by David Cole
“Seventy-five hundred for the first month. Twenty thousand total for three months, if you pay all of it up front.”
“That’s excessively expensive,” Veronique said.
“Half our residents have severe addition behaviors. Drugs, alcohol, sex, self-mutilations, and serious depression. We charge a lot, we guarantee a lot.”
She wrote out a check, tore it carefully from her book, and placed it squarely on the desk, neatening up everything else on the desk at the same time. Father Micah watched this neatening, cutting his eyes back and forth between Veronique and Abbe.
“There’s one other thing,” he said as Veronique stood up to leave. “Rapture Warriors Camp is founded on the biblical plan for humans.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Abbe said.
“Exactly right. We don’t teach it, we don’t preach it, unless you want to hear it. Otherwise, you’re only influenced by the Raptures as a metaphor for improving your own life in this world.”
“So that you become worthy,” Veronique said.
“Are you a believer?”
“I’m a Catholic. I’ve heard of the Raptures, but I’ve never understood what it meant for Catholics.”
“The Lord comes below the clouds, but above the earth. He takes the saints and the dead in Christ back up to Heaven. Then the Antichrist begins a seven-year reign. After His first three and a half years, many Jews are taken up to Heaven. At the end of the seven years, Christ returns to earth. The Second Coming, which will last one thousand years. The devil is imprisoned in the bottomless pit, and the earth is ravaged by fire.”
“Do I have to listen to this crap?” Abbe said. “Or can you just put those golden handcuffs on me?”
“You don’t have to listen at all,” Father Micah said. “But let me show you two of your new friends.”
He escorted them from his office into a windowless room, carpeted, expensive chairs and tables scattered randomly in groups. A young girl sat at one of the tables, a young black boy at another.
“Chloe. This is Abbe. She’ll be in your dormitory.”
One look at Chloe would tell anybody that she wasn’t going to make it in the camp or in life anywhere. Her unwashed red hair looked like dreads and it just lay clumped and matted. Freckles strewn like the milky way across her face, chest, and arms. Beautiful face, that peaches and cream look with the freckles, but her hands were pale and big-boned, the knuckles red and cracked like she’d washed dishes and clothes for a living. The rest of her body was slender, a Barbie figure, improbably big boobs and wasp-thin waist, but the hands gave her that alien look, so nobody really knew how to react to her.
“Hello,” she said, her voice, pitched low, hesitant, and so weak it sounded as though it had no spine in it, no bones, no skeleton. The voice of a loser, Abbe thought. No, of somebody who’d just plain given up on life.
“And this is Rafterman,” Father Micah said, pointing at the black boy, who immediately went into a singsong rap.
These mothafuckas always fuckin wit me
Like them police mothafuckas always fuckin wit me
An in the yard mothafuckas still fuckin wit me
Unless you’re hard mothafucka don’t fuck wit me
Cause I’m the kinda nigga that’ll beat your son
And go fuck your baby’s mama to increase the fun
“Rafterman stutters,” Father Micah said. “Unless he’s singing.”
“Ah…ah-rapping,” Rafterman said.
“Rap. Hiphop. I’m still learning to appreciate it. Tell Abbe and her mother where you’re from, Rafterman.”
“Ah I’m, ah…from, ah I’m from ah…ah—South LA.”
“We encourage his rapping because he gets out his feelings.”
Forty ounce freezin my balls, St. Ides my brand
I’m the mothafuckin man
With a forty ounce can
With a gun in my lap, always gotta roll strapped
Cause it’s hot in these streets gotta watch for the jack
Caps get peeled when I’m packin steel
These fuckin streets is real and wit the rappin’ skill
As my meal ticket
I’m not Ice Cube but I can still get wicked
Surrounded by bitches in like a Hollywood flick
Only five foot six but I gotta big dick
“That’s pretty disgusting,” Veronique said. “Perhaps I’ll just leave now.”
“Hey, man,” Abbe said. “That’s one motherfucking cool rap.”
“Ah…ah, thanks.”
