Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian (35 page)

And then there was the union. I’d heard of an officer still on staff who’d been a lookout for another officer convicted of raping and impregnating women inmates. The union took seriously its job of protecting members from being fired.

But what protected me from retaliation? What would prevent an angry officer from filing a report that I sold OxyContin to inmates from my desk in the library? There was little, it seemed, to prevent such an officer from suggesting that I’d helped an inmate dispose of a weapon, as that teacher, Miller, had done (or did he?). Evidence could be planted in my desk. And my fact-checked, term-paper-style incident reports weren’t worth the price of the paper of my college diploma.

All of this worried me, especially since Chuzzlewit now had an actual motive. I had, after all, embarrassed him in public and apparently almost gotten him fired. I had a feeling I hadn’t seen the last of Monsieur Chuzzlewit.

Thug Sizzle

I went into the backroom of the library to set up my class and was startled to find Dumayne already there, seated with his notebook open, prison-issue safety bendy pen in hand and two spares lined up carefully at the edge of his desk, ready, as never before, to begin class.

Dumayne had somehow managed to slip out during lockdown, through the Trap—the loving nickname given to the guard post next to his building—and get to class early. In prison terms, this was on the order of a minor escape.

He was motivated as I’d never seen him. This week’s theme, love, was, after all, his motivation for joining the class, and he’d been waiting patiently, or mostly patiently, for two months now.

If he were as charming in his love writing as he was persistent about getting to this room today, he would do just fine. Though, from my perspective, it was almost cheating to teach a guy whose idea of a love poem was “I wanna make love to you nice in your heart.” Nearly any string of vowels and consonants would sing compared to that. But he was trying.

Today he was a laser of mindfulness. When I walked in, his hand went up. I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Really, Dumayne,” I said, “you don’t have to raise your hand. Class hasn’t even started.”

“Oh,” he said.

“Was there something you wanted to say?”

“Yeah,” he said. “We’re doing love shits today, right?”

“Yes, love shits, and related topics.”

Dumayne brightened up and said, “I’m gonna get started right away.”

He began writing furiously. The combination of his hastiness and his continued inability to properly grip writing implements sent his bendy pen catapulting onto the floor. Without missing a beat, he picked up a spare and continued the effort.

The other inmates began to file in. As usual, Chudney arrived last. His fake limp was even more pronounced today. He strutted directly to the front of the class, picked up a marker, and wrote
Today’s Lesson. LOVE. With the Master, Dr. Chudney Franklin
.

I took a seat and said, “Okay, professor, let’s see what you got.”

Ever the extrovert, he launched into a tirade, “Okay, it’s like this, y’know what’m sayin’, chicks be coming in all shapes and sizes, so you got to be able to bend and twist yourself into all kinds of shapes in order to, um,
fill that space
, ya know what I’m sayin …” And in case we didn’t know what he was saying, he began gyrating and grinding.

“Thank you, Chudney,” I said. “Have a seat.”

Chudney collapsed into a chair, and said, “Seriously, fellas, I’m gonna hit y’all real hard on my opinions and views on love. You’ll see.”

“We all look forward to that,” I said.

But, I had to admit, Chudney’s love poem was probably the best thing that came of the next twenty minutes. At his turn to read, he stood up and dramatically recited a recipe for chocolate chip cookies. He had memorized it from the back of a bag of Nestlé’s chocolate chips.

“What?”
Dumayne laughed in disbelief. “What the fuck
was
that?”

“Man,” said Chudney, taking his seat, “you don’t know
nothing
about love, do you?”

Dumayne looked mortified, suddenly conscious of his ignorance.

“Just trust me, lil’ cuz,” said Chudney. “You make wifey a little card that says,
This is how much I love you
, then you put that recipe in there, and when she’s reading it, right, you pull out some cookies that you made for her, on a nice plate with flowers and shit. You’ll see what happens.”

Dumayne nodded solemnly.

Since he had the floor, and confident that his love poem was the best in class, Chudney announced that his life’s goal was to be the host of a TV cooking show. He even had a name for it:
Thug Sizzle, with your host Chudney Franklin
. He promised that one day, he would host all of us in his restaurant and that Chef Chudney—wearing a “big ass chef hat”—would serve us a feast on the house.

