by Gary Mulgrew
New York put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Joker likes you and he won’t let anyone in here to try any shit, so you should be safe as long as it’s lockdown. I’ll do a shift, then Chief will do a shift,’ he said, meaning they would watch me, ‘and then we’ll see if Angel can help out.’
‘Look guys,’ I began purposefully. ‘I appreciate the support. But you don’t need to get involved in my shit. It’s my decision, my choices, I’ll handle the con-sequences.’
‘We’re already in your shit!’ said Chief angrily as he pushed past me out of the bathroom towards the bunk.
‘Get your water bottles filled up, Scotty,’ said New York. ‘Let’s hope it’s a long one.’
I managed to fill a few bottles and clamber back onto my bunk, ignoring all the chaos and excitement around me. Ramon came over, patted me on the leg and said, ‘OK, Escosais, OK,’ as if he felt sorry for me. He knew; everyone knew. Mendiola looked frightened and sat on the bunk across from me, his rosary beads working feverishly – always a bad sign. I instinctively rubbed the beads and cross he’d given me, searching for some comfort from it as I sat up on my bunk. Mendiola kept looking at me, then launching ever more vigorously into prayer. I felt more of an outsider than I’d ever been, more foreign than ever. I’d crossed a line and there was no going back. I couldn’t stay in Big Spring. I didn’t fit in; I didn’t belong. I’d just seen a man almost killed and I didn’t want to play any of their stupid games anymore. I didn’t want to be a part of any of this. Angel, Chief, New York, the shot-callers – all of them could fuck off. I wanted to go home; to curl up in the corner and be on my own. Or maybe I’d just sit here until they came and got me.
At that precise moment, AJ came in and headed straight towards me. He stopped about fifteen feet away. He looked angry, but I wasn’t in the mood. For a moment he just stood and stared at me. Perhaps if I’d known it was the last time I would see him, I would have come off the bunk and hugged him, but I didn’t know that and I stayed on my bunk, a distance between us. Maybe it was my expression, a look of despair or defeat, that softened his own. As AJ’s face changed and he moved uneasily from side to side, he sighed heavily. Through all the continued noise and chaos, we had our own silent conversation. I lightly shrugged my shoulders as if to say sorry. AJ seemed to struggle with this – his backing of the wrong horse, all his training gone to waste, and the disgrace, he’d no doubt try and argue, that had been done to the librarians’ profession, worldwide. He forced a smile and looked intently at me; I numbly stared back at him. We nodded briefly to each other as he turned to leave. ‘Scottish shit,’ he said with feeling, before swinging round, and then, for the last time, flashing me the ‘L for library’ gang sign with his thumb and forefinger. Minutes later the doors slammed shut and the lockdown began. It would be my last.
20
ONE SMALL STEP
The first few hours were a blur. I kept my back to the wall both literally and metaphorically and couldn’t think straight. The scene at the running track replayed in my mind a thousand times and each time I’d either chastise myself for helping him, or at other times for helping out too slowly. ‘Do your own time, Scotland’ – that had been the golden rule; the one I could never seem to get the hang of. Faces haunted me. Julie chastising me for jeopardising my only chances of getting home, my mum, my brothers, Jamie, Issi, Calum and even Cara. Sometimes I even felt I’d let the shot-callers down, especially Angel. But the face that haunted me the most was a broken one, smashed beyond all recognition, lurching, reach-ing, spluttering towards me. Why hadn’t I helped him earlier? What kind of man was I? What had I turned into?
Some of the most trusted kitchen staff were allowed out of the Range to work for a few hours, but other than that the lockdown was total: no mail, no phone calls, no exercise, no TVs – no nuthin’, as everyone would groan. No one from the kitchen seemed to care much about what had happened, and each time I asked I got a deadpan response or a shrug of the shoulders. One guy told me he’d heard he was dead, another that he was stable in the local hospital in Midland/Odessa. No one cared either way. The only thing everyone could agree on was that it was a gang retribution because he had apparently been running with a different white gang in a state prison in Mississippi. No one seemed to know his name, but everyone seemed to feel this punishment was justified – that such was the order of things. No one switches gangs in prison. I tried to block it all out. I didn’t speak much to Chief, but each time I almost fell asleep or would look over at him, he was there awake, watching me, or watching over me; Gabriel the archangel. He was an angry archangel too; he never spoke to me once over those first few hours.
After a restless night, the following morning New York and I played cards and sat around talking. The lockdown was already over but the government holiday meant there was no work and none of the prison’s facilities were open. It was already hot and humid and the lack of things to do was making everyone edgy. There wasn’t much talking and you could feel how flat the atmosphere was. I was in mental turmoil, dazed and unsure for the first time through all of this – through all the troubles of Enron, the indictment, my extradition, trial delays and judges, shoddy plea deals and then Big Spring – unsure of where my moral compass lay. I was edgy and kept watching everyone entering and leaving the room; wondering who would come for me. I didn’t know what would be worse: the Feds or a gang visit. I could no longer tell right from wrong, good from bad. I couldn’t think straight at all. I wouldn’t rat on anyone, but if SlumDawg came near me or approached me, I wouldn’t hesitate to extract my own retribution.
