One: Where I am
Sunday, July 27th
(first day of diary)
I suppose I should start by telling you where I am. This is an
old prison (well over a hundred years old) and it would be better
suited as a historical site, than a place to keep prisoners. It’s
falling apart. The state wanted to close it years ago because it
cost too much to operate, but they can’t, Even though they are
constantly building new prisons and adding to the ones they
already have, there are too many of us.
They have nowhere else to put us.
The massive Romanesque architecture of the prison’s
buildings, gun towers, and the thirty foot wall that surrounds us
is composed of worn red brick. Millions of them. The mortar that
has for so long held them together is falling out. In places, the
bricks have separated in distinct fault lines. Weeds have taken
root between them and sprout directly from the sides of buildings
and the wall. It’s a funny sight.
There is a contrast in the wall between the uppermost
section—which was replaced after it broke apart and toppled into
the big yard ten years ago during an earthquake—and the rest of
it which is covered with a dark, crusty type of moss. The contrast
is becoming less apparent though. Long streaks of rust from the
razor wire that crowns the top of the wall have stained the new
section and the moss is beginning to encroach.
I’m not as old as the prison (43 now) but there are times I
feel like it because prison is all that I know. I have been in since I
was eighteen. That is, if you don’t count the juvenile institutions I
spent my childhood in. Longer, if you do. Looking back it seems
like a long time. I’m conscious that I’m swiftly approaching the
limit of a prisoner’s life expectancy—which isn’t the same as that
of a free person’s.
Two: Proximity
Monday, July 28th
My celly, Bucky, began vomiting a few days ago. He’s in the
infirmary now with some kind of food poisoning. He isn’t the only
one who got it, so he has company.
I wouldn’t wish a sickness like that on anyone but, I have to
admit, his absence from the small place that is our cell is a bit of a
relief. I am less distracted, able to write more, and can get off my
bunk whenever I want, instead of the way we have to do it when
there are two of us…taking turns.
It isn’t that I don’t like Bucky, or care what happens to him. I
do. He came highly recommended (my friend Jimmy vouched for
him). After my last celly was transferred, the cell house sergeant
told me I would have to find another, or he would find one for
me. I had Bucky move in later that day.
Bucky came to prison as a juvenile with a four year sentence,
but in the few years he has been here six more have been added
to it because of his behavior (and I suspect he will stretch it to
more than that before he is through). He gets into trouble
because he’s afflicted with what used to be called in my time
“hyperactivity”, now ADHD. They give him Ritalin in an attempt to
control it, but he sells the pills. He has no other source of money
–no parents, he was raised by the state.
You may wonder why I choose to live with a prisoner like
Bucky, afflicted as he is and only nineteen years old. But, the
truth is, I am more comfortable around him than I would be
around someone who wasn’t sent to prison until he was older. I
have patience for Bucky because I understand him…at least the
circumstances that brought him to prison, because they are not
much different from the ones that brought me here when I was
his age.
I have to yell at Bucky sometimes to take a shower because
he forgets, or to wash his socks. But, besides that, he isn’t a
problem. He’s trustworthy and his word is good. What more
could I ask?
The problem isn’t my celly, it’s that this prison has the
smallest cells in the system—we literally live on top of each other
here. State officials know they aren’t supposed to put more than
one prisoner into a cell this small. An injunction was issued by a
Federal Court years ago that kept them from doing it—until the
state got it lifted by telling the court that prisoners were
volunteering to be crammed in together. Bastards.
I’ve pondered writing to the court to tell them the truth, but I
know it wouldn’t be wise. Others have tried it and everyone
knows what happened to them. Because of the overcrowding,
more than a thousand of our state’s prisoners are housed in
other states (long distances away), and I would quickly find
myself with them if I were to write the court.
Bucky is a decent celly, but I am going to enjoy this time while
he is gone. I don’t miss being forced into such close proximity
with anyone.
next page
The Prison Diaries of Arthur Longworth
spring 2009 r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal