Caged to Kill

by Tom Swyers

  While the transcript didn’t help the state’s case, it wasn’t a fatal blow, either. The court would routinely remand the case for another hearing if the transcript was faulty enough. The system could do the hearing over and over again until the fake hearing looked right on paper or until hell froze over—Groundhog Day, the movie, Prison Edition. Phillip could wait in solitary for it all to play out. What’s a few more years?

  But the law, on the other hand, was clearly against the state on the issue of Phillip’s appeal. The court had previously ruled that substantial evidence of an unauthorized exchange exists only where there is an admission of the exchange by the defendant or a recovery of the exchanged object. The Attorney General could see the writing on the wall. He had neither and conceded defeat. Phillip’s perfect record streak remained intact, for all the good it did him.

  Even though Phillip’s legal victory spared him no time from the box, he had refused to accept the guilty finding. Maintaining a perfect disciplinary record kept alive his slim hope of release from solitary. Yes, so long as he behaved well while they tortured him he had a chance. But winning also gave him the sense of satisfaction of looking his incarcerators in the eye and letting them know, without saying a word, that what they were doing was wrong. So long as he was alive, Phillip believed that his existence served as a constant reminder to them of their unjust treatment.

  Oh, sure, they’d say to one another that Phillip got what he deserved. They’d pound their chests—always victorious—as long as they were in the company of other COs. They could put on a brave face for one another, but when they found themselves alone, like Phillip, the system would eat at them and show them no mercy.

  Phillip’s actions invited the COs to take their jobs and the memory of him home, back to their spouses, their families, and their communities. He knew damn well that COs were reluctant to tell anyone on the outside what they did for a living. He had overheard COs saying exactly that, right outside of his gate or through the ventilation grates. You hear a lot over thirty years when you’ve got nothing but time on your hands. The COs didn’t want to relive their jobs at the end of the day by talking with anyone about them. They wanted to forget their shift—to erase their time inside like it never happened.

  On top of it all there was a stigma to the job, the reek of prison that wouldn’t wash off. Phillip had heard that people looked down on the COs. They were viewed as knuckle-draggers, Neanderthals who weren’t smart enough to be police officers or fire fighters. He had read that COs had highest rates of heart disease, divorce, drug and alcohol addiction, suicide—and the shortest life spans—of any state civil servants.

  Over the years, COs would come and go, serve their sentence in the hallways of Kranston and then die before their time, while Phillip lived on. It gave him satisfaction that he was actually killing them as they tried but failed to kill him. The system spared no one—death and taxes, baby. That single thought put Phillip at peace with the world.

  At that point, Phillip decided it was time to get out of bed. He pulled the frayed cord to draw the drapes on his picture window view of the main drag to Albany. He couldn’t figure out how David fit into his dream. But with a butterfly-eating kangaroo jumping around in his head, David’s presence in his subconscious was the least of his concerns. He let the dream go.

  As the drapes ratcheted slowly open, April sunshine flowed over his green carpet giving it the look of a well-manicured front lawn. Phillip put on a too-short terry bathrobe and sat in the rocking chair David bought him at SALs. All the while Phillip was in the box, he tried to imagine what life would be like as a free man. Now he slowly rocked back and forth, content to watch the world pass him by on Central Avenue.

  Chapter 7

  When the world turned green outside his picture window in May, Phillip thought he had lost his mind. First there was the fuzzy hint of red around the branches of the tree in front of the Red Apple Motel. Then, the patches of dirt that bordered the parking lot sprouted spots of color that changed daily, from light to bright to deep green, like the carpet in his room. There were even little flowers that didn’t last long—yellow, white and purple—poking up through the shreds of litter leftover from winter.

  He hadn’t seen that kind of color on the ground, or anywhere else for that matter, since he was a kid. The windows in his solitary cells, when he had them, were always too high to see outside. The concrete floor of the rec cages prevented even the hardiest weed from taking root. Galvanized fencing on all four sides was surrounded by concrete or brick walls that soared high above the tree line. Overhead, you could see only the sky through the galvanized mesh. Rec period was always at the mercy of Mother Nature because the cages had no roofs.

  It was a novel sensory experience for Phillip to absorb colors, smells, and textures in person. The Albany Pine Bush Preserve in Karner was in full bloom when he and David pulled into the Welcome Center parking lot one Sunday in late May. The sun rose slowly over scattered gnarled pitch pine trees that dotted gentle sand dune mounds among the low-lying scrub oak. It almost felt as if the ocean should be nearby. But the nearest beach was a three-hour drive east by car and the background noise came from eighteen-wheelers on I-90, not crashing waves. Mixed in and around the scrub oak and throughout the ragged landscape, wild blue lupines were in full bloom.

  “Why are we here?” Phillip asked his tour director.

  “To take a walk. You can’t sit around in your motel room all day. It’s not good for you.”

  “Why so early?” Phillip asked, when David parked the car by the trailhead.

  “I wanted to get here before the crowds,” David said.

  Phillip nodded silently. Almost three months together had taught them both that Phillip did not like crowds and might never get used to them. It was one of the prices he paid for the decades of living in solitary confinement.

