WHEN THE WHISTLE blows at 7:30 and the prisoners come streaming out from the cellblocks and living units and head for their work details, Big Bird still hasn’t moved. Groups of prisoners linger on their way to the factories and stand around laughing and pointing up at the water tower. Word circulates with the speed of rumor. Big Bird, whose feet are so big his shoes have to be specially ordered, is an eccentric, wild-eyed man who wears trench coats or overcoats and a knit wool watch cap in the dog days of a Virginia summer, and he carries on heated arguments with himself, or he sings and laughs lustily as he walks about flapping his arms. A refugee from the streets of Washington, DC, he is forever in and out of prison, doing life on the installment plan. This is the kind of convict who in your worst prison nightmare ends up being assigned to bunk in your cell, and you live in fear not just because he’s so big his hands look like oars, but because you know at a glance he’s completely insane and you have no idea where he’s coming from or what it might take to set him off.
He has a few nicknames: Camel—because of his loping stride and a hump high on his back caused by bad posture; the Strangler—because he supposedly strangled a guy at another prison. But upon his occupation of the water tower none seems to fit so well as Big Bird. The Punishment staff know all about him, as they know about all of us, and they treat him with the kind of amused indifference reserved for those whose names are on the “Pay Him No Mind” list with the rest of the malingerers, charlatans, and stir-crazy old jailbirds. With the recent closing of many state-run mental institutions, a host of these eccentric, aberrant types have found their way into the Federal Bureau of Punishment system.
As the compound clears and most of the convicts begin their workday, I watch as two lieutenants stroll casually to the base of the water tower to see if they can convince Big Bird to come down and join the rest of us. By lunchtime the Bird still has not flown. The Old Con, a prison archetype who has mysterious sources of information and knows everything that happens not only in this joint but throughout the system, tells us that Big Bird sent word to the warden that he does not intend to jump. Groups of convicts have been standing around the water tower heckling Big Bird and yelling at him, urging him to take off and dive. But he has his radio, presumably the reception is good up there, he has some food, and he has his overcoat and his knit cap and a blanket or two even though it’s early September and the temperature is still in the high eighties. He told the lieutenant he’s just sitting there and come count time at four o’clock they can count him on the water tower. I wonder how that might sound when the count is called in to Bureau of Punishment headquarters in Washington. “We have one thousand eight hundred and eighty-one inmates in their cells, and one on the water tower.”
“He wants somethin’,” says the Old Con at lunch as we sit watching the distant aerie. “He ain’t up there for the view.”
The water tower stands behind the vocational training shops and looks over the rec yard and weight pile on one side and, on the other, the complex of buildings that make up UNICOR, the prison cable factory, printing plant, and warehouses where most of the prisoners work. They walk to and from the factories past the water tower day in, day out without giving it a second thought. I pass the tower every day on my way to work in the rec yard and never look up. Now it is an attraction.
As usual, the Old Con is right. Big Bird wants something. By 3:45 when the whistle blows to end the workday and the compound is cleared for the afternoon count, Big Bird has sent a list of his demands to the warden. The list consists of one item: he wants a job in UNICOR.
“They’ll never go for it,” says the Old Con as we congregate out on the rec yard after work. From where we sit we can hear tunes from Big Bird’s radio carried on the evening breeze. He is still up there, like some brooding god pondering life from above the fray, his thick legs like logs dangling over the edge of the catwalk, his cap pulled down over his forehead, his arms folded across his wide barrel chest.
“His name’s been on the list for over a year,” Red says and lights another generic cigarette. “I guess he finally wised up to the fact that convicts been comin’ in after him and gettin’ hired in the factory, an’ the Bird’s name jus’ don’t seem to move up the list.”
“Damn, that’s pitiful.” The Old Con shakes his bald, wrinkled head. “Imagine that—bein’ too crazy to work in UNICOR.”
“Well, they got a lot a’ tools down there,” Red says, his watery blue eyes watching Big Bird. “The Bird’s all right. But sometimes he gets his ass in an uproar for no reason. They’re probably worried he might club somebody over the head with one a’ them tools.”
