Running The Books : The Adventures Of An Accidental Prison Librarian Part 8

It could have been the t.i.tle of her autobiography: The Flowers Bring the Dogs The Flowers Bring the Dogs. She was an alchemist of misery; she could turn anything, even tulips and lilies, into pure negativity.

I pressed on. I asked her to tell me about her past. She would speak only about her arrival in America and how displaced she'd felt. She told me she "used to be someone" in Poland. In America, she said, "I was nothing." I asked her who she used to be in Poland. She didn't answer. I asked about the photos. She denied knowledge of them. I asked about her friends. She ignored the question, pretended she didn't hear.

I had decided to tape our conversation. I wanted some doc.u.mentary evidence of her life. Something, anything, to remember her by. I knew she'd never agree to speak into a recording device. This was a woman who, after all, distrusted flowers. As her grandson, though, I felt ent.i.tled to this small inheritance and decided to record her secretly.

But paranoids have sharp senses. And I'm not much of a secret agent. She detected my fidgeting with something under the table, and my guilty face gave me away. Now it was her turn to ask the questions, my turn to deny. So went our conversation. It was about as emotionally honest as a police interrogation, and ended with each of us staring at the other with guarded eyes.

Later, I listened to the recording and was struck by the textured sound of the empty air, a breeze interrupted only by the hum of a distant airplane, the creak of s.h.i.+fting chairs, the slight whistle of my grandmother's breathing. The microphone had captured the contours of her silence. That was the last conversation I had with her.

My mother took a morning flight to California to be with Fay at the end. I probably should have gone with her. Instead, I was standing in the prison yard-coming up for air-watching Chris struggle to run the length of the basketball court. Above us, the window, now dark, where Jessica watched him during my cla.s.s. And above that, an airplane soared.

Blueberry m.u.f.fin Day At long last it was my turn to attend the three-day prison orientation. One might think that orientation would, like orientations the world over, like orientations since the dawn of time, occur during the first few days on the job, or better yet, before work began. G.o.d knows I could have used some official training for dealing with the Coolidge-types, the Angry Seven, and various others. But, for reasons unstated, many months were allowed to pa.s.s before any official orienting would occur. But, even so, I was grateful. I still didn't have a grip on things.

I arrived fas.h.i.+onably late. But not too late to take in the sights. The sheriff's outpost in Chelsea was a low, cinderblock bunker wedged between a m.u.f.fin factory and a methadone clinic. m.u.f.fin World, as the factory was called, emitted a constant, wonderful cakey aroma; Methadone World, as I called it, thankfully emitted no aroma. The sheriff's outpost was used to train new prison guards, but doubled as an orientation s.p.a.ce for civilian prison workers like me. A man, clad in double denim-blue jeans and a blue jean jacket, mismatched-was splayed out unconscious on the wheelchair ramp of Methadone World. His long hair and arms dangled brutally over the railing. An obese, red-bearded trucker sat across the way, on the loading dock of m.u.f.fin World. Holding a steaming cup of coffee and a cigarette in one hand and a half-eaten m.u.f.fin in the other, he was squinting at the pa.s.sed-out man.

The outpost was chock-full of cop gear. Posters identifying various species of handgun. Badges from various brother cop outfits, many with curious cartoon insignia. Inspirational slogans about Courage and Fort.i.tude. For three days we were to sit from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. in marathon cla.s.ses on topics that ranged from dealing with security threats to writing incident reports to ratting on our coworkers to recognizing contraband. And of course, lessons on why it's not wise to comment on your colleague's cleavage.

Any thought that this day would be productive was quickly dashed when I saw my union boss, Charlie, sitting at a desk with a big smile on his face.

"This is my favorite time of year," he whispered to me. "Total waste of time."

Charlie was a connoisseur of malingering. He enjoyed killing time the way some people savor aged gouda.

"Just sit back and relax," he said.

Relaxation, however, was not likely. The orientation, which was required of all staff once a year, had little to do with teaching us how to do our actual jobs. It was more of a guided tour through the nine levels of Dante's Inferno. Rapes, suicides, druggings, hypnosis, pistol-whippings, hangings. The sharpening of daggers. We explored every manner of villainy devised by man. But instead of Virgil as our guide, we had Sgt. Dan Hickey.

Actually, we had various officers, taking turns horrifying us. One officer went off on a half-hour tangent in praise of his favorite const.i.tutional amendment.

