Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian (38 page)

But most of the time, the hawk just sat up there, squatting and watching the human dramas below.

Copyrighted

One afternoon, during the season of the hawk, Chudney and I sat in the back room of the library, working on his cover letter for culinary school. He threw down his bendy pen in disgust. He couldn’t concentrate, too much on his mind. When I asked him what was going on, he sighed.

“Dude walks into 3-1,” he told me, “I know this guy from the street. He did some pretty bad shit to my mans not too long ago.”

It was getting harder for me to decide what I wanted to know and what I didn’t. In this case, I didn’t want to know and didn’t ask.

“And this motherfucker, who’s also a motherfuckin’ snitch, by the way—and I know this for a fact—he walks into 3-1, a big mutherfuckin’ smile on his face, and you can be sure some shit’s gonna pop. That’s just how it goes, you know? And he knows it too: he wasn’t smiling when he saw me standing there, that’s for damn sure.”

“So what happened?”

“Nothing,” Chudney said, picking up his prison-proof bendy pen again, and scanning his application.

Chudney told me that he was “holding his fire,” and wouldn’t take any action against this man. He was itching to take revenge, though, and indeed felt a responsibility to avenge his friend. But he didn’t want to go to the Hole or the hospital or catch another case, because he didn’t want to get sidetracked from his work, from doing the applications and learning the recipes or preparing for his long-term goal of hosting a TV show. Getting involved in a gang war was not part of
The Plan
.

I commended him for his prudence.

“It ain’t like that,” he assured me. “The fight
will
happen. Unresolved shit, man, resolves itself eventually. That’s how it goes. There’s an enemy in the house.”

It sounded eerily similar to what Kat had told me when he got back from the Hole. Chudney said that violence was inevitable in this situation. He wanted to avoid it, but was convinced it would happen. And possibly when he wasn’t expecting it. The longer he delayed a response, the more opportunity he’d be giving his enemy to preempt. His restraint would be interpreted as weakness—or worse, smugness, indicating perhaps that he’d been talking to the cops. And asking the prison authorities to be separated from this man would also brand him a snitch. Every scenario led to some kind of escalation.

He was thinking of doing something stupid to get “lugged,” to be placed in the Hole. But he was avoiding that approach, as well. For one, his enemy would see right through it. And, again, he wouldn’t be able to work on his applications.

“So what are you going to do,” I asked.

Again, he replied, “Nothing.”

He returned to revising his cover letter. A few moments later, his mood lightened. He had written his first recipe. He pulled out a sheet of paper and showed me the recipe, with the caveat that I wasn’t allowed to write it down or photocopy it. He needed to be protective of his stuff. I noted his name and a copyright symbol at the lower right-hand corner of the sheet.

“I’m thinking of getting this tattooed onto my chest,” he said, pointing to the copyright logo. “I’m all about the copyright from now on. I gotta stay focused.”

L
ater I walked through the yard en route to the staff cafeteria. I stopped to look at the notorious red-tailed hawk. Camouflaged brown-white and rust, the raptor sat perfectly motionless. So still I lost view of it momentarily, high in its perch above the prison yard, watching, watching, watching, with roughly eight times the visual strength of a human. It was not alone in its vigil. On the edge of the yard, officers stood gabbing with each other, watching the male inmates, and the women inmates sat up in the Tower, also gabbing, also watching the male inmates.

The hawk sat, eyes wide and unblinking, a minor deity sitting in a tightly coiled pose of meditation—a world of dramatic motion, implied in this exquisite stillness. I wondered if perhaps the decoy theory was correct, that this hawk was nothing more than a plastic effigy meant to scare away pigeons. But then it moved, lifting a wide, kingly wing, a formal unfurling, flexing the feathers along the edge of its wing, then drawing it back ever so gently, like a magician taking a bow. In a quick flash of white, it had revealed its underbelly. Even from down in the yard I could see it: a sturdy, hydraulic cylinder of a leg, and, in the curvature of those heavy yellow talons, almost useless for walking, a dreadful singularity of purpose. This was what caused me to shudder.