“Whatever happens, I can tell ya’ one thing,” the Old Con says. He looks up at the Bird and strokes the gray stubble on his chin. “No way they gonna let him spend the night up there. Somethin’s gotta give. He may be a nut job, but I can guarantee ya’, these people’ll come up with somethin’. They’ll have that turkey off the skyline by the nine o’clock count if they have to shoot him.”
Red chortles and waves a hand toward the gun towers looming at each corner of the prison. “Talk about a sitting duck!”
NO ONE KNOWS exactly what Big Bird is in prison for, but I know he’s from DC. That means his crime need not be a federal offense. He could be in for anything from petty theft and cashing forged welfare checks to rape or murder. DC prisoners are farmed out to federal pens whenever the massive prison complex at Lorton, Virginia, runs well over capacity, which it does all the time. The DC prisoners are the most despised element in the federal punishment system. New York blacks, and blacks from Baltimore and Philadelphia, are quick to point out that they “ain’t no DC nigger.” Most of the DC blacks are unruly young men who’ve been doing time since they were kids. Many band together for protection and because they know each other from the streets of the Capital and from doing time together in other prisons. Like most prison gangs—the Colombians, the Mexican and Italian mafias, the bikers, the racists, the Puerto Rican street kids—in numbers they might make you tense with anger and fear, but individually, if you can ever break through their studied pose, they can sometimes amaze you with their intelligence and the complexity and depth of their character. Some of them know so much about the vicious world of street gangs and prison life and little else. They might be talented, daring, and enterprising, but they recognize only the scruples of survival. They come to prison not because they are failures at crime but because in their contempt for society and the law they are not trying to get away with anything. Many are functionally illiterate. They simply do not have the language to understand that they are as much the victims as the perpetrators of crime.
Big Bird is different. He’s a loner and a mental case. Whenever I saw him before he took up residence on the water tower, he bounded around the compound with that lunging stride of his as though his feet were so big and heavy he had to heave with his whole body to move them, his arms flapping winglike at his sides. And he was nearly always alone and carrying on a heated discussion with unseen companions. Whites avoided his wide-eyed gaze and cleared out of his way. His homeboys teased him unmercifully and tried to provoke him. Big Bird would laugh at them with his booming guffaw that was scarier than any threats. He grinned at them with a mouthful of huge gleaming teeth that look strong enough to chew off your arm.
Only once did I notice the Bird buddy up, and that was with a kid we called Dirt Man or the Janitor because he ate dirt, dust balls, pieces of trash with the voraciousness of a billy goat. I knew that Dirt Man understood what he was doing wasn’t normal because he would do it on the sly. His favorites were the old mop strings that get caught and break off beneath the legs of the tables in the chow hall. I used to watch him when he stood in line, waiting for chow, but really on the lookout for mop strings. When he’d spot one, I could see a little quiver of excitement go through him as he sized up the situation. He’d leave the line and sidle up to the table. Then, in a swift series of moves, he’d catch the piece of mop string with
the toe of his work boot, drag it out, reach down and snag it, roll it into a ball, and nonchalantly pop it into his mouth.
Big Bird took Dirt Man under his wing. Dirt Man also wore a lot of heavy clothes even during the hottest weather. I would see them out in the rec yard playing chess, the Bird with his radio, Dirt Man snacking on debris between moves. For a while they even celled together. The Old Con said Dirt Man was the ideal cellmate because he would lick the floor clean and eat all the trash. But really he was a sad case, and finally a couple of us grabbed the prison shrink, who was also a whack job, and asked him how they could let a young man walk around here all day eating cigarette butts and mop strings. Soon Dirt Man disappeared, which was also sad because then Big Bird was alone again.
And now, Big Bird is bivouacked alone on the water tower, nesting like some giant swallow. But I know the Old Con is right: somehow or other they will get him down by nightfall, even if they have to shoot him.
SURE ENOUGH, BY morning Big Bird has flown. There is all sorts of speculation as to how the cops had enticed him to come down. But those of us who’ve been here a while know only the Old Con will have the real story, and so I wait until he comes shuffling into the chow hall for his morning coffee, sits down, and gazes out at the now oddly empty water tower.