"Fact," he said. Almost every thought began with this word. "None of you would be sitting here if it wasn't for the Second Amendment." Considering that we would have been happy to not be sitting in a cinderblock bunker in Chelsea at 8 a.m., his argument lost a good deal of its rhetorical force. Noting that some states allow off-duty prison guards to carry guns, he called on the Ma.s.sachusetts legislature to change its laws so that he could carry his piece on the playground in case a child called his daughter a name. Charlie slipped me a note: "Fact. This guy is going to be in jail jail by the end of the year." by the end of the year."

We spoke of stress. "Raise your hand if you have a second job," asked the officer. Almost every single hand went up. "We all know the middle cla.s.s is dying in this country," the officer continued. This wasn't a theory or a seminar topic. It was a shared reality for everyone sitting in the room. Although everyone there worked a government job, complete with union benefits, almost no one was making enough to live and support families.

"If you're an officer, you probably got alimony," he smiled at his own joke, which actually is no joke. "The bottom line: You got to find healthy ways of dealing with that stress."

One healthy way, he noted, was giving yourself a little treat. When his marriage was on the rocks, he told us, he would allow himself a slice of cake before bed every night. Those still paying attention found this comment heartbreaking.

Another officer spent an entire ninety minutes on the subject of suicide. To be fair, suicide is truly an important subject in prison; inmates under extreme pressure may turn to suicide and it is the prison's responsibility to prevent it. But the level of detail on the issue and pa.s.sion with which this session was taught seemed excessive. Halfway through, the truth came out. When someone subtly asked why we were studying the latest national statistics on suicide, stratified by region, age, and gender, the officer blew up.

"My brother, okay, didn't have the courage to face his problems, just like the rest of us do every day, so you know what he decided to do?"

Here the janitor, a friendly Albanian man, raised his hand; the officer ignored him and went on.

"He found the closest train tracks and threw himself in front of a commuter train. There were parts we never found."

An audible gasp went up in the cla.s.s.

"And do you know when when he did it?" he did it?"

I looked at the janitor, but he wasn't raising his hand this time. I heard someone whisper, "Oh s.h.i.+t, no...Christmas?" no...Christmas?"

"On Mother's Mother's Day," said the officer, crossing his arms. "Do you have any idea what our Mother's Days are like now? Do you know what kind of h.e.l.l my mother goes through every Mother's Day? Do you know what his wife and kids go through? He took the easy way out, left us to deal with life's problems. My brother was a coward." Day," said the officer, crossing his arms. "Do you have any idea what our Mother's Days are like now? Do you know what kind of h.e.l.l my mother goes through every Mother's Day? Do you know what his wife and kids go through? He took the easy way out, left us to deal with life's problems. My brother was a coward."

The cla.s.s sat in stunned silence. The janitor looked bored. When the officer returned to his slides and began a ma.s.sively detailed description of the warning signs of suicidal ideation, everyone was able to relax a bit. After a short session on arson, we watched an unedited amateur video from the inside of the infamous Station nightclub fire, which killed a hundred people, one of the worst nightclub fires in American history. After watching the harrowing footage of people screaming and crying and pus.h.i.+ng and burning to death, the officer flicked the lights back on.

"Lunch," he said.

The afternoon session picked up where we had left off. An officer walked in and, without saying a word, slammed a billy club really, really hard onto a desk. The whole cla.s.s jumped. The desk almost buckled. The woman seated in front of me cried out, Dear G.o.d! Dear G.o.d! The white-haired caseworker seated to my right clutched his chest. Charlie just leaned back and grinned. The janitor, I believe, was still in the john. The white-haired caseworker seated to my right clutched his chest. Charlie just leaned back and grinned. The janitor, I believe, was still in the john.

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, anyone wanna tell me what that could do to your skull or to the skull of one of your coworkers?" said the officer.

It turns out that the billy club was actually not a billy club but five or six magazines curled up tightly and then duct-taped together. Apparently, this creates a rather devastating weapon. And a handy introduction to contraband. It was a session that touched upon my post in the prison.

"Any librarians here?" asked the officer. It sounded like, and was, an accusation.

Possibly because the officers spoke in a staccato of rhetorical cop questions or because we knew where this was going, Forest and I didn't answer. Finally, when it became clear that the officer actually wanted an answer to the question, Forest generated some form of pitiable squeak.