Stopping the Waves

Theme music goes up. Something slow and sublime by Gladys Knight and the Pips. Old school. Something that makes the
older crowd feel at home and gives the youngsters a sense of tradition. The mood is relaxed. Chudney, wearing crisp tailored pinstriped dress slacks and shirt—or country club casual—comes onto the set, smiles, waves to his cheering live audience. The set is a sunny city condo, a view of the skyline
.

Welcome to Urban Cooking, with your host, Chudney Franklin.
(He’s nixed Thug Sizzle)
.

As he puts on his apron, and rolls up his sleeves, he shoots the shit with his lovely assistant. She tells funny stories about her tyrannical two-year-old daughter who’s just like her. The crowd loves it. The assistant is a black woman. Girl-next-door type. Maybe a stand-up comedian. She’s got a little spunk. She chides Chudney
.

“Look at the famous chef,” she says to audience. “And
he still
doesn’t know how to put on an apron.”

Chudney opens his mouth to respond, but is speechless. He smiles and pleads guilty. The crowd chuckles
.

After a casual chat with the assistant about the day’s dish, he looks directly into the camera, rubs his hands together, and says, “Okay, let’s get started …”

C
hudney tells me that what he really loves about this fantasy is the idea that his son, who will be somewhere between ten and fifteen years old when this comes to fruition, will be watching from the wings.

“Can you imagine that, man,” Chudney says, “growing up, watching your pops in front of the TV cameras? That’d be some pretty cool shit.”

He tells me a bit about his son. Once, he was at the Connecticut waterfront with his son, age four. The boy would slowly approach the water, curious to get a closer look. When a wave would roll gently up the sand, the boy would scream in terror, turn, and run for his life.

But then he stopped suddenly and turned back to the water, crouched, and sort of threw his body backwards. It soon became clear to Chudney that the boy was trying to prevent the wave from sliding up the beach.

Chudney tried to explain to him that it was okay for the wave to roll up the beach. That’s what waves are supposed to do. The little boy was not happy with the answer. Sitting in his father’s arms, he scowled at the sea. Chudney still doesn’t know why he was trying to stop the waves. Were they threatening to hurt him? His parents? Something about it had unsettled him. Perhaps, in the noise of the sea he heard the waves swallowing up the earth, could sense that they were a force of erosion and change. It wasn’t clear. But what was clear, Chudney told me, was that he was brave enough to throw his body into harm’s way.

“Courage, man,” Chudney told me with a big smile. “You can’t teach that shit.”

The Plow Pose

I’d already assumed a particularly compromising yoga position when the officer walked into the weight room. The Plow pose basically has you on your back, balancing on your shoulders, with your legs straight and together, swung up and over, straight past your face—that is, when you’re doing it correctly.

When you’re not doing it correctly, and I wasn’t even close, your legs are splayed. To most, this looks both comical and slightly painful. To some, it looks like something much more specific. The look on the officer’s face indicated clearly that he was among this latter category.

How does one explain oneself in such a situation? Do I mention that this is a standard practice of yoga? Should I explain that the Hindu
Shakti
, or divine libidinal flow, is, according to that guru, Wikipedia, “conceived as a goddess which rises to the head, until it is united with the Supreme Being (Lord Shiva) and the aspirant [in this case, me] becomes engrossed in deep meditation and infinite bliss”? Is there any way for that
not
to be interpreted as an elaborate euphemism for giving yourself a blow job? I myself am not certain it doesn’t mean just that.

This unfortunate scenario, inauspicious in any season, was particularly ill-timed. I had a PR problem. I had provoked a group of officers and had apparently almost gotten one, Chuzzlewit, fired. And, as luck would have it, one of those officers had to show up for a weight-lifting session, only to find me, still wearing my office clothes, my dress shirt unbuttoned, in
his
weight room, inflicting my homo/autoerotic Hindu exercise regimen upon him.

