Gang of One: One Man's Incredible Battle to Find His Missing

by Gary Mulgrew

  ‘You’ve got your new bunkie,’ motioned Chief with a nod of his head towards my bunk. I saw a few Hispanics milling around one guy who was sat on the bunk underneath mine, his personal effects strewn around him. I couldn’t get clear sight of him, but I was already knocked off stride again. I felt anxiety clutch at my throat.

  ‘What do we know about him?’ I asked Chief, turning sideways away from my new roommate.

  ‘Listen to you!’ Chief laughed. ‘What are you, suddenly the old-timer? Man, Scotland, you’re somethin’ else. We’ don’t know nuthin’ about him – why don’t you go over and introduce yourself?’

  ‘Right, right,’ I apologised. ‘I’ll go over then.’ I started to walk towards my betrothed. He was wearing what looked like a dark vest, until I realised he had a full skin of tattoos, save his arms, which were largely clear, other than a few isolated, random tattoos. It was clear from the people already coming past me to greet him, all Hispanic, that he was ‘quoted’ as Chief would say – a name, a serious player, someone to be reckoned with. Not wanting to look too afraid, I walked forward towards our bunks and nodded towards my new neighbour.

  He was young looking, fresh faced and handsome; a bit of the Orlando Bloom about him, with his pencil moustache, little goatee and hair tightly pulled back in a ponytail. Despite the tattoos, he looked very clean, very pristine and precise, and I noticed how well folded his clothes were as they lay on the bed. I also noticed that one or two other Hispanics were unpacking his things.

  ‘Hey, cómo estás, Escosais?’ he said jovially, as if he knew me, and pushed his fist out for the obligatory bump. I bumped back and nodded to him.

  ‘Bienvenu a Escotia,’ I responded (‘Welcome to Scotland’), at which point his smile seemed to grow larger. He seemed very happy to be in Big Spring, almost as happy as his compatriots seemed to see him. I found out many weeks later that his euphoria was because he’d just been sentenced that day for his part leading a drug cartel, shipping in cocaine from Mexico to the United States. He had originally operated right under the Americans’ noses, smuggling in the drugs from Juárez, the notorious Mexican town right on the border, four hours from Big Spring, using one or two ‘bent’ US border control personnel, but when one of them had started to get greedy he’d had to be disposed of (I didn’t ask how). He switched the operation to the sea, and that worked well for a while. One day, at his wife’s behest, he took a quick shopping trip to Miami – on the boat. Unfortunately he picked the very day the US Coast Guard did a random spot check of his boat and found over two tonnes of coke in the hold.

  The celebration was because he had just arrived after negotiating a plea bargain and sentence of just ten years – more in keeping with a functionary than the son of the boss of the cartel and heir apparent to the whole operation. He’d expected fifty years and had hoped for thirty – ten was party time. He expected to be shipped back to Mexico within five, at which point, he said, he would barely serve one day more. Five, he said, he could do standing on his head, and could only help his credibility within the cartel.

  He seemed busy so I made to climb up onto my bunk, conscious now that I had to be careful where I put my foot in the act of climbing. Chief had shown me exactly where to put my foot, so that my shoes made no contact with the lower bunkie’s bedding – and it was a serious lesson. People got knifed for far less.

  ‘Tu habla español, Escosais?’ my new bunkie shouted up to me.

  ‘Un poco solomente,’ I responded, as I started to nervously organise myself on top of my bunk, conscious that what little space I had had, had just been halved.

  ‘I am Ramon,’ said my new flatmate in a way that suggested he spoke little of our language. He had stood up by now, but his head barely appeared above the bed. The rest of his flunkies just watched me, but it was already clear to me that they held Ramon in some esteem and expected me to do likewise. It wouldn’t be a good idea to upset my bunkie at any stage, I thought.

  ‘I speak the little English, but I good bunkie!’ he said with a zest that was both charming and a little irritating. It seemed unreasonable to be that happy, but this guy was full of the joys of Spring. I had a choice to make between English and Spanish, but I was tired, numbed by the constant stress and changes of life in the Big Room; of life in Big Spring.

  ‘That’s cool Ramon. Bueno, muy bien. The whole neighbourhood’s on the up and up,’ I said, unable to stop sarcasm emerging from under my general fatigue.

  ‘Que?’ he asked still smiling.

