared was the Big Man. He hunted Quinn down. Chased him through the thick pines, up and down gullies, across Monk’s Creek—the victim now the feared one. Quinn slips, slides down a deep embankment, gets dangerously entangled in a thicket of briars. Snared! Trapped! It was then and there that Jared prepares to kill Quinn. He laughs wickedly, “Who’s powerless now, asshole!” Arm locked around his throat, Jared hoists Quinn upwards and backwards onto his chest and pounds a bowie knife into his heart. “Die, motherfucker!” It was all just tripping on LSD and totally forgotten when he “came down.” But it remained a killing he’d have to face later—just now put back on the Wheel for a future turn.
Here, the Wheel turns again and he’s back on public display. “Oooo!” the cheerleaders sigh and giggle; he flexes his biceps and winks. His height, youth and brawn are once again acknowledged by hoots and hollers as are his gait, posture and attitude. A confident buck like him sends the sisters a-tittering and a-tattling. Jared doesn’t have to ask if it’s the gay table. While the phrase lassoed him, it missed Sean’s ears or he paid no attention, whatever. Before Jared makes it across the room Sean is seated and half-finished eating.
Maybe it was Sean’s forewarning, maybe nothing, but Jared clearly senses that the others are lying in ambush waiting for him to show his hand. As he sits down he flashes on the monastic table where no talking was allowed. All the monks ate in plate-scrapping silence while listening to readings from the gory and gruesome tales of martyrs, as in The Fourteen Holy Helpers.
Thereupon a great block of stone was placed on his breast. The next day he was bound upon a wheel set with sharp knives, and it was put in motion to cut him to pieces. Whilst suffering this cruel torture, he saw a heavenly vision which consoled and encouraged him. On the next day, April 23, 303, Saint George was led through the city and beheaded.
At that table he learned the discipline of eating spaghetti and meatballs while visualizing saints being decapitated amidst rivers of blood. Fortunately, as he ladled the tomato sauce, Friar Otto heard that they were then miraculously re-headed. Brother Ethelbert hand-signals Friar Martin for the shredded mozzarella. Tonight, Jared’s anticipating his own head swimming in a bowl of blood. Ready, he expects no miracles, except what he can save by his wit and bluster.
In this mind-set, Jared starts to eat. He does so slowly, deliberately not looking around. He feels their eyes stealing glances, spying. He hears them plotting in the code of silent table chatter. Without a doubt, everyone is in on the scheme. No doubt, the guards also sniff the downwind shift in mood. They can smell muted conspiracy like hounds sniff out the doe. And it’s apparent that the CO table is strangely quiet in this otherwise raucous feeding room.
Jared’s bluntness and directness are legendary. Many consider him rude in argument, a trait he justifies as passion. So after he’s eaten enough, he sits full upright and back, folds his arms and looks hard, piercingly at them, drawing their eyes to him like a magnet. He knows how to snare Resister eyes, nonviolent eyes.
Matt is not in sight. Sean keeps his face stuck to his plate. Big fucking help you are Sean! Mentally he kick Sean’s ass. Then he pulls the cork, “Speak!”
One guy, not looking at him, salting and peppering his plate with much ado, answers. “The word’s out you’re a fucking snitch. Tell me it ain’t so.” No false pleasantries.
Jared’s stomach muscles cramp. A long moment passes. “What can I say that’ll convince you—either way?”
He lets the question work its way around the table. He picks up and sips some water. Then he eyes them up and down again. Only furtive glances! Ass wipes! Jared knows he must control this crap, so he takes charge and sets the pace.
“My name’s Jared. I think most of you know that. You know Sean and you know Matt. If you think they couldn’t tell, then either I’m the best faker or they’re a couple of jerks. You tell me . . . but not tonight, not for a while. You’ll just have to wait and see.” He pauses, clearing a space to honor his words. Then he moves to offense. “Now, what’s your name?” he asks the guy who spoke.
“I’m Harley, from Toledo.”
Around the table it goes, names he’ll remember forever.
After dinner Sean and Jared go looking for Matt. He’s been on kitchen duty which means he eats early and can eat late again when he wants to. When Jared catches his first glimpse of him, he’s taken by how unchanged Matt looks. Always calm and self-absorbed.
Matt notices Jared, pauses, wipes his hands on his apron, then comes over and shakes Jared’s hand with one while placing the other around his neck. “At last, you’re finally here.” And with what could only be a remark of genuine affection in Matt’s world, he says, “Welcome!”
Pleasantries exhausted, Matt spins about and goes directly back to his task.
“Amazing—I can see prison has really changed him!” Jared chuckles as he and Sean go outside to start walking the Circle, the inner compound of the prison Yard. Around once, then twice, chatting. Suddenly, Sean stops and whacks his forehead as if struck by inspiration.
“I almost forgot to tell you the Creation Story!”
“What?”
“This you gotta hear!” And he begins, “Millston, FCI as you know stands for ‘Federal Correctional Institution.’ Ranked as medium security. But that’s not it, man, it’s a testimony, for —Ha! Look around! Look around!—this fucking place is built on the architectural plans for another prison. Guess where? Texarkana—fucking Texas, man. Now ain’t that rich!”
The more excited and into the story Sean gets, the faster they walk. “The cow-pie Texas inmates have the protection of double-paned windows, buildings that are all interconnected so you don’t have to go outside to move around. Believe it—yeah, dig it!—you gotta check our heaters, man, all we have are baseboard heaters. And those fuckers got full kick-ass forced-air heating!” Sean roars at this fact.
“You mean . . . ?”
“Believe it—Millston is a warm-climate prison. The dorm windows ice up on the inside, thickly. There’s
nothing but those makeshift baseboard heaters. And all this heavy-artillery Korean shit we’re wearing?” He tugs as if wearing winter earflaps. “You better believe it, man, you’ll be wearing all that shit to bed come next December and January. That’s what the dudes who survived last winter ran down!”
With a flourish Sean ends as another Count siren blasts, “Velcum to Siberia. Did ya bring yar swimmen soot?”
“A fitting testimony,” Jared chortles as he checks out the dorm walls and notes the single-paned windows, “to the idjits who brought us Vietnam.”
Millston will always mean walking the Yard, always mean scuttling around with the briskness of below-zero air snapping at their cheeks, reminding them of their mortality. Jared harbors a fear of Minnesota winters which in his mind lasts all year. Spring and summer never seem more than a weekend illusion. He’s been frightened ever since a buddy got drunk and froze to death in the back of his spun-out car. It’s a fright he banishes to a manageable level but it still shoots darts of anxiety that open large pores of sweat—as does the heavy battle jacket that keeps him toasty and sweaty. He’s always wanting to go inside, for Warmth, Heat—in capital letters—because he passionately desires them, adores them as if they were gods.
Jared breaks from their walk and says to Sean, “Hey, bud, let’s head back inside. Catch the news or something.”
Kill the dove! Page 14