Jailing Read online

  They have to take Wolfe out of the dorm and give him a bed in the reading room, or else some of the men who can’t sleep will give him a blanket party. A blanket party: during the night they pull your blanket up over your head, pin you down and beat the shit out of your brains with short lead pipes.

  October 1

  Quite a few of the men are at work on something that’s commonly called The Project. It’s a new two-story red brick dormitory with a third story sunk below ground level that will have individual cells and obviously be Allenwood’s very own hole, obviating the need to ship men over to The Wall for punishment. From all over the federal prison system men have been recruited to work on The Project – bricklayers, electricians, plumbers, forklift operators, anyone with a construction skill. That’s how Hogg and a tough dude named Blaine got here from Terre Haute. Blaine, a cowboy who occasionally hijacks trucks on the street, says they were promised all sorts of privileges and pay which they never received, and both he and Hogg recently filed copouts to return to Terre Haute. Superintendent Weger was annoyed. He called them in and demanded to know why they wanted to leave a minimum security honor camp to go back to a maximum security penitentiary; it didn’t look good on his administrative record, of course.

  Hogg says he told Weger: “Because this joint is full of rats, snitches, and faggots. And because they serve food like this in Terre Haute, the men would throw it at the walls.”

  The meal that noon had been Salisbury steak, and Weger wanted to know what was wrong with that. He’d eaten it, he said.

  “Maybe you don’t know any better,” Hogg said. “Ain’t no fuckin meat in it, that’s what’s wrong with it. It’s wheat. If I was a fuckin billy goat, I’d be eatin good.”

  Blaine confirms this conversation.

  The Project is going very slowly. Hogg says he lays about ten bricks a day. His philosophy is simple. “Any time you go out and bust your ass for them, they expect you to do it all the time. You never do it, they don’t never expect you to do it. Bowman [the hack in charge of The Project] thinks I’m the biggest fuckup he’s got. That suits me fine. Look at this jerk, Clark. Look what happened to him.”

  That’s a sad story. Norman Clark is black, about forty, from Mountainside, New Jersey. A plumber. He got caught with some dope on the street and when they asked him to become an informer he turned them down, so he got a four-year hit. He’s what’s called “institutionalized.” He does his work well, puts in plenty of overtime, never complains, is respectful of all authority and keeps to himself. I didn’t even know he was alive until he came up to me last night and asked if he could talk to me for just a few minutes. He insists on calling me Mister.

  Over a year ago he transferred from The Wall to work on The Project. Since then Bowman’s given him two Class 2 awards – that’s money – and a commendation for his permanent file. Clark went before the parole board a few months ago and when the parole examiner asked him how he spent his time during his incarceration, Clark said, “But that’s all in my file. I got a commendation from Mr. Bowman for how I spent my time.”

  The parole examiner said there wasn’t anything at all in his file of that nature.

  Clark said, “Would you please get Mr. Bowman to come in here,” but the parole examiner told him that if he wanted Mr. Bowman to speak on his behalf he should have arranged that beforehand, and now it was too late. They finally told Clark to “bring it all” – continue to expiration of sentence.

  Clark told me all this. He speaks slowly, in a puzzled manner. He doesn’t even seem angry. He said, “I have to tell this to someone like you, ‘cause when I tell it to some of these niggers around here, they just laughs at me. You see, I think they took my commendation out of my file just before the parole board hearing `cause they needed me to finish up on The Project. I know that sounds strange to you – you don’t think that peoples can do that kind of mean thing to a man, but I been around, and they can, Mr. Irving. They can.”

  He went to Weger, he says, with that accusation and Weger only laughed at him and said, “Impossible.” He had five months to go on his sentence and he asked Weger for transfer to a Halfway House in Manhattan, so he could see his family on weekends and get a job to support them because winter was coming and the roof of his house in Mountainside leaked and the hot water pipes had busted and his wife and kids had no money to fix it all. Weger turned him down and said, “Five months is too long for you, Norman. You’ll just do something foolish. Halfway House is like parole. You’ll get violated for smoking dope and then you’ll have to come back here and bring it all, and then how will your wife feel?”