  ‘Nada, nothing. Estoy un bueno bunkie tambien.’ (I am also a good bunkie.)

  While Ramon was apparently enjoying one of the best days of his life, I lay back on my bunk and closed my eyes. Beyond the light shuffling of Ramon sorting out his things below me, the din of the room began to seep back into my consciousness. The noise was incessant – so many different voices, different languages, different music. Sudden shouts, peals of laughter, cries of excitement, of anger, rising disputes, all condensed in this room with seemingly more and more people cramming into it each day. The constant traffic of other inmates coming in and out, each one looking more dangerous than the last. Big City snoring loudly at the base of my bed – how the hell could he manage to sleep in all this racket? The sounds sometimes merged together, were sometimes individually discernible, as if they were lining up to take their turn to assault my senses.

  I tried to stop translating the Spanish, because the mixture of Mexicans, Colombians, Hondurans, El Salvadorians and other accents was making it almost impossible to understand the language I had taken so long to study. They all spoke so fast! I had convinced myself that if I could tune in I would pick up when I was in danger, but the constant attempts to translate made my mind feel jumbled and tired, so tired. I would construct scenarios from a word here, a word there – but the truth was I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I felt like I was going crazy.

  I closed my eyes and rubbed them. I felt so tired but had still been struggling to sleep. I was hungry but couldn’t face another taco. I started to feel overwhelmed. I felt my heart racing, but I wasn’t in any immediate danger. Or was I? It raced even more. I suddenly felt frightened, nervous, defeated. Was I having a heart attack? I couldn’t breathe. I was panicking. What the hell was wrong with me? I felt a cold sweat on my brow and my mind screaming at me: ‘Get out! Get out now!’ I turned to face the wall, worried someone might see me. ‘I can’t let them see me like this,’ I thought, ‘or else I am finished.’ Ramon’s friends were all underneath me now, invading my space even more. Fuck, they were almost on top of me. Was I breaking down? Was I losing it!? What the fuck was happening? I felt so completely afraid. Still my heart raced ever faster. Fuck, I am having a heart attack, I thought. And I’m going to die here alone in this room with all these people. My family won’t even know. Calum will be alone. Each new thought added to my panic and seemed to speed my heart up even more. I wasn’t simply touching despair, it was absorbing me, sucking me in ever deeper. I had the urge to roll up in a foetal position and pulled my knees up closer to my chest. I’d never felt so alone; never felt such a sudden onset of despair; never felt such deep-lying fear.

  Had anyone noticed? Were they looking at me now? What the fuck was wrong with me? I had to get a grip. I just wanted to go home. I was breaking down; I was starting to disintegrate. This was all too hard, too difficult. Ridiculous. These people are going to kill me. I’m never going to get home. I’ll never survive this. Writhing around and putting my hand on my heart to confirm it was pumping madly away – it was – I felt myself slipping; losing control. Someone was bound to notice soon. What was I doing in this desert in Texas? ‘I don’t belong here, I shouldn’t be here,’ my mind screamed, my breathing heavy.

  I’d only been inside a few months so far, but the amalgam of all those moments flashed through my head: the Aryan Brotherhood, Big City, cleaning toilets, the beating, Choker, terrifying inmates, spider tattoos. Visions of all of it came screaming down on top of me
at the same time. My breathing seemed to shorten, my heart speeding up further. Then I recognised it. Within the chaos of my mind, as if standing quietly in the corner, a calm voice was talking to me. ‘You are having a panic attack,’ it said. I’d read about this once somewhere long ago. I could just see a form in my mind through the panic. It took the shape of a man; as he emerged, he was wearing a grey suit. For a moment, while all the chaotic thoughts continued to batter around my mind, their dominance began to fade and I could see a picture of this calm faceless soul telling me to breathe, to hold on, that it was a panic attack, that it was OK for me to be scared, that I was doing OK, and that this moment would pass. I tried to direct my mind towards him, towards that form, to listen intently to those calming words, to hold onto something and to block out all the other images of the last months in Big Spring.