Frank, appropriately, asked if even he would be invited.

“Yeah,” said Chudney, “you
and
your wife. Not the dog, though.”

The Plan

A few days later, on a bleak winter afternoon both outside and in the prison, after I weathered a particularly gruesome wave of inmate demands, I spied Chudney waiting patiently at the end of the library counter. A
Boston Herald
was spread before him, which he glanced at absently. A younger inmate suddenly appeared behind him, leaned in very close, and whispered something into his ear. Chudney nodded slightly, but neither said a word nor changed his expression. The younger inmate vanished.

There was something in that small interaction that left me with the distinct feeling that I didn’t know Chudney. And probably never would.

He had come to see me, which was obvious from the distracted way he had been reading the paper. As soon as I was free to talk, I motioned him over.

“I was serious about what I said the other day,” he said.

I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“I want to be a …” he looked around and lowered his voice to a whisper, “I want to be a
chef
, man. I want to have my own TV program. I’m serious about this shit.”

And he was. He stared at me—almost imploring me, it seemed, to take him seriously. But he didn’t need to implore. Sure, it was slightly ambitious, but not unfeasible. And kind of clever. He’d create a niche and then fill it: a hood cooking show. He was just the guy for the job. He was charismatic, smart, funny, loved food. He could have a show, why not? He could brand himself on marinara sauces and stuff.
Thug Sizzle
, sure. (Name should probably change, but who knows, maybe not?) And if Plan A didn’t pan out, he could at least be a chef or something. It was probably a better career plan than selling cocaine.

On the library counter, he laid out a sheet of paper with the words
The Plan
written carefully at the top, and a frightening number of handwritten boxes each containing a word or two,
parole, construction halfway house, business degree, culinary school, TV internship, moms, son, bank, loan, brothers
 … and on they went. There were probably thirty boxes connected through a battle plan of looping arrows. An even more complicated color-coded legend at the bottom explained this dizzying flowchart.

“Okay,” he said, sensing my confusion, “forget that for now.”

There was a strange desperation in his actions. He spoke in haste. Folded the sheet in a quick, rapid action, almost ripping it. It was as though he had to finalize and execute
The Plan
before daybreak.

When he got out of prison in a few months he wanted to work in construction for a while, make some money, pay some debts, some child support, and generally get on his feet. He had his high school equivalency wrapped up. Soon, he would start taking some business and culinary classes. He would intern or work in the mailroom or do whatever he could to get his foot in the door in TV. He would take acting classes. He would continue to rise through the ranks in the culinary field. He would do everything he needed to do to achieve his goal: To star in his own cooking show.

“Five to ten years,” he said. It sounded like a prison sentence.

He had a lot of questions and wondered if I might answer them or help him find the answers. I agreed. This seemed like a worthy project for the library.

He fired off his first question:
How is that final step achieved?
Meaning: How does one go from having all the right degrees and experience to actually having a show? This was an answer I could give him on the spot.

“That’s simple,” I said, “you can’t know right now.”

He did not like this answer. It didn’t jibe with
The Plan
. I explained that he must use his imagination to see how it
might
happen—and talk to people who have done it. I told him to use the same imagination he used in class to picture a scene: he’s working as a TV intern, with a culinary certificate. He’s a rookie gofer, but a trusted, hardworking part of the team. When the timing is right, he pitches something to the producer. If it’s of value to the producer, the producer will use it.
(This is not a favor he’s doing for you
, I pointed out,
he’s doing it because it’s in his interest. Don’t forget that.)
If that segment airs, it goes into his résumé as a TV writing credit. It has begun.

“My point,” I concluded, “is you can’t know for certain now. But put yourself into the scene. You’ll be front and center when an opening happens, and you’ll seize it. And if it doesn’t work out, it’s okay. You’ll have good experience and can work as a chef or have your own place or something. Always have to have a good Plan B, right?”

“Yes,” he said. He was taking notes. “That’s good, that’s good.”