"Raise your hands," the officer commanded.

We complied.

"We rely on you, gentlemen. Contraband of all kinds, including weapons, often starts in the facility's library-why do you think inmates go there? It's not to read Moby-d.i.c.k Moby-d.i.c.k, okay?"

Forest looked deflated and sunk into his chair.

We were presented with a sideshow of curious contraband objects, homemade weapons that bore an uncanny resemblance to a medieval armory. Homemade maces, spikes, mauls, flails. A battle axlooking thing. Shanks of every size and shape. A homemade baseball bat. Nothing was as it seemed-every item looked vaguely familiar as something else. Scotch tape and chips of plaster could be squeezed into a tight ball, placed into a sock, swung at your head. This could also be accomplished by a bar of soap in a sock, or hardcover books in a laundry bag. The sock weapon could knock you unconscious. A fan in a computer needed little alteration-it was already a sharp blade. Magazines and hard covers from books could be used as body armor. An orange peel could be fermented into a nasty little batch of liquor, "homebrew." Once fermented, it could be used to burn through metal to help cast a knife. In other words, an inmate could get drunk and make a shank at the same time-a lovely combination.

A floppy disk? Easily outfitted into a switchblade. Chairs could become guillotines. Shoelaces might result in genocide. A pen? The officer just laughed.

"You kidding me? You could a.s.sa.s.sinate the president with a pen."

But before we could think about how that might work, the lights were off and the officer was setting up a video. "This oughta show you what a pen can do."

We were treated to another unedited security video. This one starred an inmate sneaking into a prison dayroom, barricading the door, and proceeding to beat another inmate senseless and then stab him repeatedly with a pen (which he lifted, to my relief, not from the library but from the infirmary). We were witnessing an actual murder. By the time the footage picked up, the victim had given up resistance. He just lay there. The murderer seemed bored. He stabbed his victim slowly and methodically. And repeatedly. But without a soundtrack or any contrived cinematic frenzy, murder turns out to be rather dull on film. It looked more like he was poking holes into a raw potato. The video ended, the lights went up, and we were given the end of the day quiz.

Waiting for the quizzes to be graded, we stood out on the front steps, staring out at nothing. Those who smoked, smoked. Those who'd quit smoking ate potato chips.

The folks at Methadone World must have been on break, too, or just had nowhere to go, because they stood on their steps, a mirror image of us, smoking and eating potato chips and staring. We were like two groups of weary sailors aboard dingy pontoon boats, floating past each other on a polluted river.

Out of boredom, I waved. A little papal motion. My gesture did not appear to register over in Methadone World. Then, oddly, about thirty seconds later, one of the more beat-up fellows, the double denim guy who'd been pa.s.sed out over the railing in the morning, did finally lift his arm in unsmiling salute.

"You smell that sugar smell?" asked one of the training officers. n.o.body replied.

"They make a different kind over there every day," he said, nodding toward m.u.f.fin World. He took an anguished drag of his cigarette. His mouth curdled.

"Today's blueberry m.u.f.fin day."

He flicked his cigarette into the parking lot, and walked back into the bunker. A cloud of smoke lingered where he had stood, then faded. Everybody pa.s.sed the quiz.

On Smash After orientation things at work seemed different. I got the sneaking feeling that that had been the point: to bore and horrify you for three days until going in to work at the prison seemed, by comparison, a most wonderful treat. At the same time, the litany of contraband, the deeply disturbing scenario of fire in prison, the myriad ways of messing up, made me slightly uneasy about entering the building again.

This was normal, I was told. Union boss Charlie explained that people typically return to work from orientation slightly disoriented. "Everyone comes back thinking everything's contraband," he said. "Like everyone's out to get you, you know? Like the cons are always trying to stab you and the guy who works down the hall is gonna write you up, and the girl over there wants to sue you for being a knucklehead." This paranoia soon fades, he a.s.sured me. And then you can return to "doin' nothing and seein' nothing." He winked.

Still, when I returned to work after orientation something really did seem different. People were rus.h.i.+ng around all morning. Outside the library, officers sprinted down the hall. Then up the hall. Out into the prison yard and then back in. A few plainclothes officers, whom I'd never seen, snooped around. Later, a major strolled by, surveying the situation.

