A southern sheriff's jail, part 2 of 2

Now for the cast of characters and the plot of the story ...

Jail is a modern-day form of debtor's prison. At least 80 percent of the guys in my block were indigent, either couldn't afford bail, missed child support or missed a court appearance. Only a handful could afford a lawyer, so most of them are stuck waiting for their cases to come before the public defender, who is overwhelmed. I was one of three guys "doing time," and the only one with a felony, which made me the "baddest" guy in the block!

Here's what I noticed about the general jail population: They all share some commonalities. They're street-smart but poorly educated, they continually make bad decisions that lead to even worse ones, and have a tendency to choose immediate gratification rather than consider other alternatives.

Pretty much the upper tier was full of "hyperactive kindergartners," a bunch of wanna-be local gang guys, all of whom were under 25 and thinking they were cool with their matching tats and signs and yells. When we were in chow line, I tried to communicate with them, but most spoke "cracker Georgian" -- as did many of the guards -- and I finally just smiled and nodded.

The lower tier was comprised of us older guys who couldn't climb stairs or jump up into the upper bunks. I was usually the second- or third-oldest guy in the block, with most of the others between 30-50.

I'll call my bunkmate my Guardian Angel, because he truly looked after me the entire time I was in there. My bunkmate couldn't pass his GED but he had memorized the parts catalogs for nearly every major truck manufacturer. That was important in his job. Knowing the three branches of the federal government had no impact on his daily life.

Knowing absolutely nothing about what I was facing, he walked me through the process. And he kept me calm when my anxiety levels would go through the roof. He's in his mid-40s, and currently in a state minimum security prison in Gwinnett County until next year. He had been in serious trouble as a young man, but told me he had straightened his life out. He made the unfortunate mistake -- as many of these guys do -- of keeping in touch with the wrong people. He showed up at a friend's house just as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation conducted a drug raid. Prior conviction plus accessory. Not good. But I truly believe he's a good guy.

He admitted to me that his response to his anxiety was to talk. Of course, mine is to be quiet. So he talked and I listened. I also used the cotton plug from his vitamins to make a only slightly effective pair of ear plugs.

The other lower bunk was first occupied by a former Navy guy who was maybe a couple of years older than me, but only did 18 days. He rarely spoke at first, but we got him to eventually communicate. Still don't know what he did. He lived in a tent behind his brother's house.

The other upper bunk was a 20-year-old kid from an adjacent county, basically a spoiled rich kid who thought dealing drugs and stealing cars was cool and under the (false) impression that his lawyer would convince the judge to let him off. He was actually a good kid, but easily provoked and immature. The upper tier would taunt him through the glass and he'd be like a stallion stuck in his corral, pacing back and forth for hours.

I was dreading that first night -- shades of Shawshank -- particularly being a Friday night. But other than some hoots and hollers from the peanut gallery upstairs, I did OK. FISH! FISH!

The other Shawshawk moment came about halfway through the sentence, when a guy who was probably the only other person in there with a college degree -- a former Iraq soldier who did something dumb -- came up to me and said, "You know, you really look like you don't belong here." I agreed, and then he added, "Until we heard your story, we all assumed you were an embezzler or a child molester." Which is exactly what you do NOT want to be in there.

But he went on to tell me how I had this air of confidence, even in a place like that. He could tell just by the way I carried myself that I was different than the common jailbird. All the time, I was Andy Dufresne! Who knew?

I'm naturally an introvert, so I have to force myself to talk to people I don't know. So in this case, I tried to make small talk with whomever I was standing or seated next to, and also try to choose the largest and most-tattooed guys to befriend just in case something broke out. So I'd offer my leftovers to different guys every meal.

I mentioned Prison Spades, but I was banned from playing Scrabble for using words that no one in the block had ever seen, let alone pronounced. So I ended up being the official Scrabble argument-settler from that point on. Yes, inmates use "drugs" and "meth" more than most normal players do. And I've never seen common words spelled in such odd ways before, even from interns on deadline.

More to come ...

 

don't waste these on us

find someplace to publish them

 

I had someone ask me if I kept a diary while I was in there. That would have been extremely dangerous if discovered by either another inmate or a guard. These are specific memories that I still have embedded, three years later. Telling them in confidence to you folks may help make them less vivid.

 

Can I ask a question that I'm sorry to ask? (Please don't answer if you do not wish, obviously.) Did you have to shit in front of each other? I'm assuming one toilet in the cell, just out in the open. Do you have a courtesy method of waiting until the other guy is out of the cell? I'm assuming that's how it would work sometimes, but there are times... Well, at risk of oversharing myself, I have to go when I have to go.

I honestly don't think I could get used to shitting in front of someone, or someone shitting in front of me.

I second @Azrael, but I get how you might not want to live with this stuff for any longer than you have to. The sleep deprivation alone... Jail seems like a place custom-made to make people who are already unstable even less stable.

 

Do it once, you can do it forever.

 

I mean, I remember toilet training my kids and watching the shit come of them to make sure they were done, and thinking: I did not sign up to watch shit come out of someone. It's not something anyone should have to watch, actively.

 

Yes, it's right there, directly in line of sight of everybody walking by and our cell was in line with the guard station. My bunkie would string his sheet between the two upper bunks in order to get some privacy. I got yelled at over the intercom when I tried that -- so I said to the guard, "OK, watch me take a dump if you want."

If I could, I tried to time it during meal breaks or when everyone on our tier was out so I was the only one in the cell. Same for the other guys, mostly.

That didn't always work. If it was you who needed to go and you were locked down, you apologized and hoped you didn't stink up the cell. If it was one of the other three, you tried to read a book or think of other things.