  “We’re going on a treasure hunt,” David said, as he opened the Mustang’s door and stepped out.

  Phillip fumbled to unbuckle his seatbelt. “What kind of treasure? Buried treasure?”

  “Nope,” David said, as he locked and closed his door.

  Phillip opened his door and stretched upright as he stood outside. David’s treasure hook had worked. Getting Phillip out of his motel room or the car could be a challenge. “What kind of treasure, then?”

  “The best kind—a living kind of treasure,” David said, walking past the trailhead kiosk and on down the sandy path.

  “Don’t we need directions?” Phillip said, pointing to the plexiglass box filled with trail maps.

  “Nope. I know where we’re going. I’ve been walking this trail since I was a kid. Are you coming?” David wasn’t going to wait for Phillip. He didn’t want to leave him too much time to think about the outing. He didn’t want to give him an opportunity to invent a reason not to go. David told Annie that Phillip had an acute case of analysis-paralysis. His life experience had made him too wary of everything to do anything. David wanted Phillip to be more spontaneous and he tried to lead by example.

  Phillip looked over one shoulder and then over the other. He didn’t see anyone in the scrubby woods around them. Still, it bothered him. He was accustomed to the security of walls within reach. He didn’t have to watch his back so much when he was in the box or going to and from it. There was always a CO, bars, or a wall behind him an arm’s length away. But now he feared that anything might appear out of nowhere behind him; and there was a whole lot of nowhere all around in the preserve.

  With his hand, he surreptitiously touched the handle of the carving knife tucked in his sock, hidden beneath his cargo pants. It calmed him. He sped up to catch up to David but his feet sunk to the ankles in the sand like he was running on the beach. He almost lost his balance.

  When Phillip finally caught up, David slowed his pace and they strolled side-by-side to the crest of the dune mound and looked down into the grassy meadow below. It was spotted with the twisted trunks of bonsai-like pitch pine and covered in
a blanket of lavender blue. As they drew closer, the wave of color became dozens of stems that sported clusters of tiny flowers.

  “Aren’t these wild blue lupines beautiful, Phillip?”

  Phillip stood still and surveyed the surroundings trying to take it all in. “Is that what they call these flowers?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a field of flowers like this before.”

  “Inland pine barrens like this one are rare, very isolated. I don’t think there are any environments like this close to Syracuse where you grew up. There used to be forty square miles of pine bush in this area. Human expansion and development has caused this ecosystem to shrink. It’s gotten smaller, much smaller. There are about 3,200 acres left now in Albany.”

  As David spoke, Phillip thought about the ceiling and the walls in his cell closing in on him. “Are wild blue lupines only found here?”

  “They’re native to ecosystems like this one, but there are not many inland pine barren areas like this in the country. Maybe in New Jersey and up around Lake Michigan. But you can grow these flowers in a garden. This is crappy soil—it’s all sand. Can you believe something so beautiful requires so little encouragement to grow?”

  “No.”

  “Look at them. They aren’t just surviving—they’re thriving.” David started to walk down the path into the meadow of lupines. “Don’t they smell sweet?”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “Kind of like honey?”

  “Is that what honey smells like?”

  “It’s close.”

  Phillip trailed behind him. He had learned that these outings always had an underlying theme to them. “Are you saying I’m like a wild thing, a blue lupine or something, because I survived solitary? Is that what this walk is all about?”

  “Geez, Phillip, don’t overthink it. Can’t we just enjoy the walk now?”

  “I’m not stupid, you know.”

  “I have never suggested you were. You should really stop saying that to me.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s habit. They always treated me as if I was stupid in prison.”

  “I understand.”

  “So am I like the wild blue lupine then?”

  “You’re not going to let this go, are you?” David knew that unless he answered the question, Phillip would think about it all through their walk. He wanted Phillip to learn to just enjoy things for what they were, and not to analyze everything all the time.

  Phillip said, “It’s a habit, I guess—”

  “I understand,” David interrupted. He knew he wasn’t going to undo thirty years of obsessive behavior in a few months. “No offense, Phillip, but you’re not as pretty as a lupine. You’re more like a pitch pine over there, scraggly and bent, full of resin and resistant to rot. It’s a very resilient tree that sends a single taproot deep into the sand to find water. When you set fire to a pitch pine, its thick bark offers a protective armor, and new growth appears quickly. If you cut a pitch pine down, the stump sprouts new growth. In fact, some of the cones from these trees need the trauma of fire to open and spread their seed. They flourish from disaster. Like you, the pitch pine is hard to kill.”

  Phillip sported a grin as he walked on. “I like it.”

  David was glad to connect with Phillip on some level. “It fits you.”

  “Just call me ‘pitch’ then.”

  David gave a snorting laugh. “If I called you that in front of people, it might sound like ‘bitch’ to them.”

  Phillip looked at the ground and managed a weak smile. He didn’t say anything in reply. David’s joke had hit a bit too close to home. Truth be told, he felt like David’s bitch at times and that angered Phillip because he was nobody’s bitch at Kranston.