Within an hour the halls were clear of inmates. Silence, unusual for the middle of the day, prevailed. The library detail at that moment-Fat Kat, Pitts, Teddy, Dice, and Elia-tried to look busy and stay below the radar. The chessboard had already been folded up and put away. The banter ended. The last thing they wanted was to be sent back to their cells, where they'd be put on smash, locked down for hours, and possibly days, at a time. This was standard procedure when violence erupted.

I stuck my head out of the library and asked an officer what was going on. Without looking at me, he responded with one word.

"Beefs."

"More than one?" I asked.

He turned and regarded me with something strongly resembling suspicion.

"Yeah," he said, "3-3 and now 3-1. Some beef from the street."

Just then he noticed the inmates working in the library. He quickly averted his eyes and walked away. I recognized the gesture. This wasn't his post. If the inmates in the library were out of place, let someone else deal with it. He had other headaches.

When I got back into the library, Fat Kat smiled and said, "It's popping up there, right?"

"I'm guessing you know more about it than I do," I replied.

As usual, he did. Even though the action was not happening in his unit, he somehow was abreast of the particulars. Word spread quickly in prison. A beef in one unit could quickly spread to others and become a large-scale problem.

"Spanish dude just came into the unit. Black dude recognized him from the street. I heard it was a six on one beat down up in 3-1 ..."

"Is this gang stuff?" I asked.

Fat Kat looked away and muttered, "Probably."

Teddy glared at him and said, "Don't say nothing, man."

"You mean, in front of me?" I asked Teddy.

"Yeah," he said, sheepishly. "You gotta understand how it works in here. It's not that I don't trust you..."

"Yes it is," I said. "But I understand. I'm not supposed to trust you either."

Fat Kat smiled congenially and turned to Teddy.

"It's a' ight, Akh," he said, using Teddy's street name. Short for the Arabic, akhi akhi, my brother. "It's cool."

Teddy deferred to Fat Kat. He walked away. Like the officer, he wanted no part in this.

But before Fat Kat could go on, the officer on duty marched into the library. "Gentlemen! I don't know why you're still here, but it's time to go back."

The detail let out a collective sigh and shuffled out. Just then Miller opened the door and walked in.

"You gotta love lockdowns!" he said to me from across the room. The inmates exchanged a look. Miller headed straight for the magazines we kept behind the counter. He grabbed a Sports Ill.u.s.trated Sports Ill.u.s.trated.

Miller and I had never clicked. Hulking and spirited, a bit of a towel snapper, he was a young prison staff teacher whose c.o.c.kiness seemed entirely unjustified.

"What can I do for you?" I asked.

"I need the DVD player."

He waited at the counter, reading his magazine. I wondered why he "needed" the DVD player, considering that his cla.s.s was just canceled.

"It's in the back," I said.

He seemed annoyed that I wasn't getting it for him.

"So what do you do do all day?" he asked. "Are you going to be, like, a prison librarian forever? Do you go to school for that?" all day?" he asked. "Are you going to be, like, a prison librarian forever? Do you go to school for that?"

I changed my mind and decided to get the DVD player for him after all. I retrieved it from the back room, wheeled it out the door, and sent him on his way.

Later that morning, I made some copies in the main Education Department office area, down the hall from the library. My boss, Patti, had uncharacteristically closed the door to her office. Through her window, I could see her on the phone, taking notes. Union boss Charlie emerged from his office with purpose. Now I knew something was wrong. He seemed tense, not at all his usual good-humored self. I noticed Miller approaching.

Charlie stood in front of the main door to the office area, blocking Miller's entrance.

"Hey," Charlie said. "SID wants to see you. Right now."

Miller froze.

"SID?"

Charlie nodded slowly. "That's right, Scott."

"I don't know what that is."

Yes he did. Everyone did. I had worked at the prison considerably less time than Miller, but I knew SID. It stood for Sheriff's Investigative Division. They were the prison's internal detectives. Miller must have known as well, and yet he was playing dumb. Now I was absolutely certain: something was definitely very wrong. Charlie wasn't having it.

"They want to talk to you, Scott. I think you know what this is about."

Miller stared. His face had gone alarmingly, cadaverously pale.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

"Just go to their office, kid. It's next to the s.h.i.+ft commander's."

Miller closed his eyes, bit his lip, and departed. I turned to Charlie.

"What the h.e.l.l was that?"

"Trouble."

"Is it about this lockdown?"