I had violent diarrhea once, and our cell was "occupied," so I asked one of the other guys if I could use theirs. That could have gotten me in massive trouble with the guards (you're not supposed to enter any other cell) but I did my business and got out fast.

 

I can, however, shit anywhere.

 

Please tell us there's going to be a Part 3. Please?

 

Part 3: Castle Doctrine Cathy Gets Hit By A Car?

 

A motor home.

 

Picking up somewhere on Day 15 of my incarceration. The kid -- who was certain his stepfather would bail him out -- eventually got transferred back to his home county for a preliminary hearing. Silent Sailor shipped off.

FIGHT NO. 1: As I mentioned, there was a pocket of jailhouse Christians who would hold a bible study at one of the tables on nights we were in the common room. One guy I nicknamed Animal (like the Muppet), because he'd suddenly scream, howl or bark like a dog to get attention. Dude was seriously unhitched. One of the others I called Little Big Man -- he was 5-7 and probably 130 pounds. Quiet and polite, he'd ask me to help him read because he was nearly illiterate.

So I'm watching one of the early NFL exhibition games at another table when suddenly Animal and Little Big Man started screaming at each other, which led to a wrestling match right behind me. Little Big Man puts a chokehold on Animal, drags him into his cell, the door closes and the beatdown commences. Man, you could hear bodies slamming off the steel walls while we rest of us were standing around, dumbfounded.

Guards finally show up, put us in lockdown and take both of them out of the block. Little Big Man comes back a couple of hours later, no worse for wear. Apparently Animal went in the hole for a few days, then transferred to the crazy bin block.

That also cost us seven days of TV time, which didn't really hurt my feelings much. It finally brought the sound down to a dull roar.

Because of massive overcrowding at other jails in the judicial district (some were packing eight guys into a four-man room and putting 50 or 60 guys in a 36-bed block), we were getting much of the overflow. That included the only black guy I saw during my time there, plus a former cellmate of my bunkie and the aforementioned Wolf.

The black guy was a cocky, mouthy small-timer with a reputation for having a quick temper. He basically tried to intimidate everyone. He would up on the upper tier with the guy I nicknamed "Huh?" because that was his response every time anyone spoke to him. He and my roomie would try to hold a conversation through a fortified steel door, which led to neither one knowing what the other was saying. "Huh?" "Huh?" Geez.

And because we had two open bunks, guess who we got! Wolf was obnoxious, obese, obtuse and oblivious. He was rude, crude and loud as the inside of a bass drum. And he snored like a Peterbilt going up the Grapevine. A dumb dolt of a drunk whose primary response to any request was, "Who's going to f---ing stop me?"

His diminished mental capacity only allowed him to remember five stories, which he repeated endlessly without realizing he had told it to us multiple times previously. The worst was his ongoing battle with the small-town police chief, who apparently had the temerity to arrest him for drinking beer while riding a bike through town. At one point, Wolf asked me to edit a letter he was writing to the Public Defender. It was a rambling, delusional screed that did nothing to help his case. I told him it looked fine and he mailed it.

My bunkie got extreme pleasure out of needling Wolf and egging him on to retell his exploits. As Wolf would get more agitated, he'd get even louder. And around and around we went, for 10 long days.

FIGHT NO. 1 1/2: Wolf was napping one afternoon, so bunkie and I were by the toilet, trying to talk quietly. All of a sudden, Wolf yells, "If you're talking about me, I'm going to f--- you guys up!" Bunkie yells back, "We're not talking about you. Shut up and go back to sleep, you stupid drunk!" At this point, Wolf gets up and starts to threaten us. Bunkie hits the "panic button" (the intercom we can use to speak to the guard station) and says, "I want Wolf out of this cell now!"

For a tense 45 seconds or so, the three of us are standing there in a locked cell, and I have no idea what's going to happen next. I'm too far away from the pillow to whack Wolf in the head. Finally, the guards pop the door lock, get us all out and send bunkie and me into the common room while they detain Wolf in the cell. Eventually they decide to shift Wolf to one of the empty two-man cells (on the same tier!) and disaster is averted, for now.

From that point on, Wolf was actually somewhat civil. Like George Thorogood, he apparently liked to drink alone.

FIGHT NO. 2 1/2: A day or two later, our tier had about 15 minutes remaining in our lockdown -- and I'm just resting on the bunk -- when I hear what sounds like a watermelon being dropped from a six-story building. Splat! I look through the window to see one of the wanna-be gang dudes running up the stairs with blood streaming from both ears.

We find out later dumb ass kept calling Angry Black Guy the N-word for unknown reasons, and apparently ABG finally had enough. He picked the dude up and pile-drove him head-first into the concrete floor. Angry Black Guy was sent to parts unknown (never saw him again). Redneck Racist had a skull fracture and went to the hospital. Apparently the sheriff dropped the rest of his sentence. Sure hope his family sued the crap out of the county.

I failed to mention that the block until that point had been kept extremely cold -- probably between 58-62 degrees. I took to wearing double T-shirts under the jumpsuits and using one blanket to block the flow of air from the AC vent that was aimed directly at my bunk. However, immediately after this fight, suddenly "the AC broke," according to the guards. With no air flow when the doors were shut, the cells were stifling hot for the entire Labor Day weekend. (Of course, my anxiety is temperature-related, too.) I took to soaking a T-shirt in the sink and wearing it wet, just to bring my core temperature down.

As someone (Evil?) pointed out, you've got a bunch of bored, frustrated men in a small space. And now you've got a bunch of bored, frustrated, overheated and angry men in a small space. But somehow we got through that -- probably because most of the major troublemakers had finally been eliminated.

Still more on the way ...