  It was mentally and physically exhausting to follow David around in an unfamiliar world. Phillip thought the experience was toying with his subconscious and playing tricks on his mind. That’s the way it was in the box—your mind toyed with your body; your body toyed with your mind.

  Just a week ago, in a dream, Phillip found himself back in Kranston and there David was a CO. On the way to the rec cage, Phillip broke free from his cuffs and stabbed David repeatedly with the carving knife. Fountains of blood sprayed everything deep, dark red and Phillip didn’t stop plunging the knife into him until every last drop of blood drained out. It was the same thing a few nights before, but that time, after stabbing him to death, he dismembered the body and ate his flesh before he woke up and screamed David’s name. The dreams were growing more intense and disturbing. He was scared and ashamed of them, but didn’t know what to do. He sure couldn’t tell David about them. He was afraid to lose the only friend he had.

  Phillip didn’t have any medical insurance. He lost access to medical care provided by the Bureau of Prisons once he was released and he hadn’t applied for Medicaid. Even if he got into the emergency room to talk to someone about the sleep disturbances, some psychiatrist would flag him for confinement and observation. That would be just another box at a different venue—except they’d pump him full of drugs, too. Not an option. His plan was to just tough it out and hope the dreams would leave him as quickly as they had come. There was no other choice.

  “The thing we’re looking for is the size of a postage stamp,” David said. He could have said the size of a quarter, but David knew Phillip liked stamps. They were as good as cash in prison.

  Phillip’s eyes opened wide as he surveyed his surroundings. “Any other clues?”

  “They’re close to the color of your favorite stamp.”

  “The purple heart?” The Purple Heart Medal stamp was the one he’d paste on all of his letters to David.

  “Yep.”

  “All I see are the lupines.”

  “Well, the lupines are nice but they aren’t the treasure. Keep looking.”

  Phillip looked in the brush, at the trees, on the ground. He heard a chirp from foot level and drifted toward the trunk of a pitch pine. David followed close behind. Phillip pointed to something on the ground. It was a baby sparrow.

  “He must have fallen out,” David said, pointing to the nest above and the mother sparrow chirping away. Phillip saw the nest and the mother and shook his head. He looked down on the baby sparrow chirping and flapping its wings. Suddenly, he lifted his foot over the baby sparrow.

  “What are you doing?” David cried, pushing him away. Phillip fell to the ground. “Were you going to kill that baby, Phillip? What in God’s name are you thinking?”

  “Don’t push me, David. Please don’t. I’m tired of being pushed around.”

  “Were you going to kill that baby bird?”

  “I want to put it out of its misery.”

  “It still has a chance. The mother might tend to him.”

  “The mother needs to learn that she can’t save him.”

  David’s jaw dropped when he realized that Phillip saw a reflection of himself in the baby bird. David couldn’t imagine how many times Phillip must have wished to be taken out of his misery. It pained him that Phillip couldn’t put the prison experience behind him. But at the same time, he knew he was asking too much. He couldn’t walk a mile in Phillip’s prison flyers. Nobody could fit in those shoes but Phillip.

  David extended his hand. “Let me help you up,” he said, clasping Phillip’s cold hand and pulling him off the sand. “Trust me about the bird, Phillip. Just tell yourself that it’s not in prison. Maybe that will help you understand.”

  Phillip nodded in silent agreement. He had learned to trust David with anything outside of prison. But at the same time, he felt compelled to squash that baby bird. In prison, it would have been the right thing to do. All the cons would see it the same way. Though if it were an inmate and not a bird, no con that killed another would talk about it and risk a murder charge. But every con in the general population knew that a simple pillow could do the job without triggering suspicion. In solitary, it was strictly self-service. They put those air grates above the
solitary units for a reason. While everything in prison was cheap, the sheet thread count was always strong enough to hold a dangling body from the air grates.

  Phillip couldn’t stand to hear the chick squeak and thrash. He stared at the helpless creature; he imagined he could squish it into the ground like he was putting out a cigarette butt. It would only take a second.

  “Phillip, snap out of it.”

  “Huh,” Phillip said, now looking at David.

  “Let’s move on,” David said, pointing to the path.

  David waited for Phillip to move before following him out of the brush and onto the trail. They were walking through another wild lupine meadow when David spotted the object of his quest.

  “Stand still,” David said, “and don’t move.”

  “Why? What’s wrong? What do you see?”

  “Just relax and don’t move.” David said, carefully reaching out to Phillip’s shoulder before he touched it with his index finger.

  Phillip grimaced and his eyes bulged. “Is there something on me?” he fretted, twisting his head to see what might be on his shoulder. Was it a bee or a bug? Something was going on and it was behind him where he couldn’t see or react. He would never allow that to happen in prison.

  He was breathing hard now. His fight or flight instinct had been triggered. But David told him to stay still. Restraining himself took every ounce of will he had. Still, he feared he couldn’t hold back much longer. Knots multiplied in his stomach. He felt about to explode. He wanted to grab his knife and swing it in a slashing 360 degree circle of defense.

  “Look away,” David said. “Don’t scare the pretty thing. It’s going to be okay.”

  Phillip exhaled shakily. “What is it, David!? For God’s sake, what’s on me?”