God of the Rodeo

by Daniel Bergner

  When I had arrived at Angola, back in September, I’d had no right to anything beyond what Cain had granted other reporters: a guided tour, and interviews with inmates while an escort stood nearby. I may not even have had a right to that. But as Cain had grown confident that my vision was sufficiently affected by his Gospel-infused proclamations, as he’d told his staff early on that I could “see it all,” that I could have “carte blanche,” and that no eavesdropping was necessary, I gained a tenuous hold. My suit was based on the legal doctrine of unconstitutional conditions. Having entered into an unwritten contract with me, covering my access, he could not revoke what he had granted because I would not sign away what was indeed my fundamental right: to publish whatever I found to be accurate and true.

  As my attorneys first explained this legal theory, I was ecstatic, almost giddy with hope. It was cut-and-dried. I couldn’t possibly lose. There was no way the facts could be interpreted against me. He’d given me the access, then taken it away only because I wouldn’t meet his unconstitutional demand. The doctrine of unconstitutional conditions. During the days before filing suit, I must have spoken those five words to friends and acquaintances two hundred times.

  But even as I repeated the phrase, I knew the problems. Cain could deny he’d agreed to anything, or he could invent some security-related reason for my banishment. It didn’t have to be much. He didn’t have to say he’d found contraband in my car, or that I’d stood in the cotton fields and called for a riot. The Supreme Court had accepted wardens’ arguments that interviews with the press built the egos of inmates, and in this way threatened the balance and peace of their institutions. Cain could say the inmates I’d been following had begun to seem too self-assured.

  I tried to convince myself I had proof. I had the agreement he’d given me to sign the morning of my expulsion. But he could claim there were other issues. He could tell his first deputy and his press secretary, who’d been there at the galvanized fence, to lie about his reasons. He could tell the two assistant wardens, whom he’d called into our January meeting, to lie about his worries. Would they? Would they perjure themselves in federal court?

  The two lawyers I’d hired were calm, conservative corporate types. The judge took them seriously enough to ask us into his chambers after reading through the suit. The four of us sat around a long conference table, well-burnished like the one in Cain’s office, but of a far more expensive wood. Around us were dark shelves filled with law books, not the framed flattering clippings Cain hung on his walls. The room held a comforting power, but its elegance unsettled me. How much would the man who presided here want to involve himself in a fight over the warden’s crass control? Yes, Polozola had invested himself in cleaning up Angola for twenty-five years, but he was known as a conservative thinker—wouldn’t he suggest that my lawyers and I had no chance, suggest we reconsider?

  His warning was not unkind—“All this might be true, but I’m still going to have a hard time ordering a reporter inside a prison”—it was only crushing.

  He turned to me. “And even if I did, what makes you think any of those inmates are going to talk to you? What makes you think Cain hasn’t warned them already? He doesn’t have to threaten them physically. Those men are in a maximum-security prison. They have next to nothing. So a little crumb means a lot. They know if they cross Burl, they’re going to get that little crumb taken away.”

  “Judge,” I said, “if I may just answer that.”

  He nodded.

  “I know you’re right. I know that all he has to do is take away that crumb. Or let them know he will. But I don’t think he has yet. I think—and I don’t know how tactfully I can put this—that his ego is so big, and that he’s used to such total authority, that he figured when he threw me out I’d just stay away. He didn’t need to threaten anyone.”

  “But he’s going to find out he was wrong this afternoon, as soon as this suit gets served. And the inmates are going to hear about it on the news, and it’s going to be all over the paper, because your suit is going to be right there when the reporters check the court press box. He’s not going to need to threaten anyone then, either. The inmates are just going to know. Don’t talk to Bergner. Don’t open your mouth to say hello. He sued the warden.”

  “That’s why we hope you’ll issue that restraining order, Judge,” one of my lawyers broke in, referring to the preliminary step we asked for in the suit: that the judge prohibit Cain from communicating with the inmates in any way about the suit, and that he prohibit any reprisals against the inmates for talking with me.

  “Even if I sign the order,” Polozola said, “you know I can’t stop every tiny thing. I’m sitting here and Angola is a long ways away. And a tiny thing is all it’s going to take.”

  “We do understand that, Judge,” my lawyer said. “But it would give our client something, in the event he does get back in.”

  Polozola stared at me. If he signed, it would be, at least, a show of sympathy, something I could cling to. I tried to demonstrate, through some minute adjustment of posture and expression, that I was no loose cannon, that the story I told was true, that I had given Cain no legitimate reason to throw me out, that if the judge took this initial step he would not wind up embarrassed. Perfectly motionless now at that table of venerable wood, I tried to believe he could tell that I had committed not a single transgression at Angola, that I had refused even to buy an inmate a Coke when he’d asked. But the judge may not have been sizing me up at all. He may have been thinking about everything he knew, as an insider, about the unproven crimes of Warden Cain.

  He signed.

  What happened next happened fast. The judge called us in for another conference later that day, this one including the Department of Corrections’ chief counsel. “I want you to think about settling,” Polozola told him. “You don’t want a trial on this one.”