Around midday there was a scramble to the windows to see the first ‘suspects’ being led out for questioning. They were handcuffed and we pressed ourselves against the windows and watched them make a show struggling against the cops, aware of the audience of hundreds from the Ranges. I didn’t recognise anyone among the first batch, although I couldn’t be sure who else had been there. My attention had been on SlumDawg and his victim. A few hours later, to my surprise, they took out Angel, and he sauntered along the path that dissected the two buildings, taunting the officers, aware of his audience and supremely confident of himself. But they had not called me. Perhaps no one had seen me after all, I kidded myself; perhaps no one had talked. In the mid-afternoon, I relaxed a little and managed to catch some sleep, albeit with the images of that incident still dominating my thoughts.
Around 5 p.m., when we were beginning to get ready for chow time, two cops marched into the Range while I was sitting near New York’s bunk, reading an old copy of The New York Times. There was a restaurant review in it, and the writer was complaining about the tepid water. I wanted to laugh.
‘Mulgrew,’ one of the cops bellowed. I sat upright immediately, all eyes turning to me as my heart began to race once more. This was it. They knew. It was over.
‘Good luck, amigo,’ New York whispered, looking at me as I got up and giving me the obligatory fist bump. My eyes met Joker’s and his finger rose to his mouth, making the silence sign. I nodded to him, realising at that instant that I was part of it all now, that I felt loyalty to him, to them, to all of them. I would never rat, even on people I detested. I walked towards my bunk to get my shirt. Chief was scribbling furiously, while Kola looked at me and winked. The room had gone quiet. I walked past Chief, then hesitated and fist-bumped his shoulder. Without looking up, he offered a fist back. We bumped and I walked forward escorted out by the two cops.
As they walked me out of the Range across the space between Sunset and Sunrise, I felt as if I was on a stage – a thousand eyes upon me. Why hadn’t they handcuffed me? Everyone else had been handcuffed, I suddenly realised. That would look bad – as if I was collaborating. I put my hands behind my back – like a visiting member of the Royal family – hoping that some of my audience, up there in the Ranges, wouldn’t notice the lack of cuffs.
After the last day and a half inside the Range, the power of the sun seemed greater than ever, but then the sun always felt
greater than ever, every day in Big Spring. If the birds were singing, I didn’t hear them and I moved along in a daze wondering how I was going to handle the Feds’ questions, the interrogation. At least this time they might have the courtesy to ask me if I did it, I thought, as I picked up my pace to keep up with the two cops chatting happily in front of me.
We passed straight through the checkpoint I had stood at a day earlier, worried about blood and teeth, then turned right towards the lieutenant’s office and what I used to think of as the dreaded Hole, solitary. It now seemed like a place of peace and respite – my only hope, in fact. I’d heard that they put you in there for a few hours before your interrogation; it might just give me a chance to work out a strategy.
But we walked past the solitary cells, towards the processing centre and the entrance, and when I saw Malone, looking partly at me and partly at something else, I felt deeply confused.
‘Hello Mildew, looks like your lucky day!’ he exclaimed, with a friendly smile. The other two cops ignored me. ‘You’ve got friends in high places!’ he added. I cocked my head questioningly. Who did he mean? The shot-callers? Had they somehow colluded with the guards to get me out of the heat?
Malone didn’t elaborate, just escorted me to a holding cell, where a Colombian inmate was waiting. We made some small talk, and then I asked him if he knew what had happened to the guy that got beat up.
‘What guy?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I answered tentatively. ‘Some dude that got beat up in the Yard.’
‘I don’t know about that shit, man. I didn’t see nuthin’,’ to which I nodded with bland acceptance.
‘Why are you here?’ I asked a little later.
My heart leapt as he responded, ‘I’m being transferred.’ Surely that could mean that I was too? Could it really be over? Could I really be starting a journey home? My mind was off and running again, but I felt drained. I couldn’t take the ups and downs anymore. I felt beaten, emotionally sanitised.
‘Do you think I might be getting transferred?’ I stupidly asked, to a quick, disinterested shrug of his shoulders. Trying to keep the conversation going and needing to talk, after a few minutes I asked him another question.
‘You don’t look very happy for someone getting out of this shithole.’
‘Because, cabrone,’ he said carefully, ‘travelling through the system takes many months, and they fuck with you the whole way. You will even miss Big Spring until these people deliver you to your transfer destination.’
Chief had told me this would happen, that it was terrible, but I barely listened. For me it was going home – the first part of it, anyway. But could it really be true? Maybe they were just holding me here before they questioned me?