  He wants to know now what he can do. And I don’t know. He’s been conned by the system more than by Weger, and it’s too late.

  “Maybe you can just write about it some time,” he says, “and tell peoples.”

  “I’ll try,” I said.

  October 5

  The man sleeping next to me in Dorm Two on the left, toward the door, is a young black queen named Gerry Barker. She said to me the other day, rather sweetly, “Please call me Geraldine. Everybody does.” And so I did. She’s doing time for bank robbery in Philadelphia, which she committed in drag.

  Geraldine sewed a button on a shirt for me and darned a pair of good white wool socks – she’s as friendly a neighbor as I could want. All she asks in return is a reasonable amount of discretion, for I’m privy to the miraculous transformations that sometimes occur next to my bed in the small hours of the Pennsylvania night. It’s never totally dark in here; dim yellow bulbs high among the steel rafters burn all night, as well as a red bulb on each exit door. Nearly all the dorm is asleep when suddenly, after much clandestine huffing, grunting and moving about beneath the covers, Geraldine rises like a phoenix in the weird golden light, wearing a black wig, false eyelashes, lipstick, and – I can’t figure out where she got it, much less hides it – a sequined dress. Then she roams off to wherever that night’s assignation is to be held, or else she gets a visit, and the customary nocturnal sounds of snoring, farting and groaning of exiled men are punctuated by slurps and distinctive little moans. I’ve learned to sleep through it.

  This morning Weger called me to his office. I never like that. It’s never good news, and the more you’re seen going in there, the more the men have reason to distrust you. I walked down there through the mud. It rained last night. The whole slope between the dorms and the Control Center becomes a swamp – we call it Mud Flats.

  He didn’t waste any time. He just said, “You sleep next to Barker, don’t you? The one they call Geraldine? Barker’s a homosexual, isn’t he?”

  It happens to be standard Bureau of Prisons practice to notify the families of inmates caught in any overt homosexual practice. (“We regretfully inform you that your husband/father/son . . . is a fucking faggot.”) This is the Bureau’s idea of fairness to the poor women and kids waiting out there for their loved ones, and of course it’s supposed to act as a deterrent.

  Naturally this cuts no ice with Geraldine, who has no family that I know of other than some other inmate over at The Wall named Chuck, whom she calls “my husband.” But on principle I don’t want to – and can’t afford to – cooperate with Weger, because then he’ll keep calling me down and asking me questions and I’ll be his pet rat. You have to kill this in its infancy.

  “Sir,” I said, “I don’t know of any deviant or perverted practices taking place here among the residents.”

  The tone of that was much too flat and smartass and I knew right away I could have done it a better way. But I let it stand. He just looked at me with his bright beady dark eyes and then he waved me out of his office. I suppose I’ve made some sort of choice. Well, it was so obvious – there was really no choice.

  October 7

  A reporter and photographer from Time Magazine visited the camp today. They weren’t supposed to talk to any inmate for more than a minute or two, but when they stopped near my cubicle I managed to take the photographer aside. Their as
signment, he readily told me, was to do a piece showing Allenwood as a country club prison, a great place for a long vacation. “It’s not quite like that,” I said. “No,” he admitted, “that’s my impression, too.”

  In which case, of course, Time won’t run the article, because that doesn’t conform to their fixed beliefs just doesn’t see print.

  Miss Berson, the Camp Superintendent’s secretary – far from a beauty, fortunately – has a wooden plaque on her desk which says, BEFORE YOU ASK, THE ANSWER IS NO. That’s the basic philosophy of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. I noticed she took it down before the reporters arrived.

