Power in the Blood (2 page)

He was a short, fat man with thick hands, bushy eyebrows, and messy hair—Lieutenant Colombo gone to pot. His uniform, which always looked sloppy, had large rings around the neck and armpits. His skin was leathery, and his neck was red—literally and figuratively.

In my short time as a prison chaplain, I had met many decent and hardworking correctional officers who performed a difficult job with discipline and integrity. Colonel Patterson was not one of them.

“I don’t know either,” I said, “but that’s never stopped me from making them before.”

“Why don’t y’all come back to my office. We need to get your statements and have each of you fill out an incident report,” Patterson said as he continued to walk down the hallway towards his office.

The hallway, like all the hallways at PCI, was spotless and gleamed with the shine of a fresh coat of wax. Inmates had to have something to do.

In the colonel’s office, we waited while he used the phone. His office was decorated with photographs, paintings, and trophies, all related to hunting. His desk was cluttered; a thin, but visible, layer of dust covered it completely. It looked as if it had been quite some time since the carpet had been vacuumed, and a distinct musty smell lingered in the air. Unlike the hallway, Colonel Patterson’s office was not cleaned by inmates. Like the hallway, his office was included in their job assignment; however, Colonel Patterson hated inmates and made no attempt to hide it. Rumor was that there had never been an inmate in his office. I believed it. There were other rumors about why the colonel hated inmates, many of which sounded like war stories, involving things like riots, gang attacks, and escape attempts, all starring the colonel himself. My theory was that the colonel just needed someone to hate, and since sixty-five percent of the inmate population was black, it came naturally to him. The only thing missing in Colonel Patterson’s office was a large Rebel flag that said FORGET? LIKE HELL. Patterson was a true son of the South, although he was most often referred to as a true son of a bitch.

“I want the yard closed, the work crews recalled, and a count taken immediately. Call the superintendent, and ring him straight through to my office when you get him. Find Inspector Fortner, and get him back to my office with some incident reports.”

If the colonel was upset by what had taken place, I couldn’t tell it. He always operated at a fevered pitch, always barking out orders, always coming on way too strong, imitating a hockey player attempting figure skating. I glanced over at Shutt. He looked as if he had just killed a man. His whole body, which appeared to be trapped in adolescence, trembled.

“Are you okay?” I asked him while the colonel reported to the superintendent what had happened.

He didn’t look up, so I repeated the question. When he finally looked at me, he appeared to be in a trance, not knowing where he was.

“What?” he mumbled.

“Are you okay?” I repeated a third time, this time slowly.

He looked shocked at the question and shook his head forcefully. His pubescent face was pure fear; he was obviously in shock. He dropped his head again. I slid my chair over next to him and put my hand on his back. My hand actually moved from the force of the tremors running the length of his body. Though it was in character, I still found myself amazed at the colonel’s insensitivity.

“Colonel Patterson, Officer Shutt needs to see a doctor immediately,” I said when he had finished briefing the superintendent.

“What? No, he doesn’t. Do you, son?”

Son didn’t respond. He just continued to stare at the floor.

“Call medical, now,” I said, employing the colonel’s method of communication by raising the volume and lowering the tone of my voice.

“Ah, hellfire, Chaplain. He’s been trained. He’ll be all right.”

“Call medical now, or I will. And if I do, I’m going to declare a medical and psychological emergency. Then you can explain to them why you didn’t.”

The colonel snatched up the phone, pushed three buttons, and yelled into the receiver, “Get medical to my office now.”

“Chaplain, you need to get a few things straight about the way things work around here. If I wasn’t leaving this afternoon for three weeks of special training, I’d take you under my wing and make things real plain for you. But the short version is this. I—”

A quick knock on the door was followed by the entrance of the superintendent, Edward Stone, a deliberate-moving black man in an expensive suit.

“Colonel, Chaplain, Officer Shutt,” he said by way of greeting. His eyes stopped on Shutt. “Have you called medical, Colonel?”