“I’ll just show you one more thing,” Father Micah said, leading them both outside where an adult was counseling a young girl with fiery red hair. “Miss Cameron. Please speak up so Abbe, our newest resident, can learn about discipline.”
Miss Cameron raised her voice, never taking her eyes off of the redhead.
“You earned the demotion. So you work your way out of it in the way you walk for the next two days. You count your steps. You make it a ritual, a habit, you’ll get demerits if you look down, sideways, at somebody else, or if you smile or didn’t pay attention to me or you lose track of the cadence. From here, it’s one hundred and fifty-one steps to the parade ground, left turn, another sixty-three steps, halt. So you learn to count the steps without looking down, if the steps are exact from one exercise to another, it’s a good thing, and a good way to concentrate and avoid demerits. Am I clear?”
“Clear, yes, ma’am, clear.”
Abbe looked at the unfenced yard, the entrance road leading out to the world.
“Do I ever get out there?” she asked.
“Absolutely. Part of our discipline is fulfilling a contract with Pinal County to clean brush and litter. You’ll be taken on your first work crew later this week.”
“Well, Abbe,” Veronique said. “Good-bye. This could be just the right place.”
“Whatever.”
Veronique bent to kiss her, but Abbe ducked her head away. Veronique walked to her Mercedes without a backward look and drove away.
“You don’t have to like her to succeed here,” Father Micah said.
“Do I need to like you?”
“No. Respect is what we work for.”
“I can’t respect somebody I don’t like,” Abbe snorted.
“A word in your ear, dear girl. Whether you do or do not like me, or the staff, you’ll learn to respect us. Without respect, your hill will get mighty steep to climb.”
“You got that right out of an old western movie,” Abbe said. “Richard Boone says it to Randolph Scott in The Tall T.”
“Well. We are in the West. Just remember. Respect.”
“Or my elevator won’t go all the way to the top. I’ll be less than a six-pack in the fridge, up the creek without a paddle, rowing with one oar.”
“Miss Cameron,” Father Micah said. “Why don’t you instruct Abbe in the proper way to walk to her dormitory?”
laura
17
“We’ve got to walk from here.”
He strode off several paces, stopped when he realized I was standing with my door open, my hands on top of the doorframe.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Wordless, frowning, I gestured at the prison complex.
“It’s a waste of time,” I said. “This is nothing.”
“Oranges,” he said after a moment. “Remember the oranges.”
“I don’t…what…I don’t…oranges?”
“Oranges,” Brittles said. “In all the Godfather movies. When you see an orange, something bad’s gonna happen. Vito Corleone is buying oranges when he’s shot in the street. There’s an orange atop a bowl of fruit right in front of Don Barzini in that scene where the heads of all the families agree to stop the war. Don Fanucci, that thug in the early parts of Godfather II. He’s juggling an orange just before he goes upstairs, when Robert De Niro shoots him through the towel and the towel catches fire.”
“Sure,” I said sarcastically. “Brando sticks a
piece of orange peel over his teeth just before he dies. That’s what I remember.”
“Coppola wants to tip off the audience, something’s gonna happen, something not so nice. Whenever I’m about to go into a place that makes my scalp tingle, I stop and think of the oranges. Just a ritual, just…I guess, a way to ramp up my alertness.”
“Now you’re really scaring me.”
“Can you do this?” He walked back, put his hands on top of mine. “You’ll never be safer than inside there.”
“It’s just…it makes me think of my daughter being in prison.”
“You’re going in there,” he said gently, wiping my eyes with a clean handkerchief. “You’re going into one prison so you can get your daughter out of another. That’s the only way to think of it.”
“To get her out,” I sniffled, nodding.
“It’s not you going in. It’s her coming out.”
He took my hands off the door, nudged it shut with his hips.
“Ready?” Holding my hands, turning me sideways, facing the prison, holding hands with me like we were teenagers.
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s do this.”
We bypassed the roadway and climbed an old stairway to the admin building. A screened-in gallery surrounded the entire third floor.