  October 9

  Smoky, a big, gray-haired Corsican con man in his late fifties, works with us now in Industry as the shipping clerk. He’s been in and out of the joint all his life, and he rarely stops talking. His stories are insane, but I love them. He had a pet Alaskan brown bear named Big Duke: “Some Chicago furrier shot the mother. I raised Big Duke from a cub. I was in Alaska then, buying gold. Big Duke would kill you if you looked at me in the wrong way. I had a special wing for him in my house in Connecticut. I could drive a Mack truck in my living room and make a U-turn. I cut a slot in the floor of one room and threw hundred dollar bills in there,like a piggy bank, for my wife. Later when I went to jail she found $400,000 in the cellar. I had a slot machine for silver dollars where you put a dollar in and you always got a payoff. I had it specially built and installed for my wife.”

  All this with a perfectly straight face.

  Smoky says when he gets out he’s going to take his considerable savings, invested now in IBM stock, and make a fortune by buying a freighter, loading it with cattle and sailing around the world selling cowshit to underdeveloped countries. And he’ll establish a commune on an island that he’s going to buy off the coast of Alaska – all ex-cons welcome. “Nobody works, except now and then on the cattle boat.” Everyone would have a share in the shitselling business.

  Smoky says he was arrested this time in Miami Beach and taken by two U.S. Marshalls in a car across the country to the joint at Terminal Island, California, where he was supposed to stand trial – I don’t know for what; Smoky never says; and in the joint you never ask that question – and serve his bit. “The trip took four months. We stopped at all the federal joints en route and also various Holiday Inns. We stopped off to see Big Duke in Connecticut. I gave the marshalls $15,000 in cash and they made the reservations in advance. I taught these guys to play golf along the way. I was trying out all these joints, see. I’d only served state time before, I didn’t know the federal system. I liked Forth Worth the best because it was co-ed, but Allenwood was my second choice. When I got to Terminal Island first thing I did was apply for a transfer. That’s how come I’m here. Nothing happens in my life by accident.”

  October 18

  Geraldine left, paroled. Men come and go. It’s hard to keep track. They leave us their things, their bits and pieces of extra clothing, a better soap dish, newer shoes, books.

  Early morning: the mountains cleansed by sunlight, puffs of red and gold, like exploding firecrackers, where the leaves are still turning.

  A high wind blowing in the afternoon, and I think I can hear the wind in the rigging of the boats in Ibiza harbor. It’s a Sunday. I go for a walk with Joe and Sioti and then we watch football on TV.

  November 4

  This place has a reputation as a country club prison, we all know that. And of course you can come and go at will, up to a point. When they count you — as they do, four times a day, by your bed — they’re not counting you, they’re counting a body. So why not run an ad in the New York Times, and some of the more pretentious magazines, for substitutes? Intellectuals wanted, with a desire for a brief prison experience. Fresh air, pleasant surroundings, no pollution. They can take our places for weekends, or even longer.

  I thought to pay them a nominal $50 a day, but Sioti said, “What for? People are so fucked up they’ll do it for nothing.”

  Joe D. said, “You know, both of you aren’t wrapped too tight.”

  November 5

  Today, my 42nd birthday, a splendid cold blue day, I had an unexpected visit from Tim and Mary. They drove up from New York. They brought me Flair pens, warm ski gloves, some money, about $75 – this is contraband, of course; absolutely forbidden, but you need it for some essential favors – which I stuffed inside the torn lining of my navy peajacket (issued to us last week, used) when the Visiting Room hack wasn’t looking. About then I realized that in my pants pocket I was still carrying one of the joints that Claude gave me last night. I couldn’t risk taking that back with me, too – they only pat you down as you enter the Visiting Room, but when you leave they’re more thorough about it – so I slipped it to Mary and told them to smoke it back at the motel and think of me. I have a feeling that’s the first time anyone ever smuggled a joint out of a prison.

  We also watched some guy named Burkett and his girlfriend snuggled together in a big chair outside the Visitors Area and it was obvious that she was jerking him off. Most of the men and their wives and some kids, too, were watching. The hack looked like he was asleep. I walked back with Burkett to the dorm and asked him about it and he told me he had a hole cut in his pockets to make it easier for her to get a grip on his cock.

  There is no end to improvisation.