“Yeah, they should be here any minute,” he said curtly, as if he were talking to a new officer and not the superintendent of the institution.

“He’s obviously in shock. How are you holding up, Chaplain?” Mr. Stone asked.

“I’m okay, I think,” I said, and my voice still quivered slightly with the anger I felt for Patterson and the memory of those lifeless black eyes.

“I heard how you responded to the, ah . . . situation. Control said you reacted with no hesitation. You never know until it comes down to it what a man will do in those kinds of situations. You’re still new around here, but everybody’s trust level for you just jumped up several notches. Isn’t that right, Colonel?”

“Yeah, you never know what a man will do in a crunch,” he said, careful to respond to Mr. Stone’s first comment and not his second.

“Let’s have medical check out Officer Shutt and let the chaplain go home. We can take their statements tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I think that’s a good idea,” Patterson said as if Mr. Stone had asked him.

“Sir, I’d really like to stay and help out if I can,” I said to Mr. Stone.

“No,” he said, and I could tell that there would be no further discussion about it. “You go home now. We’ll take care of everything here. I’ll drop by and see you at your office in the morning.”

Before I could respond, the colonel’s phone rang and the medical personnel arrived to collect Shutt. As I helped him to his feet, I assured him that everything was going to be okay. The nurses quickly helped Shutt to the door. I followed them out. Just before I closed the colonel’s door, he hung up the phone, and I heard him tell Mr. Stone that the deceased inmate in the trash bag was Ike Johnson.

After a long, hot shower in the training building, during which I scrubbed Ike Johnson’s blood off my body, I drove up to the state park and tried to clear my head.

For as long as I had been a praying man, I had never found a better place to get in touch with God than Potter State Park. The park was roughly sixty acres of sage brush, pine trees, and wildlife, with long, winding trails cut through the dense woods. At its center were two small ponds with a small pathway running between them. That pathway, for me at least, was the path of peace and the way of wisdom. I spent most of the afternoon up there and felt better for it. Had I stayed until nightfall, which during the summer was still several hours away, I might have been completely distracted from thoughts of Johnson’s vacant black eyes. I opted instead to drive home and order pizza.

An event, as it turned out, which proved to be distracting in other less spiritual ways.

I was half-undressed when my doorbell rang. I guess if I were more optimistic, I would say that I was half-dressed—and that the glass of seltzer water without a coaster on my dresser was half-full. My dresser, like every other piece of furniture that I scrambled to get after the divorce, was not worth the trouble of a coaster. It had been a gift— actually its previous owners did not know that it was a gift; all they knew was that they threw it out. The dresser, like the house trailer and the rest of the furniture, did not bother me too much, that is, until I had company, which thankfully was not very often.

I was surprised when I heard the doorbell, not only because I was half-undressed, but also because I had placed my order for pizza less than fifteen minutes before. It had always taken Sal’s at least twenty-five minutes to deliver out here in the sticks. Since returning to Florida’s panhandle after my world fell apart, I had made my home in a dilapidated, butt-ugly trailer in a small trailer park on the edge of Leon County. I quickly pulled my pants back up and whisked by my gem of a dresser on the way out of my room, pausing only long enough to secure the two folded bills on its corner.

The trailer had been repossessed, and its previous owners were obviously not a gentle breed. It was situated on a thatch grass prairie on what was supposed to be Phase II of an expanding mobile home community called the Prairie Palm. Presently, Phase II was a community of one, due in large part to Phase I, which resembled a trailer junkyard more than a place where people actually lived. The trailer park got its name from the lone sabal palm, Florida’s state tree, that stood in the center of the sixty-acre plot. The lonely tree seemed to me to be an appropriate metaphor for my isolated existence here and for the state I so loved. For Florida is a lonely appendage on a continent it resembles little.