  As if the fizz began to go out of my fears, I momentarily started to breathe more easily, a bit heavily, as if I was sobbing. I wasn’t sure if I had managed to suppress the sound. I couldn’t let anyone see me like this. It was just a panic attack. It was normal, to be almost expected in the circumstances, I told myself, mirroring the comments of the grey-suited apparition. I was re-asserting control. But this was just the calm before a greater storm. My breathing had eased, but, just as suddenly I felt gripped by a new fear, a second wave, a deep unrecognisable form. An overwhelming, overpowering fear of something just lurking in the deepest shadows of my mind, something unspeakable, too painful to face, too impossible to contemplate, but something I could feel was coming, was coming to the surface, approaching me, stalking me, ready to blow my world apart. All sorts of thoughts were flying through my mind now, too swiftly for me to trap and countenance, random and dangerous, but beneath all of them there still rumbled something much more sinister. I knew it was coming and my panic deepened. It was moving from my subconscious mind to my conscious mind and I couldn’t stop it.

  What if he’s touching her? What if they’re hitting her?

  ‘NO!!!’ I shouted, not caring who would have heard.

  I sat up and clenched my fists tightly then rolled back around to the wall again and opened my eyes to stare at the peeling brickwork. I was hyperventilating. I expelled a huge quantity of air as if my despair was sucking the life force out of me.

  I forced my hands through my short hair, trying to grab my head as if it might be coming off, as those painful thoughts came around again. ‘Shut the fuck up,’ I said quickly in a whisper, my breath short, desperate, ugly. ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up.’ I thought I was going to cry then realised tears were already covering my face, as I tried to turn further into the wall. I’m breaking down; I’m losing it. Don’t let them see me like this. Don’t let them see me like this. ‘Fuck them,’ I thought just as quickly.

  Then she came to me, as clear as day; she was alone and crying, she was alone, crying for her daddy. She was frightened and alone and I needed to get to her. I needed to get out of here, I had to get home. Didn’t anyone understand I had to get home? I wiped the tears off my face. Stop crying, you idiot. I have to help her. I had to find my baby, I had to save her. She stayed with me, her pain apparent. She was sitting on a trunk. Her bare feet so small and delicate and tiny. She was cold, I could see she was cold. She was asking me where I was through her tears, she was asking why I didn’t come and get her, as she looked up to a small window at the top of a cold and soulless room. I felt the pain splitting me in two, I wanted to scream, to rage, to fight, to punch, to kick, to kill. What a catastrophic failure as a father I was. I’d locked my girl in my own original nightmare; I’d placed her in my hell. I needed to jump down from this bunk and go home right now. Just start walking and bulldoze through any fucker that tried to stop me.

  That’s what I had to do, that’s what I was going to do. I was going home. I was going to get out of here. I had faced the unspeakable thoughts; I had seen my darkest fear. My breathing was still laboured, my heart racing, but the edge had come off. ‘OK,’ I said to myself, ‘I have to stop.’ I don’t need to keep thinking of this, but I know it’s out there. I know that anything can be happening with Cara. I know that I have to get home to her, I have to find her. So I have to get a grip on myself. I have to calm down, to start all over again, to build the steps to get me home as quickly as possible. I will see my Case Manager next week and I will start the ball rolling to get my transfer under way. They owe me that; they promised me that. I’ll have to get in the zone for that meeting and do my best to get through to her how much I need to see my baby girl.

  A few times the panic felt as if it might return, but it ebbed and flowed and at last began to drift away. My heart slowed down and I felt tired, deeply tired. I strayed between a state of sleep and consciousness, aware I was drifting off but aware, too, that I was still in the Big Room, still in Big Spring. I vaguely recognised that the lights had switched off, so it must have been past 10 p.m. I couldn’t remember the count, as I thought about how little I’d slept since I’d arrived. I was in a semi-dream state and it seemed to be giving me profound comfort.

  I was remembering a time with Calum, on one of his many visits to me in Houston. Even though the dream was jumbled, I felt so close to him, as if he was right there with me, helping me. We were standing in the foyer of a cinema in Galveston. In those days, aged ten or eleven, Calum would still hold my hand when we were together, and I was visualising that feeling of warmth and comfort I had, holding his little hand in mine, as we stood queuing for our tickets. We were queuing to see Shrek 2, or maybe a Harry Potter film, I can’t remember which.

  ‘One adult and two children please.’

  We always bought an extra ticket for Cara. That way, I thought, she would know in the future that she was always missed; always with us.