“Warden used to walk around there,” Brittles said. “Make sure things were locked down tight.”
“Are we going inside? To meet the warden?”
“No.”
“Where’s the call center?”
“Not even here,” he said after a moment.
“So explain to me. We’re to work with computers, but they’re somewhere else in this prison?”
“Another complex.”
“There’s more than this?”
“Half a dozen or so. Florence is a big place.”
“So…if this isn’t where the computers are, why are we here?”
“I want you to see who you’re dealing with.”
“I can see that at the call center.”
Hesitating, unsure of what to tell me.
“Laura. The worst of the inmates are in here. This is level five, maximum security. You see how carefully inmates are treated here, you’ll understand how dangerous they can be. You get to the call center, I don’t want you forgetting for a moment who you’re working with. So get over whatever hesitation you’ve got. Let’s just go inside.”
He led me to heavy iron gates underneath an arched entrance to the main prison yard. A man in a brown Correctional Officer’s uniform waited for us, jangling a huge ring of keys as he studied a clipboard.
“Aquitek Security?” he said, looking at his clipboard again. “Mister Nathan Brittles? Missus Laura Winslow?”
“Miss,” I said.
“Sorry about that, ma’am. I’m CO Champlain, I’ll be your guide.”
Selecting a huge old brass key, he fitted it into a massive lock on the gate and swung the door open.
“Folger Adam key, ma’am,” he said. “From Joliet, Illinoise.”
Ignoring his mispronunciation, I read the sign over the gate, listing all restrictions. No children allowed. No animals allowed. Nobody in a uniform, law enforcement officers an exception if notified in advance.
We walk into an area closed on all four sides, but open to the sky. Above me, straight ahead in a guard tower, another uniformed man with sunglasses and an AR-15 studied us closely, the gun held at port arms.
“I’ll need a photo ID. No more than twenty dollars allowed inside. Nothing metal in your pockets?”
We’d already been briefed on what not to carry with us, so Brittles had locked all our money, our watches, keys, and my bracelet in his car. We passed single-file through a metal detector, showed our IDs to a woman CO, and received visitor badges to clip on our shirt pockets.
“This is worse than airline check-in,” I said, trying to make a joke, “except it’s so claustrophobic. What do you call this…this…” I waved my arms.
“Sally port, ma’am. Double-gated security. You’ll see sally ports all through the prisons. Unlock one door, go inside, lock the first door before you unlock the second. You ready?”
He opened the second gateway and we walked into bright sunlight. I thought I’d see a lot of inmates, playing basketball, lifting weights, doing all those things you see inmates doing in movies showing the yard. But all I could see were buildings, green grass, some flowers, and khaki uniforms. No inmates.
“Nobody’s home today?” I joked.
“Everybody’s home,” Champlain answered. “They’re just all locked up.”
He turned back to the gate we’d just gone through, gesturing at the walls.
“Them walls. Those gates. All this stuff came from the old Yuma Territorial Prison. Hundred years ago, the state decided to build a new prison here. So everybody at Yuma, I mean the guards, the staff, the prisoners, everybody dismantled parts of the Yuma prison and trekked it over here. Took more than a year to walk that far. Look at that wall. See the lines that look like the walls were built against wood? All this stuff came from Yuma. Wagons, lots of wagons. But the prisoners walked.”
The guard in the tower faced us again, but he’d swapped his AR-15 for a strange shotgun. Champlain saw me looking up.
“Thirty-seven-millimeter tear gas gun, ma’am. Except loaded up with knee knockers. Wooden slugs. Fire them suckers at an inmate, kneecap him right quick. This way.”
An old building, a sign outside saying it had been constructed in 1912. Champlain led us up the stairway and I could hear the buzz of many voices. Another CO came out of the gates, stood at the top of the steps waiting for us. He didn’t introduce himself, just checked our badges. He wore a black flak jacket over his uniform shirt, a holstered Taser hung from his belt, and his face was covered by a plastic visor that looked like a welder’s mask.