After an hour or two, my temporary cell-mate was packed up and gone, then Malone came back to see me with a clipboard. ‘Looks like you’re being transferred, Mildew. I’m gonna be sorry to see you go.’ I almost wanted to hug him. He kept talking to me, but I wasn’t listening. The intense relief I felt was overcoming me, from being fearful for my life to suddenly realising that I was taking the first step towards going home. I wanted to dance around the room. I started listening to him again, and at that same moment a recurring picture of the events of the last few days came back to me.
‘Mr Malone, do you know what happened to that guy that got beat up the other day?’ I asked suddenly feeling very solemn.
‘What guy, Mildew?’ he asked, his squint eye peering off into the sunset.
‘The guy that got beat up bad,’ I responded, dreading his answer.
‘You need to be more specific than “the guy that got beat up bad”, Mildew. Guys get beat up bad every day,’ he responded, way too cheerfully.
‘The one we were locked-down for.’
‘We wuz locked-down for quite a few things, Mildew. For one thing we were short-staffed, and it’s a government holiday this weekend.’
I considered that for a moment before persevering.
‘A white guy, handball player, medium build, moustache I think,’ I said, desperately trying to think of a better description, knowing I’d just covered about 20% of the prison population.
Malone just smiled and shrugged his shoulders, ‘Why do you care, Mildew? Didn’t no one tell you to do your own time in here?’ he asked without a hint of irony on his friendly countenance.
‘Why you worried? You’re going home soon – heading back to England. He wasn’t . . .’ then leaning close into me as if he had just realised something, ‘he wasn’t your boyfriend was he!?’ asked a suddenly gleeful Malone.
‘No, no!’ I answered, irritated. ‘Shit no. It’s just he owed me that’s all,’ I responded, suddenly changing tack. ‘I just wanted to know if I’ll be collecting what’s due, that’s all,’ I continued, trying to sound as indignant as possible.
Malone shrugged his shoulders again and I guessed his interest in what had happened was now fully extinguished. Nobody gave a shit; someone could have died and no one cared. I didn’t even know the man’s name. I lowered my head and felt I was abandoning this nameless, faceless man once more, even though finding out about him wouldn’t change what had happened or what was happening to him now. I had to let him go.
‘Now, what do you want me to do with your stuff, Mildew?’
I looked up and focused on Malone once more. ‘Give it to the Chief. Bed 8, lower bunk, Range 4,’ I said, the sudden thought occurring to me that I hadn’t said goodbye, that I might never see him again. I hadn’t thanked him.
‘All of it, Mildew? You’re gonna need it. It will still take you months to transfer back to England and you’re gonna be goin’ to some pretty rough prisons. You know, not everywhere is as nice like here in Texas,’ Malone added seriously.
‘Give it to the Chief,’ I re-iterated. ‘He’ll know what to do with it.’
I sat in the holding cell until night-time. My transfer bus was coming at 5 a.m. the next morning. Around 9 p.m. they moved me down to the dungeon-like quarters of the Hole, and with Malone having finished his shift, another guard took me to my solitary cell.
As we walked towards the cell I broke the silence between us.
‘Do you know what happened to the guy that got beat up the other day?’ I asked one last time, knowing my question was hopelessly vague.
‘Which one?’ was the gruff response.
‘I don’t know exactly,’ I said, pushing my luck a little.
‘Didn’t see no body bags been used this weekend, so guess whoever he was he weren’t dead. Least not when he left here he weren’t.’
I knew asking anything more was pointless – he wouldn’t know and he wouldn’t care.
‘Why the fuck d’you care anyway?’ he suddenly continued as we reached the cell door. ‘You’re from abroad, ain’t you? You don’t even belong here,’ he said with barely concealed disdain as he undid my cuffs.
‘The light don’t work, so I hopes you’re not afraid of the dark,’ he said in a southern drawl, as he prodded me into the darkened cell.
Ignoring him, I walked in and sat down on my bunk as he slammed the door shut with too much enthusiasm. I sat for a moment as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, then I kicked off my shoes and lay back on my bunk. I knew I was damaged, wounded and hardened. I knew I would carry the emotional remnants of those last few days, of the last few years of turmoil with me, wherever they sent me next. I knew I’d changed, normality would evade me and that there would be a price for me to pay at some point, maybe in two months; maybe in a year, maybe much later. But at that moment I also felt I was lucky, truly blessed.
I pulled your picture out of my pocket and tried to scrutinise it in the dark. It had been 841 days since I’d seen you, but at last I was beginning my long journey home. ‘I’m coming back to find you Cara Katrina, I’m coming back to Calum,’ I whispered as I closed my eyes and thought that whatever tomorrow brought, I could deal with it. I was coming to find you.
It was dark, but I wasn’t afra
id.
Cara, aged 5, buying flowers for her granny Crail, Scotland, May 2006.
POSTSCRIPT
JUST OVER A YEAR LATER, AFTER four more prisons in the United States and two in England, Gary Mulgrew walked free to return to his son Calum and to continue the search for his missing daughter, Cara Katrina. That search continues to this day.
A minimum of 60% of the author’s advance and royalty from sales of this edition will be donated to charities on Calum and Cara Katrina’s behalf.