“Well, they negotiated a settlement,” says the Old Con and he blows on his mug of steaming coffee. “Ole Big Bird, that fella’s got a appetite. He ate up all his food in the first twelve hours of the sit-in. An’ sure enough, come nine o’clock the Bird was hungry. Lieutenant tol’ him if he’d come down they’d send out and get him any kind a’ food he wanted. Big Bird said he wanted to know about that job in UNICOR. Lieutenant tol’ him, ‘Don’t worry about that job now. Your name’s on the list.’ Well, Bird wasn’t goin’ for that. He knows what list they got his name on. Still, the fella was hungry. He needed to eat. So, finally he said he’d come down if they promised to send out and get him a Big Mac.”
“A Big Mac!” Red exclaims in disbelief. “You serious? You tellin’ me this fool could’a asked for anything he wanted, an’ he tells ’em to get him a Big Mac!”
“What can I tell ya’?” the Old Con says. “Doesn’t much matter what he wanted. Sure, that’s what the fella ordered—a Big Mac. Said if he couldn’t have a job in UNICOR, he’d settle for a Big Mac an’ some fries.”
Everyone at the table is silent. We look at the Old Con, who sits sipping his coffee and stroking his whiskers.
“So?” Red says at last, curiosity getting the better of him, though we all know the answer to his question. “Did they get him the Big Mac?”
Now everyone is laughing.
“Well, c’mon, now, Red. You know how that goes. Give one a’ these convicts a Big Mac this week, an’ next week you’ll have fellas up there demandin’ Kentucky Fried Chicken. In no time the I-talians’ll be up there sayin’ they want Mama Leone’s pizza. Chinamen wantin’ egg foo young. Mexicans, Colombians, all them beaners holdin’ out for arroz con pollo. There’ll be no end to it.”
He pauses, nods sagely. “No, Red. No Big Mac. That ain’t the way it works. I’ll tell ya’ what they did give him, though.”
The Old Con smiles and sips his coffee.
“They give him a baloney an’ cheese sandwich when they come ’n got his ass from the Hole this mornin’, an’ shipped him out to Butner, that nut joint they got over there in North Carolina.”
Chapter Eight
THE GREAT ESCAPE
COUNT TIME.
Here sounds the mournful bleat of the horn announcing the 4:00 p.m., stand-up count. We convicts trudge back to the cellblocks from the various shops, factories, and work details to stand in our cells and be counted. The guards must make visual contact with each standing prisoner to confirm that they are not counting dummies or corpses. Once the count is complete and the number verified through Control, we are released for the evening meal. Usually this takes no more than half an hour.
Halloween the count fails to clear. I know there is a problem when I see the white-clad Food Service work detail return to the cellblocks. Ordinarily the evening-shift kitchen crew is counted in the mess hall so they can begin serving dinner once the count is clear. Sending them back to the units for a recount means the Food Service out-count is bad. Someone who should be working in the mess hall isn’t there. Once all the workers have returned to their units and the compound is again closed, a new count commences.
“COUNT! COUNT!” the guards in the cellblocks bellow as if we didn’t know what’s happening. “STAND-UP COUNT!”
We stand in our cells with that practiced look of boredom and resentment that comes from being reduced to a number. Soon the insults begin: “These fools are so stupid they can’t even count.” It’s our way of delaying hope. Still that lonely whistle that announces a clear count won’t sound. It’s six o’clock and we’re getting hungry. The guards conduct a picture-card count. Hacks run around with a clipboard and a fist full of eight-by-ten-inch cards with our mug shots stapled to them. They check the face of the prisoner against the face in the picture.
“Name and number,” the hack demands. He looks from the picture card to my face.
“Stratton, Richard, zero-two-zero-seven-zero—zero-three-six,” I say for the millionth time since I took up residence within the confines of the Punishment Bureau.
