Welcome to Prison
A Forum for Stories of Incarceration, Justice, and Redemption
DAY ONE: The Arrival
You can survive prison, and you can recover from prison, but prison never leaves you.
I was assigned to a prison camp in a remote area north of Boston, FMC Devens, a former military base where the Spanish Flu began. My older brother, who’d just turned eighty, lived in Boston and offered to drive me there. He said it would be an hour, but it seemed longer. I sat in the front, my wife in the back, and my nephew, then fifty, was also in the back. I don’t remember why we did that. It didn’t matter; everything was going to be awkward. Pouring rain most of the way, the weather met the mood. My brother’s driving was fragile, clumsily swerving from lane to lane. I could tell he was uncomfortable. He’d usually talk your head off, but was subdued on the drive there. He’d been my idol growing up and had taught me to box, nearly killing me one night in our stuffy basement when I was ten. Later, he was a Little League coach, my business partner for many years, and one of my few loyal supporters since my fall.
I could feel my wife’s discomfort the most. We’d been married for fifty years. She knew me like no other and forgave me despite my failures lurking like a family curse. Our large Italian-American family, grounded in a family business, was still recovering when the business shuttered decades ago.
“You know the way I’m approaching this?” I said to my brother, attempting to cut the ice.
“No. What’s that?” he asked.
“I anticipate they’ll treat me like shit, and I’m ready for it. I’m just going to accept it.”
“Oh, I see,” he said. “That’s great.” He’d been an officer in the Navy and said, “When I was training, the officers would say we were lower than whale shit, and that’s at the bottom of the ocean.”
We laughed. My nephew laughed as well. I couldn’t see my wife, but I’m sure she wasn’t laughing, probably not even smiling. Your husband is on the way to prison; what’s there to laugh about?
There were many road and route changes, confusing exits to manage, and then a pause in the GPS, and we got lost for a while.
“Heh, Dad,” my nephew said. “I think you missed the turn.”
“I did not. Keep quiet back there,” my brother answered. Then turned to me. “Just what I need, a backseat driver.”
“I was just trying to help,” my nephew pleaded.
In some ways, all of the issues were welcome distractions. But when we finally arrived, there was a false relief to find the right exit and manage the confusing entrance to the building. It came upon us unexpectedly after a sharp bend in the road and seemed to drive to us instead of the other way around. It was nothing like you imagined but everything you feared—a long, looming concrete block building with no windows and three tiers of barbed wire. There was no plan or rehearsal for the drop-off.
“Are you as brave as you seem?” my wife asked at the prison door. I don’t remember what I said. It was something reassuring, but there were no tears. I left them all in the car and walked through the door alone. My pre-prison research advised me to make friends slowly, live under the radar and become a ghost to the staff. I wasn’t brave.
Entering the prison lobby, my legs were like planks. A lone security guard sat behind an elevated desk, seemingly unaware of me. The reception area was cold and institutional, with skeletal chairs in the waiting area. Eventually, he motioned to me. His uniform was more custodian than military. Then, a tall, muscular guard with a shaved head and a crisp silver goatee came out of a side door. Holding the door open, he didn’t look at me. His uniform was military and intimidating, with a long silver chain hanging low on the side of his belt and countless keys jangling.
"Inside,” he ordered.
I found myself at a round table, battered and scratched, a young female guard in a Red Sox hat across from me. She was pretty but hardened and scruffy.
"This isn't like the movies," she said, trying to reassure me. “You have to stay in the Shoe for a couple of days to check your medical condition before we release you to the camp." I had heard about the Shoe, a euphemism for solitary confinement.
"Yeah," she said. "It sucks, but that’s the way it is."
Shortly after, a thirty-something female guard arrived. A bit overweight, she had short sandy hair, her uniform was sloppy and crumpled, and she looked over a folder as she sat down.
“I'm the psychologist," she said. "Have you thought about hurting yourself?"
"No." Not the first question I expected.
"You feel hopeless?" she asked, asking my name and still looking at the file.
"No."
"You want to kill somebody?"
"Anybody say yes to these questions?" I asked.
"Yeah, they do,” she answered, looking down at her file. “This is not like the movies.” Then she got up but paused at the door. "Your pre-sentence report said you were thinking about walking in front of a bus."
"Not serious," I said.
"Just kind of the despair of your life crumbling?"
"Yeah. More or less. Never really thought about it."
I had been thinking about it. I just knew yes wasn’t a good answer.
I was strip-searched and given new clothes, not new ones. Prison clothes are used and come in only two sizes: too big and too small. Mine were both. The underwear was small and tight, the shirt and pants were too big, and the shoes—a kind of slipper with one size for everybody—squeezed my feet. I didn't say anything. There was something so impersonal but personal at the same time.
After I was dressed, a Hispanic guard came in and handcuffed me, and pulled me out of the room, up a staircase and into a dark hallway crowded with guards and inmates all in orange jump suits, and most of them with tattoos and long beards shouting at one another. All the inmates were in cuffs like me, and it felt like a riot or outbreak was looming.
Then he took me down a narrow hall with steel doors on both sides, the sounds of shouting and fighting behind me. Frightening faces peered out through tiny windows, looking like men who’ve been caged for a long time. This was the Shoe, a complex of caves and corridors, where inmates were disciplined in solitary cells, with no windows, and only a slot in the cell door for meals. I never saw the guard; a container was stuck through the porthole without a word. It smelled like dog food. There was no sleep, and a cold vent blew 24/7 to keep the cell meat-locker cold. At night, there were ceaseless screams, groans, and moans from the other cells, and the lights blinked from time to time but never went out.
He shoved me into the cell, and the steel door closed like a gunshot. As he walked away, he shouted back to me,
“Welcome to Prison.”
I was there for four days. On the fourth morning, right after breakfast, I heard keys clanging in the corridor. Even today, the sound of keys still haunts me. A guard opened the slot in the door, slid new clothes through the door and told me I’d be released to the camp shortly. I looked out through the tiny portal in the cell door. Across from me, a pair of eyes peered out. I was still shivering from the cold. This was your warning: if you mess up, you're coming back. Every inmate feared it. On a long walk in handcuffs back to reception, I could barely put one foot in front of the other. I thought I was ready for prison. Not even close.
Up next on White-Collar Journal:
The Camp. I leave the Shoe and enter the general population of the prison camp. A muddled brotherhood of white-collar criminals, hustlers, gang members, and violent offenders was waiting for me.