I told him to hold on to
The Plan
and to make me a list of what the library could provide him to help prepare this effort. He said he’d get started on it immediately. He’d have me a list within ten minutes.

There was one more thing, Chudney said. “Don’t tell
no
body.”

I promised him my silence—always a dangerous proposition in prison.

“I’m telling you about
The Plan
cause I trust you, man,” he said. “There’s a lot a fuckin’ haters around here, Avi.”

I gave him my word.

And so he sat down and composed a long list. His writing posture was exactly as I had remembered from the first day in the writing class: meditating—pen lying flat on the table—then staring at the ceiling, waiting for the words to precipitate down. It wasn’t long before they did. In a flurry, he wrote:

1. degree programs (business, culinary)
   
2. CORI [Criminal Offender Record Information] issues
   
3. TV jobs, how do you get them?
   
4. recipes
   
5. more recipes
   
6. information on how to write a résumé and a business plan
   
7. loan info
   
8. recipes!!!!
   

When the officer arrived to end the library period, Chudney folded up the paper and whispered, “we’ll call this thing TS—for Thug Sizzle.”

As the officer ushered him out, I shook my head.

“No,” I said, “let’s not call it that.”

I was sticking to my policy of no nicknames.

Dandelion Polenta

I created a hardcopy file for Chudney. In it I placed a growing stack of information. Applications for business and culinary classes, financial aid and loan papers, information about business plans, licensing for starting a business, tax forms, materials from the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) and other culinary schools, with special regard given to schools that didn’t exclude ex-cons. It was always in these types of efforts—in the attempt to help an inmate figure out a legitimate life path—that I learned about the obstacles facing people with criminal records. Chudney, for example, was excluded from getting a federal loan for college.

I also threw in reviews of TV shows, bios, Wikipedia entries, and interviews of TV culinary personalities. And of course, I included some recipes. I knew that he liked Italian food, so I put in some recipes from Chef Giovanni Scappin, a teacher at CIA. I also enlisted the inmate librarians to scour the library for cookbooks.

“You having a chick over, Avi?” Fat Kat asked.

“You know it,” I said.

It was a harmless lie. The guys would work harder to find the books if they were aiding in a sexual conquest. And I’d need all the help I could get. It would be strange to find a cookbook in a prison library—but, of course, it was a strange place. After an intrepid search, the inmate library detail turned up two books. One in the Art section and another in Fiction.

“Make something with a good sauce,” Pitts advised me, handing me a Southwestern cookbook.

“Why?”

He grinned. “So you can feed it directly to her in a spoon at the end of the meal. Drives ’em crazy.”

He moaned and pantomimed this, making me deeply regret having asked the question. He also advised me to wear a “really soft shirt, makes them want to touch you.”

When Chudney showed up in the library the next day, I slid him the cookbooks and the file of documents. His face brightened up. He grabbed my hand and shook it.

“Thank you, man,” he said. “This really means a lot to me. I’m gonna pray for you.”

He seemed genuinely moved, which caught me by surprise. He flipped through the information, occasionally reading a passage aloud. He was in high spirits.

“ ‘Dress Code,’ ” he read from the information I gave him from Chef Scappin’s Italian restaurant, “ ‘Business or country club casual (collared shirt and dress or chino-style slacks) attire is preferred. No jeans or sneakers, please.’ I like that, man! You can tell people what they allowed to wear in your restaurant. ‘No jeans or sneakers, please,’ ” he said, affecting an English accent. “That’s some good shit, cuz.”

He grabbed my hand again, enacting upon it a handshake of Rube Goldberg complexity. Again, he thanked me.

I asked him how he first got into cooking. He told me he used to cook for his mother; she relied on him to cook for his siblings. He also told me that when “working at home”—a subtle way of telling me he was selling drugs, or some such—he would sit in front of the TV watching hours of cooking shows (I imagined him measuring out baggies of cocaine, loaded gun resting on the table, waiting for his hooker to call—all the while, watching the Barefoot Contessa). Even in prison, he was sometimes able to watch some cooking shows, especially when a certain officer, a fellow closet foodie, happened to be on duty.