Rumors that someone has escaped spread through the units. As the guards become more anxious, our optimism soars. A prisoner is definitely missing. The hacks are searching high and low. We fantasize that one of ours has succeeded in outwitting the keepers.
In the early evening, a party of administration brass and security honchos heads out onto the compound to check for breaches in the secure perimeter. They inspect the double, chain-link fence strewn with coils of razor wire arrayed with barbs that glint in the floodlights like a million tiny knives poised to cut convict flesh to ribbons. They survey the no-man’s land between the fences—a minefield seeded with pressure-sensitive devices and scanned by electronic movement sensors. They probe the concrete footing sunk yards below ground to prevent prisoners from tunneling under the fences. In the gun towers that squat at each corner of the compound like octagonal lighthouses, guards with night-vision binoculars and high-powered rifles with infrared telescopic sights scan the denuded fields that slope away from the prison complex. Then comes the heavy whap whap whap sounds of a National Guard chopper circling overhead. Beams of light play on the compound like spotlights signaling an event.
They find nothing, no sign of escape, no telltale irregularity. Still the count will not clear. It’s as though one of our number has simply disappeared. We are locked in our cells and counted yet again. It’s nine o’clock and we’re getting hungrier and angrier.
“They gotta feed us,” comes the gripe from the cellblocks. “Fuckin’ jerkoffs! Give us our motherfucking food!”
Where have I heard that lament? Feed us! Shoot us! Who gives a fuck? It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Except perseverance. Hunker down and live the interior life. Still, a man has got to eat. And some lucky bastard seems to have eluded our captors.
Evening visits and activities are cancelled, not that I expected to do anything out of the ordinary anyway. I’m enjoying this upheaval in the schedule. After now over five years in custody, going on year six, any break in the humdrum routine is at once disconcerting and welcome.
News reaches the cellblocks that the guards have torn apart the mess hall. I’m intrigued and excited to think that someone might actually have escaped. It is time for the nine o’clock count; we are still locked in our cells, unfed and disgruntled despite the hushed excitement. Again the count comes up short. Lieutenants, the captain, even the associate warden now make the rounds.
FINALLY, THE KEEPERS accept the fact that the rest of us have got to be fed. Teams of guards escort groups of prisoners from the cellblocks to the mess hall, where rumors run through the convict population like electricity. A ring of stone-faced guards stand
s around us as though we were persons of particular importance. Never have we felt so cherished. It is definitely a Food Service worker who has disappeared. The convicts serving the meal gloat as they pass among us while we eat and trade details of the fugitive’s background and story.
I first noticed him at work in the mess hall cleaning tables. He was slender, a handsome man with skin like smooth, rich caramel, his features finely drawn and sharp as though his thin face had been lifted from a cameo. He had a wispy, adolescent beard and a shock of shiny black hair. His eyes were a murky brown like dark coffee. Some said he was East Indian from Calcutta. Others said that he came from Goa or Sri Lanka. I was told he had come to the United States by way of Guyana, land of Jim Jones and mass suicide. There are those who maintain he was not an Indian at all but was Guyanese. But it doesn’t matter where he was from. He had escaped. All we needed to know was how he had done it.
A new man on the compound ordinarily arouses little interest. Each week the bus rolls in and deposits a pallid flock of convicts raw from jails and detention centers. In this age of mass incarceration and prison over-crowding, they are assimilated magically, absorbed like water in a trick glass that never overflows. Few are released. Many return. Only when the Indian began to show up on the weight pile, that hallowed ground of the confirmed convict, did I pay any attention to him.
He was skinny, evoking images of starving, Third-World children, and quiet at first, seemingly lonelier than most. The weights looked unbearably heavy when lifted by his thin arms. But because he was young—mid-twenties—his body reacted quickly to the exercise, regular meals, and rest. Soon lean knots of muscle swelled under his skin.
As his physical strength grew, so did the Indian’s confidence. He showed up for his workouts in a white kitchen worker’s shirt, unbuttoned and tied at the midriff like a calypso singer. He wore a strip of sheet tied around his forehead like a bandanna. Waiting his turn with the weights, he posed like a sinewy lascar.
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