  Going out to the visit, I left a messy bed and the mud on my boots got tracked all over the floor. Coming back, I found this note:

  Dear Irving,

  It is with great repugnance that we have discovered your cubicle in this deplorable condition. We urge that you correct this situation with dispatch. What will the world think? At this point you are a prime example of the failure of our correctional system.

  The Phantom Inspector

  November 15

  Hunting season has begun. I see deer on a hilltop and along the one road where we’re allowed to talk or jog. In the early evening we hear the pop of guns. One of the hacks, Sykes, tells me “the herd needs thinning.” But there’s a glint in his eye. I say, “When you hacks go out hunting, Mr. Sykes, I bet you dream you’ve got an inmate in your sights.” He laughs wholeheartedly and says, “Well, yeah . . . sometimes.”

  November 16

  Together with the Walnut Kid, Smoky is in trouble.

  The Walnut Kid is a skinny hillbilly in his early sixties who actually lived in or near the town of Allenwood – yes, there is such a place, he says. He claims he helped build Dorm Five back in the 1940s when this was an Army Ordnance depot. Dorm Five was the kitchen. Recently he had a contract to truck away the garbage from this place. But then they found out he was trucking away everything that wasn’t nailed down and finally they caught him chopping down a walnut tree inside the perimeter, which is why he’s called The Walnut Kid and why he’s doing six months here. He chews tobacco. He always says, “I know every rock around here, sonny. I know every squirrel.”

  So he and Smoky went out one night. Smoky says, straightfaced, “We went walnut hunting.” They crawled under the fence down near the end of the road and pretty soon, Smoky reports, “we got lost.” So much for The Walnut Kid’s expertise. Then they found someone’s stash – half a dozen bottles of Gilbey’s gin. “Glug glug,” says Smoky. It’s a dark, cloudy, moonless night, and they’re wandering around, knocking down the Gilbey’s gin. They didn’t know if they were inside the camp perimeter or not. There’s a flashing red beacon on a mountaintop which serves as a landmark but Smoky couldn’t even find the mountain. Smoky stumbles through the night, falls down. “A stone hit my heart.” He pats it gently with a big hand covered with liver spots. “No shit. I was hurt.”

  He keeps falling. Around 9:30, half an hour before count time, they find a house, ring the door bell and a 70-year-old lady answers the door, carrying a shotgun.

  “I’ve told my people to send her flowers once a month till she dies,” Smoky tells us.

  “We’re standing there in front of her, dressed in prison browns, of course
– tired, dirty, full of cowshit, horseshit, knees bruised. Walnut’s not really standing, I’m sort of hoisting him up by the collar. There’s an aroma of Gilbey’s gin, too.”

  He said to the old woman, “Lady, we’re not murderers or rapists. Don’t be afraid. We’re just poor lost convicts. Please call Allenwood and ask them if they’ll send someone out to pick us up.” (He was in a hurry, he explained to us, because he didn’t want to fuck up the ten o’clock count.) The woman called, but for some reason she couldn’t get through to Control for twenty minutes. Then she reached Weger at home – that was Smoky’s idea. In fifteen minutes, Weger and three cars full of hacks arrived, spotlights blazing, sirens wailing. Smoky says that when the hacks tore up and leaped out of the cars he and Walnut raised their arms and said, “Don’t shoot, we’re not armed.”

  “Don’t hurt these gentlemen,” the old lady said. “They’re my guests.”

  Smoky said, “Mr. Weger, let me sleep on your lawn until I sober up.” Weger had them handcuffed and shackled and taken to The Wall, where they were thrown into the hole. Smoky says he can’t remember anything after that. Interrogated, he couldn’t remember where the stash of gin was located.

  Five days later they were back and he told us this tale at lunch. Of course it cracked us up; we sat there in the chow hall howling, weeping with laughter. I said, “And they believed you? That you went out walnut hunting? That the gin wasn’t yours in the first place?”

  “I’m here, ain’t I?” Smoky said. “Mr. Weger doesn’t want to lose a quality inmate.”