As I walked down the extremely narrow hall of my not-somobile home, passing over the pale yellow linoleum that curled up so that it no longer reached the thin blond paneling of either wall, I remembered the two-story brick home that Susan and I had shared on Atlanta’s north side. Amazingly enough, this felt more like home, except for the filth of course. I opened the door and extended my hand and the money that it held in one flowing motion, more from practice than a God-given talent. Expecting to see Ernie, Sal’s nephew, who resembled the Sesame Street puppet of the same name, I made an audible expression and suddenly felt naked without my shirt when I saw the pert young delivery person with big brown eyes staring up at me. She was actually more than pert; she was beautiful—but her orange, white, and blue uniform, which included wonderfully fitting navy blue shorts and a baseball cap, made her look quite pert. She had shoulder-length brown hair pulled through the hole in the back of her cap to form a ponytail that swung from side to side as she moved her head. Her dark skin, which I first noticed on her muscular legs, seemed to be her natural skin tone rather than tanned. Her face was kind and soft, with features that reminded me of Bambi. Though Bambi was a boy, and apart from the muscular build of her body and the uniform that covered it, or at least part of it, there was nothing boyish about her at all—at all. Her face was flawless, with the one exception of her slightly crooked nose, which apparently had been broken. However, it made her all the more attractive.

She looked confused as I handed her the money and seemed to take it more out of reflex than anything else. I took the box from her and realized why she looked confused. It was a parcel and not a pizza. The oversized blue block letters on its side read QVC, and then I remembered.

Sometimes late at night, when I couldn’t sleep, I would lie on my old green vinyl couch and flip through all the channels for hours— the exciting life of a bachelor. Last Friday, as I flipped past the QVC home shopping channel, I saw the IBM Thinkpad sub-notebook computer at an unbelievably low price—on their easy-pay plan. The easypay plan was a wonderful plan whereby one—me, in this case—can buy things that one cannot otherwise afford.

“Actually, this job pays very well. All I need is your signature,” she said with a notable measure of amusement.

“I’m sorry. I was expecting a pizza,” I said, a little unnerved by such a stupid mistake in front of such a beautiful woman.

She handed me the pen and electronic clipboard that required my signature as she cut her eyes toward me and flashed me a quick smile. As I signed the pad, I sensed her staring at the round pink scar on my left oblique and long, thin white scar across my chest. I looked up at her.

She looked away. “Pizza, huh? You one of those health-food freaks? I bet you have a Sony Walkman and one of those nifty little exercise bikes, don’t you?”

After I signed the pad, she attempted to decipher what I had written on it. In the distance, I could hear the sounds of poverty coming from Phase I of Prairie Palm. The sounds of poverty were those of people—people with time on their hands and not much else. Children yelling and laughing, the revving of automobile engines, and the loud distorted music of cheap car stereos and boom boxes swirled together into the sad and badly mixed sound track of life in the rural South. The only artist my ears could discern was John Mellencamp, which justified the volume. Appropriately enough, it was an acoustic version of his tribute to life in a small town.

I was born in a small town and I live in a small town. Prob’ly die in a small town. Oh, those small communities.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have introduced myself. My name is John Jordan.”

“Why?” she asked. Her severe expression made me feel as if I had said something wrong.

Educated in a small town. Taught to fear Jesus in a small town.

Used to daydream in that small town. Another boring romantic that’s me.

“Why, what?” I asked.

“Why should you have introduced yourself? I’m just delivering a package. This isn’t a social call or anything,” she said. She seemed annoyed. “You’re not making a play for me, are you?”

“Well, I’m just saying it’s polite, and you know . . .”

“Relax. It’s perfectly all right. I’m sure a man in your profession introduces himself to nearly everyone he meets, whether they want him to or not. What are you, a priest? Wait until I tell my friends I was hit on by a priest.”

For about a second I couldn’t figure out how she knew, and then it dawned on me that my clerical collar still hung around my neck.

But I’ve seen it all in a small town. Had myself a ball in a small town. Married an LA doll and brought her to this small town. Now she’s small town just like me.

“I’m the chaplain at Potter Correctional Institution,” I said touching my collar.

“Oh, I see,” she said with a tinge of what seemed to be embarrassment for me. “I make deliveries over there sometimes. Big place.”

I made a mental note of that.