  As we talked about possible terms, one of my lawyers, trying to soften the opposition, mentioned that I had begun the year with a favorable impression of the warden. “Maybe Mr. Cain can get back to that.”

  “I wanted to write this book,” I added, “because I was interested in his unique thinking about criminals and prisons.”

  “Unique,” the judge said, exchanging a glance and raised eyebrows with the department’s counsel.

  “Yeah,” their lawyer muttered, “Cain’s unique all right.”

  The reporters were just then picking up their copies of the day’s business from the clerk of the court downstairs. I flew back to New York, my attorneys betting the Department of Corrections would give me everything I needed, and me not so sure about the odds. Cain ran the show. It might not matter what the department’s lawyer advised him.

  I waited by the phone. At four the next day, my lawyers called. Cain had been persuaded to settle—he might succeed in keeping me out, but there was no way he wanted a trial that examined the shakedown. I was given a kind of five-month visa, to complete my year. My interviews would be unmonitored.

  Not wanting to spend my time inside a maximum-security penitentiary where the warden felt any angrier than he already was, I declined much comment when reporters called. But fortunately one of the writers, working from the public record, discussed the judge’s order against reprisals. The story ran on the front page of the Advocate’s Metro section, so, once convict word got around, the inmates would know that they were—in theory, anyway—protected.

  Right after the settlement became official, my phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Dan, this is Burl. How you doing?”

  “All right, Warden Cain.”

  “That’s good. Now, look. I figure we just got involved in a little game of poker. But instead of just going on playing, you stood up and shot me. I just hope you didn’t kill me.”

  He waited for my laughter, and I tried to be polite.

  “Listen,” he hurried on, “we got this thing settled and we’re going to get along good. You know that and I know that. There’s
not going to be any reprisals against any inmates. There’s not going to be any obstruction. But I wish you would talk to the press. Tell ’em everything’s fine and there’s no war on between us. Tell ’em I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not talking about you doing the legal thing, I’m talking about the human thing. Would you do that for me? ’Cause my wife can’t go to church. My son can’t go out of the house. This is costing my family a lot of pain. Would you do me that favor? And it’s taking a toll on the prison. They’re all talking about it. You really ought to do it for the sake of the inmates. ’Cause I’m trying to run a Christian Walk, and this don’t look good for that.”

  I apologized. I said that I couldn’t give a statement of exoneration.

  But within a few days, the press attention died out. And no state or federal prosecutor ever called to inquire about my charges of extortion.

  Still, the warden didn’t want any more trouble with Polozola. So when I arrived for my next visit he called a meeting. He put out word across the penitentiary that all the inmates I’d been working with be brought to the Main Prison visiting shed. “Right away.”

  Cain asked us to gather around him. We formed a semicircle. Attentive. He spoke quickly, and joked weakly with me about my minimal hair, but he wasn’t overly uneasy. “I want you to know that everything they’ve got in the papers isn’t true. Me and Mr. Bergner’s not fighting. Are we?”

  “No,” I said. “I appreciate your cooperation.”

  “You see? We’re getting along fine. ’Cause I want you to talk to him. Say whatever you like. Tell him the good things, but tell him the negative, too. Tell it all. Tell it like it is. ’Cause I bless this book.”

  TEN

  “YOU LOOKED SAD WHILE HE WAS TALKING,” ONE OF the inmates said to me discreetly as the warden walked away after giving his blessing. I cannot write which inmate. Despite Judge Polozola’s sympathy and the possibility of appealing to him about any reprisal, I can, in fact, offer the convict little protection. The same man soon explained that I was just starting to see what the inmates had learned ahead of me, that Cain loved both glowing publicity and making money exactly as much as he didn’t care about the inmates, exactly as much as he wasn’t the warden they’d longed for when he first arrived. “Dumb to say,” the man went on, “but what we’re always wanting with a warden is sort of like a caring god.”

  I denied my sadness to the inmate, denied it until the very last day of my year, when we said goodbye outside the rodeo stadium. Then, as he said, crying, that he wished he was leaving with me, I allowed that he’d been right about my emotions. But for the meantime I shrugged, telling him my feelings were irrelevant. “I’m here about you,” I said.

  And two days later another of the convicts shook me almost as thoroughly as the warden had.

  Donald Cook’s surprises began when he opened his mouth to show me the sugar bags of marijuana between his teeth and tongue.

  With his shirt off on that 90-degree June afternoon, sweat shone on his tattoos: the lion-monster, the helmeted woman, the spiderweb, the declaration LOUISIANA CRACKER. Sweat trickled below his short black hair. Facing the Main Yard, we sat on a concrete ledge outside the dorms. Two of his customers lingered separately at a distance, waiting for our talk to end. Occasionally one would circle close, then wander ten or twenty yards away, letting Cook know they were impatient. They wanted to make their buys.

  “Be cool,” he told them. “I’m having a conversation. I’ll find you by the hobby shop. You’ll get it before chow time.

  “These guys are pathetic,” he said to me, smiling with his bright, slightly overlapping front teeth, and indeed his customers seemed it. One, bearded and paunchy and slack-shouldered in his V-necked T-shirt, looked more like an old hobo than a dangerous convict, though undoubtedly he had destroyed someone, murdered or raped someone, sometime.