“Stab vest,” Champlain said. “Heavy duty Taser for inmate control. Plus a face shield. Substance guard. When they spit at you. Or worse.”
“Looks like my dentist,” I said, “when he wants to avoid getting pieces of my teeth in his face while he’s drilling.”
Champlain and Brittles exchanged a cynical smile, but said nothing. The CO in the stab vest unlocked the gateway and we went into a much smaller sally port. The buzzing swelled to a loud, continuous roar of many voices as soon as we stopped at metal bars surrounding all three interior sides of the sally port. Three tiers of cells stretched all around the walls, each cell holding one inmate. In the middle of the open area, an elevated glass-walled control booth rose above stairways. Several COs inside the booth moved about constantly, checking the cells, watching everything and everybody. None of the voices was understandable. I could see many inmates with arms hanging on bars of the cell door. Some moved their hands and fingers in sign language, but no signs that I’d ever seen before.
“They’re talking to each other,” Champlain said. “See that one holding a mirror? Second floor, left side, right about in the middle? He’s reading notes from the guy next to him. In a bit, you’ll see them switch off from who talks, who listens.”
“Why am I in here?” I said to Brittles.
“Explain the face shield to her,” he said to Champlain.
“They spit on you?” I said.
“Spitting ain’t nothing. They throw urine. Feces. They store it up, hoping to catch a CO without a face shield. They’ll take anything peppery the kitchen sends up on their meal trays. Hot sauce. Chiles. Whatever. They’ll hide it in their cells with their urine and feces, load it into their plastic water or soda bottles. When a CO without a face shield walks by, BAM, they let him have it. Man, I’ve been stung by pepper spray, by Mace. That’s nothing compared to the shit these guys try to squirt in your eye.”
I turned sideways to shut out most of the cells.
“See the TV?” Brittles asked.
In the closest cell I saw a TV picture flickering without sound. The working electronics of the TV set were encased in clear plastic, with
the speaker removed. The inmate pulled out ear buds when he saw I was looking at him.
“That’s the real reason I brought you in here,” Brittles said. “The TVs, their radios, these guys can remove parts of the electronics to make things. Clear cases, making it harder for them to hide contraband and weapons from the CO who checks out the cell. Seen enough?”
Another CO came through the open area, escorting an inmate with handcuffs attached to a two-foot-long chain which was looped through a padlocked security belt at his waist. Led to a pay phone, the inmate awkwardly picked up the handset.
“This is grim,” I said, head down.
“We’re outa here,” Brittles said to Champlain.
Back on the yard, Champlain started to talk about the rest of the buildings surrounding the grassy yard. A door opened somewhere, an armed CO came down a sidewalk and crossed to the door of another building, waited until the door there was unlocked, then waved a fisted hand in a circle. An inmate appeared at the first doorway in leg irons, hands cuffed behind, shuffling along the sidewalk. When he reached the second door, a second inmate shuffled ahead, then another and another, but only one at a time. I tried to separate the men I saw, tried to understand their individuality beyond the handcuffs and chains and blue clothing. Many had ponytails, many more had jailhouse tattoos. The seventh man, a heavyset Mexican, was a full-sleever, with tats running down and around the entire skin area of both arms.
“Doesn’t anybody ever come out to play?” I asked.
“No, ma’am,” Champlain said. “Work crews are allowed. If some inmate shows up out here and he’s not legit, he’s not supposed to be here, he’ll be shot.”
“Wounded? Actually shot and wounded?”
“Or shot dead. This is a no man’s zone, ma’am. We’ve got lots of rules. And we’ve got a lot of scumbags in here who don’t want to play by our rules.”
“Take me to the computers,” I said to Brittles.
“Y’all want a tour of the death house?” Champlain said. “Most tours, that’s the highlight. That’s the place people most want to see.”
“Not today,” Brittles answered.
“Not ever,” I said to myself as we went out the main sally port to the parking lot and the hot sun and green trees and freedom. Then I turned to Brittles. “Where now?”