It was actually ironic. I was in the weight room partly because of my conflict with the officers. Their dirty looks were unnerving me; I was getting stress backaches. Someone had suggested yoga. I hadn’t ever taken yoga seriously; it sounded like a hybrid between yogurt and Fonda—not the kind of thing a self-respecting American guy should get mixed up in. But I was desperate. And now here I was in the prison staff weight room, alone with an officer who had only contempt for me. And with my face squarely in my crotch.

Try as I might, I couldn’t untangle myself. It turns out to be rather difficult, once committed, to shake oneself out of the Plow. Especially without first digging your face a bit further into your crotch. Finally I wiggled out and jumped to my feet.

“Just doing some stretches,” I announced, pulling my arm behind my head.

This comment was ignored. So indeed was my very existence. The officer set up his barbells in silence. He was benching 175. I wondered how much I could do these days. It had been a while since I pumped iron.

Feeling confident, I made my way over to the bench press. I put on 100 pounds. Then I put on 20 more. Then 20 more, 10 more. I sat down, ready to bench a respectable 150. A man should be able to lift his own weight.

I wrapped my hands around the cold metal bar and fixed my eyes on the wall, at pinups of steroid-inflated men. My gaze was met by their bulging, bloodshot eyes. Even from fifteen feet away I could see every vein in their immense glistening bodies. These were not portraits but landscapes. Were these giant men happy? And what about the guy who’d posted the photos? What did he dream about? Did the officers who used this space enjoy beholding guys flexing in skimpy bikini bottoms?

I inhaled deeply and then exhaled just enough to budge the bar. I held the weight aloft, over my body. My back protested fiercely. My arms began to wobble involuntarily. This was not a good idea. I was in the gym, after all, because my back had gone out. If it failed me again, at that moment, I’d be in serious trouble. And all because I had to compete with this officer.

I sighed and dropped the bar back into place with a loud crash.

In the mirrored wall, I spied the officer throw me a smug little grin. I buttoned up my shirt and called it a day.

The Flip-Out

I was feeling as though I had to keep as close an eye on officers as on inmates. I’d become the target, or at least the pretext, for a subtle campaign of harassment. It came in various forms. First, I heard that officers were confiscating inmate library books more frequently than usual during searches, throwing them into the trash. Members of the library detail were being routinely detained and sent back at their checkpoint, leaving me shorthanded.

Then, for two straight days, no students showed up to my writing classes. When I approached the officer on duty about the problem, he showed me a note that stated my classes had been canceled. Who sent it? He didn’t know. The note was conveniently unsigned.

The next week, when my classes finally resumed, an officer who I’d never seen swung by and stood by the door, staring in the entire time, casting a pall. Similar behavior was reported by other teachers. Everyone was whispering that these officers were looking for any excuse to point a finger at the Education Department. In the meantime, they were going to put everyone on edge.

The officers’ keenness to incriminate me bore some fruit. One afternoon, the library screened
Da Ali G Show
, which featured a clownish hip-hop interviewer satirizing deadly serious guests. A three-second cut of Ali G—played by Sacha Baron Cohen—simulating a sex act with a tree became the subject of a report against the library: we were cited for our use of “inappropriate” content. Although the report wasn’t taken too seriously by the administration, I was warned and told to monitor the library’s content more closely. When I argued that Ali G was a
satire
, I was flatly told, “don’t do it.” Again, the officers had found a way to compromise my programming, to put me on notice.

All of this was beginning to destabilize my equilibrium. Twice in one week I found myself stuck in an elevator—not unheard of—the second time forcing me to miss a class. I couldn’t help but wonder if an officer in Central Control was squeezing me, especially as these holdups extended almost twenty minutes each, far past the usual delay. Every time an officer or group of officers came into the library for routine contraband searches, I watched them with mute paranoia, fearing they might plant something or do something to embarrass me. I didn’t know whom to trust.

But the petty claims weren’t the real problem. It was the fear that these were a prelude to much more serious meddling. That one day I’d find myself sitting in the SID’s interrogation room trying to explain why an officer found drugs in my desk and why three inmates claimed to have bought heroin or OxyContin from me. My recent stress-related back problems were preventing me from getting sleep. I was beginning to crack.