  “Back last fall,” he went on, “I told myself I was going to quit dealing, ’cause of my mom and all. I didn’t want to get caught no more. I didn’t want her thinking about me in the cells. It was killing her, thinking I was doing so much wrong. But I missed it. The thrill. That’s really what it is. It’s the money, that’s part of it, but it’s the thrill. It ain’t having it to smoke. I see some dude coming down the Walk and I’m supposed to deliver? I drop the bag right there on the concrete when he’s just that far in front of me? So he can pick it right up when we pass by? The timing’s got to be just right. I got to watch him and the freeman, both. That last second? When I’m just about to drop? When I got to take my eyes off the freeman up ahead and I got no idea anymore whose eyes are in back?” Cook smiled with those overlapping teeth, then shook his head, exhaling through narrowed lips. It was clear what he meant without his saying anything: Always, at that moment, his heart was locked rather than beating, and he loved the fight to overcome that dread, loved hurling himself at chance, proving his will greater than his fear. This was his self-discipline, this was his strength, this was what made him the opposite of the slack men circling him now, just pining to stupefy themselves and, with their indiscretion, adding to his risk of getting caught, keeping his adrenaline high even as we sat there and he recounted his day.

  That morning he had woken at about three A.M. This was from habit, the routine that had taken hold during the fall when he’d quit dealing and hated the dorm, wanted to put some distance between himself and the person everyone else expected him to be. He still liked to get out while almost everyone slept.

  A few other men, having returned from their night shifts, moved like ghosts under the blue security lights. Their slippers scraped on the cement floor as they walked toward the showers. The industrial fans vibrated. Beneath these constant baseline sounds, it was easy for Cook to unlock his box, turning the key gingerly, and to dress and walk up the aisle, keeping his steps tight, without anyone hearing. His “bed partners,” the men with cots on either side of him, always asked how he could get out so quietly; they were amazed that he never once disturbed them. He was amazed that they were impressed. There was enough noise to cover anyone. His care with his lock and footsteps wasn’t even necessary. That was just something he did. “You just disappear,” they said, as if they felt betrayed by his refusal to sleep as late as possible, to minimize the hours of consciousness.

  Leaving the dorm that early morning, Cook had gone, as always, to the Toy Shop. Inside, just one man sat at a workbench, glueing blocks of wood to make flatbed trucks. He and Cook said hello, nothing more. Cook started painting the flatbeds a baby blue. He painted some pull-along rabbits the same shade. He was meticulous. Any section designed to be a different color was left ungrazed by his slender brush. Every edge was sharp, all surfaces smoothly coated. He set the trucks and rabbits in evenly spaced rows to dry. The deaf toddlers who received these next Christmas would be thrilled.

  He took a nap, curled on the vinyl couch. When it was time for work—he had been promoted again, from the kitchen paint crew to kitchen maintenance—he woke automatically. The job was often a matter of waiting for parts, which was why he considered it a promotion. That morning the crew was supposed to replace a drainage pipe. But they had no pipe, so after slouching outside the kitchen from 7:30 until 10:00, they were dismissed for the day. He walked out across the Yard, past the basketball court, where two inmates played a sluggish game of 21, past the weight pile and the little gazebo where one of the Main Prison barbers had set up shop. A guard in camouflage fatigues, one of the shakedown team, wandered the grass, waving a metal detector in front of him. Far off, at the other end of the complex, one of the field lines was being cleared back in for lunch, their boots checked for weapons.

  A few scattered benches stood by the softball field, two farther out. Cook chose the one closest to the perimeter fence, absolutely by himself. He didn’t mind baking in the sun (the Yard was without trees, to maximize surveillance). He was glad to sit with the nearest shade back at the gazebo hundreds of yards away, the price for both solitude and this particular view. He stare
d at the Tunica Hills.

  Recently he’d done some maintenance work on one of the Main Prison roofs, and he’d had his first look at Angola’s geography. He made it a very long look. Because the landscape was so flat, he could take in almost everything, from the river to the front gate. Behind the administration building, the hills rose up and the prison ended. He believed in Angola’s buffer zone, but he, unlike many of the inmates, imagined an area of only a few thousand acres. Angola, to him, was not endless.

  Today, from his bench, he gazed at the dark trees on the hills against the filmy, overheated sky. This had become a ritual, performed at least once each week. He considered those hills. He didn’t doubt what everyone said, that pigweed and thorny vines grew everywhere. He didn’t doubt what everyone said about the copperheads and rattlers. And he understood that what they said about the dog team was probably at least half true: that every week for practice they sent an inmate out with two hour’s head start, that the dogs picked up his scent and just wouldn’t stop, that they would track straight through brambles and even quicksand bogs, that those guards on the team were the craziest, meanest motherfuckers the penitentiary could find, that they didn’t care if their partners got sucked under the mud and drowned as long as they got their inmate—and got to pistol-whip him if the chase was real—that every week the team caught the convict within a few hours.