  ‘How old are the children?’ the older lady in the booth asked from behind her reading glasses. Originally that answer had been nine and five, but it had moved to ten and six, and now, painfully, by this stage it was eleven and seven. What was the seven-year-old Cara like? Time was moving on; she was slipping further away. ‘Where’s the other child?’ the lady in the booth asked. I said nothing.

  ‘She’s not here,’ said Calum in a simple uncomplicated tone. The lady paused for a moment, looking at this bizarre father and son in front of her, then shrugged and handed us three tickets. Calum, so careless and reckless with most things, took Cara’s ticket and placed it in the top breast pocket of his jacket with tender care. He clipped the pocket shut, and lightly touched it again as if to reassure himself the ticket was safe. I stood and watched him do this. There was an unspoken understanding between us and I felt a mixture of pain and love and pride inside. When we would get home, he would take the ticket out and place it carefully with the other things we kept in ‘Cara’s box’: multitudes of tickets for the cinema, water parks, amusement rides and other fun days we would, and should, have all shared. Birthday cards, Christmas cards and presents that I had encouraged my family to keep sending; drawings from Calum and letters from me, all my sad attempts to keep a history for her.

  That image of Calum and I standing silently in front of that ticket booth – waiting patiently for our three tickets, holding hands, each lost in his own world – lingered, and eventually, mercifully, carried me off to a fitful sleep.

  13

  THE LIBRARY GANG

  I STARTED WORK IN THE LIBRARY the following Monday, roughly ten weeks after entering Big Spring. I’d had a few more of those meltdown moments over the intervening time, but if any of my roommates had witnessed any part of them, no one said. In a way, though, the silence – the fact that I couldn’t talk about them – made them loom larger in my mind. I kept telling myself over and over that they were just panic attacks, but I had never experienced anything like them before, even through the extradition fight and those dark days in Houston. I suspected that Chief had noticed some or perhaps all of them, but he never said anything to me and I didn’t ask. I felt ashamed; weakened by it. I knew I couldn’t afford
to have any more episodes like that, and tried to throw myself into creating some structure to my long, slow days in Big Spring.

  When it came, the library job helped enormously with that, and so did having a few people around me, like Chief, whom I could talk to and trust. The Range Officer had frowned at my exclusion from kitchen work and Chief seemed mightily impressed that I had managed to dodge that one. He seemed less impressed by the fact that I took the effort to get clean-shaven and have my clothes ironed for my first day at work.

  ‘You’re wasting your time, Scotty dog,’ he offered. ‘No one’s gonna take a damn bit of notice of you in that place.’ He lay back on his bunk, hands casually behind his head.

  ‘Shit Chief,’ Kola added, ‘I think Scotland’s got the hots for Miss Reed. He done been in too long already!’ They both laughed and leaned over and high-fived. One of the benefits, I suppose, of having the Range so tightly packed with felons was that you could ‘high-five’ a neighbour without even getting out of your bunk.

  The joking and the bonding ended swiftly as one of our new bunkmates passed by. His name was John, and he was tall and pale, white, with a long grey beard and he had moved into the same section as Chief and Kola, just ten feet away from me. All the chomos were white, I soon found out – not a racist observation, just a reality. They also invariably had beards, large, shaggy ones – possibly out of some subconscious attempt to hide their shame. In Big Spring, there were very clear ‘rules’ on how to treat them – they basically were not to be spoken to, and not to be helped in any way. No sharing of items, no favours done, no support in any way. Chief had already told me in some detail about the events of last December and how bad some of the beatings had been. Now more were being re-introduced into the very Range that had seen a few of them murdered and scores beaten beyond recognition.

  The atmosphere around John was instantly hostile. But the inmates were aware that any visible aggression towards John or his ilk would not be tolerated by the prison officers and would lead to an immediate transfer out of Big Spring into another medium- or high-security establishment. So there was lip-service to some kind of protection for them, but essentially it was worthless. The chomos were a protected species while the guards were around – which meant that most of the worst abuse simply took place after the watershed. During the day, the abuse was more gentle and seemed to be divided up, like so much of prison life, on racial lines. The Hispanics spat near the chomos, or on their belongings, with the greatest ceremony, with real meaning and aplomb, while the Whites seemed to spend more time focusing on spit volume, summoning up a greater mixture from the depths of their bowels before violently exploding it onto their target. The Blacks seemed more intent on real damage and would throw anything around that John had left on his pristinely made bed.